Busywork

Yesterday marked day 2 with Brewer Bear. I will try to restructure what I learned. We did not brew this time around. Today was a transfer/cleaning day. These two time-consuming tasks work well in conjunction together. Instead of hurryupandwait, we would bounce back and forth between the cold room and the brewery, as activated tasks ran their course. I think I will describe them as two separate events, for I fear my shortcomings as a writing stylist will muddify particulars of the actual events.

Transfer: The ESB from fermentor to serving tank. First thing to do is to taste the beer. Rough life, I know. Brewer Bear filled one pint from the side spigot on the side of the fermentation tank, after a quick sanitizing spritz from the iodophor bottle. This is a tiny spigot at the bottom of a 15 barrel tank. These tanks, pretty small to moderate in brewery sizes, hold 465 gallons of beer plus another 1/3 volume head space. One barrel is 31 gallons, if that helps. Some ancient measuring system that exists now chiefly to confuse number-retarded people like myself.

Oh the beer. This beer has been nitrogen-conditioned in the tank, after fermentation had ceased. There are different gas lines coming into the room, some with CO2 and some N. Conditioning post fermentation is as simple as capping the tank so no gas exits and plugging in one of those lines to carbonate. Since fermentation produces CO2 beer will carbonate itself if there is some yeast activity still present. Additional CO2 can be added to further carbonate, but is mostly use to create pressure to go from here to there.

Right, the beer! Besides the nice nitro cascade, it held a cool copper color and fresh hop aroma. Mild, semi-sweet with no punchy hops one would expect from American-style ales. This is a decent example of English-style ale as I understand it, though can't speak for its authenticity.

Hm, I haven't described any transferring so far. I think I'll devote more time to it in a future post when I understand it a bit better.

Bear Beer

Wholly Geeznuts, a lot of change in a short amount of time. To review, since November of '06 I have been in talks to open an upscale sportsbar with my bartender colleague Agent Smith. Last month the business partnership gained a lot of momentum and started rolling towards serious commitmentville. We stood on the precipice of a consulting contract in which we would pay $100K to a team to steer us through the process of getting Ferrum up and running over the course of 18-24 months. This prompted me to step aside and do some serious soul-searching and bank account-examining. At the end of my few day reflection, I had my answer: BAIL!

So I bailed. Lots of factors led to the decision, but the biggest one was my disenchantment with the concept. As I have previously stated, my goals tend towards the brewery and my ideas. I could no longer justify working for the next 5+ years on someone else's concept that is not a direct line to my goals. Plus, who wants to own a sportsbar anyway? Not this guy.

So back to the brewing, yes? YES, dear reader (as if you're out there). Through the classic connection of I-know-him-he-knows-her-she-works-at-a-brewery I was able to get into the furry underbelly of Thirsty Bear Brewing company for a day "working" with the brewer. I was there from 8-3 asking questions and pitching in when allowed. It was great, me and Brewer Bear alone with our rubber boots and water hoses for hours. I had to stop myself from giggling with glee several times throughout the day. It is supposed to be work after all. We brewed the Black Bear Lager, from grains to fermentor. I have to say there were no surprises. I understood the concept, and the work was no more or less glamorous than I expected. This bear's porridge was juuuust right.

After working for several hours, Brewer Bear seemed to warm up to my presence considerably. Those bears can be so territorial! Over lunch I ever so slyly let him know of my seriousness of the work, and offered to come back again. It was such a tightrope all day, of how eager to seem, to not be annoying, to be helpful but not in the way, and now I was asking to come back and bug him more! I was nervous, as probably I should have been, but it turned out well, he was open to the idea. So this Thursday, back for more! I've got my foot in the door, I will brew another day.

Like George J, I'm a movin' on up.

Biérevolution

Things are definitely happening...Agent Smith and I had a meeting with a powerful consulting team who spelled out for us everything we do not know about starting a restaurant. The same night I met with III about his desires to put forward a restaurant team. Just the day before I met with myself and reminded me how much I wanted a brewery in my future. Will a sportslounge be a path towards that goal? I'm hoping that this book will answer some of my questions:

I plan on a full book report as soon as I finish the read. I am currently trying to figure out how to a) make this picture a link to this guys blog, and b) add links to the side of my blog. I'm html htmzzzzz.

Introducing...

My first villain beer is complete! I hope Supermom is pleased with her nemesis. Upon tasting on Saturday I am pleased with the evilness of beer containing no alcohol.

Thanks to key-z and pee-money too. Zombiebrewz...what do you think?

Kontinuing Krypton

I'm finally getting around to my tasting notes on the other three beers brewed by Supermom's pops. Here they are, from too brief to overly wordy.

Amber: Over-carbonated. It didn't overflow, but would have if I had poured the entire beer in the glass. Even the bottle itself filled up with head after pouring. After it retracted it stuck around in a sort of weak form. The flavor is delicious and tinny (that's all I wrote?!?). Full-bodied, filled my mouth pleasantly.

Red: Funny how this carbonation thing is so inconsistent. The brews go from perfect (grain beer from previous post) to too much (see above), to a bit thin, as in this red beer. I'd like to know how to control that. I'd guess that the amount of sugar vs specific gravity would have a good deal to do with that. I'd also guess that Jor-el put the same amount of priming sugar into each of these batches, as I have always done. That would account for the inconsistent levels in differing brews. The flavor of this beer is wonderful. It has a bit of that stingy, metallic flavor I expect from a red beer. All that plus real body and full finish. Back in college when I was drinking all that Leiney's Red I would have wanted it to taste like this beer. Too bad it never did.

Brown Ale: Since my critiques tend toward carbonation levels, I'll start there again: perfect this time! Especially at the outset. I poured straight into my Duvel taster and the head bubbled up, pushing the limits of the lip of the glass, without cascading over. The head slowly dissipated and carbonation stayed strong till the end. The flavor is dominated by a pleasant nuttiness. A flash of bitterness hits the back of the tongue initially, followed by a bit of malt flavor, and the beer finishes quite bitter. This is a great ale! Not what I expected from a brown, I'd have to say. It has none of the sticky sweetness found in others, I am relieved to say.

All in all, Krypton is putting out some of the best homebrews in my world. An import I hope to see a lot more of.

Montreal invades California

Last night Pee-Money and I hiked across Berkeley campus on a misty June 1st to check out Arcade Fire at the Greek Theater. Colin Stetson, high school classmate and avaunt-guard saxophone king, is now playing with them. He used his whole arsenal of instruments, including French horn and bass clarinet. The show was great! All 10-12 of them are into every tune, singing along whether or not there is a microphone in front of them. Halfway through the set they played a rendition of "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" that I felt was the highlight of the night. At one point towards the end of the night, Winn, during a song break, said to the audience, "The fucking fog broke my amp. Thanks a lot, assholes!" He then rambled on about foggy days and sunny days for a bit then exclaimed, "Eh, shut up and play the hits already!" It was a fun moment, then they immediately broke into "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)." The last song of the set was "Rebellion (Lies)," a predictable and appropriate choice. After the song was over, a large portion of the audience kept the sing-a-long chorus going for a couple minutes until they returned to the stage, no easy feat for several thousand non-singers to achieve. The encore was two songs, a heartfelt homage to his Grandfather who is buried in San Francisco followed by a raucous rendition of "Wake Up."

Oh yeah, beer: we each had two $7 plastic bottles of Anchor Steam. Bargain!!

Beer Minus Alcohol = Still Fun

Today I am subtracting alcohol from Supermom's IPA, hence making it Supermom's "Foe" IPA. I am partially making this method up as I go, due to the shortage of detailed instructions online. Apparently not many homebrewers are actually interested in brewing beer without alcohol. Funny. I also asked the grumpy old dude at the Oak Barrel beer supply store about brewing non-alcoholic beer, and he told me it was thought of as very difficult to do well. So if I fail miserably I'll at least be in large company.

First, I took my fully-fermented but only partially hopped beer and racked it back into the brewkettle, which brought me to unexpected hurdle #1: my brew kettle is only almost 5 gallons. I'm used to boiling 2 1/2 gallons at a time. I grabbed another pot and switched over towards the end, which ended up being a good idea, because I avoided getting more sludge in my finished beer from the bottom of the fermenter. I will probably end up dumping that last couple pints of sludgy beer. Sad but better than picking sediment out of your teeth.

As the beer heated up towards 180 degrees, it got pretty foamy, threatening to overflow a few times. Stirring only made it worse. My plan was to bring it back to a full boil in order to throw some cascade hops in for aroma, then back the heat back down. Now I'm thinking that a full boil with a full pot will result in a hot and sticky situation. Instead I am going to attempt the hop tea approach. I will steep the hops in boiled water then add the water at the end of this unfermentation process.

To make I used 1 1/2 oz of cascade pellets wrapped (perhaps too firmly) in cheesecloth, plus a small handful of dried out whole crystal hop flowers. The resulting tea was somewhat aromatic, and tasted slightly bitter. Hope it adds something.

After 40 minutes of 180 degree temperatures on the stovetop, I took the beer off, added the tea and cooled down the now near beer with my sanitized copper coil. I'm being extra careful with sanitation today. Usually I am a bit more carefree, confident that the alcohol would kill most bacteria that would sneak through. My last hurdle before bottling was that it takes For-effing-EVER for 5 gallons of liquid to cool down to 75 degrees, the acceptable temperature for pitching yeast. Since the re-boil killed off any old yeast, I had to wait to pitch again along with 3/4 cup corn sugar in order for these 20 or so double duece bottles to have any fizzyspritzer to them.

Now it is time for the finger crossing. Will the bottles explode? Will the yeast survive? Will there be any hop aroma? Will the flavor be alright? Did the alcohol go away? Will it taste anything like beer at all?!? I'll try not to get my hopes up too high this week.

Supermom's Foe IPA

I've finally gotten around to my first hero/villain beer...and it's not going to have any alcohol. WTF anyway.

A familiar beginning:
1 gallon of The Town H2O steeping 10 oz crushed 40L crystal malt for 30 minutes at 150 degrees.
This imparts both color and "specialty grain" flavor to the finished beer. Since I am extracting the alcohol and probably losing any subtleties in this batch, this step may be totally meaningless. I feel compelled to do it anyway, thinking that this beer will need all the help it can get if it is going to be at all quaffable.

Strain the water into the brew kettle, and sparge the bag of grains with another gallon of 150 degrees H2O.

Upon boil, added
5 lbs American light extract syrup
1 lb light dry extract powder
1.5 oz chinook bittering hop
boil all this for 45 minutes

Add 3/4 oz Kent Goldings
3/4 oz Cascade
1tsp. Irish Moss
boil all this for 15 minutes

STOP!! NO AROMA HOPS!!

Put the cooling tube in the wort to sanitize. Don't forget to run some clean water through it first. Some water from inside almost always drips into the wort at some time; best if it is not stale water form the last time I brewed.

Cool it down, add to the carboy and pitch the yeast
1056 American Ale slap pack

O.G. 1.033

Angelsweat v.2

I vow to find out if Angelsweat is as swheat as I think it will be:

2 1/2 gallons of Oaktown's finest
Approximately 7+ lbs wheat extract
1.25 oz Hallertaur pellets for 1/2 hour
.5 oz saaz for 12 minutes - add teaspoon Irish moss here too!
.5 oz saaz for the last couple minutes

On Thursday May 17, I transfered the sweat from my new 6 1/2 gallon carboy (yay) to the neck of a 5 gallon with .5 oz saaz hops for that extra fresh kick.

More Offerings from Krypton

The father of Supermom has done it again.

First up: grain beer. No other description given.
First impression is a great head, not too much but definitely present, with dense small off-white bubbles. The beer is cloudy and pale. The aroma made me think Belgian, but the palate made me doubt that guess. There isn't a strong hop aroma, which makes me think it probably wasn't dry-hopped. I also guess that cascade hops wern't used, since I don't get that recognizable west-coast smell or citrus flavor. There is a great new flavor, however, somewhat bready and slight sweetness with tasty, stinging hops bittering up the finish. The head stays around till the last sip, without any real agitation required. Good job, Jor-el.

Return of the Odd Sox

Yes, Frank is back.
www.frankallisonmusic.com - definitely check out the chicken whisperer video

Exploding Summer Beer.

This post started as one thing, will end as another. I set out to brew some Angelsweat for Bay to Breakers. I recorded all the specifics up till time of proposed dry-hop:

"That's right. The sweat of an angel, peoples. You know you want it.

Contract brewing for Adventure Angels Bay to Breakers after party. I'm pretty sure I just felt an earthquake; God must not like me bottling the sweat of his minions.

Added 6 lbs wheat extract and 1 lb light dry extract to 2 1/2 gallons tap water.
1 0z Hallertaur pellets upon boil.

Pitched yeast: Whitelabs tube of American Hefeweizen WLP320
OG: 1.053"

Then, I came home after a hot day and evening at work, and WOW! The beer had exploded out the top of the fermenter, like a geyser spraying 2 1/2 gallons of beer all over my kitchen. Back to the drawing board.

Holiday Jerk

For the $$ of ingredients and 4 ace air filters, I have created jerry-rigged jerky. The method:

1. Mostly freeze a flank steak. This will make slicing easier. Slice on the grain.

2. Marinade for 3-6 hours in a plastic bag.
2/3 cup soy sauce
2/3 cup worchestshire sauce
1 Tbs. Honey
2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp red pepper
1 tsp liquid smoke

3. Pat dry, line into cellulose filters, 16X20 worked well for this fan size
(remove white paper I have learned)

4. Attach to fan with bungees, turn on low for 12 hours.

5. Enjoy indefinitely!

Beer Names

I found an old scratch list that EARWAX and I created probably a year ago. The notes on it are:

ArborOak Brewing
Watershed Brewing Co. (later nixed due to the definition of a watershed)

Haddon Hill Hefeweizen
Grand Lake Lager
He Hurt Me Pilsner (long live the XFL!)
Reeperbahn Red
Sodomy Santa (WTF)
Krystal Weizz - Cristal Champagne - I have no idea what that was about, maybe something to do with marketing that angle of brand recognition.

This is mostly useless, but I wanted to post it to remind myself that I can post an entry even if there is no brew EVENT per se that is going on; just having some malt musings is enough.

I'm planning my next batch for SUPERMOM while she is pregnant, and have been bragging about my brillance of naming this non-alcoholic concoction. The regular beer will be "Supermom IPA." The near-beer will be "Supermom's Foe IPA." Get it? Like foe=faux!! I'm fucking brilliant. The artist rendering of Supermom's nemesis on the label will make it all come together and I will be the talk of tipsey town. Whatever the hell that is.

Party Anchor

Unihorn invited me to Anchor's holiday party. Whee! All of their beer offerings, plus food and people, and I didn't have to walk through their tour one more time! I did get a nice shpiel from Hendricks, a brewer there, who spelled out the three-part process that squirrel and I had JUST gone through ghetto-style. I also had an opportunity to taste York Creek wines across the street when Unihorn's wine dork entourage scored a personal invite from the brewer. I was definitely more impressed with Anchor's beers than wines. The barrel taste of port was good, however.

BFF: Beer Friends Forever

Me and Fritz. Fritz and me.

Hoppy Holiday Hefeweizen

Brewing in Squirrel's red-neck backyard an all-grain hefe beer based on a Paulaner recipe. The all-grain ghetto setup is totally rad; no $1000 brew-tree required. With a turkey-fryer and a small gas stove he is able to rig a totally functional system. The process is long and fun; he started early this morning and now, at 2 in the afternoon the wort is happily boiling away. One of the slickest work-arounds is the wort chiller. A flexible hose comes from the valve UNDER the sink and attaches to an on/off valve on the end of the copper tubing. This bypasses the awkward connection between copper tube and sink faucet. This is real brewing, no fuckin' around (in reference to the NFA stout I am totally enjoying).

The basics: Mash 14 lbs grains -
7.25 wheat grains,
6.75 Belgian 2-row pale malt,
6 oz German Munich Malt
Hold at 152 degrees for two hours
transfer and let settle to insulated lauter tun for a half-hour
sparge approximately 5 gallons H20 at 175 degrees
- transfer small batches to brew kettle
Begin boil!
Upon boil - hop bill 1.5 oz Columbus (14% alpha acid!) 1.5 oz Hallertau
90 minute boil, enter the wort chiller and 1 teaspoon Irish Moss 5 minutes
Everything is sanitized form this point on!
Activate the wort chiller, bring to 80 degrees (about 30 minutes).
Strain into the fermenter (bucket), yielding 5 gallons.
Yeast is hefe tube yeast made into a starter with wheat DME.
(3 tbs Wheat DME + 1 cup water, fermented 2 weeks ago then refridgerated)

O.G. 1.060 (8% potential)
F.G. _____

Barrel Beers

A week ago I attended the Bistro's Inaugural Barrel-Aged Beer Festival. There were beers aged in barrels formerly containing whiskey, bourbon, madeira, wine, you name it. And there were about 50 of them. Some brewers there, including Roger from Drake's. He keeps talking to me about opening a brewpub in Oakland. Apparantly there are a few others already in the works.

It's like that old saying in Texas, well I know it's in Texas, but probably Tennessee too... fool me once, shame on...shame on me...fool me won't be fooled again.

Wait, not that saying, the other one. I think pops said it, that if I've come up with an idea, someone else has already thought of it, and is probably doing something about it.

I digress. The tasting was great, tasted 13 beers, reanging from sticky sweet, puckery sour, sherry flavored, woody vanilla, stouty, hoppy, malty. So many different flavors, unrefutable evidence that beer is not a one-note tune.

The Winners:
Pizza Port Old(er) Viscosity Strong Ale. Best in show, a barley-wine styled sweet beer.
Glacier Brew House Ukrainian Imperial Stout. People's choice, a tasty toasted stout.

Orphan Ale 2006

Based on a clone of Anchor Liberty, today brews a quickie before Thanksgiving NINE days away.

Last night I created a starter for the first time: 1/3 cup light dry etxract and 2 cascade gop pellets boiled in 2 cups water (over-flowed briefly, of course). Cooled, added to an empty double-duece bottle. Pitch yeast, add airlock, leave out overnight. This morning, a nice head inside the bottle tells me to go ahead. Now for the beer!

Steeped 12 oz or so 60L Crystal malts for a half hour @ 150 deg., then mini-sparged with a whole gallon of the same temp. Measured out 3 lbs. dry malt extract, realized that it takes a hell of a lot of that shit to make up 4 lbs. Had to get the last pound by itself. Added that plus about 5 lbs AMerican light extract. 2.5 oz Northern Brewer hop pellets and we're off and boiling for 45 minutes.

Pee Money is here to assist me, stirring the beer with a ladel and stirring my mind with a low-pitched "Eyesore." HUH?!?!
http://pee-money.blogspot.com/2006/04/eyesore.html

After that 45 minutes, .5 oz Northern Brewer Hops and .75 oz. Cascade go in for flavor. 1 tsp of Irish Moss for Clarity. 14 minutes on the boil. Time to start sanitizing.

.5 oz each of the 2 varieties for one minute, then on to the wort chiller. 20 minutes later, ready for the carboy.

Looks pretty cloudy after all the straining. Even if I had a finer mesh strainer it seems like it would take forever to get through all that gunk.

One screw up at the end, may lead to contamination. Pitching my starter I failed to realize that there was more volume than I was used to. No more room in the tank since I filled it to the bottom of the neck! Ended up dumping some out then adding some back in, a brewer's no-no. Oh well, we shall see.

O.S.G. 1.038
F.S.G. 1.021

The beers of Krypton

Finally my friend SUPERMOM brought me beers of her father. I can only assume that they were crafted on crystal mountains of the planet Krypton. First up is his Belgian-style ale. As you can see by the pic it looks like beer. I poured it straight into my favorite tasting glass, a stemmed Michelob glass SQUIRREL picked up for me at a garage sale a year or so ago. A nice amber color, the beer produced a nice head in the glass that, unfortunately, quickly dissapated. Larger bubbles quickly formed on the sides, but within 8 minutes or so they were also gone. Tiny bubbles continue to cascade up the middle of the glass even now as I write. The flavor is REAL nice, a great Belgian sweetness without puckery sourness. It lingers on, and is complex throughout, if not a bit too sweet. I would have liked some more lingering carbonation. Perhaps it just needs more time in the bottle to mature. It's probably pretty young.

Next, the stout, Which SUPERMOM says is even better. Well, the head retention is a bit better, with the nice light brown bubbles clinging to the side of the glass as I imbibe. The flavor is good, very toasty to the point of burnt. The carbonation is nice, not too much or little. The finish is short, I'd like that toasty quality to continue on longer. Nice showing, all in all.