Brewery Fantasies

I'm just daydreaming. Thinking about the progression and final product. Just getting a small space to brew would be a great start; I could basically be a one man operation like Mr Hunt. All I need is space and equipment. I can keg and bottle, distribute and pick up new accounts. Clever labelling and great beers. Eventually, open that cheese counter at the new Oakland ferry plaza. Then a full-fleged place for the hand made cheese, baked goods and beer.

As for the learning, re-arranging my apartment to allow for a sparging system would be an interesting start to try out all these recipes. Really though, I need a big ass kitchen to bake my bread and boil all this water. Otherwise, I cant see it happening smoothly and regularly. But for the time being, it's all I got, yo.

Although I like this venue for thoughts, it would be helpful to create a spreadsheet template for the recipes, documenting batch I, II, III, etc. That way I could tweak approaches in a more organized fashion. The web is a great way to record the info on the fly, tho yo.

First Dry Hop

After doing some reading I learned that Irish moss won't work after the boil. I swear I read it somewhere to add it during secondary fermentation, but I couldn't find the reference again. There are other clarifyers I could use, but I don't have any now.

Anyway, on Sunday, after Key-Z, the big M and I drove home from the rose garden, I dry-hopped my beer with 1 1/2 oz or so of saaz hop pellets. The result was pretty cool; I have a hazy wheatish colored beer with an inch of pure green floating on top. Now how I'm going to get my siphon around all that floating debris I don't know. I was scared to bag it because the cheese cloth wouldn't be sanitized. My readings, however, say not to worry so much because the alcohol now present will actually stop a lot of bad bacteria from forming.

Fermentation Lock Luck

I pitched the yeast Tuesday morning, and finally today on Thursday I was able to place the fermentation lock on. This seems to be a very active batch, but I also noticed it got off to a slow start. I tried to place the lock on last night but failed miserably. foam was spouting all over the place, into the lock itself, and repeatedly popping the 7 1/2 cm stopper out of the neck. I tried with the same stopper today and still the same, so I tried the 8 cm and it worked the first time. I actually don't know if those are centimeters, but I do know that 8 is bigger than 7 1/2. Note: get another 8 for a two carboy situation.

Hope I didn't contaminate anything having it open for as long as I did, jamming in a rubber stopper over and over with my washed but still human hands.

Sa-Wheat Beer Night

All-Wheat Extract brew.

(all measurements are definitely approximate)

8 lbs wheat extract boiled in 2 1/2 gallons safeway drinking water for 30 minutes only
1 oz hallertauer hops added immediately upon boilage
0.5 oz saaz added after 20 minutes
0.5 oz saaz added after 12 more minutes, heat turned off

The recipe, out of HFD, called for 6.6 lbs extract. This is supposed to be a fruity, light, banana-clove german style weiss beer. Hefe-weizen is yeast-wheat. I'm planning a secondary fermentation where I will dry hop some more saaz (a definite no-no for the style, I'm told), and add some Irish moss to clarify this very syrupy-looking sweet stuff.

OSG: 0.031
FSG: 1.017

Cheese, Gromit, cheeeese!

Of course. Beer and cheese will be the staple on the menu that will prove its worth as a culinary pairing. Though it will be difficult to figure out how the hell to make money on cheese, people will come from all over to try Cole's Cheese menu. And once they are there, they will eat and drink baby, oh yes they will! Thinking big picture, I can imagine our own artisan cheeses from our own caves under, I dont know the oakland hills or maybe some warehouse in West Oaklnad, right? Think about that when looking at spaces to make the beer.

Oakland History on the Web

Resources for my beer names/brewery names

Oakland History on the Web

Websurfing Day

Welcome to HomebrewAdventures.com - News

I realized yesterday that a trip to Belgium would be very accessable to me. I have a huge amount of info available to me from Bob and Arian (sp?). Now just to learn some stuff. That's what I need to be doing; reading and learning, remember that? I also joined Zymurgy today; a three year membership for 33 bucks a year. I think a three year commitment to brewing is a given anyway, right?

Midwest Love

Sanfrancrisfro went to Milwaukee for a gig and brought back a bunch of beer. Mostly K-zoo stuff and we drank it um-hmmm yes we did. Oberon tastes much milder than it used to with the new recipe. Two hearted ale is nice and balanced; there is none of that super west-coast hoppiness, but its not like the ale is missing anything, you know? K-zoo stout yummy thick chocolate love. Didn't get to the Expedition maybe he'll save one bottle cause I'd like to try that. Well, in one month I go to Michigan and will try whatever I want to try!

Sweet, sweet barleywine

Went to Toronado Barleywine festival with Sanfrancrisfro and Key-Z. They had 57 damn syrupy beers that they sold by the oz. - 3, 6.5 or 11 oz pours. We tried 11 between the three of us, most pours being 3 oz.

We liked:
Russian River Old Gubblillygotch 2001 (yeah, Vinny)
Sierra's Bigfoot 2003
Lagunitas Gnarleywine 2003

We didn't like:
Alaskan Big Nugget 2003 (one of the competition winners)
Oggi's Colossus (butt)
Drake's (candy shoppe)

No real opinion:
21st Amendment
Speakeasy
Stone
Ross Valley Old Sobriety
Mad River John Barleycorn 2004

After all this we really needed some hops or some pancakes to go with our syrup so's we each had a round of Pliny the Elder (Vinny again!)

NFA hitting the boil

I'm sure it'll be easy

So I just tasted my new homebrew. NFA stout, brewed by me and my friend squirrel. We think it's pretty damn good, and I am now officially declaring myself a brewmaster in training. Cue the Rocky theme song. I figure I can track my progress and recipes online and hopefully something interesting will happen. Yeah, good luck yo.

Cheers