Homebrew Bash!

Well it's been a long time since my last post. And this will be the last for even longer. First and foremost, I've moved to San Francisco and won't have a lot of space or time to brew for the next 3 months.

However, I went out with quite the bang! I wanted to try a number of batches before I took off. Hence, I hosted a 'Homebrew Bash' at my place, a day in which all those interested could come and brew or learn about brewing in addition to helping me consume the excess of beer I'd been hoarding.

It was a great success! We made four beers: old style Dusseldorf altbier, Real Raspberry, Bitter Than You, and a tomato basil beer.


Old World Alt

The old world alt was an attempt to recreate my experience from Dusseldorf the previous summer. I'd tried many American takes on the altbier, but was always disappointed. Something about them seemed to be to strong and scream American microbrew. You can learn more about altbier and the recipe variation that I based mine off of at http://byo.com/stories/item/1205-old-world-alt.

I ended up actually kegging this as a surprise for my friend's birthday party. It turned out quite well, although I didn't hit the taste and lightness I'd hope for. I think my failure was in substituting too much Munich malt. However, it was still a great success and people at the party loved it.


Tomato Basil

This was the concept of my guest brewer, Ed, who'd tried something along similar lines in Japan but did not have the recipe or even name of the Japanese microbrew. However, he came up with a recipe. The process ended up being extremely messy it required a lot of tomato blending, sparging, and then using the basil as a sort of hops. However, all of it was worth it when I tried a bottle... absolutely amazing.

It was the sort of stuff that could easily end up as a flagship beer for a microbrew. Extremely refreshing, filled with flavor, had exactly the right amount of sweetness (I think that was the tomato), and a perfect aftertaste (basil). Either way, I eagerly await future variations on it. Well done Ed!

Tomatoes!

And sparging!

Hops and basil!

Bitter Than You

I'm always disenchanted by various microbreweries' IPAs. It seems that there are so many unremarkable ones out there (although there are certainly a few amazing ones). My theory it's quite easy to make a mediocre IPA, so I decided to put this to the test with a rather unplanned recipe. I bought four different types of hops high on the alpha acid scale and used some pretty straightforward malt combo and boiled for 60 minutes. I hit a total of 240 IBU (note: the max you can taste is 100). I haven't tried any of it beyond two weeks of bottling yet, but it tasted just as I'd expected. Bitter enough to drown out virtually all other flavors. Good though!

Real Raspberry

When organizing the event, I'd asked if there were any recipe suggestions. One of the attendees insisted on a raspberry beer. Now I'd done a peach wheat before with peach extract which turned out well. You'd be surprised at the number of commercial beers that use extracts actually. However, I decided I wanted to try something new and use real fruit this time. About 3 lbs of real raspberries.

The base beer was a simple wheat. The biggest decision I faced was whether to add the raspberries during the boil, or after most of the primary fermentation had taken place. After researching a bit I went with the latter and once the primary looked liked it had stopped bubbling I sanitized the raspberries and threw them in there to reignite the yeast!

Boiling raspberries!

While I didn't get a chance to try a fully ready version, what I tried tasted just as I'd hoped. It definitely had a nice raspberry flavor that was light enough not to overwhelm. However, I hope to soon hear reviews from friends to whom I've distributed the bottles.

In the end, the homebrew bash was a great way to leave town... and I can't wait to try some more of Bitter Than You and Real Raspberry when I make my way back to Boston. In the meantime, I've even left some fun experiments fermenting.

State of the Brewnion

We're over halfway through the year, so it's time to reflect upon my initial resolution, the rule to only drink homebrews at home. Well 206 days... and I'm still going strong!

In fact I've greatly overcompensated for the risk of a beerless household and have brewed far too much. Although, the love of experimentation contributed to the issue as well. Currently I have ~150 bottles that need consumption... but luckily I have friends to help with that.

Let's take a look at everything I've brewed over the past 6 months:

-Ryan's Explosively Experimental Beer (Reeb)

-2x Chocolate Stout

-Rauchbier ... this happened

-Simple Cider

-Not Quite Moonshine

-White House Honey Ale

-White House Honey Porter

-Not Yet Sunburnt Red

-Dry Hopped Ale

-Chimay Clone

-Sheibier Belgian Farmhouse

-Amale Slightly Smoked Pilsner

-Anchor Steam Clone

-Berliner Weisse

-Zombie ESB

That's a lot of beers! One of the great things about homebrewing is that it's pretty difficult to screw up beer (barring sanitization), and they all end up tasting great no matter what; even if they maybe different than expected. And with each one I've learned something new whether or not I was experimenting. A truly enjoyable hobby!

Looking towards the future I'm moving across the country in September and won't be able to brew until I've settled in at least. But don't be disappointed... as I'm taking off with a bang (to be mentioned next post)!

Sharing Is Caring

Last weekend I reached the pinnacle of my homebrewing hobby: I shared my beer with numerous people who I'd never met before. I've held tastings amongst my friends previously and they may bring along an unknown person or two, but this was a whole new level. I catered the beer during cocktail hour and dinner at my friend's wedding.

The couple always appreciated good beer and loved every homebrew I had shared with them previously so when I found out about the wedding I figured it would be a fun gift to brew a few batches for the event; an idea which they were quite enthusiastic about.

I set forth to brew a modified pilsner and a Belgian farmhouse summer ale. I won't go into too many of the brewing details, but in regards to the styles I wanted to have a varied selection that matched their respective colors and tastes! However, most fun part was the naming. The groom's last name is Sheiber,so "Sheibier" was an easy pick for the farmhouse ale. Meanwhile the bride's first name is Amy and AmAle seemed to be the way to go for the pilsner (made using ale yeast, not lagered).

The wedding was the true test to the taste of my beer as I'd never met the majority of the people at the wedding prior to the weekend. Both beers ended up on the lighter end, which was perfect for the hot summer day!

Breaking into 5 gallons of Amale and 5 gallons of Sheibier

Smelling Sheibier's aroma making sure it's worthy of consumption

Apparently it was!

And was even deserving of a thumbs + beer bottle up!

The Sheibier was the first to go

And the Amale didn't last much longer either

THE VERDICT: People loved the beer! Rather than calling it quits after one people kept on coming back for more and it didn't take long before the cooler was empty.

The Sheibier was the first to clear out, although my suspicion for this is that my description sounded more exotic in combo with the fact that all the Amale was in 22 oz bottles (rather than the typical 12), which may have intimidated people initially. However once people discovered the Amale it soon became a favorite.

In the end, it was a wonderful experience. One of the few things more fun than drinking your homebrew is watching other people enjoy it, which they certainly did!

I'll leave you with my favorite image from the wedding.

Amy with Amale. Sheibier was already out, so pots were a solid substitute

Today I'm Drinking: Not Yet Sunburnt Red

It's been a while since I've written a 'Today I'm Drinking' segment although there are more than enough possibilities to write of. However, I'll focus on what's currently the most standard beer in my arsenal until some of the summer beers are good to go: Not Yet Sunburnt Red (Irish red), recipe courtesy of the Midwest Supplies Living Social starter kit deal.

The recipe can be found here. As mentioned, it came along as part of the promotional deal from Midwest so there wasn't too much thought or investment on my end. There were several recipe options to pick from but I've had good experiences with reds and ambers, so that seemed like the natural choice.

Not Yet Sunburnt Red... soon though!

I'd go into great detail about how this tastes except I can't. It's really bitter. Really bitter! So much so that any other flavor is masked by the hops. It's not a floral hoppiness either. It's quite surprising to me as the recipe consisted of only 1 oz Cascade and 1 oz Fuggles(later in the boil), which sounds reasonable. Cascade has only about ~5% alpha acid and fuggles is around ~5% too, which are both quite low. I don't recall how long I boiled the cascade hops, but that may be the culprit if I left it going for too long.

Although I may seem bitter about the results (sorry, couldn't resist), I'm actually quite pleased with the Not Yet Sunburnt Red. It's very drinkable, not too heavy, and seems like something a lot of microbrews might make.

Zombie Yeast

A while ago I was asked an interesting question about brewing: do I culture and reuse yeast? At the time I was just starting to brew and the answer was certainly no. Why would I? Yeast wasn't too expensive and I felt much more comfortable following the recipes straight up.

I typically add dry yeast or liquid yeast that comes in a small packet or vial, which will then begin to rapidly reproduce over the coming days. However, it still takes a bit of time to hit the maximum amount of yeast. Often people create something called a starter, where they culture the yeast to a high quantity beforehand in order to kick of with a quick fermentation.

Once the fermentation has finished the yeast has no sugars left to consume; it goes dormant and sits in the fermentor until you siphon the beer out and bottle or keg. What's left at the bottom of your fermentor is giant pile of yeast, called a yeast cake which has already done its job and typically gets tossed. You can see it quite vividly at the bottom of my cider.

However, it is possible to pitch using your yeast cake, reviving it from retirement. I've always wanted to try but was waiting for the right yeast/beer combo, as the previous beer and future beer should similar styles that work well with that particular yeast strain. I was also wary of the sanitization and risk of possible infection.

But the other night I decided to finally take my chances and pitched an odd variation of an ESB (Extra Special Bitter) on top of the yeast cake from my Smoked Efficient Czech. The yeast strain, Safale 05, is a pretty standard yeast and has been used in a number of my previous brews.

I'm a bit worried about sanitization, but am not overly invested in the ESB as it was cheap and intended as a casualty of my experimentation. Luckily, I think I may be overestimating the risk of infection. And the fact that such a high quantity of yeast already exists means that it will get straight to work, hopefully overpowering anything else in its rapid sugar consumption.

Beautiful, right?

As you can see the yeast cake isn't pretty, but it gets the job done! Typically it looks much smoother/cleaner, but not this time. We shall see how this turns out.

PS: If you're trying this yourself, I forgot to mention a couple qualifications I discovered while digging around.

1. Your new brew should be a higher gravity beer (more malt & sugars) than the previous otherwise it will be considered overpitching.
2. Use a blowoff tube!
3. Don't reuse the same yeast more than ~6 times (evolution?)

Anyways, na zdravi for now!

Two Beers One Night

It had been a while since I spent an entire evening brewing and had a few unused fermenting buckets lying around, so I decided to put myself to the test by brewing two beers in one night! Luckily I carefully chose the recipes to make sure I wouldn't be up brewing until 4 am.

If you look at my recent posts, you'll notice I've been using a lot of darker malts. This has created a problem for me given my New Year's Resolution... I'm not always in the mood for a heavy/darker beer. At this moment, I probably have enough chocolate stout to last me the entire summer. Hence I've decided to start using a lighter variation of malts in future experimental recipes in general.

It also happens that summer is coming, so I decided to take it to more of an extreme and brew both a Berliner Weisse & Pilsner, both of which are beers I have made before.

In the past I've used the Berliner Weisse recipe for a peach weisse, which actually turned out to be quite refreshing. I'm still undecided as to whether I'll modify it before bottling at all. Maybe another fruit beer or maybe just keep it simple.

Either way, the Berliner Weisse was extremely quick to brew. The recipe simplified consisted of 4 lbs of dried malt extract, 2 ounces of Hallertau hops, and White Labs Berliner Weisse yeast. As you can see there are no grains involved, so the only part that needs to be boiled extensively is the hops (and the malt extract for sanitization purposes).

Having set aside the Berliner Weisse wort to cool, I still had plenty of energy left and decided to push forward with my pilsner! Currently I'm down to my last few bottles of the Efficient Czech; really just saving them for special occasions at this point. I did enjoy the prior outcome, so I figured I'd replicate my success... however with a bit more experimentation this time!

I cloned my original recipe except for one thing: I threw in 2 lbs of beechwood smoked malt grains. You may recollect my previous encounter with it with my rauchbier. However, that did not end so well and I didn't get to enjoy a nice smokey beer. My intention is to give this pilsner a slight smokey flavor that doesn't overpower the beer altogether; a lighter version of a rauchbier suitable for the summer. However, it's going to be a fine line, which I may have crossed but hopefully not. I'll find out soon enough!

Time wise, the smoked pilsner was a quick brew as well; the only time consuming process being steeping the beechwood smoked malts. By the end of the brew session, the evening still have plenty of time left!

Gushers & Bombs

It's been a little while since my last post; although travelling and other obligations have prevented me from trying anything too wild brewwise recently. However, clearly my beer did not appreciate this and decided to scream for attention... in the form of a bomb.

My variation on a Rauchbier was the culprit. Every bottle of it I've opened has been a gusher; an overly carbonated beer that spills everywhere. It tastes great, but I typically lose about 65% of it to the foam overflow. See it in action below.

As much fun as this seems, I lose way too much beer and run other risks; so let's go over what's happening.

Most homebrewers I encounter typically keg their beer as it's easier and less time consuming. I've almost concluded I'm the only person that actually enjoys bottling. With a keg, you typically force CO2 into it to create carbonation. However, bottling works differently. Before you bottle, priming sugar is added to your batch. This acts as a small amount of additional fuel for the yeast to consume. As the yeast consumes sugar, pressure is created, just as with airlocks during normal fermentation. However, there's no escape for the gas and the pressure builds up creating carbonation.

Typically this is straight forward... until you hear a loud boom and find that a number of bottles have exploded leaving glass shard shrapnel scattered throughout the room. I'm quite glad I was not in the room at the time.

Some of the remnants of the bottle bomb

Due to every bottle gushing and their exploding siblings, something different is happening here. There's too much fermentation occurring inside the bottles. This typically means one of three things. If I added an excessive amount of priming sugar, this may be the result. However, I used the standard amount which I've used with every other beer, so this is probably not the reason.

This leaves two other possibilities. The first is that not all of the sugars were fermented. However, I let the beer in the fermenting bucket for about 6 weeks, which is more than enough time for ale yeast. It could have fallen asleep, but there is no specific reason why it would have. Something like a temperature change could cause that, but the temperature remained consistent. To conclude whether this was the cause, I could have measured the gravity of the beer before fermentation and before bottling. However, I neglected to do so... so too late now.

The third option: during the bottling process, the beer was unintentionally infected by something able to consume the sugars that the beer yeast isn't. Typically, this produces an off flavor; and this beer tasted great.

Hence I have no definitive conclusion, although it's one of the last two: infection or unfermented sugars. The good news is that I learned a lot from this experience. I'll be even more careful with sanitization, use a hydrometer (to measure gravity), and most importantly of all... keep any future gushing beers out of rooms where I spend a lot of time!