Home Brewing, Part II

What a weird year. So some backstory: I switched jobs last fall and gave up my small place. I moved home to be by my fiance and find a house to buy. That didn't work out. I lost my job right after our busy season. So I went back to work finding work and that went slowly until the fall and now I'm going back to work soon. I'm back at home though for a few more months so brewing will be impossible until my fiance and I get our home.

I'm ready to brew again, I don't want to say I was burned out, but I was frustrated. I got started home brewing thinking that it would bring me closer with my friends but they never really took to it. Derek lives in Chicago so everything sucks, and Kyle's house was like 1000 degrees in the summer so everything was harder there.

There were some other problems too. I brewed more than I could drink and wasn't drinking all that I brewed. I also over bought commercial brew so that there was way more than I could conceivably drink. It became a big problem that I can admit to now. So I stopped brewing, started drinking some of my beer, and stopped buying commercial beers. The boys and I have made a dent in the beer; in time maybe we can overcome that problem. I'll probably dump some home brews moving forward to recycle the bottles and free up kegs but if I don't over brew as much I won't be as wasteful.

I like home brewing. I know it's a great way to get fine beers catered to my own tastes at affordable prices. It's a fun way to explore my creativity and the things I find interesting about beers. I'm still competitive and I'd like to win more award than second place in an obscure category at my local home brew store.

Anyways I should start brewing again soon, I am thinking an easy drinking saison and a Russian imperial stout. It'll be the second act of this hobby; it'll be where I start over, relearn some old lessons, and learn some new ones. I won't depend on friends for the enjoyment of something that I am doing because I enjoy it. Anyone who still reads this thanks for hanging with me, and to anyone who stumbles upon this blog in the future now you can understand the lull.

Thanks,
      Me

Award Winning Homebrew

At Siciliano's 12th annual homebrew competition I finished 2nd place in category 17 F. My beer was position three in a flight of nine. I won a silver medal for my effort and the store employee said congratulations (that praise was an award unto itself). My beer was scored by two judges and was awarded a final score of 38 which is the bottom of the Excellent classification.

(read more about my 'excellent' award winning home brew after the break.)

Entering A Competition

I've entered my first competition. The Siciliano's 12th Annual Homebrew Competition will be my first home brew competitions without a crazy ingredient, or a interesting premise. I've submitted a peach pLambic for their consideration.

This beer was laid down on top of fresh peaches over the summer. At bottling time the paech flavor had faded some from the first tastings, but it still had enough peach flavor to be great. It passed the all important Fiance test and that gives me hope for the judging.

(please see more after the break.)

Peach Lambic

I used up five gallons of lambic base on an experiment. I had a jug of relatively good tasting lambic style ale resting on the kitchen floor of my mothers home. It sat quietly developing from a mostly bland flavorless endeavor at first tasting to a sour one at blending time. pLambic #4 is now resting on top of peaches.

Why peaches? Because it's amazing.

I first experienced a peach lambic when Derek and I were on California Trip #2. It was here we had Fou' Foune from Cantillion. It was pretty magical. I still remember the duality of being both intensely sour with hints of funkiness and fruity with the apricot/peach flavors that were undeniable. 

Since then I've sampled other peach flavored sour ales and among them there were two stand outs. Cascade Apricot Ale which is a fine ale with nice sourness and a pleasant flavor of fresh fruits. How the beer maintains those flavors is pretty unexpected when you get your first nose full of sourness. The other standout was Upland Lambic: Peach, which like Fou' Foune had those lambic elements and a nice sour peach flavor.

When I blended white flame peaches with my sanctification clone I tried a fresh peach for the first time. I dunno why but my parents had only ever served me canned peaches floating in syrup and I thought that was the flavor of peaches. Perhaps their flavor was that of Peach Faygo, a guilty pleasure for Derek when he's in Michigan, a flavor I find cloying. I tried them at that point and found out that their flavor was totally different from what I had known. This peach season at Gavin's Orchards I've tried more peaches than I knew existed three months ago. The variety settled on to make myself a peach sour was the Blushing Star. Described as, "It has a unique wonderful distinctive full flavor of an extra sweet but slightly acidic white flesh peach plus a penetrating, pleasing aroma. Flesh is white tinged with pink and does not brown." I found it to be very easy to eat. The flavor is peachy without being too much, and the slight acidity of the peach balances that out pleasantly. Peach and acidity, who knew right?

This was mostly just my rinsing the skin of the peaches to clean off any dirt or other substances clinging to the outside, and then cutting them up. A few portions with deep bruising had to be tossed away but the peaches were in relatively good shape. Around 10 pounds of peaches were added, the amount would be 1/4 bushel or so, minus what I ate while I was working. Everything went well and after 12 hours there was minor airlock activity of the year old microbes getting a fresh start with their new food.

Fingers crossed that in four to six months this turns into a winner and that I have a real choice of what I should enter in the Siciliano's home brew competition.

The Flood

Now that it's over I can talk about it. There was a flood in my apartment and I've been homeless for 21 days. That is the length of time my landlord took to undertake what should have been a simple cleaning up from a pipe that burst in their laundry room.

Several batches that were either aging or waiting on me for bottling have been lost. One batch is on wait and see.

I also think I have to move, how can I trust my landlords after this? No longer will I inhabit the same small space I've lived in since I started this blog.

I dunno what's next but I'm hoping to find out soon.

Blending my first Kriek

The last of the blended sample

Last Summer I got started on my first Kriek by blending a sour blond ale with cherries. On it's own the sour blonde was dynamite. So mixed with 10 pounds of sour cherries I was expecting unicorns and rainbows. When I sampled it the first time I was floored...by how bad it was: 

Sanctification on tart cherries:

Aroma: Cherries, Medicinal, Band-aid

Flavor: Cherries, Cough Syrup

It was the gut kick that started my spiral towards questioning the whole fruited sours project. I was in a bad place after that tasting. Who wants to go on when all your results are bad? Where do you go from rock bottom? Just when I had abandoned all hope something magical happened: the beer turned.

What do I mean "turned"? It morphed from something terrible to something better than that. Gone was the medicinal aroma which lead to the strong flavor of cough syrup. Gone too were the phenols which made my beer smell like a band aid. What was left was a beer with a modest amount of funk, some sourness, and a cherry bliss. My only rational was that something needed a little O2 to begin it's fermentation and time to do so.

(Read more about my blending session after the break.)

Flanders Red & Other Sour Tasting.

Group photo, smile!

I wanted to sample my Flander's as I had done over the fourth of July with my lambics. I thought I should try the other sours to see if the results were as disastrous. A quick recap of my early lambics: Nothing great, a couple of acceptable, a few bads. Lets see how this goes.

So this second sampling of sour beers could not have started out with lower expectations. I mean How do you go down from, utter disappointment and near total failure? There is hope though, time does funny things to sour beers, so that could be a blessing as well as the potential to blend and have two things become more than the sum of their parts. I need to blend two beers from this to enter into the NHC to meet my entries. Lets see what I have to work with.

(Please read more after the break.)

January Recap

January has been a month for me personally. Polar Vortex anyone? sheeeesh. Hard to home brew when you can't go out for supplies.

I'm preparing to start cheese making. I use a lot of cheese in my cooking because I love it and I'd love to learn to make it! To that end instead of reading a beer book this month I've been reading about how to make cheese. A more detailed post on that is coming.

I ordered my 2014 supply of East Coast Yeast from Solar Home Brew. 2x Bugfarms, a Flemish Ale, and a Saison Brett. It came and everything looks right.

I'll be making my starter for my 2014 IPA soon. I can't wait to have fresh IPA on tap again. A post incoming soon.

This weekend I will blend my first Lambic & or Flanders Beer. I am doing this for the AHA Competition. I haven't been selected yet but I want to be ready; if I am not selected then I'll find somewhere else to enter it. Lambic and Flanders are amazing styles and if I can brew good ones I want people to try them. A recap of the blending session is coming soon.

I think that's it. As far as updates go. Stay Warm.

2013 Recap 2014 Resolutions

Thank you to anyone reading this blog.

2013 was a crazy year for me personally. Many changes have come about in my personal lives and 2014 looks just as volatile. This impacted my brewing schedule as much as the realities of the beers I brewed; by that I mean that some one has to drink all this beer. There is so much beer. In 2011 through 2013 I joined a few national reserve societies. I sampled some rare and often expensive brews from across the fruited plains. This has eaten up a bunch of funds, and sadly those funds had to come from my brewing funds. I missed almost every single one of my 2013 resolutions.

So what's left? 2014 goals? I guess.

I want to hit my 2013 goal of 6 posts a month but I am going to aim for 4 as to not overshoot.
I want to brew once a month and brew 12 new beers in 2014.
I want to finish my tap handle project and get some tap handles done.
I want to enter a home brewing competition.

That's it. Aim low. Deliver above expectations.

Thanks again if you read my blog. I'll be attempting to get to 60+ posts in 2014 to keep content up and prove 2013 was the aberration.

Sampling Sour Batch 002

Awhile ago I brewed a sour brown batch of beer for my home souring experiment. This was soured with dregs from a bottle of  Sang Noir. The time is upon me to do something with this beer so that I can continue to make make and drink sour beers. The malt bill for a sour beer is no more complicated than a conventional beer. As anyone who has read my blog before knows the secret ingredient is time. This beer has had ten months to age and it's time to see where the flavors are at and decide what if any fruit would be appropriate. The pelicle was still intact prior to my moving it, and the colonies of lactobacillus floating on the surface gave me pause that it might not be ready. Was it ready?

(Please read my sampling notes after the break.)

Brettanomyces Project Round Up

Over a year ago I started the brettanomyces project in my small brewing space. It cost a bit more than some things because I had to use liquid cultures. The project had a simple enough aim: "to test 3 of the commercially available brett strains in my Belgian single recipe to see if what the fermentation profiles and characteristics were."

I am happy to report success was achieved on that front. I produced three reasonable beers with three 'wild' strains of yeast.You can read the review of Lambicus, Bruxellensis, and Claussenii by following the links. The world of brettanomyces is a vast and open frontier.

Highlights:
The brettanomyces bruxellensis was the best of the three. It had a crazy flavor of dry spicy hay. The other two brettanomyces didn't wow me in primary fermentation. I made a dark saison with Lambicus that was awesome when I retried it.

Advice:
Try it for yourself, but be sure to keep your strains going to avoid buying fresh samples once you have your baseline. I am in this boat if I want to keep trying this and I don't really want to buy fresh samples so I might try culturing bottle dregs. I feel as though I learned some valuable things about these strains. If you do try it please let me know.

What's Next: 
What's next? nothing is imminent  I have a Brett Saison fermenting and I'll probably keep that culture going at least another generation. This was a fun test but I want to try out other things as I prepare myself to go after winning a competition in 2014. I think that brett as a primary fermentation agent could work as it has for Chad Yackobson but my focus for the next test, when I get around to it, will be brettanomyces as a secondary fermentation agent, or as blended strains.

No Posts? No Excuses

I've been hard at work recently. I am on pace to put in 60+ hours in 6 days so brewing hasn't been on my front burner. I will review a beer I've brewed tonight and post that review tomorrow. I will attempt to block out time next week to brew a Scotch Ale. Tax season is funny in that a week ago I was leaving at 5 and now I am leaving near 8. Crazy. Anyways I'm still brewing. I'm just a bit busy.

-Me

Brew Goals 2013

Happy New Year!

Last year I had some brewing resolutions lets see how I did:

Brew a beer with lager yeast; I did, my Weizen Doppel Bock. Blend a sour ale from my stock of sour ales, attempt blending; Postponed. Manufacture Tap Handles for Atlas Ale, Howard Roark Red, and Golden One Pale Ale. Failed. Work out a recipe for my house pale ale based on feedback from Kyle, Derek & others; Work in progress. Work out a recipe for the house red ale based on my two past failures; Work in progress. Attempt to make a few more small sours & quick sours (post incoming); I made batch 001, batch 002, and my rustic saison. Brew and Keg at least 2 more beers; Done! Finish out my small brewery with a malt mill; Done! and, Keep detailed notes and measurements about my brewing. Work in progress. I failed at measuring OG for all of my brews.

So I did alright. Perhaps tap handles was a bit ambitious, brewing a pale ale/ red ale are on my horizon, and I utterly failed at taking measurements. Taking measurements is something easy that I could do on my way to making better, consistent, repeatable beer. I got a malt mill, a champaign corker, and additional small kegs. I've made numerous sours and plan to blend them. Last year I miss understood the timeline of sours; they work on their own schedule.

Next year I am going to set lofty expectations for myself again: 

1. Brew 25 batches of beer, cider, or mead including:
1. Rye Blonde Sour
2. Artisanal Belgian Red
3. American Red Ale
4. American Pale Ale
5. Belgian Dark Strong Ale
2. Blend a gueuze from my lambics.
3. Read and review the brewing books I already own.
4. Enter a beer competition.
5. Average six blog posts per month.

That sounds like a good start for 2013. I'll probably do many things I can't even really conceive of yet but If I start with some loose goals I'll be in a good position come 2014. In 2014 the NHBC comes to my adopted home town of Grand Rapids, MI. I'd like to enter a beer that I have refined from previous tasting notes into that competition. I am thinking that perhaps a splendid gueuze blended with the help of my girlfriend might be my ticket to victory.

10,000 Page Views

The next page view will be number 10,000. Thanks for reading my blog. Please recommend it to your friends so that the next 10k page views happen even faster! Don't be afraid to jump in on the comments if you have any questions, comments, or critiques.

Thanks,
Don

Holiday Travel

Something to think about when you are debating the purchasing of kegs is travelling. This weekend for Thanksgiving I went over to be with Kyle and his family. I took my kegs and we had fresh draft beer all weekend. I enjoyed my american black ale on tap. Kyle really enjoyed the tropical flavors of the brettanomyces clustersianus pale ale. It's cool enough outside here that in the garage of their house we could keep the kegs without fear of freezing or being too warm.

Anyways I am back from my Thanksgiving festivities. I hope that you and yours had safe travels as well. I will be back to my regular blogging soon.

God Bless, Don.

Review: Blueberry Sour Blond Ale

Batch 001 Sour Ale - Fruiting

Appearance: Deep purple; the head rises and falls quickly. There are tiny carbonation bubbles within the beer.

Aroma: Pungently sour. The funk in the nose is well elevated and their is a unique fleshy scent that gives away the fruits.

Flavor: The flavor is multifaceted. There is an intense tartness from the the blueberries, a funk note from the dregs, and the whole beer finishes with a potent lactic sourness. The additional depth of flavors come from the base malts, and the berry skins.

Mouth-feel: The whole thing is prickly and puckering. A sour lovers sour ale.

Overall: It's a touch too sour for me. The whole thing is puckering and sour forward. The blueberry flavor isn't as much as a flavor but an essence. Blueberries are not the most flavorful fruit so they don't take over the flavor of this beer, but they add an essence of fleshy fruit skins.


Jolly Pumpkin Dregs:
Holy sour beer batman! These dregs are aggressive. A tart fruit, additional fruit sugar, and a dextrinous wort combine to form a very sour beer. The sourness is more aggressive that I would have liked. It could also have been the timing and size of my pitch. I pitched the dregs first and added the regular brewers yeast after 24 hours.

Dreams do come true:
I finally turned my tap tower on and this first pour from it since it's installation.

I am not dead!

I'm just in a dry spell in my brewing schedule, not much is ready for review, and it's busy season part duex. I'll be back in force soon with posts on keg cleaning and maintenance, Batch 002 Sour Ale, Imperial Porter II, and my Batch 001 Blueberry Sour Blond review. So while I know you're super sad this was a bum week for postings, this next couple weeks should be dynamite.

Fresh Hops Year One

This spring I ordered hop rhizomes. I ordered some fresh cuttings, and some yearling cuttings. I ordered four varieties of hops and you can read more about it here. This has given me a good cross section of hops that thrive under different conditions. My girlfriend's mother volunteered to tend the hops as a covering for a fence in their yard. This worked well for me because in my small place I don't have a garden. The yearling hops grew vigorously covering large sections of fence. While the fresh cuttings struggled to grow producing weak bines. None of my hops produced cones for a wet hopped beer this year. I am hoping that next year the two year old plants produce some cones, otherwise we're talking about 2014 for a wet hopped ale. No one wants that.

(more pictures after the break.)

Experiment: White Peach Golden Sour

I racked my Sanctification/Temptation clone from my 6.5 gallon glass carboy into a 3 gallon glass carboy to free the primary for my 100% Brettanomyces Pale Ale. When I did there was about a gallon or so left over. So I cleaned up a 1 gallon glass jug from my small batch exploits and racked the gallon of leftover beer into the new carboy. I like situations like this, It requires very little extra work, and almost no additional money to try something new. I had just finished reading TMF's post on his white nectarine sour blond and had that on my mind.

(please read more after the break.)

I'm Freaking Out Man

I strive to be honest in my everyday life, and my blog should be no compromise.

Confession: I freak out all the time.

So it was a regular Sunday night, I was accustomed to a lack of activity from the airlock on my Batch 001 sour ale. Then as quickly as could be, white dots had formed, I was sure this was mold, how could it be anything but disaster?! I checked, airlock in place firmly, liquid topped off, but there it was, something new on top of my fermentor long after I thought things were done. I was freaking out. I did what any sane person would do, I consulted Michael Tonsmeire (TMF) an expert in the field of sour ales.

(Please read more after the break.)