Beer Events - CBS Release

One of the first beers I had that blew my mind was Canadian Breakfast Stout from founders, this was a chance tapping at the founders black party in 2009. I got a taster after having my first black IPA and I was in love. I returned the next weekend and had two glasses, I brought a friend and we both agreed that CBS was without a doubt the best beer we'd ever had. This was an easy statement to make because we hadn't had many great beers prior to that. I know that it might sound silly to non beer geeks but I stalked that beer. I've only missed one chance to have it since that first sip and this weekend founders released bottled of it for the first time. I wasn't going to be denied.

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Small Batch: Process

Even when I move into a house, hopefully within a year, I'll still be brewing small pilot batches, starters, experiments, etc. It's important to me to get my process down pat for this, and for my other brews so I can make the best beer every single time.

Step one: Sanitation
On my very first brew I learned something very important, clean then sanitize. I had only bought sanitizer and my friend came over and asked 'dude where's your cleaner?' I was left dumbfounded. For all batches this starts with cleaning(you can't sanitize large chunks of gunk). I mix a gallon of cleaner up right in my fermentor; 1 table spoon of cleaner to one gallon of water, it's perfect. after this has sat for a while I drain it into a bowl with the rest of my equipment to get that clean while I rinse my fermentor and refill it with water. Next after I've filled my fermentor most of the way up with water I put a pinch less than a 1/4 oz of Starsan in. The standard mix of Starsan is 1 oz to 5 gallons, so with a bit of math I know I need a touch less than 1/4 oz for 1 gallon. After about 20 minutes I drain the bowl where the equipment has been cleansing and dump about 3/4 of the sanitizer into the bowl. This sanitizer is reserved for later in my process.

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Flanders Red Ale

With my East Coast Yeast in hand I set about brewing the Flanders ale of my dreams; a Flanders Red aged on tart cherries/sweet cherries. I want to have some cherry flavor when it's fermented and I find that tart cherries don't pack enough punch on their own in the "cherry" department. Also this cherry addition will be subject to how the Flanders tastes in a year or more, if it's tart to the extreme I'll probably blend the cherries 50/50 to give it that funk/fruit/tart edge. If the tart is right about perfect It'll be more like 75 tart/25 sweet. All Michigan cherries will give the beer a nice terrior next summer.

The start of this beer will be the yeast. ECY 02 has a profile that is "A unique blend of Saccharomyces, Brett, lacto & Pedio perfect for flemish reds and sour browns. Dry, sour, leathery and notes of cherry stone." I received this yeast in the mail on 9/10/11 and brewed the beer on 9/24/11 So the yeast is fresh and viable.

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Oak Barrel Substitutes

In reading about making lambics at home I came across several links to the work of Raj Apte on making a carboy into a barrel. In a few of the accounts they mentioned some problems with this method: that beer was being forced into the wood by pressures inside the carboy, that the wood expanded to crack the carboys because it expanded when it got wet, and that there was no way for pressure to escape the carboy.

I have designed this in response to those thoughts in hope of advancing the process of making carboys into barrels and making better lambics across home brewed America.

By presoaking the wood in water until it submerges my hope is that it won't expand very much once it is in contact with the beer. The Rubber liner is also designed to give the wood a little extra room to expand before the carboy is cracked. If pressure build up is a problem and beer is being forced up through the wood then simply adding a channel for air to escape and an airlock should solve that problem. Oxygen and CO2 should still be able to travel in and out through the wood while excess pressures will be dissipated by the air lock.

(read more after the break)