First State Brewers' Blog

New Wood Beer at DFH

2008-03-13T07:38:00.001-07:00

I ripped the following from a promotional DVD included in the 4-packs of the new DFH brown ale conditioned on Paraguayan Palo Santo wood

Enjoy!

PART I:

~~~

PART II:

SPARK! Mag info

2007-04-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all ~ John here.

If any new or old faces have seen the SPARK! Mag story , here's a specific update, plus links, on the local beers I listed.

My choices are all available locally.

In general, there are 2 great places I frequent that have a great beer selection: State Line Liquor (SLL; Elton Road, Elkton, PA) and Brewer's Outlet , (BO; Rte 202, Chadds Ford, PA just above the DE/PA border), in addition to other local marts.

By and large, my beer tastes adhere to my mantra of 'Support Your Local Craft Brewer' so all choices are by local Mid-Atlantic breweries. These selections serve as a good survey of great local beer (all apologies to the local brewpubs, as I wished to focus on off-premise retail buys)

~~~

VICTORY Golden Monkey (Downingtown, PA) ~ excellent domestic facsimile of a Belgian-style Strong Ale; warm, sweet and perfumy. Corked 750mL bottles are available and suitable for aging, like fine wine. SLL
VICTORY website

TROEGS HopBack Amber Ale (Harrisburg, PA) ~ an emerging giant in the craft-brew world, Troegs makes this superb American-style ale that does not shy away from hops with aggressive pine & citrus characteristics. SLL
TROEGS website

RAMSTEIN Blonde Wheat Beer (High Point, NJ) ~ the best Bavarian hefeweizen (German wheat) made domestically, brewed by a friend who trained at an all-wheat beer brewery in Germany. BO
HIGH POINT website

TWIN LAKES Route 52 Pilsner (Greenville, DE) ~ Delaware's newest brewery; their artesian well-water source shines through in this unfiltered lager. Available for 'growler' fills directly from the brewery & on tap locally.
TWIN LAKES website

DOGFISH HEAD Worldwide Stout (Milton, DE) ~ A modern legend. At ~18-23% alcohol by volume, it is perfect for aging. A few bottles from their first bottling can still be found my own beer cellar. Needs to be sipped like a fine port in a snifter. SLL
DH website

WE HAVE MOVED

2007-03-10T05:42:00.000-08:00

We are taking our blog elsewhere. We'll leave the stuff here for the time being... but any new updates are at:

http://www.firststatebrewers.com/blog/

Thanks for following us at our new location!

-Garrett, Scott, and the rest of the FSB bloggers.

Peated Scottish v2

2007-03-04T03:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, today is a brewing day in the Sever household - the first in over a month! I've been seriously slacking, but more on that later. Today is a peated scottish ale, probably in the 1.050 to 1.055 range. Its one I have been meaning to do for some time - the ingredients are about a year old, so hopefully things will work out just fine - but the Golden Promise 2-row and Peated Malt were purchased some time way back when some club members did a big order to North Country Malt Supply>. Its not that I couldn't have done it before, or that I couldn't have used these ingredients for something else in the meantime - I just always managed to slide something in before it. Since the peated malt is over a year old, it has a much more mellow and subtle aroma (and I am guessing flavor) than it did back in March 2006 when Scott Bieber asked me "what did you DO to this?!?!? It tastes like peat moss!!" It obviously won't be ready for folks to try at this year's Jerry & Joyce St. Pats extravaganza - but I'll probably torture folks with it sometime around May or June.

I've been very busy doing research for a semi-automated / computerized homebrew sculpture. I say "semi-automated" because I don't want to just press the GO button and it does all the work - I want the computer to do smart temperature control and facilitate some of the more tedious exercises while brewing like measuring out water, or doing mash steps. **I** still want to be the brewer, but I want to exact a level of precision and repeatability over my batches that I don't have right now. I also want to be able to capture brew session data and have the ability to analyze it later if something truely wonderful happens (or awful, as the case may be).

So instead of brewing, I've been playing with electronics - programmable microcontrollers, resistors, capacitors, logic chips, LEDs, etc. - I used to know all that stuff, and have managed to forget it in the years since I learned it in college.

If you feel like amusing yourself, go to the Tech section of our website and check out "Electrobrew", my tentative name for this endeavor. I don't know what the project will ultimately be called, but that's good enough for now.

I won first place for my Choking Sun Stout at War of the Worts XII, which got me a $50 gift certificate to Keystone Homebrew Supply up in PA. Looks like I am going to have to make a pilgrimage to spend it, but there are always tons of other things to do in Philly that would warrant the trip.

Also, looks my family and some friends are all going to the Belgian beer festival at Ommegang in July. After reading of the experience from the assistant brewer at Iron Hill Newark, I convinced my wife that pitching a tent among the other bohemians was not something we wanted to do, so we are looking at getting a cabin some (walkable) distance away where we don't have to endure the all-night drum circles and idiots stumbing into our area, begging for late-night handouts.

Last but not least, we are MOVING our blog from Blogspot to our domain and using the Wordpress platform. Blogger has been reasonably good for us, but honestly I feel better having it on our own site. If you are reading this entry at http://www.firststatebrewers.com/blog/ then you are already ahead of the game.

If not, start checking http://www.firststatebrewers.com/blog/ instead, because that's where we are headed.

More belgian fury...

2007-01-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

As my post over on the Google group indicated, I brewed more belgian style beer on Sunday morning... 10 gallons of what was supposed to be a somewhat mild brew that could support 3 or 4 in an evening without dropping the hammer... and it didn't turn out that way. Instead I'm probably looking at a 7-8% beer...

It is using a yeast cake from the Heretic Strong Dark Ale I brewed back in early January, meaning the Unibroue strain from Wyeast (3864). It smells absolutely divine as it is fermenting, and once again I am hoping that it tastes as good as it smells.

Check out that monster fermenter - a 12 gallon pyrex solution bottle, loaned to me by Oliver Weatherbee (Thanks, man!!). It weighs a freakin' ton, especially full! I've got it fitted with a BBBOT. I do wonder how accurate that stick-on thermometer is with all that glass - isn't glass an insulator? It might be like 3 or 4 degrees higher inside the bottle than it is on the surface... But hey, this yeast is good to 80 degrees, so I should be fine.

Speaking of the Heretic, here it sits in the secondary, three weeks and many days after primary fermentation subsided... and as you can tell, the yeast is still flocculating. I thought about putting it out in the garage to make it fall faster, but I'm in no hurry, so the yeast can take their time. I just hope there is enough active yeast left to carbonate it - I may end up taking a small measure of the yeast from the 10 gallon batch and pitching it in with the priming sugar.

Coming of War

2007-01-18T06:18:00.000-08:00

... of the Worts XII on Feb 17th. I have been looking at my bottled beer inventory (as well as those that I could quickly put into bottles with my counter-pressure filler) and trying to decide what to send into this Feb 17th competition. I have a couple that I know will be dogged by the judges, but I think the $5 entry fee is probably worth it to get feedback. Here are my considerations:

Sirius Black Honey Ale	12B - Robust Porter
Ed's Special Reserve Porter	12B - Robust Porter
Ed's Special Reserve Porter	22C - Wood-aged beer
Choking Sun Stout	13D - Foreign Extra Stout
My Wife's Nutty Brown	(Undecided - American brown or English Northern?)
Nightmare Stout	21A - Spice, Herb, or Veg Beer
The Beer Formerly Known As Hopocalypse	14C - Imperial IPA
Saison du Sevier	16C - Saison

I entered My Wife's Nutty in the 2006 Buzz-Off competition and got comments that it didn't have enough hop character to balance it in the Northern category, and would be better as a Southern Brown - However this is a new batch and I feel that it *IS* hoppier, so I am torn between putting it in the same category where it only got 31/50 last time or trying a different one entirely - namely the American Brown. It doesn't have American hops, so that is probably a bad idea (used Bullion and Kent Golding, I think) which probably means I should stick to English Northern or Southern.

I am entering my dad's bourbon porter in two categories, both the wood aged and robust porter, because I don't know how best to categorize it. The oak and bourbon flavors only come through in the aftertaste, and it grows slowly as you sip your way through the beer - so the judges are likely not to get much of it with only 2oz. It may end up having too much oak & bourbon for just robust porter, but not enough for the wood-aged category - that would suck.

So if I enter things as listed above, I am looking at losing basically 16 beers and $41 to entry fees, but that's cool with me. Hopefully I'll walk away with a ribbon or two for it, and I'll definitely get lots of good feedback... hopefully constructive and informative, although that isn't always the case.

I think the next competition that has a firm date on the schedule is this year's Buzz-Off in summer, so I'll have several months to build my bottle inventory back up... and I'll have a whole new batch of beers to try out in that competition.

New year brew year

2007-01-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

I may have very well brewed my best belgian ever.

Saturday (Jan 6th) was my first beer brewed in 4 weeks. Last was my homegrown ale on December 10th. Amazing that I only brewed 5 gallons in December - but we were gone for 2 weeks on vacation to Atlanta, so I shouldn't be suprised. I brewed 5 gallons of a belgian-style strong dark ale, which I intend to bottle-condition in corked belgian 750mL bottles. I'm pretty excited about it, and am happy as can be brewing again - I almost forgot how much I enjoy it. I used a whole bottle (16 oz) of Dark Candi Syrup and the Unibroue yeast strain (Wyeast 3864) so it should turn out pretty good, and different than anything else I've brewed to date.

I also took a key learning from my last batch of Dubbel and mashed at a higher temperature since I managed to ferment that last batch down to 1.009 (Yikes!!!) Maybe it was the yeast's fault (WLP530 Abbey Ale).... Oliver reported similar results, although he managed to ferment down to 1.006...

It is now 4 days after brewing, and primary fermentation has been winding down for a day or so. Let me tell you - if the aromas that are coming from the fermenter are any indication of how the beer tastes - I am going to be a REALLY happy man.

The floor corker I got for christmas just totally rocks out. I can't wait to use it on this batch of beer... and many others this year. I am more than willing to share if any of you out there are interested in corking one of your batches.

I've got a ton of bottles out in my garage again that need the PBW cleaning and label-stripping treatment... Many of them are belgian-style bottles (Many many thanks to John Biggins!!!!) so I can avoid the exhorbitant $20/case of 12 price that you must buy them for. Unfortunately several of them have some sort of wicked screen printing on them (Corsendonk Brown, Unibroue Terrible, and of course all the Delerium bottles) so I am not sure I can use them. I tried using lacquer thinner to get the paint off, and it was completely ineffective... I am suspecting that the paint is probably some oven-cured enamel that was baked on (and may have fused with the glass). I haven't given up hope on them yet... but I am struggling with what my next step should be. At some point the effort to remove the paint is going to outweigh the cost of buying them new... particularly if I can get them cheap from Victory Brewing Co. in the spring. Anyone out there got new ideas? I've already ruled out paint thinner, lacquer thinner, acetone, and "Goof Off!".

Brewing equipment for sale

2007-01-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

Gene Diemer needs to sell the following equipment and wants to give us the first chance to buy.

2 EA 14.5 Gal Fementer/Boilers (Keg) with stainless drain fittings
Counter flow chiller
1 Ea 7.5 Gal stainless fermenter (Keg)
1 48Qt cooler converted to mash tun with Copper drain tubing installed
1 5 Gal Glass carboy
4 1.2 L mini kegs with CO2 Tap
5 6.5 Gal Brew Buckets never used
Magnetic Drive mash pump
Temp controller and thermocouple with relay for heater or pump
Heat exchanger for mash

2007 Commeth

2006-12-31T22:29:00.000-08:00

Yeah, its 11:55PM before the year changes, and I'm sitting here writing a blog post instead of snoozing upstairs with my wife or watching all the sheeple on TV in time square... but that's me. What can I say.

2006 is gone, and with it goes alot (ALOT) of beer brewing. I won't rack up the total this year for fear of legal reprisal, but I was a very prodigious homebrewer. I did try to ask the government how to legally brew more than 200 gallons in a year, and received a relatively unsatisfactory and dismissive answer to the issue, and I took that response with the degree of urgency and attention it commanded. Seems that it warranted as much attention as I gave the warning too, considering the overwhelming discussion on the subject.

Actually, In 2006 I ended up giving away almost 80+ gallons, and I've still got about 40+ gallons sitting downstairs in the basement.... and we had alot of help from family and friendly visits. I definitely have left 2006 with a whole laundry list of learnings to take with me, and an arsenal of recipes that will be tweaked and revisited in the coming years.

Some of my personal homebrewing highlights for 2006 include:

Winning second place for my imperial stout in my first homebrew competition
Having Ric Hoffman from Stewart's come to the May meeting and talk to us
Getting feedback from Scott Bickham (Grand master Level II judge) indicating he rated my Saison a 37/50... and if you've ever read his (brutally honest) reviews of commercial beers in Zymurgy, that's something to feel good about.
Getting re-elected as 2007 President of FSB - I must be doing something right, or I'm a total sucker...
Assisting at Twin Lakes with a batch of Greenville Pale Ale.

I've had lots of positive feedback indicating my homebrewing is on the right track, and that people like what I'm doing. I try to take that with a grain of salt since most comes from friends and family, but to be honest those are the folks I most care about pleasing - the rest is just gravy.

I've managed to acquire many new tools and toys that I will be taking into the 2007 brewing year, including:

Motorization of my Crankenstein 3-roll mill, much to the appreciation of my abused Dewalt hand drill.
Acquiring a floor corker to handle belgian bottles and corks, so I can have that swanky presentation that Victory and Ommegang enjoy
A 28 gallon kettle with false bottom, so I can brew 20 gallon batches - What are you supposed to do when you 10-gallon-like something, and your family and friends also 10-gallon-like it?!??!

This coming year, I plan on focusing on a couple of things. They include:

Volume - 20 gallons of beer per batch may seem like alot, but man - when you share batches with friends, family, and other homebrewers, it goes fast.
Belgians - Brewing 2 or 3 batches of Dubbels or Tripels a year is not the way to master styles that are more of an art than a science... So corker, get ready - you are in for some abuse. Kegs - Take a breather, 'cause 5 gallons of bad belgian ain't worth it.
Whole hops - All my operative kettles will have false bottoms, so why use pellets when I can filter out fresher and more "pure" tasting ingredientS?

Well, it is now well past 1am, and I am not forming nearly the kind of thoughts I was 3 pints ago, so time to take the first descansa of the new year. Happy tidings to all!

Meeting this Friday (Dec 15th)!!!

2006-12-11T03:16:00.000-08:00

Come join us for the last meeting of 2006 at Scott's house this Friday at 7:30pm. The directions / invite came out last night, so hopefully you all got it. We will be electing our 2007 officers, and I will be giving away hops and grain.

Yesterday was a beautiful day for brewing - I managed to squeeze in my 2006 Homegrown Pale Ale. I used 3oz of Homegrown Nugget and 4.5oz of Homegrown Cascade - At the left you can see that part of those additions were for first wort-hopping (FWH). The hops quite honestly still smelled "planty" so I am wondering if I harvested a little too early... but with the quantity I used, I am hoping this year's batch has more hop armoa and flavor than last - The 2005 batch tasted more like a bock beer than a pale ale. My gravity came in around 1.061 so it should have plenty of kick.

Finally, Joe from How Do You Brew? ordered and received some stuff for me that I am really excited about - he ordered Wyeast 3864 Canadian Belgian, a seasonal offering that is supposedly the Unibroue strain and 2 cases of Belgian-style beer bottles... YEAH! As it turns out, his supplier just started carrying them recently. They cost a small fortune ($20/case of 12), however they are available. When spring comes I will probably buy some cases cheaper through Victory Brewing, however these should help fill the interim between now and April/May. I still need your empties, if you've got 'em!!

Harald Ackermann

2006-12-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

Check out fellow brewer from Germany, Harald Ackermann's website! You can listen to a song that he wrote and performed! Sounds good!

Beauty of Burton

2006-11-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

Or alternatively titled, "Why I wish I had an open fermenter"... look at this beautiful, bountiful, thick creamy yeast. Sometimes brewing in carboys and demjohns really suck. I would LOVE to be able to top-crop that stuff. Burton does this, the Belgian Abbey Ale (WLP530) does it, and several other strains do too - and that is just 100% good, healthy, ready to be repitched yeast.

YEAH, I know I could just use a bucket. I'm entirely too snotty for that.

Save the Belgians!

2006-11-24T17:19:00.000-08:00

OK, so really I am talking about saving your empties - the ones that come corked with the wire cage on them. Actually there are a whole bunch that do - and even domestic breweries like Ommegang, Unibroue, and Victory are bottling in these things. Unfortunately I cannot find ANYONE locally that sells them... so I need to get empties and clean / strip them. Reason being is that I am expecting to get an italian floor corker for christmas, with which I will be able to actually cork and cage my brews if desired. So please - if you have empties lying around, or generate some - Please save these bottles for me! I do plan on writing to Ommegang and Victory to see if they're willing to divulge their source... but I'm not holding my breath on getting a response.

I currently have 9 empty belgians I processed today along with 4 new cases of 12oz bottles. They are all now sitting downstairs comfortably, cleaned, de-labeled, and ready for santizing and filling. It took about 3 hours or so, but hey - its cheaper than paying a ton of money at the LHBS for more cases.

Last but not least, some of you may have read my recent mild rant over at the newsgroup about White Labs yeast vitality from HDYB, however I am here to say that starters saved the day. It took over 48 hours for the yeast to revitalize and for the starter to kick in and show signs of activity, however it ultimately did. I ended up having to postpone my brew day a little, however pitching a more healthy and active culture definitely makes me more confident about this batch. I'm sorry, but you just don't screw around with potentially bad yeast when you're brewing 10 gallon batches. And I must say to all of you out there that DON'T do yeast starters - you are playing with fire. This yeast was supposedly still 2 weeks away from the "Use by" date, and it had a 48 hour lag. Do you really want 48 hours to go by before your yeast can start defending that batch of beer you just made? 48 hours for bacteria or wild yeast to kick off first? Yeah, I thought not.

Tower of Power

2006-11-16T09:49:00.000-08:00

This photo has been making the rounds on the Internet today! LOL!

Choking Sun Stout v2.0

2006-11-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

So Sunday I brewed my second 10 gallon batch of Choking Sun Stout. It went VERY well, and I think I have definitely found the source of my stuck sparges - My grain mill was still set to crush wheat malt. It was shredding the crap out of the husks... Why I didn't notice until this batch... I dunno. I haven't changed the mill setting since my last batch of Saison, which was only 3 months (and like 5 batches) ago.

As you can see, I've got alot better crush now - The kernels are broken into several pieces, but the husks are almost completely intact. Yee haw. If only I had noticed back when I was brewing that damn pumpkin stout (which was VERY tasty, BTW).

I also made good use of my false bottom this time around, using whole hops for the complete hop bill - And I have to sincerely apologize to Oliver. He was so right saying that he by far preferred using whole over pellets. The aroma was better, there was significantly less crud in the fermenter, and it just FELT right. Sorry I convinced you to buy all those pellets from North Country Malt Supply, man! We should have just ordered from Freshops last fall too...

Last but not least, I'd say that the results of Project Uberkraeusen were successful - 24 hours, and the damn yeast is ready to blow out of the demijohn (even with 4 gallons of headspace). I fortunately fitted it with a big bore blowoff tube this time around, so I don't need to worry about blown airlocks. I pitched a 1.5L starter from a single White Lab 004 vial after a little more than 24 hours, and I have no worries at all that I've got sufficient yeast in there. If anything... I gotta make sure I keep the temperature down!!!

A very good weekend, all in all... and with my mill back cranking out the good crush and a deep freezer full of whole hops... I can't wait to brew again.

Project Uberkraeusen

2006-11-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

OK. So its just a yeast starter... but I just love how much air you can beat into the wort and yeast with a "+" shaped stir bar. Should be some mighty healthy WLP004 Irish Ale yeast for tomorrow's 10 gallon brew of Choking Sun Stout.

S^4 Ale Recipe

2006-11-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

My last few posts have centered around my experiment using the strong runnings from Stewart's latest batch of barleywine. I had a sudden "AHA!" when I went to get the recipe, and have a much better idea why the beer has such a strong flavor, which until now I've been unable to really nail down... HOPS.

Yeah, I used about double what I thought... so my guess is that many of the flavors are just unincorporated hop flavors that will blend and mellow with age - the brew is more like a low octane english barleywine than maybe a traditional strong ale... not sure. At any rate, for 10 gallons:

Fermentables

13.5 gallons Stewart's Brewing Co barleywine strong runnings (made from Maris Otter and 3-5% Crystal 60L, ~1.060 SG)
2 lb English Amber malt
1 lb English Crystal 45-55L
6 oz English Chocolate malt

Hops (12 oz total):

3oz Kent Golding pellets (5.7% AA) FWH
1oz Kent Golding pellets (5.7% AA) 60 min
2oz Kent Golding pellets (5.7% AA) 15 min
2oz Fuggles pellets (5.7% AA) 5 min
2oz Fuggles pellets (5.7% AA) 1 min
2oz Willamette pellets (5.7% AA) 1 min

Yeast: 2 packages Nottingham Dry Ale yeast

Instructions:

Steep grains for 20-30 minutes between 155-165 deg in full volume of wort. Periodically (every 3-5 minutes) "tea-bag" the grain bag. Do not squeeze grain bag when removed.
Boil total of 90 minutes
2 servomyces @ 10 minutes, 1 whirfloc tablet @ 5 minutes
Oxygenate 3 minutes per 10 gallons @ 75 deg and pitch yeast

Session stats:
Original Gravity: 19.8 brix (~1.079)
Fermentation temperature: 70-73 deg
Final Gravity: 1.016 (hydrometer)
Calculated %ABV: 8.5
Calculated IBUs: 57.5 (Rager)

So there you have it. Lots of hops, but supposedly not an overwhelming amount of IBUs. Despite that - I think the 12oz really packed in alot of hop flavor, which at the moment is hitting my palette as "medicinal". That should mellow with age.

I'm not saying that I don't have fusels in there... cause Jebus knows there probably are... but its probably not as big a deal as I was originally thinking. I think once it ages for 6 months or so, this ought to be a tasty (albeit pretty hoppy) brew.

S^4 Ale Update

2006-11-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

So tonight I have braved the torrent again, and cracked open my second bottle of Stewart's Sloppy Seconds Strong Ale (S^4 Ale).... and have found it not altogether disagreable. I think that it was definitely way too young last time I tried it... and things appear to be improving as it ages. I suppose I shouldn't be OVERLY suprised by that, but I am nevertheless.

I also actually tried a sample from my keg downstairs early last week and found it to be much better than the bottle I tried at the time, so I am not sure what exactly is at work here... but I am starting to have hope that this beer is gonna be OK given enough aging.

Let me also quantify - It is significantly more carbonated than last time, and I am drinking it at "cellar" temperatures (around 62 degrees) instead of around 40-45. The warmer temperatures probably help enhance the aromatic nature (and let me tell you - this is one seriously aromatic brew) as well as lighten the body, and the carbonation definitely helps lighten the body. I can still taste the background sweetness and some off the "medicinal" flavors from before, but they are greatly reduced...

I strongly suspect it will still leave someone who overimbibes with a whole percussion ensamble thundering away in their skull... but only time will tell.

I will try to bring a bottle to the next meeting in two weeks (Nov 17th) at HDYB for folks to sample... WARM, of course!

Good ideas gone bad

2006-10-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it may have finally happened. I might have created my first homebrew candidate destined for an unceremonius end of its existence - down the drain. Thus is the plight of my S^4 Ale, "Stewarts Sloppy Seconds Strong Ale".

Some weeks ago, Stewart's brewed their annual barleywine, and Ric was kind enough to call me and ask if I wanted their strong runnings. They had sparged all they were going to need, but since it was a barleywine... lots of sugars were left in the grains. I very excitedly accepted and had my wife run over three carboys around noon. They filled them full sometime around noon or one, and I swung by around 5:30 to get the wort.

I got the wort home, poured 13.5 gallons of it from the carboys into the kettle and heated it up to 165 degrees. I then steeped some additional specialty grains (Crystal, etc) for extra color and flavor, and after 45 minutes began the boil. I boiled for about 75 minutes, adding 3 oz of Kent Golding 5.7%AA for bittering, 3 oz of Fuggles for Flavor, and 2 oz of Willamette for Aroma. The Willamette was a last minute addition because the Fuggles didn't have any aroma to them at all... (they were about a year old, but sat in my deep freezer the whole time). I got about 9 gallons of 1.080 wort into the demijohn, pitched 2 packages of Nottingham Ale yeast, and it fermented like crazy for several days - everything seemd just fine.

Fast forward several weeks, and I have now kegged 5 gallons and bottled the other 4 or so gallons. The bottles have been sitting around for a week, and I figure I'd crack one open and see what it tastes like, even if it is still a little flat and young.

An initial flavor of cherries and ripe red fruit quickly fade into Nyquil and lighter fluid. Imagine 2 seconds of excitement followed by several seconds of washing out my mouth with water and spitting it into the sink.

WHAT THE SAM HELL HAPPENED?

Well, I am not sure... but lets run through the possibilities for giggles.

Sour wort - The carboys that went to Stewarts were clean, but not sanitized. I suppose the wort could have sat there and slowly soured between 1pm and 6pm, but that seems very unlikely.
Hot side aeration - I poured the wort from the carboys into the kettle, so there was significant splashing. That's supposed to create cardboard flavors, not a phenolic onslaught that rips your tongue off, right!??!
Bad hops - Well, the Fuggles were a little sketchy since they didn't have any aroma, but that shouldn't have made the beer taste THAT bad, I don't think.
Too many hops - 8 oz of low alpha English hops for 10 gallons of 1.080 beer?!? Dream on.
Fermentation temperature - Ooooh, ok this one is a possibility. It was in my Demijohn, and I had a beast of a time keeping it cool. It might have spit out fusel alcohols like no one's business - And even thought the stick-on fermenter said it was 72-73 degrees... maybe it was alot hotter in the center of that demijohn.
Infection - I am usually pretty careful about sanitation, if not waaay overboard. This beer didn't seem to want to clear for a while, but I assumed that was because of 2 packages of dry yeast (which is ALOT). The yeast all seemed to settle out, and I didn't ever have anything funky-looking in the carboys, so I don't think that was it. Maybe though.

Now, all that said - It may still be too early to tell what's gonna happen here. With some extended aging, the fusels (if that is indeed the problem) may break down and actually mellow out. Same goes if I had a hop problem - those flavors should also mellow.

Is "S4 Ale" ever going to be a great beer? Doubtful... but at this point I'll settle for something that doesn't compel me to grab a match, or threaten to cause organ failure.

Weekend of beer

2006-10-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, What a weekend.

It began on Friday, when I took the day off to go and provide labor to the Twin Lakes Brewery in Greenville. Mark has been very kind and worked with me to schedule an opportunity, and after many changes it finally happenened. My morning began there at 4am, where we filled the tun with some foundation water and opened the grain hopper slide valve... They had milled the first batch the previous night, so I had a slight reprieve from hauling grain bags. One the grain was mashed in, the tun's steam jacketing quickly raised the mash to temperature. We were ready to mash out and transfer sometime around 5:30am. That's when the fun began...

We opened the valve at the bottom of the mash tun and waited for the grain slurry to run down into the lauter tun. Nothing came out except a tiny trickle of wort. A flurry of panic and activity ensued for the next 45 minutes trying to unclog an enormous plug of grain right at the exit of the mash tun, which is near impossible to get at. I won't explain exactly how the situation was resolved, but suffice it to say that the solution bordered on dangerous. The guys (Mark, George, & Jack) were acutely aware of that fact and did everything they could to position folks out of harm's way. I dare say DuPont would be proud. No one got hurt or scalded, and with only a minor mess to clean up, the grain slurry ran into the lauter tun in short order. I asked Mark if that had ever happened... he said no, it was a first.

Since there was such a long delay, the grain hulls got a little soggy, and we ended up with a stuck mash 3 times on the first batch - It took about 2 hours to sparge enough to get the required 725 gallons. The remainder of the batch went without a hitch.

I witnessed and participated in all kinds of very interesting activities:

Hauling and slicing open 1450 lbs of grain and sending it up to the mill for the second batch
Emptying the lauter tun using 55 gallon trash cans (Man, that was alot of grain!!!)
Measuring out 12 lb charges of Cascade hops into a trash can, and adding them to the kettle
Shoveling spent hops out of the hop back
Pitching 60 gallons (!!!) of yeast into the giant 1550gal conicals they've got (Mark's a genious here... very cool setup).
Running the yeast out of the other 2 conicals

While they ran the first batch's wort through the heat exchanger to the fermenter, they began mashing in the second batch. This time mark gave me some directions and let me actually add the foundation water, and do some of the mashing in. While the second batch mashed, we did many of the activities listed above. Time came to lauter the second mash - STUCK AGAIN, just like the first batch. I couldn't believe it - that had never happened before, and it happened twice in one day. Fortunately this time they knew just what to do, and we had the mash unplugged and in the lauter tun in under 10 minutes. The second batch lautered EXTREMELY well, and we didn't get a stuck mash at all.

About the time they were finishing up lautering the second batch, I headed out to get some food - it was about 1pm and I was starving. I ran down the road, grabbed a sandwich from Einstein Bros, and came back to find all the overhead lights out. "What's up??", I asked... no one seemed to know - It hadn't ever happened before. About 15 minutes later... BAM!!! Everything shut down, after they had been boiling for about 20 minutes. No electricity meant no steam boiler, and no steam boiler meant no boiling. Long story short, an Electrician from Shure-Line showed up, checked around, and they found that some power lines had gotten twisted due to the high winds. He couldn't fix that, and it was going to be 4pm at the earliest before Delmarva could show up. To pass the time, Mark, George, Jack, another avid homebrewer Ryan, and I sampled the two beers I had brought - Hopocalypse and Saison. They seemed to enjoy them. About 3pm, I bid my farewells, knowing full well that 4pm to Delmarva means like 5 or 6pm. Mark was concerned that they would have to dump the second batch - but I don't know how all that turned out. I will have to find out this week.

It was a fantastic experience, and I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope I get another opportunity to do it again. I am also very appreciative of how much hard work being a professional brewer is, and admire them for being able to do it day in and day out - I don't think I could.

I arrived home to find a cord of wood dropped off on our driveway, which meant more labor as it was hauled around back and stacked. An hour later, I sat exhausted on the couch, relaxing until our club meeting that night. The meeting went well, although many of us departed early (9:30pm - 10pm), myself included. It had been a very long day.

Saturday was the All-Grain demonstration at How Do You Brew? in Newark. About 6-8 people showed up to watch us brew 10 gallons of Oatmeal Stout, which went pretty well. I missed my mash-in temperature by 5 degrees - I hit 148 instead of 153, so it may be more fermentable than I wanted, but fortunately it lautered very well. We got all the wort volume needed in about 30 minutes and didn't have a stuck mash at all, and were right on (if not a little higher) gravity-wise. The whole process went much faster than the last demonstration, and I was packed up and headed home by 5pm - so it was a 6 hour brew day. I went home with very little dirty equipment to clean, 1/2 of the batch (5 gal), and enough 2-row for my next 10 gallon AG batch - Many thanks, Joe and Marlana!

On a related note, I think I have several theories on why my last few batches have all ended in stuck fermentations, and I hope to eliminate that little nuisance going forward. I think alot of things have all come together to cause the problem (finer crush on the grain, longer sparging times, thicker mashes, etc) and once I work through them it should go away. I also have a much better perspective after watching a 1450 lb mash get stuck several times, and seeing what kind of clarity they typically look for before running to the kettle - As homebrewers we may spend entirely too much time on the inconsequential minutia instead of seeing the big picture - Is crystal-clear wort a requirement to make good tasting beer? Hardly. Is a stuck mash a big deal? Not really.

I have alot of stuff to do tonight while the wife is at Welding school - Keg the 10 gal of Nightmare Stout and rack 10 gal of Porter to secondaries and throw in bourbon oak chips. Doesn't sound like much, but between the cleaning and sanitizing of 2 kegs and 2 carboys - it takes time. I'll probably still be racking when she gets home.

Next brews on the Sever agenda:

10 gal Choking Sun Stout
5 gal Foggy Moor Peated Scottish 80/-
5 gal Clan Morrison Scotch Ale
5 gal Homegrown Ale 2006
5 gal Summit Pale Ale

Of course I think I am going to run out of time & allowed capacity well before I get through all of that.

Meeting Friday!!! (Oct 20th)

2006-10-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

We have a meeting this friday at Jeff Ramberg's house. Scott sent the address out yesterday... use MapQuest or Google Maps to get directions.

At the meeting, Oliver Weatherbee is going to bring some iso-alpha extract to do a demonstration with using Coors or some other needlessly flavorless beer. It actually provides bittering without requiring a boil!! I will probably bring a growler of my latest batch of Oak Vanilla Porter, which needs help. I'm not sure if its a lack of bittering that is the problem, or if I somehow got something in it... We'll see.

I'll also try to bring a couple bottles of my Oktoberfest - It turned out GOOD, but I'll have to sneak it past the wife... oh wait. She'll have to help me counterpressure fill it, so no sneaking.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet...

2006-10-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I got the stuff. I know you all want it. Now stop drooling already... and go get your own.

There's something to be said...

2006-10-09T18:25:00.000-07:00

...about tried & true, particularly as it pertains to brewing recipes. I feel like I really kind of stepped "outside of my box" this summer and fall and brewed some pretty wacky shtuff, but at the same time I feel like I've made alot of beers that aren't up to my typical caliber. I guess that is all part of learning and growing in your passions...

My last two brewing experiences have really kind of shaken me to the core.... My nightmare stout of two weeks ago is now sitting in secondaries, looking decidedly more brown than black and with a not too distant resemblance from the stuff I poured out of the steam cleaner tonight when I did our carpets... Yuck. I still keep hoping that it will drop clearer and turn a nice dark stouty-like color, but I'm seriously doubting it anymore. Not wishing to be beaten, I had my wife go out and buy another pie pumpkin, which is already roasted and ready for a minimash - but quite honestly, I have to say I don't give a $#!t anymore. I don't care if that beer beat me this time around - I want to get back to brewing stuff I like and know I can do well, so it is probably either going to go in a pie or down the garbage disposal.

I brewed a barleywine with a buddy this weekend (see Gnarlywine at FoolCircle.net), and while the experience went relatively well - I still had issues with stuck sparges and MASSIVE amounts of break in the kettle. When we racked it into the fermenters, it looked like someone puked in our carboys. I assume it is still doing OK downstairs... it looks ugly as hell, but it is still bubbling every 5-10 seconds or so, so the yeast are still chewing on something... but again, I am nervous if that beer will come out OK.

Truth be told, I'm feeling a little shaken and off my game. I think for a while I'm going to hang up the wacky hat and get down to what I do best - browns, porters, and stouts - with a few hop monsters thrown in to shake things up. My brewing schedule for right now is looking like the following:

10 gal Bourbon Oak Porter
5 gal Peated Scottish 80/-
5 gal Clan Morrison Scotch Ale
10 gal Choking Sun Stout
5 gal Summit Pale Ale
10 gal My Wife's Nutty Brown Ale
20 gal Black Honey Ale
10 gal Amarillo Pale Ale

Lots of familiar recipes in there, along with one or two "experimental" batches, but even then the experimental batches are very tame. Note to self... contact ATF and find out what it takes to brew more than the 200gal limit in a year. I'll pay the taxes, dammit!!!

On another note, I've got about 9-10 pounds of whole-leaf hops headed my way from Freshops.com. I ended picking up quite a haul of Amarillo, Columbus, Simcoe, and various other whole-leaf varieties that aren't available through our local shop, and for a very reasonable price. Freshops rocks! One of the more interesting varieties is a pound of Pacific Gem hops, which are supposed to be around 13-15%AA and have a blackberry character... Can't wait to brew up some porter or ESB with those things.

Moment of silence

2006-10-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

It is a sad day in American brewing.

4 percent of U.S. hops crop burns

Prob won't effect Coors and Bud that much. Now if rice and corn crops were ruined....

Nightmare Stout

2006-09-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have never been moved to tears from frustration when brewing an all-grain batch of beer before - until tonight. I am quite convinced I found an alternative formulation for concrete, and it takes the form of my ill-fated pumpkin stout recipe. I ultimately ended up getting the b@stard brewed, but with severe compromises and consequences... Of which I will enumerate below.

Let's begin with the recipe (10 gallon intended formulation):

12 lb Maris Otter 2-row
4 lb Munich
4 lb Flaked Barley
8 oz Muntons Black Roasted Barley
8 oz Muntons Chocolate Malt

1 lb Rice Hulls

2-3 Pie pumpkins, roasted @ 350 degF for 1 hour (about 8-10 lb of pumpkin mush)

2.5oz Whole Northern Brewer hops, 7.1%AA (60 min)
2 small cinnamon sticks (5 min)
2.0oz East Kent Golding (Flame Out)
0.33oz Pie Spices (Flame Out)

So there it is. I am quite convinced that 4lb of Flaked barley and 10 lb of pumpkin was pushing my luck for a single mash tun... perhaps even for 2. It all mashed just fine and converted without a problem. I had so little room left in the mash tun that I actually pulled 8qts of thick mash and did a quick 20 minute decoction to bring the whole thing up to 162 deg F. Then the horror began.

I cracked the valve to begin the vourlauf and collected about 2qt before flow stopped entirely. I opened the valve entirely... nothing. Nothing coming out. At this point I had only added a half pound of rice hulls, so I added the other half, scraped the cement off the top of my false bottom, let it settle for another 10 minutes, and tried again.... with the same result. I couldn't get the stuff to sparge AT ALL. Long story short, I ended up employing my 10 gallon kettle, another mash tun, and ultimately a friggin 2 qt collander and my wife to just get the liquid off the grain bed. I collected 13.5 gallons to boil... but with only a 55-60% efficiency, which meant I had to add 2 pounds worth of DME I had laying around (for big yeast starters) just to get the wort in the right ballpark gravity.

Boiling there was ton of grain matter and protein churning around due to my way substandard (albeit necessary) sparging technique, and when the whole hops got added it looked like a big bubbling cauldren of disaster.... and it was. I managed to get the boil completed, and after a relatively reasonable cooling duration and whirlpool began runoff... at which point the Northern Brewer whole hops joined forces with the other crap in my wort and formed a concrete layer ontop of the false bottom. My 1/2" valve and tubing was letting through a mere trickle... would have taken like 3 hours just to fill the fermenter.

I rushed downstairs, grabbed my metal spoon again, shoved it in the sanitizing bucket for 10 minutes, and then proceeded to scrap the hops off the false bottom... flow resumed normally, but tons of crud ended up in the kettle. At the end of it I was just so damn disgusted with everything that I just dumped EVERYTHING into the fermenter to get enough liquid volume (like 11-11.5 gallons) and pitched my damn yeast. I figure the $#!t will settle out and I'll siphon off as much as I can.

So, lessons learned from today? You betcha.

Pumpkin beers are prone to stick (DUH!)
Listening to someone rave about their pumpkin stout recipe on a homebrew forum... NAIVE
Mixing adjucts like Flaked Barley and Pumpkin in significant quantities... STUPID!!
Attempting to brew more than just a 5 gallon batch of pumpkin beer, particularly in a single 10 gallon mash tun ... STUPID!!
Trying to do all this on a stout backbone where you CAN'T FRIGGIN SEE WHAT'S GOING ON... MAJORLY STUPID...

And with that... I believe I am going to take my lumps and go to bed, and pray that tomorrow brings me something other than grief from my homebrew. Considering my Oktoberfest took a tumble out of my friend's truck sitting out front of my house AS HE WAS BRINGING IT IN to get tapped... after sitting in his fridge lagering peacefully for 6 months... I've had quite enough beer-related drama for one friggin weekend. I need sleep or a bullet, and at this point either is probably welcome.

OUT.

Watch your froth

2006-09-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

I found this article on the thisislondon.co.uk website.

Anger over Church advert which puts Jesus' face on beer glass

An advertisement featuring the face of Jesus as a 'miraculous' apparition on a beer glass has caused anger among critics who say it undermines anti-binge drinking campaigns.

The image of Jesus in the froth left on the sides of an almost empty pint glass next to the words 'Where will you find him?' will spearhead the Churches' Advertising Network (CAN) festive campaign to encourage church-going this Christmas.

The poster makes reference to the worldwide trend for finding holy images in everyday objects from the face of Jesus in a frying pan, to Christ on a fish finger, the Virgin Mary on a toasted cheese sandwich and even Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun.

The creators of the new poster said it was aimed at provoking "thought and debate" among young people about where and how people find God. It would be accompanied by a series of radio advertisements in which young people talk about their spiritual beliefs.

But the Rev Tom Allen, a 'mission priest' who works with young people criticised the message the image was giving out: "On the day when a Government commissioned report suggests that rather focus on drugs education, schools and youth work bodies should be educating young people about drink, CAN launch this particularly obtuse poster," he said on his website.

However, CAN chairman Francis Goodwin said he hoped the poster and radio advertisements would spark a debate about God.

The campaign will use the youth forum website myspace.com to encourage discussion. He said: "The message is subtle but simple - where is God in all the boozing at Christmas?

"For many, Christmas is just drinking and partying and God is excluded, yet many young people are interested in finding deeper meaning and exploring faith.

"We hope the link to myspace will offer another venue for them to discuss their feelings and debate the issues."

The image of Jesus on a beer glass is the latest in a series of controversial images created for CAN, a group of Christians of all denominations working in the media and advertising.

Previous campaigns include a poster depicting Jesus as the revolutionary leader Che Guevara and one suggesting Mary was having a "bad hair day" when she discovered she was pregnant.

Harvest Time

2006-09-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

Over the past week I've picked most of the hops I was growing. My Libery this year totally sucked... I didn't even bother harvesting them. The cones are ridiculously small and I got almost no yield. I think next year I will either relocate them or try to fertilize the crap out of them.

So my growing totals for this season were as follows:

3.0 oz Nugget
1.5 oz Magnum
4.5 oz Cascade

I think I could get a much better Cascade yield if I just had more height to give them, but since they only have about 4' of fence... the yields probably suffer significantly.

On a related topic, Freshops should have their 2006 harvest (all except Saaz) available by Sept 22 according to the owner, Dave. I am probably going to pick up a pound each of Warrior, Simcoe, Columbus, and maybe 2 pounds of Amarillo. I'm also considering 8oz of Pacific Gem just to try them - they sound really tasty from the description. I have been checking their online store daily to see if the Columbus and Amarillo are available yet... apparently Sept 22nd is the magic date (a quick call to Freshops got me this info).

... to those who wait

2006-09-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

Brewed February 19th, Choking Sun Stout has finally found its way to my right-most tap handle tonight. I kicked the keg of Hell's Bells Belgian Pale and Choking Sun makes its debut. And despite being warm... I like it. Alot. It turned out nice... although I suspect the Cascade hop aroma and flavor has diminished over time. I remember trying it many months ago from a bottle-conditioned "bonus" from the couple cases I sent to my cousin in Atlanta, and it definitely has changed with time. I do have a bottle of "Gonzo Porter", courtesy of Fool Circle to compare against.... I will probably do that with him next weekend when he is here brewing our next collaborative effort - a Pale / Barleywine combo.

It has been a long time since I had something dark on tap - I've really missed it. While summer beers are good and all... The dark stuff is where I really flex my brewer's muscles and shine, I think. I love the roast...

The best things come...

Twin Lakes Beer dinner at Washington Street Ale House

2006-08-31T19:20:00.000-07:00

Find some details here. Its on September 14th, and it's $50/person for a 5 course meal. Looks very tasty.

Google Group : 1st State Homebrewers

2006-08-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to ask fellow club members if anyone was brewing this weekend? Or had a particular strain of yeast? Or wanted to go to that beer even this weekend? Or had an urgent technical problem?

In an effort to foster increased intereaction amongst us FSB'ers, I have taken it upon myself to start the First State Homebrewers Google Group.

http://groups.google.com/group/firststatebrewers/about

This is designed to provide up-to-the-moment info that we may wish to share with each other Re: all things beer.

In addition to the blog, this allows everyone to contact everyone else, and you will have the option to receive all updates by email instantaneously, or once a day as a bundle ~ however you like !!!

To avoid spam, etc. this is an invite only page, so feel free to share this to all members and non-members within the local community and bordering areas (Delmarva, SE Penn, NJ, etc.)

Contact me directly for an invite

jbbiggins@comcast.net

See you online!

Time flies...

2006-08-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

Wow. Two weeks since I've written an update. Must mean I've not been doing much, right? Heh. Well, I've been busy, and have a basement full of beer to prove it. I've got 20 gallons to get into kegs this weekend - 10 gallons of amarillo, 5 gallons of oak-aged vanilla porter, and 5 gallons of mango witbier. In addition to that I've got 5 gallons of oak-aged vanilla porter to put into bottles and 10 gallons of saison that will probably stay in the primary for another week or so...

Tonight I counter-pressure filled the last of my Bourbon-oak McBride's Strong Ale clone as well as 14 or so bottles of Hopocalypse, both of which will make a showing at this month's meeting. I'll also probably bring a growler of Hell's Bells Belgian Pale, which is actually more of a summer quaffer than anything. Hopefully folks will enjoy it.

I believe we're also going to have a counter-pressure filling demonstration, so if you want some of your kegged beer in bottles, bring an clean, empty six pack and your keg of choice. I'm going hopefully work out the details with our host, Mike, in the next day or so.

We've been playing with our new smoker - so far I've mesquite smoked three chickens, with a hickory bourbon turkey on the near horizon. What does this have to do with brewing, you ask? Smoked malt, of course!!! Yep, you got it - I'm going to try to home-smoke some malts and make some killer smoked porters or something. Not sure when in my schedule that'll happen - I've already got like 6 or 7 batches lined up in the near future.

Which takes me to my last point - I'm at 140 gallons for the year so far. I am right on target for hitting (or maybe exceeding) 200 gallons in 2006. Where the hell does it all go?!??! Oh yeah.... friends and family. I wouldn't have it any other way though.

Iron Hill Wilmington Bocce & Beers

2006-08-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

I received an email from Mark Edelson of the Iron Hill brewery asking me to share this event announcement with the club!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Booce & Beers

Iron Hill Wilmington Riverfront

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-- Bocce Ball Tournament with Dogfish Head

-- After Bocce enjoy Reserved Beers from Iron Hill & Dogfish Head

-- Corporate Headquarters

-- Info

Bocce Ball Tournament with Dogfish Head

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Join us on the Wilmington Riverfront Thursday August 17 starting at 6 pm for a most unlikely evening of Bocce Ball and beer drinking as Iron Hill challenges Dogfish Head Brewery in a Bocce Ball tournament.

The event will feature Iron Hill's good friend and Dogfish Head's founder Sam Calagione as well as the brewery staff from Dogfish and Iron Hill.

Dogfish Head

After Bocce enjoy Reserved Beers from Iron Hill & Dogfish Head

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once the Bocce tournament comes to its thrilling end, enjoy special reserved beers from Iron Hill and Dogfish Head.

Iron Hill Reserve Beers will include~~~ The Cannibal: A light bodied Belgian Golden Strong Ale with hints of tropical fruit. Winner of a Gold Medal at the 2005 GABF and a Silver Medal at the 2006 World Beer Cup~~~ Berlinerweisse: German style wheat beer, with a refreshing tart, acidic, and lemony citric fruit characteristic. The addition of woodruff or raspberry syrup can balance out the sourness.

Dogfish Head Reserve Beers will include~~~ Chateau Jiahu: re-creation of an ancient beer made with rice, Wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers~~~ Punkin Ale: full-bodied brown ale with smooth hints of pumpkin and brown sugar~~~Red & White: A 12% abv Belgian-style Wit beer. It was brewed with the rinds of over 60 tangelos and freshly ground coriander. The beer is be aged in Pinot Noir barrels (not available in bottles).

Dogfish Head Red & White

Great Brews of America Beerfest at the Split Rock Resort

2006-08-10T06:30:00.000-07:00

Check out this beer festival in the Pocono's on Nov 18th & 19th!

Great Brews of America Beerfest at the Split Rock Resort
The two-day indoor festival, set in the beautiful Pocono Mountains on the dates of Nov 18th & 19th, 1-5pm, the Great Brews of America Beerfest will feature close to 50 of America's finest classic and micro-breweries offering tastes of their latest brews. Musical entertainment will be performed on three different stages, while crafts and artwork will be on exhibition and for sale.

In addition, food purveyors will be in attendance offering selections of various delectable menus for you to choose from. Each attendee will receive a commemorative beer tasting glass to take home. Seminars on various beer related topics will be featured throughout the festival. Advanced Tickets .

A Beer & Food Matching Dinner be held on Saturday night at 7:30 providing an insight into which foods match well with certain beers. The cost of the dinner is an additional $50.00 per person. For Advance Tickets and Weekend Package information, call Great Brews of America at 1-800-255-7625

Click for more info

How to open a beer bottle with a piece of paper

2006-08-07T04:32:00.000-07:00

Can't find a bottle opener around? Try using a sheet of paper.

A brewer is born!

2006-08-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

William Benjamin Brzoska

Born August 2nd 2006 at 21:36
7lbs 3.6 oz
19 plus inches

Congratulations, guys! The Austin Zealots gain another member...

Beer maintenance night...

2006-08-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight was a beer maintenance night... lots of sanitizing and racking.... with more still left to do. I kegged my Horizon Bitter, brewed several weeks ago with club member Mike Castagno... he's probably got it in bottles or kegs by now.... one of us is sure to bring it to an upcoming meeting. In addition to that, I racked my Amarillo Assault to secondaries and dry-hopped it with 4oz of Amarillo - 2oz per carboy. That's in addition to the 7oz I used to brew it... 11oz total for 10 gallons. I tried to keep the bitterness around 50 IBU, so it shouldn't be overwhelmingly bitter - but I'm hoping that the amarillo taste and aroma will just knock you out of your shoes. The mango wit should be moved to a secondary and polluted with the mango puree sometime this weekend... probably Saturday. No brew planned for this weekend - I want a little downtime. The next 4 brews wil probablyl be:

Saison du Sevier (batch #2)
Nasty Habit Abbey Dubbel
Peated Scottish
Clan Morrison Scotch Ale

Been also looking around online alot at data acquisition boards and various sensors. I'm slowly coming to realize that my dream home brewery will have to happen in stages - I'll probably implement a control panel that allows manual control of things and do that first, then worry about integrating a computer control system for the mash tun and liquor tank somewhere down the line, using the manual board as a potential "override" system if need be. Point is that yeah, it should be cool - but it has to brew good beer first. Best way to do that is to use my own skills to work things out first, then worry about adding a layer of complexity on top... Kind of a bummer b/c I kinda want to take it all on at once... but that's just not practical.

A personal best...

2006-07-26T20:36:00.000-07:00

I brewed my 5 gallons of mango wit today in 4.5 hours, from heating the mash water and dragging the equipment up from the basement to pitching yeast. Would have been closer to 4 hrs 15 min if I hadn't forgotten to sanitize the damn transfer tube for filling the carboy... DRAT! I forgot how easy and quick 5 gallon batches can be... I remember back when I was extract brewing and it took me 4-5 hours!! Good OG (1.055) so I got good efficiency... 8 lb pale, 3 lb wheat malt, 1 lb flaked oats and 1 lb flaked wheat. Wheaty....

Now I must wait for fermentation to commence and subside so I can mango it in the secondary... can you hear the tropical music playing?

Another weekend gone...

2006-07-24T16:06:00.000-07:00

Friday night's meeting at HDYB went very well, and many thanks to Joe and
Marlana Gallo for being so hospitable once again. We had a good turnout of
ten to twelve folks, if I remember correctly, including two newcomers. Lots
of good beers to be had, including Hank's debut of "Cheap-@$$ Porter", which
I really enjoyed. My raspberry wheat had more takers than I was expecting,
and Marty liked it enough that he said he'd like to see the recipe... a much
better reaction than my Peated Scottish ale in March. Joe brought out a
peach brandy that tasted like white lightning – took your breath away and
burned all the way down. I cut out around 9:15pm so I could get home and
spend some time with my wife and to make sure I didn't get too carried away,
but I think everyone had fun.

Yesterday I brewed 10 gallons of beefed-up Amarillo Pale... OK, more like 9
gallons plus a gallon of trub... I may end up adjusting with some make-up
water in the secondary fermenters. This batch was slightly higher gravity
with about 33% more hops (11oz for 10gal). I tried to keep the calculated
IBUs the same, but moved the hop loading around – 1.5oz of first wort hops,
heavy late additions, and double the amount of dry hops. It was fermenting
away this morning when I checked, so I think all is well.

The new fittings on my pump skid and water filter worked beautifully! No
leaking, spraying, or trouble to be found... until a piece of ice got sucked
up into the pump inlet hose.

Story time! Many months (12+) ago when I was cleaning and rebuilding these
pumps, I knocked one of the impeller assemblies off the workbench and it hit
the concrete floor with an unceremonious thud... and snapped off one of the
4 impeller spokes. I ended up super-gluing it back on, and with some
trepidation placed it in my water recirc pump knowing that it would be
lighter duty than the wort pump AND I didn't need to worry about any of the
glue chemicals getting into something that would end up in someone's body...
And for the past year or so it has behaved beautifully. Well let me tell you
- when that ice chunk got sucked into the pump and hit the weaker impeller
spoke... SNAP! The pump started making all kinds of hellish noise. Long
story short, I managed to nurse the pump through it and got the job done,
cooling my 10 gallons of wort down to 72 degrees in about 35 minutes... (20
minutes of hose, 15 minutes of ice water recirc). Not too bad considering
our ground water temperature is 80 degrees at the moment.

Now the question becomes what to do with my water pump? Do I try to
superglue it back on, or do I leave it out and let the other 3 spokes just
do their thing? That will put the impeller off balance, but so could a big
old glob of glue... Not sure what I'm going to do.

We peeled, pureed, and froze the 7 mangos Donna got at the farmer's market
in preparation for Wednesday's brew – a mango wit. I'll thaw and pour the
puree into the secondary and rack the wit ontop of it. Donna's pretty
excited about this one – I'm definitely curious to see how it'll turn out.
She even designed the somewhat risque tap handle label - entitled "Mango
Mama Wit". You all will have to come to my house to see this one once it's
ready...

The most expensive lesson of all...

2006-07-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

Imagine, if you will, a system that knows how long it takes to heat up 6 gallons of mash at 1.15 qt/lb, or 10 gallons of sparge water, and actually begins pre-heating to accomodate that anticipated time lag (minimizing the overall brew cycle time)... That can take a stock ProMash recipe and associated mash cycle and control to it (including step times) with minimal manual intervention... That maintains mash temperature within half of a degree... etc. That's really the kind of functionality I want out of an automated brew sculpture.

I guess when I really think about it, I really am looking for a system that has automated and intelligent MASH functionality - I don't intend on automating anything on the boil side of the system. Once my wort is in the boil kettle, I want things to essentially be manual (adding hop and spice additions, cooling, racking, etc).

When thinking through what it would take to design and build this, I've come to realize how much from my formal university training has been lost in the past 10 years - and quite honestly it makes me dismally sad. I think back to the sheer volume of things I learned at Georgia Tech, and how much I've actually retained, and I can't help but feel remorse - Tens of thousands of dollars and nearly five years wasted. OK, not wasted - I have a very good job and make a very good living, but I use none of the things that my education prepared me for. Here's a list of the things I COULD use in building my brew sculpture system that I don't remember anymore:

Heat and mass transfer - calculating fluid flows and pipe losses, heat required for step mashes, heat losses through pipes, heat pickup from HERMS coil, etc. This is the fundamental basis by which everything else is developed. Without that knowledge, your only hope is empirical models.
Physics (Electromagnetics) - Circuit design (pure and simple). How much money am I going to pay for off-the-shelf circuits that I could have done myself if I remembered what a RC vs. RL vs. RLC circuit was, conditioning input signals, stepping voltage / current, etc. I was DAMN GOOD at this stuff in college, and now I feel like a big idiot looking at circuit diagrams.
Process Control - Predictive model control, direct digital control, cascade control, you name it - I can't do any of this anymore. Hell, I don't remember enough of my heat and mass balances to actually develop the equations I would need for a model, let alone actually use it for process control! God I suck.
Calculus and Differential Equations - How in the world are you supposed to solve the equations associated with all of the modeling above if you can't even remember the methods, tools, and theory? I could probably differentiate a simple algebraic equation if I had to, and MAYBE integrate one, however if you threw in a COS(), SIN() or "e" in there, I'm totally hosed... and let's not even mention DiffEQs. I couldn't solve one if my life depended on it anymore.
Numerical Methods - Computers don't scratch out solutions on paper, they use complex methods that take advantage of their incredibly fast computation abilities... but in order to effectively use numerical methods, you still need to know how to do item (4).

I spent so much time and energy trying to become a Chemical Engineer, to aquire the knowledge one would need to do all that, only to graduate and never use it - and hence lose it. I have no doubt that I could probably re-learn a good portion of it if I sat down with my textbooks over the next year and teach it to myself again, and it may come to that - But it still upsets me to think that it is even necessary.

Use it or lose it. It's as true as it is trite... And if you spent nearly $100K to get it, losing it is just plain stupid.

Meeting tomorrow night - July 21st

2006-07-20T04:02:00.000-07:00

We'll be meeting at How Do You Brew? in Newark... hopefully everyone got Scott's newletter earlier in the week.

Next door, State Line Liquors is having a beer shindig too - they are auctioning off some good beers, and doing some other stuff that I don't have the details for.... so we may have some folks wandering over to HDYB from that as well!

Beating the heat...

2006-07-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

And I don't mean the ridiculously hot stuff outside...

I finally got around to getting some stuff to move the potentiometer on my stir plate outside of where it was before. Reason being is that it is old technology, and it develops a hell of alot of heat while the stirplate is on. that heat in turn translates into heating the starter on the stirplate... much more than you would think. I have got to bed before with the starter at 68 degrees and woken up with it over 80... whoops! At any rate, I got a standard old electrical outlet box to test it out with, used some 14 gauge wire I had lying around, and I'm currently running a test downstairs with water to see how much the temperature rises (if any at all). I'm expecting it to be basically zero.

In addition to that, I bought some new brass fittings at Home Depot to try to make my ice water pump recirculation loop less leaky. Its been a bane of my 10 gallon summer brews for over a year now - time I try out some new fittings and get rid of the leaking. The water spraying everywhere is more of an annoyance for most things... unless that nasty hose water happens to spray into your cooling wort!!! Anyhoo, I'll let you guys know how it goes next weekend. I'll take some pics to upload to the blog... not sure I've ever put my pump skid and ice water recirc loop on here before...

Oh yeah... Next couple brews:

Amarillo Assault Pale Ale (same as previous amarillo but about 2x the hops!!!)
Scottish 80/-
Scotch Ale
Abbey Dubbel

Thursday suprise...

2006-07-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'll let the pics speak for themselves. Man I'm old and gray!!!

Lessons Learned

2006-07-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

I was recently interviewed by someone from the Newark Post for an upcoming article on homebrewing (Joe Gallo from How Do You Brew? sent her my direction). One of the questions she asked me was if I had learned all that there was to know about homebrewing - I politely responded "hell no", and explained that even though I've brewed over 400 gallons at this point, my 2 years of experience couldn't possible expose me to everything that our more senior club members have during their 10+ years... and every time I think I've got it nailed down, something jumps up and shows me just how little I truely do know.

That has prompted me to enumerate a list of things learned in the past 3 or 4 months. Some are humerous, and others you will probably groan at... either because you found this out the hard way too, or you just know its a bad idea to begin with.

Triple-check your bittering addition quantity. There is almost NOTHING you can do to correct an under-bittered beer and have it turn out OK.

Boiling 1oz of hops in 1 gallon of water with the hope of correcting the previous mistake will not get you what you want... In fact it will smell like feet, overcooked vegetables, and a host of other things that you definitely don't want to add to your beer.

Fermenting 10 gallons of high gravity (1.078) beer in a demijohn is a bad idea, unless you like that solventy-hot taste... That's alot of sugar and it builds up alot of heat - which is damn near impossible to chill with a glass jar that big.

The wet T-shirt / dish towel trick really does work for dropping carboy temperatures.

I HATE using an immersion chiller in summer. The ground water temperature is too high to effectively chill past 110 deg F.

Saison yeasts like it hot - Like minimum of 75 degrees hot. They'll crash way early (like 1.030) if you don't let them hit the mid 80s toward the end of their fermentation.

A year-old smack pack of Ringwood Ale (Wyeast 1187) is not going to work. Forget about it.

Whole hops are the bomb. I've got way too many pellet hops to get rid of now that I can use whole hops.

I simply must do more first wort hopping.

Whirfloc is supposed to be used less than 10 minutes from the end of your boil, NOT 15 or 20 like most homebrew stores tell you.

I really REALLY want a stainless steel open fermenter so I can start top-cropping yeast. Luckily the wife is starting welding classes next Tuesday, so in a year that might be possible.

That and so many others... I've got a whole lot to learn.

EDIT:

I figured I'd take a picture that embodied several of these learnings. First, note the demijohn on the left - 10 gallons of (soon to be) oak-aged vanilla porter... source of bullet #1 through 4 and 8. The right hand side is 1/2 of the batch of Horizon Bitter (the other half went home with Mike Castagno, another club member), an english bitter brewed with all-horizon hops, and source of comment number #7 and 10. That thick yummy kraeusen of Ringwood Ale yeast is just BEGGING to be top cropped, alas I cannot in a carboy - SUCKS!!! I've got a killer Iron Hill Pig Iron Porter recipe that could easily be brewed with that fat layer of bitchin' biomass.

I am hoping that the hot flavors in my porter will chill with time, and that the oak and vanilla will at least mask if not aid any deficiencies in the hopping and temperature control arena. Last batch I made was "too hoppy" anyways for what I was shooting for, but I certainly didn't mean to undershoot the IBUs by about 20. Mike Castagno brought over some of the only real cure for an underhopped beer, although I haven't added it yet - and will probably only adjust 10 IBUs instead of the full 20.

Sadder than that time I had pumpernickel lager

2006-07-12T05:03:00.000-07:00

It looks like the Big Breweries are following on Drew Carey's idea of Buzz Beer.

Snip: Energy beer, a fusion of traditional ale and caffeine, is the latest craze to hit the beer industry.

Last week SAB Miller announced it would buy McKenzie River Corp.'s Sparks, a caffeinated alcohol malt beverage with ginseng, guarana and taurine.

The orange-colored brew was the first of the new energy beers to hit the market and has been credited with spawning a new breed of beer and opening a new market for beer brewers worldwide.

See full article here.

Herbs, Man II

2006-07-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone, my latest all-consuming project is herbs (the medicinal/cooking kind). Can anyone recommend any good herbal web sites, books etc? Thanks!

Jane Hautanen (Jane Doe)

Beer Haikus

2006-07-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

This batch is now brewed
Oak Aged Vanilla Porter
Ten gallons of bliss

How I hate summer
Ground water too hot to cool
Pump and ice required

Exhaustion attacks
Hauling hot liquids all day
Man I need a beer

And so I head off to the couch, happy that the brew day is done, and seeking something from my tap. Tonight it will be the refreshing raspberry wheat.

Oh yeah. Converted all of my brewzNET code over to the .NET platform. The graphics run slower than GDI APIs from VB6, but... they look better and they're more flexible. By the time I get around to actually needing this software, I'll have optimized it and Microsoft will have upgraded the platform.

Raspberry wheat is calling... Night.

Heavyweight News

2006-06-29T08:20:00.000-07:00

From: Heavyweight Brewing Company
Sent: Jun 16, 2006 9:25 AM
To: Beer Lovers
Subject: Heavyweight News

Greetings-

I trust that everyone in the NYC, NJ and the Philly area is getting excited about the upcoming 2006 NJ Beer Fest. This year's fest will again be held on the pier of the NJ Battleship at the Camden waterfront on Saturday, June 24th from 1-5pm. All the brewers in NJ (those that care about good beer and good beer drinkers, anyhow) will be there pouring nearly 50 NJ-made beers. Your ticket also allows you to tour the historic ship. For more info, check out www.njbeer.org or www.battleshipnewjersey.org. The revenue from this fest supports the NJ Battleship Museum and the not-for-profit Garden State Craft Brewers Guild which promotes craft beer in NJ. Please come out and support the NJ brewers.

As for Heavyweight, many of you have no doubt heard that we are closing up shop at the end of June 2006. We sympathize with the faction out there that feel sorry for themselves about our closing; we will also miss many of our beers. But you should not feel sorry for us. Heavyweight was designed to essentially be a one-man operation. We know that in order to allow Heavyweight to grow (as it wants to) we would have to dramatically change that basic design and we're not willing to do that. Instead, we choose to stop Heavyweight, while (in our opinion) it's on top of it's game and redirect that momentum into another project. We don't have any details for you now, except to say that it will be a pub/restaurant with a small brewery. The wheres and whens are still to be sorted out. We'll keep you posted.

In order to have an opportunity to says thanks and goodbye for now, we are hosting one last wacky Heavyweight open house gathering. This time it will actually be two open house gatherings; Saturday, July 1st and Sunday the 2nd. Each day will run from 1-5 pm and we should have a bunch of beers on tap. We recently brewed a sour-mashed rye and a wild rice beer and both will be on tap. As always, bring whatever beers you'd like to share and please bring something non-perishable for our local foodbank. Hunger is something few of us truly experience and is a disgraceful thing in such a wealthy land.

If you can't make it to the open house, Andy's Corner Bar is throwing Heavyweight a Tribute night on Wed., June 28th starting at 6pm. George, Barb and Tom are giving us most of their tap space and we'll be there to show our love for one of NJ's best beer bars.

Thanks again to all of you who made these past seven years so enjoyable for us. Remember, you are the reason that craft brewers do what they do. Thanks for supporting small breweries everywhere.

Peace,
Tom and Peggy

ENGLAND's massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry

2006-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

I found this online today!

BEER WE GO

Germans fear weii going to drink them dry
By Jeremy Armstrong
28 June 2006
ENGLAND's massive army of World Cup fans is drinking Germany dry, it emerged yesterday.
Breweries warned beer could run out before the final because of huge demand from our supporters.
In Nuremberg, organisers revealed 70,000 England fans who flooded the city drank 1.2MILLION pints of beer - an average of 17 pints each.
Astonished bar keeper Herrmann Murr said: "Never have I seen so many drink so much in such little time."
His bar at a fans' tent in the city ran out after they drained all 32 of his 50-litre (11 gallon) barrels.
Herr Murr calculated Britons were shifting beer at a staggering rate of 200 pints per minute.
City official Peter Murrmann said: "The English proved themselves world champs. They practically drank us dry."
In Cologne, where England drew with Sweden, bottles and barrels of the local K?lsch beer ran out because so many English took them to campsites and parties.
Stuttgart bar chiefs said an extra 900,000 pints were sunk last weekend where 60,000 fans partied before and after our 1-0 win over Ecuador.
The Veltins brewery also revealed it has produced a record 418,000 gallons in a bid to keep up with demand.
A spokesman said: "It is incredible how much is being drunk but the hardest thing for the breweries is keeping up with the thirst of the English."
In Dortmund, where most fans for England's Gelsenkirchen clash against Portugal on Saturday are staying, the giant DAB brewery is bracing itself by ferrying in extra supplies to boost production.

Terminal Velocity.. er Gravity

2006-06-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well, the Bastogne Tripel I brewed last weekend has finished fermenting... it was mostly done on Tuesday night, if you can believe that... in 48 hours. I checked the gravities this morning using Promash and got the following:

OG -> 23.4 Brix = 1.09425
FG -> 11.6 Brix = 1.01676 (as of today)

%ABV = 10.32

That is one serious Tripel. The unconditioned sample I took smelled incredible... yeast, bread, fruit... and while the taste was VERY yeasty (alot still in suspension), it was also very good... And STRONG. I'm actually a little scared of this beer.

Next weekend I'll probably be brewing 10 gallons of Oak Aged Vanilla Porter... My sister wanted a couple cases (and bought me ingredients for it), so I need to get to work... After that, I've got a couple of joint brews with folks planned, along with a whole battery of beers for me....

I'm going to have to start using my ice cooler and pump setup again. Our tap temperature is >75 degrees again, and it took nearly 45 minutes to chill this tripel down to 77 degrees. Thank goodness I have a solution to the problem, but it does add complexity and stress to the overall process. Blech.

The Wheatopia Raspberry Revolution (pink beer) is on tap now. Its pretty tasty, although more tart than I was expecting. I hope to put the Saison on tap today... the Native Rage is REALLY close to kicking.

brewz.NET

2006-06-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

As a disclaimer, I figured I would start this post by clearly stating that it is going to digress into realms of geekdom and nerdiness that few with our passion are willing to tread, yet I do it anyways... Programming.

As I said several posts back in my "Confessions of an uber-geek" post, I am slowly working on a graphical user interface and platform for developing a computer-controlled homebrew rig. Why you ask? Pomp, circumstance, and sheer vanity is my best and only defense... because I can. I can't think of anything cooler than having folks over, giving them a tour of the ghetto brewery in the basement (which WILL be upgraded as part of this project to an all-stainless, glorious marvel), and firing up the PC to give a demonstration. Have other people built computer-controlled homebrew rigs before? SURE. And many probably did a better job than me. But I am still resolved to do my best and do something truly ridiculous, unnecessary, and utterly cool.

My previous post gave a couple of screenshots of a pipe class I was building... well, it is now obsolete and must be completely rewritten. The reason is that I have finally decided to take the plunge and learn Microsoft's latest platform, .NET. I will be recoding anything developed thus far in VB.NET and will continue from here on out with that as the framework language of choice. It took a great deal of soul-searching and self masochism to ultimately decide, but it is the right decision. I have long avoided delving into this new language because of my inexperience and utter stranglehold on the previous iteration (VB6), but the time has come for me to learn something new once more.

I honestly wish I had time and interest to do it sooner. I actually had a very strong support structure several years ago that could have assisted me. One of my best online friends (and an absolutely brilliant resource) has since disapppeared from the face of the planet and isn't returning my e-mails. And everyone else has about a 4 year head start on me... BUT HEY! I've been busy. Kids. Moving from Mexico. Establishing myself in 3 jobs in 4 years. Learning to homebrew!!! (and investing ridiculous sums of money and time to do so). But I will make use of my demon-given aptitudes and meld my world of yesterday with that of today.

These screenshots are the re-write of my "tank" class in VB.NET. I have rewritten this class now 4 times - 2 times using VB6 and the Windows GDI API library, once using VB6 and a GDI+ wrapper, and finally (as shown) using VB.NET and pure .NET library code (No VisualBasic namespace for me, thank you very much).

In the long run I firmly believe the .NET platform will give my homebrewing control application flexibility, portability, and use that legacy VB6 never could. I must admit I have my reservations regarding many aspects of the undertaking (my own experience being one large factor), but quite honestly my tenacity and pure vanity WILL win out in the end. My arrogance and commitment knows no bounds.

This project will be open-source. Everyone who has the interest (and ability) will be able to download and start using it as the base for their creations, once completed. My intention is to build the following:

A process designer application that allows users to customize graphics, layouts, and displays for their homebrew systems
A flexible and customizable input/output system that will interact with any DACA card or device on the market and allow whatever device necessary as an input or output (thermocouples, thermisters, solenoids, float switches, solid-state relays... whatever
A SQL server database middleware layer that can be used to export and import brew sessions and trend/analyze data as required.
A web portal for folks that actually want to share their brew session data online with other folks
webcam support so folks can watch the action in progress

And many other things. Its a big laundry list to fill... I'll obviously focus first on items necessary for me to get my own brewery up and running, but the idea is that ultimately anyone could use it if they wanted to.

Enough for now... time for me to go drink some Nasty Habit Abbey Dubbel. Gotta make room for those summer saisons and wheats!!!

Big Bad Bastogne Belgian Brew...

2006-06-18T19:54:00.000-07:00

Today I thoroughly enjoyed Father's Day by brewing a 5 gallon batch of Tripel. Things went really well, although I did end up second guessing myself and adding another 15 minutes to the boil... so it was a 135 minute boil instead of a 120. Totally unnecessary, and as a result I'm going to end up slightly short of the 5 gallon mark (like 4.8 or something near there).... although the other consequence is that the gravity is higher... 1.094, actually. I did some quick spot calculations, and this beer is going to come out somewhere near 9.5-10% minimum.

Thank god I had lots of yeast to pitch... actually, the Hell's Bells Pale Ale was a fantastic starter. I ended up pitching 750mL of thick, nearly pure WLP510 slurry. There is ALOT of yeast in this thing. Its apparently the Orval strain, so it may have a somewhat acidic finish, but having tried all the strains (Trappist, Abbey, and Belgian) I am excited to try something new. I also oxygenated it for like 3 minutes, so there should be PLENTY of O2 in there for them to do their job.

Needless to say, its fixed with a big bore blowoff tube, and I am expecting some major action when I wake up tomorrow. I'll have to post pictures if it is really crazy.

Another BIG brew coming up. I'm going to have to brew more Black Honey soon... it goes so quickly... I'll probably do either a 15 or 20 gallon batch again. I am also planning a split batch with another homebrewer using all Horizon hops, and a 10 gallon batch of Oak Aged Vanilla Porter (5 gallons of which is going to my sister).

Both Wheatopias are kegged and carbonating. The raspberry turned out pretty tart... and the apricot is more grainy than I expected. I'm hoping that they'll fall clearer in the kegs once they're chilled, but they both tasted pretty refreshing. Also looking forward to getting my Saison on tap sometime really soon - that may be another beer I have to brew again this summer (got plenty of strisselspalt hops left).

Delaware City Day- July 8th

2006-06-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'll be supplying 10 gallons of hombrew (at least) for one house during this July 8th celebration down in Delaware City. On tap will be 5 gallons of saison, 5 gallons of Black honey ale (porter) and several "back up" kegs of mystery beer. I am going to see if Twin Lake has any interest in offering a 1/4 keg too.

Put it on your calendar! More details to come....

Beer may protect you from getting prostate cancer

2006-06-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

Good news for us beer drinkers :-) It says, that Beer may protect you from getting prostate cancer :-)

Cheers

Harald

Bier könnte laut neuer US-Studie vor Prostatakrebs schützen
Dienstag 13. Juni 2006, 11:52 Uhr

San Francisco (AFP) - Bier könnte laut einer neuen US-Studie vor Prostatakrebs schützen. Der Hopfen-Bestandteil Xanthohumol bremse die Krankheit, heißt es in einer am Montag veröffentlichten Studien der Universität Oregon. Allerdings müsste der gesundheitsbewusste Trinker rund 15 Halb-Liter-Gläser leeren, um den gewünschten Effekt zu erzielen, warnte Emily Ho, Leiterin des Forschungsprojekts: "Die negativen Auswirkungen des Alkohols könnten die gesundheitlichen Vorteile des Bierkonsums zunichte machen."

Der Studie zufolge wäre es aber möglich, Tabletten mit Xanthohumol-Konzentrat herzustellen. Auch könne der Xanthohumol-Gehalt in Hopfen gesteigert werden. Deutsche Wissenschaftler haben bereits ein Bier gebraut, in dem die zehnfache Menge des Wirkstoffs enthalten ist. Die Brauerei Weihenstephaner vertreibt ein derart hergestelltes Hefe-Weißbier und vermarktet es als Gesundheitsbier. Wissenschaftlich bewiesen sei der Effekt bisher allerdings noch nicht, sagte Fred Stevens, Co-Autor der US-Studie. Auch die nun vorgelegten Ergebnisse müssten noch durch weitere Tests erhärtet werden.

"Es ist der Traum jedes Mannes, dass Pizza und Bier Krebs verhindern können", fügte Stevens hinzu. Auch in Tomatensoße war kürzlich ein Stoff gefunden worden, der die Krankheit aufhalten könnte. Allerdings warnte Stevens, keine Ernährung könne ein sicherer Schutz gegen Prostata-Krebs sein. Notwendig sei vielmehr, dass Männer regelmäßig zu Vorsorgeuntersuchungen gingen

HopQuest (cont)

2006-06-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

OK, so several posts ago I mentioned that I was going to try to brew some hoppier brews in the original HopQuest post. I also mentioned a couple posts back that I thought my hop scale was acting a little wonky. Well, turns out its true. For my birthday this year I ordered a replacement hopscale, the American Weigh Blade 250. A quick calibration showed that my scale was registering about 75% of true weight, so all of my recipes for the past few months have been light. Not a huge deal (and its good to know the calibration for future formulations), because all the beers turned out very good... but I am still on the cusp of not being hoppy enough to totally blow out my taste buds... so I am going to have to surpass even my recently brewed Hopocalypse I2PA.

Several people have taste tested the Hopocalypse I2PA recently (those die-hards that stayed for the last hour of the May meeting at my place, and some other close friends) and found it beguilingly drinkable for as strong and hoppy as it is... Which quite honestly is fantastic. Marty Drinan held a pint glass a foot from his nose and indicated he could still smell the hops, But its not enough... not enough hop flavor, not enough hop aroma... So I am endeavoring to formulate yet another super-hoppy recipe (name TBD)... Mash hops, first wort hops, and massive late additions and dry hopping will once again be the order of the day. Part of the formulation will include ordering in some 17%AA Summit hops, which were released in 2005 and supposedly have a pungent citrus flavor and aroma... like a turbocharged Amarillo. I'm totally in.

BUZZ OFF feedback - GDS

2006-06-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

So I figured I would share the feedback I got from the 13th annual Buzz Off competition from last Saturday. Several folks from our club entered beers, and several of us walked away with ribbons... YAY! I figured I'd type up the feedback in its unedited and raw form for folks to see.

Queen's Darkness:

Entered as: Cat 13-F (Russian Imperial)

Judge #1:
Aroma: 8/12 (Malt, very little Roast)
Appearance: 2/3 (Opaque, head OK)
Flavor: 13/20 (Malty sweet with good roasty balance. Good recipe. Very smooth through finish.)
Mouthfeel: 4/5 (Medium body – could use a bit more)
Overall Impression: 8/10 (Raise Mash temp – good recipe. Very Drinkable).
Total: 35/50

Judge #2:
Aroma: 7/12 (high fruity esters – raisins, plums – sweet malt, low malt)
Appearance: 3/3 (fine tan head that persists, black and opaque)
Flavor: 13/20 (malt dominates the initial flavor, firm hop bitterness that persists through the finish, roasted flavor is moderate, slight sourness detected, could use more roasted character)
Mouthfeel: 3/5 (mod body, moderate carbonation, some apparent astringency from hops / dark grains)
Overall Impression: 7/10 (good beer. Could use a bit more body and increased malt bill. Balance between malt and hops is nice).
Total: 33/50

Judge #3:
Aroma: 7/12 (dark roasted malts, fruity esters, no hops)
Appearance: 2/3 (opaque , almost black. Thin head of fine moussy bubbles was long-lasting)
Flavor: 15/20 (very little malt up front but the finish is drying and the roasted barley comes out very string in the drying finish. No esters.)
Mouthfeel: 3/5 (medium body, medium carbonation, no astringency)
Overall Impression: 8/10 (good beer, but needs more malt & alcohol for a RIS. Up the malt and hops. Needs more body, malt & alcohol).
Total: 35/50

Overall: 34/50 (Took second place)

My Wife’s Nutty Brown Ale:

Entered as: Cat 11-C (Northern Brown)

Judge #1:
Aroma: 7/12 (mild malt aroma, no hops, no esters.)
Appearance: 3/3 (red-amber color, excellent clarity, good head retention)
Flavor: 12/20 (moderate malt flavor, no noticeable hop flavor, low-med hop bitterness, sweet finish)
Mouthfeel: 4/5 (med body, med carbonation)
Overall Impression: 6/10 (nice malt character but needs a little more hop balance for a Northern. Would score better as a Southern.).
Total: 32/50

Judge #2:
Aroma: 6/12 (Malty sweet, caramelly hints of raisins or plums, little to no hop aroma – malt definitely dominates)
Appearance: 3/3 (Med brown with ruby highlights. Great clarity, low tan head good retention.)
Flavor: 10/20 (Malty sweet caramel toffee flavors, low hop presence in bitterness and flavor. Some dark fruit flavors – raisins – nut in the background. Needs more hope presence to balance malty sweetness.)
Mouthfeel: 3/5 (Creamy medium bodied beer with a moderate to low carbonation for style)
Overall Impression: 8/10 (a really nice beer but not to style. Malty sweet caramel flavor needs more hops to balance, or enter as a southern brown. Complex malt profile is real nice and fruity esters as well – just not for a northern English brown.).
Total: 30/50

Overall: 31/50 (Didn’t place)

So I guess here are some of the things I take away from the experience:

My beers give good head (* snicker *)
No one really had anything overly negative to say about them
BJCP judges like hops. Period. The wife doesn’t, and these were two of “her” beers (I brewed them to please her)
I need to pay more attention to style if I want to enter more contests in the future (or at least match them up better)
The overall scores all fall within the “Very Good” category (30-37), so I must be doing something right.

In addition to these I am obviously walking away with a few other constructive criticisms that I’ll use to improve in the future, but all in all I think that I did pretty good. Not as good as Mike Castagno that walked away with FIRST for IPAs…. But there is always next year. Oh woe to ye who hath not anticipated the HOPOCALYPSE. Your time will come… Mwaaa haaa haaa.

Tapping Creativity

2006-06-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

For a couple weeks I've been playing with some tap handle label designs for some upcoming brews. Obviously the finishing gravities and ABVs aren't necessarily final on all of them, but I wanted to get the artwork taken care of so I didn't have to scramble and do something lame... And apparently I've got a little bit of a dark streak in me. *snicker*. Yeah, I'm sure you never would have guessed. Two of them came out very cool - but a little disturbing at the same time.

I expect I will probably re-use a huge portion (if not all) of the Hell's Bells artwork for my "For Whom The Bell Tolls Tripel"... Those little dudes on pikes are just too cool not to re-use. I actually did all the artwork for that one from scratch, granted its mostly silhouettes... but just me, Photoshop, and some brush strokes. Not bad for a no-talent unartistic ChemE.

To counteract some of that bad juju, I've also done a somewhat innocuous and light label for the Saison... It feels pretty in-the-vein of most Saisons - I even frenched it up a little with the Fleur de Lys. I'm so excited to try this thing - I'm hoping to keg & carbonate 5 gallons this weekend and put it on tap within the next week.

Amazing how quick time flies - doesn't seem that long ago that ya'll were at my place, and here it is just a little over a week from the next meeting at Marty's. Very cool. I'll probably bring some Native Rage IRA to share.

Hell's Bells

2006-06-04T04:17:00.000-07:00

So yesterday found me brewing another batch of beer on what started out as a pretty miserable day - raining, overcast... so I did it in the garage. This time around it was a new recipe - "Hell's Bells Belgian Pale", which quite honestly is really just a huge 4.5 gallon starter for the upcoming "For Whom the Bell Tolls Tripel".

It was an amazing brew session for many reasons... a couple I took pictures of. First, the sparge was pretty unique - The sparge water and wort did not mix in the mash tun, but maintained seperate layers due to density differences. If you look at the left pic, you'll see the crystal clear water with some grain matter floating in it, and then below you'll see another layer of a kind of ruddy red color with more - that's not the grain bed! At that point we were still an inch or so above the grain bed... so just like a black & tan, the liquid layers chose not to mix.

Second, I only had to vourlauf about 3 quarts before the wort was coming out crystal clear - most of my batches it has been a 8-9 quart affair. The wort going into the kettle was crystal clear, as shown by the right picture - even at 8 gallons I could see all the way to the bottom of the kettle.

The yeast (WLP510 Bastogne Belgian Ale) took off 5 hours later, and this morning we are fermenting full-tilt. I got a very minimal amount of break material in the fermenter which should leave me with a pretty pure yeast cake for the tripel in 2 weeks. This is apparently the a straing of the primary yeast Orval uses in their beers... and its primary fermentation looks VERY much like a Saison... kind of a fluffy, soapy kraeusen.

Yesterday was the 2006 Buzz-Off competition. I am still anxiously awaiting the results for the two beers I entered. Keeping my fingers crossed...

EDIT:Well, I got second place for my Queen's Darkness in the Imperial Stout category. My guess is they'll tell me it needed more hops and alcohol, but we will see. "My Wife's Nutty Brown Ale" didn't place in the top 4 - They must have shelled me for some flaw that I couldn't catch, or they just flat-out hated it. Again, I'll have to wait to get the judge's feedback on it. Not sure what category of brown ale it went in as... maybe that was the problem. But second place... that's not too bad for my first competition.

TWIN LAKES BREWING COMPANY GRAND OPENING!

2006-06-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Twin Lakes Brewing Company is having its Grand Opening on

Saturday, June 3, 2006 from 12pm-4pm

Park in the field & come celebrate with us...

Fresh: Live Music from Nine Eyes Band

Local: Deerhead Hotdogs

Delicious: Brewery Tours with Brewmaster Mark Fesche

Tickets are $10 each at the door

The hammer falls...

2006-06-01T20:26:00.000-07:00

I've had 3 beers over 7% ABV on tap for the past few days... ouch. I managed to kick the Oak Aged Vanilla Porter and replace it with my Black Honey Ale tonight, but that one's no slouch either (6-6.3%). Bottom line is I like to brew heavy hitters, and now it is 30 minutes to midnight and I can feel it. Go me. My keg line-up is completely different than 3 weeks ago for our meeting. I've now got on tap:

Black Honey Ale
Nasty Habit Abbey Dubbel
Native Rage India Red Ale

I addition to tying a good one on tonight, I also managed to:

Rack my Wheatopia to secondaries
Watch Tristan&Isolde
Do some significant overhauls to the the Tank class for my GUI

The wheatopia probably won't live in a secondary for long - just long enough for some of the yeast to settle out, followed by kegging and carbonation, and will quickly be ushered on-tap. If necessary I plant to counter pressure fill the hell out of my remaining Dubbel, for competition submission and for enjoyment / dispersement. That stuff rocked... many people who have tried it have claimed it is their "new favorite".

My programming for the GUI is definitely progressing. Every lunch hour I seem to come up with ideas or think through problems that will ultimately benefit the application and components. Today I figured out how to simplify my Tank class greatly, did some quick test programs, and then brought them home for integration.

Tristan & Isolde was an OK movie, however I have to admit that I didn't find it nearly as "epic" as my favorites (Braveheart / LOTR) nor very romantic... something about infidelity rubs me the wrong way regardless of the "context" or the backstory. Be honest and open, do your friggin' duty and do it with honor... What's so hard about that? Yeah it sucks sometimes, but come on - walk away from something if it isn't right. < /rant >

Lots of stuff going on this weekend:

Heavyweight open house
Open house at Twin Lakes saturday for $10
Buzz-Off competition at West Chester Iron Hill

The latter is actually my main source of concern this weekend, aside from brewing a batch of beer. I submitted two beers, "My Wife's Nutty Brown Ale" and "Queen's Darkness Strong Stout". I am extremely nervous how they will do and place in the competition, and I will probably be on pins & needles until I know. Not sure I can take the blow if one or the other gets totally panned, but at the same time I am not sure I really give a flip either - I brew for the enjoyment of friends & family, and they are ultimately the judges whos opinions really matter to me. We'll have to see what happens.

Starter marathon...

2006-05-29T19:43:00.000-07:00

Today I brewed and canned 5 gallons of starter wort. It was quite a feat. I started at 9:30am, was canning around 2:45, and finished canning at about 6:30... Long long day. As a result I've got a little over 5 gallons ready for future brews, and actually have another 2 quarts in the fridge that I'll use to make a starter tomorrow for my Bastogne Belgian Ale yeast. I'm going to brew a regular Belgian Pale, then use the yeast cake to brew a massive Tripel. I'm pretty stoked as this will be my first all-grain tripel and will be using some new techniques I've picked up over the past year.

Last night we bottled the first 5 gallons of Black Honey Ale that's going into the cases I cleaned last weekend. Of course one case is walking out the door with Donna's parents tomorrow, and my guess is that the other will be leaving with my parents in a few weeks, however that's why I brewed 20 gallons of it.

I also need to free up some secondaries... my saison and fruity wheats are both coming due soon. Heating up the saison has totally saved it... it has significantly dried out, and will be very drinkable and tasty. I am not certain how the short "rest" it had at 1.030 will impact it long-term, nor the decreased yeast count during its slow decline thereafter, but at least its not 10 gallons of pond water. If nothing else, I learned a very valuable lesson about the WLP565 yeast, and not to EVER rack it to a secondary before 2 weeks, and to keep it at 75 degrees during the entire length of its fermentation.

HEAVYWEIGHT Open House ... Last Call ???

2006-05-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

Email from HEAVYWEIGHT:

Hello everyone-

Our next open house is Saturday, June 3rd from 1-5 pm. We'll be pouring a few new beers (which will also be available in 750ml): Doug's Colonial Ale and Black Ocean '06. We may also have some of the Rye beer to sample (no bottles yet). You can purchase (to go) 750ml bottles of the Ste-ve (Belgian-style pale) and Old Salty Bourbon '05. We'll also we collecting can/non-perishable food for our local foodbank. Please bring a few cans or dry goods for the cause. You may also bring any beer that you wish to share with the hoard. Hope you can make it.

Thanks,
Tom and Peggy

No mention of them closing shop, but my guess is this is pretty much the last public date they will have.

So .... who's up for a trip?

Use the Comment section below to voice your interest

Pop quiz

2006-05-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

Which of these carboys has the RASPBERRY puree and which has the APRICOT puree in it.

I bet you'll never guess. It's too hard, I know.

Definitely glad that I chose to name this batch "Wheatopia"... judging the clarity, color, and probably overwhelming Frooooooo-tay taste... it probably won't be too far off the commercial fruit beverage offering. You know you may have gone too far when the krauesen has pink / red highlights too it.

**Snicker**... I'm a sick little monkey.

Kicking left and right...

2006-05-25T16:19:00.000-07:00

The kegs in my kegerator, that is. Ya'll put a serious hurting on my my beer last Friday night at the May meeting... I had about 1/2 gallon in each keg. After the meeting my friends and I had a few pints and ... pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft... Kicked.

So now I've just put on tap the Native Rage India Red and last 2.5gal of Abbey Dubbel, with something to replace the Oak Aged Vanilla Porter soon - it is also near kicking. Not sure if we'll put the Choking Sun stout or Black Honey on tap... I'm thinking Black Honey since I've got 20 gallons of it ;-)

I honestly am not complaining about them kicking - Quite honestly I take it as an assertion of two very important truths - People really liked my beer, and folks had a rocking good time at the meeting. It was pretty impressive - I can't remember the last time we had that many people in attendence... if ever. I imagine we probably had close to 30-40 people over the course of the night, not including kids.

Did everyone have a good time? Do we want more meetings like that, or was it TOO big? Just curious... I have gotten a couple comments from newcomers that if our monthly meetings are typically like that, they will attend from now on regularly... What about you other folks? I think Ric did a fan-f'ing-tastic job with the presentation, and hope we can entice more professional brewers to come in to talk to us... even if it requires shaming them with the fact that STEWARTS did it and they're not ;-)

Done more ubergeekiness, but I think I'll hold off posting any more pics until I actually get a full layout ready. Its going really well, better than I expected. Its amazing how quick coding Visual Basic 6 comes back to you, even after a year hiatus.

Sucks that Heavyweight is closing... that pretty much puts the kabash on us going there to do a club brew with them. I'll have to brainstorm and find some other **cough cough** suckers **cough** I mean iterested parties...

My saison is way underattenuated. I'm actually pretty pissed... but not willing to claim defeat yet, I've put a heating pad next to them and heated both carboys up to around 76 degrees, and they seem to be fermenting again. I may actually end up repitching some fresher Saison yeast if HDYB has some, but we'll see. I pitched a good sized starter, so there really isn't any friggin' reason why it should be under attenuated... the only thing I can think is I racked it to a secondary too fast (1 week) and maybe didn't keep it warm enough. I **WILL** brew this SOB again if it turns out crappy just to see how it was supposed to be.... and I'll pitch a ridiculous quantity of yeast.

State Line Liquors Beer Schedule

2006-05-24T12:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest beer schedule at State Line Liquors!

Thursday, June 1st, 7-9 pm. "Europe: The Ones We Don't Normally Taste" ... Specially selected brews from France, Netherlands, Denmark, Holland, Austria, Poland & Czechoslovakia. This is one you don't want to miss!

Thursday, June 22nd, 7-9 pm. "Summer Beers"... Pilsners, Kolsch & (select)Wheat Beers.

Thursday, July 13th, 7-9 pm. "Wheat Beers"... North American Microbrews & Craft Wheat Beers, plus German & Belgian Wheats.

A-B Distribution

2006-05-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

If you have been following the news, Anheuser-Busch has been acquiring stake many well known brands for distribution purposes (Red Hook, Pyramid; now Goose Island).

They are behemoths with their own distribution networks, and with their new partners in craft brewing, they have the ability to squeeze out the little guy.

Case in point ~ from the Weyerbacher website:

If you're in New Jersey, you may need to push your store to get this brew in [DOUBLE SIMCOE IPA -ed.]. With Anheuser-Bush's push to distribute microbrews in NJ, many stores are not as open to bringing in new products right now. This information is according to our NJ wholesaler, Hunterdon Dist, in Phillipsburg. They suggest you strongly advise your store to bring in this beer or it may get passed on for no good reason. According to some, stores in NJ have been avalanched with new brands lately.

Let you voice be heard on this subject!

!!! Refuse and Resist !!!

Copy & use this clip art at will !!!

Confessions of an uber-geek

2006-05-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

I have been spending my lunch hours for the past week or so prototyping a class that will be the first of many for my upcoming computerized home brewery... I figured that while it may be a year or so (or more) before we start constructing it, I could start dabbling with a user interface and figuring out how to display items. My plan is to make the interface layout configurable and customizable such that anyone that wanted to use it in their own home systems could easily do so. I don't think I'll be able to slap that level of generality on the back-end state machine for valve / pump / temperature controls, but we'll see.

The screenshot you see to the left is my test application for clsPipe, a very generic class that allows the user to run pipe based on a collection of points. You can easily turn various properties on and off to render it in a different way... in this case, it looks like we're running Budweiser through the lines... But you can easily specify the color of the pipe & liquid as well.

I also added a couple of routines to quickly and easily render tubing coils, not that homebrewers ever use such things... The routines are flexible enough to even allow shell & tube arrangements (such as a counterflow chiller) to be rendered without much difficulty.

This class would probably be used primarily for hard-piped configurations... I figure the next logical extension of the class (or perhaps a new one) will be to allow users to run "tubing" lines through some points and render them using Bezier curves and maybe some bitmap overlays...

Of course I still need to work on how to render tanks, pumps, valves, etc, but I already have some ideas for that running around in my head... I also want to make the graphics such that they can be "animated"... which shouldn't be too hard.

Again, its just a beginning on the long road to getting a working computerized system, but I have a feeling this dream will come true... I've got the skills to make sure it does ;-)

Good News / Bad news

2006-05-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

John Biggins here, excercising his first post as an FSB blogger. Hopefully all will go smoothly!

Yesterday was the BRANDYWINE CRAFT BEER FEST at Iron Hill-Media. The Good News is that there were some fantastic brews among the 25 invited breweries. Standouts I can recall (alas, no notes were taken) included WEYERBACHER Double Simcoe IPA, IRON HILL Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout, and STEWART'S 2005 Bourbon Barrel Barleywine. Luckily there were plenty of great Pilsners, Hefeweizens, and Belgian Whites to choose from to re-hydrate on a pleasant sunny Satuday afternoon.

The bad news has been confirmed: HEAVYWEIGHT BREWERY is shutting down at the end of June. Tom Baker is closing down the Ocean Twp site, so stock up on all your bottles, as they will be all gone soon. The semi-good news is that he is not giving up totally, but planning on opening a brewpub (in PA, I'm told ~ details not firm on my end) which means we can probably expect a selection of highly quaffable brews plus the few rotating/seasonal high-gravs for which he is famous.

B-day weekend

2006-05-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a fantastic weekend to turn 33.

On Friday night we had one of the biggest meetings the First State Brewers has seen since I joined two years ago. Jerry and Joyce Carney always have alot of folks for St. Pat's, but we must have had 30-40 people here Friday night (more if you count children). Ric Hoffman from Stewart's gave a fantastic speech on recipe formulation, and I think everyone walked away with some words of wisdom. I have to say that Ric went far beyond my expectations, and I can only hope that we can convince him to speak again sometime in the future. There was a crazy amount of beer to be had, and I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. My only regret was not grabbing our digital and taking some pictures... Thank you to everyone who came. I hope future meetings will see a similar level of participation and revelry.

Yesterday was my B-day and I celebrated it in true homebrewer style by brewing 10 gallons of wheat beer. Entitled "Wheatopia", I will be polluting it in the secondaries with raspberry and apricot purees (seperate, not together... blech!). The brew itself was textbook perfect - I nailed my mash-in temperature and mash-out temperatures, minimal grain matter went into the kettle, my gravity was dead on (maybe even a little higher), and it is fermenting like mad downstairs. I also got to use a new toy, my 14 gallon demijohn fermenter.

Today will include an activity that most would probably despise, but I am quite honestly looking forward to it... de-labeling and cleaning 7+ cases worth of bottles so I can fill them with homebrew. 4 cases are already spoken for in the way of black honey ale for my family & friends, and as much as I wish I had a couple cases of 750mL amber champagne bottles to put 5 gallons of saison in, I have a feeling that much of it will end up in 12oz. That'll only leave me with a few spare cases for future batches... I'll be soaking them in my 14 gallon kettle in PBW, which albeit expensive is a very effective way of removing labels and cleaning the crap that may be growing inside the bottles.

Life is grand :-)

Tweeds Tavern Stout official first serving @ Six Paupers

2006-05-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

John Biggins informed me of this.

On Thursday May 18th, Six Paupers Tavern will host the official first serving of Tweeds Tavern Stout as brewed by the Twin Lakes Brewing Company of Greenville, Delaware.

Join us from 4:00 to 8:00 and be one of the first to try the new signature brew from local brewers Twin Lakes. An antique horse drawn cart will deliver the first keg at 4:00 from the historic Tweeds Tavern site (the oldest tavern in Hockessin) to Six Paupers. Enjoy complementary light appetizers and acoustic music from Chip Porter of Montana Wildaxe.

What you get by drinking 24 beers a day for 8 years!

2006-05-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

OK, I have witnessed houses cluttered with empty beer conainers, but not on the scale of this!

70,000 Beer Cans Found in Ogden Townhouse

I once helped a club member clear his kitchen of about 70 emply bottles, but this guy kept 70 thousand cans! Amazing!

Saison du Sevier

2006-05-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

Today I made use of my new stainless false bottom for my 14 gallon kettle while brewing 10 gallons of saison. I am going to try to move to more and more whole-hops instead of pellets, and the stainless bottom gives me the perfect opportunity. I have to say that I have never had so wort so clear with so little debris in the fermenters as today's brew session, even with 1.5oz of Perle pellets for bittering - the whole Strisselspalt hops (6.5oz for 10 gallons) I used formed a natural filter bed.

After today my "whole leaf" hops inventory is limited to just 10oz of Strisselspalt 1.6% and some Northern Brewer, but I intend on slowly replacing my pellet hop inventory with whole hops. Yeah, they absorb wort and all that jazz, but with a false bottom - I don't ever have to worry about them plugging the valve again.

I tapped the Maibock tonight, and the McBride's several nights ago - I sure hope you guys love these as much as I do at the meeting on Friday. For a first attempt at a lager, I think the Maibock turned out AWESOME. My only quibble at this point is head retention, but it is CRYSTAL clear. I imagine my protein rest might have been a little excessive, and there are no head-forming proteins left anymore :-\. Good to keep in mind for my upcoming Belgian Pale and Tripel combo in a few weeks.

There was a private "Grand Opening" party at Twin Lakes today that was pretty cool. It was my first experience with their "Tweed's Tavern Stout", which was VERY roasty and tasty. I liked it alot, although I felt it needed a little more crystal to balance it out, but I would still buy the hell out of it over most commercial stouts. It had a deep coffee colored head, strong roasted notes, and a very smooth hop character that made it dangerously drinkable. Apparently one of our homebrewing friends from over in NJ assisted on this first batch - very cool.

It was also the first time I had tried their Greenville Pale Ale, which I must admit is equally quaffable and tasty. I do forsee a quarter keg of that taking up residency in my kegerator sometime in the future. I caught up with our Hockessin friends, the Zimms, who were there too.... Hopefully we'll see them at May's meeting.

While Mark Fesche was very busy during most of the day giving tours, I did get an opportunity to chat with him briefly. We'll cover some details at the May meeting... Any of you guys want to spend a day being his biotch and brewing a REALLY big batch of beer? I'd gladly scrub a mashtun and haul grain for the sheer experience of living a professional brewer's life for a day....

Big Meeting Next Friday (5/19)!!!

2006-05-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder to all - our May meeting on the 19th will be at my house next Friday. We will have a guest speaker (perhaps 2) as both Ric Hoffman and his assistant brewer (and their wives) from Stewart's will be in attendance.

I also intend on doing a demonstration of some sort. At this point it is a toss-up between a yeast starter, pressure-canning wort for FAST yeast starters, or counter-pressure bottle filling. I thought it might be cool if we pressure-filled kegs people brought and sent them home with some six-packs (for those that don't typically do that).

I will have on tap:

Oak Aged Vanilla Porter
Initiation Maibock
McBride's Strong Ale Clone (Stewart's)

I also have a number of different beers in bottles I will probably break out during the meeting, including:

Wagner Brewing's Sled Dog Doppelbock
Wagner Brewing's Sled Dog Triplebock
Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale
Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale Clone (for comparison)

And others.... if there are sufficient people in attendence to support the volume.

We'll have a whole bunch of pork BBQ sandwiches, cole slaw, munchies, and other food stuffs, as well as non-ethanol beverages for those DDs that are coming. I know of several wives that are also coming, and several folks are also bringing their kids (we have a playroom w/ TV downstairs), so if that is your excuse for staying home, consider bringing them!

We should all have a rockin' good time.

Upcoming madness

2006-05-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

I believe I have secured both brewers from Stewart's as guest speakers for our May 19th meeting. Even if they do not prepare a formal topic on brewing / homebrewing, they will be attending and available to answer questions. In addition the May 19th meeting will feature the debut of my first-ever lager (a Maibock) and a clone of Stewart's McBride's Strong Ale (how convenient Ric will be there). More than likely my Oak-Aged Vanilla Porter will be on tap as well (I don't think we've really even dented the keg at this point).

We're planning on having plenty of food (not just munchies). I believe we're getting a couple of pork shoulders and we'll have pulled-pork BBQ sandwiches, lots of sides, and plenty of snacks as well. I hope to have a demonstration as well - perhaps on yeast propogation, or perhaps some other topic - not sure yet.

I've been doing alot of research into what it would take to build a computerized home brewery. It really isn't too bad, amazingly enough, provided you've got some aptitude with electronics and programming (of which I can claim credit for at least one of those disciplines, and I'm trying like mad to recall my skill in the other). Wicked Stone Brewery (aka Joe Stone) put together a pretty extensive website detailing the tools and components he used back in 1998 to computerize his brewery (Pre-Windows 95... *SHUDDER*) and while some things are outdated, there is lots of really good info there. I've also traded a small handfull of e-mails with him to fill holes in my understanding, and he's been very helpful.

Donna (Mrs. GDSever) is on the wait list for welding classes... She's planning on taking the entire gamut of courses offered (Arc, TIG, MIG, pipe welding, etc) and should be quite a force to reckon with by the end of the year. I can't wait for her to start getting into it and have to rearrange my garage to accomodate all the new gear ;-) My wife is pretty bad@$$, ya'll.

My brewing agenda, as it stands now, is as follows:

* Wheatopia (10 gallons of fruit-flavored wheat beer)
* Saison du Sevier (10 gal)
* Horizon Bitter (10 gal)
* Hell's Bells Belgian Pale Ale (5 gal)
* For Whom the Bell Tolls Tripel (5 gal)

As you can see, plenty of pale beers being brewed in the next 2-3 months - perfect for a summer brewing season. I also need to squeeze in another batch of starter wort pronto (I've only got 2 qt left) and 5 gallons of Oak-Aged Vanilla for my sister (maybe I'll make it 10 for expediency).

I've ordered a stainless false bottom for both my HLT cooler and my 14 gallon kettle. Thought was I could use the HLT as a secondary mash-tun for either 20 gallon batches or high-gravity 10 gal batches once I've got some other projects handled. The screen for my kettle was so I could start using whole-hops in my 10 gallon boils... Should be good. My "other" projects include building a low-cost float-switch circuit into my pump skid for automated sparging... more details to come later.

Winds of change

2006-04-23T20:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend has marked a small re-routing of my homebrewing journey, I think. I've come to realize that while it would be very easy to drop several grand and buy one of MoreBeer's brew sculptures, I find myself wanting more than what they can provide. Hands down I think they've got the best kettles, mash tuns, and HLTs a homebrewer could want (and certainly well made for the amount of hastle it would take to buy something and weld in couplers for valves and thermowells), however in my heart I really want more.

I want to build my brew sculpture. I want it in indoors, I want it stainless and gorgeous, but it needs to be more than what MoreBeer sells... and I want it to be very "ME", if that makes any sense. Truth is I've got programming skills that I should capitalize on, and I've designed more software and written more code than I care to admit... and if you think I'm your typical "Hey... yeah, I can program" type then I've got some sites to direct you to (although a Google on me will probably take you there)...

I want control. I want to build it from the ground up. I want to wire the interface with the thermocouples, solenoid valves, float switches, and other input/output devices. I want to write a computer application that connects me to those electronic devices and have it seethe turbo-geek from every button and nerd-tastic temperature chart displayed. It must be bold, ridiculous, and a pure show of pomp. But that's me... A psychopomp.

And at the day, I will most likely spend way more money than I would buying something off the shelf, but it'll be mine, and it'll be me.

The impetus for all this came from two things - my recent investigations into designing a float-switch relay circuit so I don't have to really worry about sparge water levels anymore... and some conversations at the last FSB meeting this past Friday.

Enough of that. Tonight I kegged my Hopocalypse... Yowsa. Its a beast (9.3% ABV), and it doesn't take prisoners. I am torn as to whether I want it to mellow with age, or stay as hoptacular as it currently is... Guess that's what you get for 9oz of hops per 5 gallons. I also kegged my McBride's Strong Ale clone... separated it into 2 3 gallon kegs. One keg has 2oz of bourbon-soaked medium-toast oak cubes, the other has nothing but beer. The cubes weigh more than dry cubes due to the bourbon, and the bourbon I soaked them in pulled some of the oakiness out, so I'm not to worried about it being overwhelming... but we shall see. I still have 6oz of cubes (~3oz if they were dry) if anyone is interested. I also have 4oz dry (probably 8oz) of medium-toast oak chips that are bourbon-soaked (all for 6+ months, so they're totally saturated).

I am also in the process of overhauling my brew room in the basement - I finally have more of a game plan put together, and hopefully I'll be mostly done by the time May rolls around so you all can see it.

JB @ Twin Lakes

2006-04-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

John Biggins had a quick report back after last night's meeting activities regarding Twin Lakes... I will be following up with those guys to with a formal thank you and I'll try to get a meeting scheduled there soon. Its a bit of a drive for folks, but if there is interest we can certainly try to make it happen...

===============================

Dropped the empty keg of donated RTE. 52 PILSNER back to TWIN LAKES today. Mark and part owners Dave & Jim (I think) were well pleased that we enjoyed the beer. They also mentioned they would be around to supply grain, etc. for any interested brewers!

They really want us to be a part of their 'marketing' network, & with the free keg last night, they got off to a good start.

~~~

Notes: I tried the GREENVILLE PALE at the brewery. Nice, well balanced and very subdued. Very light on the hops; surprising as I was expecting a typical Cascade / Sierra Nevada-type pale.

Their stout brewing is forthcoming, once they get enough beer to fill their tanks.

They have about a dozen accounts now (Buckeys & Logans House have them on tap) which have been moving the beer well & are expanding w/ increasing production (Newark soon. Homegrown Cafe is interested).

Their 1st seasonal will most likely be a light Summer lager (not an IPA like it says on the website), but that is a way off schedule for now.

The Pilsner on tap at the brewery was as cloudy as at the meeting (the Pale was clear). The cloudiness is due to the fact that (a) they are purposely selling unfiltered product and (b) they ferment & lager in the same tank; no transfer to secondary tank. The Pilsner yeast is the CZECH/BUDVAR strain. The batch was extra cloudy due to the non-flocculent nature of the yeast & their zeal to get it out for kegging, so it is not a lager/farmhouse style as I speculated at the meeting.

As to whether the tours will continue to be $22, that's up in the air, but as FSB members, I think we may get a pass. They also want to have a Club Meeting with us or an additional Sat tour like we did a couple months back, so the Powers-that-be should look into it.

Well ... off to the Stewart's Barleywine Fest !

Prost!

Heavyweight News

2006-04-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

Here's some more news from the Heavyweight Brewing Company!

Hello all-

We're hosting another open-house on Sunday, April 30th, from 1-4pm. We'll be pouring the 2006 Baltus OVS, the Wee Whale Scotch Ale and the Ste-ve' (a Belgian-style Pale). We'll also have all three in bottle for take-away. We would also ask that you bring some non-perishable food for our local Foodbank collection (you know, cans and dry goods), Last time we collected 450 pounds thanks to you. Gus, our trusty open-house barkeep, would like to thank you for your gratitude (tips) in the past and wants us to remind you that all of these funds have been used in the support of the Haiti mission he is involved with. Ask him about it next time you see him.

Slow Food Philly is having a Pig roast and BBQ bash at Yards Brewery on Sunday, May 21, from 2-5 pm. Lynn Buono, (from Feast Your Eyes and Amelia's BBQ), has kindly agreed to cater the event. There will also be great beer from both Heavyweight and Yards. This will be a great opportunity to meet lots of Slow Food folks and enjoy some fine BBQ and craft brews! Tickets are $35 for members and $40 for non-members.

We'll also be at the following events:
May 5 - Beer and Cheese Tasting w/Yards Brewing at DiBruno's in Philly
May 12 - Long Island Beer Fest at the Huntington Hilton
May 20 - Brandywine Fest at Iron Hill - Media, PA

Hope to see you here or there,
Tom and Peggy

Big Easter Brew

2006-04-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

Saturday I stepped out of my comfort zone and brewed a really really big batch of beer (at least for me)... 20 gallons. I have to admit it is one of the more exhilarating experiences I've had recently. I tried out a couple of new toys, learned so important lessons about brewing big batches, and found that I really really love it... So if I ever end up investing in a big stainless system, it'll most likely be sized for 20 gallon batches (of normal gravity, or 10/15 gallon of high-gravity).

I calculated the material cost for this batch at around $75. The ingredients were as follows:

32 lb American (Briess) 2-row Ale malt
4.5 lb Caramunich 80L
2.2 lb French (Franco-Belges) Chocolate malt
2 lb flaked barley
10 oz black patent
8 lb Buckwheat honey (added after initial fermentation subsides to primary).
1.2 oz Magnum pellets
4 oz Liberty pellets
4 oz Northern Brewer pellets
3 whirfloc tablets (could have gotten by with 2)
4 capsules servomyces

I split the mashes into 2 tuns, used my 14 gallon kettle as a grant, then pumped the sparged wort into the 25 gallon kettle on my burner. I split the yeast cake from my batch of Stewart's McBride Strong Ale 4 ways, and it is doing fantastic. The only minor glitch was not filling my carboys evenly and boiling off more water than anticipated, which I compensated for when adding the honey. So... here are some pics!

Here you can see the wort pump on a skid w/ a water pump, the 25 gallon kettle, the 2 mash tuns, HLT, and my 14 gallon grant. It was a glorious day to brew beer.

Pumping the wort up into the 25 gallon kettle... beats trying to lift that much hot, 170 degree liquid and pouring it in...

Filling the kettle full after sparging the second mash tun... it ultimately came up to the handle rivets you can see there. YUM! Black crude goodness... and a whole lot of it!!!

I have other pictures, but stupid blogger won't let me upload more than 3. You all will have to wait until I put them on my personal site or the FSB gallery.

I've got 7 full carboys right now... Wow. That's alot of beer. Quick calculation tells me I've already brewed 70 gallons this year... Sweet.

Meeting this friday... don't forget! We have to change venues b/c Hank bailed on hosting. Looks like it will probably be at Scott's house down in Middletown. I'm sure he'll send details out soon.

The bad and the good... and the REALLY good...

2006-04-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

The bad first:

2 of my favorite beers kicked tonight: Black Honey Ale and My Wife's Nutty Brown Ale. They were excellent beers, and I have filed their recipes under the "House Beers" category in Promash designating that they are essentially standard recipes to be brewed several times each year.

The good:

The kegs kicked after counterpressure filling 12 bottles of each of them. I think I'll probably enter them in the upcoming Buzz Off competition in June. The Nut Brown definitely... not sure if the judges would appreciate the Black Honey, since it is such a specialty / sweet beer.

The REALLY good:

Now I've got two new beers on tap: My Oak Aged Vanilla Porter (5 gal), that many many many folks love, and 2.5 gallons of my last batch of Nasty Habit Abbey Dubbel. It has finally come to be the beer I originally envisioned it. Belgian style, but not necessarily belgian. I will have to bring some to the meeting in two weeks and see what folks think.

In addition, that also means I have 2 more empty kegs to fill. Considering I've got 15 gallons to keg in primaries right now, and another 10 gallons of Black Honey in another few weeks, followed up shortly thereafter by 10 gallons of Saison... I'll need the room.

This hobby rules. I can't believe I used to code VB and websites for a hobby - WTF was I thinking??!?!?

Pale Beer Time

2006-04-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

Well, the summer is coming, so it's time to brew some pale beers. After next weekend's 20 gallon batch of Black Honey Ale, I'll be set for dark beers for a while. Fortunately that one is good any time of year, but I am decidedly light on light beer right now... 5 gallons of Amarillo Pale Ale in a keg and just under a case of bottles is pretty much it. Well, I have another case or so of Belgian Wit, so that's not too bad.

So, my brewing schedule is looking like the following:

20 gallons Black Honey Ale
10 gallons Saison Sevier
10 gallons Wheatopia (wheat w/ fruit in secondary)
10 gallons Horizon Bitter
10 gallons Tupelo Honey Ale
5 gallons Hell's Bells Belgian Pale
5 gallons For Whom the Bell Tolls Tripel

I think that'll probably carry me through the summer and perhaps even then some. My heart breaks because I have a Scottish and Scotch Ale as well as a Porter I want to brew, so maybe I'll be able to sneak them in sometime. I really love dark beers... Formulating them, brewing them, tasting them, drinking them... Its all heavenly. The porter should be exciting since I'll be using specialty grains from one place - Malteries Franco-Belges. It'll use some Caramunich 120L, KilnCoffee, KilnBlack, and a touch of a few others... I can almost smell the wort boiling right now...

My hops are shooting up like mad. Some are well over 2 feet already. I've got shoots coming out all over the damn place. I'll probably wait a few more days and then prune back so only the biggest 3 or 4 shoots remain... (at least on the Cascade and Nugget). My Liberty hops are sucking yet again this year, but perhaps they just need better placement. If they fail to do well I'll move them to the side yard next spring.

[BUZZ] Judges & Entries Needed, 13th Annual BUZZ Off June 3rd

2006-04-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

Brewers Unlimited Zany Zymurgists (BUZZ) is proud to announce that the 13th
annual BUZZ Off home brew competition will be held on Saturday, June 3rd at
Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant in West Chester, PA. For another year we
will be a qualifying event for the prestigious Masters Championship of
Amateur Brewing (MCAB) as well as the Delaware Valley Homebrewer of the
Year. All BJCP recognized styles (2004 guidelines) including meads and
ciders are eligible for entry. We are also having a special bottle label
category this year. For complete details and forms, please visit the BUZZ
web site at http://hbd.org/buzz.

Entries will be accepted between May 13th and May 26th. For drop off and
mail in locations please refer to the BUZZ web site. Please, do not mail
entries to Iron Hill.

BJCP Judges and stewards will be needed. If you are interested please
contact me or another committee member (contact information can be found on
the web site). All judges must be BJCP certified (any ranking).

Good luck and cheers!

Christopher Clair
buzzclub at verizon.net
http://hbd.org/buzz

Motorized Mill Madness

2006-04-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

As promised, pictures of the motorized grain mill.

I made the front section of the mill housing hinged so I could drop it down and use a brush to clean dust off the rollers and inside of the mill. I also cut up a 2 gallon Ziploc bag freezer bag and used it as my "chute" to help direct it into the bin, bucket, or whatever is placed below the mill. It rocks!!

This is part of my birthday present for this year - my other present is going to be a vacuum sealer and some oxygen barrier bags so I can start storing my hops a little better. Buying in bulk is so much cheaper... And Joe at How Do You Brew? said he could help me out with the bags if I ever needed any.

The hopocalypse commeth...

2006-03-30T19:47:00.000-08:00

I brewed my Double IPA tonight. Gravity came out at 1.087 - Woot! My hop scale has been acting a little wonky recently, so I am concerned it wasn't hopped as aggressively as I wanted, but it'll still be plenty hoppy. Despite recalibrating several times, I think my hop scale may be off... need to find some more intermediate weights to make sure that 50g is really 50g.

I also completed another project - my Crankandstein grain mill is now motorized. Wish I could post pictures for you all, but Donna brought the digital camera with her to Atlanta. I'll have to post it next week sometime once she's back. I used it tonight for the first time and I gotta tell you - it is the epitome of sweetness. It gives a much more consistent and perfect crush than my hand drill did. I spent $75 on a 1/3HP, 100 in-lb torque, 151 RPM reversable 120V motor from Herbach & Rademan over in Jersey. It arrived in perfect condition. The remainder of my motor-related parts I ordered from McMaster-Carr, those being a capacitor and spider couplings for about $25. All my hardware, lumber, and wiring accessories I picked up at Home Depot down at People's Plaza. I guess all told I spent another $120-130 to get the mill motorized, but considering the results I won't complain. And if you think about it, all of that junk is still a fraction of the cost of the original mill and well worth it.... it'll last me forever.

My yeast starter for Sunday's brew is already going strong. It'll probably be fermented out by tomorrow morning and I'll stick it in the fridge until Sunday's session of McBride's Strong Ale from Stewart's. If you attended the AHA ralley up at Iron Hill Wilmington last fall, you probably got a copy of the recipe from Ric Hoffman as part of your literature. I quickly squirreled the recipe away and waited for an opportunity to brew it. I'll probably split it between 2 3gal kegs, one with oak cubes and one with bourbon oak cubes... Why not?

Delaware Barleywine Expo

2006-03-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Delaware Barleywine Expo

April 22, 2006

Stewart's Brewing Company will host the inaugural Delaware Barleywine Expo. Featuring five different Stewart's barleywines vintages, including 2 bourbon barrel aged versions. We will also host barleywines from:

Dogfish Head Brewing Company

Victory Brewing Company

Iron Hill Brewing Company

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

Put a fork in me...

2006-03-26T18:28:00.000-08:00

Oktoberfest (& brewer) are DONE... two hours ago I pitched yeast into my second lager ever - a marzen / oktoberfest. I am completely exhausted - I am still trying to fight my way clear of this damn cold my plague carriers (preschool children) gave me... My throat hurts, my ears pop whenever I swallow, I taste foulness whenever I cough... sometimes so long and constant that I bring more than just phlegm up with it... yet I still managed to brew today. I'm nuts.

And I intend on brewing 2 more times before next Sunday. Wife and plague carriers are taking a trip to Atlanta to visit with the wife's side of the family for a week - So I will be alone to do my thing. I've got a few other projects lined up... more details (and pictures) to come once / if I get them completed.

I'm exhausted. Time to go suck down some more water and go to bed... the more rest I get, the better I'll (hopefully) feel.

Quaffable quandry...

2006-03-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

My second lager attempt is on deck - without having even sampled my first. I have a 3 qt yeast starter of WLP820 Oktoberfest / Marzen going right now, in preparation for(hopefully) brewing my Oktoberfest beer on Sunday. This time around I'm trying not to sweat the whole thing as much as I did with my Maibock, which we'll crack into during the May meeting at my place.

In addition I've got a Double IPA and a clone of Stewart's McBride's Strong Ale ready to brew. Originally I wanted to brew my 20 gallons of Black Honey Ale next weekend, but I think that's going to have to wait until April 15th just due to lack of Primary carboy space - I have to get the Oktoberfest brewed this weekend, and doing that shorts me enough room to do the full 20 gallons. Holding off and brewing the McBride's first will also give me the opportunity to really build up a good yeast count of WLP002 - more than enough to pitch into 20 gallons.

Good meeting this past friday... Jerry and Joyce always host a good meeting. Hope to see you all at the next one - It'll be at Hank's place, and his wife Anjou always makes some fantastic Indian food.

!!! BEER ALERT !!!

2006-03-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

Here's an email I got from John Biggins:

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: John B. Biggins
Sent: Mar 19, 2006 5:32 PM
Subject: Please post on blog or mass-email the group

!!! BEER ALERT !!!

BREWERS' OUTLET, the beverage distributor in Chadds Ford; Rte. 202

north of Wilmington just over the DE/PA border; is getting rid of an overstock of the SARANAC SEASON'S BEST line for a dirt f@#king cheap, $10.99/case.

This is a NUT BROWN LAGER style (straight up; no 'holiday' spicings or anything).

Back when I used to live in upstate NY, 10-12 years back, I used to

buy this every Christmas when it came out.

I am drinking a bottle right now, and yes!, it is definitely as good as it was and an absolute steal for the price that they are selling it for.

They must have at least 50 cases left (piled on display as soon as you walk in), so stop up when you get the chance ! ! !

-jb

http://www.saranac.com/whats_new/index.cfm
Season's Best released December 1, 2005
Made to celebrate the holidays, this rich, mellow nut brown lager is brewed with a special blend of domestic and Belgian malts for a delicate nut-like character, then aged longer than most American

Beers. Enjoy its full-bodied taste and signature hop aroma. Available

now while supplies last!
~~~~~~~~~~

From the desk of John B. Biggins

We've got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the New Frontier
- Donald Fagen

Brew, brew, brew...

2006-03-13T17:16:00.000-08:00

Moving the Amarillo Pale Ale we brewed at How Do You Brew on March 4th to a secondary today. An ounce of dry hops, and it smells like heaven...

I also brewed that Indian Brown Ale clone with Brian Moore on Saturday. Had a really good time, and the beer is gonna be good I think. I found the temperature had risen to 74 degrees last night, but after a couple hours on the porch, I got it back down into the 69-70 range. We're going to drink it in late April... looking forward to it.

I also need to bottle and keg the 10 gallons of Choking Sun Stout... I was originally going to bring some to the meeting this friday, however I think I'll do the demo with iodophor sanitizer instead. Safer....

Next up:
* Oktoberfest
* Stewart's McBride's Strong Ale on Bourbon Cubes

Gallery is back

2006-03-09T19:37:00.000-08:00

OK guys. Did some work tonight and I managed to get our Gallery reinstalled. The installation wasn't too bad once I understood the requirements. I didn't bother updating us to Gallery 2 since that requires a database, and I didn't want to fool with it. Also, I figured recovering to the latest version of Gallery 1 would let us keep all our previously configured users and albums - which it did.

Formatting was a royal PITA - I had to redo all of the "tweaks" I did a few years ago to incorporate the header, sidebar, footer, and standard CSS styles for the site, which essentially means figuring it out all over again. I killed those brain cells off a few drained cornies ago... but we're 95% of the way there.

We've got tons of new stuff we can add "free" through GoDaddy. There are a few BLOG add-ons, but I'm not sure that we want to move it. This one works great. We also now have up to 10 MySQL databases - I guess at some point I'll have to learn MySQL syntax and how to access it via PHP... fun... :-
This weekend I'm brewing a clone of Dogfish Head's Indian Brown Ale from the September 2005 issue of Brew Your Own... should be good. I'm excited about it, and already have a 3 quart yeast starter of WLP005 British Ale fermented out and in the fridge downstairs in preparation for Saturday.

TurboTap works with nitrogenated stouts

2006-03-09T06:04:00.000-08:00

Brad Jolicoeur emailed me this link to a nice beer dispensing product! Check out the cool video!

Turbo... Stout?!

Yes, it’s true. TurboTap works with nitrogenated stouts, too.

The same technology used to pour perfect lagers also works for pouring nitrogenated stouts (like Murphy's®) at lightening-fast speeds. As always, seeing is believing, so take a moment to view an uncut video clip that demonstrates stouts powered by TurboTap. You’ll witness a sub-two second pour followed by the customary “cascading” of the tiny nitrogen bubbles. These bubbles settle to form the signature creamy collar that stout drinkers crave.

GoDaddy... is a go!

2006-03-08T18:13:00.000-08:00

OK guys... so today / tonight we switched from the free hosting that Dan Brzoska's old company was (unknowingly) providing us to the legitimate world of paid hosting with GoDaddy. I have uploaded the website with some minor glitches, however it is 95% functional. Unfortunately our gallery is currently down... I need to figure out if we're even going to be able to use that same package on GoDaddy. Any way you look at it, I've got a copy of the pictures and the captions (I think), so it shouldn't be a long-term issue.

Another thing I've done is set up our 3 main email address for the site, contribute/contact/webmaster @ firststatebrewers.com... so our flier address is now functional again as are the other ones. I even got them working with my MS Outlook and rules set up to segregate those e-mails into folders. Now Scott and I just need to work out how to manage the newsletter distribution list, etc.

As a side note... we've got 497 e-mail accounts left and 50 e-mail forwards... so if you want a FirstStateBrewers.com e-mail account, please let me know - we've got plenty. I think I may have to set up garrett @ firststatebrewers.com while I'm at it...

The Secret to Life

2006-03-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

100 year old woman holds key to long life: drink beer!

2006 Hurricane Blowoff Homebrew Competition

2006-03-05T16:51:00.000-08:00

I just got this email, so I thought I should share! :-)

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Patrick Fossett
Sent: Mar 5, 2006 12:40 PM

Subject: 2006 Hurricane Blowoff Homebrew Competition

Howdy and Please Participate in the 2006 Palm Beach Draughtsmen Hurricane Blowoff. This is a blanket email going to all homebrew clubs listed with the AHA. Info is contained in the word doc attachment enclosed. Entries can be registered and paid for via PayPal on our website http://www.palmbeachdraughtsmen.com

We are also attempting an international practical joke on our announcer during the awards ceremony. If you would be a good sport please name all your entries �Hello, my name is Dan Oliver and I�m an alcoholic.�

Good luck and Happy Brewing

Patrick Fossett
2006 Hurricane Blowoff Head Steward
Palm Beach Draughtsmen

All-grain Demo - Saturday March 4th.

2006-03-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow (Saturday) at noon will be the all-grain demonstration at HDYB. I am actually getting there around 11am to unload and get the strike water heating. My intention is to be ready-to-go at noon with the mash-in. I may delay until 12:15 to give folks a chance to show up.

We will be brewing my Amarillo Pale Ale, and I am also bringing several gallons to share (whatever is left in my keg) so folks know what it is that we are brewing. I typed up some instructions I will use as well as printed a recipe sheet ... I made 15 copies, so the first 15 that show up and want them, they are yours (I expect the demand will be much less than that).

I think the good AG stuff will be over by around 1:30 or so... after that, its just boil, cool, and pitch.... but it will take until 4:30 or so and I doubt folks will hang around that long.

My car is packed with toys - Hope to see you there.

Holy alpha acids...

2006-03-02T18:32:00.000-08:00

OK. So, in response to my February 23rd post entitled "HopQuest"... I have formulated a recipe to be brewed at the end of March. Its name will be "Hopocalypse". I'm sure you can imagine the tap handle label graphics already...

The short of it is: 9 oz of hops for 5 gallons, around 1.080 OG and hopefully near 1.016 FG, for something near 8.5%ABV.

I'm trying hard to put most of the additions at the end (flavor and aroma) and in the secondary as dry hops. I feel pretty good about the hop bill, but am still struggling with the malt bill. Here's the hops totals (times and quantities are scattered):

3oz Columbus
2oz Amarillo
2oz Simcoe
1oz Centennial
1oz Chinook

About 2/3 of the hops are added during the last 15 minutes or during the dry hop. I tried to go a little easy on the bittering additions (MH, FWH, 60min, 45min, 30min) so I didn't blow out someone's tastebuds with bitterness alone. As it is, the Promash calculated IBUs are 120+... I had some Cascade thrown in there at one point, but I had that sudden "what's the point" moment and pulled them out in favor of more Columbus (I do have nearly a pound, afterall).

Malt bill so far is as follows:

10 lb Pale ale
6 lb Vienna
1 lb Crystal 10
2 oz Chocolate

I think I might need a darker crystal in there as well... Like I said, I'm struggling a little with what malt bill would build a backbone for all those hops.

I'm thinking of mashing around 149 so it is good and fermentable. I'd hate for it to finish high and the malt mask some of that hoppiness.

I am a little frightened. I think that is a good thing.

Sweetness

2006-03-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

And I'm not just talking about the picture. My gorgeous, loving, tolerant wife let me buy 15 pounds of buckwheat honey from Fruitwood Orchards up in New Jersey. That's enough honey for me to make roughly 40 gallons of our house "porter", the Sirius Black Honey Ale. I'll brew 20 gallons of it at the end of March with the borrowed equipment from Jerry Carney.

And now, a beer haiku:

My honey's sweetest
Wild, potent, gorgeous and dark
Buckwheat is good too

Heh. Thank god I'm not an literary major... I need to stick to engineering.

Brewing today

2006-02-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

Brewing my bastardized steam beer today - stop by if you want.

Don't have any homebrew to share, but I've got some store-bought stuff in the fridge.

Michael Jackson beer tasting

2006-02-24T08:01:00.000-08:00

University of Pennsylvania Museum is hosting a beer tasting with Michael Jackson on Saturday March 18th. There are three sittings - 1pm, 3:30pm, and 6pm. Tickets are $40 for museum members and $45 for guests. Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery will be there with an ancient Chinese fermented rice beverage. I'm trying to make it to the 6pm tasting.

HopQuest

2006-02-23T18:33:00.000-08:00

Ok. So tonight I tasted the latest batch of Native Rage, or at least one carboy of it. While several months ago I found it to be extremely hoppy, this time around - Its very good, but not excessive.

I can, nay MUST, use more hops in the future.

There were a ridiculous amount in this beer, and yet I feel like it needs more. Next time I brew it, I am thinking mash hops, first wort hops, 1.5X the flavor and aroma hops and 2X the dry hops. This shtuff needs to be GREEN in the fermenter. It needs to look like I've got a hop cake, not a yeast cake, in the fermenter. Even I should be quaking with fear.

I think for good measure I will try dry-hopping in the keg using a tea ball for this batch - I picked one up at HDYB last week.

Next weekend (March 4), I will be brewing my Amarillo Pale Ale in the parking lot of How Do You Brew? as an all-grain demonstration. Whatever I have left in the keg in my kegerator, I intend on bringing it. Bring a thirst, if you plan on attending. This stuff is good. I will also be handing out recipe sheets.

Choking Sun

2006-02-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

In honor of my cousin's new project, Choking Sun, and his love (and his band mates') love of stout, I am brewing a very robust stout for them. Choking Sun Stout has 8oz of Carafa II, 8oz of Chocolate, 8oz of Roasted Barley, 8oz of Crystal 120L, and a ton of base malt per 5 gallons. The grain bill was big enough I actually had to split it into two different mash tuns for 10 gallons. Thanks again for the loan, Jerry!

It weighed in at 1.0745 for the initial gravity, was fermenting like a bat out of hell within 12 hours, and is black as midnight. This is my first major endeavor with Carafa malt, and I expect it will be very good. Hopefully the roast won't be tooooooo overwhelming.

Bittering hops were magnums, flavor were cascades, and the aroma hops were centennials. I will have to keep you all posted on this one. I'll probably be brewing a less intense oatmeal stout in a month or two since this beast won't be ready until fall.

The only brewery in the Palestinian territories

2006-02-21T19:13:00.000-08:00

I have mixed emotions about this article!

Palestinian brewery to launch 'Hamas' non-alcoholic beer

Like any good entrepreneur, Palestinian beermaker Nadim Khoury knew that adaptation would be key to his brewery's survival under a government led by the Islamists of Hamas.

So anticipating the hardliners' rise to power in January's general election, Khoury decided to develop a new product -- a non-alcoholic microbrew brandished with a label that coordinates perfectly with Hamas's trademark color.

"I figured why not have a green label so it will match?" said Khoury, who runs the Taybeh Brewing Company, the only brewery in the Palestinian territories. "All customers will notice the green for the Hamas flag."

The alcohol-free version of Taybeh beer, with a label inscribed only in Arabic and whose name means "delicious," is to be released this summer and will target the "local market," he said.

Non-alcoholic beer is already popular in a number of conservative Gulf Arab countries which officially ban booze sales.

The lucrative market potential was highlighted by a deal four years ago which saw Egypt's largest brewer of "near-beer," Al-Ahram Beverages, bought by Heineken for 280 million dollars.

Khoury says he will start small with his new beer, maybe only a few hundred bottles at first, but he has big dreams for his brewing factory in the hilltop village of Taybeh, a historically Christian town of about 1,300 people near Ramallah in the West Bank.

A sense of homeland pride and the family's ability to invest more than one million dollars spurred Nadim, who was born in Taybeh, to return after two decades in the United States in order to build the brewery shortly after the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993.

Now in its 11th year of business, Khoury said the brewery sells the equivalent of about 1.2 million pints per year, though its peak output was more than twice that in 2000 prior to the outbreak of the second intifada against Israeli occupation.

Violence was bad for business, and the intifada brought a wave of harsher regulations in many Palestinian cities.

Khoury hasn't been able to sell his beer in the Gaza Strip for years, since militants torched the home of one of his distribution outlets and radical Islamists effectively made selling alcohol impossible throughout the crowded territory.

But Khoury hopes attitudes will change with his new non-alcoholic beer.

"I don't want to smuggle my beer in Palestine. I believe I have a right to sell mine (in the Gaza Strip)," said Khoury, an unabashed nationalist who touts his beer factory as a boon to the Palestinian people and their economy.

"Every time we sell a bottle of beer it goes toward building the state of Palestine," said Khoury.

Khoury says his first name Nadim means "your friend who sits at the bar with you, your drinking buddy," and his chief product is Taybeh Golden beer, though he also makes a light version and a dark beer.

The Taybeh brews are concocted from four natural ingredients -- malted barley, hops, yeast and pure spring water. Each bottle sells for around one dollar.

The gentle, amber-colored Taybeh Golden is sold in parts of Israel, the West Bank, Britain and Germany.

However, among secular Muslims in the area who do drink alcohol, not all are devoted fans of its mellow taste.

"It's okay. It's good," shrugged one Arab-Israeli taxi driver in Jerusalem, who admitted he hadn't drunk any Taybeh in at least two years.

A waiter at a bar in occupied East Jerusalem said: "I prefer Irish whiskey. Jameson."

Hamas leaders, who now dominate parliament, have not made clear whether or not they will seek to impose conservative sharia law which would impose a wider ban on alcohol.

Khoury remains optimistic.

"I think they (Hamas) are very smart, very educated. I believe they will think twice before they do anything to hurt our business."