Northern Brewer: The Blog

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2011-11-15T10:43:00.001-06:00

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The Ballad of El Centennial

2011-10-06T11:18:00.000-05:00

Short post today - El Goodo is this year's fall-run batch, and I gotta get on cpf'ing this guy cause the trip is hours away. Let's just chat briefly about hop combos, shall we?

Centennial (homegrown) + Citra (not homegrown) = magic.

No real surprise there, right? At least some commercial beers have demonstrated the divinity of this pairing (saving a bottle of Summit's 25th Anniversary Ale for a special occasion ... like tonight. When I get home. And sanitize my Beer Gun.).

Both hops stand on their own just great, but there's some nasty, nasty (and I mean that in the best possible way) humulene alchemy that happens when these two kids get together in your wort and hopburst. The treble notes of Centennial fruit and the mango funk of Citra ... it becomes armpitty and catty (and I mean that in the best possible way), pungent and earthy like a freshly-dug rhizome on a cloudy spring day.

What's your favorite hop combo?

Makin' Cidah

2011-09-27T10:02:00.000-05:00

Apples are coming in and the cider is flowing. I happened to get a gallon of fresh squeezed cider from a friend of mine whose mother in law has a few trees up north, or "up nort" as some say in these parts.

Of course the only thing better than fermenting some cider is drinking some cider, so I had a pint of the unfermented stuff before tossing the yeast in. It was of moderate sweetness, nice apple flavors, pretty soft and full-bodied, with a hint of fermentation already going on. Not much acidity but some pleasant tannic bolstering at the end. I love those apple tannins, and most commercial ciders around here avoid them.

For a low acidity juice I like to use the Wyeast Rudesheimer strain, but I didn't happen to have that one around, so I used the K1-V1116 dry yeast instead. It is fairly neutral on the aromatics and should leave good apple character, and also highlights acidity nicely, especially as it can be quite dry. I also like the K1-V1116's "killer" abilities, it is very good at outcompeting and suppressing other yeast strains, which I'm sure this unpasteurized juice had in droves. Before pitching the yeast I added in a cup of brown sugar, which will help make a more stable end product by upping the alcohol, and may help give the cider some more body and a bit of residual sugar.

We'll see how it goes! I'm hoping that this will be an early drinker that I can add some carbonation to. Until then, I'll be on the lookout for more juice!

Notes on a Brewday: Harvest Season

2011-09-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

We are in the midst of harvest season. In Minnesota, it comes earlier than elsewhere. Hop cones are flourishing, grapes are ripening. For us homebrewers, it means one last big warm-weather brew day.

For the last few weeks, I've been watching my hop cones develop and mature. Almost two pounds of Centennial was harvested earlier, for use in some Dead Ringer IPA.

The Centennial matured earlier than the rest of my crop this year. It has given me time to plan out recipes, gather grain, and do yeast starters for the rest of my 5 varieties.

The rest of my hops were ripe, flowing with lupulin, the weather was beautiful, perfect for 4 different batches of beer. All wet-hopped with fresh home-grown leaf. All brewed all-grain. All in one day.

An ESB, a Northern English Brown Ale, a batch of NB's Extra Pale Ale, and the Twelfth Night Stout. All great batches to kick off the season, and last into winter.

Multitasking was critical for such a monumental brew day. It was not the biggest brew day I've had, but it was close. We harvested hops while mash water was heating for both of the first two batches was heating. Kept harvesting through the mash, checking periodically to make adjustments, but things were going well.

A stuck sparge threw off the schedule a slight bit during the first run off. No big deal, I had all day to handle small little hiccups like that. The second one ran off fine, and crystal clear.

The next two batches went off without a hitch. A quick decoction on one to bring it up to an alpha saccharification rest, and develop some melanoidins and additional malt character.

I've got a Horizon based IPA and Pale ale to brew next, then I have to decide what to do with all of the extra Goldings and Willamette, and use or dry the rest of the Cascade before it turns.

All in all, a great way to kick off the fall season. Next up, fresh grapes and wine. It's a great time of year to make room in the fermentors.

Notes on a Brewday: Northwoods Double Porter

2011-09-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

Seven grain mash, roasted grains ground in coffee grinder

Black ales are the adopted bane of homebrewers. It seems like from one's inception into homebrewing, the popular camp means to get us started on the campaign to disassociate dark ales from the idiom that these black liquids are 'thick and highly alcoholic'. Each of us is given that old Guinness recipe for Dry Irish Stout, with it's high percentage of flaked barley, and made to adhere to the gospel fermentation time frame that produces an opaque black refreshment that never fails either adjective.

Then, every so often you get the sneaky ambition to make a robust flavor bomb that appeals to the few who want stained pub glasses & coated esophagi. The palate-mindful seeking total sensory overload via an ever-increasing SRM beg you for it. Then on some night, after imperial cream ales have cruised past your lips enough to obliterate your filters for cautious suggestion, a recipe gets penned for a porter with more punctuated flavor than a nut brown, blacker than a molasses stout and more drinkable at that ...

When my wife brought to my attention some stout & porter drinking friends of hers that dared to look up at a new moon sky with the ambition of a full moon, my creative circuits flared. They conveyed to her lists of session stouts, simple porters & coffee or chocolate stouts that piqued their liquid interests. "What could I make them," they wondered, "with the smoothness of a stout or porter, the complexity of a Scotch drink and the gaudiness of a coffee or chocolate flavor-enhanced ale?"

I don't recall ever treating their candor-laden question with anything less than total creative appeal. I was floored to have the chance to load up a special occasion brew with layers of every different flavor profile that the most expensive bomber-bottled brews have come to earn through recipe & presentation. You should understand, though, that I'm no fan of stout faucets, and have had sketchy experiences with flavoring strong dark beers with any post-kettle ingredients. I prefer a malt profile that's focused on balance, but ready to accommodate nuances specific to the recipe's goal.

Viscous black first runnings

In this case, I was to make a completely black-colored strong porter showcasing end flavors of coffee and chocolate, and it had to be ready by the end of September. That was early August, so I wasted no spare time in creating & revising no less than six versions of what would become the Northwoods Double Porter. It features seven kinds of malts, well over the advised amount for simple & quality recipes.

The proportions of the barley players in this mash devote layers of flavor, proportioned with some advice from Brewing Classic Styles, but mostly adhered to be my own experience in shooting for the dark side of the moon to get a flavorful, dark-as-possible beer. The hopping was mainly influenced by the huge late-boil additions of Surly, but the selection of UK Fuggle comes more from single hop pale ale experiments that found Fuggles to be the hop with the most flavor-play per ounce of any of the 'classic' dark ale varieties.

The recipe showcases Wyeast's Ringwood Ale strain (A.K.A. Swedish Porter) and a lengthy secondary. I took this recipe beyond calculated final gravities with a 148 degree mash temperature & an overpitched 2 liter yeast starter. The end result calculated an FG of 1.018, which I threw to the floor at 1.010. I think the best addition was the Simplicity D-90 Belgian Candi Syrup, which made the wort uber-fermentable & imparted plenty of dark chocolate notes; backing up the roasty coffee flavor combination of Carastan, Special B and Roasted Barley.

Take this brew out for one last lakeside camping trip, a penultimate backyard bonfire, or save some for sipping beside the living room fireplace around the year's end. Whatever the occasion, brew it adventurously & throw the caution of dry session stouts or milds to the wind! Winter's on its way & the chances to brew something totally new abound.

"Northwoods Double Porter"
5 gallons, all-grain
OG: 1.077 FG: 1.010-1.018 (How low can you go?)

8 lbs. Rahr 2-Row (I also like Malteurop 2-Row)
2 lbs. Rahr White Wheat Malt
2 lbs. Crisp Brown Malt
1 lb. Light Carastan
8 oz. Rahr Rye Malt
4 oz. Simpson's Roasted Barley
4 oz. Belgian Special B
Mash at 148 degrees for 60 min.

Boil 75 min.
1.5 oz. German Northern Brewer @60 min.
1 lb. Simplicity D-90 Syrup @15 min.
3 oz. UK Fuggles @5 min.

Chill to 68 degrees & pitch 2L starter of Y1187 Ringwood Ale yeast.
Ferment 2 weeks primary, 6+ weeks secondary (add one campden tablet after 2 weeks secondary for extended aging)

Beer-braised beans

2011-09-14T13:01:00.000-05:00

Last night I made another beer-related dish that I thought I'd share with everyone. It is extremely easy, but preserves the flavor of the beer quite well!

This recipe for braised pinto beans is ridiculously simple, which really allows the beer to come through in the final product. I made the beans using my pressure cooker, but canned would do fine as well.

1 quart cooked pinto beans

8 oz Belgian Dubbel (a fruitier yeast, like Belgian Abbey II, works great)

1.5 tsp salt

2 tbs brown sugar

Dump it all into a pot and simmer the liquid down on low heat until the mixture is reduced by half and the beans are fairly thick.

And that's it. The sugar helps balance out the small amount of bitterness from the hops, and the yeast-derived flavors survive quite well, which give the whole dish the characteristic Belgian Abbey beer impression. Wish I had some pictures, but I ate it all!

Notes on a Brewday: St. Edhar 8

2011-09-01T11:47:00.000-05:00

Ah, the middle ages.

What is it about monastic beers that's so evocative of older times? The time capsule-like nature of Old World breweries in cloistered communities? The romance of a religious order living outside the flow of secular time, preserving the traditions of brewing, manuscript illumination, healing, and so on and so forth, intact through the centuries?

Whatever.

Much like Dennis in the above clip deflates the notion of watery tart-mandated governance, a clear-eyed assessment shows that Tripel is a modern invention (Stan Hieronymous dates Westmalle Tripel, the "first pale Trappist beer," to anno domini 1934), the brothers of Abbaye de Scourmont who bring us Chimay were quick to embrace Dr. DeClerck's 20th century brewing science, and operations in many of the surviving Trappist breweries are sophisticated setups.

For my money, whatever magic lives in these ales comes from the alchemy that seems to take place somewhere in between the straightforward bills of ingredients and the labyrinthine flavors and aromas of the finished product.

But that doesn't and shouldn't stop us nerds, steampunks, foodies, miniatures painters, RenFesters, Medieval Literature degree-holders, trebuchet builders, Belgophiles, blacksmiths, choral singers, and Neal Stephenson readers from rhapsodizing about them. Or brewing them.

The plan: imitate that elementally simple bill of ingredients, force the yeast and time to create the complexity. Pale like a Pilsner, hop-bitter palate like suckin' on sackcloth, like a beer from a monastery with its own hopyard should be. Strong like a provision for the head abbot's table, age-worthy like a reliquary.

Huzzah? Huzzah! Huzzah:

Foreground: yeast. Background: time.

St. Edhar 8 (Tripel)
10 gallons, target OG 1.080

Grist:

18.5 lbs Franco-Belges Pilsner malt

Mash:

148 for 75 min
170 for 10 min

Boil:

2 oz Magnum @ 60 min
5 lbs table sugar @ 15"
0.75 oz Styrian Goldings @ 15"

Fermentation:

Chill to 68 F, O2, and pitch
Wyeast 3787 Trappist
O2 again at 24 hours
allow fermentation to free rise up to 76-77 F
rack, a few weeks in secondary, prime & bottle, then try to forget about it for a while

But wait! There's more! This one's going to take so long to get good, and there's still some sugar in that mash tun ...

St. Edhar Slinebeer (small beer)
After preboil volume for StE 8 is achieved, divert the last couple-or-so gallons of runnings from the mash tun to another kettle. Boil for 20 minutes with 0.125 oz Magnum. Do not take a gravity reading. Pitch it with leftover yeast from the big beer. Ferment it for 3 days, then keg it. Then drink it.

Tasting notes: straw gold, not-quite-bright but not very yeasty either; super-lean body, dry with a husky malt character, gentle pear ester and a hint of plastic-like phenol. I am guesstimating it's in the neighborhood of 1% abv and not long for this world.

But it's just what I would want to have a couple earthenware tankards of after a hard day of working the filth in my commune and being repressed by King Arthur.

Rye Malt Syrup

2011-08-25T09:09:00.001-05:00

Rye malt syrup: sweet.

My fellow beer nerds,

I speak to you today as a fellow citizen-homebrewer, as an unreformed and unrepentant extract brewer, and as an enthusiastic user of all kinds of cereal grains:

Rye malt syrup is pretty sweet.

No longer need non-all grain brewers be excluded from the use of Secale cereale in their formulations; no longer need extract brewers be forced to omit the letter "R" from the acronyms of their IPAs; no longer need your stouts be confined to oats nor your various hybrid styles to wheat.

The extract is an exclusive, custom blended for NB and comprised of 70% pale malt, 20% rye malt, and 10% caramel 40 - unhopped, natch - gravity contribution of 1.035 ppg, color in the neighborhood 6 L. All by its lonesome you get those distinct earthy, oily, spicy notes we want from rye, but from numerous test batches I can happily report that it plays very nicely with everything from roast grain to lots of hops and with every yeast strain we've thrown at it so far.

Rye IPA? Homebrewer, please. Rye saison? Do it. Rye Baltic porter? Somebody's gonna brew one, might as well be you. Rye lager? Get down with your bad self. Rye wit, rye alt, Roggenbier, Roggenbock, Rolschbier, golden rye, brown rye, red rye, black rye? Get out your 5 gallon kettle, unchain your imagination, let no mash constrain you!

This joke had to be made.

By way of getting you started, here's a very simple, fast fermenter-to-glass recipe (available as a brand-new kit!) to help you both try out this extract and sieze the last fading gasps of summer with one more warm-weather beer:

American Rye Ale

(think of an American-style hefeweizen, but with rye in place of wheat ...)

5 gallons, target OG 1.042

6 lbs rye malt syrup
1 oz Liberty @ 60"
1 oz Sterling @ 15"
Safale US05 or Wyeast 1056

... and away you go!

Smoke Your Beer, Not Your Butt!

2011-08-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

In my efforts to keep up with the amount of beer I produce in comparison to the amount of beer I actually drink, often times a good amount of my home brew ends up in the food I cook. Some of my favorite food in the whole world is smoked pork and BBQ. Since my charcoal fired outdoor smoker has taken up residence in my parents garage, I decided to try and take a shortcut or two to produce some pulled pork sandwiches.

Although smoked beers are not the most common or well appreciated beer style, I happen to rank them near the top of my list of favorite beers. Since a rauchbier is traditionally made as a lager, I happened to brew my batch during the winter as a lot of home brewers typically do. While brainstorming recipes that would make good use of my remaining supply of rauchbier bottles, a summer time favorite of slow cooked BBQ pork sandwiches came to mind.

As busy as people are these days, it's more and more difficult to make great slow-cooked food. This is where I turn to crock pots for assistance! Crock pots are great for just throwing together a few simple ingredients before you head to work, then coming home to the smells of a nice, home cooked meal. The shredded "smoked" pork in the recipe is as simple as slicing an onion and a couple cloves of garlic, opening a bottle of beer and not much else.

In my former line of work as a chef, my mentor taught my many things about not only food, but how to be a good man and to treat yourself, your co-workers and your ingredients with respect. Working under Sandy was a life-changing experience. I learned how to produce wonderful food consistently, how to discipline my life and express myself creatively. The recipe for the BBQ sauce I made here is a slight variation on one of his recipes. It is slightly non-traditional for a BBQ sauce, but the twists and turns it takes along the way will provide some wonderfully unique flavors. If you don't happen to have the time to make your own sauce, simply pick up one of your bottled favorites.

"Smoked" Shredded Pork Butt

1 - 8-10 pound bone-in pork shoulder roast
1 - sweet Vidalia onion
3 - cloves garlic
2 - bay leaves
1 - 22 oz bottle Rauchbier (NB recipe, or a good German example such as Schlenkerla)

Peel and slice onion. Peel and slice garlic cloves. Combine all ingredients in crock pot, set to low temperature, and allow to cook for roughly eight hours or until meat starts to fall away from the bone. After meat has finished cooking, remove roast from crock pot very carefully to a large mixing bowl. Using some tongs or forks, shred the meat and remove the bone. If you like, you can mix in a few tabelspoons of the resulting cooking liquid for added moisture.

Spiced barbeque sauce

3 - 28 oz cans whole peeled tomatoes
8 oz sweet onion, peeled and sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 Tbl Hungarian sweet paprika
1/4 tsp dried ground Chipotle chile
1 1/2 Tbl ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cloves
3 Tbl molasses
1/2 cup honey
2-3 Tbl olive oil
1 1/2 Tbl cornstarch

Gather your ingredients. Peel and slice the onion and garlic - set aside and keep seperate. Open the canned tomatoes and drain the liquid, then put the tomatoes in a large mixing bowl. Using an immersion blender, puree the whole tomatoes until smooth. Measure the dried spices together in a small bowl and set aside. If using fresh lemons, collect 1/2 cup of juice - or use a bottled lemon juice product. Measure the honey and molasses into seperate containers.

Heat a thick-bottom non-reactive sauce pan, preferably 4 to 6 quart capacity, over medium-high heat. When hot, add the olive oil, then add the onion. Saute the onion until lightly caramelized. When the onion is slightly browned, add the honey. Cook and boil the honey until it starts to caramelize and brown, this should take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Be very careful not to burn the honey! When the honey has caramelized nicely, add the molasses and sliced garlic and cook just long enough to combine with the honey, or 1 to 2 minutes. Add the dried spices and stir just to combine and dissolve them, or about 30 sec to 1 minute. Add the lemon juice and cider vinegar - this will halt the caramelization process by cooling down the temperature in the pot. Be careful of vigorous foaming and bubbling due to the rapid change in temperature. When the mixture returns to the boil, add the pureed tomatoes. Return to a boil, then reduce heat to a low simmer.

Simmer the sauce uncovered for 60 to 90 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent scorching as it starts to reduce and thicken. When the sauce has reduced by about about a third, remove from heat. Using the immersion blender, carefully puree the sauce for 3 to 4 minutes right in the sauce pot. Be very, very careful when pureeing hot liquids - start slow at first so the hot liquid doesn't splash up and burn you. Return the pureed sauce to the heat and return to a simmer. Mix the cornstarch with a couple tablespoons of cold water to make a slurry, then add the slurry to the simmering sauce. Mix using a whisk, and simmer for a few more minutes to complete the thickening process. Season to taste with salt and pepper, if you like.

Mix the shredded pork with enough sauce to "dress" the meat, then pile a healthy amount onto sandwich buns. Serve with any number of sides from potato salad, pickles, mac n' cheese or a nice salad.

Brewing TV - Episode 42: King's Coolship

2011-08-12T10:00:00.001-05:00

The King is in the building! NB soldier and determined yeast junkie Jeremy King (you remember him from Episode 4, right?) is back with yet another twisted yeast experiment. This time he's trying wrangle wild yeast from his environs in Milwaukee, WI for eventual commercial use. He's got a very interesting way of going about it - utilizing a coolship. Wild yeast, microscopes, fire, and fermented fish. You never know what you're going to get when you're hanging out with J-King. Prepare to be - KING'D!

Related Blog Posts by J-King:
2 Things Literature Says You Shouldn't Do That You Shouldn't
Better Brewing Through Chemistry
Beer and Your Body: The Alcohol Hangover
Eat Your Beer Like a King

Tasting Showdown: Cider vs. An Apple

2011-08-09T10:25:00.000-05:00

Oedipus and Laius. Ken Griffy, Junior and Ken Griffy, Senior. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. And now, hard cider and apple.

Both have very good records. Hard cider, the boon of American pioneers, mainstay of farmers from New England to regular England, not quite as crazy as applejack, but just crazy enough to get the job done. Apples, the original temptation, Granny Smith to Honeycrisp, ward against doctors, the basis of some of our nation's most iconic pies. Who would win in a taste test? To find out I sat down with a classic food pairing - an apple and a glass of cider - and evaluated each.

Texture - Apple is the clear winner here. It starts with the thick, waxy skin, which is quickly followed by a burst of juice. The gentle ripping of a single bite from the whole is a visceral pleasure, and the fleshy insides, with their readily yielding contours, are divine. At the end of all of it is the skin, right where you started from, but this time providing a blander, chewy contrast to the whitish pulp. Cider is texturally insipid in comparison.

Aroma - Cider has this one in the bag. The heady, fruity intensity of cider's aroma is quite pleasing. You can almost sense the acidity and tannins. In contrast, apple's aroma is faint, and somehow more earthy than it tastes. If left exposed for just a few minutes, apple's aroma declines, while cider's stays strong.

Appearance - Apple is certainly the more complex of the two, but cider has an attractive simplicity that is subtly alluring. Apple really has much more range, with colors flashing and slowly turning over it's surface, a pleasantly white inside, and that cute little stem sticking out of the top. Cider, on the other hand, can look stunning with the light passing through it, and the co2 rising like little helium balloons all along the sides of the glass. Tie.

Flavor - Apple has a great flavor, but it's just falling short compared to cider. The balance really tilts towards sweet with apple, and I think that is one of its main shortcomings. In cider you can have it all at once, the tannins, the acidity, and a slight sweetness in a single sip. And then there's the fruitiness of the yeast, the smooth searing of the alcohol, and the pleasant dryness in the finish. Apple just lacks that many dimensions.

So there you have it, cider wins by a narrow margin, just 2.5 to 1.5 over apple. Stay tuned for next time, when I'll be comparing drinking an Irish Stout to eating a pint of roasted barley.

Thunderbolt Pale Ale: Hop Substitution Experiment - UPDATE

2011-08-04T07:53:00.000-05:00


Thunderbolt, the pale ale

Tasting notes for my Thunderbolt Pale Ale, using a blend of hops to approximate the profile of Simcoe:

7/11: 1.5 weeks in primary - 1.009 gravity. Hop bitterness is nearly the same as the original recipe. Centennial & Mt. Hood flavor totally unabridged. Hop aroma seems to be leaning toward pine, though at this early in fermentation it's not all that different from the aroma profile of the original recipe. Secondary transfer 7/12.

7/17: 1 oz. Columbus added to secondary. Estimated 7.7% ABV.

7/22: Dry hopping & secondary has mellowed the piney characteristic to a lull. Simcoe flavor is well-replicated, if only very slightly muted by the substitution blend. Really, there's little difference from earlier Thunderbolt brews.

Thunderbolt, the siren

7/29: First pint from the carbonated keg (3.0 vols CO2). Cleanly bitter, big malt character has a clean caramel taste, finish is balanced by lots of orange-like citrus hop flavor. Resinous hop character plays second fiddle to the orange/grapefruit/misc. old fruit aromas. Real Simcoe would have given more resin aroma, but the final beer is hardly deficient in that regard. Good yellow-orange color with a respectable white head. The finish leaves a pine flavor, yielding to citrus-zesty coating on the back of the mouth.

It seems the Simcoe substitute blend did well for the T-bolt. I give thumbs up to the blend. Brew on!

Notes on a Brew Day for Someone Else's Wedding, Pt. 2: Marie avec Visage-Sale

2011-07-31T09:30:00.002-05:00

Rub some dirt in it
and get back out there.

Sometimes, when you wake up with the flu but you've already measured out and acidified the strike water and weighed the grain the night before, and you're now at zero hour for bashing out a biere de garde commissioned for your cousin's wedding reception, well sir ... sometimes you just gotta start heating the water, go puke, wipe your mouth on the brew sheet, and then mash in.

Too much info? Alright, how about this: Marie avec Visage-Sale - it's what I will generously call my own loose French translation of my cousin's and her fiancee's startup farm outside Menomonie, named for a historical figure of the region:

At one time, a rather good looking young squaw, named by the boys "Mary Dirty Face," was purchased by a mill hand, as a wife. Mary utterly repudiated the pale face, and refused to share his bed and board, so [p. 276] he seized the goods he had given for her and burned them, and to have ample revenge out of his wife's relations, he procured a gallon of whiskey, put some ipecac in it, and invited the Indians to have a big drunk with him. Every available red skin put in an appearance, the whiskey was soon disposed of, and such a woebegone lot of Chippewas never struggled together to invert their stomachs. As soon as they were sufficiently recovered for concerted action, they sounded the terrible war cry, and started to hunt him down, but George, realizing what he might expect, and not being willing to become their victim, escaped. While their war paint was on, vengeance against the whole white race was threatened, but the affair was soon quieted.

from A History of Northern Wisconsin (vol. 1), The Western Historical Company, 1881

"Utterly repudiated the pale face" - good on ya, Mary, you could obviously do better. And George The Mill Hand: clearly a class act. Glad you were able to head off the vengeance-against-the-whole-white-race thing after you stole back the "dowry" you had to trade for a partner instead of resorting to, you know, courtship and pitching woo; and then setting fire to said "dowry" right before you gave Mary's kinfolk that doctored frontier hooch that made them throw up. That's pretty much exactly how I remember my honeymoon, too.

Huh. Reverse peristalsis seems to be a recurring theme in this post. I promise I will now shrug it off and move forward, just like I did on this brew day.

Anyhow, the beer: a biere de garde, a classic farmhouse style, in honor of a couple of young farmers. Since the reception will be outdoors on Labor Day weekend and it could be hot, I'm brewing it to a more historically-representative lower gravity than the higher-octane "De Luxe" bieres de garde we're more familiar with today. And because it's for September, I'm going for an Oktoberfest-ish color. And because I like biere de garde, it's a 10 gallon batch:

Try utterly repudiating this.

Marie avec Visage-Sale
10 gallons, all-grain
Target OG 1.052

Grist:

To the composter!

Mash:

152 F for 60 minutes
170 F for 10 minutes

Boil:

2 oz Palisade (whole, 8% aa) @ first wort
0.5 oz Palisade (whole, 8%) @ 15"
2 x Whirlfloc tablets @ 15"

Break.

Krauesen.

Fermentation:

Chill to 66 F, O2, and pitch
WLP029 German Ale/Kolsch (harvested & washed slurry from the IBR Pale Ale)
Ferment to TG, then rack and crash cool for the "garde" phase ...

The 029 started throwing lots of sulfur at about 48 hours, as the airlock bubbling began to slow. At the time of this writing, we're a few weeks into the secondary, SG 1.014, with great clarity and a bright malt flavor that's completely supplanted the sulfur. Next up: keg and carb in anticipation of le grand jour.

Oh, and hey: how about an extract version?

Marie avec Visage-Sale
5 gallons, extract

1 lb Belgian Caravienne (steep)
6 lbs Pilsen malt syrup
1 lb Pilsen DME
1.25 oz Palisade @ 60"
0.25 oz Palisade @ 15"
WLP029 German Ale/Kolsch
I recommend not puking on brew day if you can help it.

Notes on a Brewday: Eye of the Sun Winter Ale

2011-07-28T08:00:00.003-05:00

I'd like to toast homebrewers in the southern United States. I have too much skin to haul full liquor kettles across my backyard or stand over a 200,000+ BTU propane stove when the summer swelter gets angry. My desire to brew suffers under an oppressive 86 degree dewpoint & 116 degree heat index. Such afternoons signal it's too late to brew any lawnmower beer that isn't already sweating in hand; it's time to get a winter ale brewing.

The recipe I chose to be kissed by summer's cattle-prod lips was NB's Spiced Winter Ale, a malty-drinking holiday beer sharing English & Scottish heritage. The omnipresent radiant stare of the midday sun on this day left me lethargically anxious for a trademark Minnesota early freeze. I'd like this batch to be ready for frostbitten lips well before the end of December, when I'm used to festive spices in my glass.

I set up under the shady cover of my garage, having stuffed grain, hoses, nutrients, clarifiers, stirring & measuring equipment into my mash cooler to reduce the number of trips to the house across the griddle-hot backyard sidewalk. Having been under the eye of the sun a mere two minutes, the heat haggard kicked in as I lugged my strike water kettle with squinting tunnel vision towards the garage. Blacktop might have done just as well as the Banjo Burner that day.

A sweet steaming mash drew desperate flies to the scene, though they couldn't keep me company for the 60 minute starch conversion. I flipped on the radio & sipped an inappropriate but oddly refreshing American rye ale. A serene brewday can usually cast away lingering worldly troubles, but on a day when Scandinavian-sounding northern MN towns are hotter than northern Africa, I was left to stare stoic at the boiling kettle & to attempt to remember the faraway concept of "snow day." At wort chilling time, my immersion chiller paid for itself, letting me view its efforts from my A/C-laden kitchen. How I wanted my stomach to be the vessel the chilly wort would occupy.

I believe that a good heat-sweat dripping into the boil kettle adds karmic volume. When the ambient temperature is more than enough insulation for a mash tun, it's a sign that it's time to turn the malaise of summer's climate into a malty drink for the shorter days that will someday break through. If you've got a fridge with a temperature control or a reliable basement, make a deliriously hot day the event to brew your dark-of-winter ale.

Dazed & Infused

2011-07-26T08:30:00.003-05:00

If there’s anything I’ve learned in my time of being a homebrewer, it’s that our DIY interests rarely end at beer. Many folks also make wine, mead, cider and more culinary or health-based fermentables like kombucha or kimchi. I like to make infused liquors. Obviously, I don’t MAKE the liquor - I buy it at the liquor store (makes sense, right?). But I like to have fun affecting and infusing those liquors with different things.

Recently, I made a habanero-infused vodka. This isn’t an infusion for the weak of heart. It’s as hot and intense as it sounds. I don’t drink it straight up, on the rocks, or in shot form. Though I’m sure it would make one heck of an addition to a spicy Bloody Mary, I have only used it for cooking. A half-shot or so in the pan as I’m sauteing onions, making chili, or food processing a batch of hummus.

The process is simple enough: steep the spice, fruit, etc. in the liquor. The time you leave it steeping depends on what the ingredient is. Soft and mild flavors, say like those of bananas or peaches, may need to sit in the liquor for days, even weeks. But for a habanero, with its intense oils and heat, I only do it for a few days. Again, since my main goal is using this for cooking, I’m not concerned about “too hot.” Though if you were going to actually use this for drink-mixing or shots (Holy crap!), you’d want to watch the time and number of peppers.

I went a little crazy with the recent batch - three peppers to about 1.5 cups of vodka. I cut the stemmed tops off the peppers, leaving the seeds and ribs intact. Then, I sliced the peppers one time down the center just to increase the surface area and flow of liquor through the pepper. Tossed all three peppers in, put the lid on and shook it up. That’s it. Every day for three days, I gave it a good shake. After three days, the bright orange color had faded slightly from two of the peppers and the vodka took on the lightest tinge of orange. I strained the concoction one time to get the seeds out and transferred it back into the jar. I just barely touched my tongue to the liquid and set my mouth on fire! It’s ready. Stir fry, here we come.

Another infusion I’ve made was a lavender vodka. For that I used about two tablespoons of dried lavender petals in the small jar of vodka. Again, it soaked up that strong floral, perfumey aroma and the vodka turned violet. Very pretty. Very nice with a splash of Sprite and some ice.

I should say that usually infusion involve larger quantities of the base alcohol. I was just doing small batches for the heck of it.

Got a favorite spice? Got a favorite liquor? Let them hang out for a few days and see what happens! I think the next one on my list is a vanilla bean-infused rum. Mmmmmmm.

Update - I did end up doing a very small shot of the habanero tincture and it was a stupid decision. Immediate burn from tongue to toes. Near-life-threatening hiccups. And a seared throat. Stick to cooking or mixing drinks with this bad boy.

PS - I did something sorta/kinda/not really related to this for a homebrew in a past episode of Brewing TV. In it, I made a "tea" steeped with clementines to add to primary fermentation of a Cali Common. It turned out absolutely amazing! Going to try one this summer with mandarin oranges... and then the good ol' Clemifornia Commontine again this winter when they are in season - check out that episode here.

Flavor through a prism

2011-07-21T08:15:00.000-05:00

When it comes to the chemistry of flavor, our foods and drinks are much more connected than you'd think. Any experienced beer taster can pick out the banana notes in some Belgian beers and hefeweizens. What about when a beer reminds you of chocolate, grapefruit, or toasted bread? Well, sometimes that's because it actually is that. When you strip a complicated flavor down to its prominent elements, you'll find that many of them are identical to those found in other foods.

Lets start with some common hops. Some of the American varieties that we all know and love, like Centennial, Cascade, and Amarillo, are commonly described as being citrus-y. Add them to the end of a boil and you'll get the aromatic oils and other compounds that provide the bulk of the flavor and aroma that hops contribute. Much of the flavor from hops comes from terpene compounds, which are very common oils found in many different plants. For example, a particularly citrus-y hop may have high levels of limonene or citral, which are major flavor components of oranges and other citrus fruits.

There are many different types of terpenes, each of which can contribute different and very recognizable flavors. Combined into a cocktail of many different terpene and other compounds, they can create the complex impression that we immediately understand as "orange". Hops are particularly rich in several terpenes, including myrcene, which is also prominent in mangoes (Citra hops, anyone?) and cannabis (Cluster and Nugget to my nose). There are also large amounts of humulene (cannabis again), beta-Pinene (found in coniferous tree resin and contributing piney aromas as in Simcoe or Chinook, and also a component of basil, roses, and dill), and Caryopheyllene, which is found in, ahem, cannabis, as well as cloves, black pepper, and oregano.

How about beers that taste like chocolate or coffee, or even the malts that are named after these two foods? The roasting of dark malts, coffee, and chocolate is quite similar. All three are seeds of plants which are dry roasted using high heat. The dry heat causes the breakdown of starches into simpler sugars and then the caramelization of those sugars. The other process at work in roasting is known as the Maillard reaction, which is slightly different, but also includes high temperatures and sugars, and contributes to the characteristic flavors of toast and browned meats. The Maillard reaction and caramelization produce a range of different chemical compounds that result in the "roasted" flavors that we all know. Particular malts, roasted using particular schedules, will have characteristics similar to those found in the end products of coffee and chocolate.

And finally, those banana notes in your hefeweizen. Many of the fruity yeast-derived flavors come from esters, which is a group of compounds that results from a reaction between higher alcohols and certain acids. In this case, the characteristic banana note comes mainly from isoamyl acetate, which forms from acetic acid and isoamyl alcohol. This ester is produced naturally by bananas, and also by many of the German hefeweizen yeasts. There are numerous other esters that provide a variety of fruit and other notes both in beer and in the wild.

So, the next time your beer reminds you of toasted bread, strawberries, or tangerines, just think to yourself that it may be more than just a resemblance. It could be that you really are tasting the exact same compound or set of compounds in your beer that you do in these other food items.

Notes on a Brewday: John Ireland Blvd. Bitter

2011-07-14T08:05:00.000-05:00

I was brewing on a Wednesday. It was the third batch outside on the Banjo Burner, a wind screen fashioned with Aluminum foil. It seems like a bitter northwest wind swept around St. Paul on that otherwise fair summer day. I woke up to that wind spreading word of the newest tent in the ongoing Minnesota state government shutdown circus: media outlets were warning Joe Six-pack that MillerCoors' MN state seller's license couldn't be renewed & their M-C brands were to be pulled from liquor store shelves.

In any other year, the expiration of a state license would set into motion the process of a renewal. This year, the civil servants that process state license renewals at the commerce department were laid off along with thousands of other state employees when elected officials couldn't come together & draft a state budget.

I checked my fridge & found two packs of Neobritannia yeast, perfect for brewing my mood: Bitter. The people at the capitol with the keys to the state beer fridge are busy participating in a shouting match from their respective offices. Today, they appear ready to threaten the availability and the industry of beer to drastically escalate political sentiments of otherwise friendly Minnesotans. I was ready to wage a common sense battle by way of a recipe, while taking care of my beer consumption needs.

While half my brain pondered base malt blends for the recipe, the other pondered the value of being a homebrewer. The hundreds of thousands of us who benefit from our liberty to produce beer in kitchens, backyards & basements have the pleasure of avoiding commercial interruptions to our beverage of choice. But as the sources of choices dwindle we are interrupting our culture of creation. Many could see glory for microbrew in the pulling of MillerCoors brands from shelves. But the time will come when smaller breweries also get shut out from license renewal if this government stalemate is prolonged.

After a quick bike around town for the goods, I mashed in a 2-row/Ashburne Mild/Aromatic malt blend. I recall it took a respectable amount of 16 oz. cans from Surly Brewing, before I could pick out the flavor of Belgian Aromatic malt. In conjunction with the Surly pro series kits, I learned how Aromatic can fulfill recipe aspects ranging from light toasty notes to a wall of pleasant malt sweetness for hopbursting. If I were a beginner & couldn't buy Surly because the brewery or liquor store were unable to be re-licensed, my education in brewing would be unfairly set back. Strange how legislators worked together this session to unanimously pass changes to the law & allow breweries to tap & sell their offerings on-site, yet now those same legislators are unable to come together so brewers & liquor stores can receive sales licenses. Political culture should learn from beer culture about how a few pints can bring together all sorts of people.

Top: Mash tun before sparge. Bottom: 7 gallons of wort pre-boil

This was my first recipe to use Brewer's Gold hops. I'll try any North American grown hop that lists German Northern Brewer as a substitute. With some Fuggles added at 15 minutes to go & having miraculously not forgotten the corn sugar addition for gravity & dryness, the John Ireland Blvd. Bitter, named for the road leading uphill to our marble-domed capitol building, seems as good as ready to be poured in the glass.
--
John Ireland Blvd. Bitter - 5 gallons all-grain
5 lbs. Rahr 2-row
2 lbs. Briess Ashburne Mild Malt
1 lb. Belgian Aromatic Malt
2 oz. British Chocolate Malt
Mash at 152 degrees for 60 min, then mash out at 172 degrees & sparge to collect 7 gallons.

1 oz. Brewer's Gold -First Wort Hop
1 lb. Corn Sugar at 60 min.
2 oz. UK Fuggle Hops at 15 min

Pitched two packs of Y1945 NB Neobritannia Yeast, ferment at 74 degrees.
Ferment three weeks primary, one week in keg conditioning.
--

Top: 5.5 gal. wort at end of boil with ready chiller. Bottom: Tomas, the unhelpful, lounging cat.

Bitter is a style that upon which homebrewers can really hone their skills. It's cheap to make, has lots of flavor & color interpretations, ferments quickly, and drinks multiple refreshing pints per sitting. It's a style not yet well represented on liquor store shelves, but I think it would suit most Minnesotans' feelings these days. Something to refresh one's attitude with plenty of subdued character & a brief hoppy kick to the tongue to get a dialogue going. But if you let it set around for too long without having one, it'll start showing a deeper side.

While homebrewing has my beer supply covered, it's not as fulfilling when access is cut off to the commercial scale side of the culture. Budgeting for homebrew supplies is akin to running the books at a full-scale brewery. Breweries that spend more money in court fighting a closed door at the capitol will have less funding for tours that could educate & inspire consumers. Future seasonal brews could be curtailed. Breweries could have less revenue to donate to homebrew causes like the AHA. We ought to work together to keep the entire culture of beer open for business so would-be and experienced homebrewers can have full access to the best the trade has to offer. It's all significant to beer culture whether it's a craft beer made for intricate flavor or a macrobrew created for refreshment & profit.

I brew for sustenance, hobby and culture. Let today's bitter one day be a liquid snapshot of one-day's fervor that MN lawmakers compromise & don't turn a vibrant beer culture against the people that helped make it that way. Hopefully I'm bitter today, and we all remain refreshed tomorrow.

"There can't be good living where there is not good drinking." -Benjamin Franklin

The Most Under Appreciated Tool in my Brew House:

2011-07-13T15:29:00.000-05:00

My flashlight.

This isn't something we think of as a brew house tool, but I can't say how often in a brew day I'll need to randomly retrieve old Flashy for one reason or another. If this was a Western, Flashy would be my horse. I don't know if I could brew without him.

Most importantly, I use Flashy to inspect the cleanliness of kegs and carboys (you would be surprised how many particulates show up under direct light that you can't see in room-light) but I also use my trusty flashlight to find other tools, to check the clarity of wort, to peer through carboys, look into dark fermentation chambers, evaluate steam and boil off, and to highlight things for brew day pictures. During my indoor brew session when the power went off, you can imagine the first thing I did. Ok actually the first thing I did was grab a bunch of beers out of the fridge while they were still cold, but the second thing I did was grab flashy, lit the gas stove, and got back to brewing. I imagine (like the flashlight pictured up top from Silent Hill) he would also do double duty during a post zombie-uprising brew day as well.

Anyone else have any good under appreciated/unexpected brew house tools you can't brew without?

Notes on a Brewday: Intergalactic Brain Rescue Pale Ale

2011-07-08T08:50:00.001-05:00

Gotta propagate some WLP029 for an upcoming biere de garde brew session. Gotta try out some new hops. Want a hoppy beer on tap. Busy, busy weekend - no time for an AG brew session. How about this: session-strength extract batch brewed with said new hops, ferment with 029 and then wash the yeast cake for next weekend's biere de garde. Excelsior!

Lawn chores, deck needs staining, laundry to fold, garage needs cleaning, dishes need washing - stupid everyday life. But staring down into a few gallons of boiling wort on a midsummer evening is 60-plus guaranteed minutes of quiet meditation, a brain vacation. A brain vacation into outer space, thanks to the heady, high-alpha tropical-fruit funk of Galaxy hops. Outer space ... tropical-fruit funk ... that sounds like Parliament mashed up with Os Mutantes; I think I have a brewnight soundtrack.

Life is complicated enough already, so the recipe is going to be stupid simple: no steeping grains, one hop variety in three additions, 3 gallon batch size to eliminate the need for a starter and to minimize time I need to spend waiting for the wort to cool.

One more soapbox to climb before collecting water: American pale ale. How soon it seems we consigned you to the scrap heap of history in the rush to continuously-hopped torpedoed triple-digit IBUs and Doppelbock-grade ABVs as a matter of course. I have not forgotten, and I still love you.

Intergalactic Brain Rescue
3 gallons, extract

Boil:

3 lbs Briess Golden Light DME
0.5 oz Galaxy hops (pellet), 13% aa @60"
0.75 oz Galaxy - @15"
0.5 oz Galaxy @0"

Fermentation:

Chill to 65, pitch White Labs 029 German Ale/Kolsch
Ferment 7 days, rack to secondary (but save yeast cake!)
Dry hop - 0.5 oz Galaxy for 7 more days
fine & keg

Induction Brewing

2011-07-07T08:24:00.000-05:00

Brewing all grain, in a sub-600 Sq Ft apartment, without the use of a stove?

Yes, it is possible, as I found out the other night.

I have a rather small apartment, and as such, I try to do all of my brewing outdoors on a propane burner. That leaves me limited to brewing on nice days, or watching wistfully from inside as my wort boils all alone in the elements.

Being the nerd that I am, I looked into getting an induction cooker. Induction cooking is an electromagnetic process which transfers heat energy directly to a ferromagnetic kettle, like Northern Brewer's Megapot kettles.

Dropping all the fancy words, it means that it heats the kettle, not the air around it, not the surface underneath it, just the kettle. This means that in my tiny apartment, I don't need to stand around my burner in my underwear because it is so hot. It also runs quite efficiently.

Since this was a bit of an experiment on my part, I found the cheapest, highest wattage cooker that I could find. It is a portable 1800 watt model from DuxTop that I got for $68 with free shipping. I researched the return policy just in case things didn't work out, and figured that at most I'd be out 20 or 30 bucks.

I started out just heating some water to see how quickly it would heat, if it seemed ok, I was just going to go ahead and mash in, after all, my propane burner wasn't very far away.

It was going well ... too well. I was suspicious, but charged on anyway.

My 5 gallon system is comprised of 3 8 gallon Megapots, two of them with ball valves and thermometers, one of those is also equipped with a false bottom and a Blichmann AutoSparge. Its a pretty painless, easy to use system.

I mashed in and noticed fairly quickly that the induction cooktop was pretty good at controlling mash temperatures. The ferromagnetic bottom combined with the aluminum layer meant that heat was pretty evenly distributed, so I felt comfortable using it at a low heat setting for the mash.

With my kettles and a decent amount of grain, it usually isn't necessary to heat the mash much to hold it steady, but its nice to have a very low heat setting to do so, I think I used it for a few minutes a couple times when I saw it dip down. The rest of the mash time, I moved the Mash tun off to the side to heat some sparge water.

The sparge went off without a hitch. I was initially concerned with having enough room in my kitchen for all three kettles at different height levels, and having room to maneuver. I ran off about 5.75 gallons, thinking if it barely boiled, I could still fit it in my carboy, and if it boiled more than I expected, I'd be a little under.

The boil was to be the decider. Was this setup going to work, with a dinky little induction cooker (the whole unit weighs about 5 pounds, by the way)? I put the boil kettle on, and set about bottling another batch, half expecting it to take a while.

In the end, it didn't take nearly as long as I thought, and I had a fairly decent boil off rate with the lid partially on. I ended up with about 4.5 gallons in the carboy, with minimal loss to trub.

That was far more boil off than I expected, I estimate just over a gallon. It was quite a bit cooler in my kitchen, compared to the last time I did a partial boil extract batch on my kitchen stove. That is definitely indicative of a more efficient process. I'll have to watch my power meter before and after, next time.

In the end, I think I may still brew outdoors in general, simply because I have more room to move around, and clean while I'm brewing, but it is still quite nice to be able to brew when the weather is bad, especially considering the minimal amount of heat it gave off, and the plentiful brewing aromas.

Indoor brewers: consider induction in the future, it was a blast!

The Haphazard Brewing of Free Kick EPA

2011-07-05T12:13:00.000-05:00

*** This blog post was recently uncovered deep from within scattered brewer's notes. It's timeliness has been lost, but its moral fortitude has not. We begin in late April 2011. ***

Let me tell you about what may be the best homebrew ever brewed. Or it may be a total disaster. We’ll just have to wait and see.

This beer -- Free Kick EPA -- was born on the sidelines of a below-freezing outdoor soccer tournament, the wort chilled in a pile of snow, its yeast pitched with an amused sense of panic. Co-brewer Garth Blomberg (one of Northern Brewer’s graphic design ninjas) jokes that this is the Rudy of homebrews: a small beer that had the odds stacked against him. But he fought the good fight and held on tight to his dream - to become a real player.

My name is Chip Walton, video projects producer for Northern Brewer. As part of our jobs at Northern Brewer, we often have the chance of taking part in promotional and/or NB-sponsored events, talking with the public about the joys of homebrewing. More often than not, this means brewing a demonstration batch and serving homebrewed goodness from picnic taps or a jockey box. (I know, I know. It’s a crappy job, but someone has to do it.) Last weekend was just such a weekend.

One of our fearless leaders, Jake Keeler (NB Marketing/Creative Director, Brewing TV co-host, soccer player) asked for a volunteer for the SOB Cup, a day-long soccer tournament being held in St. Paul, MN. Good ol’ Garth volunteered to solo-brew a batch of beer and serve beer. Not one to leave a fellow soldier marching into battle alone, I decided to head out to the soccer field and help Garth with the demonstration. I arrived to find Garth had already added the malt extract to the kettle for a Northern Brewer Extra Pale Ale recipe kit and was about to hit a boil.

The first thing this beer had going against it was the weather. It was a cold day made even more bitter by a strong wind that threatened to kick the flame out on the propane burner. Brewing outside in an area not well-known to you instantly brings up a few questions: Where is our water source? Are there any hoses? How are we going to mix up some sanitizer? (Ha! I brought a 5-gallon bucket with prepared sanitizer -- boom goes the dynamite!) Where are the restrooms? All jokes aside, we were a little out out of our element.

Boil achieved. 60-minute addition of two ounces of Cascade pellet hops. Easy enough. Garth and I made sure the boil was under control then returned to the jockey box to serve the soccer players and their friends a Dry-Hopped Amber Ale, a malty German Altbier and a luscious Brown Ale so substantial it could make up for missing breakfast and lunch.

Note: Two dudes serving free beer = awesome heroes.

The only “official” addition left for the recipe kit was a one-ounce addition of Cascade pellet hops at 1-minute. Irish moss at 15-minutes - what Irish moss? Yeast nutrient at 10-minutes - what yeast nutrient? We forgot all that jazz. I laugh and cringe looking back at it. We also had a couple of handfuls of backyard hops from a friendly source. We decided to put them in at flame-out and let them hang out while the wort chilled. Only - we didn’t have a muslin bag. Not a proper one anyway. However, I had one that had the “sealed” end cut off to wrap around an auto-siphon a while back. So... we tied a knot in one end, toss in the hops and tied a know on the other end. The thing looked like it would explode! Like a hop softball. We toss it in dunked it a dozen or so times.

Now, the really tricky part: chilling the wort. We didn’t have an easily accessible hose for the wort chiller that Jake brought. So, we thought we’d be good Upper Midwest boys and chill it in a pile of snow. It snowed that morning (yes, in mid-April!) and the soccer players had shoveled the entire field onto the sideline area. We drop the kettle in the snow and piled and packed snow around it. Sadly, though, this didn’t do much. Over the course of a half-hour, the wort dropped from 200F to 160F. We needed/wanted to get this going a lot quicker. After picking our brains, I had this idea: Let’s pour the wort back-and-forth between two sanitized buckets. This would cool the wort as it passed through the cool air between buckets AND it would aerate the wort.

We did just that. Transferred the wort between buckets about a dozen times. This cooled it down to about 120F. Still very hot, but at this point we were just ready to get the wort in a fermenter. We poured the four gallons of post-boil wort into a six-gallon carboy and topped off with cold water. This brought the temperature down to about 75-80F. What the heck?! We pitched the yeast and gave the carboy one last shake.

Mission accomplished.

I loaded the carboy in my car. We went back to serving beer for a while before turning the table over to another group of volunteers.

Back at home, I took an original gravity reading - 1.034 (8.75 BRIX). Hilarious. We didn’t take into account that we were topping off the beer with almost an extra gallon of water. The wort was a nice color and pleasantly bitter pre-fermentation. Less than 12 hours later, the Free Kick EPA was bubbling away quite nicely. Whew! Not only was it bubbling, it had a very active fermentation that next day so I switched it over to a blow-off tube to help vent some of the foam.

To add to the list of factors that could end up making this the most awesome beer EVER (or making it absolutely dreadful), I added approx. 1.5 lbs. of orange blossom honey into the carboy. My hope is that the honey will not only add some sweetness to the beer, but will also supply extra sugar to boost the alcohol.

Two days later, Free Kick is still kickin’! I’m pretty excited about this beer. It’s a hodge-podge of ideas, a conglomerate of effort and intensity, born out of a random day near the pitch and brewed in sight of curious onlookers and friendly homebrewers who warmed us with words of encouragement.

Updates and tasting notes to follow? Maybe.

*** Fast forward to late May 2011 ***

The Free Kick EPA was kegged and passed back to Jake Keeler for serving at another SOB event. But he was cool enough to hook Garth and I up with a growler for the sake of tasting the end result and giving some tasting notes. First off, I will say this: this was not the worst beer in the world. Awesome!

I lost my notes (Again?! This blog has about as much hope of surviving as this beer!). So check out Garth's tasting notes and accept them as a joint effort:

"Right away the hops come flying in like Jake Keeler kicked a soccer ball of Cascade hops in my mouth. Boom! Oh yeah, the nose, a big flame out of random homegrown hops from Mr. Dawson transplants you a hop field….PFFFFF. It's hop stinky with sweet honey and malt aromas. Overall not too syrupy or sticky, it drinks clean. A surprisingly good-tasting beer considering the adversities it faced being made. A true homebrew people!"

The Joy of Extract Brewing

2011-06-30T08:53:00.000-05:00

I recently took what some might consider to be a step backwards in my brewing. I put away my mash tun and my large(ish) kettle and I brewed a batch of extract beer. When I first started brewing, "all-grain" seemed like a peak to surmount: the pinnacle of the art of brewing and the black belt in homebrewing Karate and after making the leap to all grain brewing several years ago, I had not looked back.

As with all aspects of brewing, though, the more you learn, the more you realize just how much you don't know. Making wort can get as complicated as decoctions, monitering pH and water mineral levels and more. Then come the water reports, pH meters, endless gadgets for steeping, washing, rinsing, sparging, and mashing grains. Calculations, spreadsheets and programs start to block out the scenery. "Didn't I get into this hobby to lean back, enjoy a beer, and relax while brewing?" I would think to myself.

Granted, all grain brewing doesn't have to be complicated at all. It's really just steeping grains at the correct temperature and then rinsing them, but extract brewing has a built-in simplicity that called me back (my cramped apartment and my increasingly scarce free-time started to call me back too). The more I brew and read about brewing, the more I realize that, cliche as it is, fermentation is the most important aspect of brewing. Making wort from grains is great fun, but 90% of the time quality beer (and not so quality beer) lies in the hands of yeast.

There's something evocative about brewing beer the same way I did when I first started. Getting out the old kettle, steeping grains, adding extract and hops, the wonderful smells in the kitchen. These are all things I get from brewing all grain beer, but with half the time invested, and much less clean up. I can bang out an entire batch in less time than it would take me to mash and sparge an all grain batch. Most importantly, the beer turned out great! Extract may not have all the possible flavors and nuances of all grain brews, but extract-wort is high quality wort, and in the tutelage of healthy, fresh yeast in their preferred temperature, the beer was great.

Recipe

Back to Basics Pale Ale

5 gallon batch formulated for 3 gallon boil

1.062

50 IBU

6 pounds Gold DME
0.5 pounds demerara sugar (or corn sugar if you don't steal your wife's tea-sweetening sugar for brewing like I do) add at end of boil
1 pounds Caramel Pils

2 oz northern brewer @ 60 minutes
1 oz columbus @ 10 minutes
1 oz centennial @ 1 minute
1 oz Simcoe dry hop (Simcoe RIP: use columbus or other American hop instead)

Safale S-05 open fermented for that added character and sense of danger

Mash Tun Time Machine

2011-06-28T13:20:00.000-05:00

All that's old is new, and I for one welcome our Victorian throwback overlords. There seems to be a developing trend in the world of IPA: a hearkening back to the days of yore with ultra-traditionalist rebrews of 19th century export ales from the days of the Raj.

Case in point the first: Summit Brewing's recent limited release, #6 in their Unchained Series, Gold Sovereign.

Case in point the second: Town Hall Brewery's 1800 IPA.

Case in point the third: the East India Pale Ale recipe for this year's AHA Big Brew, via Stone's Mitch Steele and Steve Wagner.

I'm sure I'm omitting more. But if this continues to catch on, it could be a little bit amazing.

Like many other British beers, the deprivations of two world wars contributed to the erosion of the strength, hop rates, and arguably even the overall character of English IPAs in the 20th century. And, much like American homebrewers and craft brewers have become the preservers and custodians and standard-bearers for any number of Belgian styles that are going extinct in their own homeland and hemorrhaging market share to mass-produced international pale lagers, we could give England back English IPA. That'd be like when the 22 year-old white kid from Canned Heat taught Son House how to play his own songs again after giving up the blues for 30 years.

Because, deep down, brewing isn't simply just about making beer and drinking it. It's also an exploration of history and culture; it's a mash tun time machine. When we resurrect these recipes, we're bringing beer (and by proxy the drinker) back to a time when hop additions were measured by the bushel, not by IBU contribution. Back to a time when a brewery's delivery truck was a clipper ship. Back to a time when a beer run meant sailing between Cape Horn and Antarctica.

Flipping back in my own brew log, all the way back to when records were kept free-form on blue-lined yellow legal tablet sheets, my second-ever all grain batch was an English IPA. Florally Goldings-y with malt biscuit and fruity yeast notes, I called it Hodgson's Revenge after a London concern in the 1800s that was first a noted brewer and exporter of IPA and then a defunct brewer and exporter of IPA.

For reasons that I did not write down and which I can no longer remember, I used a blend of English pale and European pils malts for the grist, as Mitch and Steve recommend for the AG version of their Big Brew recipe. I took that as a sign to do a throwback rebrew of my own, with some gleanings gleaned and cues taken from the three examples cited above:

Course of Empire IPA (Hodgson's Revenge 2011)
10.5 gallons, all-grain
Target OG: 1.066

Grist:

22 lbs Maris Otter

Mash:

150 F for 60 minutes
168 F for 10 minutes

Boil:

8 oz East Kent Goldings, whole, @ 60"

Fermentation:

Wyeast 1882 Thames Valley II, thick slurry (skimmed from primary of a prior batch)
pitch @ 64 F, free rise up to 70
primary: 10 days
rack to 2x corny kegs with cask hops:
cask hops: 8 oz East Kent Goldings, whole, mesh-bagged & split between kegs

Like the Big Brew's EIPA, it's a single-hop beer; like Summit's Gold Sovereign and TH's 1800, it's also a single-malt beer. The plan is to condition in the kegs, on the hops, for an extended period of time, as Mitch and Steve suggest for their recipe. That should put it at ready-to-drink in late summer, when Minnesota gets as close to the climate of Madras as I can reasonably expect it to. Stay tuned.

Spring Wine

2011-06-23T10:32:00.000-05:00

Brewing beer is an art where the effort is packed into a short period. The vast majority of decisions take placing on brewing day, when you've got to multi-task, hit all your expected numbers, and get all the temps, sanitation, and additions right. Wine and mead making are much more drawn out. And amazingly, much of the skill is in paying attention to your fermented wine or mead and reacting to it. Instead of exerting control over all factors, as one constantly tries to in beer, you've got to let the wine control you.

If that sounds hopelessly European and romantic, it probably is. A bit exaggerated, too, since you of course have to sanitize just as well in wine as in beer and do try to control as much as possible. But while the ingredients for beer are amazingly consistent, the harvest of grapes and honey really does vary hugely depending on the location and year. So using the exact same recipes and procedures as you did for last year's harvest is going to produce different results this time. You can either fight that or flow with it, with your tongue as your guide.

This past fall Northern Brewer got in a shipment of several tons of fresh Washington wine grapes for our local customers. The grapes were impressive, well balanced in acidity and sugar levels with minimal rot and lots of plump, juicy clusters. I had a couple lugs of Shiraz to work with that were nicely fruity and had a fairly large skin/seed to flesh ratio. That signaled to me that they would probably have ample tannins. With that being the case I decided to press a bit earlier and less fully to minimize tannin extraction. I chose to use the Vintner's Harvest CR-51 yeast, which I had previously used in a Shiraz wine kit. It highlights the acidity and brings out dark fruit and chocolate flavors, which I hope will make for a snappy but interestingly balanced wine.

The wine fermented just fine and I transferred to a 5 gallon carboy for aging. Early samples showed a lot of promise but also a lot of intensity. The acidic zip was there, along with tannins on the high end of what I would be looking for. Now that it is spring it's time to take another sample and make some decisions. Oak? Malo-lactic fermentation? Blending?

I just had the first taste of this wine since transferring almost 6 months ago. The intensity has diminished on most fronts, but there is still an aggressive tannic bite. I'm not getting as much chocolate as I was earlier in the wine's life; instead there is a pronounced dark cherry flavor. Perhaps a bit more fruit-forward than I expected, even from a Shiraz. I decided to proceed with some heavy toast French oak. This should help soften the tannins some and provide some nice roasty notes to balance out all that fruit. I'll take another taste after some time on the oak and see what the wine has to offer at that point. Meanwhile, the 2009 Cabernet is just starting to come around and get tasty - time to enjoy it!

Thunderbolt Pale Ale: Hop Substitution Experiment

2011-06-21T08:12:00.000-05:00

So far, it's been a hot summer and a short summer. And that's to say summer hasn't officially yet begun. As manic as winter had been, summer crept around the Twin Cities like a lurking radioactive monster. From windy to above average hot, that was only after the tornado season began in north Minneapolis.

One can imagine how fun it is to be a siren enthusiast. Oh yes! There is such an internet culture that posts homemade videos of rotating civil defense sirens for those who seek. A huge variety of people across the globe are into it. Truly they make up a fraction of homebrewers' ranks, but I'll say that the first Wednesday of the month or possibly a storm-laden afternoon summons my hobbyist ambitions as first-wort hopping would.

My spare time fascinations led me to envision drinking an IPA with the wailing taste of the iconic yellow-orange Thunderbolt siren. To me, the contrast of bittering & aromatic uses of Simcoe lay one & the same with the ominously beckoning tone of those long-necked, square-horned sirens of the 1950's.

Hey, if terrible weather or nuclear attack sends you to the basement, why not have something bottled in the cellar to match taste & ambient sound when the event arises?

I made a recipe late last summer and tweaked it over the course of two more batches (one all-grain & one extract). By the third batch I had what I was looking for: a balanced IPA that matched the color of the deafening object from beside which I wanted to drink. But the tale got seized up, come this summer...

Like a Thunderbolt with a bad air compressor, the supply of Simcoe hadn't weathered the winter well. Though the hop only occupies two additions in the recipe, the valid consensus among fellow brewers remains that no hop can replicate the resiny-piney-grapefruity-ness of Simcoe.

So would I bow to the supply scenario & put away the recipe like so many cities across America have done away with their old supercharged sirens? Would I favor a cheaper recipe that 'does the job' in the same way Thunderbolts have been replaced with new sirens that are little more than giant electronic speakers?

No, my friends... I am rebuilding the recipe with new parts to give this wailing barley beast continued year-round life!

Lucky for me, one of the homebrew clubs of which I'm a member hosted a single-hop pale ale tasting comparison this past winter & Simcoe was featured. My notes recalled resinous pine flavor riding a wave of orange flavored bitterness. Grapefruit zest was well-represented too. Other dried fruit flavors were in the Simcoe cocktail too. These club notes were very helpful, much easier to reference than the countless other pales, homebrewed & commercial which featured 'Sims (why else would it have gone scarce?).

The multitude of characteristics suggest the need for a blend of varieties, proportional to the perceived flavor of Simcoe. Treading subjectively into this, I'm estimating the following blend for my initial experiment recipe:

1 oz. Simcoe pellets @ 14% AA =
0.15 oz. Chinook @ 11% AA
3.5 mL Amarillo Hopshot 7.8% AA
0.2 oz. Styrian Goldings @ 5.6% AA

In a definitely unscientific way, I judged the proportions of Sim's various flavors as they might be extracted from other hop varieties that share those characteristics. This experiment leaves out variables such as cohumulone rates, beta acids, and pays only lip service to the non-Sim flavors present in the replacement hops. Truly, it's not perfect. I have only my existing experience using these hops to guide me.

The product of this pursuit will shape the next trial recipe for my beloved pale. All the while, the real subject of comparison remains how my ear tells my mouth how a siren would taste if it were a beer. I'm exposing this experiment for advice & maybe some encouragement; either from homebrew hop blend scientists or possibly others that don't heed a siren's call but bask in it as if it could be held in a glass.

Tasting notes to come. Please give input, advice or just plain banter!

Original Recipe
Thunderbolt Pale Ale
OG: 1.079 FG: 1.019 IBU: 91

11# Rahr 2-Row
1# Rahr Pale Wheat
0.75# German Light Munich
0.5# Canadian Honey Malt
0.5# Simpson's Med. Crystal
1# Corn Sugar (At beginning of boil, no mash)
Mash @ 151 F. for 60 min. Sparge to collect 7 gal.

Boil 75 min.
1 oz. Simcoe @ First Wort
0.75 oz. Summit @ 60 min.
1 oz. Mt. Hood @ 20 min.
1 oz. Centennial @ 20 min.
1 oz. Centennial @ Flameout
1 oz. Simcoe @ Flameout
1 oz. Columbus @ Dry Hop
1 oz. Centennial @ Dry Hop

2L starter Y1056, ferment 2 weeks primary @ 68 F.
4 Weeks Secondary, add dry hops 7 days before kegging/bottling
2+ weeks in keg/bottle before serving

Panadería Norteña

2011-06-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

When life gives you lemons... make a shandy! When life gives you undercarbonated beer? Bake with it!

Carbonation issues can happen to the best of us. A few months ago, Jeremy and I brewed the limited edition El Modelo Norte kit using Wyeast's seasonal North American Lager (y2272). Most of it went into a keg to his house, and the few remaining bottles came home to my apartment. I ended up with a delicious, malty, yet unfortunately quite flat beer and a nagging feeling that I might not have remembered to put the carbonation drops in the bottles. True, there are things I can do to fix this, and perhaps I will do so with the remaining bottles, but in the meantime I have created a new spin on my mom's bread recipe. She baked delicious bread for me and my dad every week while I was growing up. What a great mom! I didn't even have store bought bread until my first sleepover!

Hopefully some of you made the limited edition kit and will be willing to sacrifice a bottle or two to this malty grainy goodness, but if you don't have any Modelo Norte I'd recommend picking up a similar Vienna Lager at the store, or trying my recipe with a different style of beer and letting me know how it goes! I used regular baking flour, but I imagine it could be substituted for half regular, half whole wheat. I added some rye flour for texture and complexity and some masa mix to pay tribute to our southern neighbors and add a grainy texture that compliments the maltiness of the beer.

Pan Borracho

(2 loaves) 3.5-4 hours total. Labor time approx. 20 minutes.

Ingredients:

2 packages Red Star baker's yeast

3/4 cup warm water

2 cups Modelo Norte (or 12 oz + 4 oz water for a lighter flavor and only one 120z sacrifice)

1/4 cup + 1 teaspoon sugar

5 1/2 cups flour

1/4 cup rye flour

1/4 cup corn masa tortilla flour (optional)

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

aprox. 1 tablespoon butter to melt on top of loaves (optional but recommended)

-Put 3/4 cup pretty warm water in a smallish bowl. Stir in 1 teaspoon sugar until dissolved. Sprinkle yeast on top of water and allow to sit for 5 minutes or so. This was my mom's method of re-hydrating yeast for baking so it's how I've been doing it since I was a little girl. Any other tried-and-true method should work just fine.

-In large bowl, mix 2 cups room temperature, flat Modelo Norte and 3 1/2 cups baking flour. Whisk until smooth.

- Add re-hydrated yeast to flour/beer mixture and whisk or stir in. In bakers' terms, this is now called the Sponge. Let the sponge sit for 1 hour. You will see bubbles popping up on top and it will look puff-daddyish in general.

-Fold salt and oil into the sponge.

-Fold in masa mix if you are using it, rye flour, and additional baking flour into sponge until it begins to form a dough that comes away from the sides of the bowl. You may need additional flour if your earlier measurements were off.

-Knead dough on floured board or counter until dough is smooth (10 minutes or so). Add more flour as needed to keep dough from sticking to board.

-Let rise 50 minutes

-THE BEST PART!- punch dough down! hiiiiyah! My mom always let me do this step!

-Let rise 40 minutes

-Shape the dough into loaves. Tear the giant ball of dough in half and then stretch each half into a rectanglish shape. Roll up and either stuff into a loaf pan or shape daintily on a cookie sheet.

-Let rise 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees at some point during this rise

-Bake for about 1 hour. bread will give a hollow thunk when rapped with your knuckle.

-*Optional but awesome!!!* Take a stick of butter and rub it all over the bread. Make sure you use enough that your mom would have yelled at you for using too much. This will make the bread better.

Go ahead! Cut a hot slice! Make sure to put lots of butter on it! And tomorrow for lunch make yourself a smoked turkey sandwich with some spicy mustard on your drunken bread... if you can handle a flavor overload!

Hops You're Not Using But Should Be, pt 2

2011-06-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

From the lofty vantage point of my office chair (Ikea), I can see which hop varieties are the current Shiny Object, and which deserving little pellets and cones get unfairly passed over - the ugly ducklings and Cinderellas of the Humulus lupulus world, if you will. And from the lofty (ha! well, I'll call it that and maybe it'll stick) vantage of this blog I can exhort my fellow homebrewers to quit missing out.

Today's sermon: Horizon.

High of alpha and low of cohumulone; descendant of Brewers Gold, sister of Nugget, friend of all. High alpha means more IBUs per ounce/pound/kilo (that there's just good economics, I've done the math); low cohumulone means the sensory quality of said IBUs will be smooth and "neutral."

YCR says "Used for its aromatic and bittering properties due to its low cohumulone content."

IndieHops says "Brewers looking for alpha power, low cohumulone, and lots of aromatic oil character will be pleased."

Bittering? Alpha power? Aromatic oil character? Yes, please.

Sitting here at the laptop and huffing a pack of pellets, I get resiny citrus (lemons & oranges) mixed with a little fresh-hay earthy-sweetness. I bet you can think of lots of beers that would work well in.

Despite its versatility, its commercial acreage has remained small - that makes it a bit of an heirloom variety, and this is also cool - other gardeners out there know.

IndieHops also goes on to say "Horizon has remained scarce due to inconsistent availability. Whether this is due to lower yields than other dual purpose varieties, or a desire to promote proprietary hops such as Simcoe instead, we don’t know."

Brew with Horizon, fight the power, homebrewers.

The Horizon Event
target OG 1.053

steep

0.5 lbs Bairds Carastan
0.125 lbs Chocolate malt

boil

6 lbs Gold DME
0.5 oz Horizon @ 60"
1.5 oz Horizon @ 10"

fermentation

Wyeast 1450 Denny's Fave 50
primary @ 66 F, rack
1 oz Horizon - dry hop 14 days before kegging
1 oz Horizon - dry hop 7 days before kegging

Illegal: Homebrewing in Alabama

2011-06-06T10:44:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen it already, you have to watch this video that Northern Brewer and Brewing TV put together on the defeat of the Alabama homebrewing bill. It will change your mind on the state of homebrewing in the US.

Seen it? Ok, good.

Now, what is really revealing to me is how totally removed and ignorant these legislators are about homebrewing, the culture and the hobby. I'm not saying that these guys are dumb people or anything (well, most of them aren't), but they obviously have no idea what homebrewing entails. Comments like, "What is m-e-a-d mead?" and "Mead, whatever that is" are only the start. One congressman talks about how this bill will make the bootlegger in his district happy. First of all, how do you even have a bootlegger when purchasing alcohol is completely legal in 99% of the country? Even if you live in a dry county, the next county over probably has alcohol, and all anyone has to do is go over there and buy it, it's a lot easier than spending months making it yourself. And then he talks about how if this bill passes the bootlegger would probably brew beer and then have a party and invite his friends over. What the hell is wrong with that?

Homebrewing is not a get rich quick scheme, it takes a lot of time and care. Kids aren't going to start homebrewing en masse to get alcohol; they haven't in the other 48 states where homebrewing is legal. And all the congressmen talking about how making alcohol at home could be dangerous or isn't "healthy": you just have absolutely no idea how beer is made, do you? I mean, that's like saying that people shouldn't be allowed to cook meals at home, because they might make them poorly and get sick. The homebrew I make is a lot more "healthy" than drinking the rot-gut vodka or dirt cheap beer that you can buy in any liquor store.

If I had to guess I'd say that these lawmakers have absolutely no idea that homebrewing is a hobby. They've never met a homebrewer. They don't know about the competitions, they don't know about the many books written on the topic, they don't know that there are homebrewing shops all over the country (even a couple in Alabama!), they don't know that homebrewing is a passion shared by hundreds of thousands of people in the US. In summary: They have no idea what they are talking about. But they sure seem to enjoy acting like they do.

If you are feeling the rage, as I am now, you need to head over to Alabama Homebrewing's Right to Brew page and see how you can help, or consider joining the AHA if you haven't already. The state of Alabama has to stop treating homebrewers like criminals.

Settling Down

2011-06-01T10:35:00.000-05:00

I'm the sort of brewer who rarely makes the same thing twice. I've been hopping around from style to style, recipe to recipe, technique to technique ever since I started brewing. That's been great, I feel like I've covered a lot of ground, learned a lot of basics, had a good time. I'm also the sort of brewer who often measures things in handfuls, tosses whatever is lying around into the mash or into the boil, and takes a cavalier approach to using wild yeasts. Also fun, and less work.

But my brewing wanderlust is starting to wind down. After a crazy tea beer, a couple dozen 1 gallon experimental mead batches, a coffee porter, and a very lackluster IPA I've taken stock of my booze supplies and am somewhat dismayed. Where is the stuff that I actually want to drink a bunch of? My cellar probably has a few hundred bottles of homebrewed beer, wine, and mead and there's only a handful of stuff that I'd say I'm actually proud of, or that I think is the best it could be.

But rather than despair I've decided to buckle down and brew some seriously good beer. I have challenged myself to brew a single recipe for however long it takes until I feel it is the best that it can be. For that recipe I've selected a simple one that shouldn't be too hard to get right and I won't get tired of drinking: the all-grain version of Dead Ringer Ale. No fiddling with addition times, malt bill, or yeast, just working on technique. Avoiding aeration, pitching ideal yeast cell counts, dialing in mash temperatures, all the good basics of real brewing. I will post with results as I go. To better beer!

Update: Emma (and Emma's Ale)

2011-05-26T08:58:00.001-05:00

Thanks to you, the homebrewing community, together we have raised $8,000 in donations to the Children's Hospital of MN - 100% of the profit from sales of our Emma's Ale recipe kit go to pediatric cancer research.

And via her father, our friend and colleague Chris German of Brewers Supply Group, here's an update on Emma herself:

"Last week, Emma began the second round of six rounds of an antibody therapy designed to mop up any remaining sick cells that may have somehow eluded the six rounds of chemo, surgery, a stem-cell transplant, and radiation. The antibody therapy can be difficult because Neuroblastoma is a cancer originating in the nerve cells which of course transit pain but Emma has been strong. The good news is that Emma’s hair has begun to grow back, although it’s coming in curly and Emma would prefer straight hair! In between treatments, we plan to enjoy the Minnesota summer by taking lots of camping trips. We expect to successfully complete the treatment by October.

Some more Emma news related to homebrewing; Emma and her family will be in Chicago on Saturday, June 18th for the Hop Juice Festival put on by her good friends at the Two Brothers Brewing Co. Every year, Two Brothers puts on the Hop Juice Fest as a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish. This year, they came to Emma’s family because they specifically wanted to sponsor Emma's wish to go to Disney World. There will be bands, foods, lots of good beer, and a homebrewing competition where the $5 entry fee goes to granting Emma’s Make-A-Wish. General admission to the festival is free. More info can be found here: http://www.hopjuicefestival.com/

Cheers. And THANK YOU!!"

We'll double down on Chris's "THANK YOU," homebrewers. Keep brewing, keep doing good.

Amarillo Slim

2011-05-24T08:06:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't heard, there is a bit of a hop shortage going on for some of the most popular American varieties. Some of the newer varieties that craft breweries and homebrewers love so much, like Amarillo, Simcoe, Ahtanum, and Citra, simply didn't have enough acreage to meet demand this year. Here at Northern Brewer we decided to look into an alternate source of hoppy goodness: Amarillo HopShots.

HopShots are extracted hop resin that functions in basically the same way as normal pellet or leaf hops. Just add them to the start of the boil for a bittering addition or towards the end for aroma and flavor. Many commercial breweries like using hop extract because it makes filtering out of the boil kettle a lot easier. This is increasingly important when you're making something like an double IPA, where the massive amount of hops can lead to clogging issues and/or significant volume loss of wort.

To test our new Amarillo HopShot we decided to brew an all-HopShot batch of American Pale Ale. We kept the recipe simple to really bring out the bittering and flavor qualities of the hop extract. Here is the recipe, which we dubbed "Amarillo Slim":

6 lbs Northern Brewer Gold Malt Syrup
1 lb Briess Golden Light DME
1 lb Briess Caramel 20L
3.5 ml Amarillo HopShot First Wort Hop
6.5 ml Amarillo HopShot at the end of the boil

Pitched on to 1/2 of a 1st generation yeast cake of US-05.

The HopShot is easy to measure as it comes in a graduated syringe. One thing I learned from this brew session is that you really need some good boiling action to fully dissolve the hop extract. It is very resinous and not very soluble in room temp water. That flameout addition provided some very nice aroma and flavor, but also left a sticky residue in the fermentor.

I had a few people who love using Amarillo hops try this beer and they all gave it favorable reviews. It definitely has that characteristic Amarillo flavor, but perhaps slightly less earthy and more fruity than normal. The bitterness was very smooth and pleasing, perhaps even smoother than with pellet hops. In conclusion, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Amarillo hopshot to anyone, I found it to be an excellent substitute for the pellets.

Warmer Days Call For Ice

2011-05-19T09:00:00.004-05:00

These are the days where us folks from temperately chaotic climates start declaring "Warmer weather has finally arrived!!" to either the rolled eyes or dismissive guffaws of those lucky enough to live where freezing is something that happens in appliances & cryobanks. My appreciation for the seasonal change aside, these months do call attention to one of the few caveats of buying live yeast cultures via the internet: shipping & outside temperature.

Yeast are hearty organisms who have withstood centuries of propagation, pitching, & repetition ad pint infinitum. Their story in creating your beer is probably one you understand well by now. But the little guys need a hospitable environment to reproduce & keep their various cellular bits operating at pure, top-notch quality.

The weather at NB World HQ is now turning warmer, and surely the weather for some of you is in the pre-boiling phase. It's a good time for my annual fair warning: ship your liquid yeast with an ice pack. The average order from NB will spend 2-3 days in a FedEx trailer, which is not a viable environment for liquid yeast. Add one ice pack per Wyeast Activator or White Labs vial to help those yeast cells stay cooler. Our customer fulfillment staff will package frozen ice packs snuggled right against your yeast in an insulated envelope to help maintain viability.

Notes on a brewday: Warminster Standard

2011-05-17T08:04:00.000-05:00

Technically, it was a brewnight.
Waxing moon over boiler.

My wife likes English bitters, her birthday is coming up, and she wants to throw a party with lots of beer. She also owns a rhinestone-encrusted switchblade with which she makes sure I understand the things she says. Fortunately I happened to have the last 10 pounds from a sack of Maris Otter laying around and a raging propagation of Wyeast's Thames Valley II with no place else to be. I also had the urge ... the urge to sparge. To the backyard!

First, a pint and a plan: it's a party, so ten gallons is in order. A modest OG in the mid-1.030s will keep things from getting stabby with said switchblade after a couple pints, and a low-temp mash rest will drive the attenuation up, keeping the finish crisp and dry even when served at cellar temp and at a low level of CO2, as is my wont. Some Bairds Carastan for some toffee character to bridge the bready base malt and the ester notes of the yeast. Two hop additions in the kettle - heavy on bittering, light and late on aroma. UK Fuggles for the finish because of the awesome pipe-tobacco nose on the Great Dane's cask-hopped ESB I had on pump at the downtown brewpub last summer. Also learned last summer: I like quasi-open-fermented bitter, so half of this batch shall go un-airlocked as did 2010's DSB.

Pint finished, planning planned, that brings us to a recipe:

EKG: brewer-tested, wife-approved.

Warminster Standard
10 gallons, target OG 1.035-6

Grist:

10 lbs Warminster Maris Otter
1 lb Bairds Carastan

Mash:

150F - 60"

First runnings.

170F - 10"

Boil:

4 oz East Kent Golding pellets 4.5%aa @ 60"
2 oz UK Fuggle pellets 4.8%aa @ 0"

Fermentation:

Chill (indulge me for a moment as I gloat about the weather, because living in Minnesota I can so rarely do that - on this particular lovely early May evening it was warm enough to brew outside in shorts, but the groundwater still so cold that it took my Therminator 9 minutes to bring 10 gallons of wort from boiling to 62 F)
Wyeast 1882 Thames Valley II (being a PC strain and not long for the world, you could sub any English ale strain that suits your fancy)
pitch at 62 F, free rise to 66 F over 10 days
skim and save and plate some of that sweet sweet 1882 yeast
rack to kegs and store cool for ~2 weeks

Early prognosis is highly promising for me not getting knifed: warm bread-dough and caramel with appropriately subtle earthy, resiny, tobacco-like hop aromatics; a color not unlike that of the first runnings in the above pic, and great clarity early on thanks to the flocculent yeast. Stay tuned.

Brew like a Homebrewer

2011-05-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

This is a concept that has been expanded upon by the likes of Jamil Zainasheff in Brewing Classic Styles, page 244 - suffice it to say, it is very easy to get carried away when you've got some 80 types of grain to choose from. Different maltsters, base malts, "specialty malts," even malted oats. Sometimes you really just have to brew like a homebrewer.

Below is a recipe that I recently scored a 40 with in a BJCP-sanctioned competition:

Coffee chocolate oatmeal stout
1.064-1.066 OG, 1.016ish FG, 6.5%abv

9lbs Gambrinus ESB Pale ale malt
1.5lbs Grain Millers, Inc. Flaked oats
1/2 lb Simpson's roasted barley
1/2 lb Simpson's medium crystal
1/2 lb Simpson's dark crystal
1/2 lb Malteries Franco-Belges Kiln Coffee malt
1/2 lb Dingemans Aromatic malt
1/2 lb Thomas Fawcett Pale Chocolate malt
1.1 oz Nugget 11.2%AA pellet hops 60min
.5 oz Fuggle 4.6%AA pellet hops 30min
.5 oz Styrian Goldings 4.6%AA pellet hops 0min
2 oz ground Anodyne Finca El Salvador light roast coffee added during chilling
2.5 oz 100% cacao bitter chocolate added during chilling
1.5 oz raw cacao nibs added during chilling

Wyeast 1469 - West Yorkshire Ale is another star of this show - marshmallows, round Nutella-esque hazelnuts, perfect ester presence and a full mouthfeel. Pitch at 64, free rise to 68.

When I look at this recipe as a whole, I'm struck by how often I use the school-enforced tendency to keep things in halves. Half of this, half of that, together it makes a whole. The tendency to come up with nice, round numbers. Everything except that tenth of an ounce of Nugget. Largely arbitrary, I think it was a cue from the level of bitterness I've come to expect in American stouts, coming in at about 52 IBUs for the first charge. Losing that hair of an ounce would conceivably change the bitterness enough to notice, so it gets a pass today.

The strange thing about the whole recipe is how balanced it all comes out. Coffee, yes, but with an undercurrent of bitter chocolate. Marshmallows and faint anise sweetness countered by the hint of earthiness from the hops, then interrupted by a slight alcohol sweetness - not ethanol, but a distinct fruity alcohol note, an ethyl- of some sort. Over everything hangs the smooth sweetness from the Gambrinus malt, the creaminess of West Yorkshire and avena sativa. The flakes were supposed to be toasted gently, but I burnt the first batch just a bit too much, so they went in naked, due to impatience.

I can distinctly remember how I got the thought for this beer. It started as a few crystal malts thrown together. Medium crystal, dark crystal, kiln coffee, pale chocolate. Then came a bit of roasted barley, aromatic malt for richness, Gambrinus malt because it was new to me, and oats because I bought a 50lb sack that was taking longer than I expected to eat. I had 2 ounces of black malt initially because I thought it wouldn't be dark enough, and truthfully it should be in this iteration of the recipe, but I absolutely hate the taste of black malt, so I take any chance I can to delete it. I doubt the difference in color will be discernible to the human eye.

The coffee and chocolate came about later, when exploring the kitchen pantry. I had purchased far too many ounces of cacao nibs in a misguided attempt to use them in hearty cookies. They're really not very pleasant as edibles go, but they do pack a wallop of roasty, hearty chocolatey goodness. The amounts and types of coffee and chocolate used here are due to a strong influence by Founder's Breakfast Stout, a real winner of a beer. Thankfully the folks at BYO had done a bit of research for me, and I think the amounts work very well. More coffee and it would be one-note and potentially acrid/harsh. More chocolate could be done, but again, at the risk of losing balance.

The oil derived from the chocolate and coffee in this beer threw me for a loop - it looked like persistent krausen that just wouldn't go away. This same oil stuck around into the bottles, though it didn't affect head retention one bit. The cool part was that it looked identical to the light tan crema so desired in a well-pulled shot of espresso (ristretto, signore).

The next step? Different techniques for flavor extraction - from trying the 0 minute additions crammed in a HopRocket to different roasts/origins of coffees, all sorts of possibilities. Luckily I've got a few packs of 1469 tucked away - really they're just for this beer - if I had to try to replace that magical strain, I'd probably try 1450 or a London strain. The hopping rate I'm pleased with, it provides that assertive bitterness but with the pleasant minty/earthy notes from those fine English ladies.

What were we talking about, again? Oh, right, brewing like a homebrewer. Everyone goes through phases of recipe formulation, from e-mailing pro brewers to doing single-malt experiments. The important thing is owning your recipes. Know what you want to accomplish, try your best to meet that goal, take good notes, and try to learn something every single time. That, to me, is brewing like a homebrewer.

What does it mean to you?

Why I am an AHA Member (and you should be too)

2011-05-07T08:28:00.001-05:00

this AHA member and union suit enthusiast
has an important message for us all.

Happy National Homebrew Day, everybody. I'll be celebrating in an appropriate manner, as I'm sure will many of you. On this happy occasion, let's take a moment to reflect on just how awesome it is to have the ability to brew, enjoy, and share your own handmade beer, and then sip a thoughtful sip in gratitude for the largely unseen, perhaps even unappreciated, work of some folks who have helped get us where we are today, fermentatively speaking.

And honestly, they deserve more than a grateful sip. Everyone who likes to make their own beer should join the American Homebrewers Association.

Full disclosure: I've been homebrewing for 17 years this fall, but I never joined the AHA until this year (particularly ironic, since Northern Brewer, the company I’ve worked for for over a decade, has been such a staunch supporter and sponsor of the AHA for a long time). But more on that later.

First, to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been. Please come with me on a bottle-finding expedition into the cellar of the past: the year is 1994, and your narrator has just taken up the big wooden spoon (with charisma). A homebrew nation is waking up and taking shape, riding the wave of the microbrew boom and busting through the formulational limitations of the dry yeast and hopped malt extract that all but defined homemade beer for decades.

Wyeast has about a dozen strains available in 50 ml packages. You got your 1056, 1028, 1084, 2206, and there’s lots to brew with yeast like that. But no 1275, no 3711, no 1450, no 3522, no 1762, no 2633, no 3763, no single-strain lambic bugs. Yet.

You got your Cascade and Chinook or maybe Galena, you got your Goldings and Fuggle, you got your Hallertau and Tettnang and Saaz; but varieties Simcoe and Centennial and Amarillo and Summit and Warrior and Tradition and Premiant and Sorachi Ace and Palisade and Vanguard and French Strisselspalt and Ahtanum and Mt. Rainier and Citra aren't even a glimmer in the eye for us 1/6th-barrel brewers. Yet.

Imported malts, especially lager malt, can be hard to come by, and a lot of the recipes from back in the day are a testament to determination and make-do-with-what-you-can-get resourcefulness. Heck, I can remember malt from two-row barley being a big deal; now it’s taken for granted. You kids today got it easy.

There's no Brew Like a Monk or Brewing Classic Styles or How to Brew or second edition of Brewing Lager Beer or third edition of the New Complete Joy of Homebrewing; we had the first edition of Brewing Lager Beer and the second edition of the New Complete Joy and nothing but wet kindling to fire our brew kettles in five feet of snow uphill both ways and we liked it ... we loved it.

And now fast-forward to the present day. The microbrew boom of the 1990s is now the craft beer renaissance of the 2000s. Homebrewing is bigger today than it's ever been, not just in terms of our numbers (the AHA estimates that three quarters of a million Americans brewed beer at least once in 2010, and I’m willing to bet that’s a low guess) but also in terms of the range and quality of ingredients and specialized equipment widely available, and in the abundance of information at our fingertips.

And through the years, as the lot of our hobby continued to improve, with all this selection and knowledge there for the taking, I thought, why should I bother paying AHA dues? Why be a joiner? Homebrewing is all about individuality, right? Self-differentiation from the Lite Lagerbots, DIY, extremism of flavor, etc etc etc.

Solipsistic, I know. But judge not, as Mr. Marley said back in his ska days, because out of all 750,000 of us practicing homebrewers, only 24,000 of you are actually dues-paying members of the American Homebrewers Association. A whopping 3.2%. There are mild ales with a higher abv than that.But again, why should a body care? Why did I finally join?

Because The Man started to come for our beer.

Homebrewing, being much bigger now than in 1994 when we were all chugging American pale ales, and bigger still than just 5 years ago when we all started chugging Imperial IPAs, is showing up more and more on the mainstream radar, attracting more attention from all corners.

Let me back up a bit. Big picture time:

Homebrewing was federally legalized in 1978, after decades of illegality dating back to the enactment of the 19th Amendment and Prohibition. But on a state level, its legality is relatively all over the map.

Right now there are 48 states where homebrewing is legal. Up until very recently that number was 46: with lots of grassroots effort plus support from the AHA, Utah legalized homebrewing in 2009 and Oklahoma in 2010. It is still illegal - on a state level, at least - in Alabama and Mississippi; the AHA is working on that, with the help of the homebrewer-activists in those states. But a legislative defeat about a week ago in Alabama reminds us that the decriminalization of our hobby is not a gimme.

Even in states where homebrewing is legal, there are old laws still on the books that aren’t equipped to deal with the nature of homebrewing in America today.

Last year in Oregon, where homebrewing was not only legal but recognized as an important component of the state’s thriving craft beer scene, one such law was reinterpreted with the effect of making the production and consumption of homebrew permissible only within the brewer’s home. Competitions were shut down. No homebrew at public meetings or gatherings, no more organized tastings or classes, no brewing demonstrations.

The AHA immediately responded, joining a coalition of Oregonian homebrew clubs, raising national awareness of the issue, and working with state lawmakers to pass legislation reversing the restrictions. SB444 was signed into law in March of this year and homebrewers in the Beaver State are once again free to brew, share, and enjoy their beer.

And already in 2011, an eerily similar story in beer-loving Wisconsin: an archaic law has been reinterpreted with the effect of restricting where homebrew can be produced and consumed, and subsequent enforcement - yes, enforcement - around the state has meant that homebrew shops can no longer brew on site for teaching classes, competitions have been shut down, and club activities curtailed.

Once again, the AHA was there right away, joining the grassroots effort, just as they did in Oregon in 2010, presenting a unified front and working towards enactment of new, updated, homebrew-positive legislation.

It's naive to think that this couldn't someday come to any state, I said to myself. When it does, I want my voice to be louder than it could alone. It's only right to stand with the homebrewers of Alabama, Mississippi, Oregon, Wisconsin, and everywhere else if I want them to stand with me when these same chickens come home to roost with a Minnesota accent.

Without a national umbrella organization to orchestrate and marshal our efforts to effect positive change and resist the cramping of our collective style, homebrewing could begin a slide back towards the dark ages instead of striving for whatever unimagined level of homebrew culture lies above the awesome one we're currently enjoying. Weak!

A Zymurgy subscription, the pub discount program, and events like the NHC and wort rallies are all very cool, too. But the tipping point for me, ultimately, was advocacy. I don't ever want to go back to the days with less selection and less information. Or worse yet, some dystopian nightmare of paranoid windows-blacked-out brewing in the middle of the night in fear of the neighbors smelling the hopburst addition. Weak!

Support your local homebrew shop (wherever it may be), keep brewing, don’t join a local club if you don’t want to, but for the love of Fred Eckhardt, pony up the cost of a few six-packs of your favorite craft beer and get an AHA membership. Make the investment, make sure your voice will be heard, make sure there will always be a great homebrewing scene in America, make sure that going forward we will all be able to relax and not worry while having a homebrew.

Cheers.

Best Place to Have a Beer

2011-05-04T07:56:00.000-05:00

I remember the first time someone explained the concept of a "beer shower" to me. I was like, "Wait, you can drink beer in the shower??!" And, it turns out, you can. And it's awesome.

At the end of a long hard day of athletic activity, your muscles sore and stiffening, your sweat caked on to you in gritty salt crystals, you don't want to just relax, you want to mega-relax. Sweet beer, the perfect counterpoint to sun and running, moderately hydrating, muscle relaxant, a warm soft bed for your brain. And then showering, also muscle relaxant, warm, cleansing, excellent time to practice yodeling. Both a fitting end to the day; together they are much more than either could be alone.

But I've heard a lot of folks talk about beer on camping trips. Watching the sun set with a pint, pulling a bottle of beer out of a cold stream, homebrew far away from home. That's pretty good, too. I am open to suggestions on the best time/place to drink a homebrew. If your suggestion is awesome enough, I will give it a try and blog about my experiences. Cheers!

The Truth Behind Beer Goggles

2011-04-28T08:02:00.009-05:00

I came across a new study on The Beer Goggles Effect while perusing a food blog called Delish.

Who knew that men ogled more than women? A study recently published in the academic journal Alcohol examined why heavy drinking seems to increase how attractive people appear. The theory postulates that people seem more attractive to a drunk person because of a skewed perception of asymmetry in faces (NOTE: Pretty people possess symmetrical faces.). In order to test this hypothesis, both intoxicated and sober students were asked which photo in a pair was more attractive and which was more symmetrical. Men make fewer mistakes in determining facial symmetry - so, ladies, when a man says he thinks you're pretty (whether he's drunk as a skunk or sober as a stone), he really means it.

This information was scraped from this post on delish.com.

Previous posts on Beer Goggles:

Beer and Your Body: The Beer Goggle Effect

Study Debunks The 'Beer Goggles' Myth?

Yeast Experiment Round 3

2011-04-26T08:54:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted about a yeast experiment that used 6 different ale yeast strains to make mead. Preliminary tasting results from five Northern Brewer employees are in, I've summarized them below.
Some things I've taken away from this experiment: phenolic yeast strains really don't do well at all in mead, just changing yeast strains can create unbelievably different mead, and lager strains may be a better match for meads than ale strains. Three of the five people enjoyed the Wyeast 1272 the best, and two of the five liked the Wyeast 2112.

(The Nottingham batch tasted likely infected with a acetic acid bacteria and was disqualified.)

Wyeast 1272 - Dusty, sweet caramel with slight fruit and apple notes. Tart and dry with low phenolics and some alcohol presence.

Wyeast 3944 - Dry, plastic and rubber phenols with some honey character. Lots of boozy alcohol flavors.

Wyeast 2112 - Moderate floral aroma with a hint of mustiness. Some cereal grain notes, dark candi sugar like flavors, balancing acidity, and full body.

Wyeast 1026 British Cask Ale - Light floral aroma with mustiness. Moderate peppery phenols. Flabby body with virtually no acidity and some rubbery flavors.

Wyeast 3711 - Low floral aroma with moderate phenolics. Some alcohol warmth, low acid. A whiskey-like, leather component to the taste.

What's in a name?

2011-04-21T09:00:00.005-05:00

I've read that you should never name your chickens, because it makes it that much harder to boil 'em and pluck 'em when the time comes.

Perhaps in a similar vein, I've never named my beers. They are usually referred to as something like, "that one stout with the oak in it that I brewed last fall, or was it in the winter? Whatever, it's probably that one." But friends and other recipients of my beer always want to know what a particular beer is called. I once named an all-Fuggle hops bitter "Fug 'em" but in general people don't know what Fuggle is, so they didn't really appreciate it.

But I'm starting to think that the beers I give out need some names. It's fine for me to have in my head, "The lager I made with German Pilsner malt and Hersbrucker hops" but most other folks don't have any such reference point. And honestly the name of a beer does have an effect on the drinker's perspective. If I called it "Butt-stank Lager" you'd all probably tell me, "I'm getting some sulfur notes in the finish." But weirdly some of the worst sounding names are also some of the best, like Moose Drool or Face-puncher IPA, or this awesome limited release from Lagunitas called Lumpy Gravy. Some styles have odd yet popular names just by themselves, like Nut Brown Ale (doesn't contain nuts, doesn't have to taste like nuts) or Black IPA (somehow both black and pale at the same time, apparently).

So, what I'm getting at is: How do you name a beer? And while we're at it, what is your beer called?

The scent of a carboy

2011-04-19T09:09:00.003-05:00

I have an olfactory compulsion which you may find weird. Perhaps deviant. Here goes:

I love the smell of a freshly-cleaned primary fermenter.

But not just any primary fermenter that's been rinsed and then shown the PBW (I may be deviant, but I still have standards): it depends greatly on what just got cleaned out. A hoppy American ale fermented with 1056? Heaven. A dark lager brewed with WLP833? Seductive. British strains? Meh. Non-Brett Belgians? Not so much.

That scent ... it's beery but clean, with suggestions of a cold oven after the bread is baked, hops and CO2 echoing in the nasal cavity. Sometimes on a brewery tour I'll catch a whiff of it near the conicals or the bright tank and wander off ...

Am I on my own here? Anybody else? Stand up, we're among friends. There's no shame.

And I know a whole lot of you sniff airlocks.

Brewer's Log: Kansas City Lager

2011-04-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

Occasionally, I find myself & the wife in a type of restaurant that repeats itself across the country. These aren't the eateries that entirely play off some combination of fries and fried-meat-patty-on-bun as an excuse for wining & dining; rather, these are the places that have a signature appetizer, followed up by gastric proportions of steak, salad with shrimp, & the like. And it's often the case that the best pour these same chains offer is Sam Adams' Boston Lager.

Now, I'm not against Jim Koch's profitable vision. Boston Beer may be the best publicly traded investment out there. And, what's more, I think the Sam Adams glassware is pretty cool.
But I'm inclined to recreate my favorite pints, and after a couple Boston Lagers I think I can fill a patented Sam Adams glass with some homebrew that connects the devoted dots.

Enter the Kansas City Lager.

Here's my idea: a recipe with a malt bill & hopping similar to Boston Lager, but with California Lager yeast. Boston versus California ... based on my rail-riding experience, that puts us in about Kansas City!

The brew:

9# Rahr 2-Row
.75# Rahr Caramel 80
Mashed at 152º F

0.75 oz. Hallertau @ 60"
1 oz. Hallertau @ 15"
1 oz Hallertau @ Flameout

Ferment with Y2112, Wyeast California Lager yeast; 2 weeks primary, three weeks in cold keg secondary.

The result is a sublime melding of steam beer & continental lager heritage. Crisp finish & earthy yeast undertones partially masked by noble hops in the finish. A true lager fermentation would have brought this brew closer to the inspirational example that I've sipped alongside lobster, steak & the like at the aforementioned restaurants; but t there's nothing holding me back from thawing out some bottom round & microwaving some rehydrated potato flakes to complement my own able brew!

Jim, keep up your great brews & ongoing success story. I hope to have a pint of this hybrid doppelganger in hand when I, someday, purchase Boston Beer stock certificates.

Coffee Beer Collaboration

2011-04-12T08:59:00.000-05:00

Coffee beer: it just sounds right. Like when you hear "oatmeal stout", you know that it will be good, even if you've never tried one before. Deep down inside, every brewer wants to be eating oatmeal and drinking coffee and stout at the same time. It is a fantasy that largely goes unspoken, but search within yourself and see if it isn't true.

The problem is most commercial coffee beers I've had I personally do not enjoy. Even ones from reputable breweries that I love seem to fall short. The problem, in my opinion, is that most brewers just want to put "coffee flavor" into their stout. But coffee itself is a complex beverage, full of nuance and balance that can easily be wrecked by blindly combining it with beer, a beverage with very different balancing components. And choosing the stout style, which itself already has roasty flavors reminiscent of coffee going on, often results in a weird, overlapping mishmash instead of a complementary result.

Earlier this winter, during some serious stay-inside-and-eat-oatmeal-while-drinking-coffee-and-stout weather, I decided to undertake the task of building my own coffee beer that honored the bean. I've blogged in the past about making tea beer, and tea is something that I know quite well. But coffee is a world that I don't know very well, so for this project I decided to enlist the aid of Evan Keanes, my Peace Coffee barista friend. You may know Peace Coffee from our Peace Coffee Stout Porter kit, which uses their beans. I made decisions on the beer end of things and Evan arranged the coffee side, and here is what we came up with.

For the beer I chose to split the difference between a brown ale and a porter. Sort of like a brown porter, except not, because technically those have to use prodigious amounts of Brown Malt. Here is the recipe:

9 lbs Rahr Pale Ale malt
.5 lb Crisp Amber malt
.5 lb Fawcett Pale Chocolate
.25 lb Belgian Biscuit
.5 lb Simpsons medium crystal
1 oz Fuggle at 60 minutes
Nottingham yeast

And Evan used a full lb of coffee to make a super condensed cold press, which is exactly what he does at the Peace Coffee shop every day in the summer. He selected the Yeti Cold Press Blend from Peace Coffee for its very smooth taste and low acidity.

We bottled and tasted the first one a couple of weeks ago, and I recently had a chance to try our version side by side with the Peace Coffee Stout Porter kit. The carbonation of our beer was too high for the style (my bad) and, surprisingly, the coffee flavors were not nearly as strong as the Stout Porter kit, which uses only 4 oz of beans instead of 1 lb! I'm chalking this up to the cold press method of adding coffee as opposed to the "dry hopping" method used in the kit. In our beer the thick, oily nature of the cold press comes through nicely and the beer is fairly balanced. Compared to the Stout Porter, there are far fewer roasted flavors and less acidity, and a much earthier, almost molasses-like flavor. Next time we'll be looking into some alternative methods for adding the coffee, possibly doing a vodka extraction for a portion of the beans. In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye on this batch to see how it ages.

Cheers!

Beer Planet: Chicago

2011-04-07T12:15:00.000-05:00

In the cocked-eyebrow, mischievous corner of my brain lives a dream scenario wherein I leave the Twin Cities on the edge of a whim, ready to ride the winds of the world. The past two years have seen my midwinter vacation as nearly the opposite: calculated travels by train to well-researched places for R&R, and of course...beer.

I had heard the talk & seen the images of brew-centric Portland, OR; Beervana, as it were. I had never been that far west & felt compelled to drop my end-of-year savings on a trip, by Amtrak’s Empire Builder, to experience the city that Lewis, Clark & a million craft beer folk use as a dream beacon.

All through the past year, whether over my brew kettle at home or packing homebrew equipment for countless orders at work, the idea of being kissed by sweet northwest air & suds that I barely knew sustained me. One day before the trip was to commence, though, fate placed its hand on my head & knocked the pint right out of my hand.

Our American rail system a marvel; unfortunately, it hasn’t grown with the nation. When a freight train derails in Montana, there’s only the trackage that first spanned America for all trains in front & behind the pileup upon which to queue. How could I have known last December that my choice of departure date would be smack in the middle of winter’s hairiest delay?

My Beervana fantasy was snatched; my wife & I could only travel east by rail. Airlines are no option for us. We enjoy Amtrak for the two free carry-ons & the chance to sip homebrew in a private compartment, the American landscape inches outside our window. That westward dream terminated in St. Paul. Where eastward would be our destination to sip & stroll?

As Sufjan Stevens proclaims, Go Chicago, Go!

So we reversed the tickets & got a hotel on Priceline. Packing a growler of double IPA, the Amtrak refund & a few clothes we stepped into the flow of the windy city. As adults we hadn’t yet been to Chicago as anything but travelers on layover. Beyond the awesome museums, vogue stores & skyscrapers that clearly identify tourists as the ones looking up, where do homebrewers get their kicks?

The ‘L’ trains are a drinker’s best friend. They’re efficient enough to seat you on a barstool before you’re parched, and friendly on the senses to deliver you home without the stop & go of a cab (way cheaper, too). The Red line took us to Goose Island, the iconoclastic original Chicago brewery. Their Clybourn brewpub is Americana through an imperial pint.

Bonus: there’s a few Chicago-exclusive brews. My favorites were the Green Line Pale Ale and the Pork Soda. The first is a balanced, light golden ale with a fleeting touch of biscuit. The latter is a collaborative brew & an orange hop monster held at bay! Bearing citrus bitterness with a residual pine hop & finishing Belgian esters, it drinks as awesome as the Primus album for which it may have been named.

The Goose has built a reputation as Chicago’s microbrew. Though growing less micro, their brewers are blending tradition with experimentation to assure it remains part of the Chi-town zeitgeist. Try the properly aged IPA with Sriracha wings; you’ll get an old & new world kick. There was also a 6% Sahti when we went. Just try & tell me that doesn’t start your grain bill ideas!

The Blue line traces Milwaukee Ave. past the storefront (now a whiskey bar) where High Fidelity was filmed. Called either Wicker Park or Bucktown, it’s the setting for choice food & drink experiences. We hit up Piece Brewing (twice) & Revolution Brewing.

Piece Brewing won the 2006 GABF’s best small brewery award, and don’t expect them to turn down the kettle five years on. I spent our visits in the airy skylight atmosphere contemplating how to brew a Dunkelweizen like their Dark ‘n Curvy. That’s one tall beer that compliments a smoky BBQ bacon pizza with light malt layers of chocolate & a nice snappy finish.

Revolution Brewing is two stations north. Pints in hand, we idled in the packed crowd for a chance to sit a body’s width apart from other casual diners drinking up clean brews poured from fist-shaped tap handles. The menu dresses Chicago favorites like BBQ ribs & chili dogs with well-grown fruits, veggies & cheeses. The Iron Fist Pale Ale had all the hoppy trimmings of the northwest, while the Kinks-named Village Green Bitter had a more pungent, yet restrained Northdown hop flavor. I recommend the Workingwoman Brown on cask with baconfat (yes) drizzled popcorn.

Through yearning for humid Cascadian air and those Portland brews, the wife & I were soothed by the manic harmony of the metroplex we thought we knew. Chicago brewers find ways to uniquely accent each individual brew. They find the perfect moment in the boil to make a flavor hop smack your tongue, then linger. They give high gravity brews exact fermentation & aging controls to make a beer smooth enough to happily lose oneself and survive the winds off Lake Michigan.

With Oregon on next year’s calendar, I’m happily & practically recalling my sudden week in Chicago. If I can learn to get on & off public transit in the allowed half second without looking like a tourist, I can learn to brew with the clean character of Chicago’s eccentric & traditional beers without realizing it happened on my stovetop.

Jake's Craft Brewers Conference 2011 Recap

2011-04-06T12:42:00.003-05:00

CBC Symposium Beer

A special perk of working for Northern Brewer is being able to attend some of the best beer-related events in the country. We travel throughout the year to attend everything and anything that has do with homebrewing and craft beer. For the past couple of years, we have been going to the Craft Brewers Conference, which is kind of like the National Homebrewers Conference for the craft beer industry. This year's CBC was held March 23-26 in San Francisco, and I wanted to share my impressions.

The relationship between homebrewing and craft brewing has always been solid: after all, the American Homebrewers Association gave birth to the Brewers Association, and many professional brewers started as homebrewers. Every time we attend a craft beer event, we run into old friends, make new ones, and re-establish that lineage.

That's me (l) with Blake Crosby (r)

Attendance for Northern Brewer is crucial now that we carry Harry Mason beer engines and will soon carry Hereford casks. Breweries, brewpubs, and distributors are already ordering these products and we hope to serve the craft beer industry with the same quality service, fulfillment, and general excellence that homebrewers have come to know and love (and expect).

Some of the highlights this year included spending some time with Blake Crosby of B.Crosby Hop Farm. Brewing TV had the pleasure of visiting Blake's operation in the Willamette valley last year for our Hop Madness episode. We also sourced rhizomes from Blake this year, so if you're planting some Chinook, Columbus, Mt.Hood, Nugget, Brewers Gold, Williamette, Sterling, or Nugget stock purchased through NB, chances are it came from his farm. Blake was there as a speaker, representing the Oregon hop growers on a panel discussing the versatility of American hops. The talk was very informative, and gave a glimpse into some future trends of the craft beer industry's hop use, and supply chain issues. Brewers from New Glarus, Sierra Nevada and Moonlight Brewery were also on hand with special beers made for the talk. Each brewery brewed two versions of a particular beer, one with traditional German hops and the other with an American substitute. Needless to say, we got to try some amazing beers!

NB's Juno Choi with two versions
of Two Women Lager from New Glarus

It was a treat to have a beer I had been lucky enough to previously try at New Glarus when we visited their brewery last Summer. New Glarus will always have a special place in my heart as we're embedded on their homepage! Dan Carey was there to explain the hop choices and field questions. To see two of the people we've worked with over the last year addressing the craft industry at large was great.

Another panel discussion moderated by our good friend Jamil Zainasheff (Brewing Network, Heretic Brewing Company, and our Jamil's Evil Twin kit) broke down some nitty-gritty details about yeast storage, propagation, and health. It was fascinating to understand how the same principles we use as homebrewers scale to a professional level.

Jamil at the podium

Jamil's audience

The room was packed! To see Jamil, a homebrewing icon, address a room of well-known craft brewers about yeast was certainly special. We're very proud of Jamil. We've sponsored his show on the Brewing Network for about 6 years now, developed a beer kit with him, included him in multiple NB events, BTV shoots, and can't wait to see what's next for "The Pope". Way to go JZ!

Of course, it wasn't all talks and panel discussions. We ran into industry folks from Muntons, Wyeast, White Labs, LD Carlson, Crosby and Baker, and many others. It's always a great opportunity to share some good times, while talking shop and strengthening relationships. This is paramount in getting our customers the best products, service and value. I get crap from friends all the time when I travel for these events, and the criticism always lands somewhere around, "oh, that must be grueling work" (said in an overly sarcastic tone). Truth be told, these conferences and events are grueling. You're on your feet all day, working, being social, but still getting work done. By the end you feel like you didn't get to do either...but there's a beer in your hand and surely a grin on your face.

Juno Choi, Brian Perkey of Muntons, and Andrew Bartleson (Purchasing Manager NB)

Of course, some of the off-site events offer a reprieve from all the shop-talk. The events are always great ways for breweries, vendors, etc to reinforce vital components to both the craft beer and homebrewing industry; hospitality, good times, and great beer. With my BTV media pass, I was also invited to exclusive beer tasting events. This allowed me a little extra access to the hospitality-side of the conference. After long days of negotiating, networking, and learning, the nights ended on the glue that holds all together....beer.

Bitter American in cozy - 21st Amendment media event at their brewpub

Deschutes Black Butte XXII -

poured at a media-only event at the City Beer Store

After 4 days of hand-shaking and picture taking, I was more then ready to get back home and back to the office. As it turns out, Andrew and I were on the same flight as our good friend Chris German of Brewer's Supply Group. We shared a beer or two, had some lunch, and caught up. We've known Chris for quite some time, and created Emma's Brown Ale, a beer kit to raise awareness about his daughter's battle with Neuroblastoma. 100% of the profits from sales of this kit go to help fund pediatric cancer research and treatment at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. Chris let us know that Emma is doing well, and that she's almost done with her treatments. This was by far the highlight of my trip.

As I settled into our return flight, Chris sitting in front of me, Andrew to my left, I couldn't help but think that running into an old friend, getting some truly good news , and sharing a beer somehow summed up the craft beer and homebrew industries.

Some say beer (both craft and homebrew) is an industry, some say it's a community, but for me, it's a family. We help each other in tough times, and we celebrate accomplishments together. It's a group effort, and there isn't a place for in-fighting and grudges. What we need is partnership and respect. I know this view is not shared by all, but I'd like to think it's shared by the people, breweries, and companies Northern Brewer chooses to work with. I'm proud to represent Northern Brewer, and I'm proud, and thankful, to work in such a great industry, community, and family...I think that's what something like the CBC is really about.

Cheers!

Symposium beer - Sour Brown from Sierra Nevada and Russian River - enjoyed in a Mine pint at home

Notes on a Brewday: Scum and Villainy IPA

2011-04-04T12:44:00.000-05:00

S&V IPA: Sorachi Ace, homegrown Centennial, staggered dry hopping with Glacier and Columbus, blah blah blah. That's actually not what I want to talk about.

Do you like to brew? Do you brew ... frequently? Do you often find that there's still a beer actively fermenting even while you're boiling a new wort?

Back in the days of barm and godisgood and magic Viking brewing sticks, a brewer's fermentation population for each new batch came from the previous batch. These days the science is much more completely understood (plus our magic Viking brewing sticks are much more sophisticated and better-sanitized) and many, many pro brewers still use some variation of this basic technique - harvesting yeast from one batch to pitch the next.

German lager brewers historically applied (and still do apply) this kind of yeast-harvesting towards a different end: carbonating fermented beer. A quantity of actively-fermenting beer that has not quite reached terminal gravity is added to fermented, aged bright beer from the lager tank; the charge of yeast and unfermented malt sugars (not quite terminal gravity, dig?) ensure carbonation in keg or bottle; the significant trick is yielding the right amount of sugar (timing it so the actively fermenting beer is at the right specific gravity when you need it, and then getting the right volume for that specific gravity). An added benefit is that fresh, active yeast could reabsorb compounds like diacetyl and clean things up, flavor-wise, prior to packaging. The beer from primary from which the charge is drawn would still have kraeusen from the ongoing fermentation - hence the process known as kraeusening - you may know of it from recent marketing campaigns of a major American brand.

Anyway, leaving aside carbonation and getting back to the Scum & Villainy IPA (scenic route, dig?): I diverted about 800 mL of brown ale at high kraeusen into five gallons of cooled, aerated IPA wort. Big population of healthy, voracious yeast in prime fighting shape, no trub or hop debris to wash out of a slurry. Neato.

MAJOR CAVEAT: I do not endorse this as a substitute for a fresh pitch of yeast (or even recovered yeast from the bottom of the primary after the first beer is racked, for that matter) - a yeast starter is smarter, and a sure bet. If you want to try this technique, first make sure you have a pack of dry yeast on hand as a backup.

My experience has been that there is only a narrow window of time during fermentation that this trick will work, and that is during the absolute most vigorous phase - the first 24-36 hours of an ale fermentation (YMMV). Catch it too late, and the thieved beer may have a low cell count, leading to drastic underpitching, weak or nonexistent fermentation, flavor problems, and possibly the loss of a batch.

Now, if the timing is missed and you can't brew a new wort while the first beer is just starting to ferment; and if you're using a nice, strong top-cropping yeast, then you could wait until fermentation subsides and skim the floccs of yeast from the surface of the beer in primary, and then repitch that creamy, frothy goodness ... but that's skimming, and not quite the same as our barmy, low-fi, magic Viking yeast recovery method.

Primo Bottling III: Belgian Bottles

2011-03-31T07:57:00.000-05:00

A bottle of beer is only as good as its contents. However, sharp packaging can make every bottle opening a bit more like Christmas.

Here is a simple option that I used for my Righteousness Rye Wine, fermented with Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale Yeast.

Belgian-style bottles:
For the Belgian style bottles, I sanitized and filled them with the beer. I then set my portuguese floor corker to its shortest setting. That way the corker would only push the cork partially into the bottle. Once corked, the bottle was lightly stuck in the corker so I gently rotated and pulled the bottle down out of the corker. A champagne corker would aide the process of leaving the cork partially in the neck of the bottle and removing it smoothly, because that is what it is designed to do.

After corking, I placed the Belgian wire bales over the corks and tightened the bales with a carabiner I had lying around. NB also sells a champagne tightener that I am sure would work better.

I then cut 10 inch labels that I printed on my computer on regular printer paper. Then, I folded each label in half, ran it through the bale and stapled as near the fold as I could. The stickers served to keep the label in place and protect it from tearing and will also help to classify it laying on its side in the cellar. The stickers I used are glossy and slightly embossed. I think the quality of the sticker will determine the quality of classiness of the final display.

This packaging process was time consuming, but definitely worth it. The final product is sharp and sophisticated and begs to poured. You would need approximately 25 bottles to package the full batch of beer. However I recommend getting 2 cases (24 bottles) and pouring the remaining beer into a growler to be enjoyed, flat, young and punchy.

Supplies:
-750 ml Belgian-style Bottles

-Belgian Beer Bottle corks
-Hooded Wires
-Printer Paper
-Stickers
-A corker of some sort, though a floor corker will make your corking much easier and enjoyable.
-Carabiner, Champagne Tightener, or something else to twist the belgian wire bale tight.

Primo Bottling II: Champagne Bottles

2011-03-24T08:48:00.000-05:00

A bottle of beer is only as good as its contents. However, sharp packaging can make every bottle opening a bit more like Christmas.

Here is a simple option that I used for my Righteousness Rye Wine, fermented with Wyeast 4347 Eau de Vie.

Champagne bottles: For the Champagne bottles I sanitized them and filled them with the beer. I then capped them using a Super Agata Bench Capper.

I used the same label template that I used in other Primo Bottling procedures (10" x 3/4"), but cut down the strips to 7”—off of the blank end—and lightly taped the label below the lip of the bottle.

To heat the bottle wax, I used a double-boiler method to raise it to the proper temperature range, 185-205°F. I simply placed a sauce pan in a large skillet and filled the skillet with water to the level of the bottle wax. The narrower the saucepan, the better as you can use less wax to dip more bottles (you might also consider using a Pyrex measuring cup or a coffee can, NOTE: they will get quite waxy). I monitored the bottle wax's temperature as it was heated to approximately 190°F using a digital thermometer.

Once the wax had consistently melted, I dipped the bottle’s head into bottle wax and turned them 180° to coat evenly. I set them to cool on a piece of cardboard on my countertop. The stickers served to keep the label in place and protect it from tearing and will also help to classify it laying on its side in the cellar. The stickers I used are glossy and slightly embossed. I think the quality of the sticker will determine the quality of classiness of the final display.

This bottling procedure was time consuming, but definitely look sharp. It feels as if the same care I gave to the brewing the beer is reflected in their handcrafted appearance. You would need approximately 25 bottles to package the full batch of beer. However I recommend getting 2 cases (24 bottles) and pouring the remaining beer into a growler to be enjoyed, flat, young and punchy.

Supplies:

750 ml Champagne bottles
Plain Gold Crown Caps
Bottle Wax
Printer Paper
Stickers
Bottle-capper of some sort
Range with larger pan or Crockpot (crockpots work great as a double boiler, though they will take a long time to heat up).
Sauce pan, coffee can or large narrow vessel of some sort that can be heated with the wax in it for dipping the bottles. NOTE: you should fill your wax vessel no more than half full, because you will be dipping bottles and displacing the wax

NB & Bell's: Let's All Relax, Don't Worry, Enjoy a Homebrew

2011-03-23T10:45:00.000-05:00

The basic outline is pretty well known by now: Bell's Brewing served us, and not in a tall frosty way. NB has been legally asked to rename our Three Hearted Ale American IPA, our five-gallon tribute to a Bell's brew of a similar moniker.

The news hit Northern Brewer World HQ on Monday, and the buzz locally and around the blogosphere has been notable. Personally, I felt affronted in the same fashion that many of the NB faithful apparently were. Over the next 24 hours the news circulated through other outlets, with some taking neutral and not-so-neutral stances.

Many of you, our valued customers, have offered testimonials of powerful emotions about this. For many hours, I can say that my voice around the warehouse echoed your sentiments.

But this morning I'd like to take a moment to spread some calm:

The fact that a homebrew recipe kit became noteworthy enough to draw legal attention is a powerful statement of the love for brewing that made this kit one of our best sellers in the first place. Your choice in purchasing this kit, and likely your attraction to it via your enjoyment of its commercially-brewed muse, is the real story here.

I know plenty of homebrewers who have a deep reverence for a particular beer. Usually, one of their first pursuits as a homebrewer is to try to reproduce or emulate the essence of that particular commercial beer - after all, what fun is a hobby without a personal connection? Those same homebrewers would be remiss to deny that it was their encounter with a pint or bottle of Bell's (or Sierra Nevada, or Dogfish Head, or Surly, or Founder's, or Russian River ...) that inspired them to spend their time and money creating a drink they could feel proud to have brewed.

It's in your hands that such a brew remains. NB has recipe kits in the spirit of historical styles and often specific (and trademarked) craft beers that lit the flames of our passions to brew. We're homebrewers ourselves, but NB is also a business and as such, we have to comply with the rules of trade. While creating a recipe that emulates a popular brew to the effect of calling it a 'clone' isn't wrong, there are rules that govern how we market those recipes with the effect of preserving the integrity of the product that became so initially revered.

Let's put it this way: as a homebrewer you have the freedom to make any beer you so desire. As long as you're happily serving it to friends and family, without making a business enterprise of it, you're free to brew it and call it whatever you please. NB, as a business, has to play by a different set of rules. And that's where we're at today.

We're still offering the same recipe that you've made a best seller. You're still free to brew this fine ale. When it's done fermenting and is pouring from your bottle or tap at home, you're free to call it by whatever name you'd like! We have merely had to change the commercial moniker by which we sell said recipe.

You may very well have come to love this recipe kit because of your experience with the Bell's brew that it emulates. So please don't find yourself at odds with Bell's for protecting what they have, in kind, created. Bell's Brewing is amongst the finest producers of microbrewed ales, the world over. Their business obligations and the craft of the people who brew their great beers are separate entities, as any pro brewer can attest. I ask of you, our loyal homebrewers, not to call out or boycott Bell's for fulfilling their legal obligations. Remember, the people who acted on behalf of Bell's in instigating this change did so because of their commitment to their product, just as you choose NB because of your commitment to your product.

Let's be happy that we live in a nation that not only allows for such creativity to produce a beer that catches the tastes of brewers and beer lovers like ourselves, but a nation that gave us the freedom merely thirty years prior to have a hobby that so benefits our creativity and subsistence.

Cheers to our fine customers AND the fine people who make Bell's beer!

Vlaai met witbier

2011-03-23T07:00:00.009-05:00

Cooking with beer can be a real challenge, due to the fact that beer is often one of the only sources of bitterness in a person's diet. Bitterness is a taste that is rarely considered desirable in cooking, as it tends to invoke a negative response on the palate. Part of the reason may come from the primal association of bitterness with poison. Conversely, many animals seek out sweetness, because sweetness often indicates fat, sugar, and protein - all the things we find desirable in our diets.

The tendency to seek out sweetness is particularly emphasized in desserts, where humans have, for much of civilized society, indulged their love of the sweet sensation on the tongue. Even if you are not an avowed possessor of a sweet tooth, you are likely to have at least one dessert that you value above all others. Dessert is also a natural place for pairing with beer - from roasty stout to sweet and sour kriek.
There is a balancing act with any attempt at fusion, especially so with food and beer. Though extremity may rule the trendosphere, classic preparations always focus on balance. Vlaai met witbier is an extremely simple dish with a long history - a dish with no translation into French or English - dating back to Medieval times, it has the texture of bread pudding, the richness of waffles drenched in syrup, and a hint of rustic heartiness from dried fruit. Witbier brings a spiciness, a fluffy, airy richness, and a panoply of exotica. Though all these disparate elements may decry the emphasis on balance, they unite in a heavenly combination. Like Belgian waffles and Duvel, this dish is a classic expression of Flemish ingenuity. Pair with another glass of witbier, your favorite Belgian strong golden ale, or even a stange of Kolsch for the truly heretical.

Ingredients for Vlaai
2 cups milk
1/2 vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup Cream of Wheat (or generic farina/semolina)
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup Witbier (if you don't have a homebrewed version, use something like Blanche de Bruxelles, Wittekerke, Allagash White, or Ommegang Witte)
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tbsp finely diced mixed candied fruits
2 tbsp currants or raisins
3 large egg yolks
4 large egg whites, beaten to stiff peaks

Procedure for Vlaai
1.) Preheat the oven to 400. Butter/grease a 9" springform pan, or 10 individual ramekins.
2.) Pour the milk into a medium-size saucepan. Add the vanilla, scraping the seeds from the bean. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, then stir in the Cream of Wheat, sugar, beer, and lemon zest. Bring to a gentle boil and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened to the consistency of heavy cream, about 1 minute.
3.) Remove from the heat and stir in the candied fruits and currants. Stir in the egg yolks, one at a time, and let cool to lukewarm. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Fill the ramekins two-thirds full, or pour the batter into the springform.
4.) Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes for the ramekins, or 30 minutes for the pan.
5.) Let cool for approximately 10 minutes before unmoulding - the pudding will fall slightly. Serve lukewarm or cold.

Recipe for Witbier
3lbs Flaked wheat
3lbs Pilsner malt
2lbs 6-row malt
1lb Flaked oats
1lb Munich malt
1/2 oz Perle 7.8%AA 90 minutes
1 oz Saaz 3.9%AA 30 minutes
1 oz Saaz 3.9%AA 15 minutes
1/2 oz Coriander, crushed, 10 minutes
grated zest of one orange 5 minutes
2 grams paradise seeds, crushed 0 minutes

Perform a cereal mash with half of the 6-row and all of the flakes, while conducting a protein rest with the main mash. Dough-in at 122ish, heat the cereal mash to boiling over 5-10 minutes, boil 15 minutes. Add the cereal mash to the main mash, infusing to around 150. Proceed with normal saccharification/sparging/boiling, adding a mash-out if you are impatient.

Note that this is not a conventional witbier recipe, but if you give the hops time to mellow, you'll be rewarded handsomely.

Primo Bottling I: EZ-Cap

2011-03-21T13:43:00.007-05:00

A bottle of beer is only as good as its contents. However, sharp packaging can make every bottle opening a bit more like Christmas.

Here is a simple and easy option I used for my 140 Schilling Ale.

EZ-Cap bottles:
I simply sanitized and filled the 1 liter EZ-Cap bottles with my 140 Schilling. I then cut 10 inch labels that I printed on my computer on regular printer paper. Then, I folded each label in half, ran it through the bale and stapled as near the fold as I could.

The stickers served to keep the label in place and protect it from tearing and will also help to classify it laying on its side in the cellar. The stickers I used are glossy and slightly embossed. I think the quality of the sticker will determine the quality of classiness of the final display.

The EZ-Caps were very easy and quick and look great. You would need 19 EZ-Cap liter bottles (2 cases, with 5 leftover bottles) for a typical 5 gallon batch of beer.

Supplies:
-One liter EZ-Cap Bottles
-Printer paper
-Stickers

Notes on a Brew Day for Somebody Else's Wedding, Pt. 1: Selection International Argentine Malbec

2011-03-21T08:52:00.000-05:00

Image from winexpert.com

Yup. I brewed a wine. A double batch, actually. On a weeknight. In between putting the kid to bed and washing the dishes and amidst racking a Dortmunder. Gotta love wine kits!

But let's begin at the beginning: this post is going to be the first in an ongoing series about brewing (or vinting, if you must [get it?]) for an occasion. I have undertaken to provide the adult beverages for my cousin's wedding this fall. To date I've brewed (and vinted, if I must) for three other weddings, including my own, and this time I thought it'd be interesting to document the process and compare notes with others who've done the same.

So: Malbec. I like Malbec just fine, but the reason I'm making a double batch of this particular kit for the wedding is because my cousin and her fiancee spent a year traveling together in South America, working on organic farms and vineyards before returning to the midwest to start their own farm, and Argentina got stuck in their hearts.

Awww ... isn't it cute when the airlocks bubble at the same time?

Also on the docket for the reception: by request, a rebrew of last year's biere de garde that Cousin Rachel quite liked, and a to-be-determined crowd pleaser of some stripe ... I'm thinking a Kolsch, or maybe a blonde ale with some fruit from their land. Look for posts on these brew sessions in the weeks and months to come.

So, for those of you who have (or are planning to), what did/will you make for your occasion, and how did it go over?

Beware the Ides of Märzen

2011-03-15T09:25:00.001-05:00

Or don't beware, that's cool too. Amber lager is delicious, whether you call it Oktoberfest or Märzen .

Before it became a by-the-liter liquid party fuel this Bavarian beer was called Märzen - the last brew of the pre-industrial, pre-refrigeration brewing season, before the microbially-rich air of the summer months made low-fi wort cooling a risky proposition. March = März in German, hence Märzenbier - "March Beer" - lagered in caves, and busted out as needed during the warm months, and a big kill the keg party at harvest (the same tradition lives in the Bieres de Mars of farmhouse brewers).

So how can a homebrewer make a regulation, export-strength, orange-n-malty Oktoberfest into an old-school Märzen? It's both easy and difficult: brew and ferment the beer now (the easy part), and then store it cold til September (not drinking it early is the difficult part).

Yes - brew now for stein-hoisting in another 5 or 6 months. Those who fail to plan plan to fail, as my middle school gym teacher was fond of saying.

One of the most-asked questions we get about Oktoberfest/Märzens comes from homebrewers who don't have the right conditions or gear for long-term lagering at that time of year - can I use an ale yeast? The answer is yes, of course you can, this is your beer. Keep the rest of the recipe intact and swap out the lager yeast. It's not going to turn out quite the same as if fermented with a lager strain, but it will be very good.

Best results can be had if you can keep it cool (under 65 F), and my personal picks are White Labs 029 and Wyeast 1056. Other strains (your California lagers and European ales) would be good choices as well, and our friends in the lab over at Wyeast have reported success brewing lager-styles with their 2124 Bohemian strain at temps into the 60s.

Now, gehen und brauen etwas!

A Guide to Cleaners and Sanitizers

2011-03-14T10:08:00.000-05:00

No rinse? Sanitizer? Cleanser? What's the difference?

Stop the insanity! There has to be an easier way, right? Well you're in luck because below is a quick reference guide to confusingly named cleansers and sanitizers.

Sanitizers
Star San, Iodophor, Saniclean, Easy Clean, IO Star, and One Step.
These kill microbes and surface bacteria and make equipment safe to use with beer. The most important component in your brewery. Without sanitizers beer would be full of other organisms that turn beer sour and undrinkable. A key feature of these sanitizers is that they're "no-rinse" so your equipment can be soaked in sanitizer and then immediately used for brewing which reduces any risk for re-contamination.

A note: some sanitizers are not classified as such by the FDA (like Easy Clean and One Step), but for brewing purposes, they work as well as those that are. For some reason, many include the word "clean" in the name. Don't be fooled, all the above mentioned products are effective sanitizers.

Cleansers
B-Brite, and PBW.
These are not sanitizers, they remove surface grime and particulates and are cleaners. These are essential to allow sanitizers to do their job. You can't sanitize a surface if it's not clean of grime and debris, which is where cleaners come in. These products should be used on bottles, fermenters, and other equipment which has extended contact with beer. Cleaners should be rinsed after use.

That's the quick guide. Both cleaners and sanitizers are essential components of any home brewery, but they only work when you use them right. Now go, and ferment!

Bring Me Yet Another Beer

2011-03-09T10:28:00.000-06:00

So much of my life has been dependent upon beer delivery truck drivers.

An anonymous source sent me these photographs of old time beer delivery trucks. I have no idea if posting them here infringes on any copyright laws or whatnot - and I have no idea who actually owns the rights to these photos. Oh well, check 'em out:

Anytime you see a beer delivery truck, honk out of respect for our beloved brethren and snap a photo of the vehicle and email it to me: jeremy@northernbrewer.com or friend me on Facebook.

How do y'all feel about the Trunk Tap? Is this a good idea or great?

Short on Supply, High on Concepts

2011-03-03T14:51:00.000-06:00

I've had a couple years' run wherein my brewing has been a gently purring animal.

Tastes have become recipes. Those recipes have met practices on brewdays, and then found their way through the cell membranes of various yeasts, until the whole was poured into pint glasses. Those glasses were emptied into dozens of parched mouths; occasionally, a few of those mouths gave coherent, positive feedback. My three & some odd years of homebrewing have led me to a fine place where the only limits have been my imagination, palate & budget.
Now comes the looming specter of the global economy ... shortages in the worldwide barley crop. A viciously scorching Siberian summer drove wheat prices to historic highs. And, now the hop harvest pits the incoming crop's lethargic yield, against the unwavering demand for more citrusy IPAs and amped-up pale ales.

The indicators, pundits, and even common sense farmers are suggesting 2011 may be the trifecta of brewing supply shortages. But I got into homebrewing for the ingenuity! Why would any of us be over our brewing stoves were it not for a sense of creativity, concept, adventure?

The fact is, yes, current outlooks suggest an overall shortage within the harvest of the ingredients we've come to know & love. What does 2011 hold in store for our kettles? I'll take the optimistic high road & get y'all set on a short list of possible remedies for any supply/demand issues that might arise in our brewing experience ...

Alter
If you're happy making pale ales, try switching up yeast strains. Like Wyeast 1056? Try White Labs 029; you'll find a more pronounced bite within the same malty neutrality. Wyeast 3711 French Saison is another clean-ish fermenter that can lend some new flavors to tried & true beers. Are Bitters more your taste? Esters really amp up the effect of hop additions. Try Wyeast 1968 & some Styrian Goldings additions to go where Magnum used to tread. Belgian strains add a lot of flavor. Wyeast 3522 & 3463 offer plenty of new possibilities to take over for late hop additions.

Rescale
Okay, maybe you don't wanna sell out to yeast character alone. If you've been cranking the IBUs into your brews, consider hopbursting late in the boil to compensate with smooth aromas. High alpha hops like Summit, Galena, and Warrior require scant bittering additions, allowing you to split even an ounce between three or four batches of even modest gravity beers. Extend your boil to 90 minutes & you'll take your hop dollars even further! Try multiple half- to single-ounce flavor & aroma additions of mixed varieties from the fifteen minute mark down for a bevy of fine flavor.

Juxtapose
It's not all about barley or wheat. NB is sourcing more varietal honey than ever before, giving you options like mead or braggot to fill your bottles & kegs. We now offer mid to lower gravity honeywines that use less honey. Any five gallon mead recipe is ready for the addition of a mere three pounds of malt extract & a mere ounce of hops to make a strong beverage that stands up to imperial ales. Try that with a three gallon batch & you've got yourself a ready-made honey-barleywine! For that matter, check out the blog about Sahti for something from the past when barley was scarce.

Inoculate
Wyeast made Roeselare Y3763 part of their year-round offerings. This versatile souring culture will open your world to Flemish browns and sour reds, as well as lambic, geuze, and that beloved of the wax-covered-bottles Krieks. Sour beers were poised to cut into the world of pale ales in the past year, but 2011 may be the perfect storm for brews that make use of unmalted adjunct grains and small charges of aged hops. Scrape those silver bags out from your frosty freezer & dry 'em out at room temperatures! Sour beers take more from Brettanomyces & aging on fruit than boiling with humulus lupus. If you can wait, you'll have a beauty of a special sour ale that can wow the hopheads among your crowd.

Diversify
You didn't get into homebrewing to just make IPA, now did you? It may not sound adventurous, an American lager, cut with adjuncts & sparsely hopped, is one of the most difficult beers to brew well, and will make something far greater than the mass-market macrobrew that drove plenty of us into the hobby. Remember, the quality is in your hands when homebrewing. Flaked maize or corn grits could also prove a new challenge to generate a fine new recipe. A popular hometown brew here in St. Paul even uses potatoes in the mash to substitute for barley - try a few cups of dehydrated potato flakes in the tun. And then there's always styles like coffee stout or cream ale that are ripe for tweaking and personalization.

Subvert
Stick it to the man! Grow your own! Spring will kick off hop rhizome season & the time has never been better to learn how to take bittering matters into your own backyard. Read up or watch how you can turn your backyard into your brewery's cash cow. There's also the prospect of growing your own barley, wheat, or other grains. If you don't have the backyard for it, an increasing number of neighborhoods are starting community gardens that you can stake a claim in. Maybe you know someone with a fallow garden that could use a pint & then some in perpetuity?

We brewers have seen supply shortages throughout thousands of years of history, and each time our wits have sharpened our brewing behavior to resiliently prop us up in the face of rising costs, failing crops & dire times. Now more than ever we've got a community of knowledge and the widest universe of options.

2011 shall not be remembered as a year of shortage, but a wellspring of creativity!

Notes on a Brew Day: Helles VII

2011-02-28T10:06:00.000-06:00

House beer: do you have one? A brew that you always keep on hand, or at least return to frequently? Perhaps it's a seasonal feature in your homebrewery's lineup? And, in a world where change is the only constant, is the recipe static? Or do you, like me, succumb to the urge to fiddle?

House beers, despite the implication that they're fixtures in your bottle fridge or draft lines, are actually a great place for experimentation: it's hard to find a more ideal proving ground for new ingredients or techniques than a recipe you know inside and out. Change the hops, manipulate the grain bill, try a different base malt or a different malt extract, switch out the yeast; or keep the ingredients fixed but change the addition times, add or subtract mash rests, adjust the fermentation temperature and/or schedule ... because brewing is so process-dependent, entire worlds of different (subtly or otherwise) beers reside in every bill of ingredients.

Also: any old hand or competition wonk worth his or her salt will tell you that a key to homebrew consistency is thoroughly knowing your system (everything from boil kettle to fermenters to packaging), so that you can more accurately gauge the effects of changing these variables in your house recipe ... or brew a consistent house recipe at all.

Now then, Helles VII. It's one of my house beers, but as the Roman numerals imply, it's a work in progress (remember? succumbing to the urge to fiddle); there's always a new hop, base malt, conversion to extract, yeast, or something that comes along that I want to try. There've been way more than seven iterations, by the way; patches have been deployed over the years to address IBUs, fermentation character, final gravity, etc., in previous versions.

I-III were to get the grist the way I wanted it. IV was pleasing to me and set the standard hop schedule and yeast; other batches in the IV series experimented with different hop varieties. The V and VI series Helles played around with different yeasts and fermentation regimens: WLP838, WLP920, Wy2308, Wy2124 ... All were quite tasty, but I'm old and set in my ways and went back to WLP833 (or Wyeast 2487 when it's around).

The story of VII is a return to the elemental building blocks of a blonde lager - it's a single malt, single hop composition, test-batching a new-to-me Pilsner malt from Best Malz of Heidelberg. My preliminary impression is that what Warminster's floor-malted Maris Otter is to English pale malt (e.g., fracking awesome), Best Pils is to German lager malt.

Helles VII
10.5 gallons, all-grain
Target OG: 1.051

Grist:

17 lbs Best Malz Pilsner

Mash:

151 F for 75 min *

Boil:

1.5 oz German Tradition @ FWH

Fermentation:

Chill to 48 F
WLP833 German Bock lager, 4.5 liter starter w/ stir plate
50-52 F for 10 days
33 F for 28 days

* Spare me your nerd rage, O my fellow lager louts - this ain't the mash schedule I set out to execute **, but due to familial obligations, strike water couldn't start heating until almost my bedtime. Factor in a mid-mash propane outage, and this became one of those brew sessions where done = beautiful. Helles VII.i will be a reboot with the multi-temp mash I wanted.

** Although going by the range of Kolbach index values Best gives on their generic analysis for this malt, a single-temp infusion could be totally fine.

Extract Version:
In converting some past iterations to partial mash and extract, I've had very nice results with Northern Brewer Pilsen malt syrup - the beer won't have the same depth of floral, slightly sulfury malt flavor that German pils malt gives, but it will have a great delicacy, attenuate well, and accurate straw-blond color. For a five gallon batch, substitute 6 lbs Pilsen malt syrup and 1 lb of Pilsen DME for the Best Pils malt.

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So, that's the up-to-the-batch history of one of my house beers. Please use the response fields to share yours!

Seasonal Ingredient: Rainbow Chard

2011-02-23T08:24:00.001-06:00

Almost every fruit and vegetable is available year-round. Buy in-season, however, and you get produce at its peak of flavor and nutrients. In January and February, rainbow chard is readily available. Other chard tend to be available during the summer months, but the flavors do not vary much.

Am I suggesting brewing with a green, leafy beet? Yup. Sure am. Forget the Reinheitsgebot! Below is a recipe for a beer that doesn't utilize hops, instead beckoning on bitterness extracted from chard stems in a small quantity of vodka that is added to wort post boil (just kidding: there is no boil).

Chard (more specifically, Swiss Chard) is an ancient leaf beet (a variety that does not grow a large or fleshy root), originally used for medicinal purposes. It is a plant long known and recognized with documents from the 4th century citing its use. The plant doesn't appear in Eastern literature until the 7th century, so it must have its origins in the West (Mediterranean) and later migrated East via trade routes.

Good for your bones, chard is full of vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, copper, and calcium. It is also one of those rare plants high in oxalates, which can interfere with muscle function - so if you are already in a situation of calcium deficiency, I DO NOT RECOMMEND THE CONSUMPTION OF CHARD (Similarly, I do not condone the ingestion of rhubarb in any form ever.). I scraped this image from Google Images:

When prepared as food, you can treat chard leaves like you would spinach (steamed, sauteed, braised) and chard stalks like you would asparagus, but chard requires extended cooking times. Make certain to first wash the leaves thoroughly by soaking in water. The stalk of the Swiss Chard is similar to celery, but is ridiculously fibrous. The flavor is overtly bitter, and does well in frittatas. Stews, soups, and stir-frys are appropriate dishes for chard. Below, I include a recipe for an Asian Soup that uses a rice beer for its base, which I recommend you serve with stir-fry.

Rainbow chard sports a variety of colors in the stalks (white, red, yellow, orange). In the infusion I suggest making, you will lose this color and the stems will turn a gross gray color. Never you mind.

Chardashian Ale (5 gal):
3 lbs Munton's Extra Light dried malt extract
1 lb Munton's Wheat dried malt extract
1-2 oz Rainbow chard vodka infusion
1 oz Cardamom Seed/Sweet Orange Peel/Paradise Seed blend (coarsely ground)
Wyeast 3725 Biere de Garde yeast

Stand the stems of a bunch of chard in 1-2 oz of vodka (I recommend Rehorst Vodka from Great Lakes Distillery.) and soak overnight. Stir the malt extract and spices in 2 gallons of warm water. Discard the wasted chard stems and add the vodka infusion to the wort. Bring your volume up to 5 gallons with cold water and pitch your yeast.

Asian Soup [Serves two]:
1 cup NB American Lager (flat) or Cream Ale or Kolsch
1 cup Chicken broth
3 oz shiitake mushrooms, steamed
2 Rainbow chard leaves, sliced
2 green onions, sliced
Pork meatballs, steamed (see below)

Pork Meatballs:
1/4 lb ground pork
1/4 Rainbow chard leaf, chopped
1/2 oz spinach, chopped
Pinch of garlic salt
Dash of Chinese 5-spice blend
1/2 tsp soy sauce (I'll tell you how to make your own soy sauce and miso in a later post.)

Gently boil the beer for 10 minutes - you should smell the alcohol evaporating. Stir the Pork Meatballs ingredients together in a bowl, shape 12-20 meatballs. Drop the chard in boiling beer, set the meatballs in a steamer with mushrooms and steam for 10 minutes. Serve with rice or stir-fry.

To make a vegetarian version, add some diced tofu (marinated in soy sauce and spice blend) or miso instead of the Pork Meatballs and use Vegetable broth instead of Chicken broth.

Notes on a Brew Day: Surly Pro Series

2011-02-21T13:11:00.000-06:00

As I sat at my desk back in 2010 with the recipe files from Surly head brewer Todd Haug, scaling them to five gallons for homebrewer sized pilot batches, I felt like I was deciphering the Rosetta Stone with Led Zeppelin ca. 1971 on board the Millennium Falcon.

... deciphering it somewhat wrong, mind you (thanks for nothing, Bonham and Chewie). But that's the purpose of pilot batches: to work out the kinks before any cash is plunked down.

Ernest Hemingway said "the first draft of anything is $#!?," and Todd, with as keen a palate and as sharp an eye and mind for beer as any I've encountered, was as exacting as a Zen master, or perhaps more descriptively if not accurately, a richly-goateed heavy metal Yoda.

To truly replicate any beer at home is at best extremely time-consuming and expensive, at worst impossible: water chemistry, the geometry of boilers and fermenters, procedural idiosyncrasies of a commercial brewhouse, batch volume (scaling changes things) ... the recipe is only part (albeit an important part) of what makes a beer. But with the goal in mind of getting the recipes right, comparatively minuscule hop additions were tweaked, homebrewer-scale grain bills nipped and tucked, with Todd patiently exchanging vollies of emails, giving feedback on the batches, sharing the details of fermentation, oaking, and dry hopping regimens.

Early on in our correspondence, Todd said "[These ingredients] have to be right, otherwise these kits will be just another clone." The result is now before you, and I think it does a disservice to the efforts and generosity of Todd and Surly Brewing Co. to call these "clones" at all.

Because of Todd's penchant for healthy percentages of malts requiring some amylolytic love (e.g., they gotta be mashed), most of the Surly Pro Series kits are partial mash recipes; extract brewers need not be afraid - just check out this walkthrough and equip yourself with a really big reusable straining bag.

I personally like each of these beers quite a bit, but I'll use this soapbox to profile the one that oakenly, smokily plucks a couple more of my heartstrings:

Surly Smoke
Oak-aged, smoked Baltic porter
5 gallons, all grain
OG: 1.087

Grist:

9 lbs CMC Pale
6.5 lbs Weyermann Smoked malt
0.75 lbs Dingemans Aromatic
0.5 lbs Simpsons Black malt
0.5 lbs Weyermann CaraFa II
0.25 lbs Chocolate malt

Mash:

148 F 60 mins, 168 F for 10 mins

Boil:

1 oz Warrior @ 60"

Fermentation:

Wyeast 2124 (Surly uses WLP830, but with their blessing NB includes Wyeast as the default option for ease of assuring viability before brewing)
Primary at 51 F, followed by 65 F diacetyl rest
Secondary/lager at 33 F on Smoke Oak Blend (included with kit) for 5 weeks

Surly Cynic
Surly Furious

Surly Bitter Brewer

Surly Bender

Kinderweiße Cheese Fondue

2011-02-15T09:25:00.000-06:00

Serves 8

2 1/4 cups NB Kinderweisse, or a Berliner Weiss of your choice
1 Tbsp corn starch
1/2 lb. Chimay Grand Cru chees
1/2 lb. Emmenthaler cheese
1/2 lb. Appenzeller cheese
1/2 lb. Swiss or French raclette cheese
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Cubed day-old country bread for dipping
Fresh fruits such as apples, grapes or pears

Remove rinds from the various cheeses, then grate them together into a bowl or container, set aside. Whisk together 2 Tbsp beer with the cornstarch to dissolve in a small bowl, set aside. Whisk together 1/4 tsp baking soda in another small bowl with 2 Tbsp beer, set aside. Add the remaining beer beer to a 5-qt sauce pot and bring to a simmer. Whisk the corn starch and beer mixture into the simmering beer and continue to simmer for a couple minutes until it becomes noticeably thicker. Reduce heat to very low and the mixture is barely bubbling.

Reducing the heat is very critical here, if the mixture is left at a strong boil when the cheese is added, the proper emulsification will not happen and may separate. When a low gradual simmer is achieved, start melting in the grated cheeses in handfuls, stirring constantly to melt and emulsify.

Feel free to modify the cheese selections, but it is a good rule of thumb to avoid non-melting cheeses like feta or "lite" cheeses. Try to select moderate moisture and fat content cheeses. A classic mix is half Gruyere and half Emmenthaler cheeses, but feel free to experiment.

After all the cheese is melted and combined, stir in the baking soda mixture and the lemon juice. Season with a pinch or two of salt to your taste. Pour mixture into a fondue pot over low heat, but take care to not let the fondue get too hot. Serve with fresh fruits and cubes of day-old country bread. Don't forget to have more beer on hand and invite plenty of friends!

On a side note, if you happen to have an automatic bread machine lying about on your basement, perhaps ion the vicinity of your fondue pot, bring it out and prepare some bread. I happened to try baking a loaf of French bread but used Safbrew T-58 dried brewer's yeast instead of the standard bread yeast. Bake per your machine's instructions. The flavor differed tremendously from standard bread yeast, I suggest giving it a shot if you have the means.

St. Patrick's Day

2011-02-14T15:14:00.000-06:00

March seventeenth lays a feast upon Irish tables & a wellspring of firkins upon Irish pubs.

Across the Atlantic, we have been raised to reflect the revelry, but most haven't the eyes or taste buds to holistically feel for Saint Patrick's Day.

We are raised Americanized, cutting paper clovers & adorning spaces with smiling leprechauns. We change our ham & cheese on white to green ham & cheese on potato bread. We drink Guinness or Smithwick's or Harp. But you'll need to personally go east & see the flora resting upon the hills to know it's emerald not green. To know it's ale not simply beer, you could get a pen pal from outside St. James' Gate or you could homebrew your St. Paddy's experience!

Instead of packing taxis or buses, gather your “Everybody's Irish” crowd for a celebration of the real essence of the holiday. Celebrate the clover leaf trinity of Irish ales: brew an Irish Draught Ale to lambast dark ale naysayers with caramel malt aplomb. Refresh clinking tankards with Irish Blonde Ale, a winking take on honest Hibernian fermentative heritage. And brew an extra batch or two of the perennial national mascot, Dry Irish Stout, served by birthright in 20 oz. glasses.

There's no failing the occasion with these three ales. Whether you make a potato & beef stew (fortified with stout), host a sea shanty party, open your porch for an evening of ceilidh dancing or perhaps just lay down a Celtic punk rock playlist, you'll earn every bright grin & fan the fire of every toast when you homebrew your St. Patrick's Day celebration.

April, come she will

2011-02-10T08:26:00.000-06:00

That's a glass full of winter release from a local craft brewery behind an April caddis for a local trout stream: to everything there is a season. And both inside and outside of beer glasses, it's just about time for a changing of the guard, season-wise.

Even while I sip on this double IPA after a nice cruise across the cross-country ski tracks at the neighborhood golf course, at an hour at which the sun would still be glowing red on the horizon if this was midsummer; even while the city rests under a new coat of snow (should've shovelled instead of skied, prolly); even while the spring creeks I'm already thinking about are encased in Hans Brinker-grade ice, my mind and fermenters bend towards spring, renewal, and the thaw.

There won't be winter seasonals forever, although it might feel that way right now, at the butt end of a long January. These sticky hops and boozy abv%'s will give way to the effervescence and wheatly goodness of Hefeweizens, the vernal funk of saisons, and the the long, slow burbling of Marzens and bieres de garde for fall.

Hang in there. The early season starts in March around here.

Oh man, that glass of winter seasonal double IPA is empty now. How'd that happen?

Fruhlingsweizen (Spring Wheat)
10 gallons, all-grain
Target OG 1.049

Grist:

Mash: 111 F for 15", 119 F for 15", 148 F for 30", 156 F for 15", 168 F for 10"

Boil:

2 oz Liberty whole hops (or equivalent) @ FWH
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan (or your favorite Bavarian hefeweizen strain)

5 gallon extract version: replace grain malts with 6 lbs Northern Brewer Wheat malt syrup and 1 lb Amber DME.

April caddis
Hook: Tiemco 102Y, #17
Shuck: brown antron yarn
Body: superfine olive dubbing
Underwing: brown antron & olive sparkle yarn
Wing: tan polypro floating yarn
Hackle: golden badger hen

For your love

2011-02-07T13:28:00.000-06:00

How do you say love? Flowers, chocolates, I.O.Us on chores, big ticket gifts, and fancy dinners? I don't think any of those things are a proper substitute for sharing your passions with your significant other. Why not share the joy of brewing?

Good beer is one of my passions, and my wife shares a passion for good food and drink: so began a brew day with my wife. She wanted something on tap that reminded her of the Young's Chocolate Stout she had enjoyed on a night out with her good friend at the Happy Gnome in St. Paul. She had also discovered the joy of Left Hand's Milk Stout.

Bam! I thought it a brilliant and chivalrous idea to make her NB's Chocolate Milk Stout. Better yet, why not brew the beer with her and teach her the basics of brewing a 5 gallon batch? I chose extract to keep the brew day simple and manageable. And it turned out we could spin this brew day into an episode of Brewing TV.

The brew day yielded some laughs, some cheap shots, and in the end some wort ready to get its ferment on. Four or five weeks later we decided to keg the batch as samples were deemed excellent and session-worthy.

Now, my wife is asking when we can make another batch. I may just set her up with the ingredients this time and let her fly solo.

I'd like to think that love is about sharing what you love. Getting involved in your significant other's interests and passions can teach you a lot about the one you love, and in turn, about yourself. Having them share your passions makes your passions all the more enjoyable. This Valentine's, do what you've gotta do to let your sweetie know how you feel ... but take a minute to schedule a Brew Day of Togetherness, and let them know you'd like to share the joy of homebrewing.