Monday, November 8, 2010

1 Gallon Glass bottles!

Whole Foods is selling natural apple juice in 1 gallon glass jugs. It's really good apple juice and the glass bottles are just like baby carboys. The homebrew shop has bungs and airlocks for cheap, and I've been curious about brewing different kinds of ale in small batches so the glass bottles are perfect. It's a lot easier to brew one gallon at a time for obvious reasons. What's great is that I can pour the hot wort right into the bottle (I preheat the bottle with hot water in the sink first so the glass doesn't break) and then cool it inside the glass. It really reduces the risk of contamination that could normally happen while cooling in the pot or during siphoning. And obviously it's much easier to cool 1 gallon than 5. The darker one on the left is a Christmas stout and the lighter one on the right is cider. I just poured a glass of juice, then shook the juice to aerate it and pitched the yeast and threw on the airlock. Talk about easy. It started bubbling away within 24 hrs and it's been going for about 5 days now. I have no idea how much sugar (fructose) is in there or how long it will take to finish fermenting. If it comes out good, I think I'll be doing it all winter.

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Diffusing Beer Bombs


It was an interesting educational experience today. I had bottled some stout that I had recently brewed because I had the time, and there hadn't been any apparent activity in the fermenter for a few days. I normally sample the beer at various points of conditioning to see how carbonated it is, etc.. and just 2 days after bottling it was fully carbonated. Obviously the beer was going to get way too carbonated for safety, so I put all the beers in the fridge to halt fermentation until I figured out what to do next, (and as I mentioned before, I was nervous about bottles blowing up and leaving a black mess and glass shrapnel in the closet. So I asked Callie if I could borrow her welding helmet and leather gloves so that I could open the bottles without risking putting glass in my body. The fridge did a great job of halting fermentation. If anything, the bottles seemed less pressurized than before. The swing-tops that I left in the closet were dangerously pressurized after just a couple days though and they seemed like they were really on the brink of exploding. But it was as easy as popping the tops a few times to vent the pressure. Just so you know, the reason the beer tricked me into thinking it was ready to be bottled was that though there was still a lot of fermentable sugars left in the beer, the oxygen had been completely attenuated, so the yeast growth had simply slowed down to one 20th or so of what it had been. But it was still going, just very slowly. The reason that the oxygen was depleted so soon compared to the sugars this time was because it was such a malty beer (I added 4 pounds on top of the normal 5 pounds of amber liquid malt that would normally make an amber ale similar to a Shiner Bock).
What did we learn? Let your beer have lots and lots of time in the fermenter even if it seems like the activity stopped, especially if it's a big one.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Ok this is my stout that I just brewed. I have never even read a recipe for a stout, but on a whim I got some dark malt when I was at the homebrew shop. I used 5lbs amber liquid malt, which on its own would make something like Shiner Bock, then 2lbs Crystal Dark malt and 2lbs Chocolate Malt Pearls (almost the darkest malt they had - with the husk removed). I used 1lb liquid light for bottle conditioning instead of dextrose. 2 days after bottling, I tried it to see how it tasted before the liquid light was fully fermented, but it seemed like it was fully carbonated. Out of fear of exploding bottles, I put the rest of the batch in the fridge to slow the fermentation. I've never exploded bottles before, but this stuff is sooo dark - darker than any stout you have ever seen - darker than espresso - I didn't want to stain the closet walls and carpet if the bottles exploded. The beer in the picture is a 1 liter - it was actually most of the stout I opened mixed with an IPA. It wasn't bitter at all (as far as my homebrew goes). It's crazy how the smooth creamy body of the British Chocolate Malt Pearls smooths out the bitterness of hops and tannins. And it's like eating a meal. I was just enjoying it without giving it too much thought, and it took me 2 hours to finish it (24 ounces total). This picture to the right is after an hour. I don't drink a lot of stout so I didn't realize how filling it can be. Also I pulled about a 6-pack worth of the stout aside and I'm using a food-quality small plastic bucket to Franken-brew a killer BIG and hoppy version of it (inspired by Stone's Sublimely Self-righteous Ale - only twice as dark and meaty).

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The brewing has been crazy fun lately. Here's the last week:

90 minute Extra Pale Ale (bottled)

90 minute IPA with extra Malt (Mike's Batch)

Koelsch Ale (also Mike's)

Crazy Awesome Strong Stout (don't know what to call it yet - maybe Toothkicker)

and hopefully tomorrow:

Crazy Malty 30 minute big'n'sweet IPA

I hope to elaborate later

Monday, October 25, 2010

Brown India Ale Followup

So this brew was educational for me, in that I found out what it tastes like when you over-extract your roasted grains during the mash stage. I know all about over-extraction and tannins because of my coffee roasting experience, but I wasn't very careful and I started the malt at 175 and it took it quite a while to get back down to 160 and then I sparged the heck out of it - trying to get all the carbs and sugars I could out of it. Because it just seems like so much of the malt gets wasted. I guess it's a common rookie mistake. What happened was the over-extraction of the malt (which was medium-dark British Crystal malt) brought out too much of the bitter/sour/astringent qualities of the tannins, which kind of conflicted with the bitterness of the hops. If it weren't for the tannins, the bitterness of the hops would be a much more pleasant taste. I've had people tell me they loved this one, and others said it was way too much. I guess it's a matter of taste, but next time I'll be much gentler with the mash.
http://wooga.drbacchus.com/bible/alcohol.html

I don't know who Dr. Bacchus is or what wooga is, but I found this article on alcohol and the Bible that is very straightforward with all the facts, and I find it tells us in a very detailed and non-biased way, what the Bible tells us about drinking alcohol.

So many churches (i.e. the famous example of Southern Baptists) have taught that drinking alcohol is a sinful practice, but I have never found that in the Bible. I looked for anything I could find on what the Bible says on drinking, and I came up with exactly the same conclusions these people did. That is, the Bible supports drinking alcoholic drinks (as a blessing from God) with a caution against over-indulging.

People or chuches who teach anything else simply don't have a biblical world-view concerning alcohol use. They need to consider ALL of what the Bible has to say about it.

If you want more info, click on the above link.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Batch #5 What to call this one?? Something like Brown India Ale. Maybe someone more familiar with all the styles and their names can help me out with that.

I'm getting away from using the liquid extract as I get more experience with doing the mash. This time I used only one pound of light malt, which was my base for the IPAs. And the rest was half amber and half medium crystal malt. It looks pretty dark brown. For hops, i used Amarillo and Chinook. I don't know for sure how perfectly they will go with all that crystal malt. Oh yeah and since they didn't have any London 1960 or 1968 I just went with London 1928 Least so we'll see what happens there. It had a very vigorous start anyway.

Does anyone know if I could do the mash in a plastic cooler? Is the plastic safe for that? I've seen people do it on the internet, but I'm a little bit more picky about consuming chemicals than most people.

Batch #4 is finished and it came out pretty good. I'll need to do a lot more brewing before I can get a feel for which flavor combinations work best, for example, which hops go best with which malts and yeasts. But I'm not claiming to be a pro yet anyway. It's totally carbonated but it's not 100% attenuated yet, and there are probably still some sugars left which makes it taste sweeter than it will be in a few weeks but the yeast will also clean up the flavor. So its hard to say if it's better now or later. Probably later.

I wouldn't mind a little bit of feedback (Mikes!) on the beers to help out my learning curve.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Did you know that Texas has a kazillion amazing breweries?
I'm talking about little breweries that make great - sometimes mindblowing quality ales (and lagers too). I was looking to see what brewers were representing our great state at the Great American Beer Festival and here are the breweries who signed up.
Spoetzle Brewery (Shiner.. duh.)
(512) Brewing Company 512 of Austin - awesomeness!
Uncle Billy's Austin. haven't been here
Thirsty Planet Brewing Company Austin. haven't been here
The Covey Fort Worth. haven't been here
Southern Star Brewing Company Conroe. Their Pine Belt Pale Ale is killer!
Saint Arnold Brewing Company Representing Houston!
Real Ale Brewing Company Great Ales! Probably my favorite in TX
Rahr and Sons Brewing Company Fort Worth. Quality beer.
North By Northwest Restaurant and Brewery Austin. haven't been here
Live Oak Brewing Company Austin. I had Live Oak Hefeweizen at the Driskill and it was probably the best Hefeweizen I've ever had.
Jester King Brewery Austin. ??? Looks like they have good ideas at least.
Independence Brewing Company Austin. Independence rocks.
Humperdinks Dallas. haven't been here
Freetail Brewing Co. San Antonio brewpub. haven't been here. If BeerAdvocate rated it #1 brewpub in Tx it must be amazing.
Draught House Pub & Brewery Austin. haven't been here

there were 3 others that linked me to the wrong page.. so i didn't list them here. and these were just breweries and brewpubs that were competing in the festival. amazing, right. So make the pledge to never drink cheap domestic beer again.

Monday, September 6, 2010

OK... It's 1 am and I'm winding down from bottling my latest batch. I started at 11:30 or so and I'm sure I made enough noise to wake my wife up - at least I know I woke Josiah up about 4 times. There were a lot of bottle clinking sounds and a few bangs and a lot of water splashing. With all the sanitizing and siphoning and cleaning, it was a ton of noise, at least when all else was quiet.

This one is a less kick-you-in-the-teeth Pale Ale - though I don't know exactly what to call it. It's at least as hoppy as a traditional IPA, even though I used much less hops this time (maybe because the Warrior hops are so freakin acidic - but tasty), but it's not pale. I added some medium (darkness) Crystal malt which darkened it up a little compared to previous brews.

I've just had 2 pints of the pre-bottled product. I'm getting used to predicting what it will taste like when it's fully attenuated and carbonated. It feels like 5% alcohol right now, so it will probably be a little under 6% when it's ready. More than I had in mind when making the recipe. The medium-dark crystal malt brought in some brown to the light golden-reddish color of what I have been brewing. It's pretty close to Shiner Bock in color. Probably a little darker than what Shiner has recently become (seems like it's been getting closer and closer to Budweiser since it was bought out by some Chinese company - or is it just in my head?) It's got a very bright but not too bitter hop profile that really stands out and really lingers, a sweet maltiness, with a little taste of the caramelized sugars (sweet but less a less pure more tasty sweet) of the crystal malt, and the body is weird. It's like you can feel the sugars in your mouth, and there's a little bit of sediment still swirling around. The alcohol stands out on its own as well. Obviously, it's not done yet, and the week to come will totally transform it and bring all these separate characteristics together. So far, I'm very happy with the flavor.

Monday, August 30, 2010

An interesting article (thanks to Jon for sharing)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201433200 <--- click here

Though I don't applaud alcoholism or alcohol abuse, I've always contended that moderate alcohol consumption is a healthier lifestyle than abstention or heavy consumption. I believe what most researchers call moderate consumption is 1 to 3 drinks a day for men and 1 to 2 for women, mostly because they have less blood (M: 1.5 gal, W: .875 gal)

In short it says that moderate drinkers live much longer than heavy drinkers and abstainers, but heavy drinkers also live longer than abstainers. This study says that though people (ie AA) have always said that ex-Alcoholics mess up the statistics for non-drinkers, their study proved that people that have never drank actually had the shortest lifespan.

So if our messed-up-from-all-directions society hasn't messed you up when it comes to alcohol ("drinking is naughty sin" from the religious right or "drinking is naughty fun" from the rest of the world -- It's not naughty people! All it takes is a LITTLE BIT of self-control!) then come on over and enjoy a cold one with me!

Sunday, August 29, 2010

5 days ago I brewed another London style pale ale. Extra Hoppy and pretty malty, somewhere between a traditional IPA and an ESB. My closet currently smell pretty hoppy malty and yeasty. And I think you can tell when you go in that it's got a lot of CO2. I don't know if you can smell CO2, but it seems like it. There's a certain mild stinging sensation in the nose that's not really a smell but it's pretty distinct and instantly makes me think of CO2. It was a 4.5 gallon brew. I used 5#pale malt extract, 1#2-row and 1#medium crystal malt. only 4 oz of hops this time (Warrior and Amarillo). In the past it has been 6. I used 1968 London Ale yeast. Hopefully if it tastes good, I'll try to harvest it to reuse next time around.

Could this one be my Northfarthing Ale I've been wanting to make? Well see if it's worthy.


Yesterday Mike and I brewed a Koelsch Ale. It was the first time we've done a recipe using wheat. It smelled like cream of mushroom soup at first. One benefit of using wheat is that after the mash is done, you can stick the wheat in the fridge and eat it for breakfast. The barley is usually too fibery to eat. Probably great for a horse though. 2#wheat, 3.5 # pale malt extract, 1#dry malt extract (hopped) and 2 ounces of mount hood hops. How will it come out?? Time will tell.

Friday, August 20, 2010

I'm Josh and here's my page all about beer brewing! I like mostly British style ales or even better, American ales that were inspired by British ales, but taken to a whole new level. Ya I like a good hefeweizen every once in a while (Live Oak from Austin makes an amazing one, but I can't stomach typical ones like Shiner anymore). To me, the best of beer can be found in Pale Ales, especially ESBs and IPAs. And sometimes an amazing stout, if made by crazy talented people like Stone or Independence (from Austin). But anyways, the main point of this blog is not to talk about what kind of beer I like, but to keep people up to date as to what beers I have been brewing.

So far I have brewed 3 versions of the same kind of beer, which is basically a pretty normal IPA.

For the first brew, my cousin David was in town, and we had discussed his brewing and since I have been wanting to brew for years and knew about this place called Defalco's where we could get all the ingredients, we headed over there (after having an awesome lunch at the Hobbit Cafe) and got all the equipment I needed, (an auto-siphon, an airlock and bung for the ozarka bottles I already had, a hydrometer, and I can't remember what else) it was under $100, including ingredients. For the quantity of beer it would make, I'm pretty sure the first batch (including equipment) was dollar for dollar HEB prices. From the second batch on, it's probably 60% of the cost of beer at HEB.

Since I had recently tried St. Arnold's Elissa for the first time and recently had it on tap at the Fisherman's Wharf in Galveston, sitting right in front of the Elissa where it was docked. The beer was named after the Elissa because it had actually I had the Chicken Elissa for dinner too! I had actually I tried Elissa IPA a long time ago, not even knowing it was an IPA, and didn't like it, but they changed their recipe and it's better now) so I thought I would try to brew an Elissa clone. I wanted to understand what it was about the Elissa that I didn't like. I think it was actually the yeast. Sometimes I wonder if they throw in Belgian candi sugar (or used to). The old recipe had a disturbing sweet / mild spice flavor kind of like many Belgian beers do. David already had a beer clone magazine but wanted one that had more recipes, so he let me use the one he was buying to find my clone recipe. We got 5lbs pale malt (extract) and a pound of 2-row pale malt (crushed barley with a little more of an amber color). This is a partial mash recipe, not the all-grain mash they obviously use at the brewery. Hopefully I'll be doing all grain mash soon. Anyways, we got the hops (loose leaf and pellet - mostly Cascades) and the smack-pack yeast activator bag, and headed over to Petrol Station for a little inspiration before going over to Mike's to brew. That was really a great day now that I think about it. My dad even showed up at the brewing and helped out. So anyways, after more than an hour of stirring an intensely boiling pot and adding the hops and then rapidly chilling, putting it in the bottle and pitching the yeast, we let it sit in a cool dark corner. Then for me it was off to New Jersey. We were going to visit my sister and when I got back it was just ready to be pulled off the trub. Mike and I didn't really know what we were doing, but we did a fine job. Then, weeks later it was time for bottling. That was fun, aside from sanitizing, and surprisingly it came out perfectly balanced and carbonated. I didn't let my first batch last too long, so I don't think it was even totally attenuated (sugars converted to carbon dioxide and alcohol) when I finished drinking it. But it sure tasted good.

The second batch was based off the first, but I tried to make it taste a little more like Widmer Brothers "Drifter" Pale Ale. I used a little extra 2-row and extracted the heck out of it. Also the hops schedule was crazy. I think I used double the hops. And only 1/6th was cascades. It came out very full-flavored, and almost amber in color, but was a little rough in flavor. Probably from my abusing the malt, and the crazy mix of hops.

The most recent brew I made was all pale malt extract (no 2 row). I more than made up for the 2-row with extra extract. It started out a pretty high gravity brew, and I think it's probably a 6 percent or so now that it's fully attenuated. It was very sweet and clean soon after I bottled it, but much of the dry hop flavor starting becoming more present after letting it sit for a few more weeks. Here's a photo of the Krausen. Thankfully I had put it in this container or the blowoff would have gone all in the carpet, which would inevitably have let to bug problems. It looks like a lot, but it's mostly yeast and hops. It was less than a pint of liquid at the bottom.

It was crazy! It went kaboom in the night. I don't remember hearing it, but it obviously exploded because hops were splattered all over, and they had obviously hit the walls shelves and boxes at a high speed. I think the loose-leaf hops floating at the top clogged the airlock and pressure built up and it just blew. But it was like a volcano for at least 2 days. intense. I was worried that I had lost much of the dry hops that I had just added, but they had been sitting in it for probably more than 6 hours before they were blown off. It actually came out pretty hoppy.


The next one I want to make is a heavily malty ale. I'm not sure exactly what yet, but I'm thinking something amber colored. I have been a hop-head for a while now, but the description of the quality of the malt in the ales they made at the end of the Lord of the Rings (year 1420 on Middle Earth time) made me want to make an ale of that caliber of maltiness. We'll see if I can pull it off.