Zen Hefeweizen on Tap

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Primary

For a single ale in primary I like to used my patented containment system: A keg tub to house the bucket and a towel over it in case the lid blows. It has enough room to use a growler and a blow off tube and when doing so it tends to sound like a tug boat. 

Pictured here: Hefeweizen open fermentation. Not Pictured here: Towel/blanket for containment

The Hefeweizen was being fermented open so we didn't need to worry about a blow off tube. Though had the lid been on it probably would have exploded even with a blow off tube. The starter almost blew off the tin foil hat it was wearing. 

Before and after culturing yeast on the stir plate

Before and after culturing yeast on the stir plate

This was designed, rewired, and 3D printed by my good friend Steve. It has had one of the biggest impacts on our brewing, other than controlled cold side fermentation for lagers. 

Hefeweizen open fermentation eruption in containment

Hefeweizen open fermentation eruption in containment

Since it was still the tail end of winter, it stayed a stable 68 degrees for fermentation. Aiming for a banana forward hefe, we wanted it to ferment on the warm side, so we never put it in the fermentation chamber. Also reading up on hefeweizens, less pressure helps produce more banana esters and reduce clove phenols. We let it ferment open with the cheese cloth for 4 days to let the bulk of fermentation and phenol/ester creation run its course. After high krausen fell, we put the lid on and let it finish fermenting for another 10 days. After that we kegged it and let it sit at about 11 psi for 2 weeks.

 

The Outcome 

It's amazing we still have a bit left in the keg in April, as this was brewed back in February. 

The end beer has almost zero clove, it's very light with banana and hints of vanilla. A medium body leaves it very drinkable. It's a fantastic spring and summer beer that just tastes like sunshine. The beer was originally cloudy like you'd expect with a hefe, but after being in a keg for a month the beer is almost crystal clear. 

I was surprised that this wasn't a banana bomb. It's fruity but balanced. I think if it fermented a bit warmer we would have had a lot more banana in the beer, but I wouldn't want to push it over 74F. 

Thanks to our dear friends, the keg is nearing its end so we will have to brew it again soon.

Here's the recipe again if you don't want to search for it in the previous post:

Zen Hefeweizen

7 lbs Wheat malt

3 lbs Pilsner 

Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephaner Weizen

.5 oz Hallertauer for 60 and 20

ABV 5.5%

IBU 12

Divorce Before Marriage Gose

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Being the first of the month I wanted to get some beers going. I had wanted to make a Gose for a long time now, even more after trying Sam Adam's 26.2. I have also been threatening Lisa for years about making a pickle beer. Lisa absolutely hates pickles, she likes cucumbers and fermented things, but not pickles. 

So for April Fools day, I have brewed a pickle beer!

A traditional Gose is usually barley based, spiced with salt and coriander, and finished by lacto fermentation.  This pickle beer is slightly different with a bit of salt, peppercorns, and dill. I made a "starter" with the cultures from 3 different kombucha bottles. I'm going to let this do its thing for a day or two, then sprinkle in a little CBC-1 bottling yeast to help finish it out.

I was in the middle of the boil when Lisa walked in the door- perfect timing. She yelled "divorce before marriage!" as it has become tradition when discussing pickle beer. After a small complaint about me actually making a pickle beer, I said she'll feel better about it after she tries a pickle beer. "Oh that's an old wives' tale!" she responded.

"No, its a New Husbands' tale" 

Onto the pictures and recipe:

Finished boil

Used for culture to ferment

Just enough for a 2 liter batch

Divorce Before Marriage Gose

2 Liters of water (its a small batch)

145 g pale malt extract

35 g sugar

3 Tsp Himalayan salt

1/2 Tsp pepper corns

3 sprigs of dill

Kombucha culture- or a lacto culture

OG: 1.05

Brewery Tour: Harpoon Brewing - Boston stop 4

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On our final day in Boston we managed to squeeze in a trip to the aquarium, a brewery tour, and seeking out one last lobster roll before catching our flight. I'm not sure we were prepared for how epic the Harpoon Brewery is. Through the front doors and up to the next level is the beer hall.

The bar runs the entire length of the beer hall, with a register at the entry way. The tickets for the tour are a little booklet about the brewery. We grabbed a few tasters and pretzels while waiting for our tour to start. The pretzels are made fresh and also made with spent grain. We got a plain one with two mustards and a cinnamon and sugar one with two different amazing dipping sauces.

The kegging line and the canning lines can be seen through the windows that make up the one wall of the beer hall. The tour starts at the far end of the bar. After donning a pair of safety glasses you are lead onto the catwalk where our one tour guide is hanging the sign. In the first few steps of the tour you start to see how large Harpoon really is, which isn't too difficult when you are two stories up on a walkway. 

The entire facility used to be a Navy dry dock and Harpoon has outfitted it well for their needs. Above you can see the kegging line. They have elevators to raise empty kegs and lower filled kegs. This is just the first 5 steps on the tour before heading into the actual brewery.

The tour walkway leads into the tasting room and the brewers office, but you can see that there is a walkway to all of the fermenters and bright tanks. The tour goes through the tasting room and out onto the brew deck for the traditional ingredients talk. 

After checking out the brew deck, it's back to the tasting room for the fun part. Being the first tour on a Monday at noon, the brewery was pretty quiet and our tour group was fairly small. For the tasting, you could choose anything they had on tap. Their radler was fantastic and not overly sweet. They also had a cider made with their house ale yeast.

Behind the tasting bar they have all of the bottles from their 100 Barrel Series. These are typically small one off batches. One from this series was on tap for our visit, the Braggot Rights- a braggot blend of a double IPA with wildflower honey. It is a very well balanced 8% braggot, doesn't taste heavy or alcoholic making it go down a little too easy. 

At the end of the tasting portion you have to leave the glasses you were using in the tasting room, because you can't carry them back across the walkway. We were told we'd get "fancier" glasses back out in the bar area. On the way out you get to checkout the bottle packaging line, where you can also see quality control taking place. After that you are lead back to the entrance and return your safety glasses. Here we were told, by both tour guides, to get our booklet/ticket stamped at the register and to get our tasting glasses from the gift shop. Harpoon has another brewery in Vermont, where if you tour both in a year they give you an IPA glass. We got our stamp, then really confused the girl at the gift shop asking about tasting glasses. I was in no way trying to stir things up, and if anything we need to start getting rid of all of the glasses we have. I felt really bad when the girl at the register called her manager about how they don't give tasting glasses out but you can buy them. The manager, who's name I did not catch, was very nice about everything and still gave us a tasting glass. That's just how awesome everyone at Harpoon is. Thank you for the fantastic tour and putting up with my ridiculous questions. 

On an unrelated note, If you need a few pint glasses I might be able to help you out.

 

Brewery Tour: Boston Beer Works - Boston stop 3

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If you search for breweries in Boston, Boston Beer Works ends up being listed a few times. I figured it was a local bar chain and wasn't actively seeking it out. While wandering to a T station near Fenway Park, we stumbled across a little brewery in the window. Putting a brewery across from a baseball stadium makes perfect sense. 

Our bartender Andrew gave us the low down on the place, and actually gave us a little tour. They have a fascinating business model for a brewery. They have six locations, each with their own brewery, and they each help make sure all core beers are on tap at all locations. During baseball season the Fenway location brews their Hub Light almost around the clock to keep up with demand. 

Their fermenters line the far wall from the entrance and the bright tanks are in a walk-in cooler behind the bar. For the most part, the beers served on tap are directly from the bright tanks. 

The Hub Light is a good light beer with almost zero hops. The Back Bay IPA is a nice east coast IPA, a little fruity with a solid hop bite upfront. They have a Rosemary wit, which we were both wary of, but it is very well balanced between the yeast character and the rosemary.  We really wanted to try the Golden Road which is a Golden ale made with Mosaic and Sorachi ace, but it was unfortunately out. All of their beers are very accessible and not too outlandish. It was an interesting place. I can only imagine how slammed they get during games. 

Brewery Tour: Cambridge Beer Company - Boston stop 2

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After Sam Adams and visiting friends, we headed up to Cambridge. Our first stop in Cambridge wasn't the brewery, but rather Lord Hobo. 

The Epic Beer Festival in town brought a bunch of beer enthusiasts together, as well as bringing many interesting beers to local bars. Lord Hobo is well known for having an impressive line up of drafts and bottles. They also were featuring a few lines that would rotate through the weekend with beers from the festival. We got to try the Meadowlark IPA from Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project, and a few things from Enlightenment Ales that were fantastic and I completely forget the name of. 

We got to talk to a few people working at Lord Hobo about their upcoming brewery in Wobern and their Boom Sauce IPA that has been advertised for a while now in Beer Advocate. They are still setting up the brewery, so it will probably be another two months or so before the first release.

After finishing our drinks, we headed down to the Cambridge Brewing Company. CBC came on my radar after reading about their Banryu Ichi, a sake beer hybrid. 

We made dinner reservations and didn't get a chance to actually tour their facility. The bar and restaurant are built around their brewery, so you can view parts of it from just about anywhere inside.

We started off with some sweet potato fries and apple cider aoli while we went over their beer list. We got a few tasters to stretch dinner out and to experience as much of CBC as we could. Our flights included the following:

Belgian Blonde- Pepper and almost a green grassy nose. Well balanced between the hops and yeast spices.

Machinery of the night- A 6.5% barrel aged and blended sour. Had an light oxidized oaky aroma, not a puckering sour, and finishes with roasted malt on the back end.

Kafka's Hat- A Simcoe hopped IPA 6%. A nice and very fresh IPA. Light but not quite floral hop character, that I thought would pair very well with onion dishes. 

Tripel Threat- 10% Belgian tripel. Very bready nose. Nice smooth malt texture that was almost creamy. A very solid example of the style.

Vienna Secession- 5.2% Vienna lager. This beer was all malt. The batch may have had a handful of hops in it and it finishes like a floral bread. Not a bad beer but not entirely what I expected from a vienna style lager.

The Grantchester Meadows- 4.9% gruit. Very herbal aroma with a malt backbone and a chocolate nuance.

Blunderbuss Barleywine- 13%. Smells slightly oxidized but still with a lot of hot alcohol. Malty upfront but finishes a bit hot. This would age well in a bottle but feels a little aggressive and young.

I had a nice pork chop for dinner and Lisa got the lobster ramen. Our tiny table could barely hold all the beers and our dinners.

They have a solid offering of food and beers. I could easily see us coming back here. Their experimental beers sound fascinating, I just wish we could have tried a few more of them. The Banryu Ichi hasn't been brewed "in a few years," according to our waiter. I think I will have to attempt one myself this summer. 

Cricket Bat to the Face Scotch Ale

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Years ago when I started brewing, I'd always take a few bottles over to my parents' house. This continued when  I moved away. My Mom doesn't drink beer and Dad sticks to his Labatt, though Dad would occasionally try to pawn my beers off on his friends.

That second hand feedback was always funny: "Why would you do that?" "Why does this taste like motor oil?" "Can I run my car on this beer?"

I did make some heavier beers back then. A lot of them sat around either in the basement from Christmas stashes, or in the beer fridge in their garage. Between random bottles left over at my parents and six packs that sat in my closet for a while, I discovered a beer that I would call my one true house beer.

Cricket Bat to the Face Scotch Ale.

The first incarnation of this was brewed back in September 2010. I remember it being a bit harsh to drink when I cracked the first few open around Halloween. I was, and still am, a big fan of Shaun of the Dead, which I may or may not have been watching while drinking said beer. Hence it's name. 

A few went up to my parents during the holidays, and a few got buried in my closet while I was brewing other beers. Come March 2011, my birthday rolled around and I started digging through my bottle collection to drink. Stumbled across a few remaining scotch ales and decided to go with it. And WOW! 

Over the six months it spent conditioning in the bottle it had turned into this magical drink of honey and sunshine. It was, at that moment in time, the best beer I had made in my brewing career (which was maybe two and a half years). I decided at that moment that I needed to make it again. A tradition was born. 

Every year in September I brew the beer to be ready for my birthday in March. I use each subsequent yeast generation on the next batch. Each batch is aged on scotch-soaked oak, which tends to change with what ever is in my bar at the time. Because of all of that, mixing up some specialty grains during the extract period, moving to different locations, water, the weather, and everything, each year has been vastly different. 

2011 didn't have the bright honey notes, but was a nice mellow ale. 2012 ended up having a few fusel notes that never faded, which I didn't realize until I compared it to the 2013 vintage at my last birthday party. The 2013 again had a nice oak character with mellow malts, but was still a big, full-bodied beer. 

In 2014, I stopped brewing extract and moved to full grain brewing. The 2014 Vintage CBTTF was the first iteration brewed all grain. It was also the first batch of my scotch ale to be kegged (we ran out of bottles). 

Today the keg was tapped. 

It pours a deep reddish brown with a decent head that dissipates after a minute or so.  It smells oaky with a little burnt caramel. When it warms up a little you can smell a bit of the alcohol.  There's a nice smooth caramel malt upfront that starts to get a little smokey with a noticeable oak but not quite peaty finish. The body is light which makes it very easy to drink- except it is 13.1% ABV.

I must say that it is far removed from the memory of the first "vintage," but it is mine. This is my birthday beer and I wouldn't have it any other way. The six month wait is always worth it. Hanging on to previous bottles and being able to do vertical tastings has really opened my eyes to how far I've come as a brewer. While I have never brewed anything besides the scotch ale with my house yeast, I think I'm going to build up a large batch soon to experiment with. 

Prost! Salud! Santé! カンパイ! Cheers! Here's to another year of brewing and life! 

Cricket Bat to the Face Scotch Ale 2014 vintage

  • 10lbs marris otter

  • 13 lbs 2 row

  • 1lb carapils

  • 2lbs crysal 40

  • .5lb white wheat

  • .5lb smoked malt

  • 2 oz Willamette for 60 minutes

  • Edinburgh Yeast or any malt forward yeast (2014 was brewed with gen. 5 house yeast)

Brewery Tour: Sam Adams - Boston stop 1

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Entrance to Sam Adams tour

This past weekend we ventured up to Boston. Winter still wasn't over, but we didn't let the weather deter our plans. We woke up early on Saturday for the morning mash in tour at the Sam Adams Brewery.

This is their only tour you can book tickets for, but keep in mind that it starts at 9:40am. None of the tours cost money, instead they take donations for local charities. Your ticket is a fresh label and you walk through a gutted tank to the brewhouse.

Start of the tour

The group was lead to a small room next to the barrel room. Here our tour guide Jessica gave us the background of the brewery and the usual ingredient show and smell. This was the first brewery tour I have been on where they tell everyone to take a few hop pellets and crush them by rubbing your hands together. After everyone is covered in hops we are lead back into the brew house. This is the smallest of their three breweries, the other two being in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The tour group seemed rather large for such a small brewery. In Boston they do more experimental beers, especially the collection stored in the Barrel Room.

After the brewing process overview, the fun begins: day drinking at 10am in a brewery. The tour group is lead into the tasting room pictured below. On one wall they have a frame with a bunch of their Great American Beer Festival medals, on the other pictures of Jim Koch and other brewers. Jessica described the process for evaluating beers as pitchers of Boston Lager were passed around to the group. Boston Lager is definitely not a corn-infused macro brew, but it will never be the first beer I reach for. The second of the three tastings was Cold Snap, a belgian wit. Middle of the road yeast profile for a wit with a lot of spices thrown at it. It ends up a little all over the place, but is still an approachable beer.

Tasting Room Bar

The morning mash in tour is known to have special beers at the tasting portion. For our third and final tasting we got to try the 26.2, a gose brewed for the Boston Marathon. Jessica described it as a gatorade beer. For the style it wasn't too salty, very smooth and mellow. I have to say it surprised me. I think it's one of the best beers they have made, aside from their sour line (and the utopias). 

Unfortunately the tour does not include going into the barrel room. You only get to view it through the window overlooking barrels and foeders. The tasting ends and you exit through the gift shop. They also point out that you can take your beer label down to a bar called Doyle's Cafe where if you order a Sam Adams pint, you get to keep the glass. 

All in all the early morning trip was worth it. The brewery is a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but they still make it clear that they are a giant in the craft industry. 

 

Brewery Tour: Mad Fox Brewing Company

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Entry to Mad Fox

Located almost in our back yard is a nice little brewery, Mad Fox. It has been about two years since we first visited, but only last week did we manage to make it to a brewery tour. Every first Saturday of the month they hold a few brewery tours open to the public. No reservation required but there are only about 15 spots. There is not a lot of room in the brewery itself. 

If these photos don't illustrate it well enough, we were packed wall to wall. Its a little cramped but very clean. They use a 15-barrel system and "brew to gravity" for their beers. They have 6 30-barrel fermenters and each beer is brewed one half at a time; giving them a chance to fix anything that may go wrong in the first half.

On our tour we got to hear about the sour beer we reviewed previously. As the story goes, one of their barrels went sour and they blended it with the rest of the batch to make the sour Diabolik. 

It was nice to finally see the brewery up close. As you walk into the building, behind the welcome desk, you are greeted by the bright tanks. In the dining room you are able to see the brewery through the windows. Along another wall of the dining room there are a few racks of barrels. 

The bar is a little different than most bars in the area as they have up to 6 cask ales. The cask ales are usually a little different than their normal line-up of beers, for example dry-hopped IPAs or traditional English ales. They typically have about 10 house beers on draft, advertised by the blackboards on the walls. Most drafts are available in growlers and we've been known to use them as gifts. 

Both the normal drafts and casks change fairly frequently as the place gets packed at times. The restaurant side makes great food, almost all from scratch. They even make their own ketchup. It's hard to go wrong with anything on their menu, I highly recommend brunch. They occasionally hold special events, such as the annual barleywine festival. Mad Fox is definitely worth checking out.

Mad Fox Brewing review: Oaked Diabolik Ale

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We went to Mad Fox for dinner this week and saw they were selling 22oz. bomber bottles of their first sour beer. Oaked Diabolik Ale is a 9% belgian sour saison, brewed with 100% pilsner and spalt hops, aged in oak barrels. 

 

Evan's Review:

Appearance- Nice clear golden color, head dissipated fast with a few lingering bubbles around the rim. 5/5

Smell- Bit of apple cider but slightly oxidized and a little sour. 3/5

Taste- Dry with a light fruity apple hint upfront. Not overly sour but tangy and more sour as it warms up. It finishes with a peppery and oaky finish. At room temperature the pilsner really comes through. 3.75/5

Mouthfeel- Not a lot of body for a 9% beer, but well carbonated. 4/5

Overall- Very accessible for a sour, fruity overtones and a light acidic edge. 3/5

 

Lisa's Review:

Appearance - Pale golden. Very clear for a sour. The head dissipated quickly.  5/5

Smell - I can definitely smell the sourness. Not a vinegary smell like some sours, but a nice, palatable funk. 3.5/5

Taste - This is not a sour that will make you pucker. It is a very drinkable sour. I taste a good wild, tangy sourness with hints of oak, pepper, and Belgian spice character presumably from the original yeast. 4/5

Mouthfeel - A pleasant, light carbonation adds to the drinkability. It's subtly astringent, but not unpleasantly so. 4/5

Overall - This is a drinkable sour with oak flavors and Belgian character. I would definitely drink it again. Great first sour release, Mad Fox! 4/5

 

 

Brewery Tour: 3 Stars Brewing

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Today marked the kick off of the 2015 Illuminati Reserve society at 3 Stars Brewing in DC. Mike McGarvey and Dave Coleman have been putting out great beers since founding 3 Stars in 2012. Located in the North East quadrant near Takoma in DC, I don't make it out there too often. In 2014 they offered a membership to their Illuminati club promising five special release beers through the year. They certainly delivered on that, as of posting this I have only opened two of the five, and they have been some of the best beers I've tasted out of their brewery.

Mike and Dave answering questions

The 2014 memebership helped 3 Stars buy their bottling line, which in turn basically made the members the guinea pigs for new bottles. Aside from the special Illuminati releases, 3 Stars released their Pandemic Porter and Peppercorn Saison in large format bottles in the DC area. I was surprised to find at today's event that they now have five different varieties bottled. 

The 2015 membership expanded from the original 200 members to 400 members, and is funding the expansion of their tasting room. The new tasting room will be build inside the warehouse, that is the brewery, and sounds like it will be a little more accommodating than the generic picnic tables uninsulated by anything currently. 

They had pulled a lot of barrels for tasting and blending. I am particularly interested in the Green Hat barrel aged beers they have, which I believe were filled with their Ghost white IPA. 

If I remember correctly (and if wrong I will correct this) they are running a 10 barrel brew house and have a number of 20 barrel fermentation tanks. They seem to know what to do with their barrels and how to blend their beers as proved by last years illuminati releases. I still think they have the best chocolate beer ever (Ebony and Ivory) though it was unfortunately not available tonight. They also announced tonight that they are starting a sour beer program this year. Other than announcing it, there was not very much information otherwise. I look forward to what they come out with, as they tend to have some of the most flavorful beers, usually big in body and ABV, in the DC metro area. 

I was a little disappointed to see nothing new on the menu tonight. Fairly standard tap line up, I had their Southern Belle, From Russia With Love, and their Peppercorn Saison. Southern Belle is an imperial brown ale with toasted pecans. It has a nice sweetness to it with a dry finish from the toasted nuts, I'd give it a 3/5. From Russia with Love is an imperial Russian stout and I think the only beer on the menu I had not previously had. It's a big 8.5% stout, boozy with a roasted finish another 3/5. I finished my time there with a peppercorn saison since it had been so long since last having it. I feel like they have toned down the peppercorn influence and made it a much better balanced beer. A lot of spice that compliments the saison yeast character, 3.5/5 overall. 

While their standard beers pack a solid punch of flavor, their barrel aged series from the Illuminati keep me excited for what they come up with next. Mike was saying they recently expanded the brewing staff, with four new hires, so it isn't just Dave and Mike coming up with beers. "Nothing is too crazy to at least try a batch" is what Mike said about talking about the creativity they had brought in and is very much inline with how I feel about brewing. 

3 Stars also has a homebrew shop, definitely worth the trip for supplies and or a pint. 

Brewery Tour: Troegs Brewery

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It was a very chilly weekend; the roads were treacherous and temperatures were so cold that the the wiper fluid lines on our car froze. After having to stop a few times to manually, clear off the windshield, we made it to Hershey, Pennsylvania, the current home of Troegs Brewery.

200 E Hersheypark Dr

Founded in '96 in Harrisburg, Troegs expanded to the current brewery in Hershey in 2011. Walking into the compound, the store is to your right and the tasting room is straight ahead. You check in to your tour at a desk in the store. You can also see their original homebrew set up in the store.

Original homebrew set up

We grabbed a drink before our tour started in the tasting room.  The main brewing kettles are situated behind the bar. The opposite side opens up to a deck overlooking the parking lot, which is obviously not open in the winter.  

Tasting room

Tasting room

The tour starts outside of the lab. Right off the bat you see how interconnected the brewing side is to the customer/drinking side. The brewery is part of the tasting room, and everything else in the process is able to be seen through the "self guided tour". This is the only brewery with two tours I've been to. 

Inside the lab

John, our tour guide, led us behind the bar into the grain room. They do a good job with keeping the dust down. John mentioned they spray the grains down to prevent dust from getting kicked up. 

John gave a nice brief overview of grain and how they impart different flavors, even passed around a few containers of grain. Munich malt seemed to be the main base malt used from the way John discussed everything. From here we are lead up a few steps in the grain room to the brew deck, overlooking the tasting room.

Tasting room

Brew deck with self tour in the background

The brew deck is where the magic happens. The main brewhouse is a 100 barrel system with the biggest hop back I've seen.

two floor tall hop back

hop addition for kettle

Towards the end of the brew deck is the boil kettle and the tool for hops. Here we got the normal spiel about bittering hops and aroma hops and how those contribute to flavor. We had a sample of citra pellets and cascade leafs passed around for people to smell. From the brew deck we walked down a flight of steps, through a door into the fermentation area. 

whirlpool and fermenters

The tasting tour (as this is called) has the lovely opportunity to taste beers straight out of the fermenter.

Jovial out of primary

After a talk about the differences between ale and lager yeast and the importance of temperature during the fermentation process, we arrive at a tasting table in front of three giant foeders.

John our tour guide and I believe flying mouflan fermenting in foeders

We got to taste Cultivator helles bock, Troegenator double bock, Jovial dubbel (out of primary), and Nugget Nectar ale. 

After the tasting we are led around to the first bottling line for corks and caging. Past this you can see the bright tanks which lead to the kegging line and the bottling and canning line. 

water tanks

cork and caging line

a few beer awards in the gift shop

The tasting tour ends back in the gift shop and you exchange your lanyard and safety glasses for souvenir pint glasses.

We went back to the tasting room to grab some food and drink before hitting the road to go back home. The tasting room has a bunch of long tables which is very german biergarten-like. Food is available at the far end of the tasting room. A variety of different dishes are available. They have the standard pretzel and brats, as well as substantial sandwiches, soups, and popcorn. We got a bratwurst and a venison open faced sandwich to split, which were both very good. 

The tasting room is also home to the scratch beer series, experimental small batches of beer only available at the tasting room. On tap for our visit was #172 Chocolate Stout. 

From the tasting room you can walk through a set of doors to go on the "self guided tour", which is a glass-lined hallway with information about the process of making beer. The self guided tour ends at the barrel room, which was closed with the lights off. 

The beers

Cultivator

Evan: Light bodied, light flavored, easy drinking lager. We were in a bit of a rush when we first got there and ordered. This through me for a loop until I realized it had 25 ibu and was a lager. A clean and unoffending beer.

Lisa: A light, refreshing beer. 

Troegenator

Evan: A much more robust lager. A bit on the dark side and clocking in over 7% with a nice malty backbone. 

Lisa: Mahogany in color with a malty sweetness, a delicious American double bock beer. 

Nugget Nectar

Evan: Hard to beat a fresh hoppy beer straight from the source. Almost juicy from the hops, it is full bodied and full flavored. 

Lisa: This is my favorite beer that Troegs makes. A hoppy amber ale that is amazing. 

Jovial

Evan: I had no idea they were making Belgian corked beer until this trip. Off of the primary it just tastes young. It was under carbonated but rather mediocre. We got a few bottles to take home, which were way better. Out of the bottle it has a fantastic belgian yeast character smell and flavor. Surprisingly though is has almost no body at all, easy to drink and not too filling. 

Lisa:  The Jovial we had from the fermenter on the tour tasted very young, very bland and not very Belgian. The bottle we had later tasted a lot more flavorful and Belgian. It still tasted light for a 7% Belgian Dubbel, but it was tasty.

Scratch #172 Chocolate Stout

Evan: Easy drinking and less filling than youngs double chocolate stout. Decent chocolate flavor without being overly sweet, still lets the roast from the stout through.  

LaGrave

We opened a bottle of LaGrave we got at the Troegs' store while writing this post. 

Evan: Light belgian yeast nose and a nice clear golden color. Doesn't drink like a true belgian tripel, more like an american triple pilsner. Tastes very light for 8% which is great but dangerous. It is a nice clean beer but not very belgian, though it has more body than Jovial. 

Lisa: This is good, but has less body than I prefer my Belgian tripels to have. Tastes lighter than 8%.

The start of sour beers

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Discovery

A few years back my brother and I made a trip out to California to visit our cousin. Our cousin decided to ruin us forever with the introduction to Russian River. We had heard of the beers and the brewery before, very few people haven't, but the brewery floored us. There was nothing like this beer near where we lived, especially the line of sours. I picked up a few bottles from Russian River and a few other breweries in the area before flying back to the east coast. 

Back on the east coast, Lisa and I brewed a nice golden saison that finished up in primary. Before kegging I separated a gallon to inoculate with dregs from Almanac Farmer's Reserve 3. This small batch sat in a closet for a while, mostly forgotten about  which is a major part of the souring process. Out of sight and out of mind makes the sour beer less painful to wait for while the magic happens. Just make sure your airlocks stay full.

I reached out to Almanac to ask them about making one of the most tart beers I had the pleasure of drinking, Jesse Friedman responded:

“The yeast character comes from a cocktail of wild bugs, using lactobacillus, pedio, brett and brewers yeast. We had several different strains in different barrels that we blended together to make the final product.

It won’t be quite the same, but if you wanted to try to make something like it at home, this would be a good starting point: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/brewing-sour-beer-at-home.html

thanks!

- Jesse ”

The way I framed my question I only asked about yeast. I had read Michael Tonsmeire's blog, The Mad Fermentationist, before and knew a bit about mixed fermentation for sour beers. I should have asked more about their souring process, as that is typically more important than the yeast used to make the base beer. This email was from 2013, in 2014 Tonsmeire published American Sour Beers which I highly recommend reading if you are going to start making sour beers.

This first sour beer of ours sat for 6 months before being sampled and bottled. It was completely different than the clean counterpart it originated from. Lighter in body and more effervescent with just enough acidity to give it a little tart edge. Those notes were from the first month or two after bottling, 6 months later the brett has taken over and its transformed again with more earthy tones not present before. 

Pipeline

Living on the opposite coast from Russian River makes it a little difficult to procure their beers in an easy way. Brewing challenges are fun and definitely interesting. The start of my sour pipeline began with a clone of Russian River's Consecration. This was a proper 5 gallon batch instead of a single gallon.  It had to endure a cramped tiny apartment with little temperature control, a mid summer move, and even more time to reach its desired flavor profile. 

RUSSIAN RIVER LEFT, MY CLONE RIGHT

RUSSIAN RIVER LEFT, MY CLONE RIGHT

It took almost a year and a half grain to bottle, but it was certainly worth it. Russian River's has a much more assertive sour bite where as mine was a little more mellow and not nearly as carbonated. If and when I brew this again I think I will add specific bugs instead of waiting on Roeselare to finally get around to souring. 

The continuation of the sour pipeline began as left over wort turned experiment. We created what I call "The Intergalactic Mother Funk." It was a few left over vials from the fridge as well as dregs from almost every sour beer we've had over the past year or so. Inspired by Sam Adams barrel room program, this new house culture has become the engine of the sour funk program. We have a few beers going now from this process which I will cover later when Volume 1: Variations on Red finishes carbonating and gets reviewed.

Saison du Sexy

Simple saison great as it is and a fantastic base for souring

10lbs pils

2lbs 2 row

1 oz st golding (celeian) 60min

1oz willamette 2 min

Belgian saison III WLP585

 

 

OG: 1.05

FG: 1.004

Abv: 6

IBU:16

Old World Mashing

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Lisa and I began brewing separately, but both of us began with extract batches of beer. Over the years, our process has changed to an all grain set-up.  We currently have a 10 gallon cooler for a mash tun, a 10 gallon kettle, and a Blichmann burner. A simple set up, but not always simple beers.

Lisa and I had the great pleasure of attending Oktoberfest this year, and while in Munich managed to tour the oldest brewery in the world, Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan.

Located just north of Munich in Freising, a quick metro ride away, Weihenstephan was easily the most informative brewery tour I have ever been on. One of our guides, Per, the man in the yellow vest pictured above, had been working at the brewery for a while and is going to school to be a Master Brewer. The school is conveniently located at the Weihenstephan complex, right next to the brewery. The guided tour is very open to pictures and Per said they really don't have any secrets. The most interesting thing we learned was that they decoction mash everything in their line of beers. Decoction mashing is taking a portion of your grains, boiling them, and adding them back to the main mash to reach the next temperature step. Originally this was done because grains of yesteryear were lacking in quality and this was a way to extract more sugar. However, modern grains are of higher quality, and typically this type of mash isn't required anymore.

On a homebrew scale this means that your brew day will be much longer than normal. I want to say there is a diminishing return on decoction mashing. I wouldn't mash this way for every single beer we make, but it does help produce nice results. Our second annibeersary was an Oktoberfest beer made by decoction mashing. I'd say it was one of our best beers ever and very similar to the german beers we were drinking there.

Inspired again by Weihenstephaner I am brewing a hefeweizen (full recipe below). Braukaiser has a fantastic write up on decoction mashing here. I mashed in low, around 100, for the acid rest. Pulled the first thick mash to boil and bring the main mash up to 138 for the protein rest. Pulled another thick mash for the saccrification rest at 148 and 158. Using a thin decoction to hit 168 and mash out. Before even getting to the boil my brew day is already 3 hours longer than a normal brew. Some things cannot be rushed.

It will cool overnight in the fermentation chamber while the yeast starter picks up. Aiming for a more banana than clove beer we plan on fermenting it open, with cheese cloth covering it. We'll have a review up once its done!

 

Hefeweizen

7 lbs Wheat malt

3 lbs Pilsner 

Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephaner Weizen

.5 oz Hallertauer for 60 and 20

ABV 5.5%

IBU 12

The Evolution of a Female Homebrewer Pt. 1: From Kits to Recipes

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As a woman that brews, you get used to the looks of sheer shock when you share that information, even from men who brew themselves. I suppose we are a rare breed? But I have never been a fan of the shocked reactions or the implicit assumption that always followed the shock that I must only brew because a man introduced me to it. As one old coworker put it when he found out, "Did your boyfriend get you into that?"

But I started when I was single. And I started for the love of beer, and with the hope that I could craft my own versions of the beers I loved. 

My palate has grown over the years, but when I started brewing I was predominately interested in hoppy beers and Belgians. I was absolutely in love with Troeg's Nugget Nectar, Affligem Blond, and every beer made by La Chouffe. But I didn't know anything about anything, so I started with an amber ale kit.

What followed was a mixed bag of trial and error. Some brews were raging successes in all ways, but there were also exploding bottles from too much bottling sugar and batches with off flavors because I had no control of the temperature in my apartment. It was also weird brewing in my apartment at times. There were three of us living in a two bedroom, with the dining room walled off with plywood to make a third bedroom. One of my roommates didn't like beer, didn't understand the appeal of making your own beer, and resented the afternoons I took control of the kitchen to brew. Sure, I made a huge mess at times, but I always cleaned it up and I liked the way our entire apartment smelled like warm grain when I was through. But there remained a strange tension around it. Once I caught her spraying my fermenting bucket in the communal closet with perfume, even though it had an airlock and didn't smell. After that, I fermented in my bedroom to keep meddling paws away from my beer and dreamed of a time when I'd have my own place where I could brew as much as I pleased. I definitely wasn't going to branch out from extract batches in that situation.

By the time I met Evan, I felt boxed in by kits. I had just moved into my own place, so I finally had the opportunity to branch out. I wanted more control over the beers I made, but I had never made my own recipe. I didn't have the equipment needed to go all grain. And I didn't have any friends who brewed and could give me advice. I began considering braving homebrew events, even though I was nervous about sticking out like a sore thumb as one of the few women in the room. But luckily fate intervened and I met Evan. 

When I first met Evan, I asked a million questions about his brewing process. He was brewing far more interesting beers than me: a peanut butter stout and jelly ale meant to be mixed together like a black and tan and an IPA with an insane amount of hops. When I asked why he put so many hops in the beer, he replied "Why not?" It was such a refreshing attitude about beer. So creative! He was already designing his own recipes and brewing outside of the box in the way I aspired to. 

The first beer I designed was a Nugget IPA. It was an extract brew with Maris Otter, 2 Row, 1 oz Warrior hops and 3 oz of Nugget hops. It turned out well, so I decided to branch out further. My next beer was a not-so-pale IPA with aromatic grains made entirely with Nelson Sauvin hops. Half of the batch was fermented normally, while the other half was fermented in secondary with a hefty amount of pineapple. Evan's creativity in brewing had rubbed off on me. I consider it one of the first major milestones in my evolution as a brewer.

 

Agent Nelson IPA

Extract recipe for 5 gallons

6.6 lbs Golden Light LME

3.3 lbs Golden Light DME

2 lbs Aromatic Grain

1 oz Nelson at 60

1 oz Nelson at 30

1 oz Nelson at 5

1 oz Nelson at 2

First a bit of history.

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I started brewing in 2008 after a friend introduced me to the concept and showed me the kegs of homebrew he and his roommates had. Honestly, I don't remember much of what I tried at his apartment, but the seed was planted. When a technical writing class assignment required me to create a brochure on a process, I chose brewing. Down the rabbit hole I went. It seemed easy enough, and if my friend could do it, why couldn't I? I found some old, unused brewing equipment in my parents' basement, ordered the missing parts and a stout kit, and began. My first brew was a half decent oatmeal stout, although I learned the hard way that plastic miller lite bottles do not make for a great way to age beer. 

Fast forward a few years later: I bring a couple of my homebrews to a housewarming party. My friends hosting the party introduce me to a girl who also brews and who brought a few of her homebrews to the party. I have her try my 50 shades of Greyskull IPA, continuously hopped with a pound of Sorachi Ace in a 5 gallon batch. (See recipe below. She hasn't let me live it down yet). She has me try an amber ale that was made with the wrong yeast. (She wasn't very happy with it.) We hit it off that night, and 3 years later we are still brewing together. During the past three years, our brewing process and beer knowledge has evolved. We've gone from extract batches to all grain, as well as coast to coast and abroad to learn more about beer. I feel we have come leaps and bounds from when we first started brewing together, and even farther from where I started alone. 

That brings us to today: the first of February. We live together now and recently built out our keezer to run 3 taps. The beer garden in our dining room is now open. This month I've decided to challenge myself to only drink alcohol we have made. This shouldn't be a particularly difficult challenge, as we have five kegs partially full of beer and the other half of the keezer filled with various bottles and cans. 

 

 

The larger challenge is preparing for the DC Homebrewers Cherry Blossom competition. I am currently fermenting a small batch of a cherry blossom lager, brewed last weekend. Stay tuned: more on the lager and brewing to come soon.

-Evan 

50 Shades of Greyskull IPA (2012)

For using up a remaining pound of hops as well as meeting new people

5 Gallon Batch

13 oz sorachi ace hops leaf, 1 oz every 6 min, 3 oz dry hop

10 lbs 2-row or other base malt (extract: 6 lbs light dry extract)

1 lb cara munich

1 lb carapils

San Diego Super Yeast WLP090 

OG: 1.065

ABV: 6.7 - 7%