A New Homebrew Competition

For as long as I've been homebrewing, there's never been a shortage of excuses to get together and share beer.  While weekend nights at someone's house are always fun, local homebrew competitions among friends take that comaraderie to an elevated level.  There's been various incarnations over the years.  Red Off! 1, Red Off! 2 and Red Off! 3 really started the whole thing, getting bigger and bigger each year.  The Brown Ale Competition last year brought another large group of homebrewers into the mix.  Now, a new competition has been devised with a special twist.  Here's the way it went down:

1.  Participants selected their two preferred BJCP styles and submitted them via email.  

2.  All of the different styles were placed in a container and chosen from.  

3.  The selected style provides the parameters for the next homebrew competition.  

The whole rationale behind this method is that styles submitted by multiple brewers would have a better chance of being selected.  However, there's also the possibility that a challenging or unpopular style could be selected, adding some intrigue to the process.  Lewy came over a few nights ago with some Mission beer to share and we made the selection.  A date for the competition hasn't been set yet, but we're shooting for late April.  See the selection video below (that's my daughter, Claire, picking the style):

  

Senne Valley Saison

The weather has been weird lately.  It's either hot and sunny with clear cloudless skies, or overcast and rainy-no in between.  When you wake up each morning, you never know if you'll need your umbrella for walking through a downpour or for shade at the beach.  I'm going to spin the wheel and make a saison and hope for more heat to assist in a hot fermentation.  I put my last saison outside, wrapped in a towel in the hot sun in July last year, and the taste did not disappoint.  For this one, I want to do something a little different.  Here's the recipe for Senne Valley Saison.

Brasserie Cantillon - Senne Valley

When I first started thinking about souring beers at home, I bought a vial of White Labs Brettanomyces Bruxellensis, figuring that I would use it to make an all Brett-fermented beer of some sort.  It's been sitting in the fridge for the past few months, waiting for some attention.  While I still think that an all Brett beer would be interesting, I plan to pitch the neglected vial into secondary when I transfer this saison off the primary yeast cake.  The Brett should impart a clear mild sour flavor that increases with age and dries the beer out nicely, which goes well with traditional saison style parameters.  I'm hoping that the combination of the Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast and the Brett will make for a very complex and interesting result, with the 3711 enhancing the spiciness of the grains of paradise and helping some of the characteristic of the Czech Saaz shine through for a different twist.

Easy Inspiration for A New Beer

Fermentation chamber with chalkboard painted doors.

With my fermentation chamber nearing completion, I don't have to try hard to find motivation to brew.  Last Tuesday, Lewy came by with a bottle of his Portsmouth Kate the Great clone beer.  The hype surrounding Portsmouth's KTG offering is at a level inhabited by a select few other craft beer releases (Pliny the Younger and Dark Lord come to mind) and Lewy's clone did not disappoint in the least. On the contrary, it made me want more.  So I decided to take the plunge, test my patience and make a clone of it myself.

Dark and roasty with a confluence of aged flavorings that are at once familiar and hard to identify with the right words.  There's apparent oak and bourbon flavors, some vanilla, currant and burnt wood as well.  It's not malty and retains some residual sweetness that adds to the warming provided by the high ABV.  Lewy based his recipe on the information provided by the brewer, Tom Mott, and publicized by way of the Home Brew Talk forum.  I did the same but made some adjustments based on recommendations made by The Mad Fermentationist.  I simplified the hop additions added additional chocolate and roasted malts and selected WLP060 American Ale Yeast Blend to give it a more lager-like finish without compromising the things I like about WLP001 CA Ale.  Click below to see my recipe:

KTG   

After primary fermentation, I plan to age the beer on oak cubes that have been soaked in bourbon in much the same way that Lewy did.  Cheers to waiting 6+ months for satisfaction!

The Craft of Stone and a New Brew Session

This Christmas, my parents bought me a hard-bound copy of the new book detailing the rise of Stone Brewery as one of the most important craft brewers in the world.  The book, The Craft of Stone Brewing Co., provides a history of the company, highlights its philosophical tenets, and generously presents a wide range of information about their products, including recipes for both beer and food.   Stone is definitely the most visible and commercially successful player in the San Diego craft beer scene, and their pioneering work with hop forward beers is impossible to ignore or discount.  They do some really interesting things with food, as well, and they have a beautiful bistro/brewery in North County that is a destination in and of itself for tourists interested in all things San Diego and especially those with a love of good beer.  Despite their unbelievable success, I often find myself gravitating to other local beers instead.  Perhaps it is the ubiquity of their product in San Diego, or maybe I just want to support the smaller brewery that looks up to Stone and others as they attempt to innovate and carve a niche for themselves in what seems to be an increasingly convoluted yet incredibly forward-thinking industry.  Regardless, I was excited to read their book and get a renewed sense of how craft beer in San Diego trod toward national prominence.

Written largely in first-person and with a casual voice, the content of the book belies its sophisticated packaging.  Overall, the book comes off as a sort of a giant advertisement for Stone Brewing Co., and I don't usually have much patience for being sold, but it did have some useful and enetertaining pieces.  Part 1 begins with a basic lecture on beer genetics and history for the unexperienced that can be quickly thumbed through by most anyone with a serious interest in beer.  

This is followed by Part 2, a portion dedicated to Stone's history and growth which takes the form of a variety of stories and anecdotes connected to the brewery's rise within the craft beer movement.  You get a chance to read about the philosophy that inspired Stone's founders and ever-increasing number of employees and devotees to continually push the envelope and challenge consumer palettes.  This section of the book tells the company's story through a variety of lenses and details their numerous successes both as a business and as a brewery.  Part 2 ends with a detailed rundown of all of the beers that Stone has created both on its own and collaboratively.  

Part 3 of the book shares recipes and culinary knowledge from Stone's flagship restaurant and presents some advice about glassware and food pairings.  The final pages of Part 3 presents recipes shared by Steve Wagner and Greg Koch, scaled to home brew proportions.  I spent most of my time looking through this section and decided to brew my first smoked beer based on Stone's Smoked Porter recipe.  I decided to base my smoked porter on their recipe, but made some changes to hops and grains based on my personal taste preferences.  Stone's original recipe is as follows:

Stone Smoked Porter

10 pounds 8 ounces 2 Row

1 pound, 2.5 ounces Crystal 75

10.7 ounces Chocolate

4.9 ounces Peat Smoked Malt

.71 ounces Columbus @ 90

.60 ounces Mount Hood @ 0

.5 tsp Irish Moss @ 15

White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale Yeast

I made this beer on January 9, 2012.  The biggest change I made flavor-wise is the use of Cherry Wood Smoked Malt instead of the Peat Smoked Malt in the original recipe.  I'm hoping to obtain a mellow smoked flavoring in the final product.  You can see my full recipe here.

Fermentation Chamber Build

Having a fermentation chamber is the ultimate dream.  A device that lets you brew whatever beer you might like and wag your finger in the face of ambient temperature.  I used to pretend to be happy making just saisons in June, July and August. I convinced myself that off flavors in beers that were fermented inside my house in the high 70s F during most of the rest of the year were acceptable.  Everything came out pretty good, right?

No more.  My buddy Lewy, ever-vigilant and ever-creative when it comes to brewing acquisitions, set me up with a used commercial refrigerator that I've started to convert into a fermentation chamber.  I picked it up with the help of my dad, brother, and his future father-in-law in drizzling rain this morning and started getting it ready to make my yeast happy.  I attached casters and spent a few hours cleaning it out and disinfecting everything. Then I painted the outside green.  I plan to paint the glass doors with chalkboard paint to inhibit light and allow me to keep track of what's going on inside (it should hold 8+ carboys!).  I'll also need to build a shelf or two to allow me to use the space more effectively-I guess I'll start thinking about configurations.  

Outside painted, waiting to paint the doors.

Now I just need a new beer recipe to try out in it...

Belgian Base to Play With

One of the things that makes brewing sour beers harder than Saccro styles is the time factor.  It's a little scary thinking that the beer that you're brewing one day won't be right (or even palatable) for years to come.  My experiences with aging meads and barleywines have been successful in the past, but I always just bottled them and set them aside.  The sours take up carboy space and that's harder to get comfortable with.

I've always been a big believer in planning far ahead and making beer in excess (for all the right reasons). I've gotten into the habit of thinking about my next beer immediately after I finish a brew day.  So I spent some time thinking about some possible base recipes for my next sour beer and decided to borrow the Belgian Pale Ale recipe shared by Jeff at Bikes, Beer and Adventures.  I made some minor adjustments, using a different yeast strain and changing up the grain bill a bit.  I still have so much to learn about brewing sours that it seemed like a good way to go.  Jeff uses it with some apparent success and I'm hoping to do the same.

I scaled the recipe up to seven gallons so that I would have 5 gallons in a traditional carboy and another two gallons for dregs beers (#3 and #4), like before.  The brew day went smoothly, with Lewy helping out (and ditching work) as has become customary.  I mashed at 152 degrees F for a solid hour and ended up hitting my gravity and volumes perfectly and was really happy with the color as it came out of the chiller.  Here's what I plan to do with the wort:

Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueze and Orval bottle dregs

5 Gallons

Pitch Antwerp Ale Yeast (WLP510) and then consider dosing with Brettanomyces Bruxellensis at some point during secondary fermentation or when conditioning.  The amount of time that it ends up aging depends on how I use the Brett, I suppose.

Dregs #3

Pitch the bottle dregs from a 350 ml bottle of Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueze and let it ferment out and age for as long as necessary (whatever that means-I don't really know yet). 

Dregs #4

Pitch the bottle dregs from a 350 ml bottle of Orval and do the same as above.

Regardless and perhaps in spite of the outcome, the experiment continues.  Waiting is an exercise in patience and patience is a virtue, right?  I never really saw myself as particularly virtuous, but I'm happy to wait. 

  

A Beer Lullaby

My son Ben is two, and he is starting to assert himself.  While I encourage the growth of his personality and want him to seek independence, that order of self-awareness comes with a side dish of defiance that can be hard to swallow as a parent.  He's old enough to understand what I say (Stop riding the dog!" or "Don't put your finger there, just let me finish changing your diaper"), but not to the point where consequences are significant.  I guess I never realized that Time Out doesn't work unless you have a way to make the person stay there.

One of the most reliably contentious moments between us happens at bedtime.  I imagine (hopefully) that something similar occurs in most households with single digit age children.  The basic tenets are the same for most families, I think.  Parents want the kids to go to sleep so they can do anything but clean up messes, answer questions and mediate conflicts.  The kids want to stay awake where all the action is.  Invariably, the nighttime routine becomes increasingly complicated as parent and child vie for precious minutes, with a variety of techniques being employed on both sides (stalling, threats, fits, flat out lies, coddling, bargaining, etc.).

Kiddie potty on the left, dregs beers on the right. 

The other night I was 25 minutes into Ben's night time routine and I was starting to lose it.  My wife Erin and I have somehow wordlessly agreed that she lays with him while I tell our daughter, Claire, a story.  Then, when she says goodnight for the final time and closes his door, I intercept him each time he gets up crying and turns on the light to try and open the door and leave his room.  Sometimes he'll get up once, but usually it takes me 4+ attempts to get him to stay in bed and eventually fall asleep.  This night, I had been basically standing at his door or forcing him to lay down while he screamed for close to a half hour.  I had gone into his room for the tenth or eleventh time and decided to give in and lay with him.  As I was laying there humming to him I heard a gurgling sound.  I piqued my ears to hear it again and sure enough, 30 seconds later the gurgle vibrated my eardrums.  I couldn't help but smile as I rubbed Ben's back and willed him to sleep.  I've been fermenting my two dregs beers on a high shelf in his closet-it was the only place in the house that something (kids, temperature, dog, movement) wouldn't disturb them.  Their check valves were calling back and forth to one another, singing a calming lullaby to me, and reminding me to step away from the ledge and relax.  By the time these thoughts had finished forming in my mind, Ben was asleep.  I crept out quietly and closed the door, not wanting to disturb the uncommon peace that had formed within
.