Beer America

A recent foray into the upper-Midwest United States of awesome beer garnered the usual choice fatigue that comes along with such great options.   However this was a special trip  to a special place where liquor stores dot the landscape like that of an expelled colony of ants. I was prepared to spend on what my eyes feasted upon.  Caution was thrown to the competitively priced winds, undaunted by national restrictions and penny pinching.  Some old favorites are in there, some new researched bottles and then some that just said drink me.  My purchases came from several different stores, predominantly Blue Max Liquors which is the best beer store in Minnesota, bar none.  Next is Haskalls, which is a chain and meh, but usually they have seasonals in the South Metro because nobody goes there for beer when Blue Max serves the seeker. The Liquor Barrel in SLP had a few unseen imported rarities that I was stoked to pick up unexpectedly. And finally, my usual keg provider, Zipp's Liquor on East Franklin Ave. 

Cans

From L-R
Surly: Cynic Ale - a great saison summer beer with a belgian yeast and a black pepper finish.  Soo good.

Surly: Furious - Look, there's no way you go to the twin cities and not drink this. Grapefruit crammed right up the wazoo. If you havent had this, its time to get Surly.

Tallgrass: 8-bit - I love most of what this brewery has done, especially having done it in my people's state of Kansas.  If it sucks, the can is to blame.

Tallgrass: Oasis - This beer is awesome.  Super malty ESB, even maltier than Furious which really does a seemingly unrivaled job of it.  When it comes to ESB, this is my choice.  We can talk about Red Racer only after talking about Oasis from Tallgrass. 
   
Bottles

Half Pints: Queer Beer 2012 - This is not from the US, but it does represent a transnational celebration of the Queer movement in all shapes and sizes - even the dry sectors.  This beer is very much a shandy that has undergone some consternation, more so for its flavoring.  Last year's benchmark used raspberry juice to an unsatisfying effect.  This year, raspberry extract was used.  It does have the aroma of more 'fruity fabulousness' but it could still be more more more.  But, it is what it is and im proud to drink it.


Yeastie Boys: Digital IPA - This came highly recommended by the fellow beer drinker from his insightful post at the Liquor Barrel.  Cheers.

Schells: Maifest - Thanks Brian (happy birthday), for turning me onto this one.  I do like me some Summit Maibock, but this does a hop lover a bit more service. Love you Minnesota.

North Coast: Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout - The dopest Imp Stout I have had.  Major points for using an accurate historical figure whom equals the darkness of this beer. 

Verhaeghe-Vichte: Duchess de Bourgogne - boom, my favorite Flander's Red Ale.  Sour like i like.

Bombers

New Belgium: La Folie (Lips of Faith Series) - This ol'boy set me back a piece, but after falling in love with sour ales, and knowing how well New Belgium is at getting me as a beer drinker, I went all in.  However, now it will go all closet for as long as I can hold out (1-3 years already in oak barrels).

Breckenridge: Extra ESB - After reading a pretty positive review of this in All About Beer mag May 2012 , it looked good enough to try.  Will have to set it down with a crew and run the ESB gauntlet.


Rogue: Younger's Special Bitter Ale - Again, it scored well and im hoping to expand my palate in that style.  Rogue who?

Unibroue: Quelque Chose - I'm not sure if my discouragement at the fact that this Canadian beer (and many other Unibroue's) is more readily available in a country other than where I live in Canada is warranted.  But seriously, lets get on this people.  A kriek/brown cross reserve, this cage and cork 750ml looks to be a beer to let age (best by date is 2025!).

Coney Island: Steel Hop Lager -  Ive seen these around far too long to not have an opinion on them.  Yes the graphics are in your face, yes they scream judge me, and yes they may in fact be all hype.  But this one boasts Steel Hops!

If you go somewhere, drink what they drink.  But when you leave somewhere, take what you can't get here.
    

The Turn

Have you ever had an infection in your beer? An introduction of a living organism that was not supposed to be there? One so foul, so wretched, that it ate all your digestible sugars and gave no love other than its toxic gas? Expelling all across your upper lip when you lean in for a big draw? No?

The creation of a sour ale is about harvesting that wild beast which subverts the standard beer through guile and craft. In the fermenter today I have a homemade batch of Berliner Weisse which calls for this greasy intruder to be admitted, no, invited, into the young beer.

To begin, Berliner Weisse is a German style wheat ale that is generally low in alcohol-by-volume and is very light in color and sour in taste. The ingredients for this batch are as follows: 2 parts wheat malt, 3 parts 2-row domestic barley, 1oz of Liberty hops, homemade lacto-bacillus and a general ale yeast.

Historically, sour ales were naturally inoculated with wild yeast in open fermenters left outside, on rooftops, in barns, bakeries, abbeys and now my kitchen. These wild yeasts are all around us, at all times, and will gladly take a free lunch. However this is not going to produce a great beer all the time. If you have ever had an infected batch, that is the example of why wild yeast or bacteria is not always a welcomed helper. But beer styles are a funny thing, a brown ale with a hint of sour is totally uncalled for and would be rejected by a beer judge, however a Flander's red ale that tastes like sour gummy worms is applauded and marveled at.

Here's how it works: A week before brew day, I prepared a small jar with crushed 2row domestic and 130F degree water, placed tin foil over top and let it work with whatever happened to be trapped inside. Mold began to form within 2 days and a gray pellicule arrived by day 5. This recipe was a no-boil batch, meaning instead of sparging from the mash-tun into the brew kettle, the wort was run directly into the fermenter. Grains were doughed at 150F for 75 minutes with the introduction of boiled Liberty hop tea. Sparging up to the 5.5 gallon mark on the carboy and waiting to cool took much longer than it should have due to the difficulty of reducing temperature for pitching range without a wortchiller. Once cooled the moldy liquid from the lactobacillus starter was introduced. My kitchen smells awful.

Currently the brew is bubbling and expelling funk, in 2 days I will introduce an ale yeast that will help digest the bulk of the sugars that are undigestible for the lacto. This is intended to also impart estery flavors beyond the soured characters working right now. Many homebrew shops sell a cultured lacto strain in smackpack form. However, the great adventure of homebrewing is about utilizing the context in which you brew. This batch will taste kinda like my apartment, if you think thats gross then you're not invited.

Another option for making a style such as this and many other great sour ales is to get acidulated malt, or make your own. Instead of utilizing the yeast to make the souring quality, the malt itself is left to stand in warm temperatures for natural yeast to make it turn. Then it is added to the boil or mash-tun depending on your setup.






Similarly to my Gueuze, I will be waiting in sheer anticipation for when this brew can be tasted. For a closing image, I provide you with the following. One of the more pleasurable things to do, now that it's warm out, is two-maning the mash-tun over to the compost bin. We dribbled all the way there.

Manitoba

Over the last two months I have been working on a writing project that has brought me to places I have never been before. Unpacking the historical landscape of this city and finding remnants of its past is very much like an Indiana Jones enterprise, without the inherent colonial tomb stealing.
Im pretty stoked on these tasting glasses from now defunct Manitoba breweries. You may call me out as a hoarder/collector of things I don't need, but honestly I have been buying these with the flights in mind. My plan is to build flight decks for sets of 4. These flight decks will be in the shape of swords, I hope.

Black Galaxy

Gentlemen, frankly I am amazed we made it to the brewery on time for the Saturday morning release. And I don't think its because we took it easy during our respective Friday nights either. A testament to our will for one-off releases.

So here's the lineup, even before the door opened, to score Half Pints Black Galaxy Cascadian Dark Ale. A great batch that has somehow managed to stay around the apt. longer than two weeks. We got our limit, but there definitely were a handful of those who did not (gauging by first hand account and the unpopulated review board on BeerAdvocate). Those empty handed might want to try Lethbridge though. If you missed out and would like to trade for any Gueuze I have not had before, feel free to contactme.

J to L

As mentioned in the previous post, I had prepared a chocolate porter for the first time in my brewing history. I was very pleased with the results and will definitely be using chocolate in future batches and in different combinations. After a success one tends to try and keep going on that path. The past two weeks have seen three different batches brewed using first time ingredients largely from the produce and herbal sections at Organic Planet.

As owner/brewmaster of Dogfishhead Brewery Sam Calagione would say, 'why brew normal beer?' Although he is both older and wiser in the craft, sometimes you also want to make sure you are brewing what people generally refer to as beer, so that you can be reminded that when it comes down to it, you can make a style as intended. So this latest activity in the brewery has produced one creative weizen, one daring schwarzbier and one good old fashion brown ale.

These homebrew concoctions were labeled in the J to L spectrum of the alphabet so in keeping with problematizing linear progression, lets start with L:

Lowbush Vice
- Creative
Made as a hopeful attempt at an untroubled segue from winter to spring; this weiss batch utilized a couple tubs of wheat malt that had been kicking around the brewery for far too long. Lowbush berries - referring to the height of the organic blueberry shrub - were added after a standard boil and allowed to steep for 30 minutes. The longer the steeping lasts the more aromatics the blueberries will produce. Weiss style guidelines call for slight fruity characters in the nose and estery notes in the aroma.

When using fruit such as this in your beer, it is important to prevent the skins from breaking and keeping all amounts of pectin out of the wort. Mind you, the inside of the blueberry is where the flavor is, but if making a mead or fruit wine you would then need to uncomplicate the yeast's job by chemically stabilizing the amount of acids present, and that is far too much chemistry work for this first shot at blueberry beer.

I'm not sure if the originator of this recipe (which I tweaked from homebrew favorites) threw out the blueberries after steeping or not, but it would be ridiculous if they did. These are freakin good blueberries still...having said that I now have a couple bags of frozen blueberries that smell like syrup and are covered in hops so choose wisely how you reuse these.

All in all, this Vice has received good reviews from those who have tried it in the tap room. The remaining 2 gallons are bottle conditioning till that beckoning sunny spring day.

Licorice Lager
-Daring
Unfortunately there are no pictures of this foray into schwarzbier other than one of the secret ingredient in question = Licorice Root.

This batch sums up the creative nature of homebrewing for me. I found a recipe for a dark lager, added licorice root shavings in the last 12 minutes of the boil and an additional can of expired pre-hopped malt extract for a pilsner (I got it in the discount bin at Brewers Direct - which I don't recommend doing unless you are experimenting). Before I go any further, I want to mention that licorice has many great medicinal qualities...it also is used as a laxative. Drink under advisement.

Schwarzbier is a German black lager, meaning it has an srm (standard reference method) count near the porter end of the spectrum but the body of a lager. With any lager, there are particular conditions the brewer has to pay attention to. The biggest problem for me was keeping the lagering temperatures constant. I placed the carboy out into the walkway of my fire-escape when it was still -10C outside. However, the days grew warmer and the nights grew shorter, and the lager was not conditioning as it likes. Anytime you end up with temperature fluctuation you will get your yeast to react poorly. Generally, they release diacetyl which has a buttery taste to it, this batch produced more like a septic tank smell. The flavor is fantastic and made for a very quaffable beer, but the aroma was ungodly. After about 20 minutes of sitting in the glass the odor dissipated. I'm hoping this secondary fermentation stage at room temp will help expel some of that nastiness.

Just a note, lager yeast will ferment at ale temperatures, but the proof of lager yeast is their ability to produce good clearing beer at the near 0 C temp range. Right now, it's a wait and see policy.

Jupiter
-Old Fashion
This all-grain brown ale was inspired by the awesomeness that is the greatest planet (besides our own) in the solar system. Its fantastic and perceptible trip in the night sky during the months of February and March (in conjunction with that of Venus) has been both thought provoking as well as a silent companion on night marches. As seen at left, the brew produced a violent storm as if evoking the gas giant within my kitchen.

My best beers have been variations on Papazian's all-grain recipes from his seminal text, The Joy of Homebrewing. This little gem is no different. Still an issue with all-grain brewing in the apartment, but this time, it was slightly easier as my two brewpots are large enough to contain just over 5 gallons of wort, as opposed to three smaller pots just under.

Step mashing method was used for the bulk 2-row pale malt, black patent malt, chocolate malt, and 120-lovibond crystal malt as the specialty grains. Fuggles for boil and Goldings for aroma make this classic brown ale as good as I have tasted. One new addition to this style which I seem to make better than any others - not saying a whole hell of a lot - was the 1tsp of gypsum to the mash. When making regional styles of beer, the brewer must account for contextual flavors that go beyond the flare notes, in this case its replicating the waters of Burton upon Trent, a historic brewing
region of England. The traditional brewing waters of England have a lower ph level than my tap water or even the Red River can produce. An addition such as this seems to emphasize the desire to meet a standard because not living in England or back in the early 1800s before brewing water was treated is to recognize that this type of beer is historical, and must adhere to historical factors.

And this fun picture is what was left over after the primary transfer. Mmmm...

Sláinte!

The past 6 months in the Brewery

Over the past 6 months, I managed to see a few things and brew a few things. Most brews were standard and uninspiring. When I look back and see the lack of photos taken, I am reminded that the everyday brewing processes were once so new that they required documentation at every turn. Now the process is just part of the everyday. I blame the kegging for this. You begin to fill the need to just fill the thing and have something on hand. Meanwhile the bottling process is greatly decreased (for the good) but the ratios of bottling sugars begin to vary due to the different amounts of young beer left from a 3gal keg.

The image above is not the result of beer (or at least i'm not ready to admit so), but the solution involved beer!

Winter brings cold, and when its cold, the brewer brings out the darkness to counter the white. Bock's are high powered lagers with dark characters but often more on the brown to red side. This batch to the left is the fixins for Mr. Spock, an ale version of a bock. After trying to cultivate a lager strain that died on me before it hit the yeast starter, I had to use what was on hand. After three different strains of yeast, it started to bubble. Rapidly, music to the ears.

Although using multiple types of yeast can start a small war in your fermenter, when you have nothing else to lose with a batch, just go for it. Indicators that other strains are dead will help cut down on this conflict which results in off flavors in the batch. Pointers such as no activity in the bubbler, sandy to muddy textured sediment at the bottom of the carboy, and a lack of colored layering in the sediment. White layers are healthy and chunky sediment is a good sign as well.

This is a concoction based loosely on a recipe in Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing. His Sparrow Hawk Porter was the adequate base for what I am calling Dark Port Hawk. Combining the darkness of Black Patent Malt, Dark LME, Unsweetened Bakers Chocolate and Mayordomo Vanilla Hot Chocolate Cubes from Oaxaca Mexico, I am expecting great things.



This is the first time for me using chocolate and after reading several suggestions to use cocoa powder, im assuming the chocolate will melt and dissolve and not stick to the pot. Heres to experimenting.









Update! As of May 26th, the Dark Port Hawk took 1st Place at the Do-It-Yourself Brew-It-Yourself Fest!

Hot Stuff! Chili Beer

I had heard of people making chili pepper beer before and thought it would be fun just to say I've done it and to grasp what that flavor would impart to beer. My local liquor stores are quite bad when it comes to getting a diverse range of craft brews, particularly those that are common place throughout the US. Only this summer did they receive Rogue's Chipotle Ale

However what I was going for was not just to impart the roasty quality of that particularly daring ale, but to also see what sort of firepower I could add. My recipe research said that Serrano peppers or small chili peppers would be best. However, as mentioned elsewhere - I will take what I can get - my local organic grocer only had Anaheim peppers. Honkin huge ones!

The brew itself was a recipe for an Extra Special Bitter as something about a good English hop with dry bitterness combined with a subtle heat seemed to make sense for my brain and palate. The peppers were added to the secondary fermentation after about 5 days of rigorous primary fermentation. As shown above, I took 5 large Anaheim peppers and removed the stems. I roasted them in the toaster oven for 12 minutes until the kitchen started to smell roasty. The skin was soft and starting to brown slightly. The purpose of the baking is to both kill any unwanted organism that could be on them as well as to impart that roasted flavor. Once cooled I cut them in half and dropped them into the carboy. Racking on top was the easy part, racking off after 9 days however was very hard as seeds and skin had come off and were sticking to the siphon.

As expected, I had to hold the carboy upside down while cleaning it and use a knife to try and spear the peppers individually to then pull them through the opening. It was...a lot of work.

This beer is quite good actually just as a beer. But like many of my beers that have an unusual theme to them, you wouldn't want to drink Hot Stuff back to back. It is a nice sipping ale that has an obvious burn to it on the way down, and for those who suffer from heartburn, I wouldn't greet pint after pint with anything other than milk of magnesia.

115th Dream Hopbursted

Eventually, my addiction to hops comes back around. I went with a more hop heavy kit than I have brewed before, 115th dream hopbursted IPA from Northern Brewer. The name for the kit comes from the amount of time to boil and the use of a technique that ensures extreme Flavor/Aroma presence from your hops, known as hopbursting. For a good little explanation of why hopbursting is an effective method to imbue this quality to the wort, see this fellows blog.

Pictured above is that addition of dextrose which came with the kit and was added after the boil was complete. The additions of soluble sugars for this recipe were intended to create and Imperial style which has higher alcohol levels as well as just more of everything. The 1 pound of hops should be the dead giveaway. My major complaint, as with most homebrew supply stores and their kits, they don't always give you all the ingredients so you don't really know what it is your tasting. In this case, the massive amount of hops for bursting were called "hop blend".

Yeast starter was applied as instructed, because of the massive amount of sugars which didn't dissolve properly due to the large blanket of boiled hops that laid on the surface of the wort. For this reason, my gravity was a bit under weight, but the yeast tore right through it all. Just take a look at that bunghole! Primary is oh so messy.

On the whole, the kit was just so-so. Very heavy hitting ingredients bill, but taste and aroma wise it could have been much simpler and more effective, as well as cost efficient. But we aren't in it for that, are we.