Dude at my work ‘Hey, I here you make some pretty good beer?’
Me “Yeah, I make all sorts of shit.’ Dude ‘I’d like to try some sometime. Can you bring me in a can sometime?’ Me ‘OK, what style do you normally drink’ Dude ‘Oh, just regular, you know Bud.’ Me ‘OK, but I don’t really brew that style. I’ll try to bring you in something lighter that I make that you might like.’ Dude ‘OK because I don’t really like those darker styles like Lager, I just like regular beer.’ Me ‘OK, I’ll try to bring in something you’ll like sometime.’
Guess I’ll never be bringing him a can of my regular homebrew – lunk-head.
This past weekend I had my first trip up to Boston in over 10 years. The last time I was there was for the Phish New Year’s Eve run of 1996 – I have fond memories of wearing Birkenstock sandals in the middle of a blizzard, staying at a relative of a friend with way too many people in such a small place. Ahhh, what a great time.
Fortunately for me, I had a great time this time too, and I actually got to see some of the city this time. This year I went up with the five lovely people above: Jody, Dave, Karen, Heather, and Paul. From what I gather, JDH&P have gone up to Boston annually for the past couple years, I think it was all originally based around going to a Red Sox game at Fenway Stadium. So, this year Karen & I were asked to join the crew on their annual pilgrimage to Boston. We made reservations at the exclusive Omni Parker House right in the middle of downtown. The OPH is a historic building and the originator of the Boston Cream Pie (my favorite). The hotel was very nice, but because of its age the rooms were smaller than I would have preferred. Because of the location of the hotel using the public transportation or walking wherever we went was a snap.
We actually left on Thursday night so we could get the majority of the driving done before the weekend and not waste all of our time driving. Since there were six of us and we wanted to all ride in one vehicle we decided to rent a Toyota Sienna mini-van for the weekend. I must say, the mini-van was dope. We all fit comfortably, it drove like a dream, it had a DVD player (which we never used), and got great gas mileage. I totally think it was a smart thing to do, plus we got hooked up through my buddy Todd because he works at the dealership. So, essentially Thursday was boring driving. We stopped about 30 minutes from Boston in Framingham, I believe.
The next morning we decided to head into Cambridge and get some breakfast and kill some time before going to the hotel, we weren’t sure if we would be able to get an early check in or not. Found a nice little diner and chilled out. After the diner I suggested we look for the Cambridge Brewing Company and grab a beer. We got shitty directions from our waitress and began looking for the CBC. Well, after about 45 minutes we still couldn’t find it, we decided it was time to head into Boston and try to find the hotel. When we did get to the hotel we were able to check-in early and got adjoining rooms. For whatever reason I was kind of out of it by this point and kind of continued to be for the rest of the day.
After checking in we were off again. This time we went for a walk to the open air market area and then to a neat Irish bar called the Black Rose. We only stayed for one beer and I guess I should have gotten a Guinness, but instead I drank another Boston favorite Harpoon. After the Black Rose we walked into the Little Italy area and found a few nice spots to stop and grab another beer and some excellent espresso. After heading back to the hotel and regrouping a little we headed out for dinner at the 21st Amendment, kind of a little hole in the wall bar with maybe 20 seats right on the outskirts of downtown. The beer selection kind-of sucked but the food was better-than-average bar food. After dinner we went for a walk through the ‘rich’ area of town and headed back to the hotel to hang out and have a few beers. While we were chilling, the decision was made to rent and watch Borat around midnight. I must say, it was a lot funnier than I was expecting, plus lead to many quotes for the rest of trip, ‘It’s a nice!’
Saturday was the day I was looking forward to. We already had dinner reservations at a nice restaurant and essentially the rest of the day was wide open. Dave & Paul headed off to the Red Sox game at about the same time that the girls and I headed off to Harpoon Brewery. We knew that they did free tours on Saturday and wanted to try and get to the early one. The ride out to Harpoon wasn’t too complicated though we almost missed a transition from the train to the bus. The “tour” was pretty cool. Basically they have a little shop where they sell merchandise and beer with a bar set-up in the middle. Pretty much they had like six or seven beers on tap and there tour really consisted of a tasting of all the beers. We also got to go out on the brew platform, but in all honesty it isn’t very exciting. I did wind up picking up four beers from their 100 Barrel Series, so I was stoked about that. I got the Peche, the Refsvindinge Private Stock, the encore series Barleywine, and the encore series of the Smoked Porter.
After Harpoon it was back to the hotel to drop off beers and then to decided to where next. Originally we had planned on going to Sam Adams Brewery and getting a tour and tasting there, but we decided instead to try and find the Publick House and grab a couple beers there instead. It took us a good hour to pull our shit together and get an address, phone number, and directions, and then another good forty-five minutes or so to get there. By this point it was starting to get later than we wanted it to be and we still had not eaten lunch plus had out fancy dinner in a few hours that night. Regardless we all got food and beers. I must say I really liked this place. The closest comparison around here would be Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia but with more room and less snotty attitude, but with just as great a beer selection. This is the kind of place that would be a do-not-miss kind of place if anyone ever asked me about Boston. I had a nice calamari salad and a glass of St. Bernardus 12 followed by a Founder’s Imperial Stout for dessert. Everything was cool and eclectic, I really enjoyed that break in the day.
After the Publick House it was back to the hotel to chill out and clean up before dinner. The restaurant we made reservations at, Grille 23, is a Boston steak house destination for sure. It was a very nice restaurant where they are listed as being in the 10 best steaks in the country, and have hand selected beef from a private farm, sounds tasty to me. We all got dressed-up pretty and grabbed a cab out to the location. Originally I was a little off put by the volume (noise) of the people inside the restaurant, but that was quickly evaporated as we were lead upstairs to a private little nook that made the place feel just right. We enjoyed a bottle of Pinot Noir and a bottle of Cabernet, I don’t remember what brand they were, but I do remember that I was totally blown away by the Cabernet, great wine. Along with the wine I started with a Nantucket Clam Chowder, which was a slightly thinner spicier clam chowder in comparison to a Boston Clam Chowda. Most of the table enjoyed the traditional Wedge Salad, but Grille 23 threw their twist on it by serving the lettuce wedge with an 8th of a small wheel of blue cheese and a large fresh piece of bacon versus the standard blue cheese crumble and chopped bacon – it looked delicious. For my main dish I chose the 10oz Fillet Mignon cooked medium-rare and it was perfect. And in all honesty after looking at all the other meals, mine looked the best, simple but perfect. For dessert the table chose to split a fresh strawberry ice cream cake, it tasted very much like a frozen strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries, delicious also. After dinner we some how wound up walking back to the hotel, I guess it was closer than I initially realized. That night we just chilled back at the hotel again, which was about all I could have handled.
By the time Sunday morning came around most everyone was ready to be home. We did the slow get ready to go and hit the pike. We decided to wait until we got on the road to stop for breakfast which quickly turned into two hours later and stopping for lunch. The car ride home was mostly unproductive, but we did manage to miss almost all the traffic which was sweet. After getting home and dropping everyone off, we still needed to head to the car rental place and drop off the car. All-in-all it was quite a wearing car ride home, but so totally worth the trip. I hope the six of us get to do something like this again sometime soon.
Last Wednesday was my second time kegging, and that’s without even knowing if the first time was a complete success or not yet, great! Anyway, things seemed like they went off quite easily which I guess is a good sign. I actually cleaned the kegs on Tuesday and sanitized and filled them on Wednesday.
Not going to have too much to say probably. I have learned that the closer it is to the event that the post goes up the more detailed and excited I typically am while writing the post. Since this was about five days ago now, there is only so much to say. So, basically I kegged the new-style (different recipe than the original-style) Belgian-style Wit bier and the Hazelnut Brown. Again, I stole a 6-pack from both kegs – I sure hope those Cooper’s drops work well.
Per usual when I do this kind of thing, I got to taste my batches to see how they are progressing. These of course were warm and uncarbonated samples, but sometimes that’s how I like it. The Wit was soft and silky on the palate, really nice feel, with a little zinger of a citrus bite. I’m hoping that this cold and carbonated will be a real day-time hit. The Hazelnut smelled fantastic! The hazelnut essence for the Hazelnut Brown was only added at the last moment for kegging/bottling to help retain the most hazelnut aroma, and let me tell you it really smelled great! The flavor seemed to have mixed well with the beer, but it was a little bit more difficult to form an impression of what the final product will be like. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.
Sunday was the Annual Sly Fox Bock Fest & Goat Race. Per usual it was a helluva-good time. Don’t even know where to start except for the fact that we didn’t score a goat for the race, so there was no Grundles McFister Maibock this year. Oh well, beer happens.
It was cool, I wound up going up with Robert this time again and we ran into a few characters. We ran into, Guy, Prague, and Tommy of the Team Fuck-All-Y’all fame, Rick and Natalie from Stewart’s, and Jason from Keystone Homebrew. It’s always cool to run into familiar faces. We unfortunately showed up in time for the final heat of the goat race. So once again I was all pissed-off. They seemed to have run out of food, glasses, and some beer rather quickly – but otherwise it was once again a rather chill cool event. It makes me wonder when they are going to out grow their current facilities?
What I look like through the new “Grundles McFister” Maibock.
So, Friday night was my first true kegging experience. Yeah, I got to watch/help Garrett when he gave me my kegging demo, but this was my first time alone, without a net. Sure I could have used the phone-a-friend option if I ran into trouble, but I knew Friday night would be a bad night to call. The only mishap happened in the very beginning when I accidentally tipped over the CO2 tank with the regulator on it and smooshed one of the gauges – I’m hoping I can get that fixed inexpensively.
I probably got started about 7:30. I had already decided I was going to clean, rinse, sanitize, transfer, and carbonate two beers, while simultaneously cleaning, rinsing, and sanitizing the draft box to be used in conjunction with them. Really most of the kegging stuff is pretty simple and pretty boring, just like bottling. But, the good thing with kegging is you only have to do all of those procedures to 1 container instead of 50. Plus once the beer is transfered you are essentially done. Sure you still have to carbonate it, but during bottling you’d still have to fill and cap all 50 bottles.
Basically the night went something like this: 1) Boil 6 gallons of water to add 3 gallons to each keg plus PBW. 2) Let keg sit for 30 minutes both upside-down and upright. 3) Flush hot PBW solution out of keg and through draft box. 4) Rinse each keg with hot water thoroughly, twice. 5) Flush hot rinse water out of keg and through draft box. 6) Fill each keg with cold water and sanitation solution. 7) Let keg sit for 10 minutes both upside-down and upright. 8 ) Flush cold sanitary solution out of keg and through draft box. 9) Now both kegs and draft box are clean, sanitary, and ready to be used. By this point it was magically 10:30 some how. Looks like the night was going to be longer than planned, but at least things were going well.
Next it was time to transfer the beer and then to carbonate it. I guess old habits die hard, because even though I was kegging I was still planning on “stealing” a 6 pack of beer from each keg. Originally I thought I may be able to just set up the siphon with the bottling wand attached to the end and siphon directly to the bottles. Well, that didn’t work. Not that big of a deal, I just siphoned it into a pre-sanitized bottling bucket instead. Of course I didn’t know exactly how much a 6 pack of beer was going to be, so I pulled off like 3/4 of a gallon, which was a bit too much. The other thing I had to figure out was how to prime the bottles for carbonation. Fortunately I had planned ahead and bought a pack of Cooper’s Carbonation Drops. Supposedly these cough drop looking things are the perfect amount of priming sugar for on 12 oz. bottle. I have never used them, nor do I know anyone that has, so we’ll have to see what the results are. They tasted just like rock candy.
After the bottles, I could finally do what I’ve been wanting to do the whole night – actually keg the beer. I think I did everything right and pretty much kept my fingers crossed the whole time. I forgot how much sediment and debris can be left behind from dry-hopping, so whenever those first pints are pulled someone may get a slightly chunkier beer, oh well. The first beer I kegged was the Oaked C-Hop Pale Ale (I know incredibly original name). This was the beer that I had all sorts of trouble with on brew day. It has taken to just recently for it to finally clear and it was brewed back in March. But like I said before, there was a little bit too much beer taken for the bottles so there was enough for me to taste. And let me tell you, I was pleased. It is a very traditional West Coast Pale Ale style beer with a nice little bit of bite and nose from the oak to keep it interesting. I think this one is going to go on first and I bet it will go fast. The other beer I kegged was the SAW Pale Ale (I know another incredibly fascinating name). This beer is almost overwhelmingly over hopped. To me it’s good, to some it may be too much. It has tons of Simcoe, Amarillo, and Warrior hops in it so it’s picking up an intense-mellow bitter back-bone from the Warrior and Simcoe, and crazy flavor (think: orange juice) from the Amarillo and some depth from the Simcoe. I think it may be a hit or miss as far as a crowd pleaser, but I think those that do like it will really like it.
After that it seemed to be easy street. I hooked the CO2 up to both kegs (thanks again, Garrett, for letting me borrow some equipment!), dialed in the regulator, and it was a total set it and forget it moment. Supposedly after three days these bad boys will be already to go and I can start this whole process all over again, this time kegging the Hazelnut Brown and the Wit. After janitorial duties I finally went back upstairs to call it a night. When I looked at the clock it was almost 1AM! How did that happen? I really need to get a clock down in the basement, it’s like freakin’ Vegas down there.
Transfered the Belgian Wit-style beer to its secondary fermenter tonight. It seems to have attenuated well, smelled fine, and tasted pretty good – a little zingy, but refreshing. All of these things helped calm my nerves a little bit, I was worried because of the lovely yeast I was using.
Pretty much the transfer went off without a hitch, which is always good. Now all four beers that I will be kegging are in secondaries and waiting to be transfered. I believe the two pale ales are going to be kegged this weekend, and the hazelnut brown clone and the wit the following week. Doing two at once this weekend will give me a chance to work out some of the kinks plus give me an idea of how long the whole operation should take.
I just finished the May/June issue of Zymurgy magazine. This is my favorite of the three beer magazines I receive. The company that publishes it is the American Homebrewers Association which is a sub-level of the Brewers Association, so it definitely has credibility.
This issue was pretty good per usual. The main feature of this month are all the different things that you as a brewer do to your own beer that make it different from someone else’s. It actually sounds quite similar to the idea of the article from BYOabout ‘Creating Balanced Beers’ but taken to the next level – instead of just balanced also all the other things you can do to make your beer extreme or mild. This has been the second month in a row that they have run a short article about the idea of a Beer Sommelier and how this concept isn’t that far from a reality. All I have to say is ‘where do I sign up!?’ There was also a neat article from one of the scientists at White Labs yeast on how you can get different beers from the same yeast by controlling other variables; like the temperature of fermentation and the original gravity of the wort. Then there was a nice big dick-tease of an article about the Homebrewers Conference in Colorado this year – double whammy, really wish I could go to both.
I’m a bad hop daddy! It’s now the end of April and my hops still aren’t in the ground! I know, I know they should have been in like a month ago, but I’m a slacker and have had other stuff to do – forgive me hop-gods for I have sinned.
Right now my almost 4 year old Cascade hop plants are sitting in a flower pot on our back porch. This picture doesn’t show it but they are already as tall as I am and that’s with less than optimal growing conditions. I REALLY need to get these suckas in the ground. Last year when we moved and dug up the roots to replant here I was amazed how long they had gotten. When I originally bought them the rhizomes were about as long and thick as my finger. After I dug them up they the longest ones were over 3 feet long and half as thick as my wrist at there thickest point! I really don’t want to accidentally kill these hops. I don’t expect a large yield this year as they re-establish their root system, but hopefully by next year they’ll be kickin’ again. I’ll keep you posted.
Saturday the 28th was the annual Trail Dawgs Triple Crown event. At this event there are multiple races to choose from: a marathon (26.2 miles), a half-marathon (13.1 miles), a 10K (about 6 miles), a 5K (about 3 miles), and theTriple Crown which is the half-marathon, 10K, and 5K back-to-back-to-back. We participated in the half-marathon.
This was our third year running the Trail Dawgs half-marathon (nice cheesy picture of us after the race). Overall I’d say it was probably the best year so far. The first year was a decent run for Robert but was a royal pain for me. The first year it had rained for like two days before hand and was still raining in the morning. Plus this is a 13.1 trail run with two creek crossings, so that made it quite difficult. It sounds weak to point it out now, but I was just about to buy new sneakers before that race, so my old sneaks just could not get traction during that race, and there are a bunch of up hills – regardless it was very tough for me. The second year was better, well for me (my best time out of the three years). That year I had a decent run, actually a pretty good run, and Robert was all jacked up. He had just finished reading a book called Chi Running which has a neat theory on how to run better. So Robert was trying to apply the Chi Running techniques during the half-marathon, but hadn’t had enough time to practice the theories so it actually made his run harder on him. But, this year we basically both were on point. It turned out to be Robert’s best time of the three which is good. During the race I never felt completely drained and afterward we both were feeling pretty good, especially after we cracked into a bomber of Rogue’s 2006 Old Crustacean Barleywine and a Three Floyd’s Dreadnought Double IPA (only small beers, snicker). Trail Dawgs day is always a good time, just a long day overall.
After the race we decided it was time to go to Twin Lake’s Brewery and pick up some growlers. Unfortunately since it was an unplanned trip we didn’t have any empty growlers, so we had to pay $10 for two deposits on glass which made it so we bought 1 less growler, but we still got 2. We each sampled 3 beers while we were picking up our growlers. There new beer was available the Caesar Rodney Gold. It was good, just to similar to there other beers, what they need now is something ‘different’ for them. The Twin Lake’s sales man Matt Day joked that they were working on a sports beer, a la Gatorade beer or something, it was pretty funny.
So on Thursday I spent the evening over Garrett’s house learning the basics of kegging. The good news is that it appeared as easy as I was hoping and made bottling look like even more of a pain in the ass. I’m actually quite excited about giving this a shot.
Basically when I had arrived at Garrett’s he already had things in motion. First, the kegs need to be cleaned and rinsed before anything else can happen, and that’s the part he took care of before I arrived. He said that basically you take a strong hot solution of Powdered Brewers Wash (PBW) and water and clean the keg with that. The most ‘difficult’ part is making sure all the poppets, the relief valve, and the dip tube are all cleaned properly. After the cleaning with the PBW you need to rinse well with hot water also.
So this is the condition the kegs were in when I arrived. At this point the kegs still need to be sanitized, flushed with CO2, filled with beer, and carbonated. For the sanitation process we used StarSan which I was initially surprised about because of its history of being a notorious foaming agent, but Garrett reassured me that it was a non-issue. After the keg was done being sanitized, he showed me an intelligent move to kill a few birds with one stone, basically he hooked up the CO2 and pushed the sanitizer out of the keg and into a bucket. This removed the sanitizer from the keg in an efficient manner, filled the keg with CO2 (which we wanted), and gave us a bucket of sanitizer solution to sanitize the racking cane and anything else we may need. Next we transfered the beer, which is essentially what I do when I bottle moving it from carboy to bottling bucket then to bottles, but this time it was just carboy to keg, period. After the beer was transfered we threw the CO2 on it and essentially it is a walk-away and leave it alone kind of thing for about three days.
Pretty cool. I know I’ll be nervous when I first do it by myself, wondering if I’m doing it all right or not. Fortunately he said he was going to e-mail me a cheat sheet to help me remember everything, and as he repeatedly reminded me, “It’s not rocket science.” Thanks, Garrett.
