So the Injest Beer Company, aka my garage, now has a logo. The name, In Jest works two ways. First, the act of imbibing something, namely beer. The second meaning in a joking manner, since this is a homebrewery after all. The Jester/Joker is holding a mash paddle and a beer, with the ingredients of beer in the corners (malt and hops). Let me know what you think in the comments:
And in color:
So here is my first draft of my new IPA. This is the basis of a recipe that I will be tweaking as the year goes on. I am aiming for something simple to start, so I can know what I am tasting, and what direction I want to take this in.
This will be my first brew using my Christmas present, a hopstopper from Jaybird, owner of Norcal Brewing Solutions. The man makes amazing products, I have used a false bottom of his design in my mash tun for about a year now, and knock on wood, not one stuck mash. So the new hopstopper, in combination with a false bottom in my boil kettle, means no more hop spider. This is advantageous for two reasons. One is that I can keep the lid on now while I chill, which is good for contamination. The other is that the wort will be in contact with the hops constantly, rather than a bag in between. It also makes cleanup easier, since I can hose out my boil kettle, and not have to clean the hop bag.
I will be moving forward with using a combination of pellets and leaf hops now. This will form a filter bed on the false bottom, so less trub will get through to the fermenter.
The grain bill here is a theft from Black Raven Brewery’s Double IPA named Wisdom Seeker. Simple, and will get out of the way of the hops. The grain has been called a Canadian Marris Otter, but basically it is a two row pale malt with a bit of toastiness to it.
The hops are simple. Some Delta leaf hops, and a ton of Galaxy for aroma. The Galaxy will be getting dumped into the dry hops, but I haven’t decided how much and for how long to go with those, I will update the recipe when I decide.
This will also be my first ferment in my converted sanke fermenter. All 11 gallons, temperature controlled in the garage with a thermowell right at 67F:
Going with a 90 minute boil, since I did that on Pliny The Wildman, and it worked out well. I am also backing off on the kettle salts, as I think I was going a bit overboard on them. Just a bit of gypsum to cut through the sweetness.
So the end of 2011 is near. This has been my most productive year as a homebrewer, especially on the learning side. I have begun to dial in my process, despite making lots of changes to my equipment and setup.
I decided to take a look back at the batches I have made this year. It looks like there were eighteen brewdays between 1/1/2011 and 12/31/2011 which resulted in 25 different beers. The results were a typical bell curve, with the majority falling into an acceptable range, a few batches being both excellent and a few batches being unacceptable.
I brewed around 161 gallons of beer (another five gallons of mead with Katie). Those batches used 352.5 pounds of grain and 108 ounces of hops (or 6.75 pounds). I don’t want to know how much water I used, or tanks of propane, or hours of time.
Going forward, I have decided on some goals for 2012. I really want to dial in my IPA recipe, something between an IPA and a DIPA. I want it to be dry, and really let the hops shine. So I am starting on January 2 with a new recipe, and will tweak that going forward.
I also want to dial in a stout recipe and a saison. I am going to take my work I have done on the Petit Soleil and really nail that recipe down on the saison side. We will have to see what comes of Blackened Rye to see if that will be my stout.
I also want to brew at least once every single month, which should be a pretty easy target. I also want to become a BJCP judge, more to understand my beer more than judge others.
In 2012 I just really want to become a better brewer, and move my beer forward. Can’t ask for much more than forward progress.
Two podcasts made me want to make a gluten free beer. The first was the HowStuffWorks “Stuff You Should Know” podcast about Celiac Disease. The second was TheBrewingNetwork’s “The Sunday Session” episode on gluten free beers. Both made me realize how miserable Celiac’s Disease, or even a gluten intolerance, must be. The worst part was when a dude with a particularly bad Celiac was talking about how he couldn’t eat pizza for a few years until he found a place that processed their pizza dough completely separately from their normal dough, because just a few pieces of grain would shut him down for a month to a month and a half. Celiac disease prevents a brewer from using barley, wheat or rye, which just happen to be the only ingredients I have ever used in an all-grain batch. Goddamn that is awful.
I don’t think I could survive with Celiac. No pizza, no bread, but worst, no beer. So I decided to make a beer that someone with Celiac could drink. I did some research, but all of the all-grain options involved malting my own grain, and screw that. I am willing to do alot of work for my homebrew, but that is not something I will be doing anytime soon, especially for an untried recipe. So I combined the ideas behind Dogfish Head’s new Tweason Ale, and a recipe I found on the HomeBrewTalk.com forum.
I haven’t done an extract batch in a long, long time. I am looking forward to the short brewday. This recipe combines Sorghum Syrup with Buckwheat Honey as fermentables. I have heard there is some spiciness in the sorghum and the buckwheat honey, which could be interesting. The hop bill is light, clocking in around 20ibu. There is some spicing, Sweet Orange Peel and Coriander being the star of the show.
I have heard the Sorghum Syrup takes awhile to ferment out. Hopefully this batch should be available for sample at the end of January.
I forgot how ridiculously easy extract brewing is. You boil some water, dump in some ingredients, then chill the whole thing down.
I usually take a quick taste of my wort that goes into the fermenter. The wort usually tastes pretty bitter, and obviously flat. This wort tasted especially thin, which worries me a bit since that is a knock against Sorghum based gluten free beers. As the yeast attenuates the sugar, it certainly isn’t going to get any thicker. Hopefully I can just crank the carbonation on it to give it a bit more illusion of body.
After 24 hours, still no signs of fermentation at 69F, but that was another warning about these beers, bit of a slow starter.
I see the argument at the beginning of Gordon Strong’s recent book that extract brewers aren’t real brewers. Not to be insulting, but there aren’t any numbers to hit, no temperatures to hit, no grain to mill. It just doesn’t seem like brewing. It’s like making brownies from a box versus baking from scratch.
So as an update to my previous “Homebrewery Upgrades”, I present More Homebrewery Upgrades. Or I should say, a further continuation of previously mentioned homebrewery upgrades.
I finally finished the propane plumbing on my brewstand, no longer do I have to run three propane tanks for three burners. With alot of help from HomeBrewTalk.com, 300 trips to Home Depot, two orders of needle valves from BayouClassicDepot.com (I stripped one from the first batch) and some propane hoses bought online, I was able to get it done.
I finally pressure tested the entire thing this past weekend, and no leaks. Some guys who built this brewstand ran their feeder pipe across the entire brewstand. Instead, I did a short pipe and let the hoses do the rest:
That project didn’t cost much in parts, but alot of labor and time.
The next project didn’t cost much of either. One of the problems with a March pump is that it isn’t self priming. I have been letting the “in tubing” drain for a second before connecting it to the pump, purging the line of any air. But then I saw an idea for a purge/prime port online that only took a little bit of parts, and I was pumped.
The idea is that you open the purge port when draining from a vessel. This allows the gravity to fill the pump. Then you simply close the purge port, and open the outlet port, and then the pump takes over from gravity. Simple and cheap:
The final upgrade is a new fermenter. This is going to get it’s own post when the fermenter box I am building for it is done, but for now, take a look at this beast:
So I got the keg from a local scrapyard. It is dinged up, but can hold liquid and pressure. I got the fermenter attachments from a guy online, and they are incredible. All stainless steel and perfect for the job. So once I removed the sanke fittings, you are left with an opening in the top. The fermenter attachments use that opening to turn this thing into a 15.5 gallon fermenter. No more split 10 gallon ferments.
The top picture shows the fermenter in fermenting setup. The thing with the white tip on the end is the racking cane that is adjustable, so you can pull beer from just the right level. The other tube is a removable blowoff tube. There is also a stainless thermowell that allows you to drop a temperature probe to get a reading inside the beer without touching the beer.
The second picture is a closer shot, with the blowoff tube attached. What is attached is an ingenious contraption a guy on HomeBrewTalk.com came up with to push a small amount of C02 into the keg to force the beer out, so you can rack it off without exposing it to any oxygen. Ingenious.
Another one of my split, three gallons in each, fermentations. This time it is a recipe that takes the grain bill of the Stone Smoked Porter, I tinkered with the hops a bit, and then threw in some post fermentation spice additions.
I seem to be on a dark beer kick lately. Maybe a reaction to all the light colored beers I made during the summer?
I got this recipe from Stone Brewing Company’s book “The Craft of Stone Brewing Company”, which is a decent read if you are a big beer fan. A decent amount of clone recipes in the back, so that made it worth buying the Kindle edition for me right there.
Pretty basic grain bill, high quality British malts. Touch of smoke from the peat smoked malt, which should be a different smokiness than I got out of using rauch malt, which is smoked over beechwood.
The hops aren’t meant to be a huge flavor component here, so I felt comfortable using what I had around. I was shocked to see the high mash temp, so I would expect this to be a pretty sweet beer coming out of the fermenter, and especially with a FG of 1.018.
Finally, the spice additions. One will be getting some vanilla beans and cacao nibs, which is my first time using these spices. Should be a nice pairing with the sweetness of the wort.
The other batch is getting chopped, dried chipotles. What I am hoping for here is something akin to the beer Katie had up at Dieu Du Ciel when we were in Montreal, which was a stout with chipotle.
Smooth brewday. Thought I had a stuck mash there for a minute, but apparently I had just lost suction on the pump. All good.
Hit all my numbers. Pretty quick brewday since this was only 6 gallons. OG was around 1.063, had to make some decisions on the fly. I ended up changing the hops to Columbus throughout, and upped the IBU’s a little bit. I am thinking I will want those there to deal with the sweetness from the cacao nibs, vanilla beans and balance the Chipotle.
I also decided to call an audible on the yeast. I went with a packet of dry yeast for each three gallons for a few reasons. Time was tight at the end of the week, so I didn’t want to make a starter. I have been wanting to try some dry yeast lately, and I have decided an IPA is coming down the pike soon, so I save the White Labs 001 for that batch.
This one is bubbling away in my new fermentation cabinet that I will post about soon. Hopefully the dry yeast will take this thing down to about 1.018 in about a week.
Post Thanksgiving, what else to do but brew. Now that I have the propane plumbed on the new brewstand, I felt like I needed to take it for a spin. Also, Katie is working, and what better way to spend my free time then to brew.
As the weather is getting colder, I am drawn more to the dark beers. I wanted to do a stout, but I want to use up some rye I have kicking around, and put a different spin on it. I plan on doing a smoked porter sometime soon, so I figured I would do a different kind of a stout, so here it is: a Belgian Rye Stout.
This one gets a pretty typical grain bill for a stout, but heavy on the chocolate malt, the rye and some black patent instead of roasted barley. I am hoping for a chocolate/coffee flavor from this beer and some nice spiciness from the rye and the Belgian yeast.
I am thinking at least a portion of this one will be going on some oak chips I have had soaking in Rye whiskey for awhile.
Couple of issues on brewday, nothing major. First of all, I have been trying to get rid of the rest of the grain I bought back in Spring from our group grain buy. I assumed I had enough two row left, and I was wrong. I thought I would have the nine pounds, but I only had 5.5 in my bucket, so I went scrambling. I was able to find 1.5 pounds of older two row that was in a bag, so that brought me up to seven, I have 1.5 pounds of flaked barley from a cream ale earlier in the summer, so that went in. Finally, I just finished it off with some pilsner malt, which got me back up to the numbers I was looking for.
The other issue is that my brewing laptop crapped the bed, so I was flying kind of blind. I tried to use some online brewing software, but ended up going back to Beersmith 1.0 on Katie’s computer, and that made me realize my OG should be 1.060, not 1.065 like the online software said. So the ABV of the beer should be a bit lower.
My fermentation cabinet is having a bit of trouble keeping the temperature around 70 like I would like, instead hovering in the 67F range. But as of this morning, the saison blend half was krausening and the abbey half was definitely chugging away. The lower temps should keep the phenols and esters down, which will be a good thing in a stout.
11/30/2011 – After starting the ferment at about 68 and seeing some vigorous blowoff, the beer started to slow down a bit. I have bumped up the temperature to 72 now to try to make sure the saison yeast attenuates fully. Hopefully we are out of the woods for the phenols and esters that come with higher temps, but won’t find out for a few more weeks.
In honor of the weekend, and the fact that we will finally get to see Trampled by Turtles live again (this time in Portland, rather than Rothbury, Michigan) on Sunday, I thought I would post what I’ve been listening to lately.
The first one is a TBT video, pretty cool visuals, a bit creepy but well done time lapse effects. It’s for the song “Victory” from their newest album Palomino, solid listen and hopefully we will hear it Sunday night:
The next two are from my favorite band to listen to right now, Pickwick. Another one of the growing trend of bands that seem to have thirty or so members, they are fantastic. It’s modern soul music, and the energy is fantastic:
Next up is The Head and the Heart, a three person band from Seattle (just like Pickwick) that has been getting press for a couple years from their debut album that is self titled. Great band, it’s always nice when you can have three lead singers, makes for a nice variance on an album:
Finally, an older song that I keep listening to. It’s from The Elected, and it’s a song from their 2006 album “Sun, Sun, Sun”. The song is “I’m Not Going Home”, and it’s my favorite of theirs. Half of the band is also part of Rilo Kiley, and this song is great, despite the weird video:
Saturday is National Learn to Homebrew Day as declared by the American Homebrewer’s Assocation, so I will be brewing. I am making a recipe of my own, so I am doing 5 gallons with a lager yeast, 5 gallons with a Kolsch yeast, and seeing which I like more.
The nice thing is they should both be clean and neutral yeast, letting that rye malt shine through. I think I might end up letting a chunk sit on some oak chips I have had soaking in Rye whiskey for the last month.
European continental hops, mostly Euro malts and some Canadian two row and Canadian rye malt. It’s like NATO came over and made a beer.
If anyone wants to see the brewing process in action, or just hang out in the garage while I brew and talk beer, my email is gtn80 at gregnorton.net, shoot me an email.
Brewday went very smoothly. Had a bit of trouble getting the wort down to pitching temperature, but an hour in the fridge dropped both batches down to the right temperature.
Had a bit of trouble hitting my numbers, going to have to change the settings on my mill, tighten it down a bit. Also time to take a look at calibrating my refractometer as it’s giving me some interesting readings. But all in all a good brewday.
11.26.2011- Took a gravity reading on both beers, the Kolsch is right where I want it, hovering around 1.010, so I put it into cold storage to try to drop the yeast. After about seven days hopefully I can rack this off the yeast and into a fresh keg for lagering. The lager half was still around 1.020, so on Wednesday, I will bring the keg inside for a diacetyl rest and hopefully when the Kolsch gets moved, I will do another reading, and that will be low enough to rack that half off the yeast as well.
Beer Scene/Music Scene
First of all, let me throw out there that everything following this is the ramblings of a beer geek. This is the opinions of one man, and they are strictly that, feelings.
I was watching a documentary on Pearl Jam the other day, “PJ20″. The documentary was released for Pearl Jam’s 20th anniversary in 2010, and written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The part that struck me was a scene when Cameron Crowe was in front of the camera talking about when he was a music writer in Seattle in the mid to late 1980′s. He kept talking about how there was a “scene” in Seattle at that time like he had never seen before. Members of bands would support and go out and see each other play, and in the process the collective group as a whole got ideas, inspiration and were challenged by the group as a whole and got better as a result. As a juxtaposition, Chris Cornell recounted the story of Joey Ramone (a member of the Ramones, a legendary punk band in NYC) telling him that NYC bands would never help each other, that they would try everything they could to trip up another band, that it was ruthless.
So where am I going with this? Well, as previously mentioned, I am a beer geek, so everything comes back to beer for me. I am as much fascinated by the history, culture and business of beer, as I am by making it myself. And coming off of Maine Beer Week in November, and the scenes of brewers drinking each other’s products at the Great Lost Bear and Novare Res, I was thinking about Maine’s beer scene. It was inspiring to see “competitors” enjoying each other’s company. Recently, for an event in Boothbay, Rising Tide, Maine Beer Company andAllagash got together for a collaboration beer, uniting the breweries that share a street in North Portland. Not the typical event for owners of “competing” businesses.
Maine brewers, especially those of the “second generation” of Maine breweries, definitely have a scene. What am I defining as the “second generation”? Those that were opened after Allagash changed the brewing culture in Maine. I am talking about Maine Beer Company, Rising Tide, Marshall Wharf and Oxbow. I am talking about the Maine breweries that shunned the British brewpub beer that Maine was saddled with prior to Allagash and did their own thing. They took a chance, and in the process furthered beer culture in Maine and the scene as a whole.
As an amateur, these are great breweries to have around. Allagash has had a homebrewer’s rally each of the last couple of years, allowing amateurs to come in, see their brewery, try their beer and ask questions. This year, the party spread to Rising Tide and Maine Beer Company. These breweries are trying things that are exciting, and that makes you as a homebrewer want to try them too.
I wanted to make a clone of Allagash’s Big Little beer last year. I shot them an email, thinking, no way they respond. Not only did they respond, head brewer Jason Perkins himself wrote back, giving me percentages and ingredients. I brewed the beer, even fermented a portion with Brettanomyces, and it turned out to be my favorite beer I have made. Would I have tried something like that if it weren’t for Allagash? Probably not.
Now, I am not writing this as a love letter to Maine’s beer scene. I am not naive enough to think that these are not money making ventures. But it seems as if these business owners have realized that growing this niche market is better for all of them, the “rising tide lifts all ships” sort of argument.
But what turns me off is a business first, beer second attitude. This also came across while watching the Pearl Jam documentary, as they struggled to decide what they will be once they got big. It struck me as one of the problems that all rapidly growing breweries have. To rapidly scale up production means to lose touch with each batch, with each recipe. It means catering to your fans rather that experimenting. I think of Dogfish Head when I think of Pearl Jam (maybe because of their collaboration), but I think of a brewery that came out of the blocks making crazy beers, but now is tethered to barrel after barrel of 60 Minute IPA and Raison D’etre. I couldn’t help but think of Eddie Vedder singing “Daughter” or “Alive” night after night. You need to make money, you need to placate your fans asking for the favorites, but if you go down that rabbithole too far, you have “sold out” and you are passed over by a fickle fanbase.
I have written before about breweries as bands. It is something I have written and thought about a bunch before. I have also written about my feelings about Baxter Brewing before. This is where this blog post is veering rapidly into my opinions and feelings, and where some people might disagree with me. I have always felt Baxter started as a business first (and by a longshot) and as a brewery second. If you look at a brewery that started not too long after, Oxbow, you realize they couldn’t be more different for two companies in the same industry. Baxter’s first release, a watery “extra” pale ale, was clearly formulated for mass consumption. Oxbow’s first release is a funky American farmhouse style. Baxter followed up with a very drinkable IPA, and then dropped the ball with the 1990′s most over made beer style, an Amber, again, mass consumption.
I realize that these are businesses. I have an undergrad in Business Administration and an MBA, and have worked in the finance world for ten years, so business strategy and motives are not foreign to me. But what turns me off from something like Baxter is akin to what turned off indie music fans to the Backstreet Boys and NSync. It is clear to an educated public when something is created solely to appeal to the mass market. Especially when that same educated customer base champions the DIY ethic of their indie favorites. Do I root for a business owner or a brewer? We vote with our dollars, and I can honestly say I have spent an embarrassing amount of money on Allagash, Maine Beer Company and Rising Tide beer. I have never spent a dollar on a Baxter Brewing beer.
Then came the ugly incident last month when they parted ways with the firing of brewmaster Michael LaCharite, a longtime member of the Maine brewing community. The backlash was pretty quick on BeerAdvocate, with opinions ranging from disappointment to anger and promises of boycotting Baxter’s beer. We may possibly never know who is telling the truth, but what is clear is the timing of the press release was probably a mistake and that the whole episode certainly didn’t endear a young beer newcomer like owner Luke Livingston to the Maine beer scene.
So I can already hear the arguments. They obviously make good beer because they have sold around 5,000 barrels in their first year. Well, if that’s your argument, this will certainly back you up. I realize that I am just a dude who writes on a blog, and they have the last laugh as their beer flies off the shelf. But here is one thought that should stick with you. Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen have always stayed true to their art, their craft, and resisted “selling out”. NSync, Backstreet Boys, and Good Charlotte were created to appeal to the mass market. In 2020, who are you going to be listening to?