We're still at it!

Yes, we are still brewing up a storm. Since the last brewing update, we sampled the “API Lepirt” Houblon Chouffe Clone and our “Farmhouse Eleven” Saison, both of which turned out very well despite a fairly high final gravity. We were still learning about pitching rates and proper attenuation at the time and assumed that one Wyeast smack-pack would do the trick for any beer.

The St. Bridget’s Stout also turned out quite well and the cocoa nibs imparted a very smooth, chocolatey taste to the beer. It may have been even a little too sweet because, once again, the final gravity was around 1.025. A fuller attenuation would have dried out the mouthfeel considerably, I think. In any case, my colleague Bridget loved the beer and was super-flattered that we named the beer after her.

Hard Lessons

We regressed a bit in our next batch. Liles wanted to make something “quick and easy,” so he chose a Nut Brown Ale kit from Northern Brewer. It wasn’t terribly interesting to brew, so we kind of missed the fact that we used distilled water instead of spring water for the whole process. The beer ended up tasting OK (pretty much like a Newcastle), but it is weird to see a beer foam up out of the bottle, then have the head completely disappear within seconds. Not a great effort, but an interesting learning experience, nonetheless.

If any beer hammered home the lesson of yeast pitching rates, it was our next effort. Jeff decided that he wanted to brew a Strong, Dark Belgian Ale and age it on bourbon-soaked oak chips. We chose Northern Brewer’s seasonal Golden Dragon kit and dubbed it “Jeff the Magic Dragon.” This is a very high gravity brew, with lots of late extract additions, as well as an addition of a pound of beet sugar at high krausen. It isn’t surprising that this beer had a tough time getting started since, again, we used a single smack pack. Jeff ran out and got another smack pack the next day when he saw there was zero activity in the fermenter and ended up saving the batch for the time being. We finally got the krausen going with the extra yeast and were able to add the candi syrup.

Jeff also bought a bottle of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey and some medium toasted oak chips for the bourbon-barrel effect we were looking for (this is now one EXPENSIVE batch of homebrew). After allowing the Magic Dragon to condition for a few weeks in primary, it was racked into a glass carboy for the long secondary fermentation. A few weeks later, the bourbon-soaked chips were added. We thought it would be a good idea to rack the beer again to help clarify it a little, but this may have been a big mistake in retrospect. We bottled the beer, using our normal amount of priming sugar, then waited a couple of weeks. Right out of secondary, the beer tasted very good, with a boozy heat backing it up, so we were excited to taste the final product.

Two weeks later and . . . the beer was still flat. There is a tiny hint of carbonation in the mouthfeel, but we were expecting a much fuller head, or at least some visible carbonation. While this is disappointing, at least it still tastes very good and, with some more aging, could end up being a Lost Abbey Angel’s Share type of beer (maybe not quite as good, though). I think the lessons to take from this batch are:

1. Always make a yeast starter for big beers
2. Seriously. Big starter for big beers. No exceptions.
3. Don’t rack your beer too many times, since you will be taking away the valuable yeast cells needed for carbonation
4. Only use Stanahan’s chips in beer you already know will be good

If we were to attempt this beer again, we would probably also re-pitch with a packet of yeast at bottling, like you would with a Trappist beer.

Anyone else have similar struggles with brewing big beers? I’d love to get some words of wisdom should we attempt this recipe again.

Up next: Building a better starter and the move to all-grain brewing.

The Farmhouse Eleven turned out rather well. Early on, it was a little green and had a very prominent banana/bubble gum aroma to it, but it has since settled down and is tasting closer to what I expected. The old home brewer adage that “the last two bottles in a batch taste the best” seems to apply in this case. Overall, it’s a nice, refreshing summer beer. The reviews so far have been pretty good, although I prefer our first beer, which was excellent right out of the gate.

Road Trip!

Torrey Pines State Preserve

From May 19-25 Meg and I ventured down to Southern California for my cousin’s wedding, and to check out some of San Diego’s awesome breweries. After the wedding in Malibu, we drove down to Carlsbad, home of one of the Pizza Port brewpubs, and an easy drive to Escondido and Stone Brewing. After spending some time on the beach, wandering around town, and checking into our hotel, we headed over to Pizza Port for dinner. Pizza Port Carlsbad has a very good reputation in the beer community, with several GABF medals and other assorted hardware to show for their efforts. Jeff Bagby, the Head Brewer, did a recent collaboration with Stone and Green Flash to produce Highway 78 Scotch Ale, a rich, malty departure from the hop bombs associated with those breweries. At this year’s Boulder Strong Ale Festival, Carlsbad’s entry was their Hakunama Ta Tas pink (yes, pink) IPA. So, needless to say, I was very excited to see what was on tap.

So many choices . . .

A lot of the beers on the board were intriguing, but I ended up choosing a guest brew for my first beer, Three Floyds’ Topless Wych Baltic Porter on cask. Never know when I’ll ever get a chance to try that again. It was very smooth and chocolatey and the cask carbonation was just right. Once our food came out, I ordered the Pants Optional Strong Pale Ale, to go with the barbecue chicken pizza and big-ass salad we were sharing.

Amazing pizza, salad and beer!

The Pants Optional was very crisp and hoppy, with the typical grapefruity aroma of most West Coast IPAs and it tasted incredibly fresh. It was a very filling meal, so I had to quit after only two beers, which was a bummer, but I’m glad I had the experience. The people of Carlsbad are lucky to have such an awesome brewpub!

Up next: A visit to Stone Brewing.

I changed the label a bit by taking out the color out of the movie screenshot and altering the quote on the bottom to be more accurate (yes, I am a dork).

Now more faithful to the film!

Fellow internet beer geek and independent music aficionado Zac Early, wrote up a nice post about beer labels and album covers the other day. You should check it (and the rest of his blog) out here. He has created some pretty cool labels for his own homebrews. A favorite of mine is the one he made for his “Big Black Bitter.”

Ol' Dirty Bastard drawing by Eric Reynolds

Last weekend, we bottled our Farmhouse Eleven at Jeff’s place. We tasted a sample and the flavor seemed to be on track. The final gravity was about 1.020, which will give it an ABV of 6.19%. We used a combination of 12 oz. bottles and 22 oz. bombers this time and, as it turns out, we had just enough to divide evenly three ways.

Once the bottling was finished, we packed up Liles’ share and headed up north to Longmont for some “research.” We gathered at Liles’ house with our significant others and piled into the Lipe-mobile. Our first destination: the Left Hand tap room.

Left Hand makes some very tasty beers, and some that, well, aren’t that great (IMHO). Their Fade To Black (vol. 2) is one of my favorite beers of the last year and I had some of their 400 Pound Monkey on cask once, which was awesome. Their Milk Stout on nitro is quickly becoming a favorite in Denver bars too. This day, we came up to see what was new and different in the tap room.

I tried their Week Sauce, a coffee stout made for Colorado Beer Week. The body was a little thin and the coffee flavor a little too pronounced for my taste, but the cask conditioning made it very smooth. Meg, Jeff, and Liles all went with the Wake Up Dead, a barrel-aged imperial stout that they had on keg and on nitro. It’s a little thin for an imperial stout, but the taste was very sweet and boozy. Not bad at all. The nitro version was even better.

"Surprise, you're dead!"

I split a taster tray of some of their more “sessiony” beers with Jeff and Liles, including Polestar Pilsner, The Stranger, 400 Pound Monkey, and (regular) Milk Stout. I probably liked The Stranger, a pale ale based on a rye malt, the best out of that group. The 400 Pound Monkey had a very strange aroma, which got more pronounced as it got warmer. In fact, it was downright gross and reminiscent of, well, a four hundred-pound monkey. I didn’t remember this from the other times I had tried it out of the bottle or on cask, so I asked one of the bartenders about it. She attributed the “earthy” aroma to the English hops they used in the beer. Looks like I won’t be using Fuggles, Kent, or Goldings in my beer if there’s a chance it could end up smelling like sweaty undergarments!

The lineup

Overall, it was a pretty cool experience at Left Hand. The tap room had a nice log-cabin type of vibe and  live music was playing for most of the time we were there. The beer was also very reasonably priced (taster trays were only $4). We were hungry though, so it was time to get to our next destination, Oskar Blues’ Homemade Liquids and Solids.

I’ve been a big fan of Oskar Blues for years. I remember picking up a twelve-pack of Dale’s Pale Ale during my ski bum days in 2004 and being blown away by the idea of craft beer in a can. Now it’s pretty commonplace, but few brewers are putting beers as audacious as Ten Fidy or Gubna in their canned lines. Anyhow, I had never been to any of the Oskar Blues’ locations before, so I was pretty excited to taste some of their draft-only beers. Their menu of Southern-fried foods looked to be just the ticket as well.

Outside Homemade Liquids and Solids

Some pre-trip planning told me that they would have ODB, their barley wine, on tap. I tried the ODB at the Boulder Strong Ale Fest back in February and remember liking it a lot, but you really can’t tell too much from a two-ounce pour. While waiting for our table, I ordered a Gubna for Meg and an ODB for myself. The bartender said that they were out of their “regular” ODB (bummer!), but they had a keg of “special” ODB that had been aged for six months in a Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey barrel (score!!). It would, however, set me back $12 for a 10 oz. glass. I hesitated, but only for about a nanosecond. This was a rare opportunity that should not be passed up.

After getting the first whiff from the glass, I knew that it was well worth the money. The whiskey aroma was incredible. It had a murky, muddy appearance and kind of a thin head, but looked pretty appealing nonetheless. The barrel aging seemed to really mellow out the barley wine flavors, making it incredibly smooth for 13% ABV beer. I passed my glass around and everyone seemed to agree that this was something special. Now, I know that ODB stands for “Old Double Bagger,” but I think they should consider dubbing this version, the “Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” after the Wu-Tang Clan rapper (AKA: Dirt Dog, Dirt McGirt, O.D.B., Ason Unique, Osirus, Big Baby Jesus, Joe Bananas, BZA, Ol’ Dirty BZA). This is one filthy mutha of a beer and one of the best barley wines I’ve had in ages. It was the highlight of the trip for me. I’m seriously contemplating making a bourbon-barrel barley wine in the near future, which would mean a Wintertime release.

For an appetizer, we got a mixed basket of cayenne and habanero flavored wings that were very hot and flavorful. The ODB really stood up well to them and complemented the spiciness. I had a few tastes of Meg’s Gubna as well. It must have been extremely fresh, because the hop aroma was incredibly dank and powerful. I was tempted to get a glass for myself, but I don’t think another 10% beer would have been the smartest idea. Dinner arrived and I dug into my crab cake with crawfish etoufee, which turned out to be a great pairing with the bourbon-barrel barley wine.

We spent the rest of dinner sampling each other’s beers, including some Ten Fidy and G’Knight. I tried some of their Workingman’s Stout, which is a low-octane version of their TenFidy. I could tell it was good, but after drinking some of their more powerful beers, it seemed almost watery by comparison. Liles ordered up some banana pudding with ‘Nilla wafers, served in a mason jar and passed it around. It was the perfect end to our research trip to Longmont. Now we just need to find a way to make it tax-deductible . . .

Bonus:

Maybe Oskar Blues can use this in their marketing for Bourbon-Barrel ODB?

It doesn’t exactly fit their hippie, Bluegrass-y image, but I think we need more hip-hop themed beers, don’t you?

A lot has happened since Nookie Day. We realized that a 40 beer yield does not translate into lots of beer for everyone. I’m down to my last four bottles of Nookie after our “release party” bacchanal and giving out samples to friends and coworkers. It’s cool though, since the reviews have been pretty good so far. I gave a bottle to DJ and John over at Little’s liquor store, my local beer purveyor, hoping for some constructive feedback. They liked it so much, that they put it on their “Wall of Fame,” which is made up of beers they love, but can’t sell. It’s pretty flattering for the Nookie to be lumped among New Glarus and Bell’s. Our empty bottle now sits next to Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale behind the register. Since I’m the beer-buying equivalent of what casinos call a “whale,” I hope they just weren’t being nice, but I think they genuinely liked the beer.

Last Saturday, we reconvened at Jeff and Heather’s place for more hot brewing action. Actually, we decided to pregame/strategize at Hops and Pie, a pizza joint and tap room that is quickly becoming one of my favorite places in Denver. Heather and Meg came along as well. We filled up on some tasty artisan pizza and some of their incredible rotating selection of draft beer. I had a Maori King imperial saison from Funkwerks, a new Fort Collins brewery. Jeff had a Stone Vanilla Bean Smoked Porter, and Liles ponied up for a Stone Vertical Epic 06.06.06. Just what we needed for inspiration.

We went back to Jeff’s place and racked our API Lepirt into secondary after a three-week primary fermentation. We took a hydrometer reading and had a taste of the fermented wort. The final gravity came out to 1.020, which looks to be on target. It tasted kind of boozy, which is a good sign. We may decide to dry hop this one as well.

Next, we got started on our latest batch, Saint Bridget’s Stout. My coworker Bridget donated two carboys to the cause, since she hadn’t used them in about ten years. So, we’re naming this batch after her. We are using Northern Brewer’s Big Honkin’ Stout as the basis for this brew and will add cacao nibs in the secondary fermentation period to give it a dark chocolate flavor. The kit came with 1.5 pounds of specialty grains including:

- 0.5 lbs Simpsons Roast Barley
- 0.5 lbs Simpsons Black Malt
- 0.25 lbs Weyermann Carafa III
- 0.25 Briess Caramel 120

We steeped these grains slow and steady for about 20 minutes, since we wanted to get the most out of them. By the time we hit temperature, it already looked like a stout. Once it got up to a boil, we cut the heat and added 3.15 pounds of Dark Malt Syrup, then 2 ounces of Willamette hops. With 15 minutes left in the boil we added another 6 pounds of dark syrup and an ounce of Cascade hops. Then, with one minute left in the boil, we added another ounce of Cascade and a few ounces of corn sugar (not in the recipe) to boost the alcohol content a bit.

We cooled the wort, then aerated and pitched the yeast. No major problems this time, although the specific gravity was a little lower that the 1.068 we expected, even with the additional sugar. We’ll have to see how that goes.

Well, I don’t have pictures to post this time, since our blog photographer took the day off and the pics on my phone are not that great. Maybe next time . . .

Next up: bottling the Farmhouse Eleven.

Six weeks after we started, we finally got to taste our first batch of homebrew. Meg and I hosted the event at our place, where we would also be having Easter dinner. I think we were all a little nervous about how it would end up and I was fully prepared for the possibility that we’d have to let the beer condition in the bottle for another few weeks.

I opened the first bottle and was relieved to hear the hiss of escaping CO2. I poured the beer a little aggressively, in case there wasn’t enough carbonation. Turns out that wasn’t necessary, since the pour produced a huge, fluffy head. So far, so good.

First pour

The aroma was really nice, although not as strong as I thought it would be after we dry-hopped it. The first taste was really a surprise. It was very, very good! I think all of us were kind of stunned that it turned out so well. Most home brews that I’ve tried seem to taste just a little bit “off.” I don’t know why this is the case, but they always seem a little sweet, or the yeast has a strange flavor, or there is very little carbonation. The Nookie has none of those issues. I think we can credit Northern Brewer’s recipe and our insistence on using the best possible ingredients. I think this bodes well for our future batches . . . or maybe we just got a healthy dose of beginner’s luck.

"Hey, this isn't bad at all!"

We enjoyed the rest of the day, eating some great food (courtesy of Meg, Heather, and Brandi) and sampling more Nookie and a few other beers. Judging by the 10 (!) empty bottles of our beer I found later, I think everyone enjoyed our first foray into home brewing.

Bonus Coverage!

Here is a video I shot right after our first taste. I think you can tell how bemused we are about how well the beer turned out. Meg makes a cameo appearance along with her leg of lamb.

Next up: fun with Farmhouse 11!

Looks like one of our planning sessions

On the same day we bottled the ‘Nookie, we got going on our third beer, the Houblonmonstre Tripel IPA kit from Northern Brewer. They describe the kit like this:

Once upon a time a poor homebrewer was lamenting the lack of time that the modern world allowed him for his hobby. He had the ingredients for a batch of Tripel and a batch of IPA, but the demands of home and work life were such that he had no opportunity to brew them, and so he cried himself to sleep. While he slept, a collective of Ardennes Forest Beer Gnomes (Houblonmonstres, in Flemish) came into his house and took pity on the poor homebrewer. They decided they’d brew his beer for him. Unfortunately, the Gnomes were already three sheets when they broke into his home, and so they combined the ingredients for the two batches. This recipe is the result of their drunken meddling: an elegant and pale strong abbey ale carpet-bombed with American and continental hops. You’re going to have to do the brewing yourself, though.

Pretty cool to picture a bunch of drunken gnomes making beer, especially since this is a tribute to Houblon Chouffe, a very tasty and strong beer. Liles and his wife Brandi, however, thought that a strong Belgian should pay tribute to the most famous strong Belgian of all, which is why we are calling it:

Hey Ladies!

Pretty sexy, huh? This is, by far, our biggest beer, weighing in at an OG of 1.082. Here’s how it unfolded:

After recovering from our awesome lunch, we set up in Jeff’s garage to start the boil. The API Lepirt has several hop additions along with a lot of late sugar additions, so it played out quite a bit differently than our first two beers. There were no specialty grains to steep, so once we got our water up to a boil, we added 3.15 lbs of Pilsen malt syrup and 1 oz of Yakima Magnum hops. No boilover this time. With 15 minutes left in our one hour boil, we added 1 oz each of Cascade and Saaz hops along with 6 lbs more of the Pilsen malt syrup. With 5 minutes left, we added more Cascade and Saaz. Then at burnoff, we added two pounds of corn sugar.

Lots of late additions

All of this sugar should translate into lots of alcohol if the fermentation goes well. We pitched the Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes yeast after cooling and aerating the wort. It’s currently in its second week of primary fermentation and I’m thinking that we’ll give it at least one more week before racking to secondary. I’m wondering whether or not we will want to re-pitch at that point. I guess it all depends on the taste/gravity when we rack it.

Today we will finally get a chance to taste our ‘Nookie IPA! I’m a bit nervous to see how it turns out. I’ll detail it in my next post.

Bottling went pretty well, considering that most homebrewers find it to be a major pain in the ass according to what I have read. Having three people probably helps. Anyhow, we made a day of it. Before bottling our IPA, we racked our Saison into secondary fermentation. Jeff bought a cool beer thief/test tube contraption that helped us to take an accurate gravity reading.

I'm not a scientist, but I play one in Jeff's kitchen

The saison had a final gravity of about 1.01, which is about on target for what we wanted. We stole a taste after the reading and the flavor seemed right on. After an additional month of conditioning, I bet it will taste pretty awesome.

After storing the Saison in Jeff’s guest room, we prepared our bottling equipment and sanitized everything, including “The World’s Most Expensive Beer Bottles.” While Jeff and Liles racked the ‘Nookie into the bottling bucket and mixed it with a sugar priming solution, I sanitized all of the bottles and put them on the bottle tree to dry. Before bottling day, I though that a bottle tree might have been a bit of an extravagance, but now I think it is absolutely essential.

Carefully racking into the bottling bucket

Sanitizing the bottles

Bottling the beer went quite smoothly. We set the bucket over Jeff’s open dishwasher and used a spring tip bottle filler to get an accurate pour without wasting too much beer due to spillage. We had a few handfulls of caps in sanitizing solution ready to go and we used a bucket-brigade technique to get the bottles filled and capped in no time at all. We had a taste of the uncarbonated beer and the flavor and aroma seemed right on target, even though the sample already had priming sugar mixed in. It should take about two weeks for the beer to carbonate in the bottle, which means we are aiming for Easter weekend to debut the ‘Nookie. I can’t wait.

Bottle Brigade

The first bottle of Nookie!

After bottling our first batch of beer, we celebrated with a feast. Liles brought over some of his famous ribs, Jeff cooked some awesome baked beans and my girlfriend (and blog photographer) Megan made some amazing coleslaw and pineapple upside down cake.

Yum.

But the day wasn’t over yet. Oh, not by a long shot: we had to get started on our third batch of homebrew.

In my next post: Hops, yeast, and JCVD!

The label for our second beer (click to enlarge)

Here is how the first day went down:

After racking our IPA, we got started on brewing the Farmhouse 11. It went pretty smoothly at first. We steeped the specialty grains, just like we did with our IPA, then got up to a full boil. We cut the heat, then added the malt extract (6.3 lbs Gold Malt Syrup and 1 lb Gold Dry extract). We got the wort back up to a boil and added the first half ounce of hops, which led to:

GAH!

Since our IPA never even got close to boiling over, this caught us a little off guard. Fortunately, we didn’t lose too much, and I’m glad that I didn’t add all of the 2.5 oz of the French Strisselspalt hops at the same time. We cut the heat again and I added the rest of the first hop addition before bringing it back to a boil. In the future, we need to account for the fact that the turkey fryer throws off a lot more heat than a typical stove burner. We may even be losing some flavor when steeping our specialty grains due to the water getting too hot too quickly. We probably should have also watched this video beforehand:

Other than that mishap, everything else went well. Jeff was able to multitask:

Drinking while brewing is always a good idea

Liles cooled the wort with our wort chiller, we strained the wort into our primary fermenter, aerated it and took a gravity reading. The OG was reading about 1.055, which is close enough to where we wanted it. Then I pitched the yeast and we sealed up the fermenter.

Next up: Bottling the ‘Nookie!