A look back on my first year as a brewer.

Last year my New Years resolution was to brew beer.  My goal was seven batches which I eclipsed with my tenth batch; a Black IPA.   I have learned so much this past year! I've read several books and magazines dedicated to beer, visited several breweries both large and small and most importantly, talked to others who brew.  There is so much to know, so many variables to the process, that I feel like I'll spend a lifetime perfecting my recipes and process.

Here is a list of what I've learned my first year.

• Kits make great beer!  Someone put the time in to figuring out the right recipe, enjoy their hard work.
• Use the resources at your local homebrew store, those guys know a TON and like to share.
• Define what kind of brewer you are, what are you trying to accomplish.
• Water makes a difference, find out what kind of water you are brewing with, if you are using city water, ask your city water dept for the analysis for your town.  I found out our city water is terrible for light beers. The Palmer book explains water quality very well.
• Sometimes mistakes work to your benefit, sometimes they don't.
• Document, document, document..  If a batch turns out great, you'll want to repeat it.
• All-Grain brewing introduces 20x the complexity to the process over kit brewing.  If you want to really understand the process of brewing, make the switch, but be prepared to make some bad beer out of the shoot.
• Sometimes I like to keg, sometimes I like to bottle, bottles make it easy for sharing, kegs make for less of a cleanup effort.
• READ!  So many great sources of info out there.  I subscribed to 'DRAFT' and 'Brew Your Own Beer' magazines this year.  Lots of great info, seemed that every article in BYoB had some nugget of info for me.
• Don't fear a style you might not normally like.  Brew it all!
• Don't fear a Lager, all you need is someplace cool to store it for a while.  If you live in the midwest, it's easy to find!
• Get organized.  Know where your stuff is.  Create a standard way of logging notes.
• Clean up before putting your stuff away!  When it comes time to brew, you don't want to scrub trub from your fermenter or dried hop residue from your brew pot!
• Get creative, buy a 3 gallon fermenter and play with a few gallons of your beer!  I've added pears, nuts, oranges and lemons to my 'play batch'.  Some have turned out wonderful, others, not so much.
• Be objective! You brewed it, so you're going to be biased, but sometimes bad beer is bad beer.  Don't take it as a failure, learn from it!
• If something went wrong, research the reasons!  you'll learn something.
• Involve others, invite friends over to brew, or to taste, they'll be your biggest fans.
• Set goals.  What are your plans for the upcoming year?  

Best of luck to you in the next year.  Happy brewing!

"Grrrr, My Beer Is Too Thin! Why?!"

I admit that I have very few beer batches under my belt (8), yet my expectations for the beer I brew are very high.  I switched from extract to grain 3 batches ago and my biggest complaint with my first all grain batches is how thin the beer tastes.  How do I fix that?  So many variables with all-grain!

So, I recently brewed a Nut Brown ale which I had high hopes for.  Everything went well during the brewing process.  I hit all my temps, nothing went wrong during the mash, lauter, boil, fermentation process.  So, when it came time to crack one open and give it a taste, you can imagine my disappointment when, after a visual inspection for color and clarity (good!), I tasted it and the first thing that hit me was how thin it tasted.  Damn!

I'm determined to make the Nut Brown my first multi attempt recipe.  I want to keep refining it until it tastes the way I want it to taste.  So, in an effort to alter what I feel is the biggest flaw, I've done some research on adding body to beer.  The first place I looked was Palmers 'How to Brew' as always, he has good info here.  Adding unfermentables can help with thin beer, as can chosing your yeast selection... Read on.. 

Did you know that Crystal malts (aka caramel malts) and Dextrin malts (aka cara-pils or cara-crystal) have had their starches carmalized during the kilning process rendering them unable to provide sugars for fermentation?  Well I didn't, but I do now.  I knew flaked barley and oats provided unfermentables, but I thought all grains provided sugars/food for our little yeastie friends.  I found a very good explanation of 'body' here.  Might be a little scientific for some, but the payoff comes at the end when Ron Bach talks about 'Body Builders' and the 'Finishing Process'.

I'm off to Northern Brewer this afternoon to pick up what I need for a Black IPA.  I am going to add a .5 lb of flaked barley and an additional .5lb of cara-pils to the posted recipe to 'body it up'.  We'll see.  The true test will be when I remake the Brown Ale with some modifications to adjust for the thiness of my original.  Stay tuned.

Cheers,
-Chris

Growing Your Own Hops – A Beginners Experience.

Hop Vine shows signs of growth,
cones will soon appear!

In February 2011 I started seeing ‘pre-order’ messages from hop rhizome retailers in homebrew supply magazines Northern Brewer and Midwest Supply.  I was intrigued and put in an order for 4 varieties of Hops; Cascade, Willamette, Nugget &  Golding .  I didn’t do much research before I put in the order, and in hindsight, should have chosen more wisely.  Here is a good source for Hops info.  Turns out I ordered 1 variety of bittering Hops (Nugget) and 3 Aroma hop varieties (Cascade, Willamette & Golding).  Oops.  Should have done 2 and 2.   See my earlier post for Rhizome info.

For planting and growing reference I bought and read Homegrown Hops: An Illustrated How to Do It Manual.  The book is not very good, I have to admit I didn’t do any research for ‘good books on hop growing’, there might be better how-to books out there.  If there are, please let me know.   

Hope cones form in early August

The Cascade vine is performing better than the rest. Why?  I’m not sure. It is the vine that has had the most access to direct sunlight, so I don’t know if that’s why it is performing, or if the climate of Central/Southern MN has something to do with it.  Regardless, I’m going to have a nice little crop of Cascade hops this year.  The vine is currently 12 – 15 feet long, and has 50+ hop cones maturing.  The Willamette vine never produced a shoot.  The Nugget and Golding vines are up, and have climbed about 7 feet, but aren’t producing cones.  The book said not to set big expectations from your first year.  Apparently vines need a year to establish, and do much better in year two.  If you want a quick tutorial on growing check out this link.

First year Cascade crop

I attached my string to wire clothes hangers that I modified which has worked great! Two of the hop vines I grew along side my garage, and the other two vines I placed by our front porch.  The garage height (soffit to ground) is about 7.5 feet.  The height from porch ceiling to ground is about 10 feet. 

Soon they shall be in beer

7.5 feet is NOT long enough for a vine that is growing well.  I had to extend the vine string horizontally along the garage soffit to give it room to grow.  Keep this in mind when searching for your grow location.  The garage set up seems to be working just fine, and honestly, when it comes time to harvest, It’ll be easy to access the cones.  Just plan for your hop vine to reach a length of 15 feet when surveying potential locations.

Next will be ‘the harvest’.  I’m excited to use homegrown hops in a fall batch!

GeoBrew FINALLY ready for the bottle!

time to uncover

  On Memorial Day weekend I was finally able to bottle the beer that John and I brewed and buried 6 weeks prior.  I tried the beer on the Saturday of MDW and it had a buttery flavor, which I read is common for Lagers.  You must warm them up to room temp for 48 hours to allow the yeast a chance to consume those buttery esters (Diacetyl Rest for nerds or for geeks).  I pulled the bottle out of the ground and put it in the woods (covered) for 48 hours, temps were in the 60's, so all was good.

father in law chipping in

dead-lift 5 gallons out of a hole

 Tasting the beer after two days at room temp got rid of most of the buttery flavor.  The roasted malts used in this beer hid any subtle off flavors, which was no accident.  based on the taste of this beer, I think I'll try a lighter Lager next time.  Go for a crisp clean brew.

 So, how does it taste?

Making a Mash Tun - All Grain Brewing

I've brewed 6 batches of been since January, all have been from extract kits.  Extract kits are great, they make great beer, and cut down on a few complex steps.  I've found it helpful to start with extract kits, it's good to cut down on the variables at first.  Lord knows enough can go wrong in the beer making process, why start complex and get frustrated?  Plus, all grain batches require a few more items, start up cost can be minimized by starting with extract kits.  Once you are ready to get more technical and get a taste of what a all-grain brewing is all about, pick up a Partial Mash Kit.  It uses a mashing process and some extract, you'll get a feel for what all-grain brewing is all about.  Northern Brewers Speckled Heifer is a good partial mash kit.

I'm at the point where I'm ready to make the switch to all-grain, so the first thing I needed was a Mash Tun.

GeoBrew Update week 3

It's been three weeks since I buried 5 gallons of Schwartzbier lager  in a hole near Waupaca WI.  I have NO IDEA what's happening with it!  The temps have been cool topside, which I hope translates to appropriate temps 4 feet below ground.  I need a temp of 45-55 degrees to get my Lager actively fermenting.  Ground temp was 40 when we put it to rest.



Next will be to get it out of the hole to get a Gravity reading, then a 48 hour warm up...  then?  Well, we're working on that.  I need to chill it down to the mid thirty's for at least two weeks.  I've been told to research the old Norwegian tradition of harvesting ice in the winter from lakes and storing it in sawdust and hay for use in the summer...  Must make that decision soon!

Cheers!
-Chris

Lemon Infused American Ale in bottles

I set aside 1.20 gallons of American Ale and dropped an entire lemon into the carboy for 2 weeks.  I peeled off strips of the lemon rind, then quartered the lemon before dropping it in.  After 2 weeks I tasted it, you could definitely taste the lemon, unlike the pear infused beer I tried earlier this spring.  In that batch I dropped two quartered and peeled red pears into the same amount of beer and the pear taste was subtle!

My impression was that the lemon flavor was too prevalent...  But we'll see what happens after priming sugar has been added and its had time to ferment.  I added a little extra priming sugar to give it a little more carbonation.  My thinking is that it'll make a great dog day summer afternoon beer..  Light, lemony, fizzy.  We'll see.  GottaBHot American Ale?

Cheers!
-Chris