Homebrew Update

As you may remember, in our brewing escapades, we brewed a mai bock with chinook hops, a hop usually found in American IPAs. A lovely hop for an IPA, but really, we learned that's where they should stay. Not made for mai bocks. At first we thought the beer might be infected, as it had a sort of a cooked brussel smell and tasted a little metallic. Not really what you want in a beer. We had kegged the beer, so it made sense that maybe one of the many parts was dirty.

[Yes, you have to sanitize EVERYTHING. The first couple batches I ever made I wore gloves and sprayed anything that might have some into contact with anything potentially dirty. I've let it slip a little. You pay me money for my beer? I'll put the gloves back on.]

Needless to say, we cleaned the the tap line, just to make sure. And the beer tastes better. Still a little metallic, but much better. Not your typical mai bock, and I'll probably never brew another one like this. But it taught me that a lot of beers are brewed the way they are for a reason.

Although a little ginger may have been good in it....

The 3rd bock from the same yeast is wonderful. It's almost a porter, a dark lager, kinda what I expected the schwartz to be like. Another 6 months will do it well.

We brewed a hefeweizen this past week. I'm not too much a fan of the style; it's nice a couple times every summer, but I'd rather have a good Saison. It's a perfect party beer though. I guess I have to think of a reason to have a party in a month or so.

Yummy gruit

With rising hop prices, brewers have been looking to find other non-traditional bittering and aroma agents, such as heather, lavender, rosemary and pine sprigs, or gruit. These and other similar herbs have been used in lieu of hops in Scandinavian countries and Scotland for centuries, and their beers have seen a resurgent in recent years, irregardless (that's a word, right?) of hop prices.

So I picked up a bottle of Alba Scots Pine Ale, from Heather Ale Ltd. out of Scotland. From their website:

Introduced by the Vikings, spruce and pine ales were very popular in the Scottish Highlands until the end of the 19th century. Many early explorers, including Captain Cook, used spruce ale during long sea voyages since it prevented scurvy and ill health. Shetland spruce ale was said to "stimulate animal instincts" and give you twins. Alba is a triple style ale brewed to a traditional Highland recipe from Scots pine and spruce shoots pickled during early spring. Pure malted barley is boiled with the young sprigs of pine for several hours then the fresh shoots of the spruce are added for a short infusion before fermentation.

It was pretty darn good--not piney at all, but sweet and malty, almost Scottish ale. I'm excited to try other beers with herb mixtures. Gruit, here I come!

Cheese and Beer

Think wine and cheese were made for each other? Syeah, right. Try BEER. My friend and neighbor Don hosted a beer and cheese pairing this past weekend, with each guest bringing a beer and cheese. There was a great array of cheeses and beers available. We brought Fourme D'ambert, a creamy blue, paired with Rogue's Shakespeare Stout, and Avec Les Bons Voeux from Dupont (that's the beer....) with Bucheron, a French chevre (goat cheese). Both were great pairings. Other winning combos were Bell's HopSlam with an aged English cheddar, New Holland's Dragon's Milk (a strong dark ale) with a strong blue, and Don's home-made Helles with a Spanish goat cheese. What was clear is that while there are some general guidelines to beer and cheese pairings, they are easily broken, and quite forgiveable.



Don has some more great photos over at his Flickr page.

All grain IS all that

For the past couple months, my brew partner Tony and I have been talking about making the move to all-grain brewing, that is, no more pre-made malt extract. With extract brewing, you buy concentrated liquid malted barley, thick, gooey, sweet and expensive. 6 lbs is about $16, and it comes in a bunch of flavors, depending on the kind of beer you want to make: light, dark, pilsen, wheat, etc. I had often referred to extract brewing as being like buying pancake syrup instead of making your own.


Oh, was I wrong.


There are about 7-8 kinds of extract malts, and dozens kinds of grains, each of which can be roasted differently. All-grain allows the brewer to better control and determine what the end product will taste like. Of course it takes about twice as long, as you have to soak the crushed grains in hot water for an hour, and then drain off all the liquid and rinse as much sugar from them as possible.

We nailed the starting gravity at 1.052--really, anything that would have be within a few points of that would have been great. Time will be the test of course, but I have a good feeling about it. We're trying to recreate a brown IPA we made a while ago that was fantastic.

Speaking of IPAs, there's new one on the TC market that I highly recommend. The Crooked Tree IPA from Dark Horse Brewing out of Michigan is phenomenal. And if you can find it's souped up cousin the Double Crooked Tree, grab a bottle. They're about $13 for a four pack, and run close to 14%, so they should be shared and sipped, but wow. Barleywine-esque, in the same way that some barleywines are double IPA-esque. I'm saving one for a year.

Ruinator

I suppose every Minnesota blog is complaining about the 6 inches of snow we got today, after it was in the 40s and sunny yesterday.

Yup, it sucks.

Yesterday, I built a plastic cover for a hot box in my garden so that I can get those seeds in early. Helped Tony build his hop trellis (well watched really), and busted out the kids' bikes.

6 inches.

Thank god for Beer.

Our Maibock is phenominal. Better than the Point Einbock I have in my fridge, maybe even more enjoyable than Summit's version. I've also been working through the Dopplebocks. Schell's has a great one commemorating 150 years in existence , the first of eight Anniversary Series brews. And of course generally anything ending in -ator. Salvator, Consicrator, Primator, etcator......We of course brewed one. Got a name? Leave a comment. It will be ready in 5 - 7 months.

CRAZY

Yah. The 2008 legislative session is crazy. CRAZY. Hence the lack of posts. I'm here to tell you that it's crazy. The governor and the legislature are facing off, continually one-upping the other. The legislature got a couple good jabs in with the veto override and the boot to transpo commish Molnau. "Oh yeah?" responded the governor. "Here's a serving of some program cuts AND a tax cut!"

And while that is forefront on the media's radar, lots of other stuff is going on.

Like making beer.

Homebrew update

The first mai bock is quite tasty, but still could use a few more weeks. The chinook mai bock is in the keg, and the third bock is still bubblin' away. All from the same yeast.

We added some molasses to the schwarz bier, and I cracked my first one tonight. Whoa. Want a cookie? This one gets a few more months in the bottle. The porter--from the same yeast--was thick as hell when we transferred it, and in need of some serious age, 6 months at least. Maybe we'll find a bourbon barrel or something. We took the yeast from this one and made a dopplebock, which will sit until next fall as well.

The liberty lager was waaaaay fruity, like an apple, when we bottled it (with our new capper!). Good summer beer I hope.

Speaking of summer, time to start some ales and get the hop rhizomes in the ground.

Fermentin' Away

I think the photo says it all.

We've been re-using the yeast cakes from our beers, meaning that after we transfer one beer out of the primary fermentor to the secondary fermentor, we put a new beer--or wort really--right into the "dirty" fermentor, on top of yeast that's collected at the bottom of the fermentor. Some brewers will clean and rince the yeast and put it into a clean carboy, but so far we haven't had any problems. And we're not selling our beers to the masses. Yet.

It's still lager season. The Mai Bocks share a yeast, as do the the Schwarz and the porter. We should be able to get 6-8 beers out of each yeast packet we buy.

Thanks for the photo, Tony.