End of the Hiatus a.k.a. Spring is Here!

I haven't brewed since September, probably the longest stretch in 5 years. To think a year ago, Tony and I were at it about 2 nights a week. I'm thinking of supplementing all grain brewing with a little extract here and there, just to keep the supply up. But until then, I'll be taking advantage of the legislative spring break and cooking up a Saison this week, which will be ready just in time for summer.

Seems like as good as a time as any to resume more regular blogging. Other social networking sites have diverted me from Capitol Brew-haha, but I'm back now. At least until some other distraction takes hold.

Beer Week

What a week! Let's see, just a quick run down:

• Wednesday, I brewed with DT for the first time, whipping out a clone of Summit Winter, which is just hitting shelves here in MN. It was super-thick, and should be fermenting fine. On the way home from his place, I swung by the Muddy Pig for the Lagunitas kick off party. Still crowded and got a glass of the Gnarley Wine. Yummy.


• Friday I brewed a batch of my standard India Brown Ale. Then that evening, at the last minute, I was invited by a friend to Stub and Herbs for the Darkness Eve party, a gathering of beer geeks from around the country who were in town for the release of Surly Darkness the following day. Don brought along some beers to trade, and we ended up drinking with some blokes from Ohio. They cracked open bottles of 07 and 08 Dark Lord from Three Floyds. 07 was incredible, 08 will be in a few years.


• Saturday culminated in the afore-mentioned Darkness Day. I volunteered to work the event, so didn't have to worry about getting there early to get any bottles (the first 700 people had a chance to buy up to 6 bottles at $16.66 a piece). I dropped $100 and got my bottles, plus a few extra at the end of the event for friends who couldn't attend. Merry Christmas!

Here are some photos from Don's lot, which looks very similar to mine. Love that label!

Change on all fronts

Ah, autumn in Minnesota. Change is in the air, with particularly notable occasions this season. [Disclaimer--fall is easily my favorite season]. Yeah, I love the change in color, change in temperature, change of wardrobe, and this year, change in leadership, change in direction of the country, and change in my family. My sister had a little girl--Nora Lorraine--on Tuesday, adding another birthday to the week (Dylan turned 6, his good friend Lily turned 5, and I know increasingly more people born in October).

And, with every passing day, I'm more convinced that Obama will be our next president. Clearly helping things along the way, in addition to Obama's consistent message of change and stellar campaign organization, is McCain's rapid approach towards running one of the worst campaigns ever. I mean, no way in hell should I get a single phone call or piece of mail, because of who I am AND where I live, yet I've gotten four and three respectively. But I say, "keep 'em coming!"

The Minnesota beer scene is also changing, with the market continuing to expand. My most anticipated return to the market is Lagunitas, one of the first California breweries that grabbed and shook me ten years ago. Hopefully their crazier brews will also trickle in.

As the Oktoberfests are cleared out of the aisles, the winter beers are flowing in. I'm a big fan of most 'em, but Summit and Schells are at the top of my list. Again, "keep 'em coming!"

Homebrew Update
I've been digging into some of the darker beers that were made last December and January, as we fooled around with lagering and reusing yeast. Unfortunately, the resulting beers have been less than impressive, especially since all-grain brewed beers seem to be so much more satisfying. Which is also unfortunate, since the length of time that it takes to brew all-grain beers has significantly put a damper on the brewing efforts.

A little of this....

Whoa. One month. It is summer time, eh? I'm sitting here drinking one of the best double IPAs, Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, hopped continually for 90 minutes during the boil. 9% abv. Yum. Of course, you have to drive to Wisconsin to get it, but it's worth it.

(Every time I sit down at the computer to write a post about what I'm brewing or what I'm drinking or who I'm voting for, I get stuck over at my newest on-line obsession, Facebook. I can simply write a one or two sentence "status update," letting all my friends know what I'm doing, and it takes five seconds, as opposed to a half an hour at blogspot.com.)

While I've blasted Wisconsin time and time again, they do have access to a much broader range of beers than here in Minnesota. This month, Stone Brewing arrived in the state east of us, and it would be well worth your time to pick up some Ruination or Arrogant Bastard while passing through Hudson.

Tomorrow's my birthday, and I'll be whooping it up at the Happy Gnome, ignoring their inflated prices in exchange for thier amazing selection of beers. C'mon down and buy me one!

Homebrew Update
The saison is in the bottle. It came in at about 7.4% abv, and was amazingly smooth when I bottled it. Labor Day can't come quick enough.

Our first batch in the big brew kettle turned out pretty good. A nice drinkable pale ale, 5 gallons dry hopped and the other without. I'll let you know how they turn out.

The second batch was our India Brown Ale, this one made more like the extract version we did a year ago, with 5 ounces of hops, honey and brown sugar. It should be about 8% abv, with a nice hop bite after dry hopping.

Saison for change

My home brew supply is dwindling--or at least I'm not drinking a bunch of my dark brews that will be better in October or November. The hefeweizen is gone, soaked up at a party. I have one bottle left of a couple different lagers, and one of the brown pale ale. So what do you do? Brew!

Tony, my brew compadre, had time on his hands to whip out a couple batches, while I was saving the children at the Minnesota capitol. So as soon as he skipped town to climb a mountain, I brewed a Saison. It was certainly a challenge doing it myself, from planning the recipe to measuring the water to filling the carboy, but I enjoyed getting more into the science of it. My friend and award winning homebrewer Don provides good advice, and he sat in for the mash. In some ways I leaned on him too much, but it's nice to get another perspective.

The beer is still in the primary fermentor, but it's ready to age a bit in a secondary. I'm excited to try it, as I added some orange peel and went light on the hops, and hopefully the yeast character will be interesting and tasty. I've been drinking a lot of Saisons this summer, so it will be good to compare.

While this summer certainly hasn't been the brew summer I expected, due mostly to our switch to all grain, which take a lot more time, things are about to change. Tony bought a 15 gallon brew kettle, so we can whip out 10 gallons at a time. Tomorrow will bring our first batch in the kettle, a pale ale. Yay!

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.

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.

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.

Obama for President?

I'm getting pretty close to supporting Barack Obama for president. See, I've been luke warm on the whole situation for a while now. I supported John Edwards 4 year ago, but it seems clear he's not really going anywhere. I think Hillary Clinton would make a damn good president, but her whole "I-voted-for-the-war-before-I- realized-that-wasn't-popular" thing feels like de ja vu. And Obama just seems young.

But that seems like it's to his advantage now.

I took a look at Facebook, a rapidly expanding social networking site highly popular with college kids, and how many supporters the candidates have:

Edwards: 33,463

Clinton: 61,892

Obama: 208,551

Criminy! Granted it's clearly not a scientific method, but it seems like Obama is damn popular and will be the eventual nominee. I mean, a Black candidate winning in mostly white Iowa? And my dad like him.

Where do I sign up?

Homebrew Update

Lagers and more lagers. We have two lagers in bottles now--a Pilsner Urquell clone and an Austrailian one using Ringworm--er wood--hops. We also brewed our 20th batch--that's 100 gallons--of beer since we started brewing together this summer. Batch 20 is a maibock, and will be ready around--you guessed it--April.

Lagers are....

While December is the perfect time to pour a dark, big beer--porters, stouts, barley wines, heavy browns--it's hardly the time to be brewing them, at least when the basement hovers around 50 degrees. I typically stray away from most lagers, which uses yeast that needs to ferment at lower temperatures. Dopplebocks can cause me to turn my head and tip my glass, but I would rather have an ale than most maibocks, Octoberfests and of course American lagers.

I had to swallow hard to face the fact that Tony's basement is under a constant chill and perfect for lagers. So we brewed our first ones last week: a Pilsner Urquell clone, which uses nothing but Saaz hops; and a lager using dry yeast, and Pride of Ringwood and centennial hops. It should be duly noted that centennial are typically used in West Coast IPAs, so we'll see what happens. Similarly, we just bottled an ale using mainly Saaz. Ya gotta experiment to learn, even if it results in a beer that's better as a marinade.

About 6 months ago, on a hot and sweaty July day, we brewed a double IPA and a barleywine. The double IPA is sadly about gone, but we're just now cracking into the barleywine. It's full of caramel and pipe tobacco, balanced with a slight bite of green apple.

Hahahaha, at about 10%, please ignore that last sentence. It's just fuckin' good.

Final note: I've been spending a lot of time blogging over at MnBeer.com, so please check 'em out if you haven't already.

Beer + Turkey = Good?

I was charged with (or took charge of) preparing our family's turkey this year, my first attempt at the task. You may find this shocking, but in searching for a recipe, I turned to one of my most reliable sources for everything beer, BeerAdvocate.com. Their turkey recipe was simple and still intriguing. While it called for injecting a Märzen or Octoberfest into the turkey, none could be found and so I used some of my homebrewed alt. I'd like to think it made a huge difference, but even though the bird was quite delicious, I'm not convinced it did. The alt was good with the bird, but maybe not so much in the bird.

My wife has a more complete account of the meal on her blog.

At least Iowa is good for something

Despite my consistent whining about some of the good beer that is unavailable in Minnesota, all it takes is a trip to a state that doesn't have it as good as we do to bring me back to reality. Last weekend, I was in Iowa for my college homecoming and took the opportunity to visit a local liquor store to check out their wares. I had called ahead, and so I knew that they would have some Gumbalhead from Three Floyds--an excellent hopped-up wheat beer. I picked up three bottles of that (anyone wanna trade?), and a variety of other beer that isn't found in Minnesota.

In case you can't read the labels, from left to right, that's Gumbalhead, Hoppy Brewing Hoppy Face Amber Ale, Blue Frog Red Frog Ale, Lost Coast Pale Ale, ReaperAle Deathly Pale Ale, Millstream Iowa Pale Ale, and MacTarnahan Mac's Ale. The ones I've tried thus far are solid.

Sure, none of these beers come to the North Star State, but Iowa--at least Benz Liquor Depot in CR--doesn't have nearly the quantity of quality craft brews as Minnesota. And no Surly either.

Homebrew Update
Oh, where to start. It's been a busy summer and fall, filling the basement for winter. The Barleywine, Double IPA, Alt, Sweet Stout, Belgian Dubbel, and Winter Warmer are in bottles and the Steam, India Brown Ale and IPA are fermenting. With Tony's coaxing, we've begun to get off-recipe and tweak some of the kits, even making up our own. The Winter was a real treat to brew, as we added a little of this and a little of that. We doubled the grains, added some molasses, fresh ginger, honey, coriander, cocoa powder, juniper and dry hopped it in the primary. When we bottled it it reminded me a bit of Anchor Winter. The Double IPA is excellent, the hops balance the alcohol, which is probably around 7% abv. We have a couple empty carboys to fill, so I'm sure we'll be back at it next week.

Not my life

My mom's been giving me some flack in the comments over at Jane's blog, apparently because I don't post enough about my family and my life. True 'dat. I succumbed very early on to the inherant self-centered, egotistical nature of blogs, going so far as to only write about the things I want to write about, and if my family, friends and really anyone at all wants to read about it (or not) than so be it. I like writing about beer right now, have had my beer musings published a couple times (there goes that ego thing again) and so that's what I'm going to write about. Love ya mom, but you'll have to head over Jane's way to read about someone's personal life (which is a good one to read about!).

But being that I am a caring person, take my new poll to your right and maybe I'll alter my posts. Or maybe not.

Homebrew Update
I came home from France to a wealth of beer at my doorstep. Ready for the drinking is an extra pale ale, a hopped up amber and a Fat Tire clone. All are drinkable, but the EPA is luscious. Well balanced but still giving a nice hop punch. Tony and I bottled our barley wine and Belgian Dubble this week, and dry hopped the double IPA, all of which can be opened around Christmas. A winter and German Alt are on the deck for brewing soon.

Tooting my own horn

It seems my reaches into the beer community grows every day. I responded to a request from MnBeer.com to be a contributor and help with the upkeep of the site, and they agreed! It's a wonderful opportunity to help out one of the best local blogs around--so good that they won Best Specialty Blog from the City Pages last year.

Also, Twin Cities Imbiber magazine has accepted an article I submitted about recent changes to the state's liquor laws. The issue should be on news stands at your local pub, cafe or liquor store in the next month or so.

And here I thought I was just brewing and drinking for the enjoyment of it.

Speaking of brewing, Tony and I have been busy stocking up for the winter. We have five gallons of barley wine, double IPA, extra pale ale, Belgian dubbel and Belgian amber in different stages of fermentation. Yes, you did your math correct and that's 25 gallons of beer. That should get us through Christmas.

Homebrew club

You may remember some time ago I had thrown out the idea of starting a homebrew "club," with "members" coming from the halls of government. Of course, what I really wanted to do was gather some fellow homebrewers--many who work in government--together to drink and be merry. Well, last night was the inaugural meeting of the Capitol Brewers. And we drank and were merry.

Let's see, we had an ESB, Mild Ale, Saison, Pale Ale, Chinook IPA, Dubble, a couple Hefeweizens, and Stouts, a hopless Lager, some mystery ales and some Vine Park left overs.

Thanks to Peter, Ben, Sara, Tony, John and Nate for their contributions. We finished almost every bottle before heading to Sweeney's for a birthday party. Thanks also to the non-brewers for (hopefully) enjoying the beers.

My personal fave (not counting my Saison) was Peter's Lazy Summer Pale, forgotten in the secondary for a few weeks too long which turned out to be just right. Yummy. The worst in show were the Vine Park brews, which should have been consumed months ago. Sorry Nate.

Before we go, I realized this post is my 100th. Exciting. Cheers.

Brew News

So you've noticed the change. I've come to realize that Mozilla users recently began to encounter problems viewing CBH, so I've upgraded to the new Blogger version. My apologies for the pain it causes your eyes. Hopefully I can muster up the energy to spend some time with the template in the next couple weeks.

The big brew news is that there's a new distributor in town. 99 Bottles specializes in small breweries, some of which are veterans of the Minnesota beer scene, and some which are new arrivals. I picked up a couple different beers from 1st Grand Avenue Liquors. The Big Eye IPA from Ballast Point Brewing out of San Diego was incredibly well-balanced and smooth. The IPA from Fish Brewing was a bit of a let down compared to the Big Eye, but the fact that it was organic helped me get past some of the inadequacies. Their pale and amber--also organic--were solid, but nothing to write home about.

I look forward to the other beers 99 Bottles will be bringing into the state, including the return of Anderson Valley, one of my personal faves from the days of All Saints distributing.

I'm brewing a double IPA and a barley wine with a friend this week, which should both be ready around Christmas (although a fellow brewer aged his barley wine made from the kit we're using for seven years, and said it only got better.)

Roguishly Busy

Well I've been busy working on an article to submit to the Twin Cities Imbiber about recent legislative changes to the State's liquor laws. Whether they publish it or not, it's been a great experience working on my first journalistic piece. First, that is, if you don't consider all the words printed here. Anyway, I learned a ton about said liquor laws, and that our franchise laws, tax and fee system, and commerce laws play as much as of role in preventing more good beer from reaching the masses as do the laws which directly govern beer. Thanks a ton to the folks at Town Hall Brewery for filling me in, and if TCI decides to run my piece it will be in the August/September issue.

I believe I had the most overrated beer ever--besides Fat Tire that is, which just made its return to Minnesota last week. Ok, it wasn't really overrated, just over-priced. (Besides, I couldn't resist getting a shot in at the FT.) Rogue's 10,000 Brew Ale is just that--their 10,000th batch of beer. It's a double IPA, clocking in at about 10% abv and 83 IBUs (bittering units). Sure, the 750ml re-sealable ceramic bottle is a keeper, and the contents were pretty amazing, but at $22 a bottle, I want to be completely blown away. I guess it's a good thing I don't drink high end wine.

At the Happy Gnome a couple weeks ago, I paid a similar price for a beer, but this experience was far different. As some background, every Thursday, the Gnome taps a couple casks of beer. Surly Furious is a regular, but usually they supplement that with something else. Bells makes consistent appearances, recently offering an Expedition Stout. When I went by for a drink it was the Tuesday after tapping it, and they surprisingly had some left. See, the oxygen in the cask begins altering the beer's characteristics, so I was intrigued. The $7 for 10 ounces was meager compared to the Rogue. Bitter chocolate and smooth espresso, brought out by the roughly 10% abv, was numbing. It lasted me a nice long 60 minutes, and was worth every one of 'em.

Homebrew Update

So after two-and-a-half weeks without a post I better have some good homebrew news, right? Actually Jane has the scoop over at her blog. I will add though that I tried the mild today, and it's a lot better than I anticipated. The tastings during each transfer were a bit bland and a little funky, but I think the carbonation really livens it up. Another week and it will be perfect.

New Resources

The Twin Cities has a new beer rag on newsstands--mmmm, rag of beer--but who ever buys a magazine from a news stand in Minnesota? Maybe Chicago or New York, but Minnesota?! So its great that Twin Cities Imbiber is free!

Dedicated to the beer and coffee industry in the Twin Cities, TC Imbiber will be available soon around town. The first issue features a nice write-up of Flat Earth Brewing, and a comprehenize summary of Maibocks on the TC market. Future issues may include pieces by me. Pick it up at your local pub, liquor or cafe.

For my loving wife, I brewed a mild ale last week. It will be a nutty, mellow brew at about 3.5% abv. I also helped TonyVav bottle his first homebrew, a hefewiezen with nice undertones of banana and cloves. TV is investigating all-grain brewing, and generally reducing the cost of homebrewing by growing his own ingrediants and buying bulk. This has long been my goal in homebrewing, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the science and specificity behind this ancient art.

Some Updates

Couple updates here for ya on a Saturday night as I'm waiting to get tired enough to go to bed.

***I received a nice email from the "Director of Quality" at Boulder Brewing about the culprit behind the recent bad batch of Hazed and Infused:

The number one problem with the Hazed and Infused you ran into was the actual age of the product. For whatever reason, we had beer on the shelves in MN well past the pull date, and old beer isn't usually a good thing. The pull date on the beer you came across was October 2, 2006, almost 6 months past it's pull-date at the time of purchase. Also, due to the fact that Hazed and Infused is an unfiltered beer, even the slightest contamination can cause serious flavor issues over a 9 month period. The age of this beer made finding the culprit very difficult, as we don't even store archive bottle samples for that long. The samples of the beer I got back from MN showed very little signs, other than the sour taste of course, of a wide spread contamination.

He also had this to share with me:

On another front, keep your eyes open for our latest release Cold Hop. Maris Otter malt gives this beer a unique maltiness and the Saaz and Nelson Sauvin hops finish it off perfectly.

Thanks, man.

***I learned at a visit to Big Top tonight that Bridgeport Brewing will no longer be distributing to Minnesota. Fortunately this meant that I got four six-packs at $4 a piece. Unfortunately you won't be able to drink beer from this solid brewery in Minnesota anymore, unless you come to my house in the next couple weeks.

***My home brew is aging well. The Sasion, still clocking in at about 5% abv., is sweet with a nice bitter undertone. A couple weeks will round it out and give it some more body. The ESB is near perfect, but lacks consistent carbonation, nothing a week or two more in the bottle won't solve.

***Finally, I tried this years' CynicAle from Surly, this time in a can. An amazing Saison, worth every penny. God, I love those cans.