That’s Cold

[ No Comments ] Posted on 02.08.10 under Uncategorized

The downside to watching football on TV:
Coors Light. Of course it’s aged cold! Of course it’s filtered cold!!

Select 55

[ No Comments ] Posted on 02.07.10 under Uncategorized

Watching the Super Bowl, I have become aware of Bud Select 55. BeerAdvocate.com claims that this beer is 4.0% ABV. So how does that work? BeerSmith tells me it would have to have a starting gravity of 1.020 and finishing gravity of 0.989 to meet those stats. I couldn’t do it without dropping below 1 for the finishing gravity. WTF? Must be the effect of alcohol on the gravity reading. But still. 1.020. That’s low.

Writing Beer Recipes

[ No Comments ] Posted on 02.04.10 under Brewing

In the world of homebrewing, there’s a common progression. First, one starts with kits. Premade recipes in little cardboard boxes all packaged with instructions. Brewer’s Best, for example. Then one moves on to the recipes of others, like clones of famous beers or just highly regarded tried and true homebrewer favorites. Now it’s on to the SNPA clone or Denny’s RyePA. Finally one day, the intrepid homebrewer decides it is time to stray from the beaten path and derive a novel recipe for an intended flavor profile.

The culmination of brewing experience gives the knowledge of the influence of each ingredient on the finished product. But at the same time, there are hints of apprehension around the unknown. I mean, it’s hard to tell what exactly will happen as a result of the addition of an ounce of Cascades at 15 minutes.

Here are a few rules for making your own recipes followed by an idea.

  1. Keep it simple: Making a recipe doesn’t have to be tough. In the end, a bunch of extract and a few ounces of hops will make a perfectly agreeable beer. Pick some stats: color, gravity, IBU. Then put together some ingredients to meet those stats. And there you go. Your very own beer.
  2. Leverage the past: Look at the recipes you’ve already brewed. Think about how the beers came out. Consider taking one of your old favorites, and modify one thing. Voila! Your own recipe! With minimum risk. Then build from there.
  3. Just do it: In the end, you can read all you want, but you just have to try something. The more you make the more you get to know how it all works. Consider it an iterative process. You get an idea of what you want to make. You come up with a recipe. It is off by a little bit in some certain way. You adjust the recipe to address that deficiency. It is off in a different way. You adjust. It is not perfect. You adjust. And so on.

Now: here is the idea. Imagine if you could pick your beer style and there was a computer program to make the recipe for you. What do you think? Have you ever seen anything like that? Could it even work?

Dundee Mix Pack

[ No Comments ] Posted on 01.22.10 under Tasting

When you’re value shopping, you come across tough choices.

I ended up with a Dundee mixer 12-pack for $10.99. One dollar cheaper than the Red Hoook $11.99 special (I already used the $5 rebate, so that doesn’t count any more). Worth a shot for the Dundee.

Plus it’s a mix pack, two each of six different beer styles. IPA, Pale Ale, Porter, Wheat, Pale Bock, and the immortal Honey Brown. At least it’s a variety, and if one is terrible, little is lost. Besides, who could predict which would be the best? Mix packs like this satisfy the ticker in me.

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Joy and Pain

[ No Comments ] Posted on 01.15.10 under Brewing, Kegging

Kegging is such a joy. It is always so exciting to be packaging the results of brewing and fermenting. It is the last time-consuming step in the process. From there on out it’s all enjoyment with no more work. You get to measure your final gravity, determine your ABV, see how you hit your marks, and most importantly, get a preview taste of the beer you’ve just made.

Furthermore, kegging is so quick and easy, it takes around a half an hour at most, and you’re done. It’s all so wonderful. I am euphoric every time I complete a kegging run. It is just so satisfying and a great symbol of many weeks of drinking pleasure to come in the future.

But kegging has a dark side that I’m experiencing this week.

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Getting Out The Trub

[ No Comments ] Posted on 01.05.10 under All-Grain, Brewing, Hops, IPA, Lambic, Stories, Zok

I am lucky enough to be able to enjoy over a week of paid time off between Christmas and New Year’s. With such an extended stay at home, it’s almost a given that there should be a time to brew somewhere in there. As it turns out, the holidays are busy times full of seeing family and stuff like that. But in the end, I managed to carve out a perfect brewing day – January 1st. I still haven’t decided if it was Brew Year’s Day or New Beer’s Day, but either way the pun is bad.

I have had these bacterial cultures in my fridge for a while, and I decided to finally put them to work. I made a lambic. Half malted wheat and half pale malt, with a handful of what we dubbed “bunny hops” boiled for 60 minutes. I skipped the whole raw wheat turbid mash four hour boil thing, and went pretty standard with an infusion mash around 148°F for this one.

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Bison Honey Basil

[ No Comments ] Posted on 12.28.09 under Free Beer, Tasting

I have to admit that I have had some guilt over this one for a while.

One day, I got an email from a brewery seeking a media outlet for their beer. And I was it. I love that kind of thing. I don’t get it every day. Or really every month. Or even quarterly. So I had in the mail a pair of bottles of beer and some marketing info. I’d given the expectation to the brewery that I’d review the beer online. But yet I never found that “right time” to “formally review” the beer. I drank one of them right away, and formed my initial impressions, and then the second has sat in my fridge since then. It’s been probably about six months since I first tried this summer special from the certified organic Bison brewery from California.

Now, finally, I have got the guts up to write up this one.

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European Stones

[ No Comments ] Posted on 12.25.09 under Uncategorized

The other day, Stone started looking for a brewery space in Europe.

For some reason, a lot of people are mad about this. Well, actually I understand the reaction. Until about a few months ago, I couldn’t get Stone here in Connecticut. I had to drive to the beer Mecca known as the state of Rhode Island to get Stone.

But now I can get Stone right here in CT. And I am quite happy that I can. I mean, a $7 bomber of 13th Anniversary is a good thing for poker night.

So now that I have access, I am all for more access to more people. At the same time, I can understand the views of people in states that still can’t get Stone. I mean, why not make more beer in the US, maybe from a Midwest or East Coast location. Imagine if some Americans could get Stone from the Shelton Bros before they could get it from the local Sam Adams distributor!

All that said, I think that making American beer in Europe is an awesome idea! I know that I prefer beer made in America for freshness reasons, and if Delerium (for example) started making beer in USA, I’d be all over it. So now fans of American beer will be able to get the real thing made relatively locally!

Stone opening a European branch extends the reach of not only “craft beer” but also of “American-style” “craft beer”. And that’s a good thing.

Beer Peace

[ 1 Comment ] Posted on 12.04.09 under News

peace-doveHow many brands? How few owners? Who knows? Who cares?

There has been a lot going around about how two “breweries” own over 200 beer brands, comprising a vast majority of the American beer market. As a result, there are a lot of “Bud sucks” kind of remarks out there, as well as abundant boycott sentiment against the big two, three, or four from the craft beer defenders of the world wide web.

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What Kind of Beer is That?

[ No Comments ] Posted on 12.02.09 under Alcohol, Barley Wine, Brewing, IPA, Style Profile, Tasting

IIPA or Barley WineI pull a half-pint of my latest monster – a 10% ABV beer, pale in color, with a moderately high bitterness and lots of late hops. A huge nose of Amarillo and Centennial hits me right away – floral citrus notes assault me like Coltrane’s Sun Ship. Then I take a sip. Bitterness is not that strong, and alcohol dominates the flavor. This beer was meant to be an IIPA. But now I am not so sure.

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