Happy Belated New Beers

So, yeah ... it's been forever and a day since I've posted anything but I've been BUSY with BEER!

This post will be more of a bulleted dissemination of what I've been up to; just to try to catch up.

Since July I have brewed 17 all-grain batches both in the garage and in the kitchen.

• Berkland RyePA
• No [Bitter] Bottom: a black "IPA" that turned into more of a molasses-y stout; I Parti-Gyled it to make Bitty Bitter Brown with the second runnings.
• I ventured into sour beers with SouRIPA, a sour rye IPA (Flanders Red?) fermented exclusively with brettanomyces bruxellensis. Just to get crazy I added some milk sugar, sour milk beer? Why not! If you'd like to try it I have a couple bottles left. It's not as off-putting as it sounds. I washed the yeast and re-brewed it, this time without the milk sugar. This second version had been in the fermentor since November 29, and will be for nearly another month...
• Another Parti-Gyle, this time a Russian Imperial Stout with a Cream Stout squeezed out of the second runnings.
• I then brewed almost 14 gallons of the acclaimed "999" IPA for my best friend Brent Schreiber's wedding to the lovely Kim. For Kim I brewed about 9 gallons of a honey wheat, which everyone loved, called Kim's Honeymoon.
• Unbeknownst to most everyone, especially my official photographer, Natalie Champa Jennings, I brewed what many thought to be my best beer to date. The Citrus Ale. I have another batch that I will be kegging likely today so come and get it on tap soon!!!
• C.R.O.C Porter: Chocolate, Roast, Oat, Coffee. 5-gallon batch spit in half after primary fermentation, half dry-hopped, half left alone. Delicious. Should have made 20 gallons.
• A quick Christmas Eve story:
• My uncle: Surly Furious is my all-time favorite beer.
• My aunt: Aaron, can you brew Furious?
• Me: I can come damn close. How about I brew a beer that [my uncle] will like better than Furious?
• GAME ON. I had been wanting to brew an English IPA using English hops that start with the letter "P". Thus, UKIPA, aka, AAAAAggressive (thanks Steph) was born. I'm not sure if my uncle will like this first attempt better than his beloved Furious but it's pretty good and currently on tap. Come try it and tell me what you think. Just leave some for my uncle.
• Using the same yeast from the UKIPA, I embarked on a Three Hour Boil to make a more traditional English IPA. This is in secondary and will be bottled within a week or so.
• Last but certainly not least, both in importance of the beer and of course in brewing beer at all, was MaiMomBock. A light-bodied, malty, and pungently hopped Munich Helles/Maibock, brewed for and by, my Mom!

 

Look at the clarity of that wort!!!

That's it for actual brewing. Well almost...I've actually been helping to brew a lot of beer for the last four months. 100 gallons a week to be exact. I am the assistant brewer at Vine Park Brewing Company in St. Paul. Talk about right place, right time: I had heard of Vine Park for several years, knowing they're a brew-on-premises where anyone can go there, pick out one of nearly 50 recipes, set up a brew day, and have a knowledgeable, friendly, and enthusiastic brew coach walk you through it. In their words:

Welcome to Minnesota’s most unusual Brewery & Winery.

Vine Park is unique – the only brew-it-yourself-on-the-premises in the Midwest. Since 1995, Vine Park is still the Fun Place to Brew Your Own Beer & Make Your Own Wines! We hope you will join the thousands of happy customers who take home the beer and wine they have handcrafted here to share with friends & family.

So I randomly stopped in one day in late September to check it out and to see if they needed any help with anything. Turned out Andy Grage was in need of an assistant brewer for his growler sales. I assist on mashing in, monitoring sparge gravity, cleaning the mash tun, pumping into the fermentor, and of course, cleaning kegs! I've even had a bit of input into recipe design thus far; and am doing a little brew coaching from time to time. Make an appointment to brew your own beer! Who knows, maybe I'll show you how! Keep your eye on Vine Park, good things are coming...

Speaking of brewing your own beer, I was hired as a part time retail sales associate at Northern Brewer's beautiful new flagship location in South Minneapolis. I must be doing something right to have been 1 among 8 people chosen out of what I heard to be 70 applicants to sell home brew equipment and supplies. I absolutely love the job. We offer classes and events too so if you're interested in starting to home brew, need help with certain areas of your existing home brewery, or want to hear from professional brewers about how they did it, drop on by!!

Lastly for today: because of Northern Brewer's new store opening, the South West Journal decided to write an article on home brewing. Yup, you guessed it. I was "featured" in the article as "the local home brewer". It was pretty neat. I don't think I've spewed out so much of my brewing knowledge in a single sitting like I did the day Aaron Rupar came over for the interview. The article can be found here.

I'll leave you with some photos... thanks for reading. 

Cheers!!

~abcbrewing

Garage set-up.

Setting the hop schedule in stone.

Gravity.

Piper and Paul.

Willamette cones.

Boil.

Chill.