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.

High Summer

Where is the time going!? It's already the middle of July; I gotta start brewing more again. However, I can't think of a better way to spend this stormy morning than catching you all up on my brewing related endeavors. This one will be lengthy so grab a pint and enjoy!

I've got a lot to talk about because I haven't said anything for a while so I'll try to keep everything in sequential order.

The Lemongrass Saisons were put into their final resting places on June 28th. The partial mash went into ten 12-ouncers and one bomber with the rest kegged for home enjoyment. It ended up having a smooth, almost wheat-like body, with the subtlety of the lemongrass, edazote, and Saaz hops masked by the DME. Not bad at all though, just not quite as delicate of a beer as I was hoping for. the all grain version, on the other hand ... haha ... well, I bottled the entire batch and brought some up north to share with my Aunt, Uncle, and Grandma, as well as with my boys at the Lake Superior Open disc golf tournament. The one bottled shared with family was fantastic! Very light and delicate with the earthy notes I was after abounding. I was happily surprised and very pleased. Then, at the tournament, the bottles shared with buddies all foamed over when opened, the aroma was that of a band-aid factory, and the flavor was skunk. My worst fear was realized and my goal as a home brewer will now never be attained (it could never actually be attained anyway...): I had a contaminated batch. I had steam sanitized a batch of bottles in the dishwasher months ago and let them sit in the basement covered with foil. Must have gotten through the micro-porous foil giving the residual yeast something else to do besides eat up the priming sugar and carbonate my beer. Oh well. Now I know. SANITIZE immediately before bottling. Great lesson learned. And, there's still some hope that the entire batch isn't lost because of that one prophetic bottle drank with family in Grand Rapids, MN.


A week prior to bottling and kegging the Lemongrasses, I made a purchase: a ten-gallon cooler all-grain system. It includes two ten-gallon beverage coolers fitted with bulkhead spigots, one with a false-bottom for mashing and lautering; and a fly sparge arm for rinsing the grains after lautering the first runnings of wort. I was so excited I had to try it out so I did a small, 3-gallon "test" batch that very day. It is John Palmer's "Oak Butt Brown" grain bill hopped with Chinook and Fuggle and seasoned with some nutmeg. It needs to be kegged!!

Natalie Champa Jennings came over and did what she does best: take amazing pictures! Many thanks to her again for her support and help. She assembled her own post which can be found here. It was a really fun afternoon in the Red House Brewery, compete with a bucket stacked on a chair stacked on the dining room table (gravity always wins); the riddle of the mysterious note left by the mailman was answered; I got to use my immersion wort chiller for the first time; we saw a double rainbow; and, of course, QueHaz was there, as he is right now, rubbing my arms, face, and computer, walking on my keyboard, and trying to bite my nose while I type. Love that cat. Now for some pictures.

Remember, for your professional photography needs, look no further than Natalie Champa Jennings Photography.

Mikey mashes in while I make sure the lid has an underside.

Grain soup.

QueHaz wonders how long mashing will take. Only an hour buddy.

Paddle-Guitar...

Getting sparge water ready.

Weigh.

Vorlaufing.

Go sparge arm, go!

Gravity.

What a photo-worthy moment: throwing something away. The guy who lives across the alley caught us in the act here and we ironically ran into him at the bar later that night. He thought it was very strange to be taking pictures of throwing stuff away.

I found this in my mailbox that morning and was utterly dumbfounded...

... but then it all made sense ...

... it was the gear cassette and rear derailleur I was anxiously awaiting! Now they're on my bike and I'm a happy peddler.

You have to stay in QueHaz ...

... "That pisses me off!"

Happy brewer, happy peddler, happy guy.

Updating The Book.

Redwood tree commemorating my years in Humboldt County, CA where my appreciation for craft beer grew exponentially. I was spoiled rotten with all the great beers out there, many of which we can get here in MN now too!

It works!

It was so intense.

So that was the inaugural batch in the cooler system. It went so well and I can't wait to use it again, now that I have this:

A 15-gallon kettle fitted with a bulkhead spigot. This will allow me to do 8- and 10-gallon batches; split 4- or 5-gallon batches to experiment with different yeasts, dry-hopping, or other second-stage additions; or to do big and small beers from the same grain: make 5 gallons of a high-gravity wort then sparge another 5 gallons to make a low-gravity session beer. It's gonna be great!!

I nearly forgot the other toy I acquired a little while ago from my friend Doug Taylor: 

A kick-ass set of propane burners. The legs come off so I can put it on the floor to complete the gravity system. The flames rip real high so I should be able to achieve a rigorous boil and they also simmer real low so I should also be able to keep strike water at a lower temp before mashing or for making infusions to adjust mash temperature.

Last but certainly not least of the new brewery toys is my home-made stir plate for growing yeast starters:

 

I found the instructions through Home Brew Talk, a great forum I often use.

I only have it going at about 1/4 speed in the video above because the magnet loses its attraction to the one inside the box when it goes much faster because of, I think, the convex bottom of the jug. I'll get an Erlenmeyer flask soon and hopefully I can let 'er rip then. 

So, with all these new toys at my disposal, all I need now is a propane tank and a little garage-space-management and I'm ready to brew! I'm thinking it's time to cook a Russian Imperial Stout. As chewy as possible, hoppy, as dark as a black steer's tuckus on a moonless prairie night, and probably with some coffee added. That should be great if this coming winter is anything like the last. Sorry to mention winter but with a beer like this, it's now time to think about it.

I originally sat down to write this blog last Friday; now it's the following Thursday. I've lost about 10 pounds sweating at the stadium this past week in the oppressive heat we've been having. Only four more days of trading people alcoholic beverages for their hard-earned dollars then I'll start brewing again. A friend of mine wants me to brew him a batch so he has something to serve his friends who will be helping him move. ON BIKE. A bike move. I'll write about that when appropriate.

That's all I have for you now. I truly hope you enjoyed reading. 

Don't be shy to drop me a line if you would like to try some beer!!

I'm Proud of My Beer and Humbled You're Here

Lemongrass Saison Update

Speaking of the Lemongrass Saison, it's time for both batches to be bottled and kegged.

The partial mash version came down to a final gravity of 1.010, putting it in the neighborhood of 8% ABV.
The "all grain" version fermented out to nearly water with a final gravity of 1.002, giving it an ABV of around 5.5%.
The original lager version was about 5.7% ABV.

The containment processes will happen within the next few days. If you want to swing by and sample, let me know. I'd love to see you. Leave me a comment or drop me a line at 952.221.8858.


I'm Proud Of My Beer And Humbled You're Here

Inaugural Sample Party Results

On May 21, I hosted a sample party featuring 5 beers of my own design. I ordered custom 5-ounce sample glasses, had hour d'oeuvres, set up our disc golf baskets, stopped the rain, and halted the Rapture. It was a great time. Check out Paul D. C. Jennings' video below for a synopsis of what happened.

As for the beers themselves, they were, in order of appearance:

Lemongrass Saison Lager

Citrus Ale

Toronto? Maple Brown

Big Spicy

999 IPA (first of my brews served on draft!)

I asked those in attendance to judge each beer with the following form.

Several weeks later when I had poison ivy weeping out of my leg and it was 103 degrees outside, I sat down in my air-conditioned office and tabulated the results of all those voting forms. There were about 40 people who reviewed each of the 5 beers. 40 x 5 = 200 individual forms. It was a fantastic Excel geek-session. Here's how it shook out.

Sample Party Averages

Out of 5 points possible…

The Maple Brown tied with Big Spicy at 4.5 for the best color.

The Citrus Ale edged out Big Spicy by a tenth of a point at 4.3 for best aroma.

The 999 IPA had the best body (perhaps because of the forced carbonation?) with 4.4.

The 999 IPA also had the best flavor at 4.4.

The 999 had the best aftertaste at 4.2, with both the Lemongrass Saison and Big Spicy at 4.0

Big Spicy was the most original with 4.5.

The winner of the party, the Lemongrass Saison Lager, was in 3^rd for Color, 5^th (last) for Aroma, 3^rd for Body, 2^nd for Flavor, tied for 2^nd for Aftertaste, and 2^nd for Originality. Nobody said they wouldn’t drink it if it were given to them, 85% of people said they would tell others about it, and 80% said they would buy it.

It was because of these results that I decided to make 8 more gallons of the Lemongrass Saison, as described in my first blog, Lemongrass Saison. 



I'm Proud Of My Beer And Humbled You're Here

Inaugural Sample Party Video

Many many thanks to Paul D.C. Jennings for filming and editing this great video. On May 21 I hosted a sample party featuring 5 beers of my own design. I asked people so try the beers and judge them with forms I created with criteria such as flavor, color, aroma, body, aftertaste, and originality. Everybody who came had a great time. My roommate Mikey burned his hand, someone opened the bottle of IPA that I was going to give away as a prize, and I got called Indiana Jones, but other than that the party went very smoothly. I'll write more about the party soon but I wanted to share this as soon as I could because Paul did such a phenomenal job with it.


ABC Brewing from Natalie Champa Jennings on Vimeo.

I'm Proud Of My Beer And Humbled You're Here

Backyard Hops

Back in April, I planted 5 hop rhizomes at my parents' place in Excelsior. Chinook, Fuggle, Willamette, and 2 Nugget rhizomes. Because of the cool and cloudy spring, the ground took a bit longer than usual to warm up and the hops subsequently took a bit longer to emerge. Hop bines (that's not a typo, they're actually called "bines") are apparently pretty hearty and resilient, needing only water and sun to thrive.

Per widely accepted standards, I dug holes in the ground that measured roughly 12 inches long by 6 inches wide by 6 inches deep. I then filled each one about half way with loose gravel to allow drainage below the rhizome, filled nearly to ground level with good organic soil, laid the rhizome into that soil, and finally topped with a mound of soil to a few inches above ground level.

Once the bines grew large enough, it was time to begin training them. I inserted plant supports with loops on the tops into the ground next to each rhizome. To the loops I tied twine and ran it to the eave of the garage where I screwed eye hooks in and ran a length of climbing rope through. The bine-training twine just wraps over the climbing rope and down to the ground, anchored with rocks. To harvest the hop cones, all I'll have to do is untie the twine from the rock and the bine will sag enough for me to reach even the top-most clusters. 

I've personally never been much of a gardener, but I've never been disinterested in it; my folks have fairly green thumbs so growing hops at their place works pretty well for all of us.

I'm not terribly concerned with any yield in this first year. It's more important for the rhizomes go get established in their conditions, developing a good root system and plant mass before they begin to focus their energy into cone production. But if I can brew a fresh-hopped IPA this fall, I'll be a happy brewer!!

This is how big the Willamette was when I rigged my "trellis" system.

June 13, 2011. The Fuggle rhizome produced 4 bines.

Willamette. 6.13.11

Fuggles on 6.19.11. They are starting to get a lot fuller and are possibly even growing faster now. My parents measured growth of 7 inches in one week a couple weeks go. Amazing.

My hop Momma with the Fuggles on Father's Day, 6.19.11. They're about 3 feet tall now.

It's been interesting to note that the Fuggle and Willamette bines are growing much faster (and are more healthy?) than the Chinook and the Nugget. Fuggle and Willamette Alpha-Acid (the substance responsible for bitterness) percentages are in the 4 - 5 range while those for Chinook and Nugget considerably higher, 12 - 13...

Speaking of Nugget and Willamette, I drank the second-to-last bomber of my "999 IPA, take 2" while I wrote this. This beer will evolve into a staple for ABC. It's my take on a 90-minute boil, with 9 hop additions, and ideally 9% ABV (I'm working on that, the one I drank tonight finished around 8%). The "third generation" 999 was on tap at my sample party, blog on that to come, and I think I almost nailed what I'm after in an IPA: dry and bitter with full hop flavor/hop "sweetness" throughout, light yellow and clear, and strong with a thick white head. It'll happen. Stay tuned.


I'm Proud Of My Beer And Humbled You're Here

Maple Brown Cook Session Photos

I just got these wonderful photos from a wonderful friend of mine who is a wonderful photographer. Her name is Natalie Champa Jennings, and her work can be found here:

Natalie Champa Jennings Photography

www.nataliechampajennings.com

Be sure to consult Natalie for your wedding shoots, headshots, or any other professional photography you may need.

These were taken on March 29, 2011 at the Red House Brewery in South Minneapolis. The beer is called "Toronto?" and it is a maple brown. I drank one last night as I was finishing up with the Lemongrass Saison session and it is getting better with a little age! It has a great, mellow maple aroma and aftertaste, with classic and satisfying brown ale overtones. I still have some left if you want to come try it.

I'm Proud Of My Beer And Humbled You're Here