Land of Amber Waters

"Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota." This is a book that I got for Christmas that I have to give a quick mention. This book was written by Doug Hoverson, a teacher at a private high school in St. Paul. He took a year off and partially funded by Summit and Schell, he researched for this book. The end result is amazing, an extremely well researched book with a huge amount of beautiful pictures. Doug starts with the first settlers in Minnesota and takes it up to today. There are amazing picutres of old family breweries, taverns and a great collection of vintage labels. He discusses a lot about the history of small town brewing and the effect of the industrial age. He worked closely with the historical society and looked at a lot of local records. To me the level of research is really impressive. Bottom line is, from what I've read, this book would be great for anyone interested in the history of brewing. If you are familiar with Minnesota, it makes it that much cooler, but I think it would be interesting regardless.

Winter Ale

When the Fat Tire yeast became available I bought some up, but hadn't decided what I wanted to make with it. Because Fat Tire is finally available in the cities, I didn't really want to make a clone since I can just go get the real stuff. I had toyed with making the Big Ticket Brown Ale in honor of Kevin Garnett, but have decided instead to use it to make a winter ale.
I found a recipe in Charlie Papazian's Microbrewed Adventures book for the Alaskan Brewing Company's Winter Ale. I had this beer over Thanksgiving and thought it was awesome. It's lighter than most winter ales and is brewed with spruce tips. I don't know if I can find any spruce tips, so I think I'm just going to go with the spruce essence extract available at Northern Brewer. I think it'll be good. I'll post the recipe once I make it.

Up next however is my La Libertad, a west coast pale ale using Northern Brewer and Cascade hops.
Anyways, Happy New Year
-The Bearded Brewer

Iowa Beer

Jeff brought back some beer from our home state of Iowa. There are very few breweries in Iowa, but Millstream is the state's oldest microbrewery, located in Amana, near Iowa City. Jeff brought back two beers, the Iowa Pale Ale (IPA) and their John's Generations White Beer. They were both excellent. Here are my thoughts:



Iowa Pale Ale (IPA)
This beer was a very nice IPA. It poured a darker golden color, almost copper. It had a nice two fingers white head and a really floral aroma. The description on their website says they use Northern Brewer, Hallertau and dry hop with Cascade hops. I think the cascade hops gave this beer a nice crisp citrusy finish. Its not overly malty, and has a nice sweet body to it. I was really impressed with this beer, a very mild yet refreshing IPA.


John's Generation White Beer
This beer was a silver medal winner at the GABF for the wit category, no easy feat considering the huge popularity of this style and the large amount of breweries who have recently been brewing wits. This beer is brewed in honor of John's Grocery, a store in Iowa City that is the largest and most famous beer and wine distributor in the state. It's been handed down through three generations, hence the name.
Anyway, onto the beer: This beer was outstanding and one of the better white's I've had. It poured a light yellow, with a cloudiness from the yeast and a thin white head. It was extremely crisp and refreshing. There is a slight hint of coriander, but not nearly as present as a lot of white ales. I really liked this beer and it would be the perfect summer beer.
I'd love to try more from this brewery, but don't know when I'll be getting back down to Iowa. Check out their website at www.millstreambrewing.com

Good to see some good Iowa beer!
-Bearded Brewer

Beer for Christmas

Happy holidays everyone. I'm in Wisconsin celebrating Christmas and excited to have tried some native Wisconsin beers during my trip. In a previous post I mentioned my obsession with a Wisconsin brewery, New Glarus. Well, I was able to sample several more New Glarus products and thought I'd share my thoughts:

Spotted Cow: This is a beer I had tried before, but several weeks ago when I was in Wisconsin tried again and really fell in love with it. This is described as a farmhouse ale and is the beer that they have doing a lot of marketing with and have on tap in a lot of locations. This beer pours a very light golden color with a thin white head and a healthy amount of carbonation. It's very fruity with a hint of citrus and melon. It's very smooth and has a soft mouthfeel. This is a great summer beer and just an easy drinking beer.

Smoke on the Porter: This is part of the "unplugged series." The label says that Dan the head brewer is given freedom to brew a batch of whatever he can come up with. This summer was a Belgian Quadruple. For the winter they market a four pack of this unplugged, a smokey porter. Apparently the malted grains are smoked with applewood. My dad described this beer as "incredible!" It pours a dark brown, almost black with a very thin tan head. The first thing that hits you is the smokiness and it remains throughout. This beer is unlike anything I've had before. Smokey and roasty, with very little hint of anything else. This beer tastes like a campfire. Unique and excellent.

Yokel: This is New Glarus' lager and while I'm not normally a lager fan, this is a good beer. It pours a very light yellow with a thick rocky white head. There's a crisp, slightly sweet aftertaste. This beer drinks very smooth with very little hop presence. A nice drinking lager.

Organic Revolution: This is a newer addition brewed with organic Wisconsin malts and organic Hallertau hops. It is described as a hoppy pale ale, but I found the hop presence to be quite mild. It was a nice drinking pale ale, with a slightly caramel taste. I thought it was decent, but nothing outstanding, especially in comparison to their other beers.

I also had another Wisconsin beer from Point Brewery in Stevens Point. I'm a big fan of their white beer, it was actually the inspiration for my Inky's White as it's one of my wife's favorite beers. Nothing else we've had from them has particularly stood out. Their holiday beer is called St. Benedict and is a Belgian double. It pours a light brown with a ruby red hue. It has a very thin off-white head and a very fruity flavor. It's very nice and has a warming alcohol presence to it. I liked this beer and would compare it to the Schell's Snowstorm. A nice holiday Belgian.

I got several beer related books for Christmas, including one that deserves its own post, the great Land of Amber Waters. This exhaustive history of the brewing history of Minnesota is an amazing book. More on that later.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
-The Bearded Brewer

Whitefish Cranberry Wheat

My Whitefish Cranberry Wheat was a recipe I designed for my parents for a Christmas present. I gave them a case, the recipe (my dad's a homebrewer too) and the label. My parents have a lake home on Whitefish Lake in Northwestern Wisconsin, a big cranberry growing region. In fact Stone Lake (the nearest town) is home of the hugely attended Cranberry Fest in October. This beer is made using close to two pounds of frozen cranberries. Last year I was pleased with the turn out, and this year I've been happy with the results after 2 weeks in the bottle.
The beer pours a nice light redish hue with a thick white head. The cranberry presence is very faint. There is a tangy-ness to the beer, but the cranberries aren't overwhelming at all. Its a very nice drinking wheat beer with a hint of tartness. This is my Christmas beer, and I'm excited to have a lot more of it this year to drink. It's different enough, but my whole goal was for the cranberries to be evident but faintly. The color is beautiful and its a beer thats accessible to a lot of people.

Here's the extract recipe:
6lbs Wheat Malt extract
1.25 lbs Wheat Malt
.25 lbs belgian pils
.50 lbs honey malt
1 lb Tettengar hops (60)
.50 lb Tettengar (15)
Then .75 lbs of frozen cranberries (chopped in a food proc.) at 30 minutes
Then 1 lb of frozen chopped cranberries in the secondary for a week.
The yeast is Wyeast 3068 Weistehpen Weizen

Happy holidays
-The Bearded Brewer

Random thoughts

I have winter break coming up, which explains why I'm semi checked out and posting more frequently. I'm excited about the time off to brew several beers. I have been waiting to brew a Pittsburgh style beer for my brother-in-law Peter and my wife Kristen. They are from Pittsburgh and both(as am I) big fans of Yuengling. Peter's not an ale drinker and has been asking me for years to try to make a Yuengling clone. Unfortunately, I don't have the capability to lager. So the Yinzer Ale is going to be a 3 gallon batch. I'm hoping for it to be a lager-esque ale that is going to aim at being in the ballpark of Yuengling or Iron City.
Plus. it's very timely since my brother-in-law just got a long-awaited job in the video game industry. There isn't a more deserving person to be working in that world and its a rare opportunity that someone works their whole life to achieve a goal of doing something really cool, and he's well on his way. So congrats bro, and this beer is brewed in honor of you.
I'm going to finally be brewing La Libertad. I had the idea when I was in California in September to brew a "west coast style" Pale Ale. I had the recipe kicking around in my head and then after buying a sixer of Anchor's Liberty Ale after I got back from my trip, I decided I'd aim for something similar. I was lucky enough to get 2oz of Cascade hops right before the hop shortage.
Also I'm planing on brewing the Big Ticket Brown Ale, but I'm still working on the label. It's going to use the Fat Tire yeast, not exactly sure what the beer is going to be yet, but I have an idea.

Some other random beer thoughts: I wasn't aware that Schell's Snowstorm was a rotating recipe. Jeff really liked it and told me about it, I thought I'd had it last year but then I found out it's new every year. This year is a Belgian dubble. It's really good, fruity and has a nice redish brown body.
Also, I've been drinking one of my favorite winter beers- Bell's Winter White. This is Belgian white ale (wit) and is one of the best. It's got a sweet flavor and a presence of coriander at the end. It's a nice change of pace from all the winter ales. I love everything about this beer even down to the label.

-Bearded Brewer

Water conservation

One of the biggest wastes in the brewing process at any level is water. For a five gallon batch, a lot of water is used at a variety of stages. I had been trying to think of a way to collect and reuse the water I use during the cooling down stage, which is when the most water is wasted. When I went on a tour of the Summit Brewery they talked about how they collect their excess water and reuse it for cleaning and other things. I had been trying to think how to apply this to a smaller scale. I found a solution that worked fairly well (I've only done it once). The process is simple, I bought camping jugs that hold 7 gallons each for about $8 a piece and used them to collect the water I send through the wort chiller. I easily filled up 14 gallons and still had a lot of water that went down the drain. But, at least I can reuse those 14 gallons. I had tried before with a 2 gallon sprayer but it didn't really work. This works a lot better because there's a spigot that I can easily use to pour into a bucket or a jug. I've been using it to fill a 1 gallon jug I keep filled with 1-step sanitizer.I might buy some more if I have room, since the next time I brew I doubt I will have gone through all the reused water. Just wanted to share a method for other homebrewers to try or if any of you have another system that works, let me know.
-The Bearded Brewer

Bangy Tangy

Today I brewed the Bangy Tangy Belgian Ale. This beer was orgianlly named by my friend Josh Broten (who Brother Brotino is also named after). He's a big belgian beer fan and wanted me to brew a beer he would enjoy. He came up with the name and the first time I brewed this beer it was a big hit. My friend Jeff says that the name describes the beer perfectly. Because of the name, I tried to make a tangy white beer, I did this by adding cranberries and orange marmalade to the recipe. The end product was a very smooth, tangy wit that poured an orangish color. I recently redid the label and am brewing it in time for Josh's visit in February.

The recipe is:
2 lbs Pilsen malt
1 lb white wheat
1/2lb caramel 10
The above are partially mashed at 150 degrees for 30 minutes.
6 lbs Wheat Liquid Extract (added at 30 min)
.5 oz Magnum Hops (60)
.5 oz Magnum (30)
1 oz Sladek (due to the shortage of Saaz, this is a replacement) @ 5 min
8 oz chopped frozen cranberries at 30 minutes
2 T of orange marmalade (5 min)
1/2 t of paradise seeds (2 min)
Belgian Wit yeast.

We'll see how it turns out. It's cold in my basement, so I put the carboy upstairs in a cooler and wrapped it in blankets to get it up to 70 for the primary fermentation. Next time I'll write my impressions of my cranberry wheat beer (not quite 2 weeks in the bottle) and also share my thoughts on a new system I've added to reuse water from my wort chiller.
-Bearded Brewer

Morris Park Porter

After two weeks in the bottle, I'm happy with how the Morris Park Porter has turned out. This was my first attempt at a porter, and I've been happy with the results. My wife Kristen, not normally a dark beer fan, also really like it, so that's a good sign.
It pours a dark brown, almost black with a thin tan head (at this point). It has a very smooth, sweet flavor at first, which is followed by a nice coffee-roasty flavor. I think it'll mature nicely.
For the homebrewers, it's an extract recipe, it's 100% organic:
1 lb Chocolate Malt
.75 lb Crystal 120
3 lbs light malt extract
1 lb light malt extract (added at 15 min)
1 oz organic admiral hops 60 min
1 oz organic admiral hops 1 min
1056 Wyeast American Ale

Next post I'll have some thoughts on my cranberry wheat and my Bangy Tangy.
* Update, after a full three weeks in the bottle, this is one of the best beers I've made. It's super silky smooth with a sweet chocolately flavor that finishes with a nice roasty-coffee-bitterness. I already want to brew this beer again.

Bearded Wear for the Holidays

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New Labels

I recently redid the label for Burning Beard, the new version features Neil from Clutch (the inspiration for the name). Also the label for my upcoming La Libertad, a west coast pale ale.

Northwoods Ale

My Northwoods Ale has been in the bottle for two weeks and thus far has really been tasting nice. I think that if I can hold off for a bit longer before drinking more of them, the flavors will really come togther even more.

This beer turned out to be much lighter than what I had intended....I used a recipe for a British bitter, but had to cut the grains in half when it came time to mash. The beer pours a very light golden color, with a very thin white head. The first aroma that hits you is the maple syrup. I put the maple syrup in during the secondary and I think that gives it the presence in the aroma more. Not much of a taste from the syrup, but a little sweetness. The wild rice gives it a little dry finish and a very distinct taste. The wild rice isn't overwhelming in my mind, but it's definitely there. Overall I'm pleased. The last time I made this beer it was more of a brown ale, and I would say this beer is closer to a lager, with very little hop presence and a smoothness to it. I'm thinking it will age well. Wild rice is fun to brew with, but time consuming because you have to boil it before hand.

Big Ticket Brown Ale

It feels weird this winter not to be watching KG on a regular basis. The Big Ticket Brown Ale is going to be coming in early 2008. Brewed in honor of 12 great seasons being spolied watching one of the best of all time. On another note... this could be dangerous now that I know how to post youtube clips! More to geek out on!