Bearded Brewing Blog

Doble Double IPA

2012-01-19T17:08:00.004-06:00

As part of my double brew weekend, I brewed up a double IPA. I always love the slew of Imperial IPAs that come out in late February/Early March, and thought it was about time I added my own to the mix. Plus, my Ryeteous Rye Porter got an infection, so I'm looking for something that I can have on tap in a month or so. Instead of brewing two lagers that would require time, I went with the Doble.
I've brewed my fair share of big IPAs, and I tend to focus more on the hops than the malt, since I tend to like IPAs that aren't too syrupy. I had a lot of whole leaf hops grown by my friend, Zeus and Centennial. I wanted to choose a complimentary hop that would balance the intense citrus and fruitiness of those hops. So I chose Chinhook, a hop I've used in some other beers of mine. I really like the piney/slightly smokey flavors that come from Chinhook and when paired with overly citrusy hops, I think it creates a nice complexity. I've been striving towards adding complexity in my hop profiles, so I'm hoping the desired result comes through.
The other difference with the Doble than previous brews, is that I chose to boil the wort for 90 minutes. I had time to spare, and have never done this. Based on what I've read, it should add some bitterness to the beer.
I was a little disappointed that my OG ended up lower than intended, so I'm thinking that I need to adjust my sparging techniques. I batch sparge, but I wonder if I am rinsing too fast, because my OGs have been lower than expected. That is however, the beauty of partial mashing...I still end up with a decent product, but am not getting as much out of the grains as I should. After two weeks of fermentation, the Doble has finally finished at around 7% abv. So its more "double" in IBUs than ABV. First pull out of the carboy was very tasty and very hoppy so, I'm not too concerned.

Going forward I would like to correct the sparging problem, or figure out another reason why my OGs have been so off.

As for the Doble recipe:
Mash @ 151 for 45 minutes
3 lbs Org 2-Row
8 oz Org Crystal 60
80z Org Crystal 40
1 lb Org Carapils

9.15 Organic Light Malt Extract (@ 20 min)
1 lb Honey (@ 5)

Hops: 1 oz Chinhook @ 90
1 oz Chinhook @ 60
1 oz Leaf Centennial @ 30
1 oz Chinhook @ 15
1 oz Zeus Leaf Hops @ 10
1 oz Centennial @ 5
1 oz Chinhook @ 2
1 oz Zeus Leaf Hops @ 1

2 packs Wyeast American Ale 2

I'm very excited to see how this turns out.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gringo De La Noche

2012-01-15T15:42:00.005-06:00

It seems like it's been a very long time since I've brewed or posted anything. With a busy holiday month, I didn't have time to brew in December, but made up for it by brewing twice this weekend.

My Friday night brewing session was my annual Imperalistic Mexcian Cerveza, the Gringo. This year I decided to brew a darker version of the Gringo, more in a Negro Modelo style. I have had some Vienna malt I've been wanting to use up, so a Vienna lagerish beer would be perfect. I have had success in the past by balancing out my "imperial cerveza" with Centennial hops. For the darker version, I wanted to go with all Cascade instead and I didn't use quite as many hops as I have with the other versions. I wanted to tone down the hops until I saw how they played off the darker malts.

As with all my pseudo-lagers, I use the California 2112 "steam" yeast which gives a nice clean finish and after lagering the beer for a couple months, I can get in the ball park. That said, the Gringo has always been it's own animal, clean and smooth with a nice hoppy citrusy presence with little bitterness. I'm hoping De La Noche continues the tradition.

Here's the recipe I went with:

Mash @ 150 for 1 hour

3 lbs Organic Vienna Malt

1 lb Organic Munich Malt

10 oz Organic Carapils

6 oz Organic Carafa 2

6 lbs Organic Light LME

Hops: .40 Cascade @ 60

.60 Cascade @ 15

1 oz Cascade @ 10

1 oz Cascade @ 5

1 lb Agave nectar @ secondary. Lagered for 3 months.

Yeast: Cali 2112

Very excited to see how it turns out!

Stay tuned, I brewed the following night and will be posting about my Double IPA this week.

Salud!

Bearded Brewer

Ryeteous Rye Porter

2011-11-16T20:01:00.004-06:00

I have never brewed with rye before. I haven't drank a lot of rye beers, but have had several recently that I really enjoy. The two I really like are the wonderfully hoppy Red's Rye PA from Founder's and the very unique Cane and Ebel from Two Brothers. Northern Brewer recently released a rye malt extract that is a combination of rye malt, caramel malt and 2-row. I thought that would be a nice way to ease into the rye world, and planned on brewing a rye IPA. As the weather has been getting colder however, I found myself wanting a darker beer. I have had a rye porter from Iowa's Peace Tree Brewing Company which was quite good as well. So I decided to brew up a nice porter and use 3.15 lbs of the rye malt extract. I'm excited to see how it turns out. Normally I have an idea in my head of what I think the beer will taste like, but I have to admit I'm not quite sure what I will get with this one.
I had read in a BYO article about the idea of building complexity in a porter through layering dark grains. So I decided to use a variety of dark grains, in addition to some crystal malt to give it some sweetness. At the last minute, I was a little worried about the rye adding a bit too much bitterness, so I threw in a small amount of dark belgian candi syprup for balance.

Here's what I went with for my partial mash recipe:
Steep overnight in 4 qts of water (extract liquid added at 10 minutes left in boil)
8 oz Organic Carafa 2
4 oz Organic Roasted Barley
6 oz Organic Black Malt
8 oz Organic Chocolate Malt

Mash @ 151
3 lbs Org. 2-Row
1 lb Org Munich
1 lb Org Crystal 60

Extract @ 20
3.15 Rye Malt LME
3.15 Organic Light LME

2 oz Dark Belgian Candy Sugar @ 10

Hops:
1.5 oz Fuggles @ 60
.5 oz Fuggles @ 20

Yeast: White Labs 02 English Ale Yeast

I am curious to see how it turns out.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Final Touches

2011-11-06T09:40:00.004-06:00

When I made the move from kits to creating my own recipes six years ago, I received a copy of Brew Your Own magazine in the mail with the annual label contest results in it. I was blown away and inspired to start doing it myself. I had never thought about that aspect of making my own beer...also making my own "brand. " Bearded Brewing was born and after many different drawings, I settled on my logo. The next step was creating my own labels. I've always used a really old school program called Microsoft Picture It!, but recently have started learning how to use Gimp (a free program that is very similar to photoshop). The next step was actually putting the labels onto the bottles. At first I used to buy labels in the homebrew shops, but found that they got to be really expensive. I eventually switched to inkjet sticker project paper sold at stores like Office Max and even Target. It was cheap, and I could easily cut out any size label I wanted, which is nice when bottling 22 oz bombers. It won't hold up forever in a fridge since it's not glossy finish, but it looks good when you give a friend a bottle or a six pack, and it actually holds up pretty well for a while in the fridge before getting soggy. Essentially, it's cheap and looks great til you get it wet. I use templates from 4th and Vine (which are the labels I used to buy at the homebrew shop). However, it looks like their website might be defunct.

I love the "professional" look of the labels on the bottles I give out, but thought it would be cool to have bottle caps. Until recently, it seemed way out of my price range since I would have to order a lot of them, and there would still be a really high price point.

Then I read an article in Zymurgy about a homebrewer who started his own bottle cap printing company, called Bottle Mark. I was really excited and even more so when I went to their site. You can order as few bottle caps you want at .12 cents a piece. Plus, you can load up a jpeg file, manipulate it on the site, and then even order a free digital copy to make sure it's what you want. Incredibly cool.

For $15 (including shipping) I got one hundred caps to start with. The customer service was awesome and the bottles looked great (and came quickly). My friend commented on how good they looked, not off centered or something you might expect from something as inexpensive and customized.

I have to say a six pack of bottles with my own cap on it looks sweet! In the future, I can see myself creating a cap for a special occasion like a wedding or a party, which I think is the company's big draw. Just had to share this self indulgence. Half the fun of home brewing is sharing your product, and the caps put the final touches on my beers.

Salud!

Bearded Brewer

1Up Pale Ale

2011-10-21T21:40:00.003-05:00

Several years ago my wife and I decided we didn't want to travel for Thanksgiving and deal with traveling to Pittsburgh or Arizona every other year to appease grandparents. So we decided to stay in Minnesota, and to only invite my sister's brother. It has turned into the most stress-free enjoyable holiday of the year. We have a laid back time consisting of a lot of football and movie watching, video game playing and beer drinking. Last year I decided to brew a beer special for his visit, a California Common.

My brother in law is a video game developer who lives in California. He recently switched projects and moved to San Fransisco. Being in Northern California, Peter has started to become more interested in hoppy beers. Not ready to jump into the IPA territory, his gateway lately has been pale ales. I decided to brew up a beer for his visit again, this time the 1UP is going to be a nice easy drinking pale ale.

I decided to brew a pale ale with some vienna malt I had, as well as some victory to give it some nice biscuity tones to play off the caramel. I used Cascade and Centennial hops for the hop bill. Pretty straight forward pale ale:

Mini Mash:

2 lbs Organic 2-Row
1 lb Organic Vienna
.5 lb Organic Victory
.5 lb Organic Crystal 40
.5lb Organic Crystal 60
. 5lb Organic Carapils
* Mash @ 153

6 lbls Organic Light LME @ 15

Hops:
1 oz Chinhook @ 60
.5 oz Cascade @ 10
. 5 oz Cascade @ 5
1 oz whole leaf Centennial @ 0

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Hawkeyepa

2011-09-24T11:13:00.009-05:00

Despite the fact that I have lived in Minnesota for the past 15 years, I have held strong to my love of my home state of Iowa, and the team I grew up following with a fervor, the Iowa Hawkeyes. This past weekend I had an opportunity to travel down to Iowa City with my family to watch the Hawks

come back from a large deficit to beat Pitt. It was fun game and a great experience to be in Kinnick Stadium.

I had been wanting to brew up an IPA for the fall, using the Centennial hops my friend Jesse grew for me this year. I went down to his house to help harvest them, and have been excited to brew with them. Inspired by my trip to Hawkeye nation, I settled on the name and label for the IPA recipe I've had in my head for a couple weeks now.

I wanted to keep the grain bill relatively simple, I like IPAs that tend to be on the lighter side of the malt spectrum, focusing more on the hops than the malt. I wanted use pilsner malt in the partial mash, and also wanted to use some organic victory malt to add some complexity and body. I wanted to use some Chinhook hops to add a little bit of piney flavor to play off of the citrusy Centennial hops. I plan on dry hopping with an ounce or two of Centennial as well.

Here's the recipe:
Partial Mash: Mash 1 hour @ 152
3.5 lbs Organic Pilsner
.5 lbs Organic Victory Malt
.5 lbs Organic Crystal 40
.5 lbs Organic Carapils

Malt Extract: 6 lbs Organic Light LME @ 20

Hops: 1 oz Summit (17% AAU) @ 60
.5 oz Chinhook @ 30
.5 oz Chinhook @ 20
1 oz whole leaf Organic Centennial @ 5
1 oz whole leaf Organic Centennial @ 1

Yeast: 1272 American Ale II

Salud and Go Hawks!
Bearded Brewer

Waxing bottles

2011-09-05T11:40:00.008-05:00

Homebrewing is all about individual expression for me. I love the ease of kegging, but I also love bottling because I love designing labels and playing around with different bottles. This summer I bottled my Farmhouse Ale in champagne bottles. They are a little more costly, but look very cool and when used for a special beer, they add a nice touch. I feel the same way about waxing big stouts, it makes them look cool and special. Last year I used wax for the first time, and it was a pain in the ass. This year, it went much better, so I thought I'd share the secrets of my success.

First off, wax isn't cheap at first ($14 @ Northern Brewer). However, the 1lb bag will last you for a long time. From my experience, 12 oz bottles don't look good with wax and aren't really worth the time, but 22oz bombers look great.

Here's what I did, and what worked well:

Take a tin can, with the label removed, and put it into a pot of water filled up enough to surround the can. Put the wax in the can, and bring the water to a boil.

The can will move around a bit, so if you have some grilling tongs to hold onto the can it'll help.

After the wax melts (which takes about 10 min), you are ready to dip the bottle. Be sure to stir the wax with a spoon, sometimes the top layer is melted, but there are still wax clumps which

will clump up on your bottle.

The wax will drip down the bottle, but will dry quickly. In the end, you have a very cool looking bottle to impress your friends!

Salud!

Bearded Brewer

Los Muertos Imperial Amber Ale

2011-08-12T10:30:00.005-05:00

Last year I decided to make a double version of my hoppy Amber ale, El Muerto. Last year's version turned out to be one of my favorite beers of the year. A heavy dose of crystal malts gave this beer a really nice caramel sweetness to go along with a hefty amount of hops. It wasn't overly malty, like some big IPAs can be. Instead it was sweet and kind of bready, finished off by some piney/citrusy hops. The key to last year's Los Muertos (and this year's El Muerto) were Simcoe hops. Aside from some more citrusy finishing hops, the largest amount of flavor hops were the Simcoe and I loved the piney/resiny/grapefruity flavors they added. I was sad to hear that Northern Brewer was completely out of Simcoe hops when I went to buy the ingredients for Los Muertos. I decided to improvise with Chinhook hops instead. I have never brewed with Chinhook and wanted something similar in profile to Simcoe. For a finishing hop (similar to last year's version) I added an ounce of Centennial at the end of the boil. Los Muertos will also be dry hopped in the keg with 2 ounces of Chinhook leaf hops. I have high hopes for this beer. After a summer of drinking lighter wheat and belgian beers, I always start to crave hops towards the end of the summer and fall. I plan on harvesting a lot of hops from my friend Jesse again this year, and doing a big IPA with it. So I thought brewing up Los Muertos now would be good way to satisfy my hop crave while doing something different than what I'll be brewing up with Jesse's hops. I'm pretty excited about Los Muertos, I calculated the IBUs to be around 89 and when I transferred it to the keg, it tasted great.

Here's the recipe:

Mashed @ 154

3 lbs Org Munich

.75lbs Org Crystal 60

8 oz Org Vienna

4 oz Org. Crystal 120

4 oz Org. Carapils

4 oz Org. Black Malt

9.15 lbs of Org Light Malt Extract

Hops: 1 oz Summit @ 60

.5 oz Chinhook @ 30

.5 oz Chinhook @ 20

.5 oz Chinhook @ 15

.5 oz Chinhook @ 10

1 oz Centennial @ 1

Dry hop: 2 oz Chinhook leaf in keg

2 smack packs of Wyeast 1272 American Ale 2

More to Come!

Salud!

Bearded Brewer

El Gordo Mexican Stout

2011-07-31T10:00:00.004-05:00

This summer I've been on a stout brewing kick. It started with my Black Beard Pirate Stout, then my 2011 None More Black RIS, and finally El Gordo. The nice thing about brewing big stouts in the summer is that by November they have had a nice amount of time to condition. This time around, I wanted to brew up a nice chocolate stout, but add a Mexican flare to it. In addition to cocoa nibs, I plan on adding cinnamon and vanilla beans to the secondary. While most people associate some kind of chili pepper in a Mexican stout, I have yet to have a chili beer I actually liked. Since I don't want to make a beer I won't drink, I plan on experimenting with maybe a gallon of the Gordo, but keeping the pepper out of the rest of the beer.
The only problem with summer brewing is keeping the temps low for pitching. I use a dual immerison chiller system, where I put one chiller in a bucket full of ice, then that goes to the other chiller in the brew pot. The brew pot is sitting in an ice bath as well. The problem is that tap water hasn't been getting much colder than 70 degrees, so there reaches a point where the wort won't cool down much past that. I ended up putting the Gordo into another ice bath in the fermenting bucket, which eventually brought the temps down to 68. It has risen back up to 74, which I hope doesn't produce too many esters or alcohol burn. But brewing in a basement in the hot summer only allows me so much control, so it is what it is.

For the last three stouts, I've been using a cold steeping technique I read about in Gordon Strong's Brewing Better Beer. I've been steeping instead of mashing my dark grains for some time, but usually similar to how you would in extract only brewing. Gordon's method involves cold steeping grains for 24 hours in a 2 L/lb ratio. Similar to cold steeping coffee, you end up with a very concentrated concoction, which I add to the last 10 min of the boil. Here's the recipe:

Mash @ 158 for 1 hour
2 lbs Organic Munich
2 lbs Organic Crystal 60
1 lb Organic Carapils

Cold Steep:
1 lb Organic Chocolate
8 oz Organic Roasted Barley
8 oz Organic Black Malt
- Cold steeped in 4 L of cold water for 24 hrs added @ 10

Extract: 3.15 lbs Wheat @ 30
6 lbs Organic Light LME @ 20

Hops: 1 oz Horizon @ 60

1 stick of cinnamon @ 5

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

In the secondary:
5.5 oz Cocoa Nibs
1 vanilla bean
* cinnamon sticks if necessary

Can't wait to see how this one turns out.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

2011 None More Black RIS

2011-07-11T12:27:00.004-05:00

Last year I attempted my first RIS. While the abv didn't get up to the range I wanted (it was more around 8.5%), it was very well received and ended up being one of the best beers I've brewed. I tend to like fruitier Imperial Stouts, and the None More Black had a nice amount of dark fruit that played nicely with the chocolate and roasted tones. The best part of the beer was that it was proof that sometimes brewing doesn't go as well as planned and yet the beer turns out great.
When I brewed the NMB last year, I was having problems with my mash tun, it wasn't holding temps and so I kept losing heat. I ended up only mashing for 30 minutes before the temps had dropped significantly. Since I'm a partial mash brewer, I knew I was still going to be adding enough fermentables that it would still give me beer. After I cooled the wort down, I ended up pitching at too high of a temp, but then put the carboy in an ice bath. I ended up getting distracted and not realizing that the ice bath had dropped the temps significantly. It eventually rose to an appropriate level. All of the variety in temps made me think I was going to get some off flavors, but it didn't end up being the case!
This time around I am not going to replicate the flocculating temps, but I did hold back from making any significant changes to the recipe. The only minor change I made was using Dark Belgian Candi Syrup instead of Treacle. With the Black Beard Pirate Stout containing molasses, and I envison both being ready to drink around the same time, I wanted the NMB to have more dark fruit notes, so went with the dark candi syrup.

Here's the recipe:
Mashing @ 150 for 1 hour
2 lbs Org 2-Row
.75 Org Crystal 120
.75 Org. Chocolate
.5 Org. Special B
1 lb Org. Carapils

Steep for 24 hours in 2qts of water, then added @ 10 minutes left in boil:
.5 lbs Org. Black Malt
.5 lbs Org. Roasted Barley

9.15 lbs Org Light Malt Extract
1 lb Wheat Malt Extract

1 cup of Dark Belgian Candi Syrup

Hops: 1 oz Warrior (17% AAU) @ 60
1 oz Cascade @ 15
1 oz Cascade @ 5

Two smack packs (didn't have time for a starter) of Wyeast 1056

More to come...

Salud!

Bearded Brewer

Black Beard Pirate Stout

2011-06-22T10:28:00.010-05:00

On Father's Day I got an opportunity to brew a beer I've wanted to brew for some time. Inspired by a recipe from the brewing book that has had the biggest impact on my brewing, Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing. There is a whim and loose approach to brewing that immediately encouraged me to take risks and just have fun. I've gotten more brewing books over the years, some more serious like Farmhouse Ales, Brew Like a Monk and the new Brewing Better Beer by Gorodn Strong. All of those books are a more serious and calculated look at brewing. But Randy Mosher's book is a must for anyone wanting to try something different. I've wanted to brew a stout similar to his Black Ship Pirate Stout recipe for years. Last summer I brewed a big stout in the June and aged it until October with great results. This year I am doing 2 big stouts, and the first is the Black Beard. While I based the recipe off of Randy Mosher's recipe, I added some things here and there and adjusted the recipe for both partial mashing and organic grains. I'm excited to see what comes out in this one.

I've wanted to brew a stout with a Belgian yeast for awhile, but never have. I've had two commercial examples that were really tasty, Boulevard's Dark Truth Stout and Lucky Bucket's Certified Evil are both brewed with Belgian yeast strains. In addition to the Belgian Yeast, I am going to age the Black Beard on oak cubes soaked in rum to give it that "Caribbean" feel. I'm curious to see what (if any) flavors will come out from the rum.

So the recipe looks like this:

Partial Mash:

4 lbs Organic Munich

1 lb Organic Caramunich

Cold steep in 2 qts water: 12 oz Organic Black Malt, 8 oz Organic Carafa 2 (liquid added to boil @ 15)

6 lbs Organic Light LME

3.15 lbs Wheat LME

Hops: 1 0z Org. Hallertaur (8.5% AAU) @ 60

1 oz Willamette @ 25

1 oz Willamette @ 15

1 lb Organic Molasses @ 10 min

1 oz Coriander (@ 1 min)

1/2 tsp Allspice (@1 min)

2 pods of Anise (@ 1 min)

Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes

In the secondary I plan on adding 1 oz of oak cubes soaked in rum. Also, orange zest soaked in rum as well.

Should be interesting.

Stay tuned!

Salud!

Bearded Brewer

Farmhouse Ale

2011-06-17T18:13:00.006-05:00

When I first started brewing 7 years ago, one of the styles I felt most comfortable brewing as I started designing my own recipes were Belgian Ales. What I loved about brewing Belgians were the creative freedom and room for error. Don't get me wrong, Belgians can be incredibly complex and require a lot of skill to brew, but because of the creative freedom and "loose" style guidelines, Belgians also allow adventurous brewers the ability to take some risks. Also, since Belgian yeasts add so much character (sometimes strongly) it helps cover up some minor mistakes that a young brewer might make. I found that my Belgians tended to be very popular amongst a variety of friends, which was another incentive early on for me to brew drinkable Belgian ales.

As I gained skills as a brewer, I expanded my styles and tried to nail down other styles. I spent the last couple years trying to improve my ability to brew darker ales and IPAs. On a recent trip to the Lost Abbey in San Diego, I was inspired to get back into Belgians. Their beers are amazing, and embody everything good Belgian beers are in my opinion; complex, refreshing, creative, and highly drinkable. I decided that the first beer I wanted to brew to start off my summer vacation (I'm a teacher, so I love to brew a lot in the summer) was a farmhouse ale. I brewed a Saison years ago, and I don't think I was patient enough, understood the style enough, and just didn't know what I was doing. I wanted to try my hand at it again. This time around, I've spent some time doing research, both in liquid and printed form. I've been drinking a lot of Saisons as I thought about the parameters I wanted to go with. Most notably I've been drinking: Saison Dupont (of course), Boulevard's Tank 7 (outstanding American farmhouse),Ommegang's Hennepin (a standard) and Great Divide's Collete (very good). As expected each of these is different and brings a different thing to the table.

I decided to go with a simple recipe and ended up adding some flaked corn as a nod to my home state of Iowa and what comes to mind when I think of "farmhouses. " I debated a lot over the types of yeast to use, and then stumbled upon the White Labs American Farmhouse Blend, which adds some Brett to the Saison yeast. After I researched the yeast, it turns out it's from the Lost Abbey, perfect! Here's the recipe:
Mash @ 149
3 lbs Organic Pilsner Malt
1 lb Organic Vienna Malt
1 lb Flaked Maize

Last 15 minutes of the boil (6 lbs Organic Light LME)

1 lb Turbinado Sugar @ 10

Hops: 1.5 oz Organic Belgian Saaz (1.9 % AAU) @ 60
.5 oz Organic Belgian Saaz @ 15
1 oz French Strisselspalt @ 10

Yeast: White Labs American Farmhouse

I'm excited to see how it turns out. I'm also going to brewing some big stouts intended to be ready in October. I'll be brewing Black Beard Imperial Pirate Stout, and the 2011 None More Black Imperial Stout.
Stay Tuned!
Bearded Brewer

Dank Beer Review

2011-05-31T22:28:00.002-05:00

A couple months ago I met up with a local North Minneapolis beer blogger that I've been following for a while. I'm not sure exactly when I stumbled across the Dank Brewer's blog, but I have always enjoyed his posts and frequent musical offerings he puts on his blog. Nick has been an All-Grain brewer for a couple of years and we had exchanged emails and intended to meet up for some time.
Finally this spring, I saw a post of a Black IPA he brewed, and having brewed a similar one (using some elements of his recipe as a reference) we figured it'd be a good time to meet up and compare Black IPAs amongst other offerings.

I was really impressed with the three beers Nick hooked me up with. He has brewed a ton of variety in a short amount of time, and some of his beers (like a Pilsner brewed with fresh Minnesota Snow) sound really creative. In addition to his Black IPA, Nick also gave me a Biere De Garde and his Dank The Essence Double IPA. I was quite excited to delve into his offerings.

Overall, I was really impressed with the Dank's beers. They were really well balanced, had great elements going on, and were clearly well conceived. I'm excited for some future beers, especially some Saisons which are apparently his specialty. Anyway, onto the reviews:

Dark Embrace Bitter End American Black Ale:
This beer poured jet black with a nice off white head. Chock full of citrusy hop aroma, with a little pine and some roastiness coming through. Perfect mouthfeel. The beer starts off smooth and creamy but hop bitterness replaces the creaminess quickly. The beer finishes with some coffee and chalky /roasty maltiness that play nicely off a lingering piney flavor. Really well balanced. The roasted malt presence is not overwhelming at all. I find this style, homebrewed or commercially brewed a very difficult style to be well balanced. The Dank Brewer has found that balance. A very good beer for the style.(And a lot better than the one I gave him!)

Bier De Garde:
I have to admit that I went into this beer totally blind. I had never had a Biere de Garde before, but now I will be seeking out the style. This beer poured cola colored with some redish highlights and a thin off white head. Amazing aromas, sweet and sticky, malty and slightly funky. Right away there was a nice sticky sweetness, very malty. Not very much spice, it was dominated by malt and raisiny, dark fruitiness. The body was again perfect, it finished really clean and was somewhat light despite all of the maltiness in the taste and aroma. This beer would be a great Christmas beer. I was really impressed with this beer, it was totally drinkable, but very complex at the same time. Well done!

Dank the Essence Double IPA:
Nick told me that his inspiration for this beer was a cross between Hop Slam and Russian River's Pliny the Elder... I have to say right off the bat that I have never smelled a homebrewed beer with this much hop aroma. I emailed Nick about it and he said it was six months old... amazing. Fresh this thing must have had the same aroma you'd get if you literally rubbed hops on your face! There was some honey sweetness that definitley gave it a similar Hopslam aroma, but definitley more intense. It poured clear pale gold with a foamy tow finger head. There was some nice sweetness and slight malt, but it got obliterated by the bitterness. This was the most bitter homebrewed beer I've ever had. While the bitterness remained, and gave the beer quite a backbone, there was a nice amount of sweetness from the honey and the citrusy hops to balance out the beer nicely. The hops dominated this beer from start to finish, citrusy and sweet upfront and a lingering bitterness at the end. This was a monster beer, and I can only imagine how good it would have been young, because hop aroma is supposed to dissipate with time, but this one was full of hop aroma and flavor. Mission accomplished in my mind.

It's always fun to meet the people behind the blogs. It's a unique community that feels great to be a part of. Beer is a social thing, even virtually. It was great to exchange beers and beer advice and overall conversation. I look forward to hooking up with Nick in the future and trying some more of the great Dank Beers he has filling his basement in Nordeast.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Holy Hoppiness! Double IPA Tasting

2011-05-08T15:13:00.008-05:00

This past weekend I had two friends, Jefe and Jesse over to do a follow up to our fall IPA tasting. Unfortunately, our friend Ben was not able to attend, which taught us a valuable lesson, splitting 9 Imperial IPAs amongst 3 people does make for a very rough next day. That being said, it was a fun a ride and we were surprised by the DIPAs we drank, some great and some disappointing.

As with all tastings, you can never make sure you have all the best beers you want, but we felt good about the ones we did have. My friend Jesse is quite the authority on double IPAs, and as the evening progressed he was frustrated that a few of his favorites weren't amongst the offerings, most notably Founder's Double Trouble, Bell's Hopslam, Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree, and Oskar Blues' Gubna. As a result, there's a good chance we will do a follow up at some point. Regardless, what we did have were the following:
Avery's Maharaja, Millstream Hop2, Moylan's Hopsickle, Odell's Myrcenary, Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, Bouelvard Double Wide, Grand Teton Lost Continent, Weyerbacher Simcoe, Surly Abrasive.

Here's the rundown in the order we drank them, I'm giving the average grade:

Avery Maharaja: Surprisingly, this was the least favorite of the offerings. Big and sticky with quite the alcohol burn, this one was quite malty and pungent. Nice aromas of pine, mango and tropical fruit. But the beer was way too thick and syrupy was the general consensus.
Grade: B-

Millstream Hop 2: Regular readers of this blog will know what big fans of Millstream the Jefe and I are. With a recent law in Iowa passing, breweries can now brew beers over 6% and Hop 2 is Millstream's first double. This one was good and sweet, with a smooth crisp body. That said, it lacked any hop aroma. While tasty, it wasn't nearly hoppy enough for a double IPA.
Grade: B

Moylan's Hopsickle: This one was the first to really blow us away with the aroma. It smelled the way one imagines a double IPA should smell. Citrusy and piney with a lot of grapefruit and orange. Fairly well balanced and bitter, but a little on the malty side. A little too much on the combination of malt and syrupy body.
Grade: B

Odell's Myrcenary: The first to really blow us away (as was the Odell's IPA in the fall tasting). Light in color and body, this was full of nice tropical and citrusy hop aromas, along with some slight pine. Sweet, but clean, hoppy but really smooth. After the Hopsickle, we really loved this one.
Grade: A-

Lagunitas Hop Stoopid: We are all pretty familiar with this one, but all enjoyed it in this setting. Light with a malty and orangey aroma, this one is smooth and hoppy. Probably a solid B, but what bumped this one up to a B+ is the bang for your buck that Hop Stoopid is. At $5 a bomber, you can not find a better value for a double IPA. In the same class as Imperials that are double the price, this one is a no brainer when you want a good DIPA without dropping $9-$13.
Grade: B+

Boulevard Double Wide: A lesson for me that you should not judge a beer by the association you have with the brewery. Boulevard Wheat is a gateway beer on tap in much of the midwest, but their Smokestack Series has produced some very good beers, Double Wide among them. This one had some interesting flavors, a little vanilla and more bitter than some of the others we drank. Much more carbonated than the other beers, it was quite drinkable. Very good.
Grade: B+

Grand Teton Lost Continent: The biggest surprise of the evening. Jesse picked this one up on a whim (along with the Double Wide) and we were all blown away. Jefe called it an Imperial Two Hearted, it was light but complex. It had nice citrusy aromas of lemon and orange. Just fantastic aromas, nice complex sweetness in the body and finish and a good bitterness.
Grade: A -

Weyerbacher Simcoe: Aromas of brown sugar, pine and grapefruit. This one was thick and sticky. Puckering finish, with a ton of malt and syrup in the body. It was good, but a little too much. Was a little disappointing since Jesse dropped $13 for this bomber and we had high expectations of this one.
Grade: B+

Surly Abrasive: I have to admit that all of us were familiar with this one and Jefe and I pegged it as the favorite going into the night. We saved it for last because of that reason and it didn't disappoint. We all agreed it was head and shoulders above the rest. The aroma is so complex, piney and citrusy, but more aromatic than some of the others. Bright and bitter, but well balanced between sweetness and bitter finish. Bias aside, Abrasive just brought more to the table.
Grade: A

At the end of the "first round" we went back and tasted some others just to make sure we were being fair to the earlier beers. In the end, this was the consensus order:

1. Surly Abrasive
2. Grand Teton Lost Continent
3. Odell's Myrcenary
4. Boulevard Double Wide
5. Weyerbacher Simcoe
6. Lagunitas Hop Stoopid
7. Moylan's Hopsickle
8. Millstream Hop2
9. Avery Maharaja

What is fun about a beer tasting is that everyone tastes something different and it felt good that the three of us really poured (no pun intended) over the beers to come up with a "final list." The next step is to take the top 3 or 4 and put them up against the ones we forgot to include. But after the three of us were hung over on Mother's Day...it might be awhile until we can get the opportunity to do it again :)

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Funky Monk Belgian IPA

2011-04-22T12:06:00.008-05:00

Last fall I brewed an IPA using only Zeus hops my friend Jesse grew for me. I was really impressed with the hops, they were really sweet and orangey. The beer, Lightning in a Bottle, was really good I thought, but it wasn't really an IPA. Despite using 1.5 ounces of whole leaf hops for bittering (and we believe the alpha acids were around 14-15%) the LIB wasn't very bitter. I'm not sure what the cause was, some thoughts are the bittering affect of young hops. Because of the lack of bitterness, I thought the hops would be fantastic in a Belgian IPA. The sweetness and fruitiness could turn out quite tasty if paired with an Abbey Ale yeast.
So I decided to brew a beer featuring these hops again. This time around I went with a base of pilsner malt, with a little bit Belgian aromatic and Belgian carapils. I also used 1 lb of turbinado sugar and 1 lb of orange blossom honey to give it some nice floral notes. I went with Wyeast 3787, Trappist High Gravity because of it characterized as more fruity than spicy, which I wanted in the Funky Monk.
The partial mash recipe is:
4 lbs Organic Pilsner Malt
.5 lbs Belgian Aromatic
.5 lbs Belgian Carapils
3.15 lbs Light Organic LME
1 lb Turbinado sugar
1 lb Orange Blossom Honey

Hops: .65 Columbus @ 60
1 oz Whole Leaf Zeus @ 15
1 oz Whole Leaf Zeus @ 10
.35 Columbus @ 5
1 oz Whole Leaf Zeus @ 2

3787 Wyeast Trappist High Gravity

I'm also going to bottle condition it until July or August. Last year I found that (as I should always know about Belgian yeasts) the Funky Monk was so much better several months later. So I plan on being patient on this one too.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

El Muerto 2011

2011-03-21T12:18:00.004-05:00

El Muerto is a beer that I've brewed more than any other beer. Despite the fact that a beer named El Muerto has been brewed multiple times over the past 6 years, the recipe has evolved and completely changed numerous times. Orginally designed as a clone beer to Rogue's Dead Guy, I have augmented the recipe so many times that it has nothing to do with the original idea.
The basics of the recipe have always been some combination of Munich, Crystal 60 and crystal 120 malts... but the hop bill has changed quite a few times.
Last fall I brewed big hoppy amber ale for the fall, I called it Los Muertos, a kind of doublish version of the Muerto. I loved the Los Muertos, it was one of the best beers I've brewed this year. So I thought to myself... I've got it! Just scale it back and now I have the newest (and maybe final) version of El Muerto. This time of year I really love redish/amber ales brewed with a lot of citrusy hops. I love Summit's Horizon Red and Odell's Red Ale. So with those beers, and Los Muertos in mind, I headed to the homebrew store. What made Los Muertos work in my mind, was a large portion of Munich malt, and a nice combination of piney/spiceness from Simcoe hops and the floral/citrusy tones of the Amarillo and Cascade hops. To my surprise, there seems to be a bit of hop shortage at Northern Brewer, so I had to improvise.
Out of Amarillo and Simcoe (a hop I've really grown to love)... I decided to go with Summit hops for the bittering hops and the substitution for Simcoe. They might not be as piney, but they sound pretty close. Warrior was available, but after some experience with Warrior in my Black IPA, I can say that they are quite strong and stronger than I wanted in the Muerto. For the finishing hops I decided to go with Columbus and Cascade for the replacement to Amarillo. I'm going to dry hop with some Zeus hops that were grown for me by my friend Jess. The Zeus hops I have are quite orangy/tangeriney, so it should add quite a bit of citrus. I am going to tone down the bitttering hops, just to bring the malt forward a bit more.
Hopefully it will turn out.
More to come. Tomorrow I'm off to visit some good friends in San Diego and will be hitting up the infamous Port Brewing/Lost Abbey, can't wait.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gringo 2011

2011-02-21T21:22:00.004-06:00

Several years ago I set out to try and hone my skills by brewing 4 or 5 recipes and master them. That didn't really work out, I have a hard time brewing the same beer very often because I'm constantly inspired to try brewing something different. Either I try a commercial beer that inspires me, come up with a label or name idea I want to work into a new recipe, or end up tweaking an old recipe so much that it's not the same beer.
But there is one beer that I've consistently brewed (relatively) the same for four years. What started out as a 3 gallon experiment has turned into one of my favorite beers to brew. The Gringo started out as my sarcastic take on the Imperial movement, at the time I thought an Imperial Mexican Lager was kind of over the top. Now everything is imperial, and the imperial pilsners I've had are fantastic. The Gringo is intended to be a hoppy Corona-esque thirst quencher. 4.65 ounces of Centennial and Cascade hops in the last 15 minutes gives the Gringo it's citrusy punch and the addition of Agave Nectar in the secondary gives it a nice sweetness on top of the citrusy hops. Not able to maintain lager temps during fermentation, I use California 2112 yeast which gives it lager "like" characteristics, then I put it in a fridge and lager it for 3 months, which really smooths it out and gives it a nice crispness.
I have not tweaked the recipe much each year, but I do make some minor changes. This year, I didn't have any organic Vienna malt, and chose to up the Pilsner malt instead, which might make a very slight change in the profile, but I don't expect too much. I also had to audible because they were out of organic light dry malt extract at Northern Brewer, so I went with 6lbs LME instead (still ended up with the same OG however). The only other change I made was adding some agave nectar to the boil in replacement of sugar. No matter how hard I try... I can't help tweaking a bit :)

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Double Brew Weekend Pt.2- Stout Chocula

2011-01-25T20:13:00.005-06:00

Two weeks ago, I made the most of some open time to brew up two batches of beer. The first beer was a black IPA, and the second beer was a remake of one of my favorite beers from last year, the Stout Chocula. Impressed by Founder's Breakfast Stout, I decided to brew my own breakfast stout. While not nearly as heavy and big as Founder's version, I was really happy with the turn out of Stout Chocula. The addition of coffee and cocoa nibs in the secondary really brought the beer home. Cocoa nibs were the key, adding a nice chocolate flavor and creaminess that played really well with the coffee.This year I thought that I could try to enhance the beer with two of brewers' favorite stout additions... oak and bourbon.I looked at a lot of blogs and recipes about adding both oak and bourbon. I decided to go with oak cubes, as they seem to impart more flavor than chips. I decided to soak 1 oz of oak cubes in about a shot and a half of Jim Beam Bourbon. I plan on letting the cubes soak for a week, then adding the cubes and the remaining liquid into the secondary (along with the coffee extract and cocoa nibs). In order to impart a nice balance of flavors and aromas, I intend to age the stout on the cubes for a couple months. Should be interesting. Here is the recipe:
Steep: 1 lb Organic Chocolate
2 oz Organic Roasted Barley
4 oz Organic Black Malt

Mash @ 152 for 1 hour:
2 lbs Org. Munich
.5 lbs Crystal 60
.5 lbs Oatmeal
1 lb Organic 2-Row
.5lbs wheat
.5lbs coffee malt

6 lbs Organic Liquid Malt Extract @ 60
.75 oz Nugget @ 60
.25 oz Nugget @ 30

Irish Ale Yeast

More to come:
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Double Brew Weekend- Darkside IPA

2011-01-16T20:11:00.007-06:00

This past weekend I had a rare opportunity to brew on back to back nights, and squeeze in a beer tasting with some buddies. For Christmas I got a new brew pot that allows me to boil all 5 gallons, so I've been pretty excited to be brewing with it, and thankful for the time to brew two batches in 24 hours!
Lately I've been on a big stout kick, and the theme of the beer tasting on Saturday was dark beers. As a little change of pace from the darkness, I wanted to brew up something hoppy. I just couldn't get completely away from the dark malts that have been dominating my palate as of late. So I decided to brew my first black IPA.
I really wanted to go with some piney notes from the hops, so I settled on using Warrior and Simcoe hops. I was really impressed with the piney/spiciness from the Simcoe I used in the Los Muertos I made earlier this fall. The Warrior and Simcoe also should give me some of the citrusy notes I want to come through as well. I added .20 oz of Centennial in the last 2 minutes, and plan on using them as a dry hop to add some complexity to the nose.
I went with this recipe:
Mash @ 154 for 1 hour:
1 lbs Organic Munich
12 oz organic vienna
4 oz organic victory malt
1 lb org 2-Row
1lb Org carapils

1 lb Black Malt (steeped)
6.30 lbs Org LME (3.15 @ 60, 3.15 lbs @ 20)

Hops:
1.25 oz Warrior (17% AAU) @ 60
.25 oz Warrior @ 30
.5 oz Simcoe @ 15
.25 oz Warrior @ 15
.5 oz Simcoe @ 10
.25 oz Warrior @ 10
1 oz Simcoe @ 5
.20 oz whole leaf Centennial @ 2 minutes

I poured the wort on top of a yeast cake of American Ale 2 from the Frozen Beard Winter Ale. I love using American Ale 2 for IPAs, and hoping that the citrusy/spiciness plays well with the roasty notes.

More to come this week: The second brew from the weekend, Stout Chocula, and a report from The Embrace the Darkside dark beer tasting!
More to come!
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Frozen Beard Winter Ale

2011-01-02T13:30:00.005-06:00

Even though it is only the second day of January, this winter is shaping up to be a bitch of one here in Minnesota. We have had a lot of snow (seemingly more early on than usual) and now the real cold season seems to be setting in. Its the time of year when Minnesotans hole up and drink, and lately I've been filling my fridge with a variety of dark beers.
I decided to brew up another Frozen Beard Winter Ale, this time going with a stout. I find myself brewing styles in waves, wanting to brew hoppy beers in succession, or in this case stouts. I have only brewed a few stouts in my 6 years of brewing, but I have to say it is one of my favorite styles of beer to brew. Similar to how I feel about Belgian beers, I feel like there is so many different things you can do with a stout. I decided to go on a stout run of sorts, I plan on brewing another version of the Stout Chocula to go on top of the yeast cake of the Frozen Beard.
For the Frozen Beard I didn't really have a particular style of stout in mind, but I knew I wanted to add some dark Belgian syrup to the boil, but when I got to the brew store, they were out of it. Instead I opted for using some Treacle I had at home to achieve some of the same things I wanted out of Belgian syrup, and then some Star Anise caught my eye, so I bought some of that as well. Knowing I was going to be brewing up a chocolaty stout after this one, I wanted this one to feature some flavors quite different, so the anise and molasses that comes from the Treacle should be nice.

I went with this:
Steep: 12 oz Org Roasted Barley
4 oz Org. Black Malt

Mash @ 157 for 1 hour
1 lb Org. Carapils
1 lb Wheat
1 lb Org. Munich
12 oz Org. Crystal 60
4 oz Org. Crystal 120

6 lbs Organic Light LME

1 T Black Treacle @ 10
3 stars of Star Anise @ 10

1.5 oz Fuggles @ 60
.5 oz Fuggles @ 30

1272 American Ale 2

My only concern is if that the anise doesn't overwhelm. I've never used it before, it really had a strong aroma before I put it in the boil. Should be interesting.
Happy New Year!
More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Untamed Beer Review

2010-12-06T21:27:00.002-06:00

I'm almost embarrassed to be writing this blog post. You see about 4 months ago Brian @ Untamed Beer sent me a box of his beer. I always enjoy Brian's blog, and in the past have really enjoyed his homebrew. Brian sent me six of his beers, and for reasons I can't even try to justify, it's taken me this long to work through the beers and write up a proper review.

Regardless of how long it took, it was amazing to experience. I'm not trying to be dramatic, Brian (and his wife's) beers are incredible. The creativity that goes into his beers is the stuff that inspires me as a homebrewer. I had made the decision to get back to trying to push the envelope and be creative in my brewing and Untamed's beers reminded me of why I need to do that. Brian sent me six beers; Kolsch, Smoked Chocolate Porter, 2009 Bourbon Oak Aged Imperial stout, a Gruit and two beers his wife brewed, a Thai Pale Ale and a Curry Stout.

Per Brian's suggestion I started with the Kolsch which was bottled off the keg. I'll write up the rest in order of drinking them:

Kolsch: This beer poured light straw gold with a thin white head. Wonderful fruity aromas, floral and almost apple notes. Sweet, but not overly sweet at first. A subtle floral sweetness followed by some grainy flavors. Finishes crisp and slightly dry, almost bitter as one would expect of a kolsch. A very refreshing, true to style kolsch.

Thai Pale Ale- Pours cloudy orange with a thin white head. Amazing aromas of ginger, floral hops, and slight spiciness. Smooth and sweet at first. Wonderful complexity of flavors, the "Thai" flavors don't overwhelm, but there is some nice lemongrass in the finish that works so well with the pale ale. It's malty with a great lingering sweetness. It's unique, but so well balanced and the lemongrass and other spices really play nicely with the pale ale. Very good!

Smoke Chocolate Porter- Pours jet black with a two finger khaki head. Chocolate and roasted aromas with some nice smokiness coming through. Excellent texture, milkshake like creaminess with a full but smooth mouthfeel. As it warms, the chocolate and smoke start to stand out more. It's complex but clean, not overly smokey, just a touch to add some nice character to a great chocolate porter.

2009 Bourbon Oak Imperial Stout- Pours motor oil black with a thick khaki head. Chocolate, bourbon, woodiness and roasted barley aromas hit you right away. Smooth and chocolaty at first, followed by some nice woodiness and some licorice in the finish. The bourbon is faint, a hint in the nose and the finish. The woodiness blends really well with the roasted notes. Just a fantastic beer.

Massaman Curry Stout- Pours black with a thin white ring around the glass. Smells so aromatic, not surprisingly, smells exactly like curry. I've never smelled a beer like this before. Really interesting and unique. Spices dominate, I know Brian's wife Nicole threw in a ton of spices:whole cardamom pods, dried chili peppers, cinnamon sticks, crushed cloves, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, cumin, nutmeg, mace, coconut flakes. The cardamom is really the spice that dominates, but there really is a unique mixture going on. After the intial layer of spices, the stout starts to come through, with some faint chocolate and roasted notes. The beer is good, and definitely unique, but not one I could drink often. Very impressed with the concept, and I think I'd like it more if the spices weren't so dominate.

Gruit - I was very curious about this beer. An old beer style brewed before the use of hops. This beer is brewed with sweet gale, rosemary, juniper berries, cardamom, star anise, caraway seeds, ginger and bay leaves. The beer pours mahogany with some red highlights and a thin white head. Again, spices come through, especially the cardamom, ginger and star anise in the aroma. The flavor is sweet, with the star anise coming through nicely in the finish. It's unique, very sweet, obviously not bitter. A very interesting combination of spices and sweetness, very easy drinking.

Overall, I was really impressed with Brian and Nicole's brewing. The beers were unique and well crafted. While the curry stout and gruit might not be beers that I would drink on a regular basis, I applaud their approach. It's why we homebrew, to create something without restrictions. The Thai Pale Ale is a perfect example of what happens when you take risks, you end up with an outside the box concept that works so well that it makes total sense in the end. A big thanks to Untamed for the box of beer, (patience waiting for this review), and the inspiration to keep pushing the envelope.

Salud!
Bearded Brewing.

5 Year Anniversary Ale

2010-11-25T18:28:00.009-06:00

I've been brewing for over 8 years. For the first couple years I brewed several kits a year. Living in a small apartment, brewing was fun, but not worth all the cumbersome chores involved with the process. Then my wife and I bought a house, a 50's stucco that included a special room in the basement. The room was a canning kitchen, complete with a gas stove, plenty of cupboard space and a long counter top perfect for bottling. It was the ideal set up for a homebrewing, plus it was close to the laundry sink. Easy access to water, gas stove, space for fermentation, and no need to mess up the kitchen! Too good to be true.
I started brewing more that following year, and then one summer got really into brewing. I also got a subscription to Brew Your Own Magazine. The issue that forever changed my brewing was the issue with the annual label contest winners. I was so blown away by the labels, the creativity that went into them, and the concept of uniquely naming your homebrewery. I decided to create my own homebrewery name, something I had never even considered before. I also started designing labels, something I have found to love as much as brewing.
That summer I designed my first label (below), and I also took the plunge into creating my first beer from scratch, the Bearded Fury Pale Ale. Even after pouring over recipes, I must have annoyed the hell out of the patient staff of Northern Brewer with all my questions. A simple extract Pale Ale recipe was a huge leap of faith for me. But it turned out pretty well (from what I can remember) and Bearded Brewing was born. What followed has been more fun than I ever anticipated. Several months later, after a tasting party to share a bunch of homebrew with friends, I launched a website because my friends wanted to keep informed of what I was brewing. My friend El Jefe and I created a site, but after a year, we encountered some problems with the site and I found the blogosphere as a replacement. That opened up a whole new world, and one that I have benefited from in more ways than I ever imagined. Not only did people care about what I was posting (something weird to me at first), but I became friends with people through this world. Trading beers and emails, meeting up with some local bloggers/brewers, and even going to the National Homebrew Conference on a media pass. I have learned SO much through the people I've met through the blog. I have tasted amazing homebrews, beers that have inspired me and expanded my appreciation of beer.It has been an incredible experience, one I honestly never expected when I started brewing, or blogging for that matter. A sincere thank you to all of you who read, post comments, email, etc.
I wanted to brew a beer to commemorate the 5 years that Bearded Brewing has been in existence. I decided to brew a stout for the winter, but wanted to go with something I hadn't done before, which is use a lot of wheat. I decided to go with a partial mash recipe, and changed up some things at the store. Here's the recipe:
6 lbs Wheat Extract
4 oz Org. Black Patent
4 oz Org. Chocolate malt
4 oz Org. Special B
2 oz Org. Crystal 120
2 oz Org. Cryatal 60
2 oz Choco wheat
2 oz Dark wheat
1 lb Org. Munich
1 lb flaked wheat
4 oz Org. Carapils
1 oz Fuggles
Yeast 1098 English Ale

Should be interesting. The next post I write will be a review of some beers from Untamed Beer Blog. I got some beers made by Brian and his wife in August. Have been working my way through them and feel AWFUL that it has taken me this long to a)drink them all and b) write a review of them. So an apology to Brian. And stay tuned for that.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

El Oso Rojo Raspberry Brown

2010-11-04T21:14:00.007-05:00

Last week I brewed up my annual holiday ale. In the past I've tended to go with something lighter that would appeal to a lot of people, usually a Belgian wit with a holiday twist. Last year it was a Cranberry Orange Wit, that was good, but not great. I've been wanting to brew a raspberry brown ale for some time. The only one I've ever had is from a California brewery, Lost Coast Raspberry Brown. Unfortunately I can't get Lost Coast in Minnesota, but I make sure to enjoy this beer whenever I can get my hands on it, and it is a family favorite. My wife thought that it would make a great holiday beer.
For the second year in a row, I found myself brewing on Halloween, which was perfect timing because I wanted to allow a brown ale plenty of time to age. With the brown ale I brewed last year, El Oso, I found that it was really good the longer it conditioned in the bottle.
I went with a really simple recipe for Oso Rojo. I didn't use the El Oso recipe, instead I wanted to utilize the organic Victory malt I got from Seven Bridges this summer, to impart some nuttiness and biscuity flavors. Wanting to emphasize those biscuit notes, I toned down the caramel and chocolate in the grain bill.
Here's what I went with for an extract recipe:
6 lbs Organic LME
Steeping grains: 8 oz Organic Victory Malt
4 oz Org. Caramel 60
4 oz Org. Chocolate

1 oz Org. Fuggles @ 60
1 oz Org. Fuggles @ 10
Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale
* Raspberry extract in secondary

I usually use American 1056 in brown ales, but I wanted to get some nice fruitness and maltiness from the English yeast that I hope will help accentuate the raspberry extract.
Should be interesting. I find that late fall, early winter is the perfect time for a nice brown ale, so I'm hoping this one turns out as intended.
More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Lightning in a Bottle IPA

2010-10-25T16:31:00.004-05:00

Last year I brewed up my first really big, hoppy IPA. I stop short of calling it "Imperial" because it was in about the 7-8% range. It was brewed for my good friend Jesse, a hop fanatic and connoisseur of beers featuring the letters IP and A. I brewed him the Steelhead Slammer, which I was happy with, but felt that it lacked in a few areas. In the year that has followed, I have brewed up several big hoppy beers, and feel that they've improved with each brewing.
Last spring Jesse, a big gardener, decided to order some organic hop rhizomes, and become my main supplier :) In exchange for the glorious luplins, I of course owed him a harvest IPA. Jesse poured over articles and hop profiles and my input and decided upon 4 varieties: Centennial, Cascade, Nugget and Zeus. Jesse wanted some commonly used hops, but wanted to also grow something unique and one not often found in beers we drink, hence the Zeus hops. We had a pretty good harvest for the first year, but the most aggressive grower was Zeus. We yielded close to 12 oz of the Zeus. So naturally I decided to brew a big IPA. Jesse came over to brew with me so he could experience the whole process, which was a lot of fun.
The research we did about the Zeus says it is similar to Columbus, a piney, citrusy hop with about 13% alpha acid. I wanted to brew the beer with all Zeus hops, and keep the caramel malts to a minimum to bring out the hop flavor.
For the Lightning in a Bottle, I went with this recipe:
9.15 lbs of Light Organic LME
Steep: .5 lbs Org Crystal 40
.25 lbs Org. Vienna Malt
.25 lbs Org. Victory Malt
1 lb cane sugar
Hops:
1.5 oz Whole Leaf Zeus Hops @ 60
.5 oz Zeus @ 30
.5 oz Zeus @ 15
.5 oz Zeus @ 10
1 oz Zeus @ 5
1 oz Zeus @ 2
2 packs of Wyeast 1272 American Ale 2

Thus far, the hops have a very orange/lemony aroma, so I'm excited to see what they end up like in the final beer. I plan on dry hopping with more Zeus in the secondary.
More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gluten Free IPA update

2010-10-17T19:43:00.004-05:00

This summer I brewed up a gluten free IPA for a friend of mine who is intolerant to gluten but sorely misses the hoppiness not found in commercial gluten free beers. The post got quite a number of comments, so it seems that this is an area that people have a lot of interest in. I learned a few things, and was happy with the turn out of the beer (although I have to admit I didn't drink too many, still not something I would choose to drink). But it accomplished two things, I was able to make a very hoppy GF beer, and it made my friend happy (I'll include her review). A couple quick notes:
1. You can check out my recipe here. If I were to make it again, I would maybe add more maltodextrin since some "maltiness" did come out in the final product. I would omit the oats I used for steeping because I don't think it did anything, and as some people pointed out, some people with gluten allergies can't eat oats.
2. The hop schedule worked, while it lacked some of the body, the IPAness was there, it was bitter in the finish, sweet and citrusy in the nose and intial taste, similar in aroma to other IPAs I've made.
3. Why I didn't like it was why I don't like gluten free beers and am glad I don't have to have that as a substitute; they lack the body and malty goodness of beer. Mine still had the almost cider like body and mouthfeel that I've had in the few gluten free beers I've tried.
That being said, I was happy that my friend was satisfied, and here's the email "review" she sent me:
Okay, so I've never reviewed a beer before. Unless you count the many, many good beers I've drunk and then "reviewed": i.e., "Mmmmm." I became a bit of a beer snob after college, and quickly grew to prefer microbrews over the standard college Bud Light. I started to appreciate the more subtle aspects of a good beer. Among those, I gravitate towards hoppy, crisp IPAs. Then, last year, I realized that I'm intolerant to gluten. I'll spare you the details, but let's just say that no matter how good the pizza or beer, I'd rather miss out than not at this point. And I love pizza and beer.
So, I embarked on a quest to find a good gluten-free beer. There had to be a few out there, right? There are so many people who don't eat gluten, whether it's because they have celiac disease or they're intolerant and feel better without it. Armed with a few inspirational blogs and recommendations from friends and liquor store employees, I worked my way through all of the commercially bottled GF beers I could find in Minneapolis. Overall, there were some that I found palateable. A few of them were even almost good. But, as my husband pointed out, I may have forgotten the taste of really good beer in the year that I've been gluten free, because in his opinion "those beers are horrible. Horrible." Accompanied by a grimace and a quick follow-up chug of his Surly Furious to wash down the horrible taste of my far-inferior bottle.
Then, my good friend the Bearded Brewer made me a gluten-free IPA. He'd listened in horror to my descriptions of the beers I was finding. And so he made me one. And it was awesome. Seriously, I hadn't tasted citrusy, piney hoppiness like that in a year. It had a bitter aftertaste that made me smile. It even had a slight malty flavor, something that's usually missing in gluten-free beers due to the lack of barley. I thoroughly enjoyed two cases of the stuff (which I stretched out over two months, I'll have you know). But maybe the biggest complement to the Brewer? When my husband was stranded without beer a few Sundays ago, on a crucial football Sunday, he asked if he could have one of mine. "Really?" I asked. "Yeah," he said. "These are pretty damn good."

More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

1UP Ale

2010-10-11T20:08:00.005-05:00

Last year for Thanksgiving my wife and I decided to start our own tradition as opposed to traveling to one side of the family or the other. The tradition involved inviting my wife's only sibling, her brother to stay with us, without any other family. My brother-in-law lives in California and works in his life long dream job, the video game industry. The holiday ended up being the best Thanksgiving. It was totally relaxing, allowing plenty of time to hang out, drink beer, play with the kids and play some video games. So we are excited for Uncle Peter to return this year, and since he recently has been getting into craft beer, I wanted to brew up a beer for the occasion. Plus, since Peter has been rocking the same crusty Bearded Brewing trucking hat for years, I figure it's about time he gets a beer made in his honor.
Peter is not fan of darker beers, and isn't really a hop head either. I wanted to brew something light, but not too light for the season, so I settled on a California Common. It's been a long time since I've brewed this style, but I love the subtle flavors that make this beer an enjoyable balance between maltiness and floral hops.

I created a fairly simple extract recipe, but in retrospect I worry that I might have gone a little strong on the hops... we shall see what happens. I plan on tasting it in a week, getting a feel for the bitterness and worse case scenario will brew up another one and pour it on top of the yeast cake. I still plan on letting the beer lager for a month or so, just to get some smoothness.

The recipe:
6lbs Organic Light LME (1/2 @ 60, 1/2 @ 20)
1 lb Munich DME
Steeping Grains: 12 oz Crystal 40, 4 oz Victory)
Hops:
1.45 oz Northern Brewer @ 60
.55 oz NB @ 30
.50 oz NB @ 15
.50 oz NB @ 5
2112 Wyeast Cali Lager

More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Been too long

2010-10-07T23:12:00.002-05:00

Life gets crazy, and this month past month has been that. I apologize for such a long hiatus from blogging (and brewing). A couple quick things:
Finally brewing this weekend- more to come on that very very soon.

After 10 days with no activity, had to pour out the cider experiment. Not sure what happened. Will try it again, but at this point just excited to brew again.

Have been enjoying some great homebrews from Brian @ Untamedbeer.com, a wonderful smoked porter, a interesting (but in a really good way) Thai PA among some others. I will post my reviews on those soon as well.

Happy with the turn out of my Los Muertos Double Amber and also the first tastings of the None More Black RIS I brewed in June.

So... please stay tuned... I plan to hit on the above topics in the coming weeks.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Crabby Apple Hard Cider

2010-09-18T20:29:00.004-05:00

For a bit of a change, I decided to "brew" my first cider. I'm not really a big hard cider fan actually, but that has more to do with lack of exposure than anything. This summer I went to the National Homebrewer's Conference here in the Twin Cities. Upon registration, everyone received a complimentary bottle of beer and cider brewed by a local homebrew club. I was really impressed by the hard cider and thought it would be a nice change of pace in the fall. Once I started doing a little research into cidering, I was even more sold on experimenting with it.

Not to disrespect those who make great cider, but I was a little surprised by the simplicity of it. Again, I have a feeling that those who make great cider do a lot more complicated things to make a great finished product than I did making my first trial batch. I did some research , including a very helpful site, makinghardcider.com.

I decided to start with two gallons, just as a small trial run. Eventually I would like to get into adding different spices and maybe some other fruit. But for my initial run I went the easy route. Shockingly easy after being a brewer for 7 years.

The recipe:
2 Gallons of local apple cider
1 package of Wyeast 4766 Cider Yeast

* One important point I learned. You need to have 100% natural apple cider. It makes sense that any kind of preservative would effect the fermentation, so apple juice is not usable.

After sanitizing my 3 gallon car boy, I poured in the 2 gallons of cider, added yeast, and will wait. I'm going to put it into a secondary 2 gallon container for clarity, prime it and bottle.
The name and label of my first cider is inspired (unfortunately) by my teething 15 month old son. I'm excited to see how it turns out. As a brewer of beer, I do feel a bit weird about not being able to control more variables. I love toying with grains and hops when brewing. So any cider maker with tips and tricks, please chime in. I'd like to eventually make some more interesting ciders that I'm able to play with different additions.

More to come on several beers I have coming up, reflections on some beers from this summer (a Gluten Free IPA update) and some reviews of some great beers Brian from Untamed Beer sent me about a month ago.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

IPA Taste Off

2010-08-29T10:25:00.007-05:00

Last Friday night I had three friends over for an IPA tasting. I feel that I am always looking for new beers, but wanted to see what would come out of a night tasting a bunch of personal "fall back" IPAs. The idea was simply to put a bunch of our "fall back" IPAs next to one another and see what the end results were. Everybody brought two IPAs each, and then we did a single beer all at the same time. I should start by saying that we weren't necessarily looking for a winner, just wanted to see our impressions of each beer. It turns out that most of us had similar thoughts on the beers, but it was interesting to drink 10 different IPAs next to one another.
Here's what was brought:
Lagunitas IPA, Great Lakes Commodore Perry, Bell's Two Hearted, Odell's IPA, Surly Furious, Deschutes Inversion,Town Hall's Masala Mama, Dark Horse Crooked Tree

Results? Well I should start by saying that none of these beers are bad, in fact they are all very good IPAs. What was interesting was how different from one another they were.
Overall the least impressive was the Deschutes Inversion. Very well balanced, and good, but didn't have an extra something that really separated some of the others, a solid B by most accounts. Laguintas was very solid, most people rated it around a B+, just clean and hoppy.

Bell's Two Hearted, my dark horse favorite, was very good, quite citrusy and lighter in body. We were surprised at how light in color it was compared to the others and how it was much crisper overall. It's not overly malty and the Centennial hops really stand out. Odell's surprised us a bit and was very well balanced and almost refreshing, clean bittering. Turned out better than I was expecting, I need to drink more of it. It's a beer I've had, but don't always turn to when wanting a good IPA, that's going to change.

As for the cream of the crop: Town Hall and Dark Horse were both outstanding, exceptionally balanced. The Dark Horse Crooked Tree really was well received, and everyone gave it an A. Malty, piney and citrusy as well, just fantastic. Masala Mama from Town Hall has a nice bite, lingering bitterness, and sweet mixture of maltiness and citrus you expect.
Great Lakes Commodore Perry was really the surprising IPA of the night. Amongst so much citrusy and piney IPAs, the Commodore Perry had a really interesting taste, almost berry like. It was very fruity in aroma and flavor.
Surly was the oddball of the night, but not in a bad way. After the first taste of the Furious everyone kind of took a step back. Stacked up next to these beers, it's more. More of everything, malt, aroma, and hop oomph. We decided that it really doesn't count in this tasting because it's just so different than the rest of the IPAs. For those who haven't drank a Furious, it's full of complex layers of malt, piney and citrusy hops, bitter and sweet, extremely aromatic. It's a great beer, but not really an IPA in comparison to the more classic American IPAs listed above.

After the eight beers listed above had been tasted, I broke out two beers I had in the fridge. One being Founder's Centennial IPA and a recently obtained bottle of Hop Art IPA from Coast Brewing in Charleston, South Carolina.

Founder's Centennial IPA is solid, dripping with citrusy sweetness. It's slightly malty but is over powered by the citrus. Centennial is as advertised, a great showcase of Centennial hops.

As for the Hop Art from Coast Brewing, I have been eager to try something from Coast for awhile. A small, husband and wife run brewery they try to brew with sustainable practices and organic ingredients as much as possible. For more information on Coast, I did an interview in 2008 with Jaime, one half of the brewery's operation.

Anyway, we cracked open the Hop Art last, and while we had all had a number of IPAs, all of us were really impressed. Perfectly balanced, the Hop Art poured Amber with aromas of citrus and slight pine, malty and sweet. Lingering sweetness with some slight bitterness. Throughout the night none of the IPAs possessed such a wonderful balance of all the qualities. So while we weren't looking for a winner, Hop Art really stood out amongst the rest. A special thanks to Brian @ Untamedbeer blog for sending me this gem.

My friend Jesse made a good point about the evening, we set out looking to just pick our "fall back" IPAs and we were able easily come up with eight that we'd be more than satisfied to walk out of a store with a six pack of. Overall, a great night. Brewing a beer with friends while drinking 10 great IPAs back to back.

More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Los Muertos Imperial Amber

2010-08-18T15:07:00.005-05:00

Next week I am back at school. This week however, my wife and kids went to Pittsburgh to visit inlaws, but due to some conflicts I couldn't go. It was a nice way to end the summer actually. Friday I am brewing up an imperial amber ale, Los Muertos. A couple friends are coming over to brew with me, as well as have an IPA tasting. More on that in another post, but basically four of us are bringing 1-2 kinds of IPAs to share and we're going to taste them side by side. Should be interesting...more on that to come.
As for the Friday brewing, I wanted to brew up something hoppy and hearty for the coming fall. I've wanted to brew an Impeial version of my El Muerto for some time. Los Muertos is based off the original version, but I've significantly changed the hop bill.
I decided to go with a big Amber ale, hopped up like a double IPA. Since I wanted to put a lot of amber/caramel malts, I decided to go for some piney notes by using Simcoe hops throughout much of the beer, also am adding 1 oz of Amarillo at the end for some citrus nose. I also picked up 2 oz of whole leaf hops to dry hop with, Simcoe and Cascade.

Mash: 3.5 lbs of Organic Munich Malt
.75 lbs Org. Crystal 60
.25 lbs Org. Crystal 12o
1 lb Org. Vienna Malt
.5 lbs Org. carapils
4 oz org. roasted barley

9.15 lbs organic light liquid malt extract (3.15 lbs @ 60, 6 @20)
Hops: 1.5 oz Org. American Summit 14% AAU @ 60
.5 oz Org. American Summit @ 30
.5 oz Simcoe @ 15
.5 oz Simcoe @ 10
.5 oz Simcoe @ 5
.5 oz Simcoe @ 2
1 oz Amarillo @ 1
Dry hop: 1 oz whole leaf Cascade, 1 oz whole leaf Simcoe
Two Wyeast packs of American Ale 2 (ran out of time for a starter)

Should be interesting. More details to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

OPA: Organic Pale Ale

2010-08-15T13:25:00.005-05:00

I've been brewing for about 7 years, and over the past 4 or 5 have transferred about 95% of my brewing to using organic grains, extract and when possible hops. At this point, with the exception of wheat malt extract, my grain bills (and extract usage) are all organic. There are several reasons why I started brewing organically, one reason being inspired by the book Fermenting Revolution. I believe in local/organic agriculture, and feel that it connects me in a way to the origins of localized brewing. I wrote a post a couple years ago, my organic manifesto in a way, that gives more reasons for my organic brewing, you can check it out here if interested.
The transition hasn't really been that difficult or in many ways that much more expensive. Between my local Northern Brewer and occasional big orders from Seven Bridges in California, I am able to find a wide variety of grains. For extract brewers, you are limited to just light pale extract malt. This is one of the reasons I got into partial mashing, it allowed me to use a wider variety (and larger quantities of specialty malt) to brew with.
The one portion of my brewing that is more difficult to brew organically is when using a variety of hops. There are a number of varieties available at Seven Bridges, but often times they aren't always the kinds of hops I'm looking for and are considered good substitutes for more commonly used hops. Last fall however, I was able to buy a pound of organic Cascade hops from a local hop farm called Hippity Hops Farms. I am down to my last 4 ounces and decided to use them in a nice pale ale for the fall.
I went with a fairly basic recipe:
3.5 lbs 2-Row
.75 lbs munich
.75 lbs crystal 40
* mash @ 152 for 1 hour
4 lbs DME
1.5 oz whole leaf cascade @ 60
.5 oz whole leaf cascade @ 15
1 oz whole leaf cascade @ 3
Wyeast 1056 American Ale

My basement is a little on the warm side right now and even using some cooling methods, the OPA is fermenting on the high end, 72 degrees, so I'm a bit worried about some adverse effects.

More to come, I need to post some stuff on a couple upcoming beers and some I've brewed but have yet to write about.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Dream Brew Store

2010-08-04T12:04:00.006-05:00

As I've mentioned on this blog before, I'm a high school teacher. I love my job and have no plans to change it. Like most homebrewers I've had dreams of making Bearded Brewing a full blown brewery or brewpub some day. But the more I've grown as a homebrewer, enjoyed the blogging community to share my ideas and brews, the happier I've been where I'm at. In fact watching my friend Derek @ Beer This! start his journey from working in the financial industry to the brewing world has helped me realize the reality of the brewing industry. Low wages, limited creativity (compared to homebrewing) and just a hell of a lot of risk and hard work.
But every once and awhile you come across something that makes you rethink that dream. For my wife and I that came from a very unique experience we had on vacation of the southern coast of North Carolina. Once on the island of Emerald Isle, we came across and advertisement for a Harrika's Brew Haus, Art Bar and Eclectic Gifts on the main land in nearby Swansboro. What we found was an actual house. A really amazing spot that was unique and the kind of place I'd love to own someday.
Harrika's is an actual house, packed to the gills with single bottles of beer arranged by style. Every room is jamed from floor to ceiling with metal shelving, including the closets. Where there isn't beer, there are jars of tea or unique works of art and pottery. There are four beers on tap (apparently North Carolina laws allow beers on-tap in off-sale beer stores). There was a small room that contained a tiny bar, along with bar stools along a single shelf that ran the length of the room. As you continued around back, there was a backyard complete with a patio full of tables and chairs, a small stage and picnic tables. Its hard to describe the vibe, it just was such a unique location, a place to go pick up some great craft beer, maybe have a draft while reading a book on the patio. It felt like your comfy neighborhood coffee shop, only for craft beer. Hopefully the pics can do it justice:

Now that I'm back, I intend to get to some updates on some brewing I've done and some coming up.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Summit Unchained #4

2010-07-20T22:13:00.004-05:00

Summit has just released their 4th beer in the Unchained series. I've really enjoyed the Unchained beers, which are the limited releases, one off creations of an individual brewer. One was a Kolsch, Two a Scottish Ale brewed with heather, Three a Rye IPA, and now a Belgian Golden Ale. Brewer Eric Harper has created a beautiful Golden Ale that also is the highest alcohol beer brewed by Summit.
Last week Summit was nice enough to contact me about receiving some samples. I have to say that this is my favorite of the Unchained series. The Golden Ale pours a perfect clear golden color with a thin white ring of foam. Wonderful floral and spicy aromas at first, with a faint hint of alcohol and some slight yeastiness and fruitiness. The Golden Ale is sweet at first, with some nice spiciness coming through. Light in body but with some stickiness and some very faint burn from the alcohol. It finishes with some lingering sweetness and fruity tones. Its just crisp enough to beg you for another drink.
I have to say I'm quite impressed. For a brewery that has been the steady constant in the Minnesota craft beer landscape, they've taken some bold steps in recent years. Horizon Red, a fairly hoppy red ale, has quickly become their second best seller. The Unchained series has allowed Summit to head into new directions with interesting one offs. While a Kolsch and Scottish Ale don't scream bold necessarily, the Rye IPA and now a big Golden Ale are moving in a bolder direction. Summit is known for making consistently solid beers. In my opinion, this Golden Ale puts Summit in the discussion for American breweries making great interpretations of Belgian Ales. I'll be making sure to stock up on Unchained 4 before it leaves the shelves and anxiously waiting to see what #5 brings.
I'm heading to North Carolina next week and hoping to find some local goodies or at the very least some southern and/or East coast favorites. I also will post about the recently brewed Burning Beard Belgian Ale soon.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gluten Free IPA

2010-07-06T21:16:00.005-05:00

This summer I decided to try to brew a gluten free beer. I've only had one before, New Grist by Lakefront and while it was decent, the truth is that beer brewed primarily with sorghum doesn't really stand up to the good old malt based beverage I love. However, my friend and colleague has a gluten allergy. Before she realized that gluten was the cause, she was a frequent recipient of my beer, and I feel guilty that I continue to give her beers to pass along to her fiancee. She asked me to brew her a gluten free beer and I was intrigued by the challenge. As she sampled the commercial examples, she complained that the one thing that they lacked was hoppiness. Her favorite beer was Bell's Two Hearted and she craved the citrusy hops in a gluten free beer.
I did a lot of research looking up gluten free recipes. Not knowing much about sorghum and how it would react with hop bitterness, I wondered why you couldn't just hop the shit out of the extract. The main problem with sorghum it seems is that it is fairly sweet, and most things people can add to get color, body, and mouthfeel seem to be more fermentables like molasses or sugar. I found a couple recipes for gluten free IPAs, and taking some of their additions, with my own thoughts on trying to see what happens when you just add a lot of hops I came up with this recipe:
Steep: 1/2 lb of oatmeal
6lbs of Sorghum extract
1 lb of sucanat -(which is basically pure dried non refined cane sugar. It retains molasses flavor and color as a result)
8 oz Maltodextrin (to add body and head retention).
Hops:
1 oz Chinook @ 60
.5 oz Chinook @ 30
.5 oz Centennial @ 15
.5 oz Chinook @ 10
.5 oz Centennial @ 5
1 oz Centennial @ 1
Yeast: Safale US-05 (* apparently many liquid yeasts aren't gluten free)

Here's the weird thing, fermentation. The beer started fermenting early on, and has held steady for more than a week now. The weid thing is that there isn't a lot of foam or krausen at the top (I'm assuming this must be due to the lack of glutenous material?) It's odd, check out these pics. It has dropped in gravity, so I know it's doing the job, but it just seems to be slow and steady. If anyone who has experience with brewing gluten free can explain this, please let me know.
More to Come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

None More Black RIS

2010-06-29T21:36:00.003-05:00

I've never brewed an Imperial Stout before. I'm not the biggest fan of the style to begin with, and it seems like a very daunting beer to brew well. It was a bottle of the Dark Lord from Three Floyd's that made me think again about brewing one. That beer was so complex and full of fruity and roasty flavors. Not to set the bar too low for myself, but I have a hard time believing I can match that monster. Nonetheless, I wanted to see if I could brew a big stout full of flavor and force myself to age it for some time to see what the end result is. Part of why I brewed it in June was because right now a big stout is not something I'm craving. My plan is to age it for a period in the secondary (might be splitting/adding some things to the beer at that point as well), bottling and then waiting until the weather starts to get chilly before finally cracking one open.
I rarely reuse a name of a beer, but years ago I wanted to make a label playing off of Metallica's Black Album for a dark beer. I used it for a black wheat I brewed about 3 years ago. Let's be honest, the best Imperial Stout names are taken: The Darkness, The Dark Lord, The Yeti, The Abyss. So I went back to the label. The name comes from a cult favorite for my college buddies and I, Spinal Tap. For those unfamiliar, when the band is presented with an all black album design, Nigel says "It's almost like how much more black could it be? And the answer is none, none more black." Always thought that would be an awesome name for a dark beer. (skip ahead to about :50 sec).

More to come:
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

AHA Pro Brewers Night

2010-06-23T22:52:00.005-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to go to the Pro Brewer's night at the American Homebrewer's Conference in nearby Bloomington. A pretty cool opportunity given that this conference is in a different city every year. I applied and was accepted for a media pass, another huge opportunity. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it to much of the conference, but was able to get to the Pro-Brewer's night on Thursday. Over 45 breweries on hand, including all the local ones, it was a great opportunity to drink some good beer.
I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that much of what was on hand was stuff that you can find in the stores. I was hoping for some rareities, but a few breweries did deliver on that end. I went to the conference with my good friend Jesse. We met up with a couple local bloggers that I've met before, Derek from Beer This! and Jon from Legal Beer.
The list was a bit overwhelming, and as the night went on it became incredibly harder to make mental (written was thrown out early) notes of what I drank. But here are the highlights:
Started off the night with Surly 4. I had never had this beer before, but heard a lot about it. A great espresso, milk stout. Surly also had their AHA Rally Wort- they aged this in oak barrels with the Cynic yeast, also quite good. Jesse had the Braggot and said it was very interesting.
Some other Minnesota breweries that impressed me were St. Paul's, Vine Park Brewery, a former brew pub, turned brew-your-own location, that now apparently brews their own batches available for growlers. The beer they had on hand was inspired by their group trips (yes, they offer that as well) to Beligum. It was called Cuvee de Belgium and one of the more surprising beers of the night. Jesse and I both walked away impressed by this one.
From far, far up north in Minnesota is Boathouse Brewpub in Ely. Jesse was impressed with their Hasselhop Rye IPA, and I had their Deepwater Horizon Brown Ale. Very good brown full of brown sugary goodness.
Town Hall and Fulton sampling came towards the end of the night. Town Hall's Imperial IPA was awesome, Jesse ( a huge DIPA fan) was excited to finally find one and Southwest Minneapolis' Fulton's Sweet Child o' Vine (second time I've had it) was very good as well. Excited for their continued growth. Also had to try Summit's Oatmeal Stout, cask conditioned and dry hopped with Fuggles...very tasty.
Among the surprises of the night was a small brewery located in Zanesville, Ohio called Weasel Boy. Weasel Boy seems like a pretty small operation, and the beers they had on hand were fantastic, a great Russian Imperial Stout called Anastasia RIS and Bitter Sable Imperial Black IPA.
Overall the night was a lot of fun. It was great to be able to sample so many beers from all over. Good to hang out with good people, my only regret was not being able to make more of the conference (especially club night).

The pics in order from the top (Derek and I, Jesse and I, John and I).

Coming up this week will be some info on my None More Black Imperial Stout I brewed, and some other thoughts on some beers I've been drinking lately.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

New Glarus Interview Link

2010-06-19T20:26:00.003-05:00

I'm a huge, huge fan of New Glarus. You can skim my past posts for the gush fests that are my reviews of their beer (and as my buddy Jefe says...still waiting to drink a bad New Glarus). I found this interview on Twitter link from the Dankbrewer. Had to post it. I admire so many things New Glarus does; the emphasis on local ingredients, the simplistic labels, the great range of traditional to out of the box beers, the old school brewery, the fact that they only sell in Wisconsin (sucks but you gotta respect it), etc.
This interview is just a reminder of why New Glarus is the shit. Great approach/outlook on the craft of brewing. No wonder they make great beers, the man behind it has a great vision. I digress... click here
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Southside Summer Ale

2010-06-18T19:44:00.005-05:00

I've never been a huge fan of blonde ales. But recently I got a sample pack of Ska Brewing Company. I was disappointed at first because of the 12 bottles in the pack, four were their True Blonde Ale, and there were only 2 each of their Ten Pin Porter and Buster Nut Brown (the two I was most excited about). But oddly enough I found myself coming back to the blonde ales in the box. It was crisp and slightly malty and brewed with honey which gave it a nice lingering sweetness. Nice and refreshing on a hot day. Trying to decide what I wanted to brew for a nice summer beer, I decided to step away from the wheats I typically brew and brew up a blonde.
My recipe was fairly basic, but because of the extra time I have now that it's summer break, I decided to do a partial mash. What a mess for my first brewing of the summer. I didn't hit my temp first, then did the annoying process of heating/drawing off water/ putting it back in the mashtun...basically a clusterfuck. Finally I got it at 150, and the temps started dropping rapidly. Not sure if my cooler is no longer holding temps or what the deal is, but to top it off, after about 30 minutes of this shit, my 1 year old son wakes up and I had to go deal with that, deciding to scrap the partial mash. I had bought an extra couple pounds of DME, so I knew I had enough extract to brew up the beer.
To add to the ridiculousness of the ordeal, after putting in my first addition of DME, I went to refill my beer and had a boil over...something that hasn't happened in a long ass time! Frustrating! But the rest of the brewing went fine, I broke my hydrometer testing tube earlier as well, so I have no idea about the OG. I still believe it will turn out fine, but what a pain.
The recipe is very basic:
5 lbs of organic light DME (1 @ 60, 4 @ 15)
1 lb of wheat dme (@ 60)
1 oz Hallertau @ 60
1 oz Hallertau @ 5
.5 lbs of honey @ flameout
I'm also going to use some raspberry extract in the secondary.
1056 Wyeast American Ale

On another note, had a great night at the Pro-Brewers night at the American Homebrew Conference. Plan on posting about that experience in the next day or so...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gringo 2010 Review and other thoughts

2010-06-14T18:53:00.005-05:00

Finally getting around to reviewing this beer. The Gringo yielded a little bit less this year, I only ended up netting about 4 gallons for some reason, and putting the majority of it in 22 oz bottles. It's a fairly popular beer amongst my friends and it's the kind of beer that is good to give to people because it is fairly accessible. As a result, my stash of Gringo disappeared quick this year. The Gringo came about a couple years ago, when tired of the Imperial craze that seemed to dominate the market, I set out to create an imperial something, and settled on a Mexican lager in jest. What started out as a 3 gallon smart ass beer, now in it's third year has turned into one of the beers that is really well received amongst those who drink it. Its basically a pilsner brewed at somewhat ale temps (I use the Cali 2112 yeast which claims to retain lager like characteristics up to 65 degrees). I then lager it for a couple of months. In the case of this year's Gringo, I was lazy about bottling and ended up lagering it for almost 3 months. The end result was a very smooth beer with some nice crispness and great clarity...clearly 3 months is the time frame for lagering it. In addition to the pilsner malt that dominates the recipe, I also use 3 oz of Centennial hops and 1 oz of Cascade in the last 15 minutes of the boil, the final touch is 1lb of Agave Nectar that goes into the secondary. One more note...it's not technically a lager due to the lack of lager yeast (hence the use of the more general "Cerveza" instead) and also it is not technically "Imperial" because it clocks in at about 6% (hence the "Imperialistic" label). Onto the review:
Pours pale yellow with a rocky white 2 finger head. Crystal clear. Aromas of agave, citrus and slight graininess. Sweet, honey like at first followed by citrusy flavors of lemon, lime and tangerine. Soft mouthfeel that finishes crisp with some lingering agave sweentess and the graininess again.

Other notes: I am not thrilled with the Funky Monk at this point. I think I used too tame of a Belgian yeast, or something. It's a bit unbalanced. I did split the batch kegging 3 gallons and keeping the other 2 in a 2 gallon fermenter. I'm going to be adding some oak chips to it and see how that works out.

Also, I'm exicted to go to the American Homebrewers Conference here in the Twin Cities. I got a media pass, which is awesome. Due to some prior engagements I'm not sure how much I can go to, but for sure am hitting up Thursday night's Pro-Brewer's night. Stay tuned for details from the event.

Last but not least, the beauty of teaching...summer break. As of today I'm on it (and already brewing). I plan to brew a lot this summer as last summer was busy with the birth of my son. On the docket, a Russian Imperial Stout, a gluten free IPA, another Jefe collaboration (this time a black wheat) and a couple other ideas I'm contemplating.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Hopbama Shirt from Zazzle.com

2010-05-31T22:50:00.000-05:00

Hopbama Shirt from Zazzle.com

Shirt Idea

2010-05-28T13:50:00.007-05:00

I've had this idea for awhile, but didn't know how to make it. I found a website called obamaconme.com that is perfect for creating "obama" images. The shirts should be available soon @ zazzle.com/beardedbrewer.

The Funky Monk and other thoughts

2010-05-16T09:58:00.005-05:00

Last week I had a box of beer sent to me by Dave @ Muckney Brewing. I will eventually get to the reviews of his Saison and Barley Wine he sent. In addition to the homebrews, Dave sent me a number of commercial beers. Among the beers was a Stone beer I'd never had, Cali-Belgique IPA, which they describe as their Stone IPA brewed with a Belgian yeast. I was really impressed with this beer, it was fruity and hoppy, slightly bitter but also funky. A really nice blend of styles. I had been trying to decide what I wanted to brew next and this beer was so tasty I decided to brew my own interpretation.
I started with a fairly basic IPA recipe, kept the IBUs down some, opting for 1 oz of Columbus as the bittering agent. I also added some Amarillo and finished the boil with Citra as a late hop addition. I've never used Citra before, but the description of flavors of mango, pineapple and passion fruit sounded like a perfect compliment to the Belgian yeast. I went with White Labs Abbey Ale 530 yeast to give it some nice fruity,funky notes. I'm excited to see how this beer turns out. More to come on that.

On another note, I've been lucky to have a couple sessions of drinking great beer with some great people lately. Last Friday, Aaron @ Captain's Blog and Derek from Beer This came over to share some homebrew. Aaron brought along an amazing Wild Rice Brown Ale he brewed. The wild rice finished the beer off nicely, but the caramel, nutty and brown sugar flavors that dominated the beer were incredible! In addition, he brought his Hefeweizen, which was clovey with some nice banana aromas followed by great hefe-refreshment. In addition to his homebrews, he shared a bottle of the coveted Dark Lord from Three Floyds. Man oh Man! I'm not a RIS fan usually, but this beer blew me away! A really nice evening of beer geekery and excellent brews.

This past Saturday, my oldest friend El Jefe came over and brewed the Funky Monk with me. He also brought a New Glarus Unplugged Cherry Stout. I turned El Jefe onto New Glarus a couple years ago and believe I have created a monster. He turned me onto Millstream, so I guess we're even for creating a thirst for out of state beers that we can't readily get our hands on. Regardless, El Jefe recently went on a run to Wisconsin to pick up some New Glarus and saved a bottle of Cherry Stout for us. Cherry Stout was great, so unique and not what I was expecting. The "stout" of the beer is hard to pick up as the cherries dominate, similar to their award winning Belgian Red. Aaron @ Captain's blog said it perfectly, its almost Cherry Coke like. His review was spot on. I'm really hoping that there is an off chance that I can find a four pack still left on the shelves when I get to Wisconsin later this month. Its not a traditional stout, but it's something unique. As Jefe put it, still waiting to try a New Glarus beer that I didn't like.
Coming soon, I'd like to get to the review of my 2010 Gringo as well as some commerical beers I've gotten a hold of recently.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Uno Agave Wheat Ale

2010-05-12T19:43:00.006-05:00

Two years ago for my daughter's first birthday I decided to brew a beer for her party. With a lot of friends and family attending, I wanted to make something accessible to everyone, yet interesting enough at the same time. I decided on using Orange Blossom Honey in a wheat ale. It turned out really well, and for my son's birthday party, I decided to brew another wheat beer. I'm not a big fan of the traditional American wheat ales, but at the same time they are a great beer to make as a crowd pleaser. I decided to add Agave nectar to my son's version, and also decided to use the Belgian Wheat yeast 3942 to make it a little more interesting. Once the fermentation was complete, I added .5 lb of Agave nectar to the primary before kegging. At about two weeks since kegging it's tasting nice, right now the agave gives it a nice sweetness and the Belgian yeast gives it just enough spice and funkiness to make it interesting but doesn't detract from the simplicity of the beer. In about 3 weeks when the party is, it should be a nice beer.
The recipe was simple:
6 lbs Wheat LME ( 3@ 60, 3@ 20)
1 lb Flaked Wheat steeped
1 oz Spalt Select Hops (5% aau) @ 60
8 oz Agave Nectar @ 5, 8 oz Agave Nectar at kegging
Belgian Wheat 3942

I plan on getting to the review of my Gringo 2010, plus I'm brewing up a Belgian IPA this week inspired by Stone's Cali-Belgiue IPA.
More to come,
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Surly Review- Abrassive Ale

2010-05-01T22:42:00.006-05:00

The following statement would be blashphemous to some, but it took awhile for me to really get into to Surly beers. Now, before you start questioning my beer geek credentials...just know that my reasons were solid. Much of my early craft beer drinking/blogging/brewing was centered around non hoppy beers. Hoppy beers have been an acquired taste for me, and so while I enjoyed the Bender, I didn't love it at first, and really didn't like Furious. But as my taste buds changed, I grew to love hoppy beers and was finally ready for Furious again, and it blew me away. Floral, citrusy, malty, complex. Really lived up to the hype. Abbrasive ale is no different. This is a beer that quite frankly I wouldn't have appreciated two years ago. I would have cursed myself for dropping $16 on a 4 pack of cans. Times have changed and I've grown into a fan of IPAs, especially big ones, and Abrassive Ale might be the best DIPA I've ever had. I try to avoid using too much hyperbole, but in this case, it applies. I'm not saying it's the best DIPA ever made, I'm saying that for my tastes, its the best I've had. I know some people who feel that Furious is better, or that this beer isn't chewy-hoppy-malty enough. I however, think it's really, really damn good.

Abrasive Ale pours honey gold with a finger of white head. Heavy citrus aromas, lemon, and grapefruit along with some nice hints of malt and even biscuit. Sweet and citrusy right away, with some maltiness and even some floral notes as well. This is similar to the Furious, a unique hop complexity that Surly does so well, a balance of floral and citrusy hops. There is plenty of bitterness throughout, especially in the finish. The body is lighter than some DIPAs, not chewy hoppy, bright but still with plenty of body. Finishes sweet and citrusy with plenty of lingering bitterness popping throughout your mouth. One more thing that I liked about Abrassive ale, was despite the abv, it's not boozy. The effect is there when you finish it off, but there isn't a boozy aroma in the nose. Overall, outstanding.
A+

More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Review- Big Ass IPA

2010-04-24T19:53:00.006-05:00

Sometimes beers turn out better than expected.
Like most of you, I am obsessed with beer and homebrewing. I read articles, blogs, and books about brewing. I've grown over the years in my knowledge of ingredients, flavor profiles and techniques. While still not as technical as some, I have tried to better myself in that arena. But despite all that, there are times that you just plain fuck up...and sometimes that doesn't even matter. The more I brew and learn, the more apparent it becomes that save for an infection, it is fairly hard to screw up the brewing process.
Big Ass IPA was the final beer on a string of increasingly hoppier beers I brewed starting last June. As my taste and appreciation of hoppy beers grew, so did my desire to better myself at brewing bigger and hoppier IPAs. I had success with my Steelhead Slammer, a big IPA brewed with a lot of Centennial hops. I have struggled with my brew house efficiency and attenuation (despite a starter) with big beers in the past. Not sure if it is temperature issues, or what. But knowing that the chances of getting an IPA into the 9-10% range was going to be challenging, I opted to call this beer what it was...a big ass IPA. Hoppy and high in IBUs, but not big enough in ABV to truly be an imperial.
Brew day didn't go as well as I would have wanted, for some reason I was distracted as I brewed, ended up missing my timing on a late addition of malt extract ( put it in the last 5 minutes), and completely missed adding a pound of sugar that I was hoping would boost my abv. Not huge mistakes by any means, but annoying nonetheless.
What I was really going for in the Big Ass IPA wasn't the abv or even a chewy body of a DIPA. I was aiming for bitterness. I felt that I had nailed down aspects of IPAs in the past, but never could get the bitterness to where I wanted. As it turned out, despite the misteps, I felt that Big Ass turned out great. The hops turned out bright and vibrant, and a nice bitterness rounded it out. As my buddy Jesse wrote me: The citrus/pine is there... but there is almost a bursting, somewhat sweet sensation midway through the mouth that is borderline bubblegummy... now I'm not saying it tastes like bubble gum, but rather that flavor burst of bubble gum is there.... so i'm talking logistics not flavor... and yet the flavor is an orangish/grapefruity/piney that is more sweet citrus than fruity citrus like most...

I'll leave my review at this: Pours dark gold with a white finger of head. Aromas of orange, tangerines, and pine. Sweet and hoppy at first, bright, but followed by some nice bitterness. Bitterness lingers throughout,some hints of caramel and malty sweetness. Finishes sweet and citrusy with lingering bitterness.

Here's the recipe: 6 lbs Organic Pale LME @ 5
3 lbs Amber DME @ 60
Steep: .50 lbs Org Crystal 60, .50 lbs Org Vienna, .50 lbs Org. Carapils
Hops: 1.4 0z Org Pacific Gem (13% AAU)
1 oz Simcoe @ 15
.5 oz Amarillo @ 10
.5 oz Centennial @ 5
.5 oz Amarillo @ 3
.5 oz Cent @ 2
Dry Hop: 1 oz Cent. leaf hops, 1 oz Amarillo leaf hops
Wyeast American Ale II (w/ starter)

More to come on my thoughts on Surly's Abrasive Ale and the Ichi Agave Wheat Ale I just brewed.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

A year later- Mike's Saison

2010-04-17T15:54:00.003-05:00

Over a year ago, I went to Denver for work and also had an opportunity to brew my first (and only) all-grain batch with my cousin-in-law. Mike, an accomplished homebrewer, is very adept at brewing Belgians, and I enjoyed some of his out there, as well some more he hooked me up with in September when I saw him again. Of the beers I've had of Mike's its clear that he nails down the subtle and complex flavors that make Belgian's unique, and in the case of the Saison we brewed, and a Wit he gave me, he can brew up a perfect example of the style to compete with any commercial brewery.
Last weekend it was a perfect day outside, sunny and 70 degrees and I thought it was the perfect time to crack open the remaining Saison I had, almost 1 year to the date we brewed it. The beer poured crystal clear as you can see, straw gold with a thin white head. Spicy and funky aromas with some slight grassiness. I think some of the funkiness has dissipated with age, but is still present. Sweet right away with nice fruity and citrusy flavors (orange and tangerine). There's some nice spicy-peppery notes going on as well. Perfect mouthfeel, creamy but has some nice carbonation, bright and fizzy. There's some sticky sweetness but finishes dry.
A great sasion...aged well. It was fun brewing with Mike and having my first all-grain experience. Mike is a great brewer, especially belgians.
I plan on reviewing my Big Ass IPA, as well as Surly's new DIPA, Abbrassive Ale this week.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Ska and Deschutes Beer Reviews

2010-04-07T20:48:00.008-05:00

While out in Arizona last week I was able to try quite a few beers that I normally don't have access to. While on a visit to a store my dad had been raving about for some time, Total Beer and Wine, I was able to pick up a fair share of good beer. The store itself is impressive for its prices and quantity. For example, compared to Minnesota where typical bombers run to $6-7.99, I was impressed to find a lot for $3.99-5.99. I think beer stores are always a grass is greener type of situation. While the aisle of strictly single bottles makes a geek like me drool, the selection was no different than a good store in any area, just that the brands they carried tended to be ones I can't get my hands on locally. With only so many days to drink, and not wanting to be sloshing drunk while visiting my parents, I restrained myself and instead filled out an order for my dad to bring up when he drives up to the Midwest this May.
That said, I still dropped some coin in the store and sampled a fair share of beer. I drank a number of different beers, including some Alaskan, Lost Coast (Raspberry Brown Ale is amazing), and some Lost Abbey. But the two I'm choosing to do extensive reviews are Deschutes Hop Trip Pale Ale and Ska Brewing's Modus Hoperandi.
Deschutes Hop Trip Pale Ale:
Apparently while I was gone last week, Deschutes arrived in the Twin Cities. A very good thing since everything I've had of theirs has been awesome. This pale ale is a wet hop ale, in fact they claim that the coordinate everything so that the hops are picked, put on the truck, and dumped in the kettle in about 4 hours! Pretty cool. This beer pours brilliant gold with a thin white head. Sweat aroma of caramel, malt and soft aroma of pine and citrus. It's sweet with caramel tones, and some nice citrus notes. There's very little bitterness, the hops are sweet and bright and the body is malty. Perfectly balanced. It finishes smooth with some nice lingering hops and malty sweetness. Outstanding pale ale.
A

Ska Brewing Modus Hoperendi
This is the first beer I've ever had from Durango, Colorado's Ska Brewing. What a great IPA. What a great name for an IPA. Modus pours caramely-amber with a two finger foamy white head. Great blast of citrusy piney hops right away. Perfect mouthfeel. Creamy and smooth with sweetness up front and a nice bitterness in the finish. Chock full of citrusy hops, grapefruit and orange that is present throughout the beer and balances nicely with the maltiness. The finish is sweet with a great bite. Excellent IPA.
A

More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Nimbus Brewing- Tucson, AZ

2010-04-01T10:56:00.006-05:00

My parents live in Tucson in the winter and the several times I've been down to visit I've picked up the local brewing product, Nimbus Brewing. This time down, I finally was able to make it to the brewery/brew pub of Nimbus located in an industrial park in Southern Tucson. I've never been blown away by the products of Nimbus, but at the same time I have had a couple of their beers that have been pretty good. I was looking forward to checking out the brewery and sampling a larger selection.
The restaurant/tap room is attached to the brewery, which is part of an industrial park. Not your typical locale for a brewpub, but as you can see from the pics, the restaurant is connected to the brewery. In fact our table was separated from the bottling line by a tall gate. Usually a brew pub has a fancier seperation like glass of some kind, but a metal gate separates the warehouse with fermentation tanks and bottling line, from the restaurant. It works though, I liked the vibe.
I bought the sampler, which consisted of their six regular taps plus their seasonal, a Belgian Golden Ale. Here's the brief breakdown:
Pale Ale- A pretty decent pale ale, a nice hoppy nose, some nice bitterness. Fairly hoppy with some good citrusy/Northwest hop flavors.
Dirty Guera Blond Ale- I've had this beer before and didn't really drink it this time around. I'm not a big fan of blond ales, and this one is quite light. For the style its good, crisp and smooth, slightly sweet. I just find blond ales boring.
Red Ale- A nice amber ale, malty body, quite sweet with some faint bitterness that helps balance it out. Good example of an American Amber ale.
Oatmeal Stout- A good example of an oatmeal stout. Smooth, creamy mouthfeel with some nice roastiness, chocolate notes and a dry finish.
Belgian Golden Ale- This seasonal is a good Belgian Golden ale. Not overly fruity or funky, but nice spiceness and sweet. I thought it was more of a "gateway" Belgian than a golden ale in the vane of Duvel or something of that category. But not a bad alternative as a lighter ale with more character than their blond ale.
Old Monkeyshine- Described as an English Strong Ale, this beer was probably the best beer they offered. I thought this beer was a unique beer, not a style you find often. This beer poured dark brown and was all about the caramel sweetness. A great aroma of brown sugar and caramel, the beer is malty and sweet and lighter in body than the 8.3% ABV would suggest. An excellent ale.
Nut Brown Ale- I've had this beer several times before and think (along with Old Monkeyshine) it's the best beer they make. Almost closer to a porter than a brown ale, this beer is quite dark and roasty. It's nutty and chocolaty, but the use of black malt gives it a roastiness I don't usually associate with brown ales. Regardless, its a really great ale.

Overall, Nimbus has some good beers and a couple great ones. Arizona seems to only have a couple breweries, yet every year I find some new ones, so it seems to be a growing scene. I also picked up a fair share of beers from out West that I normally don't have access to, including the always outstanding Lost Coast, Deschuttes and Ska Brewing. I plan on reviewing those soon.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Review- Stout Chocula

2010-03-20T09:49:00.009-05:00

I love coffee, and of course I love beer, especially stouts. Naturally I'm a big fan of the combination, especially when done right. I think that coffee beers that are successful are a delicate balance of coffee presence and the chocolatey-roasty qualities of a stout. When done wrong however, they are unbalanced and have either aroma and no flavor, or the acidity of the coffee fights with the roasted malts to overpower the subtleties of the stout.
One of the things I love about homebrewing is being able to brew a beer, tweak it, and having it come out better another time around. While its hard for me to always be 100% satisfied with my final product, I can say that I would rank Stout Chocula in the top 3 beers I've ever brewed.
I had attempted an oatmeal stout in October, the Norseman. The Norseman turned out great in a couple areas and fell short in several others. It was the first time I had brewed with oatmeal and I felt like the mouthfeel was perfect, it also had some nice chocolaty notes going on, but was not nearly dark enough or roasty enough. I had brewed with coffee before too, but wasn't in love with the result. I think the coffee ended up being too bitter and acidic in the beer. This time around I did some things differently and feel like the changes worked. For starters I used cocoa nibs in the secondary, which really brings out the chocolate and adds some nice texture. Also the coffee cold pressing worked better this time around and really brought the aroma to the forefront. These two things come out in the beer. The oatmeal helped add some nice mouthfeel as one would expect, and I did a partial mash/steep mix that I had read about in a BYO article from Chris Colby. He discussed steeping the dark malts so that they don't add acidity (mashing dark malts in a partial mash changes the ratios compared to an all grain batch) and so I mashed the base malts, and steeped the dark malts. The end result was the color I was looking for and the beer is not too acidic. One last twist, is that I brewed with decaf coffee. I chose to use a local coffee, Peace Coffee's Dark Roast. I chose to go decaf so I could enjoy this beer at night! Overall, I'm quite pleased. Onto the review:
Stout Chocula pours dark chocolate brown/black with a two finger light khaki head. Aromas of coffee come out right away, nutty and roasty like a fresh brewed cup, followed by some chocolate and caramel notes too. The first thing you notice in the flavor is the coffee, but that soon becomes chocolaty and malty sweet. Faint hints of vanilla, nuts, and milk chocolate. The coffee isn't as present initially, but comes through in the finish. It finishes with some lingering milk chocolate sweetness. The mouthfeel is perfect I think, creamy with a nice milkshake quality. At 6% its not nearly as chewy as a bigger stout, but still smooth and full.

Here's the partial mash recipe:
Steep: 1 lb Organic Chocolate
2 oz Organic Roasted Barley*
.25 lbs Organic Black Malt *
* Organic co-op Seven Bridges has expanded their grains, now they thankfully carry black malt.
Mash @ 152 for 1 hr:
2 lbs Organic Munich Malt
. 5lbs Organic Crystal 60
1 lb Organic 2-Row
.5lbs Oatmeal

6 lbs Org. LME @ 60
. 6 0z Organic Pacific Gem hops (13% AA) @ 60
Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

In the secondary: 4.5 oz Organic Cocoa Nibs, boil in 1.5 cups of water, drain, and put in secondary. 10 oz or so of cold pressed decaf dark roast (For those not familiar with cold pressing at home, very simple, just add 1/2 lb of coffee grounds to a container, fill it up with 24 oz of water and let it sit overnight. Then strain it through a coffee filter.) Plus .5 tsp of vanilla.

On another note, for my spring break I'm headed to Tuscon, Arizona. Excited to try some West Coast beers, hit up the Nimbus Brewing Company, and go to a store called Total Wine that my dad raves about for their incredible selection. Planning on dropping some cash in that store. I hope to post next week on my experiences out Az.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Homebrewer Review- Lutherhaus Molasses Stout

2010-03-07T20:45:00.004-06:00

A couple months ago some bloggers decided to all brew the same stout recipe save for one "secret" ingredient. The plan was to then ship them off to each other and review the end products. I found out about the opportunity too late, as they all brewed around the same time. Next time I would love to get in on the fun, since it sounded like the results were amazing. I was lucky to get my hands on what sounded like the best of the bunch.
Derek at Lutherhaus/Beer This blog came over in January to brew with me, and brought along his recently bottled stout and told me to give it some time. I finally opened it on Friday night and was very impressed. While the molasses didn't seem to dominate, it created some unique flavors that complimented the rest of the stout perfectly. An outstanding stout in every way. My review:
It pours jet black with a finger of tan head. Great roasty aroma with a hint of sweetness. Perfect mouthfeel with a nice creaminess and full body. Sweet at first with some nice smokey-roasty flavors going on. Great balance of bitterness and sweetness. Just a wonderful complexity of flavors; sweet, chocolaty, smokey, with some licorice/molasses flavor hidden in there as well. It finishes smooth with a lingering sweetness and chocolate followed by some smokey-roastiness.

Congrats to Derek, maybe you should bring a bottle to Summit during your internship and see if you can get this added to the Unchained series! I'd buy sixers of this in a heartbeat.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review-Red Ale Revolution

2010-02-21T11:02:00.003-06:00

I've been steadily drinking the Red Ale Revolution throughout
January and February. While I think the RAR can be improved upon in the future, I'm happy with the turn out. The color turned out perfectly and it's a great drinking session ale. I think the recipe can be tweaked to be a bit more complex, maybe some more malt, and more varieties at that. This recipe is heavily Munich malt, which is nice, but I think some additional malts could add some interesting complexity. For a nice mid-winter hoppy session beer, this beer has hit the spot. Here's the review:

It pours a clear mahogany with some ruby red highlights and a finger of off-white head. There's some nice hoppiness in the nose, grassy and slightly citrusy, with a biscuit-bready aroma as well. At first it's hoppy with more of the grassy notes and citrusy sweetness. Right away the munich malt makes itself known, with some nice malty-bisuity flavor going on with a good amount of sweetness. There's a nice amount of bitterness going on as well. A lingering sweetness in the finish, malty and citrusy.

I posted it before, but here's the recipe:
Mini Mash- 2.5 lbs Organic Munich
.5 lbs Organic Crystal 120
.75 lbs Organic Crystal 60
.25 lbs Organic Chocolate
6 lbs Pale Organic LME
3.15 lbs Munich LME
Hops: 1 oz Organic Pacific Gem @ 60 (16% AAU)
2 oz Whole Leaf Organic Cascade @ 30
2 oz Whole Leaf Organic Cascade @ 5
Dry Hop: 2 oz Whole Leaf Organic Cascade
Yeast: 1056 American Ale

More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Big Ass IPA

2010-02-13T11:09:00.004-06:00

A couple years ago I never would have imagined myself brewing an imperial IPA. Being a hop head is something that I've grown into over the years. In 5+ years of brewing, I've only been brewing IPAs in the last 2. Last summer a friend commissioned a double IPA from me. In my "research" to formulate the recipe, I drank a number of big IPAs. Like most things in life, having an open mind helped me grow into a fan of hoppy beers, and the acquired taste has slowly grown into more and more appreciation of hop bomb beers.
The Steelhead Slammer as I named Jesse's beer turned out better than expected. While the ABV didn't get as high as intended (my fault for not making a starter), the hoppiness was definitley there. The beer was well recieved, and the only real change I wanted to make was to give it some more backbone. The Slammer was 75 IBUs, but definitley lacked that "bite" for lack of a better term that great DIPAs have. I think proper bitterness is a tricky thing to accomplish in homebrewed IPAs. Aside from an outstanding one the Captain made, I've yet to taste any other homebrewed versions that achieve this or hit the mark in any of mine. At the same time, the Steelhead Slammer was a tasty array of citrusy hops and I don't want to stray too far from that.
So I've been chomping at the bit to brew another big IPA, since I can't seem to consistently get my starting gravities as I intend (a matter obviously worth exploring), I've decided to stray from the "Imperial" or "Double" label. Hence...Big Ass IPA. Because that what's its going to be...a very hoppy IPA that may or may not flirt with the 8-9% range. Regardless of the abv, if I can end up with something close to the Slammer, with some more bitterness to give you that bite that leaves you wanting another sip of citrusy hops...then I'll be happy. More to come on the recipe as I'm toying with exact hop amounts and additions that I won't decide on until brew day. At this point though, the Big Ass is going to have at least 1 oz Simcoe, 1 oz Amarillo, and 1 oz Centennial in the last 15. I'm excited because Simcoe and Amarillo are two hop varities I've yet to use, so I'm excited to see what they add.
More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gringo 2010 and Stout Chocula update

2010-01-30T16:27:00.008-06:00

Last year I was really happy with the second go around of my Imperialistic Mexican lagerish experiment, The Gringo. I had brewed a version in 2008 and while it had some decent elements to it, I tweaked it and was really pleased with the turnout last year. To give a bit of the background, I had the idea of brewing an "Imperial" Mexican lager. While the Gringo has never been high in the alcohol content, the "Imperialistic" tag comes from the overabundance of American hops, Centennial and Cascade. It's not exactly a lager because I use the California 2112, or "steam ale" yeast, which according to Wyeast imparts lager like characteristics in temps up to 65 degrees. I then lager it in a fridge for 10 weeks. Regardless of the finer points, the Gringo ends up being a very smooth, citrusy-hoppy cerveza that retains some slight maltiness and grainiess that one would expect in say, a Corona. Last year's twist was to add agave nectar, a honey like substance that really stayed true to the Mexican vibe, and also gave the Gringo a great sweet-honey aroma and nice finishing sweetness. Overall people really liked it and the reviews I got all seemed to hit what I was going for: a hopped up Corona. Aside from adding an additional ounce of Cascade hops the last minute, there were no real changes. I'm excited for this one to be ready around May. (Yes...my bastardized Mexcian lager will be ready right around the time of the Over-Americanized Holiday of Cinco de Mayo!)
This time around, fellow Twin Cities beer blogger Derek @ Beer This! came over to brew with me. It's always nice to brew with someone since I tend to brew alone. It was nice to pick Derek's brain on some things and fun to bounce ideas off of. And of course enjoy some good homebrew.
Derek brought over his wort chiller to try out an idea he had. We hooked up our immerison chillers, putting one in a bucket filled with ice. The end result was fantatic. Not only did we cut down the cooling time significantly (about 10 minutes cool down) we obviously saved a lot of water in the process. Instead of spending the money on a counter flow chiller, I plan to pick up a second immerison chiller to do this everytime. A great time saver and water saving resource; win-win for an extra $60.
On another brewing note, I bottled/kegged the Stout Chocula last night. I'm very excited as it smelled and tasted great. To back up a bit, last week I transferred it to secondary, and at that time added 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract, 4.5 oz of cocoa nibs (pictured to the side) and cold pressed decaf coffee. Not to sound like a coffee snob...but I am a beer snob, so why not, I added Fair Trade Organic Decaf from Minneapolis' Peace Coffee (an awesome company with great coffee, btw.) The aroma turned out great. For those not familiar with cold pressing at home, very simple, just add 1/2 lb of coffee grounds to a container, fill it up with 24 oz of water and let it sit overnight. Then strain it through a coffee filter (which yields about 10 ounces or so). Can't wait to drink this beer in a day or so when it's nicely carbonated.
I am running out of keg/bottle space, so there is going to be a slight hiatus from brewing for a bit, then I plan on revisiting my big IPA. I was very happy with the turnout of the Steelhead Slammer, but want to brew up another version of a big IPA, this time upping the bittering to try and get some more bite to the finish. Can't seem to nail that yet, so stay tuned.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

The Norseman Review

2010-01-23T20:28:00.004-06:00

I went through a phase the last year where I moved away from brewing more experimental and/or unique beers, and tried to focus more on brewing more traditional beers. One beer that I had never brewed was an oatmeal stout. I love a good oatmeal stout, they are creamy and smooth, but have a wonderful balance of caramel and roast. On Halloween I brewed the Norseman, my version of an oatmeal stout. In a lot of ways the Norseman turned out great, it has a perfect mouthfeel, and is very enjoyable and quite flavorful A lot of my friends loved the beer and I found myself going through the keg quickly. However, it missed the mark on two key areas of an oatmeal stout, it wasn't dark enough and lacked roastiness. So...it's more of a dark oatmeal brown ale?...oatmeal brown porter?...basically something other than a stout. It's the beauty of homebrewing in a way, and also the nice thing about the return to the basics for me. By having a fairly simple recipe, I can easily determine that the Norseman misses the mark on a couple things that are fairly fixable, mainly upping the roasted barley and either adding some black malt or debittered black malt. On the other hand, it was highly enjoyable as it was, so I know that I either have a really good beer as is, or make a few changes here or there and I have something closer to the stout I'm aiming for. A win/win basically. So onto the Norseman review:
The Norseman pours light chocolate brown with a lot of reddish hues, held up to the light the red really comes through, as well as a nice finger of lacy off white head. Aromas of chocolate and toffee with some faint roasty notes. Smooth at first, with a nice softness that finishes with a slight bitterness. Flavors at first of malt and biscuit, followed by some nice chocolate notes and just a little bit of roast. A lingering chocolate sweetness and a hint of the chalky-roastiness I was aiming for...but just a hint. The finish is soft with a coating of chocolate and malt and slight bitterness.

More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Stout Chocula and Beer Blog Summit.

2010-01-16T09:40:00.005-06:00

This past week I had the rare opportunity of having a week by myself with my wife and kids out of town. I was able to fill the week with plenty of beer related activities.
Last Thursday I got together with about 20 local beer bloggers. It was a really cool night, filled with good beer talk and of course drinking. It started out as a couple bloggers I've met before wanting to get together, Derek @ Beer This, Stu @ Friday Night Beer, and Aaron @ the Captain's Beer Blog. Quickly it grew into a large event, and I jumped at the opportunity to suggest one of the nights I was free of kid obligations. It was a really cool event that will hopefully happen again. And a big shout out to Stu for putting it all together.

Friday, I was able brew up a breakfast stout I'd been planning on for some time. After having Founders outstanding version of a coffee, chocolate, oatmeal stout, I wanted to brew my own. Stout Chocula won't be nearly as high of gravity, but I'm aiming for the same chocolatey-coffee goodness that is their version. I have contemplated brewing with chocolate for some time. A huge help in formulating my recipe was an article I found here from the Maltose Falcons brewing club. A great source for breaking down what forms of chocolate do what to a beer. In the end I decided to go with two things to achieve the chocolateyness (I just made up that word, but it works). I upped the chocolate malt and also am going to be adding cocoa nibs to the secondary. This seems to be the best way according to several sources. Brian at Untamed Brewing also suggested adding some vanilla to really bring out the chocolate as well as the nibs. They weren't cheap, but the best deal I found was at Nutsonline.com (make sure you type that in correctly:D) While $13 a lb isn't cheap, I can get several chocoalte beers out of the pound.
One more thing, I love coffee beers, but don't like staying up all night. So I decided to try brewing this with decaf coffee. I'll be cold pressing and adding it to the secondary as well.

More to come on the progress of that. Also I brewed up the 2010 version of the Gringo with Derek from Beer This blog on Saturday. It was fun to brew with Derek and I'll post about the Gringo 10 soon.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Red Ale Revolution

2010-01-03T21:42:00.004-06:00

I'm back in the saddle after a short hiatus for the holidays. I ended my winter break with a brewing session, and plan a couple more next week (more to come on that). I've been wanting to brew a version of a red ale for some time. One of the first beers I ever drank illegally was a Killian's Red I took from the store room of a restaurant I worked at when I was 18. Now the story isn't that I was so blown away by this beer, but simply that myself and red ales have come along ways since then. I love the newer wave of red ales, (at least they are new to me). This past year I had three great beers, all malty, caramely, and chock full of citrusy hops. Green Flash's Hop Head Red, Summit's Horizon Red Ale, and Lagunitas Imperial Red Ale. All three of these beers leave me wanting more, and wanting to brew my own version.
I formulated a recipe based off an India Red Ale recipe in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing, but I made some changes and swapped out the bittering hops. This beer uses a lot of Munich malt, more than I've brewed with before, as well as a 4 oz of Cascade hops. It was nice to come across a deal this fall, where I secured some local organic whole Cascade hops for a great price, and have had the luxury of working through that pound. So I will also be adding 2 oz of whole hops to the secondary for dry hopping to really give it that hoppy nose. I'm quite excited about this beer, and the color came out perfect at this stage.
Here's the recipe:
Mini Mash- 2.5 lbs Organic Munich
.5 lbs Organic Crystal 120
.75 lbs Organic Crystal 60
.25 lbs Organic Chocolate
6 lbs Pale Organic LME
3.15 lbs Munich LME
Hops: 1 oz Organic Pacific Gem @ 60 (16% AAU)
2 oz Whole Leaf Organic Cascade @ 30
2 oz Whole Leaf Organic Cascade @ 5
Dry Hop: 2 oz Whole Leaf Organic Cascade
Yeast: 1056 American Ale

* The downside of brewing in Minnesota is it's damn cold in January, (since I'm not all grain, luckily the down side isn't freezing my ass off in a garage), but this past week it was hovering around 0 all week. I brewed this beer late at night and it was pretty cold in my basement. The water was too cold when I combined it with the wort, and it brought the temp down to 52, I pitched it pretty cold, but after moving it upstairs, putting blankets on it, and setting it next to the heater, it's up to 67 and bubbling away....everything I've read said it's not a problem to pitch colder and have the beer rise in temp, this is a bit extreme though. Anyone have any thoughts? I'm thinking it should be fine...
Next week I'm off to my annual trip to Pittsburgh, so will be enjoying some good Pennsylvania beer, especially East End, and hopefully some other goodies I can't get here in MN....
More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

2nd Annual Year End Awards

2009-12-30T17:27:00.016-06:00

Last year I decided to do an End of Year Awards post to take a look back at my year in beer brewing and my favorite beers and brewery of the year. It was fun to do because I got a chance to look back and evaluate how far I've come, think about beers
I've brewed, and set some goals for the coming year. So without further ado, here's the 2009 Bearded Brewing End of Year Awards.

Worst beer/idea: Easily the worst beer/beer idea was my Cranberry Milk Stout. Luckily, El Jefe questioned if putting the entire batch on cranberries was a good idea and so I split the batch into a 2.5 gallon keg of the milk stout, and put the rest on top of cranberries. I think a couple things went wrong, but the end result was not good at all. First off, I think it's a bad combo, the tartness doesn't play well with the stout and I left it in the secondary for too long and it became almost winey. Thankfully El Jefe was right and I was able to salvage a good milk stout out of the batch.

Best recipe to build on: This one goes to the Steelhead Slammer DIPA. While it didn't end up quite as high of ABV or having bitterness I want in a double IPA, it was the hoppiest beer I made. It was well received and it gives me a base to build on, by upping the bittering hops and using a yeast starter, I should be able to get my next big IPA to what I'm wanting. It was a good experience though, and I know I can brew a really hoppy beer successfully.

Successful new style brewed: I was happy with the turnout of both my Vaca Milk Stout and Norseman Oatmeal Stout. I haven't brewed a lot of stouts, and I am excited going forward to brew more. I like how both turned out, and want to continue to play with the amount of chocolate/roasty/coffee flavors I can get by using different quantities of roasted malts.

Brewing Accomplishment: In June my wife had our second child, and the following months have been a feat to juggle a 2 year old and a newborn, as well as my job and sanity. Without becoming a dead beat dad or a divorced dad, I was able to keep my brewing going. How you might ask? Well, I changed my brewing time to 9pm on Friday or Saturday nights, and switched from the partial mashing I had been doing back to extract. The switch saved me some time and allowed me to brew about once a month. I also kegged more, which also saved me a lot of time. The one thing that has been hard is finding time to blog as much as I used to. The first couple years of this blog I was able to write more, and on a variety of topics. I hope to get back to that eventually. Regardless, keeping the brewing going has been more manageable than I thought it was going to be, and that has been a huge accomplishment this year!

Believe the Hype Award: Last spring I got a chance to go to Denver and at the Falling Rock Tap House had my first taste of Russian River. I had the Damnation, Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Elder. This fall I received a bottle of Blind Pig... all excellent. Every bit as good as advertised and a brewery I wish we had access to in Minnesota.

My Favorite Brewery of the Year: The truth is that New Glarus could get this award every year in my mind. But for the sake of making this interesting and not to sound like too much of fanboy, I chose three finalists....
First off was Lagunitas, which only loses out because I haven't had everything they offer, so I can't fairly judge them. What I have had has been great, and Hop Stoopid is the best bang for your buck DIPA out there. $4.99 a bomber at most stores, and is comparable to most $9.99 bottles from other breweries.
I would also be remiss if I didn't mention Summit. I love what they did this year. They added 3 new beers. Doesn't sound like much, but I think Summit sometimes is the forgotten old man of the craft brewing world in Minnesota. This year the release of an aggressive hoppy red ale, Horizon Red, plus the new one-off series Unchained, produced a Kolsch and an outstanding Scotish Wee Heavy...these served as a reminder that Summit makes great beer and shouldn't be overlooked. Excited to see what this coming year brings from them.
But Founder's came to Minnesota this year, and damn...I've had their lineup and it's all good. Centennial IPA and Founders Porter both jump into the top 2 of those styles I've ever had, and their Breakfast Stout is the kind of breakfast I could drink every morning (if I wouldn't lose my teaching license.) So brewery of the year for me is Michigan brewery Founder's.

Which leads me to my Top 9 beers of 2009. This category is for beers I've never had before this year, even if they had been out, they were new to me. In no particular order:

Dark Horse Crooked Tree IPA
Dark Horse Stout Series Tres (Blueberry Stout)
Summit Horizon Red Ale
Founders Centennial IPA
Founders Porter
Town Hall Brewery's Raspberry Milk Stout
Fitger's Starfire Pale Ale
New Glarus Cracked Wheat
New Glarus Coffee Stout

And finally....the Bearded Brewing Beer of the Year: The Gringo Imperilistic Mexican Lager

Last year this was the beer that I was excited to build on, and I was happy with the changes I made. In my mind, I wanted to create a unique beer that captures a lot of what my brewing is about: organic, accessible, but unique and well crafted. What started off as kind of a joke, an imperial Mexican lager, turned into a hoppy, smooth beer that was unique enough to impress some beer geeks, but accessible enough to be enjoyed by most. The key to the Gringo this time around was two things: Patience to let it lager and sit in the bottle long enough, and also the addition of Agave Nectar in the secondary. The agave (a honey-like substance) rounds out the sweet citrusy hops, but adds a nice touch that compliments the beer. I was happy that most people who reviewed it picked up on the maltiness, the beer is slighty grainy and lagerish, but the heavy addition of Centennial hops gives it a great citrusy presence. It was the beer I was most proud of this year...hence the award.

It was a great year, brewing and otherwise and I look forward to 2010. The goal for this past year was to return to some basics, try my hand at nailing down subtleties in beers like pale ales and stouts. Also to brew very hoppy beers, something I've never done. I sought out advice from more fellow brewers (three new bloggers reviewed my beers), I connected with some local beer blogger/brewers, and am entering a contest for only the second time this winter. The goal for 2010 is to return back to the creativity that drove my early brewing, building upon the success of the beers I brewed this year, combining what I learned with some more adventurous recipes.
Happy New Year and thanks for reading.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Review- New Glarus Coffee Stout

2009-12-27T21:18:00.005-06:00

This fall I bought a New Glarus sampler that included this Coffee Stout. It was easily one of the best coffee stouts I've had, but I didn't get a chance to write down my impressions. Back in Wisconsin for Christmas, I was happy to see that the samplers available still included this seasonal. Coffee naturally goes well with stouts, but that doesn't mean they always hit the mark. As with any addition, there are coffee infused beers that I've had that miss the mark on balance, either overdoing it, or understating it to the point that you only know its there because of the label. Of the coffee infused beers I've had, I'd put the top three as: Surly's Coffee Bender, Founders Breakfast Stout, and New Glarus'. This beer is a perfect blend of coffee and roasty stouty goodness. Does it get any better than that combo done right? Anyway, onto the review:
Pours jet black with a lacy finger of khaki head. Gread rich coffee aroma with some faint chocolate. Bitter at first, with the coffee really making itself known, but that soon gives way to some nice chocoalety and even slightly nutty flavors. Some nice caramely notes as well, but the coffee is present throughout the beer. It doesn't dominate, but lingers nicely in the finish along with the chocolately sweetness. Perfectly balanced between the two, it's like taking a drink of your favorite stout, and immediately taking a drink of a well brewed cup of coffee. A perfect 10 in my book!

Stay tune this week for my second annual year end awards. In the spirit of end of the year lists, I'll break down the year that was in my drinking and brewing of beer.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Review- Holiday Cranberry Orange Wheat

2009-12-21T18:39:00.005-06:00

This year for Christmas, my wife wanted to hand out gift baskets that included some of my beer. I wanted to brew a beer that had some of the holiday feel to it, but also one that was accessible to a variety of beer drinkers. While I enjoy brewing beers for the beer geek side of me, I also really like to make beer that everybody enjoys. I find that wheat ales offer me the ability to add a creative twist, but also are enjoyed by the people who might not be too adventerous of beer drinkers. The Cranberry Orange Wheat Ale was the right choice. I was happy that the cranberry gives it a nice tangy quality that fits well with the holiday vibe, and adds a distinct flavor to the sweet wheat ale. I had 3 lbs of frozen whole cranberries that had been in my freezer for a year. Knowing I had to get rid of them before they lost too much their flavor for cooking, I decided to add all 3 lbs to the secondary. This gave it a nice tangy presence, you definitley know they are there, but it's not overwhelming. The feedback has been really positive from both beer geeks and non, so I feel good that I hit the mark.
Onto my review: It pours cloudy dark gold with some deep orangish red highlights. Foamy white head that laces the glass. Tangy aromas of cranberry and citrus as well some clove. At first it's quite tart that gives away to a nice sweetness. Not overwhelmingly cranberry, but there's a tartness that lets you know the cranberry is present. It's a pretty sweet beer, with some citrusy flavors, lemony and orange. The cranberry flavor isn't dominant in the finish, instead there's a lingering tartness and some citrusy sweentess. The body is light as one would expect with a wheat ale, but there is a nice crisp finish that is aided by the tartness. Overall, a nice Christmas Ale.

The recipe is listed in the previous posting on this beer.

I'm in Wisconsin for Christmas, and just picked up my bounty of New Glarus. Excited to try Snowshoe Winter Ale, one I haven't had. Was also happy to see that the samplers including the outstanding Coffee Stout still was around. I will review both in the coming weeks. Thanks to all of you readers for your comments, interest, and overall curisosity in my small corner of the brewing world. A Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all of you and yours.
Salud!
Bearded Brewing

Irie Stout- 9 months later

2009-12-19T13:06:00.005-06:00

I'm never that good at saving beers. I tend to drink my beers too early, and rarely let beers sit for a long period of time. Before I got more into kegging, there was always the issue of bottle availability as well. The bottom line, the fact that a bottle of Irie Stout managed to last 9 months is a first for me. Seeing the last bottle amongst my bottles, I was curious about when I brewed this one, so I checked the date in my brewing notebook and found out that it was brewed on March 13, exactly 9 months to the day, so on December 13th, I cracked open the Irie.
This beer wasn't one I was too happy about this year. While some people liked, I felt that I had tweaked it beyond what I had wanted. In an effort to get the ABV high, I added some Black Treacle, an English Molasses, and I felt that it was too present. The beer ended up about 10.5 % abv, and for the first couple months, there was too much heat.
The original Irie had been a nice balance of fruity flavors and chocolate, it was drinkable and captured the Caribbean feel of what I wanted. But over time I tried to make it more "Imperial" and each time felt like I had gone too far away from the orginial plan. This latest version was probably the closest to an "Imperial" beer as the Irie was going to get. It was complex and over time the alcohol definitely mellowed out. While the Irie at 9 months was much better than it was earlier, I learned my lesson that I shouldn't always mess with a good thing. Nevertheless, it was fun to age a beer this long, and I can see how, particularly with a high ABV stout, it really changes the beer in a positive way.

The Irie pours black with a three finger light khaki head that lingers some on the glass. Aromas of tropical fruits (mango, passion fruit) as well as molasses and slight alcohol are present in the nose. There's a fizzy carbonation, which adds some refershing qualities, but takes away from the "stoutiness." Some chocolate and more complex fruitiness at first, with some molasses as well. There's no roastiness, but some citrusy/orangey flavors. The mango-tropical dominates the fruitiness more than the citrus (both Mango and Orange preserve were used in the brew). There's some lingering chocolatey sweetness in the finish, as well as some alcohol. As it warms, the chocolate definitely becomes more apparent.

Overall, I'm glad I saved a bottle. It taught me a lesson on Imperials, that I knew was the case, but it was nice to taste the difference. I felt that the treacle was still too present and the flavors were more complex along the lines of an Impy stout than I wanted for my personal preference. Still a good lesson learned.
I plan on getting in a review of my Holiday Cranberry Orange Wheat in before Christmas arrives.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- Bell's Double Cream Stout

2009-12-10T18:15:00.005-06:00

It's been awhile since I've reviewed a commercial beer, mainly because I've been so damned busy that blogging has taken a bit of backseat to life. But with holiday break coming up, I should be able to get in some good posts in the coming weeks. I intend on reviewing a couple of my own homebrews soon, my Holiday Cranberry Orange Wheat, and the Norseman Oatmeal Stout, but wanted to give them both a week or two more before the "official" review. Both are tasting nice though.
I wanted to get to this review before I finished off the sixer. I've always been a big fan of anything Bell's, I think beer after beer they are one of the most consistent breweries. Easily one of my top five breweries. You know when you buy a six pack of Bell's that you are getting something really well crafted and exceptionally solid through and through. I recently picked up Bell's Special Double Cream Stout expecting amazing things and wasn't dissapointed in the least. A++ across the board. Onto my review:
This pours thick and creamy, motor oil black with a two finger khaki head that dissipates into a thin layer. Wonderful aromas of coffee, roasted malt, dark chocolate and caramel. The first mouthfeel is perfect, milkshake creamy with a great sweetness at first, but some nice roastiness comes through as well. It's quite chocolatey, but a lot of dark, almost bitter chocolate notes. There's a silkiness to it that makes it very easy to drink, and the roastiness gives it a nice backbone, but a wonderful lingering chocolatey sweetness makes you want to drink more. The perfect amount of roastiness in a cream stout, with a lot of chocolate and sweetness going on. The bitterness of the dark chocolate and coffee notes balance nicely to hold it from being to sweet. A perfect nightcap stout, and one I will most definitley be buying again and again.

I plan on getting to some reviews of my own beers soon, as well as some commerical offerings as well. Winter has definitley arrived here in Minnesota, which means a lot of negative things, but for me it means I'm drinking a lot of great winter warmers and dark beers. Both of which are in an abundance in the stores, so it's good beer drinking season (not that there isn't always one.)
More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Oso Brown Ale Review

2009-11-29T13:27:00.004-06:00

This weekend I finished off the keg of Oso Brown Ale. This was the second time I've made this beer, but this time around I made some changes to it in the hopes of making it more interesting. The first time around, reviewed here, I was happy with the overall turnout, a nice drinking mild brown ale. However, while highly drinkable, it was a little too mild for my taste, and lacked something to make it memorable.
The latest version has been much more on track.
I made a few changes to the hop bill, adding 2 oz of organic whole leaf cascade hops, as well as adding 1/2 lb of honey in the secondary. I think the extra sweetness complimented the beer and gave it the extra something I was looking for.
My review:
The Oso pours cola brown with amber highlights and a finger of tan head. Aromas of honey, brown sugar and biscuit. Sweet at first with some nice honey and brown sugar flavors. It's followed by some faint biscuity and bready flavors. Not as much as I would have wanted, but I had kept the Munich malt low in the grain bill, so I will want to up that next time around. There's some slight hoppy bitterness that is quickly replaced by lingering sweetness. A nice mouthfeel, smooth with a some body but also highly drinkable. The honey is just present enough to let you know it's there, but fades nicely into the beer. Glad I held back and only added 1/2 lb. Quite an enjoyable brown ale.

Overall, I was quite happy, with the holidays around I always like having beers around that are easy drinking for everyone to enjoy. This beer really served that purpose as a variety of people enjoyed it. My next brown ale is going to be an India Brown Ale after having Dogfish Head's and also Derek's @ Beer This blog. Derek brewed a killer India Brown Ale that I had the pleasure of tasting. My next brown ale will most definitely be a more hopped up version. Here's the latest Oso recipe:
6 lbs Organic Light LME
1 lb Wheat DME
Steeping Grains: .25 Org Munich
.50 Organic Crystal 60
.60 Organic Chocolate

Hops: .50 oz Organic Pacfic Gem (14% AAU) @ 60
1 oz Organic Cascade Whole Leaf Hops @ 15
1 oz Organic Cascade Whole Leaf Hops @ 1
.5 lbs Honey in secondary
Wyeast 1056 American Ale

I will brew the Oso again for sure. I plan to get to some reviews of some commercial beers in the coming posts. More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Power to the Porter

2009-11-21T17:47:00.006-06:00

For our third collaborative ale, my buddy the Jefe and I wanted to do a porter. We both are huge fans of Summit's Great Northern Porter, and wanted to create our own tasty porter. We played around with names for some time, I always want the name of our collabroative beers to reflect something of our 25 year friendship. I've always thought it would be cool to somehow play off of Public Enemy's logo by putting the Bearded Brewing logo in the crosshairs. When Jefe and I were in junior high and graduated from the likes of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, Public Enemy was one the first groups to really blow our little small town minds and became a monumental group for us. When I started looking through song titles, Power to the People jumped out at me. To be honest, this is one of my favorite labels, probably because I spent countless hours drawing the Public Enemy symbol on various school notebooks, so putting it on my beer feels nostalgic in a way.
But the important thing is the beer. Jefe and I did a comparison tasting of two of the best porters IMO, the aforementioned Great Northern and Founder's Dark, Rich and Sexy Porter. We thought the main difference was the amount of roastiness, with the GNP having more of a roasty quality and the Founder's having more of a chocolatey emphasis. We opted to go for the roasty side of a porter. Here's the recipe:
6lbs Light LME
1 lb Amber DME
1 lb Crystal 80
6 oz. Org Chocolate
6 oz Black Patent
Hops: 1.5 oz Fuggles @ 60
.5 oz Fuggles @ 20
1 oz Kent Goldings @ 10
1 oz Kent Goldings @ 5
1056 American Ale yeast.

We had good luck with our IAPA being what we had in mind, so I'm hoping the PTP hits a similar mark. I plan on posting some more reviews over the Thanksgiving holiday, been behind on my beer review posting. More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Cranberry Wheat Ale

2009-11-10T23:17:00.004-06:00

I haven't done a holiday ale in a couple years, but this year my wife wanted to give out beer for a gift to some friends. I was trying to think of a recipe that would appeal to everyone, and be ready by early December when the Holiday party season begins. Seeing that most "holiday" beers contain a lot of spices that sometimes take time to meld, I thought I needed to go with something accessible, but that is also ready pretty quickly. I decided to brew a wheat ale, and add cranberries. I've brewed a lot with cranberries in the past, and have had a lot of success. I had two pounds of frozen whole cranberries that I needed to use up, because they are about a year old. I decided to add some orange zest, because orange and cranberry always goes well together in food, and I thought it would add a little complexity. My recipe was pretty straightforward and I'm going to add the cranberries to the secondary, which should give the beer a nice coloring and not an overpowering, but present cranberry flavor. In the past I've brewed a Belgian Ale with cranberries, using a Belgian wit yeast, and also brewed with the Weistephen yeast, which is heavier on the clove-like characteristics you find in German Wheat beers. I thought the clove would go nicely with the "Holiday" aspect of the beer, and in the past this yeast has helped bring out some tanginess in the beer and keeping down some fruitiness.
Here's the recipe:
.75 lbs Organic Wheat
.25 lbs White Organic Wheat (ran out of organic wheat).
6 lbs Wheat LME
1 oz Organic American Pallisades @ 60
1 tsp orange zest
Wyeast 3068 Weistephen Yeast

On another note, I transferred the Norseman the other day and was surprised how light in color it was. Despite using .5 lbs of Black Roasted Barley and .75 lbs Chocolate Malt, it is more of a chestnut brown... I used light LME (only organic available) and so that probably contributed. I think I need to throw in some black patent or debittered black next time. It tasted good though, just didn't have the ominous black look I wanted. I'm debating throwing in some coffee since it's changed a bit in what I wanted, so why not experiment at the this point? More to come on that.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Satisfied Customer

2009-11-07T08:47:00.005-06:00

This big chunk of feedback is about the Steelhead Slammer and is from the man for whom the beer was made. Jesse has put together a collection of feedback from friends he gave the Slammer to, as well as his own critique of the beer. It's so entertainingly written (and too big to fit in the comments section of the post), that it deserves a post all its own. So a big thanks to Jesse for collecting and typing up impressions, and of course what a better compliment than to have such satisfaction from the person who commissioned the beer. - Bearded Brewer

Hey Ol’ Bearded One,

It is your slacker friend who requested a special commission that would further invigorate the gusto of a fall fishing trip on the rivers flowing into effervescent Lake Superior. I desired a pungent heart of an India Pale Ale with a kick. There is just something just so right with a full bodied, envelop the mouth with popping hops-filled beer that settles splendidly on a cool crisp day after fishing. Not that one should necessarily abstain from drinking one before or during fishing. You created a spectacular brew my friend that left all who tasted wanting more. So, I absolutely loved it. Here are some general reviews, comments, and random notes.

The Bearded Brewer makes plenty of good beer that has left me wanting more, especially of my favorite flavors. So to convince him to put a spin together just for yours truly was special. Hats off to the nice label as it further adds to the character of this beer, much like all of your beers. Further, the label and name always have another story – I think this makes beer taste more real. No different then food in my opinion. You could eat this mouthwatering fresh Coho that your buddy caught two days ago at “the big bend” or you could eat some potatoes that were grown by a green giant on some massively pesticidal, steroid infested commercial farm. Kudos.

I had the opportunity to listen in more than usual and even help bottle while Mr. Bearded tried to enlighten me to the finer points of brewing. I liked the tasting part the best. I couldn’t believe how excited I was for the flavor of the uncarbonated beer. I was full of anticipation for the final deal.

My mom in law was one of the first tasters. She likes good beer, and I never back down from trying to earn some points occasionally. She begged for more.

One fellow fisher tripping lady said “Heady, Hoppy, HOOOWHEEE,” when asked for a review. Nearly everyone who had the Slammer on the fishing trip was extremely impressed. Now I don’t think anyone truly appreciated your beer necessarily as much as I did on the trip, although my wife was impressed. We had wine connoisseurs and cocktail drinkers for the most part. As far as I remember, nobody dissed the beer although I was slightly surprised that there were a couple to bring home. Their loss, my gain.

I had a really great review from my neighbor. Noticed I said I had… great apologies to you and a fellow brewer who gave you more than a decent review. He had some technically sound compliments regarding gravity with such hoppy beers. There was much more to it, in probably less words than I provide now, but I can’t remember the particular “brewer” vocabulary he used. I somehow erased the desirable comments, or so they seemed, on my crackberry.

Another friend of mine, who works in the beer, amongst other adult beverage, industry, provided this detailed report. Besides being a beer aficionado, Mr. Taylor is a talented fisherman giving his review that much more credibility.

Steelhead Slammer....

Color - slightly cloudy amber with hints of orange/yellow/brown on the edges of a good white/white/brown head.
Nose - fresh with hints of citrus/lemon/orange/zest with spice and sweet water.
Body - Sweet on the tip, turning light on the middle pallet, finally turning medium on the back.
Finish - hoppy yet good acidity that leaves the tongue cleanly.

Over all impressions - I liked it...Slammer lacks the alcohol content (which I noticed right away in the nose and finish) of many intense IPAs but more than makes up for it in finesse and mouth feel. The brighter citrus notes separate it from the likes of Bells which tends to have more malt/hop/bitterness to it. The surprise is in the lack to lingering hops on the finish. This is not bad in my opinion. Yes it coats the tongue but its coating is less viscous than most hopped up brews probably do to the toned down backbone of maltiness - two thumbs up.

Thanks for the bottle! I really enjoyed it – Todd

And here is my official review for the Slammer… or general notes that I took one night.

Big head, maybe a little too much for me, a hint champagney in terms of carb. Quickly levels down though and I ended up appreciating that aspect for its originality amongst Double IPAs. Not quite double enough IMO, not that this is necessarily a bad thing, regardless, still strong and full of plenty of ABV overall. Would’ve liked a final reading of 9-10.5. Very smooth for an IPA but still has quality depth and plenty of body. Rich flavor of India (not that I know what this means in a beer type)… hits it perfect with a nice blend of citrus/fruity goodness with enough bittery hoppiness (being a huge hophead, I would take more of all of this flavor, hops, bitterness.) to know what your drinking is what you desire. With the head, lesser ABV, and overall smoothness you would think this beer wouldn’t really be a true Imperial IPA. Yet, wikipedia quotes “Imperial is a term that is used to describe something that relates to an empire, emperor, or the concept of imperialism.” Further, I really like the synonyms “domineering, kingly, lordly, magisterial, majestic, royal, sovereign, stately” This beer truly fits the definition to a T. Despite not being what one would expect, anyone who drinks the Slammer could close their eyes and believe they are tasting a private reserve label made for royalty. An IPA is my beer of choice. After drinking many more than I can remember over the last few years, this would be a six pack that I expect would sing a favorite Replacement’s song everytime I walked through the door, “Here comes a regular.” When can I get some more?

Thanks buddy.

The Norseman

2009-10-31T17:07:00.012-05:00

I felt that on a chilly, Halloween night, it was only appropriate to brew a dark, roasty stout. I have been planning on brewing an oatmeal stout for some time. I've only brewed three stouts in my 6 years of brewing. The Irie Stout, a cherry stout, and La Vaca Milk Stout. In each of these stouts, there's something that I added...but as far as a nicely balanced, roasty, silky oatmeal stout, I have yet to brew one. This past year I've tried to move away from "experimental" beers in some ways, and tried to really hone my skills on some more "basic" beers. Hence the pale ales and IPAs, brown ale, and now an oatmeal stout. I love brewing outside the box, but at the same time, I want to really get better at the subtle nuances that separates a good beer from a memorable one.
There are a ton of recipes out there for oatmeal stouts, so coming up with the parameters and personal tweaks of the recipe wasn't that hard. The hardest part for me, ironically, was coming with a name and concept. Which is usually the first thing I come up with. I wanted to go with something dark and "metal" but kept floundering. I liked the idea of a hearty dark beer for the coming winter and a hearty name to go with it. Jefe suggested "Viking Beard" and feeling like the Viking vibe fit and of course they were a bearded lot, so I settled on the Norseman.
Here's the recipe:
6 lbs Organic Light LME
Partial Mash:
1 lb Organic 2 Row
.75 Organic Chocolate Malt
.75 Organic Crystal 120
.50 Organic Roasted Barley
1 lb Flaked Oatmeal
.70 oz Organic Pacific Gem Hops
1084 Irish Ale Yeast

In Jamil Zainasheff's book, 80 Classic Recipes he suggests mashing at a higher temperature to achieve some nice mouthfeel and creamy texture. I mashed at 160 for 45 minutes, so hopefully that was high enough for the desired effect. I have high hopes for the Norseman, because as the cold weather comes, I start craving dark, hearty beers.
More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Fitgers and New Glarus Binge

2009-10-21T20:56:00.012-05:00

Last week I had the rare opportunity of two days without daddy duty, and a beer filled trip with a couple close friends. The original plan was to go to the New Glarus brewery outside of Madison, Wisconsin, but the trip plans became too expensive. Plan two became a trip to arguably the best brewpub in Minnesota, Fitger's in Duluth. My parents' cabin is two hours southeast in Hayward, Wisconsin, so we had a free place to stay. I'd been to Fitger's before, but it was the first visit for El Jefe and our friend Bob. Fitger's is impressive, inside an old building that was the site of the original brewery founded in 1881. All three of us got a flight of 7 beers, along with a few samplers of the other specialties on tap. I regrettably forgot my geeky beer notebook, so I'll give a very brief description/impression of the beers we enjoyed:
Light House Golden Lager- The least favorite amongst all of us, a pretty straight forward lager. Nothing wrong with the beer, none of us are particularly big lager fans.
Breakwater Red- A raspberry wheat beer. Smelled great, tasted very good, but very fruity. Not a beer I could drink a lot of, but would be good on a hot day.
El Nino Double Hopped IPA- One of my favorites of the day. An outstandingly hoppy, aromatic IPA. Piney, citrusy, caramely...just great.
Starfire Pale Ale- I can push this pale ale amongst the top pale ales I've had. Great floral hop aroma, quite hoppy and a great balance between caramely sweetness and slight bitterness.
Big Boat Oatmeal Stout- An outstanding oatmeal stout. Creamy and chocolaty with a great roastiness and nice bitter balance. Perfect mouthfeel and just a great balance of flavors. I could drink a lot of this stout.
Amsterdam Ale- This was a Belgian ale, spicy and malty. It was good, but not amongst our favorites of the day.
Witch Tree ESB- This was a great ESB. It was biscuity with some nice floral aromas. A nice, drinkable ESB, a perfect session ale.
Wildfire Lager- An amber lager brewed with chilli's. This was probably one of the worst beers I've ever had. Not because of execution, but because this beer was just way way too peppery for my taste. We all had a hard time choking down the three ounce sampler we split. Pure pepper all the way down to the esophagus.
Daisy Ale II- This was a very hoppy amber ale, and was outstanding. Great citrus and floral aromas, wonderful maltiness. Another excellent hoppy ale from Fitger's.
The Bearded Brewer, Bob and The Jefe enjoying some flights.

A great drinking experience, and worth the trip if anyone can get up to Duluth. I think it's a toss up between Fitger's and Minneapolis' Town Hall Brewery for the best variety and quality of brewed beer in Minnesota.

After Duluth, we headed south stopping in Hayward's Marketplace grocery store to stock up on New Glarus for the night. We were there a night before a bear wandered through the front door of the store and into the beer cooler. Seriously. We missed the bear, but we did pick up a sampler pack of New Glarus, along with some Hearty Hop IPA and Spotted Cow. While Jefe cooked up some great Iowa pork chops, we delved into the sampler pack, which included their Fat Squirrel Brown Ale, Cracked Wheat, Stone Soup, and Coffee Stout. I've written a lot about New Glarus in the past, but the reoccurring comment of the night was "this one is great too." I was especially impressed with the Coffee Stout. I feel that Surly's Coffee Bender is the best coffee beer I've had, but New Glarus' is a very close second. We went through quite a few New Glarus through the night, and as usual it delivered.
We agreed that if we were to list the top beers of the trip, in no particular order it was New Glarus' Cracked Wheat, Coffee Stout, Hearty Hop, Fitger's Starfire Pale Ale, and Big Boat Oatmeal Stout. A great trip, nothing like excellent beer, good food, and good friends.
(And I think have broken my personal record for using the adjective "great" in a posting.)
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- Steelhead Slammer

2009-10-11T23:43:00.009-05:00

The Steelhead Slammer came about as the second time I've been "commissioned" to brew a beer. My friend Jesse has always been a strong supporter and brutally honest critic of my beers, really the best combination. In June he called me about wanting me to brew up a big IPA for a fishing trip he was taking at the end of September. Jesse's obsession is fly fishing, and he wanted there to be a fishing theme and most importantly a hoppy, hearty IPA to share with his friends on the trip. Jesse is a salesman of sorts, so I knew I had to deliver on a good beer since most likely Jesse would be talking up my beer before the trip. I've never brewed a big IPA before, but we talked about the kinds of beers he likes I set the parameters to be between two of his favorites, Bell's Two Hearted and Avery's Maharaja. Quite different beers, but in my opinion both beers are hoppy and citrusy, but bright. Feeling that I've never really gotten down brewing hoppy beers, I brewed three beers this summer in preparation, the Iowa Pale Ale I did with the Jefe was a good base of a clean but nice hoppy beer, and followed that up with the Bearded Fury, which was well recieved and I felt it was my strongest hoppy beer yet. I brewed an organic IPA, the Green Beard which unfortunately got an infection. With those beers, I was feeling like I could brew up the Steelhead to what I had imagined in my head. I wanted to have a nice caramely/malty base, but wanted to overload the final 15 minutes with Centennial and Cascade hops, and then dry hop with 2 oz of Cascade to give it a very citrusy presence. I didn't make a yeast starter, which might have affected the outcome, as the beer only got up to about 7% when I was aiming for for 9ish range. However, at 74 IBUs, it was officially the hoppiest beer brewed at the Bearded Brewery. So not technically an "Imperial", I think Big Ass IPA is probably more appropriate "category" of the beer. Regardless of the category Steelhead fits into, I'm extremely happy with this beer and more importantly Jesse loved it. He helped me bottle, and there probably isn't a better feeling than having him try a sample off the bottle bucket and being very pleasantly surprised. The feedback I've gotten from other friends has been really positive too, so I know I have a base recipe to build future big IPAs off of. Onto the review:
Steelhead Slammer pours a cloudy orange with a thin white head. Nice citrusy aromas of orange, lemon, and slight alcohol. Quite a bit of hoppy sweetness right away, citrusy but not puckering, more of an orangish-lemony citrus flavor. There's hints of tangerine in there as well, some faint fruitiness. Very little maltiness, some caramel notes, but this beer is more about the sweet hops. There is a nice bitterness in the finish, enough to give it a bite and balance. I'm happy about this since it's the most bitterness I've had in an IPA yet. I think the mouthfeel is very nice too, highly drinkable with a brightness to it, the hoppiness doesn't feel chewy to me, but more of a crisp, bright feel.

I was excited for the challenge of brewing a really hoppy beer. I was late to the scene of hoppy beers as a brewer. Hops were a taste I had to acquire over time, and it wasn't until the last couple years that I've enjoyed hoppy beers. Creating a recipe for a friend is always something I enjoy and I welcomed the challenge of brewing Jesse a big hoppy beer. Since it's technically his recipe, I'm not going to post it. But I will give the hops in it, because I found comparing hoppy recipes very helpful when formulating my own recipe.
I used: 1 oz Chinhook, .35 Summit @ 60, .65 oz Summit @ 15, 1 Oz Centennial @ 15, 1 oz Centennial @ 5, 2 oz Cascade @ Flamout, dry hopped 2 oz Whole Leaf Cascade.

More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- Alaskan and Bear Republic

2009-10-05T19:09:00.007-05:00

I've been slowly working through the commercial beers I got from my cousin's husband Mike from Denver. I had drank other beers from both Alaskan and Bear Republic breweries, so I was excited to have some more.

2008 Alaskan Smoked Porter: I've always heard about this beer as a gold standard of smoked porters. When I was out in Denver at the Falling Rock Tap House, I actually had this on tap. But it was the final beer I drank following an evening drinking a lot of Belgians and big IPAs. I quickly realized that my palate and level of sobriety were not to the point of being able to truly appreciate this beer. I asked Mike to bring me a bottle of Alaskan Amber and this so I could really appreciate it.
This beer pours as expected, jet black with a finger of khaki head.
Aromas at first of chocolate, sweet malt and a decent level of smokiness. Upfront there's a sweet chocolate flavor, soft mouthfeel with almost a milk chocolate like texture. Quickly the sweetness is replaced by a strong smokiness. The smoke lingers, along with some roastiness and slight sweetness in the finish. It's enjoyable and gets better as it warms. Definitely well crafted, but the smokiness does become a bit overwhelming, something I could only enjoy in small doses.

Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA:
I've had mixed results with Bear Republic, I love their Hop Rod Rye but really didn't like their Pale Ale. Racer 5 however is a winner. It pours a cloudy pale orange with a finger of white head. Great citrusy aromas of grapefruit, orange and some lemon. Right off the bat you get a blast of nice citrusy hops, very sweet and slightly puckering. A smooth malty sweetness follows with some great caramel notes. Hops are prevalent but are on the bright side. There's some nice bitterness that gives a good base, but this IPA is heavy on the citrusy hops, with a nice clean finish. This is a classic West Coast IPA.

More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

El Oso Brown Ale Round 2

2009-09-26T18:13:00.004-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from a friend forwarding me an ad on craigslist for local organic hops. It turned out to be a local farmer who started growing organic hops because his sons are homebrewers. He planted Cascade hops and his first year yielded 10 pounds. I emailed right away and was lucky to snag the last pound (the other 9 lbs were snatched up by Superior Brewing Company). I'll be interviewing George for the blog, he and his wife are just starting out and excited about how fun it was to grow hops. I'm curious about the process and what they did to grow the hops organically. Next year they are looking to get certified organic and possibly a pelletizer. Seeing that I've only been able to get organic hops from California, a local option is aweome! More to come on Hippity Hops Farms in the future.
Anyway, with these new hops I wanted to brew a beer for the fall, and was trying to decide between an amber ale and an American brown ale. Now that might wife is drinking again, she voted for the brown ale. Seeing that I've been brewing IPAs, Double IPAs, and a bunch of beers the past year that I knew she wouldn't drink, I thought she should get the final vote. When I brewed the Oso last year, I was happy with the end result, but felt like it was missing something. It was almost closer to a mild than a brown ale and I felt that it could have used more hops, more chocolate malt, and maybe even some honey. Something to take it from a decent session ale, to a heartier, more memorable brown ale. I'm hoping that two ounces of Cascade will help with this, and I have yet to decide if I'm going to put some honey in the secondary.
I changed the recipe from the original partial mash to an extract. My ability to find time to brew has been cut significantly with an infant added to the household, so my brewing schedule at the moment consists of starting the process with my infant son while my wife puts my 2 year old down. This starts around 8:30 or so, and I don't finish until around midnight as it is. An extra hour or two for the mashing, heating the sparge water, etc. is something I can't afford at the moment. So, I'm back to brewing extract and readjusting my recipes. I'm excited to see how this turn out.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Russian River Blind Pig Review

2009-09-19T08:36:00.004-05:00

Over labor day at a family reunion, my cousin's husband and I traded some beers, both homebrew and local commerical beers. Mike lives in Denver and among the beers he brought me was Russian River's Blind Pig. When I was in Denver in March, I tried both Pliny the Younger and Pliny the Elder from Russian River and both were excellent, so I was excited to see this among the beers he brought.
I was thinking lately about the hype surrounding beer. I think the grass is only greener mentality applies to beer a lot. I think its only natural to believe that the rare beer for me is better than the beer that I can get on tap all the time. However, I think that sometimes beers that I take for granted or sometimes don't even like are beers heavily coveted by beer fans in other parts of the country.
That being said, Blind Pig is not a beer that falls into that category. Whatever hype surrounding this beer, or brewery for that matter, is well deserved.
Blind Pig pours a cloudy gold with a foamy white head. Wonderful grapefruity aromas along with some pineness. Citrusy flavors right away, mostly grapefruit with some puckering bite. Very litter bitterneness with some great sweetness, seemingly from the hops more than the malt. Perfect mouthfeel. It's creamy and soft up front wiht some great bite in the finish that gives it just enough crispness to leave you wanting another sip. Wonderfully complex, this beer is piney and grapefruity and just extremely well balanced. An excellent IPA.

Slowly, I'm working through the reviews I want to get to...coming up is either one of my own beers, or another of the great beers Mike either made or brought me.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Luther Public House Review- Triple

2009-09-12T19:59:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago I posted about a couple of beers I exchanged with Derek from the Beer This!Blog. The name of his homebrewery is the Luther Public House, and his beers follow the theme of Martin Luther. In addition to the mild and the porter he gave me, he also included a triple, named Kate and Care Triple for Luther's wife Katherine and his wife Carolyn. He felt that this beer was the best of the three he gave me, and I was excited since I'm a big fan of Belgian triples.
It's been a busy couple of weeks with a long road trip to a family reunion during Labor Day weekend, and the start of a new school year. I've felt bad that I have not been able to open up the triple, but at 10% alc and a full 22 oz bottle, it wasn't something I could just pop open whenever. So this past Saturday I was very happy to finally find the time to sit down and enjoy this triple while I watched my beloved Iowa Hawks destroy the Iowa State Cyclones.
Onto the beer: The Kate and Care pours a cloudy gold with a foamy two finger white head. Great aromas of tangerine, orange and some slight spiceness. It smells like a great Belgian right away. The key in my mind to a great triple is the mouthfeel, and this one doesn't dissapoint. It has the perfect combination of creaminess and a crispness that I associate with the triple. There's very little alchohol heat present up front, instead a nice sweetness with some citrusy flavors and a spiceness that seems kind of like corriander to me. Throughout the beer there's a nice sticky fruitiness, but highly drinkable and almost refreshing.
In the finish there's some lingering sweetness along with some alcohol heat that isn't overpowering. Derek had told me that there seemed to be a lot of alcohol when the beer was young, but that has gone away with time, as it was barely noticeable and defintley didn't take away from the beer. Of the beers he gave me, this was clearly the best, and I'd put it up there with about any commercial triple. Nice work Derek!

I plan to eventually get to some reviews. I exchanged some beers with my cousin's husband, including a saison we brewed together. He makes great beer and I look forward to diving into the homebrews he gave me. He also hooked me up with some beers he picked up for me in Colorado, including the coveted Blind Pig from Russian River, Alaskan Smoked Porter and a Great Divide Saison. I'd also like to get to a review of my milk stout, La Vaca and Steelhead Slammer Imperial IPA. I will do my best to review all those beers soon.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Orange Beard Mango IPA

2009-08-28T11:12:00.002-05:00

Last November I went to Town Hall Brewery to celebrate my birthday and had a beer that has stuck with me ever since. I've drank a lot of beer since last November, but Town Hall's Mango Masala Mama was such a great beer that I've wanted to make one of my own. The thing that was outstanding about the Mango Mama was how unique it was and how different it was than I had expected.
When you think mangoes, you think of an extremely sweet fruit that would be best suited in a wheat beer, similar to an apricot or rasberry wheat. However, for some reason put together with the hoppiness of an IPA, the sweetness mixes great with the citrusy hops.
I brewed up a version of Green Beard IPA and decided to split the batch into a 2 gallon and 3 gallon fermenters, opting to use the 2 gallon fermenter for the mango experiment. I bought three mangoes and blended them up, then putting the result into an ice cube tray. The disappointing thing was how little this made, about 12 cubes. The end product turned out better than I expected. It has been a big hit with my wife and dad, neither one IPA fans, as well my friend Jesse, a big IPA fan. It turned out fairly similar to what I remember of the Mango Mama. The only problem going forward is how to replicate it in a five gallon batch. Simply because mangoes are not cheap in Minnesota, around $2 each, so a five gallon batch could require a lot. The only other problem is I only yielded about 12 bottles.
Onto the review:
Orange Beard pours a cloudy dark orange with a thin, foamy white head. There's bits of mango floating around in the beer. Right away there's a fruity/mangoey aroma, followed by some citrus. At first, it's quite sweet with a fruitiness that's slightly mango, but not overpowering. It follows with a dry bite that gives a nice balance to the sweetness. The bitterness isn't noticeable, but I think it comes out in this dry finish. There's a lingering sweetness that comes back in the finish, citrusy with some nice mango going on as well. I think it has a nice balance of sweetness and hoppiness, the mango doesn't dominate, but cuts some of the citrus and blends in great with the sweetness of the hops.

Overall, I'm happy with the turn out of the Orange Beard, and once I figure out how to get the amount of mango I want in an inexpensive way, I plan on brewing a 5 gallon batch.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Luther Public House Review

2009-08-25T12:15:00.002-05:00

Earlier this year I started having some email contact with another Minneapolis area homebrewer. Derek blogs at
Beer This! blog, and also has a website displaying his beers at Luther Public House. As someone who likes to have a theme to his beers, I enjoy how the names of his beers follow along with his Martin Luther theme.
Derek contacted me in the spring about trying some of my Gringo. Unfortunately things were crazy in the spring with the end of school and the birth of my son. Derek was very patient and I set aside a Gringo for him. We finally met up a couple weeks ago over some beers at Busters in South Minneapolis. I had a great time talking beer and walked away with three beers from the Luther Public House. His PhilliPorter, a mild, and a triple. I've yet to get to the triple, but throughly enjoyed the other two.

PhilliPorter: Derek told me that he didn't have any bottles left of his Indulgence Chocolate Porter, he hooked me up with an older bottle of his PhilliPorter, which is a similar recipe. He warned me that it would be oxidized, but the oxidation wasn't that noticeable and definitely didn't detract from the outstanding porter. As you can see from the picture, it pours a jet black with a two finger khaki head that dissipates to about a finger of foamy head. Nice porter aromas, chocolate and roasted malt. A very slight wet cardboard or "dusty" taste at first, but it goes away very quickly and doesn't take away from the wonderful porter underneath. Wonderful chocolate flavors, along with some nice caramel and roasty notes. The mouthfeel is perfect for a porter, creamy and silky with body but not too much. There's a great lingering sweetness in the finish. Despite being old and slightly oxidized, this beer was great. I can only imagine that fresh it's an outstanding porter.

Mild: I have to admit that I've never really had a mild. I read an article on the style in Brew Your Own magazine and have been interested in brewing one. After having Derek's, I need to brew one up. This beer pours a dark chocolate brown with ruby red highlights and a thin white head. Wonderful toasty, bready, and biscuity aromas. Very enticing! Toasty, malty and slightly sweet, it has a nice balance of flavors going on. The beer starts off biscuity and follows with some nice brown sugar flavors as well. There's no hop presence, a very nice amount of caramel and is well balanced and all about the malty sweetness. A very great session beer and one that I might need the recipe for.

I'm really looking forward to the triple, as it's one of my favorite styles of beer. These two samples of Derek's work were great and I can only imagine the triple will be more of the same.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Draft Day Success

2009-08-23T13:05:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was my fantasy football draft. For the second year in a row I brewed a beer for the occasion, and another member of the league designed the label. I was happy the beer went over as well as it did. I brought 5 gallons to this year's draft, which was a perfect amount as it (combined with a pony keg of Summit Pale Ale) lasted through the pre-draft, draft, and post-draft festivities. It was a perfect day here in Minneapolis, about 85 and sunny, so my hefeweizen was the right choice. People really liked it, and at around 4.5% abv, it was light and refreshing, so a lot could be consumed. The feedback I got was there was a lot of banana, some orange, and clovey flavors going on. I used the Wyeast 3056 Bavarian Wheat blend. I had used the Weihenstephen before in my hefes and been really pleased, but they were out when I went to pick up the ingredients. I think this blend worked nicely, and gave it some nice complexity without being overpowering.
And as always, the portable kegerator delivered. If interested in making one, check out the link to my previous post. This thing works great for 2.5 gallon kegs with the lid down, or 5 gallons with the lid up. I use a charger with 16 gram co2 cartridges to dispense the beer. It works great for putting my beer on tap in my backyard, or for situations like the draft. Overall, I was quite happy with beer, the reception to it, and the draft... I'll spare my draft results as I like to keep this blog dedicated to one geeky obsession only.
Coming up, I'm going to be reviewing some beers I got in an exchange from fellow Twin Cities beer blogger, Derek @ Beer This blog. I'm really looking forward to his beers. Stay tuned.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Fantasy Draft Day Ale

2009-08-15T16:15:00.005-05:00

Mid August means two things, the last few glorious weeks of summer and the build up to football season. This year is the 10th anniversary of the fantasy league I'm in. Despite homebrewing for 6 of those 10 seasons, last year was the first year that I made a beer for draft day. I'm glad that I did, as the beer was a big hit and the only unfortunate part was that the 2.5 gallon keg I took was consumed in about 3 rounds. For last year, I sent around an email asking for ideas on what to brew, I settled on a California Common, since there were plenty of lager and ale fans. The beer was good, but this year I wanted to go for something more appropriate for the occasion. Last year it was very hot, and the beer went fast. I thought the perfect beer for a mass audience, with diverse beer tastes, on a 90+ degree day where everyone is just concerned with drinking a lot, would be a low abv hefeweizen. I went with a pretty straightforward recipe, and partly because of a mistake on my part. I miscalculated the time I had until draft day and so I threw together a recipe that I knew would deliver and be ready in 3 weeks (1 primary, 1 secondary, 1 kegged). I went with this:
6 lbs Wheat LME
1 oz Hallertau @ 60
Wyeast Bavarian Hefe yeast.

About as simple as you can get. But after a secondary conditioning, it tasted great, some nice spicey-clovey-bubble gum flavors coming out from the yeast, and nice crispness to the beer. I think it should be perfect for the draft. I'm also bringing a 5 gallon keg this time!
One note on the label, it was designed by a member of the league who is a graphic artist by trade. Last year I approached him with the idea of designing the draft day ale label, and this year he did it again. I think it's pretty cool and glad he threw in the Bearded Brewing logo as well.
I'll post the reaction after next weekends draft.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Steelhead Slammer Double IPA

2009-08-04T11:51:00.002-05:00

My friend Jesse has been a long time fan of my beers. It's always nice to have friends who are both supportive and also very honest critics of your creations. Earlier this summer Jesse asked me to brew a beer for him, specifically a double IPA. Jesse is a fan of all things hoppy, and in particular enjoys double or imperial IPAs. Similar to my obsession with brewing, Jesse's main hobby is fishing. He's a big fly fisherman, and wanted the IIPA to take on a fishing trip to the shores of Lake Superior fishing for Steelhead salmon. He gave me plenty of time, calling me in June and wanting the beer by the end of September/early October. In preparation, I brewed several hoppy beers this summer and consulted a number of sources to figure out a way to brew a hoppy monster. After several conversations we settled on the name,he approved the label, and I finally settled on a recipe.
This summer I've been brewing extract beers to compensate for the lack of time I have with a 2 month old and a 2 year old. I've actually been having a lot of fun brewing extract beers, and have a routine down that allows me to fit in brewing at night. I've brewed much more often then I had thought I would. I plan on slowing the brewing down once school starts, and limiting my brewing to once a month. As a result, I think I will be going back to brewing partial mash recipes, which I do enjoy more. Steelhead Slammer is an extract recipe, using 9 lbs malt extract and some cane sugar.
This is the hoppiest beer brewed in the Bearded Brewery. It should be around 70 Ibu's. I used 1 ounce of Chinhook hops and .35 ounces of American Summit (13% AA) for bittering, and then I used 2 ounces of Centennial, an ounce of Cascade and .65 ounces of American Summit in the final 15 minutes. It smelled fantastic and it was already active this morning, so I'm hoping it will finish quickly and cleanly. I am going to use 2 ounces of cascade whole hops for dry hopping. Pretty excited to see how it turns out, and talking to Jesse he's pumped to drink the end result as well.

On another note, my Orange Beard Mango IPA is tasting great after a week in the bottle, so I have high hopes for this, and it will most likely turn into a 5 gallon batch in the near future.
I will also post soon about my annual fantasy draft beer, this year's version is a hefeweizen.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Busy Brewing Month

2009-07-30T18:42:00.007-05:00

It's been a pretty busy month in the Bearded Brewery. I brewed the second version of my Green Beard IPA, simply an IPA using all organic ingredients (I usually don't use all organic hops). I had bought a large order of hops from Seven Bridges in California, and included was a high alpha organic hop, American Summit. In the Green Beard, I used the hop for bittering and all other additions, using 3 ounces in total. I chose not to dry hop, but instead split the batch (as mentioned in the previous post). I bottled both the Green Beard and Orange Beard (2 gallons of the GB on fermented on top of mangoes.) I'm pretty excited for both, the Orange Beard tasted amazing at bottling and I'm excited for this one, but might have to come up with a filtering technique to get less mango pulp in the bottles.
The Green Beard smells great, very citrusy and at bottling was also looking like its going to turn out to be a nice citrusy, hoppy IPA.
In addition to brewing the IPAs, I brewed a hefeweizen for my annual fantasy draft. More to come on that as well.
I've been really happy with the turn out of my hoppy beers lately. It was something I was trying toget better at, and between the IAPA Pale Ale, Bearded Fury IPA, and the Green Beard, I'm feeling pretty good about my hoppy beer brewing. So onto another area I want to perfect, dark beers. Winter is thankfully months away, but I'm getting excited to start brewing some darker beers. I'm planning on a porter, an Oatmeal stout, and a Negro-Modelo-ish dark lager (winter version of the Gringo). But I wanted to start my dark beer brewing with one of my favorite styles, a milk stout. I'm a big, big fan of Left Hand Brewing Company's Milk Stout and wanted to try one. Last year I added lactose to my Cherry Stout, but wanted to brew a straight milk stout, so I brewed La Vaca, which will be ready in time for the start of fall. I had wanted to try putting cranberries into the secondary, but have opted to split the batch and put cranberries on 2 gallons, and save 3 for the straight milk stout. Should be good. I'm excited to see the turn out, I'm planning on transferring it in the next day or two, so I'm anxious to see how it's tasting.
More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Little Experimental Fermenter

2009-07-22T22:20:00.002-05:00

I love to experiment in my brewing. When I first started writing my own recipes, I would brew more unique beers. While I'm happy to say that a lot of my experiments went well, some didn't. When I had more time and money wasn't as tight, I loved to experiment. But given the current beer costs and my obligations outside of brewing, I'm less willing to take risks because I'm fearful that I might end up with a bad beer that used up a lot of my time and money.
But the creative side of me can't be content to just brew the standards, so I've come up with a minor solution. I bought a 2 gallon fermenting bucket at Midwest brewing for $5. I already had a 3 gallon carboy, so it works out perfectly. I recently brewed a new version of Green Beard IPA, but I had also wanted to experiment with a Mango IPA. So I split the batch, 3 gallons of the Green Beard, and in the 'lil' fermenter, roughly 2 gallons of IPA sitting on top of some mangoes. I blended 3 mangoes and froze them as ice cubes (which makes surprisingly little).
Next up, I'm brewing La Vaca Milk Stout, I had wanted to experiment with using cranberries in the secondary for a milk stout, so I'm going to do the same procedure, transfering about 1.5-1.75 gallons into the bucket on top of some cranberries, while kegging and bottling the remainder of the batch.
I think this will be a good way to test out some experimental batches that could become 5 gallon batches in the future. At the same time, if I'm spending the time and money, I'll still be getting around 3 gallons of a good, drinkable beer. Should be fun!
More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

More New Glarus Gushing

2009-07-20T11:24:00.003-05:00

Readers of this blog know that it is no secret how much I love a Wisconsin brewery by the name of New Glarus. On a recent visit to Wisconsin, I picked up a number of New Glarus beers, including two more wheat ales. A couple of posts ago, I wrote about New Glarus Black Wheat. The Black Wheat was an interesting twist on a wheat beer, and the following two beers are also intesting wheats.
The Crack'd Wheat is quite a unique wheat. New Glarus describes this beer as "marriage of a sophisticated Bavarian Hefeweiss and an assertive American Pale Ale." This beer pours a straw yellow with a lacy white head. Right away interesting aroma of grassy/herbal hops, sweet candy, clove and cinnamon. Interesting flavors follow, citrusy and candy sweet, with hints of clove and a hoppy bite in the finish. The mouthfeel is great, creamy and slightly crisp. A very interesting take on a wheat, the Amarillo dry hopping gives it a uniqueness.
The Dancing Man Wheat is a much more traditional take on a Bavarian weiss beer. It pours a fairly clear gold with a two finger foamy white head. Spicy aromas of clove and cinnamon, along with some nice fruity aromas. Very sweet, with a smooth mouthfeel. Great sticky fruit flavors, along with some nice spicy notes. It finishes crisp and refreshing with lingering apricoty and fruity flavors. A nice drinking wheat ale.
New Glarus always does a great job with whatever style they brew. These two examples show the diversity and craft of their brewing, a unique twist and a traditional wheat. Very different from each other, but both excellent!
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Homebrew Review- Untamed Beer

2009-07-14T21:44:00.005-05:00

Recently I exchanged some homebrew with a South Carolina homebrewer/blogger, Brian @ Untamed Beer. I've been a fan of his blog for some time, I enjoy reading his reviews, his videos, and his ever changing beard (the picture to the left a fine example). Brian and I contacted each other about doing a possible exchange awhile back and I'm glad that we were able to finally get some beers to each other. Brian recently posted his reviews of the Bearded Brews I sent him, and I was happy that he enjoyed them and appreciated his feedback.
Brain sent me three of his beers and all three were very good and very unique. I wish I had more of his excellent beer since these three selections all left me wanting to try some other Untamed offerings.
The first of his beers I opened was his Oatmeal Nut Brown Ale. Brian said that he was inspired by oatmeal cookies. He added toasted pecans to the mash and some vanilla in the finish. My thoughts:
It pours a nice cloudy light brown with some ruby red highlights and a thin white head. Wonderful aromas right away of brown sugar, molasses, vanilla, and pecans. The aroma is very enticing. What follows is a lot of sweetness, great brown sugar flavor going on, along with some nice nuttiness. The toasted pecans come out more in the aroma than in the flavor, but they really add to the experience, I think he could even add some more. A nice smooth, creamy mouthfeel. This beer was outstanding, quite sweet, almost like a desert brown ale? The beer tastes like a cookie, but the flavor combination of toasted oats, brown sugar, pecans and maltiness is really nice. I easily could have had another right away, its not overwhelmingly sweet, but is creative, well balanced and quite tasty!

Oak IPA- The second of the Untamed Beers I opened was his Oak IPA. Brian said he added steamed oak chips to the secondary for three days. This IPA pours a beautiful cloudy amber with a thick three finger off white head. Citrusy hop aromas along with some woody and caramel undertones. Right away there is some nice grapefruity, hoppy sweetness that gives way to a malty, caramelly body. The oak comes out nicely in the finish, it is definitely present in the end and adds some softness to the hops and a lingering woody flavor. There is an almost peppery bite of bitterness in the end as well. I have to admit that I have strived to achieve this wonderful balance of bitterness and citrusy sweetness in my own IPAs, without this much success. This is one of the better homebrewed IPAs I've had, the bitterness gives it a great backbone and along with the oak it has a great balance.

Saison- The third and final Untamed Brew I had was his saison. This saison pours a cloudy pale gold with a two finger foamy head. Nice complex aromas of citrus, malt, spices, and a slight funky yeastiness. Smooth and sweet at first with some nice peppery bite right away. Very easy drinking, smooth and sweet with not as much funkiness as some saisons. This is not to say it's simplistic, its quite refreshing and the peppery aftertaste makes it interesting. I think this beer is great on a hot day, and fits the bill as a hoppy, fruity farmhouse ale. Another solid Untamed Beer.

I really enjoyed the exchange and look forward to another one in the future. A great bit of creativity goes into his beers and they are all excellently crafted.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Back in the Saddle

2009-07-06T22:30:00.004-05:00

Its been a busy and crazy month, with the birth of my son and a trip to Pittsburgh for a family emergency. Thankfully things look like they are going to turn out well with my wife's family situation, but I do not recommend flying last minute with a 3 week old and a 2 year old. Because of the craziness of figuring out how to handle a newborn and a toddler, I've been craving some brewing time. It's always a nice release for me, and isn't that what hobbies are for? Last week my wife's good friend stopped by for a couple hours to hang out with the kids, and I was able to brew! I brewed up another batch of the I.A.P.A. since I enjoyed this pale ale so much and after splitting half the batch with Jefe, whom I brewed with, I had already run through my supply.
Last year I was all about brewing Belgian Ales, and was happy that some recipes like Bangy Tangy, El Jefe and Burning Beard are definitely going to be permanent fixtures in the rotation.
Lately, I've been all about the hops. I have been trying to better my skills in brewing pale ales and IPAs and was very happy with the turn out of aforementioned IAPA and also the Bearded Fury. So I've decided to brew up another IPA, and I'm going to split the batch, conditioning half on mangoes because of the amazing Mango Mama IPA I had at Town Hall brewery this winter. I can still taste that amazing beer and have wanted to brew a Mango IPA ever since.
I've decided to return to extract brewing for the next couple of batches I brew to save time. I have been brewing partial mash batches for almost two years, but right now the extra hour and a half or so I could save by skipping the mash will allow me to brew more often. I for one have never been under the belief that one brewing technique was better than another since I've had good and bad brews made from every method, so I'm not worried about quality.
As for this IPA, I'm brewing up an all organic IPA, using 4 ounces of American Summit Hops I got from Seven Bridges. I put in a large order of organic hops this spring, and look forward to using these high alpha hops, that are supposed to be similar in flavor and aromas to hops like Simcoe and Cascade. It will be the first single hop beer I've made, so I'm curious of the result.

On another note, I traded some beer with Brian at Untamed Beer. I look forward to trying out some of his homebrew and some Southern beers he sent along. I will get to those reviews and I look forward to his thoughts on the Midwest and Bearded Brewing offerings I sent in exchange.
More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Labels and labeling

2009-06-30T13:14:00.006-05:00

Well the results came in from the BYO label contest, and I didn't win. To be honest I'm not that disappointed because there were some great labels that got in the mag, and I think my own labels are really good. Plus, art is in the eye of the beholder right? The main reason I enter the contest in the first place is a goal to better my skills from one year to the next and I think I've done that. I should probably learn how to use Photoshop or a similar program because that would probably allow me to make some better labels.
Which brings me to the subject of this post, my labels.
I've had some emails in the past asking me about my labels, how I make them, and what I use to put them on bottles. For starters, I use a really outdated program called Microsoft Picture It! for my labels. I know for a fact that if I learned how to use Photoshop or a similar program I could make better labels, but I'm really comfortable with my program and have been frustrated when I've attempted to use Photoshop, so for now I'm sticking with my old ass program. I have hand drawn, then scanned, some of my images, like my logo and the El Muerto logo. Other labels are a combination of clipart, fonts, and
other things.
As for the labels on the actual bottles, I use a couple different things and wanted to pass my tips on to those interested in putting some labels on your beer. I used to buy the labels at my local homebrew shop. They come from a company called 4th and Vine. The beauty of buying these is the access to their templates, which have a variety of sizes for bottles. I still use the templates, but have switched to a cheaper method of label paper. I buy the sticker project paper at Office Max or Target. They come in packages of 15 sheets, have a peel away sticky side, and can be used for a variety of bottle sizes. It got costly for me to buy 4th and Vine labels for both 12 and 22 oz bottles. With sticker paper, I can adjust the images to fit even odd bottles, like the pint bottle in the picture above. Another plus is that these labels come off very easily if you recycle your bottles.
I really enjoy this aspect of my brewing, it's another avenue to be creative and it's also fun to give friends a six pack with labels on the bottles.
More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- New Glarus Black Wheat

2009-06-25T13:19:00.003-05:00

Summers for me mean a break from teaching, more time for brewing (unless I have a new baby like this summer) and going to Wisconsin to my parents summer home. Trips to Wisconsin means access to some beers not available in Minnesota, most importantly New Glarus. I have professed my love of New Glarus often in this blog, in fact one of my very first blog posts was about New Glarus. This small brewery in Southeastern Wisconsin rates as my number 1 brewery in the country. I don't say that lightly and the reason is that I've never had a bad beer from New Glarus. I have had beers of theirs I don't prefer because I'm not a fan of the style, or it's just a bit too experimental for me (Imperial Weizen comes to mind), but I've never been disappointed by the quality, creativity and sheer craftsmanship of New Glarus. They think outside the box and do it well, or traditional and do it well. That to me is the sign of a high class brewery, everyone can make a super crazy beer or a super hoppy beer. But to do all styles well, I think there are a handful of breweries that can succeed in all they brew. I have a lot of respect for their strong "Drink Indigineous" credo, as they use a lot of local products in their beer to reflect Wisconsin. And even though it sucks for us Non-Wisconsinites, they only distribute in Wisconsin, which I think allows them to focus on quality instead of quantity.

My dad recently brought me two wheats from New Glarus, Black Wheat and Cracked Wheat. I'll get to the Cracked next post, but I've been loving the Black Wheat. It pours a cloudy black with a foamy, two finger white head. It smells like a porter hefeweizen...aromas of roast, caramel and chocolate, but also clove and banana. Its smooth and light, almost crisp in the finish. The "weiss" part of this beer dominates with the "black" taking a backseat. Sweet, clovey and banana flavors mix surprisingly well with the chocolate, caramel and roasted malt going on. There is some lingering "porter-like" for lack of a better term, flavors that are present in the finish, but the roastiness is replaced by a nice clovey-sweetness that wants you coming back for more. I think this is a winter or spring seasonal, and I can see why. It gets you ready to drink light refreshing beers in the summer, but still has enough of a darkness/roasty quality to be really satisfying for a non-session beer. Another great New Glarus.

I will get to my Cracked Wheat review, along with a few others, and I'm going to attempt to brew again soon, so I'll keep you abreast with how that goes...maybe wearing a baby on my back? Not sure of the logistics, but the brew kettle is calling.

Salud!

Bearded Brewing

Beer Review- IAPA

2009-06-16T12:51:00.003-05:00

It's been two weeks now since my son was born and we are adjusting nicely. But the itch to brew is starting to grow and I'm trying to figure out how and when I'm going to be able to start brewing again. At 8 weeks was the first time I brewed with my daughter, but I'm not going to be waiting that long to brew this time around!
When I do brew again, it will be another batch of this Iowa Pale Ale (or IAPA). As I mentioned before, this beer was the second collaboration with my best friend Jeff, whom I grew up with in Iowa and now lives up here in the Twin Cities.
I have been nervous to brew a pale ale for some reason. I feel like pale ales are the kind of beers that can be great, but at the same time if done poorly can be forgettable or just plain bad. I've had plenty of commercial or brew pub examples that fit that description. I remember reading an article by Jamil Zainasheff where he mentioned that his true test of a brewer is to taste their pale ale because it's simple to brew, but easy to do poorly.
It's been several years since I brewed a pale ale, and I wanted to make one that could be my "house" pale ale. Jeff and I's favorite Pale Ales are Summit EPA and Millstream's Iowa Pale Ale. In my mind, Summit's is a classic American pale ale, with a nice citrusy hop presence, a clean bitterness and a nice caramely-malty sweetness. Millstream's is probably closer to an IPA than a traditional pale ale, heavy on the citrusy hops, crisp and clean with more of a subtle sweetness. We were aiming for something in between and I'm happy that I think we nailed it.
It's rare for me to be this excited about one of my beers right off the bat. I generally really like the beers I brew, but I tend to tweak and over-analyze them. Both Jeff and I agree that the IAPA is excellent and doesn't need tweaking. I would put it in the top five of the beers I've brewed. Onto the review:
IAPA pours a clear gold with a finger of white head. Right away nice aromas of classic Cascade hops, grapefruity, with some nice caramel notes coming through. There's a pleasant citrusy hoppiness at first followed by caramel and malty sweetness. There's a bitterness that gives it a good backbone that balances well with the sweetness. It finishes with a lingering caramel presence and refreshing crispness.

Here's the recipe:
2 lbs Organic 2-Row
1 lb Victory
.75 Org Caramel 60
.25 Org Carapils

4 lbs Org Light DME (2 @ 60, 2 @ 15)
Hops:
.60 Organic Pacific Gem @ 60
1 oz Fuggles @ 30
1 oz Cascade @ 2
1 oz Cascade @ flameout

American 1056 Yeast

More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- Lost Coast Brewing

2009-06-10T10:17:00.008-05:00

My parents are snowbirds that spend their winters in Tucson, Arizona and summers in Wisconsin. Before making the journey back to the Midwest my dad told me to look up a beer superstore he'd been going to called Total Wine and More and pick out some beers I wanted him to bring up. The selection was impressive and it was hard to narrow down the list. Aside from Alaskan Brewing Company, the rest of the beers I had him bring up were California breweries. Out of all the beer he was going to pick up, the one my dad insisted I needed to try was Lost Coast because he was impressed with their brown ale he had picked up before. My dad brews one of the best browns I've had, so I figured it must be good. He picked up their Alley Cat Amber Ale, and 8 Ball Stout along with the brown, Downtown Brown, and all three were outstanding. Onto the reviews:

Downtown Brown: Pours a nice mahogany brown with ruby red highlights and a finger of off white head. Nice aromas of toffee, malt, caramel and nuttiness. Right away there's a nice malty sweetness with great flavors of brown sugar, and nuts. Sweet and slightly roasty with a faint bitterness in the end. Very well balanced and a great creamy mouthfeel. An outstanding brown ale.

Alley Cat Amber Ale: Pours a cloudy amber with a thin white head. Nice aromas of malt, biscuit, and flowery hops. There's some nice spicy notes and caramel flavor right away. Very nicely balanced between biscuit, malt, and hoppy spiceness. Great mouthfeel, creamy with some hoppy bitterness in the finish. A perfectly balanced amber ale.

8 Ball Stout: Pours dark, chocolate brown almost black with a finger of tan head. Wonderful aromas stout aromas of caramel, roasted malt, coffee and chocolate. Smooth, creamy mouthfeel, with a great roasty flavor. A lot of caramel and chocolate milk sweetness going on as well. It finishes sweet and malty with a lingering roasty backbone. Another outstanding beer from Lost Coast.

Overall, I was really impressed. All very well balanced and highly drinkable, I wish I had access to more of their product. In the coming posts, I'll be reviewing the rest of the beers I got, which include Green Flash Brewing's Hop Head Red, a couple Alaskan Brewing Company beers, Anderson Valley Boont's Amber Ale, and a couple beers from Mad River Brewing Company.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

New Brewer Arrives

2009-06-05T09:33:00.003-05:00

Bearded Brewing has added the newest brewer to the fold, my son was born on Thursday. As a result, my summer will be filled with little sleep, diaper changing, trying to manage a two year old, and probably little brewing. I will continue to post when I get a chance, I have a lot of beer reviews I have yet to post, so stay tuned for those. I am going to try to sneak in a couple of brewing sessions. I have a Saison recipe I'd like to brew and would like to brew another batch of IAPA (review coming soon). I have to say I haven't been this happy about a beer I've made in a while. I generally really like my beers a lot, but can always find a few flaws, because I'm anal like that. But, the IAPA is a spot on pale ale in my opinion and exactly what I had in mind when I made the recipe. I want to brew another batch since I split half the batch with Jefe and he's got a case of it.
I still have to get to the reviews of all the California beers my dad brought me from Arizona, and also a new New Glarus he brought me down from Wisconsin...a Black Wheat... I love New Glarus, traditional or experimental, they always bring it!
Stay tuned, I'll try to post when I can...even if it's in a sleep deprived state.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- Bearded Fury IPA

2009-05-28T21:44:00.003-05:00

Well, no baby yet, so I'm going to get to another posting and review my recently tapped Bearded Fury IPA. I've felt for sometime that I haven't quite nailed the bitterness I want in an IPA. The Bearded Fury is definitely a keeper in my opinion, but I still feel like I can up the bitterness a bit more to just add some more of a bite. Regardless, I feel like this is my best IPA yet, so I'm on the right path. It's on the low end of the IBU scale, only at 43. Where the Fury does hit, is the citrusy hoppy sweetness I was aiming for. I think that the Fury is definitely the IPA to be added to the rotation, especially once I figure out this bitterness thing.
Onto the review:
Bearded Fury pours a cloudy orange with a finger of white head. Nice citrusy aromas of orange with some nice grapefruit notes. Right away it's sweet with some nice caramel presence in the body, but quickly it's dominated by citrusy, hoppy sweetness. There's some lingering bitterness in the finish, but as mentioned before, not as much as I would want. A nice balance of aromas and sweetness, this is an IPA that goes down nicely on a hot day.

Here's the recipe:
2 lbs organic 2-row
1 lb organic munich
.75 lb org crystal 20
.25 lb org Belgian carapils
Mash @ 152 for an hour
6lbs org Light DME
Hops:
1 oz Nugget @ 60
.50 oz Centennial @ 15
.50 oz Centennial @ 10
1 oz Cascade @ 1
1 oz Cascade @ flameout
1 oz Cascade Dry Hop
Yeast: Wyeast 1272 American Ale 2

More to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Race against time

2009-05-23T08:32:00.005-05:00

My wife is 37 weeks pregnant, and we have been told that our second child will be arriving anytime. I plan to brew this weekend...plan being the operative word. The first time she was pregnant, she found out right before our first ever Bearded Brewfest. So as everyone tried the variety of beers I made, she had to drink juice. It was unfortunate that during the pregnancy was when I really started brewing frequently and honing my skills. So when our daughter was born, she wanted the beer I had made for her, Inky's White Ale, to be ready for postpartum drinking. This time around I have debated between Inky's and Bangy Tangy, another favorite of hers and a great summer beer. I chose Inky's out of tradition, and seeing that it will most likely be the last time I brew a beer for a birth, I thought it was appropriate. But the Bangy Tangy is a very similar recipe, with cranberries added to the boil, so I decided to try to get the best of both worlds. I'm going to use the Inky's recipe and add the cranberries. It won't quite be either beer, since there are some differences in the grain bills and hops. But both beers are fan favorites and I figure with a lot of people coming to see the baby, the beer should be a nice summer beer that most will enjoy.
If all goes according to my plan, I will be bottling the El Muerto tonight and brewing the Inky's tomorrow. I've posted Inky's recipe before, but I'll post it with the changes once I brew it.

-My parents came up from Arizona on their way to their summer home in Wisconsin. My dad had called me before leaving Tuscon. There's a crazy beer store he frequents called Total Wine that has a great selection of beers. Weeks before he left I printed out their beer list and chose some beers for him to bring up. He arrived Thursday with a case of beer for me! I'll get to those reviews soon.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Label Contest Entries

2009-05-17T10:01:00.006-05:00

For the last two years I've entered some labels into the BYO label contest. I first started to make labels after stumbling across the annual contest winners in a Brew Your Own magazine. I had just started brewing enough to have multiple beers at a time, and was trying to think of a better way to give my friends six packs than saying "the dot is a pale ale and the x is a wheat beer." I was inspired by the labels I saw, and thought this was a great way I could use some creativity and combine it with my love of brewing. I love the whole process of naming the beer, to designing the label as much as I enjoy brewing it and drinking it. I do enter the BYO contest with the hopes of getting published, but I also enjoy using it as a vehicle to improve over the previous year's labels. This year I entered the following labels:

-In another note, I want to send a thanks out to Stuart at the Twin Cities based Friday Night Beer Blog. We met at the Town Hall Brewery so I could give him a couple beers. Stuart's a very cool guy and we had a good time talking about beer and other things over an amazing Raspberry Cherry Stout at Town Hall. Stuart recently reviewed my El Muerto and Gringo and I thank him for the kind words.

- I'm planning on reviewing my Bearded Fury IPA soon, I've been happy with the turn out. Also, my dad is bringing me up some beers he picked up in Arizona. I think I'm getting a few six packs of some West Coast stuff not available around here, so look for some reviews in the somewhat near future.
More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Interview- Odell Brewing Company

2009-05-09T19:28:00.003-05:00

It's been quite awhile since I have interviewed a brewery. On my recent trip to Colorado I had a great red ale from Odell Brewing Company and decided to check out their website when I got back. What I found out was that this Fort Collins,Colorado brewery not only brews very good beer, but they also do a number of excellent "socially responsible" things, like giving a lot of money to charities (as a lot of breweries do) and a number of other cool things. After contacting the brewery, I found out that they also are also very environmentally conscience as well. My previous interviews have all centered around breweries who are either organic, or socially responsible, and I am always happy to be able to "spread the word" about breweries doing great things.

1. How long has Odell Brewery been in operation?

Odell Brewing Company was founded in 1989 by Doug Odell, his wife Wynne and sister Corkie, they are still our operating owners.

2. What kinds of sustainable practices do you have at your brewery?

We have a number of sustainable practices that help to minimize our impact on the environment. We send all of our spent grain to a local dairy farmer for feed, collect our used yeast for another farmer that adds it to his cattle’s feed (it is extremely high in vitamin B12 and has lots of other benefits). These 2 practices aid us in recycling/reusing 98% of our solid waste, we have an extensive recycling program that allows us to recycle all of the obscure packaging materials we get on a daily basis like shrink wrap and plastic ties (and of course all glass and paper are recycled!). We have changed brewing, cellaring and packaging habits to reduce our water use from 4.8 gallons of water per gallon of beer down to 3.85 (it is an industry standard to use between 4 and 7 gallons!). We participate in Fort Collins’ program “Climate Wise” allowing us to purchase wind power. It also helps us to regulate our energy use by installing “hot shot boxes” on our chillers to cut them at peak hours of the day. We package off peak hours (to minimize our stress on the grid) and run our local delivery trucks on Blue Sun Biodiesel. We also use Zero Hero to lower our waste impact on large events like our Small Batch Festival. Those are just some surface things I can think of… let me know if you’d like more!

3. Do you brew organically or have plans to do so?

We are brewing a beer this fall that will be lightly bottle distributed that will be made with organic hops grown on the Western Slope near Palisade (as local as you can get!) We are thrilled to be able to use “local” organic product in our beer and hope to use more in the future!

4. Could you explain a little about the charitable and socially responsible aspects of your brewery?

The Odells have always had a strong sense of responsibility in their community and it is reflected through their mission statement and practiced through their unique charitable program. When you visit us in our tap room and purchase a taster tray, the proceeds benefit our charities of the month. We typically have two represented; one locally and one from a further reaching area within our distribution. The monies are split and the charities get to showcase themselves on our charitable board for the month. Because of our size and desire to make an impact, we have limited our parameters for donation to include Human Services, Sustainability and Education. Our budget for this year is projected to be right around $110,000! We also donate lots of beer and goodies to fundraisers and events outside the brewery.

5. Where do you think "green brewing" practices are headed and why should breweries move in the direction?

It honestly seems to me that it has become an industry standard which is a great source of pride for all of us involved, particularly for those of us that work for companies that have been doing their best from the beginning. I think with large breweries like New Belgium and Sierra Nevada setting wonderful examples of ways to limit their impact alongside their immensity, it gives those of us with slower growth the opportunity to take advantage of practices that will sustain us. Our friends and patrons are better educating themselves about the products that they purchase and voting with their dollars, it is important to offer them a quality product made with creative passion that fulfills our need to be gentle to the Earth and good to our communities.

For more info, check out their website, including this cool video about their operation:

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Beer Review- Gringo 09

2009-05-05T00:01:00.000-05:00

Seeing that it's Cinco de Mayo, I thought it would be fitting to finally getting around to reviewing The Gringo. This is the second year that I've made this beer, and it has definitely improved over last year. Last year I decided to brew an "Imperialistic" Mexican Lager. I tried to think of something that would be my own twist on the "Imperial" everything that seems to dominate beer today. Not really sure what I was going to end up with, I was pleasently suprised by the result, but it still wasn't as good as it could be. This time around I had a much better idea of what I wanted. I wasn't aiming so much for a big, imperial beer, more of a hoppy-citrusy Mexican cerveza. For a final touch, I decided to add some Agave Nectar, which is very similar to honey and one of the main ingredients in Tequila.
The Gringo 09 has turned out very well, and while I think it could use a few minor tweaks, I think I'm definitley in the ballpark of what I want. Here's my official review:
The Gringo pours a dark straw yellow, crystal clear with a thick, foamy white head. An aroma of citrus and honey right away, with some nice grapefruit notes. Smooth at first with a lot of sweetness , and some hoppy puckering. The agave is there, in fact a little too much, I think it hides some of the hops. But they are not lost in the sweetness, as there is still a very hoppy presence. It finshes smooth with a lingering honey sweetness and some citrusy hops.

Overall, I'm quite happy. It's smooth like a lager, but the hops and the agave make it interesting. "Americanized" to the point of almost being unrecognizable as a "Mexican lager." My only complaint is that instead of using 12 oz of Agave in the secondary, I think 1/2 to 3/4 of that would have been better, allowing the hops to come to the forefront more. However, I think this is very drinkable, unique and is on the right path. I gave a couple bottles to Friday Night Beer Blog and he said it was like a hoppy Corona. What I was aiming for!
Here's the recipe:
3 lbs Organic Pilsner Malt
.5 lbs Organic Cara-pils
.5 lbs org. Munich
.15 lbs org Vienna
Mash @ 154 for 1 hour
4 lbs Organic Light DME
2 lbs Cane Sugar

Hops:
.35 oz Centennial Hops (9.1 % AA) @ 60
1 oz Centennial Hops @ 15
.50 Centennial @ 10
1 oz Cascade @ 5
.50 oz Centennial @ 2
1 oz Cascade @ 1
.65 oz Centennial @ flameout

Wyeast 2112 Cali Yeast
12 ounces Light Agave Nectar in Secondary
Lager for 2 weeks @ 35 degrees.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Bad father?

2009-05-03T15:33:00.006-05:00

I preface this by saying that this isn't about self promotion. It's simply for those demented beer loving parents out there like me that has introduced their young children to craft beer at a very young age. One of my daughter's first words was "brew." This came about from her playing around in the Bearded Brewery with me (brew spoons and buckets are pretty fun toys for toddlers). She accompanies me to buy said "brew" and to the homebrew shop. Now that she's almost two and has more words in her vocabulary, she associates rabbits and frogs with "hop" and it made me think of this design. I have wanted to make a Bearded Brewing shirt for my daughter, but this seemed better. For those interested, I have the shirt available at zazzle. Like I said, it's not about self-promotion, I make a whopping $1 off a shirt. I just thought I'd share in case there are other parents like myself who think there's nothing wrong with your young child wearing beer related clothing!
Here's the link if interested.

Salud!
Bearded Brewer
-

Summit Horizon Red Ale

2009-04-29T20:53:00.005-05:00

I'm sure that most people have that "fall back" beer. The brewery, or beer that they go to when they aren't feeling adventurous. For me Summit beers are those beers. I know what I'm getting, know that I will enjoy it, and can fall back on it when I'm not in the mood to try something different.
Summit holds a special place for me because Summit is the beer that made me get into craft beer. In college I did like most people, and drank whatever crap came out of a keg at a party, or whatever I could drink a lot of for cheap. After college I started getting more bold, going for such radical beers as Rolling Rock, Leinenkugals, and Grain Belt Premium.
Then I found Summit. I can't remember if it was the Hefeweizen, or the EPA that I first had, but the beer that turned me was their Maibock. Word spread amongst my friends that there was this beer that got you really drunk after two or three pints! When late Febuary, early March would roll around, we were excited for the famous blue and white checkered tap handle that said that Maibock had arrived. From there I moved into other Summits, mostly their EPA and summer offerings. It opened the door to craft beer for me. Years later, it was on a trip to the Summit brewery that I was introduced to a style I didn't like at the time but have grown to love, porters. I thought I didn't like "dark beers" until a free token at the Summit brewery resulted in a glass of Great Northern Porter (still my favorite porter) and my love for this style began.
Summit is the forgotten big brother of the craft beer industry in Minnesota. Once Surly came along, the hype followed as Surly was producing the beers that beer geeks love; hoppy, bold beers. They canned them and had a really edgy marketing theme to go with it. Surly makes great beer, and the hype as the new kid on the block was well deserved, but I think that people began to forget about Summit. Summit made very solid German and English style ales. EPA was the standard in most bars, and their Scandia was a nice Belgian Wit that became a popular summer beer. But I think that amongst a lot of beer geeks, they lacked that "umpf" or "sex appeal" for lack of a better word.
Well, Summit has answered that call with their Horizon Red Ale. This is their answer to hop heads who have been lured by the aggressive beers now available in Minnesota. Horizon is by far their hoppiest beer, and a damn good one at that!
Horizon Red pours a reddish brown with some ruby red highlights, a white head and wonderful flowery, hoppy aromas. Right away you notice some nice malt and biscut notes. At first there is some malty sweetness along with a heavy biscuit presence, those are quickly replaced by a dose of hoppy bitterness. It's well balanced, especially the more you drink. There's quite a bit of hop presence throughout, bitter, yet citrusy and floral. There's also quite a bit of maltiness and sweetness as well. There's some lingering bitterness in the finish as well as some caramel and citrusy sweetness.
A refreshing new beer for Summit. I think it's their most aggressive beer, but doesn't lose the extremely well balanced quality they have in all of their beers, and is definitely going to be added to my "fall back" options of Summit beers.
An excellent addition to the local beer scene.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

A couple random things

2009-04-26T10:23:00.003-05:00

A couple quick things:

1. I will be reviewing the new Summit Horizon Red Ale soon. My quick thoughts: I really like this new Summit and its an encouraging sign, since its probably the most aggressive of their beers. I think this beer is Summit's answer to the hoppier, more aggressive beers in the industry, especially the growth of Surly. I will write more on this beer this week, but I really like this hoppy, bitter, red ale.

2. I bottled my Irie Stout this weekend. Its been sitting in the secondary for a month to mellow out, and hopefully blend the flavors a bit more. Granted, it needs time to bottle condition, but I'm not overly optimistic about the turn out. I think I tweaked this recipe too much and combination of treacle (too much molasses flavor) and the 10.2% abv (very present at this point), right now it's not extremely drinkable. I know I need to give it some time, but the two previous Iries were drinkable at the bottling. This might of been the case of me overthinking, and trying to hard to get the beer to fit into a category, when before it might not have been stout like, but it was damn good. We'll give it some time though.

3. Speaking of tweaking, I also will soon get to my Gringo 09 review. This is my Hoppy Mexican Lagerish beer. I don't really know how to exactly explain the Gringo in terms of style. Its made mostly from Pilsner malt, I used the Cali 2112 yeast, and lagered it for a couple weeks. It's very smooth and crystal clear in color. I used 4 ounces of Centennial hops.I also added 12 oz of Agave Nectar in the secondary. Never using Agave Nectar before, I wasn't sure how strong of a flavor it would produce...the answer...a lot! 12 oz was entirely too much. There is a great smoothness and citrusy hoppy presence to the Gringo...once you get past the honey flavor (agave nectar is essentially a light honey). Its not undrinkable by any means, its light and crisp and sweet. Too sweet though, and I just keep thinking of how much better it would be with 1/2 the Agave Nectar. I'll post an official review and the recipe soon.

4. I'm submitting my labels into the annual BYO label contest this week. I've chosen 4 labels and will post about which ones soon. I think I've improved my label designs since last year, and for that reason alone it's nice to have a contest to better yourself for.

5. One quick beer thougt...I recently got some Troeg's beers sent to me. If you have the ability to buy Hopback Amber Ale, by all means do so. Such a damn good beer!

More to come...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer

Gun to My Head List

2009-04-21T18:05:00.002-05:00

I'm not usually one to fill out the "top five ________ lists" on Facebook, but I did fill out my top five beers. This was virtually impossible for me! I can't pick just five. I can't ever go to the store and pick out some beer, I have to look at all my options, see if there's anything new or seasonal out, it depends on what kind of beer mood I'm in, dark, light, hoppy, Belgian, etc. In fact I rarely buy a specific beer often, I'm constantly trying out new beers or taking advantage of mix your six pack deals. Ever since I made the top five list on Facebook, I keep thinking about others I would put. So I decided to come up with a list of beers I would buy with a gun to my head...just go in to the store and grab a six pack kind of moment. These are in no order of favorites, but are simply based on these two rules:
1. I have to have had bought the beer multiple times.
2. It has to be available to me either in Minnesota, or something I could get on my frequent trips to Wisconsin or in the case of Millstream, what I have people pick me up in Iowa on a regular basis.
3. Can't be seasonals, so no Hopslam or special releases.

The categories are: Pale Ales, IPAs and Ambers, Dark beers and Belgians

Pale Ales:
1. Summit EPA
2. Millstream Iowa Pale Ale
3. Left Hand Jackman's Pale Ale
4. Stone Pale Ale
5. New Belgium Mighty Arrow Pale Ale *
* technically a seasonal...

IPAs and Amber Ales:
1. Dark Horse Crooked Tree IPA
2. Stone IPA
3. Lagunitas IPA
4. Bell's Two Hearted
5. Rush River Unforgiven Amber Ale
6. Rouge Dead Guy
7. Left Hand Sawtooth (Amber)
8. New Glarus IPA

Dark:
1. Surly Bender
2. Bell's Best Brown Ale
3. Left Hand Black Jack Porter
4. Left Hand Milkstout
5. New Glarus Fat Squirrel
6. Summit Great Northern Porter
7. Millstream Oatmeal Stout
8. Rogue Shakespeare Stout

Belgians:
1. Ommegang Three Philsophers
2. Ommegang Hennepin
3. Triple Karmaleit
4. Hoegaarden
5. New Belgium Triple
6. New Belgium Abbey
7. New Belgium Fat Tire
8. New Glarus Spotted Cow
9. Millstream's John's Generation White Ale
10. Surly Cynic Ale
11. Unibroue Fin Du Monde
12. Unibroue Maudite

So...there you go. So much more satisfying than the Facebook 5. There were more that I could have added, but didn't fit into my category of having them multiple times. If only I bought more of the same beers...but what would the fun be in that? I encourage people to create your own lists and post them on the comments. I'd love to see what others have...
Salud!
Bearded Brewer