Tale of Two Brews

Sometimes I make bad choices when it comes to fitting in time to brew. As you can tell from the amount of beer I brew, and the variety of beer, lets just say that I have a slight obsession. I was talking with a friend last night about how what I should do is choose 5 beers that I have made that really stand out and just brew those and perfect them. I've actually had that "plan" several times. But my problem is that I'm constantly inspired, either I read about a style, I try a new beer I really like, I come up with a cool name or concept, etc. The creative side of me is never satisfied, and thus I'm constantly brewing new beers.
The reason I mention this, is that sometimes I am so eager to get the beer brewed that every once and awhile I try to juggle to many things, while brewing because...well, I really want to get the beer brewed so I can move the focus on to the next beer I have stewing in my head. Recently, I had an experience of banging out a beer while trying to care for my infant daughter and help out my wife with some stuff, all at the same time. That was not a good idea...

El Jefe: This is a beer that I made for my oldest and closest friend, Jeff. I had been toying around with different styles and recipes for this particular beer for awhile and settled on a light, Belgian pale ale. I was inspired by beers like Stone Soup from New Glarus, and recently Springboard from New Belgium. Basically something light, fruity, with some interesting flavors but not overwhelmingly alchohly like say Delirums, or Duvel.
The brewing started off fine, but I ran into complications later in the boil, including missing the time I intended to put in the last of my extract, (supposed to be @ 15, and I put it in @5), due to a freaking out baby. I thought "I'll just let it boil for awhile longer" and so....that's what I did. I don't know what the official time was, probably somewhere around a 75 minute boil, which of course throws off my hop schedule. But since it wasn't intended to be a hoppy beer, that wasn't much of an issue. I bottled the beer this weekend, and it tasted nice and light with a hint of those Belgian flavors I was going for...we'll see how it pans out after some time conditioning. Bottom line...juggling a baby and beer making makes for a more stressful experience than I ever want it to be and hopefully doesn't result in shitty beer. If it ends up being good, I'll just chalk it up to my amazing skills :) Or more realistically the fact that in the end...its not that hard to make beer.

Irie Stout: Now for the exact opposite experience. I have this week off from work due to spring break, so I intended to get this beer brewed that I had been wanting to brew for awhile. I wanted to brew a Caribbean style stout, using orange peels and some spices to balance out the roastiness. I'm excited because I think this is going to be a very good beer. The recipe was extract, which was one less step than partial mashing, and I had plenty of time, no baby duties and a steady dose of Bob Marley playing during the brewing. I had intended for the beer to be at around 1.083 for starting gravity and ended up with 1.093, which is fine because I wanted a bigger beer. After the debacle with El Jefe, if this was the only thing to go wrong...fuck it! It's currently bubbling away and I'm excited for this beer. And the brewing experience was nice and relaxing, a great way to spend a snowy (still!) day in mid March.
For the record the following albums were listened to while brewing Irie Stout:
Babylon by Bus, Uprising, and Talking Blues.
Salud!
The Bearded Brewer

Mayabock and other random thoughts

This weekend I brewed a new organic recipe for my maibock. Last year I brewed a similar beer, and it spent close to 3 months in my garage lagering. I was fairly happy with the turnout, but not totally satisfied. It lacked some maltiness and something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I think part of the problem was that I lagered it for too long. When I tasted the maibock after a month I think it tasted closer to what I was going for than after the 3 months that I lagered it. I don't know if that makes any sense, but this time around I'm going to only lager it for 4 weeks.
As I've mentioned before, maibock is one of my favorite styles of beer, so its a beer I really want to perfect. I redid the label and tweaked the recipe a bit, making it organic and changing some of the grain bill and the hops. I also poured it on top of a slurry of California 2112 Lager Yeast. The name comes from the my 3 year old golden retriever Maya, featured on the label.

I also transferred The Gringo (hence the slurry) and I have to say that I'm intrigued to see how this turns out. In the sample I tasted there was a huge grapefruit presence, which I would attribute to the Centenial hops I used. I'm excited to see where this ends up after lagering for a month.

Also this weekend I scored an old fridge, so I'm excited to have room to store more grains and hops in the freezer (just in time since I ordered 14 pounds of organic grains from Seven Bridges Co-Op last week.) I cleaned it out and am excited about using it for lagering year round. While I'm not a huge lager fan, I'm excited about the ability to make bocks and several other styles.

Friday I came home to a package of beer sent to me from Rick from Bob Woodshed Beer Blog as part of our exchange. He sent me three 22 oz bombers of organic beers I can't find here in Minnesota. Needless to say I was excited ! He sent me Bison Brewing Company's Belgian Ale, Green Lakes Organic Ale from Deschutes Brewery and Island Red from Roots Brewing Company. I'll post some reviews soon.

He also posted a review of my Northwoods Ale, and I was happy that he liked it. I completely agreed with his suggestion of adding more wild rice. I had read that it could be strong, but in both beers I've made with it, I found myself wanting more of a presence. Here's the link if you're interested: Northwoods Review

In addition to the reviews of the organic beers, I'm planning on posting about my recent visit of Summit Brewery. I had contacted them for an interview and I ended up getting a tour with their PR person. It was really cool, and I got to see some things not normally included in the tour like the lab, which was really interesting. It was a neat experience and again I was impressed by how nice and cool everyone was. That'll be coming this week.

Salud!
The Bearded Brewer

"Imperialistic " Mexican Cerveza

A couple months ago I was talking to a friend about the hoppiness of beers, and the recent imperial beer trend. I wrote a post about how I think there seems to be a trend in American brewing to make beers as big and hoppy as possible. While I can respect that people enjoy it, I think it can be excessive at times, in a very American way. Obviously everyone has different beer tastes and luckily there's enough great craft beer to satisify all those tastes.

In that post I mentioned a beer from East End Brewing Company in Pittsburgh called the Ugly American. I've never had this beer, but I loved the description: "A perfectly enjoyable classic Belgian Trippel corrupted almost beyond recognition with a completely inappropriate amount of US hops. Only in America can such excessive excesses be fully appreciated, celebrated, and enjoyed.."

I love the concept of this and the sentiment. I'm not a huge hophead, but I do enjoy hoppy beers. So that got me thinking of what I could do similar to that idea, and I came up with a hoppy Mexican Lager. I've spent a lot of time in Mexico and enjoy some Mexican beers: Negro Modelo, Bohemia, Montejo. The Gringo is based partially off Bohemia, I'll post the recipe, but I'm using Munich, Vienna and Pilsner malts. I also threw in some flaked maize to lighten up the body. But to "Americanize" it, I am using 2 ounces of Centennial hops for a 3 gallon batch. Another first for me, I'm going to use the slurry of California 2112 yeast left over from the Yinzer Lager. It'll have alot more hoppiness than a standard Mexican Cerveza (and hopefully some citrusy overtones from the Centenial hops) and at 6% abv, its stronger as well.


I'm planning on brewing it this weekend. It's not quite a true Imperial, but in the spirit of the Ugly American, The Gringo is definitely an Imperialistic Mexican lager. We'll see how it turns out.

Salud!
The Bearded Brewer

Winter Ale

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

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

Bangy Tangy

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

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

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

Beer weekend and bad beer

With a new baby, time in the brewery gets harder to find. This weekend I was excited to be able to get three things done in the brewery...
Friday night I bottled my Northwoods Ale. It turned out to be a much lighter beer than I had originally intended, but I think that the maple syrup and the wild rice will make it interesting. When I tasted it while bottling, I was happy to notice a maple syrup presence and the wild rice gave it a dry crispness. This should be interesting as it matures.
Saturday I bought the ingredients to make my next two beers: Whitefish Cranberry Wheat and La Libertad. La Libertad is a west coast ale inspired by my trip to San Francisco and in particular Anchor's Liberty Ale.
Sunday I brewed the Whitefish and transferred my Morris Park Porter. I decided against adding the coffee this time around, mostly because I've never made a porter before. And secondly this tasted awesome when I transferred it and I don't want to mess with it. And with the results of the latest batch of Burning Beard (read below) I decided I'd just leave the Porter alone this time.

Bad Beer:
For the first time in my brewing history, I had to sadly pour out a batch. The Burning Beard Belgian Ale was terrible. I don't know what went wrong, but its awful. Kristen thought it tasted like olives. Not exactly a beer flavor I'm going for. It doesn't taste like it was contaminated. I think I used way too much flaked wheat. It has a terrible dry finish that really fights with the cranberry tartness. Whatever the case, its really bad. I've poured out most of the batch so far, and the nice thing was that I had plenty of bottles for the Northwoods. Bottom line: I need to stop messing with my good recipes.

Organic and Socially Responsible

I wanted to take a minute to explain a few things about those two aspects of my brewing beliefs.
First of all, organic: This is getting easier to do because Northern Brewer is selling more organic brewing ingredients and even has several organic kits. I use organic malts and grains most of the time when I brew. I also try to use organic ingredients as well, for example my upcoming Northwoods Ale was brewed with organic wild rice and organic maple syrup. Hops are a bit harder to come by, but I try to use organic hops as much as possible. The USDA actually considers organic to be 95% of the materials used, so I can get by using non-organic hops if need be.

The socially responsible is a little harder to achieve from a homebrew setting. But there are ways....first of all I think all homebrewers are great about reusing materials like bottles and limiting waste. I reuse my bottles and my friends have been good about saving the bottles I give them to return once they drink the beer. Water is a big part of brewing, and I'm trying to find ways to recycle water that I use. Other than that, its about an attitude I think. I support local breweries, I buy craft beers, and I use as many organic and fair trade ingredients as possible. My upcoming Morris Park Mocha Porter is 100% organic, including the priming sugar, and is going to include 4 oz of fair-trade organic Peace Coffee.
So...just some thoughts...
Drink responsibly...by that I mean support your local craft brewers and other craft breweries, its worth the extra money. Buy organic beer as much as possible, the higher the demand, the more options for organic brews we will have.
-The Bearded Brewer

Bearded Fury

Bearded Fury Pale Ale: This is my "house" beer, or the beer that I make and am confident will be good. This beer was the first original recipe I ever made. I had been brewing kits for about 2 years and decided to try my hand at making my own recipe. Pale ales aren't necessarily my favorite kind of beer, but because there are a wide range of pale ales I thought it'd be a good, safe place to start. I first made it last summer (summer 06) and have made it several times since then. It was also one of the first labels I made. The first recipe I made was extract and then I have since converted it to be organic and a partial mash recipe. This beer is not your traditional American Pale Ale because I use fuggle hops for the aroma hops (more commonly used in English beers). A lot of people who don't like hoppy beers like this beer and I think its because the fuggle hops are smooth and very floral.

Well I bottled this beer last week, and I am usually impatient when it comes to waiting for my beers to mature. But one week in the bottle and the Bearded Fury is carbonated and ready to go! It pours a medium honey color with a white head. The first thing that hits you is the floral notes of the fuggle hops. Its smooth and sweet with a hint of caramel flavor, mild fruitiness and that "pale ale" sweetness. Its not as bitter as say, Summit Pale Ale or Sierra Nevada PA. My friend Nate has said it is the best beer he's ever had, Bearded Brewing or commercial, which is a really great compliment. This is a beer that I'm super proud of and love to drink. It came at the right time because this summer I decided to get experimental and went out on a limb brewing some beers. They turned out decent, but nothing outstanding. I was starting to over-analyze and become too critical of my beers, but this one brought my confidence back because it's damn good!

Here's the recipe:
2 lbs organic 2-row
1 lb organic crystal 60
* mash for 1 hour at 150 degrees
add .70 oz of Organic Admiral hops
1 oz of organic cascade hops at 15 min
6.0 lbs of organic liquid light extract at 15 minutes
1 oz of Fuggle hops at 2 minutes
1 oz of Fuggle hops dry hopped in the secondary.
I use American Ale 1056 yeast.


More later.
The Bearded Brewer

Upcoming beers

Tonight I'm brewing my Burning Beard Belgian Ale. The name comes from one of my favorite songs by the band Clutch. I've changed the recipe some, so I'm intrigued to find out how it turns out. This beer is a Belgian White beer, but I'm going to use some different ingredients this time around.
The last time I brewed it, I used mostly extract and it turned out well, but I wanted to try to do it using more flaked wheat. I also add orange marmalade, a trick I learned in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book. This book is like my bible for brewing, I find it much more helpful and interesting than any other brewing book.
The last time I made this beer, it was called "Bangy Tangy" named for a friend of mine. A couple of my friends continue to refer to the beer as such. After my friend Josh came up with the name, I tried to brew the beer with a some tangyness. I decided to add cranberries to it because I had some left over from another beer I had made. I brewed half a pound and then added half a pound to the secondary the last time I brewed it. This time I'm going to just add the cranberries in the secondary to give it more of a presence. I'm also hoping that the cranberries give it a bit more of a redish color.


The recipe is:
.75 lbs of Belgian Pils
.75 lbs of Belgian Pale Malt
1.5 lbs of Flaked Wheat
.36 lbs of Flaked oats
3 lbs of Dry Bavarian Wheat Extract (I'll add this the last 15 min)
.5 lbs of Light DME (I'll add this at the start of the boil).

1 ounce of Hallertau hops
2 tablespoons of Orange Marmalade
1 lb of frozen cranberries
Belgian Witbier yeast.

It should be interesting. I found a recipe for a Hoegarden Clone that used 3 lbs of Flaked Wheat and 1 lb of Belgian Pale, then Wheat Extract. I was intrigued by this. I use Beer Tools and came up with this recipe to use that much flaked wheat. I've only used it in small amounts in my Inky's White. I'll be interested in the end result. I'm hoping for a slightly redish tint because of the cranberries, and a light, crisp body. I'm not adding Paradise seeds (something I did the last time) simply because they are expensive and I think they'll be lost in the flavor profile because of the marmalade and cranberries.


Tonight, I'm also going to be bottling another beer of mine, my "house beer" Bearded Fury Pale Ale. This will be the fourth time I've made this beer and I haven't made it in awhile. It tasted good when I transfered it to the secondary and I've sinced added another ounce of Fuggle hops. It'll have been in the secondary fermenter for about 2 weeks.

As for other upcoming beers, this is what I have planned for the months of October and November:
Northwoods Ale: Last year I brewed a beer using wild rice. Per usual I didn't give it enough time to mature before I drank most of it. The last half of the batch was really good as the wild rice had mellowed into the flavors. I've changed the recipe some, and the beer is basically a standard British Bitter, pretty basic. But I'm going to first boil wild rice, then put that into the mash tun. Then to mellow out the flavors, I'm going to add maple syrup at the end of the boil. It should be a good nutty balanced ale for the winter. I'm going to give it plenty of time to mature this time.

Yinzer Ale- My in-laws are from Pittsburgh, home of Yuengling Lager. This is a beer that I love everytime I get a chance to drink it. If we drive out to P-town we bring some back with us. Well I can't lager because I don't have the access to a fridge that I could control the temps and use for brewing. Plus I don't enjoy enough lagers to make buying one a priority. I would love to be able to make bocks, but I'll make due for now. Anyway, my brother-in-law has been asking for a Yuengling clone for some time. I made a light cream ale this summer using rice solid extract that was a pretty close representative to a standard american lager like Bud or Miller Light (It was a gift, not my choice!). Using the success of that, I'm going to try to make a Pittsburgh Style Ale, using rice, and some carmel malt and the California Common yeast to get a beer that is crisp and dry. It'll hopefully be somewhere between a Iron City and Yuengling. I'm making a 3 gallon batch first so that if it sucks...well then it was experimental.

California Pale Ale- After visiting California recently (see my next post) I was inspired to brew a super hoppy beer. I'm not a hop head really, and my friends enjoy Belgians or brown ales more than hoppy beers. But this summer I brewed a California Common that was heavily hopped with Cascade hops and it turned out great. It was darker than a pale ale, and I'm bascially trying to achieve the same thing. I was in the Bay Area and out east of Oakland in a hop growing region. All the beer I was drinking was heavily hopped, so I'm going to brew a pale ale and use several ounces of Cascade and Chinhook hops.

El Muerto (version 3.0)- I've made El Muerto several times and I'm changing the recipe yet again. I've been annoyed by what seems to be too sweet of a character in some of my beers and I think it might be a result of using Amber Malt Extract. So I'm going to brew El Muerto again, but this time not use any Amber LME, and instead increase the crystal malt for coloring. I'm hoping that will give it more of the malty, carmely flavor I'm looking for. I'm also going to increase the hops. I've been bored by what is one of my more popular beers, so I want to make it a bit more ...just more malty, more hoppy. I'm also going with a different yeast. I've brewed it with 1056 American Ale, Rogue Yeast, and now I'm going to use the California Common yeast to hopefully bring out more of the malty and hoppy flavors. We'll see how it turns out. I know I shouldn't mess with a good thing, but I want it to be one of my "flagship beers" and since it started off as a clone of Dead Guy, I just want to keep tweaking it until its a unique beer.

Whitefish Cranberry Wheat- This is going to be my Christmas beer. My parents have a home in Stone Lake Wisconsin, home of a Cranberry fest, cranberry bogs, and basically everything cranberry. After harvest time (late September) cranberries are extremely cheap to buy. Last year I made this beer and it turned out great. A nice subtle cranberry taste in a refreshing wheat beer. Its brewed with 2lbs of cranberries. I'm looking forward to brewing this beer again.

Thats all for now.
The Bearded Brewer