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Cheers

I am on the move!

In case you haven't noticed, I am now on Word-press at http://cnybrew.com - Please update your information because I am not going to be updating my blogger site anymore! Cheers.

Little bottling, little drinking

Tonight I racked over my still unnamed IPA and added the Willamette dry hops to both carboys. I had a taste and was really pleased with the flavor. This is going to be a great IPA. There were a few things about the brew day that I forgot to outline:

Step mashed - I used a step mash instead of a single infusion mash. I did this for more practical reasons of just questioning the amount of water that I could add to the mashtun with that volume of grain. The first step was 135 for 30 min and the second step was 150 for another 30 min. Finally, because we were not able to get up to 168 for mashout (short on room in the mashtun) and because it was so cold out, we sparged out with near boiling water. All day we were losing temp on water because of the extreme man cold that we brave for beer.

Finally I broke out some of the Tripel Nipple that I have been aging since January. It's great. I am really pleased how this beer turned out. It's a little intense on the tongue, but the banana and spices really make this a great example of a tripel. I need to dial down the carbonation a bit, but the recipe is spot on. I am going to need to do this one again.

Ted's Mint Stout Tasting

On his way through this summer, Ted and I exchanged a few brews. I have been through a few of them (and really liked all so far!), but was saving the Mint Stout for a rainy day. Well in CNY, rainy days quickly turn into snowy days, so Nick and I tasted the mint stout after our brew day this weekend.

I was impressed with the brew. I am not sure I would be able to handle 5 gallons of it (good thing he only made a 1 gallon batch), but it was tasty nonetheless. Ted really hits the mark on his brews (unlike MNB), but if I had to make a suggestion, it would be to tone down the carbonation just a little.

Cheers

I've been through the desert on a beer with no name

...It felt good to be out of the snow. While we are still unsure about the name of this IPA, for now it's a poe-boy because we used our free hops from Red Hook for it! It's a great tour if you get the chance and you're in Portsmouth, I recommend it.

As you can see from the picture above, it was actually cold out for our brew day. This is man brewing conditions, not like those in Georgia where 55f is a cold brew night. We got to brew out the Carharts already!

This was an IPA with a lot of hops and about 55lbs of grain involved. There were some adjustments to the recipe that was indicated earlier. First off, it was German Tetinang, not Galana that we had to brew with so we went a little heavier on the Northern Brewer. In the end, we were able to get very near our intended IBU's.



Now when it came to how to distribute the hops over two 10 gallon batches of beer, Nick had a pretty crazy idea to help us brew and cool in a timely manner. First off, please note that we take and mix all of the batches when we put them into our fermentation buckets.

Now Nick's idea was simple - We have bittering hops and flavor hops. The flavor/aroma hops do not need to boil for the full 60 min, nor does the wort that gets those hops. So, we have one 10 gallon keggle for bittering that boils the full 60 min, and the second one boils with all the late hops additions. While we cool the flavor/aroma keggle, the bittering keggle is on the second leg of it's boil. By the time we are done with the flavor/aroma keggle, the bittering one is ready to cool.

I racked my brain for a way to make this not an acceptable method, but it seems pretty logical. I am interested to hear some feedback, if I get ambitious, I may make a diagram for this.

So, quick recap - The keggle on the left has all the bittering hops additions. The keggle on the right has all the aroma and flavor hops additions and only boils for 1/2 hr. In the end, they are all mixed together.

Overall it was a great brew day. We missed out on our volume and didn't take any mashing/sparging readings, but we were well over our mark on gravity (1.066, instead of 1.057) so I think in the end, we were right where we wanted to be. The beer was a nice straw color, so we will see how it settles out.

We also did a tasting of Ted's Mint Stout. I will be posting up a video later this week to get everyone through turkey day.

Cheers!

Back to brewing!

Finally, we are going to brew this weekend! Because Nick and I are so low on brew and because I was able to come across some free high alpha acid hops while on brew tour, we are making an American IPA. I picked up the grains last night and I am going to be rocking the starter tonight.

This is currently a namless IPA, but I am sure Nick and I will come up with something good.

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 20.00 gal
Boil Size: 22.89 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 8.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 98.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------

50.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) 91.32 %
2.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L 3.65 %
1.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L 2.74 %
1.25 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine 2.28 %
5.00 oz Galena [13.00 %] (90 min) 59.8 IBU
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (45 min) 13.4 IBU
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (30 min) 11.2 IBU
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (20 min) 8.9 IBU
2.00 oz Williamette [5.50 %] (15 min) 4.7 IBU
2.00 oz Williamette [5.50 %] (1 min) 0.4 IBU

1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [SYeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 54.75 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Light Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
75 min Mash In Add 17.11 gal of water at 161.4 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Add 10.95 gal of water at 200.2 F 168.0 F

I am still up in the air about weather or not we're going to fly sparge or batch sparge. It will be a game time decision.

On another note, I would like to congratulate Joel (the picture was taken at a MNB brew night)from Monday Night Brewery was recently elected 4th ward dog catcher. With his political prowess, I am sure he will be moving up the ranks to city-wide dog catcher in no time!

Cheers

Little Bottling, little kegging

While I have not been brewing much in the recent past, I have been aging a few brews. The first was my melomel that I brewed earlier this year. It's been aging for three months in secondary and ended off with a FG or 1.026. It's pretty sweet, so I topped it off with a few pints of water so that the sugar would get cut a little.

I had a few tastes and I have to say, it's pretty good. I am carbonating and hope that they carbonation gives a little bite to offset the sweetness.

The second project was the bottling of the Christmas Ale. I decided on a name and made up labels using Bottle Your Brand. They were fast and the price was decent. The thing that I liked was that they have a template for your label so you don't have to use one of the generic ones that they have. Once I get a picture of one of my bottles, I'll be sure to post it up.

Finally, I am trying out Word Press as my blogging utility. I am playing around with it now to see what I think of it, but if your interested in taking a look, please feel free to check it out at cnybrew.wordpress.com. Let me know what you think.

Cheers

DARE...To stand up and say something!

I sat on this for a few months now, but I have to say something. The recent scuttlebutt about lowing the drinking age has opened the door to an important conversation about alcohol and the youth. As a homebrewer and as a relatively recent graduate of college, I have a unique perspective on this issue. I would like to take few minutes to let you know how I feel and open this up to response.



First off, what happens at 21 that makes someone so different? In this country, an “underage” person who is 20 years old is treated the same way as an underage person that is 17 years old. Both can drive and both are under the required age of 21 years. However, one of them is going to be giving free reign to buy and consume alcohol in 12 months where the other is still four years away from that important date.



It’s my opinion that we are creating young adults, that are going to be exposed to alcohol on a regular basis after their 21st birthday, that are not prepared to socially consume alcohol. These kids one day are hiding from police at house parties, binge drinking for a buzz, and treating alcohol like a drug used by junkies. The next day we open the flood gates and they can go out to a liquor store and buy any kind of booze or beer their heart desires.



Furthermore, everyone these new legal adults know people that are still under age. If a 21 year old buys alcohol for their 20 year old friend, they are serving alcohol to a minor. Besides not preparing these new adults for their professional careers, we’re setting them up to be criminals by the very system we perpetuate.



Now somewhere along the line, owning an establishment that serves alcohol became a despicable drug dealer instead of a go-getter entrepreneur. These business owners are presumed guilty if an underage person enters their establishment and buys alcohol with a fake ID. Never mind that when an underage person enters a bar under false pretense they are trespassing, it’s still the fault of the bar owner. This is just crazy. To take it a step further, if a bar is closed down due to under age alcohol violations in NYS, the next bar owner has to deal with the fines and violations as if it happened while they owned the property…but I digress.



Sadly bar owners are treated like drug dealers and thugs, while they instead create a safe, monitored alcohol consuming environment. Not like house parties, keggers, field shindigs and boat parties that are havens for alcohol related death, rape and just general tomfoolery. A bar has groups of adults, bouncers and the bar owner, that are all there with the job of keeping things in order. This compared to a house party where there is no one to limit access to alcohol or monitor someone who has had too much to drink.



Finally, I don’t think that the drinking age is the problem. To me, the demonization of alcohol is the real problem. We take kids, tell them it’s bad and horrible for 20 years, 11 months and then bang…suddenly its everywhere and it’s your right to drink as much or as little as you want. I’ve seen it at the colleges; I’ve seen it in the high schools. We’re not preparing young people to be adults. They treat alcohol as a drug where the only intent is to get fucked up. If an adult wanted to teach their child about alcohol consumption in a controlled environment, they would be labeled a horrible, irresponsible parent.



The treatment of alcohol in our current society (in regards to underage drinking) is eerily similar to the conditions that led to prohibition. Mothers fueled with righteous indignation screaming louder than the masses calling for further and further control of alcohol because it’s ruining our society and killing young people. MADD, SADD and every other ADD related group was always focused on fighting drinking and driving. The laws are now incredibly strict and police take the offense very seriously. So why are they continuing to push for further punishment of alcohol related offenses? Perhaps they should shorten things up from Against Drunk Driving to Against Drinking.



This is not a healthy balance and we are not preparing young adults for adulthood (in fact I would go so far as to call it a hypocrisy, but that’s just me). The key is not to keep them from alcohol, it’s to teach them to say no. If we can’t do that, we’re never going to be able to keep them from wanting it.



Ah, glad I got that off my chest. Cheers.





For more information, check out David Hanson Ph.D

A quick note on football

First off, sorry I have been lagging on my brewing. It's been a slow going since the fourth, but things will get better. I am getting ready to bottle my Christmas Ale and I may have found a great name for the brew. More to come on that...

But first a quick thought on football. I have been and always will be a die-hard 49ers fan. I grew up wanting to be Joe Montana. Last night I saw my niners come two yards shy of beating the 6-3 Cardinals. It sucked. But one thing I will take away from that game is that they believed that they could and should win. For the first time in a long time, they played with some heart and some dignity.

It's been a long road for the 49ers and we're far from out of the woods, but Singletary has brought some old school values to the team. I hope they make the right decision and hire him.

Now to bring this back to beer, here is a lesson to all you kids; don't do interviews on national television when you are hammered.

Now I know that Joe has a legitimate drinking problem and has since been through treatment, but it does not lessen the hilarity of this clip one bit IMO.

Cheers!

Vote 4 Beer

I know it's a bit geeky for the beer medium, but be sure to get out and vote. We as homebrewers need to become a voting block, vote for your rights and your freedoms. There were times when homebrew was illegal, we need to become a united voice to make sure that that or prohibition never happens again.

Cheers!

Breaking the top 100, CNYBrew has arrived!

Just a quick note, in case you missed it, the Culinary School Guide came out with it's 100 Best Beer and Wine Blogs and CNYBrew is on there! Ahead of Monday Night Brewery I might add.

Great props for A good Beer Blog and Ted for proper recognition. I noticed that Bearded Brewer was on there as well.

It's good stuff.

I'll be back full time here in 5 days!

Cheers

I am still alive...will be back to brewing soon

If there is anyone still out there, I just wanted to drop a line and let you know I am still alive and I will be back to brewing in a few short weeks(15 days to be exact). This is my busy season so I have been doing more drinking than brewing (not always a bad thing).

I've been fortunate to try some cool new brews. Here are some thoughts on some of the brews I've tried:

Southern Tier Imperial Pumpkin - Awful. This stuff was really way over the top. So much so that it was not enjoyable. If you think that you would enjoy drinking pumpkin pie concentrate, this is right up your alley, otherwise I would pass (however the other imperials from Southern Tier are all great, it was too bad about the pumpkin).

Lake Placid Brewing Ubu Ale - This might be my favorite beer of all time. It's a great beer with an even better cause. It's named after brew-dog "Ubu" that died. Every year a portion of the sales of Ubu are donated to the local SPCA. I am sure it's not a small donation because Ubu is definitely the flagship. The style is a doppelbock (I think anyway) and has a really great balance of hops and malt.

AB Bud Ale - I had this at a sports bar and was pleasantly surprised. I say that because there are a lot of times that I find myself in bars that have nothing by Bud, Bud Light, Labatts, L-Lite ext. the prospect of having a decent ale at a bar like this is nice. Plus getting people over the "I don't like dark beer" hump with an AB product can only help craft brewing. This brew is a very basic ale with a light malt profile, copper color and some hints of hops. Nothing to write home about, but if you were stranded at a bar with no other options, things could be worse.

There have been more, so I am going to have to update this as they come to me. I will be back in commission ASAP.

Cheers and remember to vote on November 4th.

Nameless Christmas Ale

I am still contemplating what the name of this brew is going to be, but I think that I'll get into that more when I start working on a label. Right now, the plan is to load up on bombers (it's a great excuse to stop at Galeville and grab a bomber every now and again) and make some labels for the brew. I'll bottle all or most of it in bombers (30 for 5 gallons) and put a unique label on them. The thought is that I'll wrap up with two goblets (from Syracuse China) each and give them out as Christmas gifts.

I was thinking something with Clark W. Griswold, but we'll see.

Anyway, the brewing went well, I struck at 154f for 45min, decoct for 10 min to get the mash up to 168f. I did a fly sparge for about 35min at 170f and was able to collect about 8 gallons. the recipe called for a 90 min boil, so I did that (especially since I had such a good volume).

All went well. I added the spices at 1min and mixed them all together before adding them to the wort. In the end I had a brew that weighed in at 1.090 and I was able to pitch a very healthy yeast. So much so that it was a problem. It was bubbling out of the cracks between the bucket and the lid! It's the first time I've had that happen. That only lasted about 32hrs. Now it's slowed and it's about ready for secondary. I'll do that later this week.

It was a great brew day. This is a busy time for me, so it's nice to have something that takes my mind off of work and I can focus on brewing.

Cheers!

***UPDATE***

I racked this over and when I tasted it, the anise was totally overwhelming the spice profile (note to self, no more anise EVER) so I added another teaspoon of apple pie spice and a half teaspoon of ground ginger. After a week like that, I took a taste and STILL wasn't happy so I took Ted's advice and added 2 shots of Appleton rum and another tablespoon of apple pie spice. I had a small sample of that and it was really good, complex, warming and not overpowered by any one flavor or smell. The final spice breakdown was as follows:

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp apple pie spice
2 shots of Appleton rum
a pinch of anise seed (don't add next time)

Christmas in September

For the last few years I have been wanting to brew up a Christmas Spice beer, but I have never been able to fit one in because of my job. I adjusted my schedule so that I will have some time on Sunday to brew up a nice "little" Christmas spice. There will be a name forthcoming.

Here we go:

Batch Size: 5.25 gal
Estimated OG: 1.094 SG
Estimated Color: 20.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 24.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item
12.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) 52.52 %
9.80 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 42.89 %
0.81 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) 3.54 %
0.24 lb Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) 1.05 %
1.00 oz Galena [10.00 %] (60 min) 24.5 IBU
0.26 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min)
1 Pkgs London Ale (Wyeast Labs #1028) [Starter 50Yeast-Ale]
The spices that were added are as follows: Add with 1 min left
1/2 tsp Cinnamon (ground dry)
1/4 tsp Ginger (ground dry)
1/8 tsp Nuteg (ground dry)
1/8 tsp Allspice (ground dry)
*optional - Anise

Single Infusion, Full Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
45 min Mash In Add 28.56 qt of water at 163.7 F 152.0 F
20 min Step Decoct 9.52 qt of mash and boil it 168.0 F

More to come. Cheers!

Big first harvest, now we dry the hops

About half of the hops are ready to go, so now I get to pick and dry them so that I can see how much I'm going to yield. As anyone that has been into drying herbs or anything knows that I'm going to lose 70-80% of the weight of my harvest as the hops dry so keep that in mind when you see the pictures.

This is just a gratuitous hops shot that I thought all the hop heads would enjoy.

After doing some reading, I discovered that there are two basic concepts in drying hops. One is heat based and the other is airflow based. When push comes to shove, it's up to you beyond that. the things to be sure to avoid are situations where your hops are going to be sealed up while still moist as this will lead to everything from off smells to mold. You also want to keep an eye on them because you don't want to over dry them so that they are too brittle to use.

With all that said, it's drying stuff so don't get too worked up about how you do this. Just keep an eye on them and you'll do fine.



As you can see from these pictures, I used the airflow based method where you ensure that there is a steady flow of air going over the hops to remove the moisture. To do this, you are going to need to have the hops in a warm place.

I took a screen out of one of my windows (ghetto?) and placed it over a plastic bin. I have a small fan in the bottom that is face down turned on. My thought here was that the fan air is pretty intense so by facing it down the airflow will be broken up by bouncing off the bottom before flowing over the hops. I also placed another bin over this one to keep anything from landing on the hops from in the air, but it's not a huge ordeal of you left them open.

As you can see, I spread them out so that there were no hops on top of one another and let them be for a few days. They were done within five days and I put them in zip lock bags to store them in the freezer. My total yield for this first picking was 2 ounces so I am a little disappointed, but I sill have another harvest that is about half as much as that so I should wind up with three to three and a half ounces of hops. I was thinking of using all my homegrown hops in a batch with some organic malt and call it hippy juice or something.

One quick note is that with my second set up hops I am going to try and dry them on the vine. I have heard of doing this with other plants and I thought it might work with hops too.

Cheers!

New drinking anthem

I got an email out of the blue from someone named "Drunker than Satan" with a free mp3. The song is "Drunker than Satan" by none other than Mr. Horatio Lee Jenkins, for those of you that are so inclined, he has a MySpace page.

The video helps illustrate what's going on in the song in case it's not clear enough




I know what you're thinking, 'what the hell does this have to do with anything?'. It doesn't. It was one of the rare unsolicited emails I get to my cnybrew.com email address and I decided to listen to the song. Since then, I have been humming and singing it so they must have done something right.

It's funny, but it's actually not a bad song at all. I was a big Bloodhound Gang, Southern Culture on the Skids, Reverend Horton Heat fan so this was right in line with all those classics.

Anyway, I enjoyed and thought you might too. Cheers!

How do I know when my hops are ready?

Well the short answer is like that. But what are we looking at? (click on the picture above for a good look)

First, you will note the yellow lupulin glands are spilling out onto the leaves near the stem. This is the yellow dust you see in the pictures.

Second is papery to the touch. They should be dry and papery, but not brittle.

Third, the cone should be beginning to open up. When touched, your hands should smell like hops (yea, it's awesome to rub a plant and have your hands smell like hops).

The cones will ripen at different times. There will be some that are ready before others. In some cases, homebrewers wait and let them all ripen and sacrifice a few for the ease of getting it all done at once, but I am going to pick these ones that are ready now.

Cheers!

Hops are almost ready!

While my brewing has been a little sparse this summer, the hops have been continuing to grow and in only their second year, look to be doing pretty well!

This is the cascade and fuggles vines. The fuggles on the right is not producing anything, but the cascade is looking great!!!



There are quite a few cones on there and they are coming along nicely. There are some hairs on them, but they still seem small compared to some of the hops cones I see in other pictures. I am thinking that next weekend I might pick a few and dry them because some are further along than others.



This is a nice shot of the head to head between the cascade (on the right) and the centennial. I am quite sure the centennial are ready as they are REALLY smelly and look a lot more open than the cascade. The cascade cone pictured on the right is more mature than most of the others on the vine so I am going to give it more time.




As you can see from the pictures above, the centennial hops did not do as well, I only expect to harvest a few ounces at best with this one. Hopefully next year all hops will be putting out a bigger harvest. I am pleased with this year as a whole though.

Cheers.

Great Show on The Works

So tonight I just finished watching "The Works" on The History Channel and I have to say...I'm impressed. They toured Smuttynose. and an AB Brewery, an AWESOME homebrewer setup, a can collection for the ages, and a marketing firm that works for AB.

I was really impressed with how throughly they covered the process and even got into cask ales (Stonch would be proud), how the basic keg works, and all sorts of fun.

If you missed this and can catch it on a rerun, I HIGHLY recommend it. It was pretty good.

Cheers

Breaking the Fruit Cap

Since this is my first time doing the whole "Melomel" thing, I have been documenting everything pretty extensively. This whole process requires a lot of doctoring throughout. While I know a lot of people do the fruit in the secondary, I went with the BYO article I saw and fruited in the primary. This creates a dynamic where you need to break up the fruit that collects at the top of the fermentor and allow the CO2 to escape while also introducing some O2 to the mix. I made a short YouTube video of the process:

Pretty interesting stuff right? It's actually pretty easy. I have been taking refractometer readings once or twice a day (when I break the fruit cap) and once I get to the proper gravity, I'll rack over into the secondary. So far it's moved about 10 brix since I pitched it. It's at a pace of 1 brix per day. My goal is 18brix (1.025). At this point, I just need to keep those little guys moving to get there! Cheers!