All posts by grub

brewing day

more markham madness

nov 10th saw another markham brew day. on the docket for the day were a batch of hopocalypse for josh, the winner of my yearly beer raffle for our october charity drive at work, and a jamaican export stout for eric and jan. the JES is an export stout that eric created using jamaican cane sugar.

on with the photos!

dessert on friday night. jan hit a belgian shop near his place and brought over a selection of excellent stuff. we paired this with a bottle of ommegang chocolate indulgence. delicious!

saturday morning. doughing in hopocalypse. scott looking on from outside the garage, josh in the haze of steam, and eric and i pouring in the strike water.

me stirring up the mash. in the second you can see eric enjoying a cinnamon bun, one part of the great morning snacks jenn whipped up for us.

jan enjoying some of jenn’s home made granola with some yogurt.

the tasty looking hopocalypse mash.

eric and scott talking.

jan still working on his granola.

josh taking a turn stirring up his hopocalypse mash and me checking its temperature.

at this point i believe we were raising the temperature of the hopocalypse up to mash out (168-170F). jan was helping monitor the temperature while i stirred. gotta keep stirring to insure you don’t scorch it.

josh taking a moment to check out designing great beers by ray daniels. this is the go-to book for most american and english styles.

the remains of jenn’s great mornign snacks. raspberries, cinnamon buns, and home made granola.

here we had eric working on raising the temp for the stout, with scott in the background. check out the sweet wind screen, one of two he made for us. nice thick steel with a hinge in the middle so that it can wrap around the burner and fold up for easy storage. thanks scott!

eric, horns.

here i was grabbing a sample so that i could verify we had full starch conversion. a drop of iodine will turn black if there’s still starch present. as always, we were in the clear.

another look at the wind screen. josh and eric appreciating the fine aroma of the stout mash.

collecting the hopocalypse. you can see the simcoe first wort hops that went in as soon as we started collecting.

me adding in the last of the first pot of sparge water…

…and refilling it so we’d have enough for the stout. eric is carrying the second pot of sparge water into the garage. i still need to pick up another keggle or two, so we end up doing this multi-pot thing for sparging. not a big deal though, just takes a little bit of planning.

eric was transferring the mash from the keggle to the cooler tun. in the first photo he’s grabbing a scoop of sparge water. we usually do this and use it to rinse the grains that are stuck to the sides of the keggle down to the bottom, insuring that we don’t leave anything behind. the second photo shows him scooping the last of the mash from the bottom of the keggle.

jan grabbing the third pot of sparge water.

due to pot shortage, we were using our grain bucket for vorlauf. here you can see eric directing the flow against the side of the bucket. with really dark beers, it’s quite difficult to see when the runoff is ‘clear’. if you let it run in a very thin layer over the bottom of a nice shiny pot or the side of a bright white pail it’s easy to know when things are settled and it’s time to start collecting the runoff. be sure to watch it for a minute or two, just to be sure nothing is slipping through.

having just laid out the foil on top of the mash eric was checking on things.

jan and eric working on recirculating the vorlauf.

here i was showing josh the ins and outs of promash and how handy it is.

yep, the runoff smelled just as good as the mash.

more vorlauf.

jan telling a story, probably about his recent trip to california.

…where he got us each a sweet pliny the elder hat. i was in need of a new hat, and this one is great!

eric adding the last of the vorlauf. for the stout.

mmm, looks delicious…

…but not as delicious as the sweet lunch spread jenn put together. some tasty soup and a great assortment of bread, crackers, cheese, and fruit.

a closeup on my soup and the glass of great divide titan ipa that eric picked up in buffalo. also pictured are my refractometer, designing great beers, and a pound of amarillo.

me, beer. mmmm.

me talking with scott while eric washes out the hydrometer + tube.

checking the gravity of the runoff on the stout. still looking good.

eric with his soup. jan punching.

the hopocalypse chilling and the stout boiling.

scott.

josh.

here the hopocalypse was going into the fermenter and eric was keeping an eye on it while i figured out the efficiency and whether or not we’d dillute it to reduce the gravity. i ended up adding a little water since the gravity came out a bit high. jan punching again.

eric

josh, eric, and i talking at the end of the hopocalypse transfer.

jan

“i love you man”. “no, i love you man”.

eric

eric giving the horns in approval of the collection of the stout.

the brew day done, it was time for a little guitar hero…

…and a little later some euchre and beer. here we were sampling and reviewing some tasty oscar blues ten fidy. horns all around.

a nice fire in the fireplace.




















a bunch of us being goofy and/or reviewing.

another successful brew day.

brewing day, tasting

club brew 2007

a couple months back, jayc sent us all an email indicating that he was hoping to come and visit the toronto area sometime before christmas, likely in the october/november timeframe. he wanted to see as many people as possible while he was here, so we all started coordinating our schedules. as it turned out, the weekend of october 27/28 worked for everyone. jayw was even going to be up in toronto for a halloween party on the saturday evening. so the date was set.

we quickly started planning. my first thought was obviously brewing, since it isn’t too often that jayc is around for a brew day. this would be a good time to try another “club brew”.

when we did our club seasonal in october 2005, we managed to get 5/6 of the current biergotter crew out for the brew. at that time we envisioned it being a recurring event, at least a couple times a year in celebration of the seasons. in practice, it hasn’t been that easy. with members in windsor, waterloo, and around the GTA it’s pretty tough coordinating everybody’s schedules to get together. that got even harder in the spring of 2006 when jayc moved from toronto to pennsylvania. when he visited in july 2006 he and i had a great time making a wheatwine, but it was just the two of us. his other visits hadn’t involved any brewing, so it was about time.

we all started bouncing around ideas on what to brew and eventually settled on two 10gal batches: a belgian imperial stout and another stab at a rye barleywine (loosely based on the batch jayc+jayw did in sept 2005).

we also all figured it was a good excuse for a monster tasting. we’ve all got a bunch of good stuff in our cellars, and it was a perfect opportunity to break out a few. jayc went a little over the top, bringing back a ton of beer for the tasting and also throwing in a bottle of stone 11th anniversary for each of us. jayc, piera, and owen would have our guest room, jan spoke first for the basement couch, eric for the living room couch, and rob for some floor. tim needed to get back home so he’d have to cut things short and jayw would be heading back into the city for a halloween party.

friday evening jay, piera, and owen arrived around 6pm. we watched owen run laps around the house for a while we ordered some dinner and relaxed for a while.

once we’d all settled in and had some dinner, jay and i decided to break out a couple beers. first up was his bottle of de hemel nieuw ligt grand cru 2005. this ‘barleywine with spices’ was really interesting and deceptively drinkable. then i busted out one i’ve been hanging on to for a while, bristol xxx warlock. i’d heard it was pretty hot and a little crazy, but found that it was much more drinkable than i’d heard. we both enjoyed this one and thought it did pretty well for 18.4% abv.

saturday morning began like any other. the crew began to arrive and we started weighing out the grains and surveying the quickly growing stacks of beer in my fridge. tim arrived early, and we ran over to pick up eric from the go stop. jan arrived soon after we got back. we had just started working out in the garage when rob arrived, a little sooner than all of us expected. that left only jayw missing, but we knew he wouldn’t be arriving until closer to noon.

with all the greetings, we got a bit of a late start. normally we’ve got things rolling by around 9:30am, but it was more like 10:30 before we got started. a little late, but not too big a deal. we had to stagger the batches a bit, so i figured that would delay things more, but nothing major. we were behind, but i didn’t think we were in trouble yet…

the brew day begins with grinding the grain. eric giving the horns in support.

it was kind of a dull and crappy day to brew. initially i had the burners outside, but once it started raining i had to move them in the garage.

in the background jay and rob are talking on the left. on the right, it looks like jan is trying to describe the length of something to jenn, who is shaking her head in disbelief.

the blue bins have the grain for the belgian stout and the bucket has some of the grain for the rye barleywine.

tim’s cooler tun, and a couple ounces of cascade.

rob, tim, and jay (hidden behind rob).

jan and i

eric cleaning some kegs

jan walking like an egyptian

eric and i were dumping the grain into the keggle and jan took the opportunity to start a punch fight with eric.

more of jay, rob, and tim standing around.

eric, jan, and i working on the next batch of grain.

rob, jay, and tim…more standing.

me still working, eric on a mission

our mini keggles. these little guys are 7.9gal warsteiner kegs. great for 5gal batches, more durable and easier to toss around than a regular pot.

most of the biergotter crew. rob, jan, jayc, tim, and rob. jayw hadn’t arrived yet, and i was off working on something.

jan and i discussing one of the many things that was going wrong.

rob

eric having some coffee

jan and i finishing grinding the second batch

breakfast! sausage balls, fruit, and kyoko and jenn’s banana bread.

jan likes his grain

here he was showing off with his “behind the back grain pour”.

eric checking temperatures and everyone else standing around. piera came out to check things out too.

grinding the grain

everyone waiting for the water to come up to temp

i’ve ben doubting the accuracy of our thermometer, so i had tim pick me up a new one. i was comparing the two here. there was definitely about a 4-6 degree difference between the two. about 5min later i dropped the new one on the ground…

eric doughing in

time to add the rice hulls. i’ve been told that they absorb a crazy amount of water, and that it’s also a good idea to rinse them before use. i added about a gallon of water to them and mixed them up pretty well, then pulled them out of the water and added it to the mash. most of it i could scoop out with my hand…

…and the rest i poured through the strainer.

i started cleaning out the bucket+strainer, then jan took over for me.

me working in the rice hulls.

when the biergotter crew gets together, we do it right. almost everyone grabbed a few gems from their cellar and brought it up for our evening tasting. however, we ended up with so much stuff we figured we needed to start early if we were to have any hope of getting through it all. so shortly before 11am the glasses came out. here we see jay with the first bottle of the day, lost abbey devotion. rob was in the background checking out something on the computer and eric is out of frame but showing off some of our breakfast food.

me checking on the temp of the rye barleywine mash after doughing in. we did a protein rest on this one since it was about 30% rye.

the first bottle and the glasses all lined up and waiting.

needed to bump the temperature on this one, so i got rob to help out with stirring while jan was monitoring the temperature. that left me a few minutes to finally get a cup of coffee, but not before i got my first beer.

somewhere along the way, jayw showed up. here we see jayw, eric, jayc, and tim crowded around the computer checking out something.

fast forward a little while. the belgian stout running off in the distance, breakfast carnage and several empty bottles, and i’m about to start loading up tim’s tun with the rye barleywine.


fast forward about 4 hours. all hell had broken loose. i preheated tim’s tun and loaded it up with the mash from the rye barelywine. after a successful vorlauf we managed to collect about 4gallons before the runoff slowed to a trickle. by the time we got to 6 gallons it had come to a complete halt. that’s when tim mentioned that his cooler tun “always does this” but it usually works eventually. unfortunately, this happened with the more “fussy” of the two beers. we waited for the runoff on the belgian stout to finish and then transferred the mash over to my cooler. while we waited we heated up some sparge water to a boil so that we could try and keep the temperature up once we transferred the rye barleywine over. i preheated the tun for a few minutes and we started transferring over the mash. the good news was it didn’t really seem to be stuck or clumpy, so we thought we might be in the clear. we weren’t to be so lucky.

while this was going on, jan and eric were working in the basement transferring some beer around and cleaning carboys. in the process, jan dropped one. not a big deal, and fortunately nobody got hurt. with the vorlauf nearly done i left jayw in charge of things and went inside to survey the damage. nothing major, just needed a bit of cleanup. i checked on the status of the transfers while jan cleaned up the glass. unfortunately, since we were doing 20gal, i needed 4 empty carboys and now only had three. it was still fairly early, so jenn and jan ran out to see if they could find one at a local one shop. fortunately the local vin bon who i’ve bought used carboys from in the past had an extra 6gal carboy around, and at the bargain price of only $12.

i went back outside to check on the status of the rye barleywine and found that jayw hadn’t ever stopped the vorlauf, so we’d basically run off about 4 gallons into our vorlauf pot instead of the collection pot. to make things worse, the flow had once again slowed to a trickle. this time when i put a stick down in the mash i found that the bottom half of it was now solid as a rock. the temp had dropped too far and the rye had gummed everything up.

so then we spent another hour or two in a never ending cycle of over heating our vorlauf and water in an effort to bring the temperature of the mash back up to a reasonable temperature and hopefully ‘unstick’ the rye. we’d get the vorlauf going and before we even really start collecting it’d be stuck again. so we’d loosen it up, add more hot water/wort, and repeat with the same results.

in the middle of this chaos, one of my propane tanks ran out. since it seemed nobody else was willing or able to go get a refill, i hopped in the car and ran over to my local canadian tire for a refill. when i got back i switched the stout back over to the full tank and went back to work. as i was to find out hours later when the beer was going into the carboy and we strangely had nearly 12 gallons at a lower than expected gravity, apparently when i switched burners this one never got back to a boil. two different people told me this hours later, but neither bothered to say anything at the time or turn up the heat to correct the situation…

eventually we just gave up on the rye barleywine. the 7gal we had collected up to that point had a preboil gravity of 1.077 so we just threw it on the boil. it continued to defy me, not boiling off as much as usual and resulting in 6gal at 1.081 instead of 5gal at more like 1.091.

the photos above show the aftermath of the rye debacle. my cooler with the rye barleywine mash was still very full of water, so i was scooping it out with a strainer in an effort to remove most of the water, letting it drain for a minute, then bagging it. when i got down to the bottom and it was too soupy i just took it outside and added it to the tops of my hop mounds.

jayc reviewing something. i was so busy working on the brewing all day that i missed out on about 1/2 the beers and only managed to review a couple.

fast forward again. the belgian stout was already downstairs and the rye barleywine was going into the fermenter. we ended up with a full 6gal of this one, so when i got inside i transferred it into our 7gal carboy to give it some room for krausen. it stll ended up blowing off and making a mess…

bottles opened during the brewing:

lost abbey devotion (jayc)
sierra nevada harvest ale (tim)
voodoo brewery voodoo love child (jayc)
weyerbacher twelve (jayc)
weyerbacher eleven (jayc)
mcchouffe (jan)
southern tier pumpking (tim)
half pints bulldog (rob)
half pints octoberfest (rob)
molyan’s hopsickle (jayc)
stone 10th anniversary (jayc)
half pints stir stick stout (rob)
iron hill old ale 2002 (jayc)
jayw’s rye pale ale
brooklyn black chocolate stout 07-08 (tim)

with the crowd we had, we figured we’d keep it easy for dinner and ordered pizza. you can also see our first post-brewing beer, ommegang ommegeddon.

and guitar hero. i was still in the basement pitching yeast and cleaning up and jayc and rob busted out the guitar hero. here we see jayc and eric rocking out with some coop guitar hero ii and rob looking on.

later in the night rob was playing a little solo gh2. it was either tiredness or beer that caused him to play laying down. or maybe just showing off?

another post-brewday staple: euchre! the cards were fairly kind to me today, with eric and i winning 2 of 3 against jayc and jan. you can see me, jayc, and piera here.

and jan and eric.

and me looking especially goofy for no particular reason.

rob and jayc, and more beer.

eric and i reviewing.

jan did not enjoy the flash…

the carnage of our insane evening tasting:

ommegang ommegeddon (me)
malheur curvee royale (jan)
three floyds alpha kong (eric)
three floyds fantabulous resplendence x (eric)
half pints humulus ludicrous (rob)
general lafayette 275th anniversary (jayc)
abbaye de st bon chien 2005 (me)
lost abbey judgement day (jayc)
ommegang chocolate indulgence (jayc + jan)
nogne dark horizon 1.edition (jan)
three floyds dark lord 2007 (eric) – skipped for another day
girardin 1882 framboise (jan)

festivals

volo cask days 2007

another october brings the annual volo cask days festival. although there are other festivals through the year, this is the only one that i always consider a “must see”. there’s just no topping the array of excellent cask beer that ralph brings together for this event. there’s always some standard offerings, but many of the local brewers put together special edition and one-off casks for the event that you just can’t find elsewhere.

we were fortunate enough to be invited to brew beer for last year’s event, and with the success there we were happy to be invited back this year.

our primary offering this time around was a new take on hopocalypse, last year’s favourite. we brewed up the new version, dubbed hopocalypse redux.

i decided to whip something up using a bunch of my cascade hops, and settled upon an american imperial porter that i dubbed casc imperial porter. you can see the brew day blog for more details.

finally, like last year we also brought in something on tap. this time out it was our monk’s elixer belgian strong dark ale. this one was brewed back in may so it would have some time to mellow out before the fest.

all three beers were very well received and we had a great time hanging out and talking with everybody all weekend.

some additional links to discussion of the event:

bartowel thread
flickr group
steven beaumont blog post
toronto star article

on with the photos!

carl setting up. eric and i arrived early to help with setup. carl was trying to match up all his signs with the casks (which weren’t all marked). some taste testing solved any ambiguity though.

labeling the beers. eric helping with the signs.

the line starts to form. a few early arrivals, eager to have some breakfast and get things rolling.

breakfast buffet. the breakfast spread. tons of excellent food. i was expecting a simple continental breakfast and got a fine mix of hot stuff, continental, and other great food.

the first 6: wind & sail dark ale (barley days), hopburn ale (camerons), hop bomb (black oak), bourbon barreled 2005 nutcracker porter (black oak), west coast ipa (church key), and hop bomb “STFU” pale ale (black oak).

7 more: hop head ipa (county durham), fuller’s esb (fullers), blak kat stout (county durham), taste of ontario harvest ale (f&m), london pride (fullers), george’s herbal mild (george eagleson), and pumpkin ale (great lakes).

another 5: mill race mild (grand river), plowman’s ale (grand river), best bitter special (granite), keefe oak chip steeped irish stout (granite), and devil’s pale ale (great lakes).

6 more: ipa (mill street), stewart’s organic ale (heritage), traditional english dark ale with vanilla beans (hockley), maclean’s pale ale dry hopped (macleans), fog on the tyne (magnotta), and left hook barley wine (nickel brook).

and 7: jackson’s best bitter (st andre), peppermint stout (trafalgar), perry’s atomic pumpkin ale (scotch irish), arkell best bitter (wellington), grains of wrath (church key), and special pale ale dry hopped (wellington>).

me

breakfast with the brewers

more breakfast

me, beer

mike and me. my father in law, usually a coors light man, is never afraid to try new beer. one of these days i’ll bring him away from the dark side.

mike, me, kathy. talking with my inlaws.

cheers!

mike, jenn, me, kathy. my wife and her mom don’t even drink beer, but came out to show their support. jenn ended up loving the monk’s elixer and has requested that i keep it regularly on tap at home.

jan. our most junior biergotter member was proud to have helped brew our beers and couldn’t get enough of the monk’s elixer either.

jan and me

beer talk. so many people stopped to talk and compliment us on our beer. it’s really a thrill to take part in something like this and have so many people share in what we make.

food. as always with volo, the food was top notch. mike was checking things out and giving his approval.

hopocalypse redux! this hazy beast had almost 50% more malt than last year, and more than 50% more hops. double dry hopped for even more hop intensity. not quite as balanced as last year, but that wasn’t the idea – we wanted this one to be a little over the top. i could easily pick it out in a crowd just from the colour and the intense haze all the hops left.

crowd shot

my lovely wife and i

homebrew station. the first pin of hopocalypse redux was gone in about 2 hours. in session 2 we brought out the casc imperial porter – a big american porter featuring a whole bunch of my homegrown cascade hops. session 3 got the tail end of the porter and a fresh pin of hopocalypse redux. took less than an hour on sunday for the porter to run out, and about two hours for the second pin of redux to go dry.

not seen in the picture was our monk’s elixer belgian strong dark ale that was on tap and ran out around 9pm on saturday.

robert hughey’s totally bitter ale was pouring beside us all weekend.

jan and me

jan

the bar

cheese. saturday evening snacks.

food

saturday night crowd. eric in the middle.

more saturday night crowd

need more ice! sunday the temps soared to a surprising 79F/26C – unheard of for this time of year. ralph had to grab many bags of ice to keep the casks at a reasonable temperature. worked out pretty well.

sunday morning

getting hot

sunday crowd

more sunday crowd

eric, me, jan. the worn and weary biergotter crew, late on sunday afternoon. all three of us spent the whole weekend at volo, sharing lots of great beer, great conversation, and good times. too bad the whole crew couldn’t have been there!

update: much like last year, ralph had ballots for attendees to vote for their favourite beer and favourite beer name. once again, biergotter has come out on top, winning “Favourite Cask” for hopocalypse redux. thanks to everyone who voted for us! congrats also to magnotta who won “Favourite Name” for their Fog on the Tyne.

in addition, it’s our pleasure to have contributed all the proceeds from our beer towards the $2707.92 that was raised for the Sick Kids Foundation. thanks to everybody who contributed!

brewing day

solo^2

as our most junior member (both in age and brewing experience) jan always has many questions on brew day. i’m always happy to take time to answer questions, but brew days can be pretty busy making this difficult. i’m usually the most experienced brewer on hand, and as a result i’m usually running the show and busy coordinating everything. throw in the usual few guests on hand and things can get a little crazy…

so jan asked me about doing a brew day, just the two of us, so that he could ask as many questions as he wanted and get more familiar with all aspects of the process. i suggested an even better idea: a solo brew day. the recipe and the entire brewing process would be his responsibility, with me there to answer questions along the way and point him in the right direction if he got off track. brewing is one of those things where you can read as many books as you like, watch brew days, and ask lots of questions, but you never really get into it until you try to brew. jan agreed and we picked a date.

his first suggestion was to brew an orval clone. it’s one of his favourite brews, so he was pretty excited about that idea. i loaned him my copy of brew like a monk to learn more about the trappist brews. the book also contains an award winning orval clone recipe called laVal Abbey Special by Dan Morey. this recipe uses white labs wlp510 and is rumored to be the primary fermentation strain direct from the brewery. unfortunately, this yeast is part of the “platinum strain” series and only available in november+december. knowing that jan wanted to get as close to the original, i suggested that he wait until we can get this strain before attempting the orval clone. he agreed, and we shelved that idea.

once orval was off the table, we started talking about other ideas. jan immediately came up with the idea for the “black kate moss”, inspired by a kanye west song. he pictured something fairly big and malty, with lots of chocolate, and maybe something fruity and sweet like port involved. i suggested that he could brew a sweeter porter and age it in secondary with some cocoa nibs and oak cubes soaked in port. maybe some oats for that silky smooth mouthfeel and lots of head retention. jan came up with a pretty solid recipe, and after a little tweaking the PORTer-OHHH (aka) black kate moss was born.

eric, not wanting to be left out, also volunteered to do a solo brew of his own. he’s been tossing around a few recipe ideas for a while and decided to go with his Breakfast Brown Ale, an imperial brown ale that’ll get coffee and cocoa nibs in secondary. to add a little more excitement, he’s going to age a gallon on straight oak cubes and another gallon on bourbon soaked oak cubes.

i spent most of the day sitting around, occasionally reminding the boys when they had something they should be doing, and answering questions along the way. a pretty easy brew day for me!

and now for some photos!

the grain for both batches: jan’s porter on the left and eric’s brown on the right.

brown ale after crushing.

ths was about the most work i did all day, helping the boys get their grain crushed. here i’m talking with jan while we load his into the mill.

jan working on something on the brew table and me standing around.

eric hitting the food.

more of me standing around.

jan working on a chocolate croissant and discussing the crush of his grain.

our solo brewers for the day: eric in the foreground and jan in back.

mmmmm, croissants.

more shots of eric’s grain waiting for dough in.

and jan’s too.

jan hadn’t yet read the commentary i added to a previous brewday writeup. we got a good laugh out of it.

eric checking on their strike water. since they were both aiming for the same sac rest temp and had basically the same dough in temp they just did one big batch of water and split it between them.

this temperature checking stuff is hard work. just look at him slaving over that keggle.

more standing around, and jan posing in the background.

fast forward a couple hours. both beers have been sparged and are approaching a boil. jan’s porter in the background and eric’s brown in the foreground, with our scum skimming pot in front. you can also see my high tech wind screen in action.

jan skimming and looking angry. apparently he doesn’t like skimming. his beer will though!

more hard manual labour for me. here i was weighing out some hops.

eric and i discussing the hopping for his recipe and running some numbers in promash.

jan keeping an eye on things.

eric doing one of his hop additions.

jan also talking hops.

i think this was the part where i said “hey jan, do you have the 2oz cascade addition that you were supposed to add 5 minutes ago ready?” he didn’t. he also couldn’t find the cascades in the freezer (the ink on the bag is fairly worn), so i had to go find them. as it turned out, the 2.3oz left in the bag was just the right amount for his now 45min addition to give the same IBUs as 2oz would have at 60min.

on to some tasting!

jan working on reviewing something. we had a bunch of great stuff on hand: sierra nevada 2007 harvest ale, three floyds brian boru old irish red, surlyfest (which jenn brought back from a recent trip to MN), and stone 2007 old guardian.

jan was clearly excited about something…

…and i think it was football. this is just after he ran out to his car to put on his jersey. try not to look directly at it.

here he is adding 1oz of my homegrown cascade hops.

mmmm. looks delicious.

jan showing off the 2007 old guardian in my old guardian glass. he was pretty excited about it.

he was pretty excited adding his liberty hops too.

time for dinner, featuring a growler of stone arrogant bastard that jan picked up for me on a recent stop at consumer’s beverage in buffalo. thanks jan!

jan and eric brought over some assorted cheese, so jenn put together this spread to go with dinner.

jenn’s spagetti and meatballs. delicious!

brewing day

pumpkin and the secret october project continued

another brew day in markham. on deck saturday was a 10gal batch of pumpkin ale for eric and jan and a 5gal batch for the secret october project.

for the 5gal batch, i debated between a few options, eventually settling on a porter loosly based on our ed fitz clone and a gonzo imperial porter clone that i have been wanting to brew. the kicker was using almost a half pound of my homegrown cascades for the flameout and dry hop additions. because of the use of cascade and the fact it’ll be served on cask, i decided to call this one casc imperial porter.

eric was running late, so while waiting for him to arrive i got the strike water on for the porter and doughed in.

i gave eric some suggestions from radical brewing and our past experience and he roasted up the pumpkin before coming to the brew day. once he arrived we quickly threw together the rest of the grain bill and mashed in. while that was going we discussed hopping and finalized the recipe. pumpkin ale was born.

guests in attendance for today’s brew were kyoko and chris, a great couple who are nice enough to let eric crash in their basement while he looks for a new apartment.

didn’t take too many photos this time around, and they’re almost all taken at the start of the brew day. ah well, this shit doesn’t change much day to day.

morning snacks. muffins, croissants, and fruit. coffee was present but not pictured. try to ignore the wort-stained tabletop.

early on the brew day. chris enjoying a cup of coffee, me tending to the porter mash, eric cleaning a keg, and jan looking on.

everybody crowding around the porter mash. i can’t remember if i was bumping up our mash temperature or heading for mashout here. from left to right we have chris, a sliver of eric’s head, jan, kyoko and me stirring the mash.

more of the same.

eric working on his keg again. go brew monkey!

our most junior member (in age and experience) and our two guests for the day listening attentively as i explained the mashing process. you can also see my cheapo wind screen. ain’t pretty, but it does the trick.

mmmmm, porter. that shit just looks damn sexy.

me checking the temperature.

i have no idea what eric and jan were discussing in these next ones, so lets just make something up.

eric: stop staring at my junk!

jan: you know you like it.

eric: you better stop or i’m gonna lay the SMACKDOWN!

jan: ok, i’m sorry man. i just love you.

eric: that’s ok, lets hug and make up.

jan: phew, that was close. if only he knew my secret burning desires.

jan: you won’t give away my secret, right?

the remains of my lunch. tasty meatloaf sandwich with cheddar and bacon as well as some fritos bbq hoops.

pumpkin ale going into the carboys. yeah, we didn’t do a great job on photos this time, completely missing anything to do with the pumpkin ale and only showing the beginning of the porter. ah well, sometimes you just get into the brewing and forget the rest of it.

misc

hops 2007

now that the 2007 hop season has wrapped up, i’ve got a series of photos from this year’s crop. you might want to check out my writeup on last year’s crop for comparison.

may 20th/2007

the hops were already up to about the maximum height they reached last year – and they weren’t even in the ground yet at this time last year!

the first four lines on the left are cascade, the other four are centennial. each line has 1 or 2 bines going up it. last year i gave them about 10′ height to grow. this year i increased it to about 20′ and tried to spread them out a bit. next year i’m thinking of splitting them and moving the centennial down on the other side of the air conditioner.

everything about this year’s crop is bigger than last year. even the leaves are huge, bigger than my hand.

the vines are much thicker and stronger too. last year they were about the size of the twine, this year they’re much larger.

the vines with me shown for scale. i’m 6’2, and the top of the hops are out of my reach.

august 16th/2007

a friend emailed me to ask how my crop was doing, since his first year rhizomes were tiny and had only a cone or two. as you can see, mine are growing like mad, having reached the 20′ mark long ago and full of cones. it’s going to be harvest time soon!

cascade in the distance, centennial closer. as with last year, the centennial isn’t as big as the cascade and didn’t have quite as many cones. all my plants (from 4 rhizomes) are much larger than last year.

closer shot of the centennial…

and the cascade. the cascades are going nuts. going to be a good harvest.

sept 3rd/2007

harvest day!

once again, thanks go to jason for taking some of these photos.

a look up at the cascade bines.

another, showing a bit more of them.

cascades on the left, centennial on the right.

i attached this piece of wood to the wall, then put hooks along it and i attached twine to the hooks. to harvest, we just unhooked the twine and brought the hops down to ground level. here eric has just cut down the last centennial bine and you can sort of see all the bines laying on the ground.

jenn harvesting the centennials.

eric pretending to eat the hops. i actually did eat one. kind of an interesting experience. they definitely taste like hops, but they have a crazy spicy character, almost like a hot pepper. they smell awesome too.

the results. cascade on the left, centennial on the right. this is tons more than i got last year.

sept 14/2007

after about 10 days on my drying racks i bagged everything up and weighed it. final tally: 9.6oz cascade and 3oz centennial. huge increase over the 0.5oz total that i got last year.

cascade. two 4oz bags and a 1.6oz bag.

centennial. one 3oz bag.

can’t wait to see next year’s crop!

brewing day, tasting

(not so) secret october project v2.0

soon after the success of last year’s volo cask days, eric and i started planning and plotting for our return this year. from the start we knew that even though hopocalypse was a huge success and crowd favourite, we didn’t quite want to repeat it. instead we chose to use it as the inspiration for something new. as soon as eric suggested making it bigger, my first thought was of ‘apocalypse now’. when apocalypse now was re-released a few years back, it came with an extra hour of footage, bigger and longer than before. right away we knew it’d be an imperial ipa and at least 50% bigger than before.

hopocalypse redux was born.

the grain bill stayed mostly the same, but increased from 23# total to 30.5# total. the hops took a big jump too, from 12.25oz up to a staggering 19oz. double dry hopped. up from 6% to 10% ABV, and from 65 to 93IBU.

jan, eric, and i were on hand for the brewing, with jason joining us to see things in action. i actually met jason at last year’s cask days and spent a while talking with him about homebrewing and beer in general. he’s been trying to make it out for a brew day ever since, and finally made it out.

this was one badass beer to brew, and we hope it’ll be at least as exciting as last year. if not? who cares, i know we’ll like it.

and this isn’t all we have in store for this year’s cask days. stay tuned for more.

on with the photos. as a bonus, we’ve got a whole bunch of photos taken by jason added in with the usual ones. he did a good job of showing some of the finer details. thanks jason!

several shots of my motorized barleycrusher.

the cooler and manifold.

strike water coming up to temp. cheapo 5gal pot on the left, and one of my two 7.9gal keggles. these things are pretty sweet, and damn near indestructable.

the grist for today’s beer, waiting for water.

the completed chiller that we worked on last week. you can see how i wove copper wire up the sides to make it good and solid, and added a couple on the neck too. also have the hose hookups, making it easy to disassemble and store.

the manifold fitted in the cooler. there’s a scrap piece of copper under the left hand end to keep it mostly level. the right hand end has a T that fits fairly snug into the bulkhead. just in case, i’ve also got a little piece of copper on the end in case it happens to slide out. it never has, but better safe than sorry.

there’s me checking the water temp.

jason was curious how we store and propagate yeast, so i showed him my stir plate that i use when making starters and a big old slug of yeast slurry from a couple recent batches. yeah, that’s nearly a half gallon of thick slurry. the last blurry one is a vial of white labs wlp007 dry english ale.

back to the action. strike water up to temp, eric and i were doing the infusion. two tricks to observe here. first, we’re not using the handles on the keg to hold it. pouring over the lip on them is a big pain in the ass, and it tends to splash all over the place. scalding hot water just isn’t any fun when it hits your legs/feet. so we just hold the top ring and pour through one of the handle holes. still splashes a little, but much easier to work with.

the second thing to note is that i’m not holding the bottom of the keg. the ring on the bottom gets hot enough to burn right through a pair of oven mits nearly instantly (eric and i know from experience). so one day i grabbed my hammer off the work bench and used that. just hook it under the end and it allows you to tip the keg up without cooking your hand off. i suppose any other hook-like object would work.

eric jumping to grab the mash paddle and stir things in. it’s crazy how much air is trapped in the grain, and it stars bubbling like mad when you dump in the water. as you can see, we had this one pretty darn close to the top. we needed to get it mixed and didn’t want to lose any of our grain.

this mash paddle is pretty kickass for getting things mixed together and breaking up dough balls. it’s pretty stiff to move at first, but the strong oak paddle is up to the challenge.

an hour later, we were bringing things up to mash out (168-170F). i was keeping things moving while jan checked the temp.

is it too early for a beer? of course not! jason brought out a growler of grand river plowman’s ale. this shit is damn good. they’ve definitely tweaked the recipe a little since my first sampling and it’s now much more balanced (but still pleasantly hop-forward). great beer.

when i’m bumping the temperature of the mash up like this, it’s really important not to go too crazy with the temperature of the burner and also to keep the mash moving so that it doesn’t start to burn. very important, especially with high BTU jet burners.

the plowman’s ale and an assortment of morning snacks.

here’s me and my lovely wife jenn. she’s the keeper of the snacks and makes sure we’re fed and hydrated on brew days.

almost there…only a couple more degrees…

here’s me loading up the tun.

i think this is where eric was asking “are you sure it’s all going to fit in there?”. this was the maiden voyage of our cooler tun, and although i was fairly sure it was the same size as jay’s, i wasn’t completely certain. turned out that it has the exact same capacity (30# of grain and 1.5qt/lb of water). actually, we had 30.5# in there. just need to get the runoff going a little before you can fit that last little bit of grain in…

jan enjoying a snack.

more filling…

just in case we didn’t have enough shots of me filling the tun…

yeah, that looks like we’re pushing maximum capacity.

nobody gets out of the brewmonkey chores, not even me. once i had emptied the mash into the cooler i needed to wash up the keg so we could start collection.

everyone relaxing and enjoying a beer during vorlauf.

initial runoff.

eric prepping the foil. lay a piece on top of the grain bed, cut some slots in it, and you can pour your sparge water on top without worrying about disturbing the grain bed or creating channels.

eric cutting the slots in the foil.

sparging.

about half way through the collection.

a quick and rough check on the gravity of the runoff. we usually keep going until we hit volume or the gravity drops too low (which rarely happens). as for “too low”, we usually want to stop the runoff before it falls below 1.010. at sparge temperatures, i know that 1.000 is comfortably above that, so it’s generally what i watch for.

eric skimming the scum, aka hot break. this stuff isn’t desireable to have in the beer, and by skimming it off you also avoid boil overs. double bonus!

hopocalypse is all about amarillo. here you see most of a 1# bag of whole amarillo from the wonderful freshops. bonus that it was on sale the last time i hit adventures in homebrewing.

next brew for the day, stone 07.07.07 vertical epic. this one is definitely built to last, but unlike some previous offerings i didn’t find that it was all that great fresh. i can see it growing into an excellent beer, but it’s a little spicy and hot right now.

after finishing the sparge, we drain off any liquid left in the cooler and push on it to squeeze out as much of the liquid as possible. makes it a little lighter when i dispose of it.

the new chiller in the kettle. fits perfectly!

mmmm, hops.

here’s me hooking up the chiller to the hose. i finally found a use for the lid to the cheapo aluminum lid that came with my turkey frier burner. i cut a notch in the side so that it’ll fit around the chiller and cover the top nicely. no more taping on plastic wrap!

to stop the whole hops from clogging up the racking cane, just sanitize a hop bag and throw it over the end. make sure it’s tied off pretty well though, so it doesn’t fill up through the top.

promash, my refractometer, and my empty volo cask days 2006 glass.

desipte the hop bag, we had a hell of a time trying to siphon the beer. the 2oz whole plus 10oz pellet really caused havoc. after a while we resorted to pouring the wort through a strainer to pull out most of the hop material. it was still tough to siphon, but this definitely helped. we ended up a little low on volume – it’s crazy how much they absorb.

sanitizing the stone before oxygenating.

iodphor, our sanitizer of choice. no rinse, and works great.

the view in the fridge. old ale and pale ale on tap, a couple growlers of yeast, and a bunch of other great beer.

airlock filled with canadian club whiskey. i don’t drink the stuff, so this is a good use for it.

eric and jan with beer.

in addition to this being a brew day, it was also a celebration of my birthday (sept 4th). once the brewing wrapped up we relaxed with a few choice beverages and a feast of salmon and king crab legs.

i mentioned this last week (when jan brought up several girardin beers), but need to mention it again. he returned from belgium with a ton of great beer, and this week was no exception: westvleteren blonde, 8, and 12. i paired this with the full rochefort line (6, 8, and 10) as well as our rochefort 10 clone from 2005. one heck of a great way to celebrate my birthday.

all of us putting up the horns.

the lineup for the evening tasting. not too often you get to sample the full lineup from two trappist breweries, especially not two as fine as these.

equipment, tasting

new gear in markham

when we setup our brewing operations at my place in markham, most of the equipment came from my apartment-bound biergotter bretheren, mostly DrJay. when a new job brought him down to philly he left most of it here since they were still in an apartment. when they bought a house earlier this year, i knew jay would be setting up the first US biergotter contingent. that means it’s time to build some new gear!

the first order of business was a new chiller. we’d been unhappy with the old 25′ chiller for doing 10gal batches, so were already interested in going up to 50′.

next up, we needed to replace jay’s cooler tun. i caught a sale at walmart and grabbed a pair of 48qt coolers. picked up the copper for the manifolds and got everything cut to size the other night, so the only thing left to do was cut the slots in it.

there’s me with my sweet tee from homebrewtees.com. chris (oxmasterscream on beer advocate) is a fellow homebrewer and puts these together on the side. check them out!

you can see a little better in this photo, but i was trying to move the stupid pipe bender. sure, these things are great for making sure you don’t kink the soft copper when you’re bending it, but goddamn are they a pain in the ass. put even a slight bend and they start binding up and barely move. after the first two bends we gave up, then spent the next 20min trying to pull the damn thing off. more time was spent trying to remove it than bending the whole coil (which went flawlessly around a corny). more trouble than they’re worth.

here i was showing eric how to use the dremel to cut slots in our copper manifold for the coolers. not much to see really.

now we have eric working on the manifold in the background, and jan working on a beverage. can’t quite remember what it was at this point.

eric hard at work.

i managed to get a metal sliver, but it was easily removed.

the first two bends on the new 50′ chiller.

another shot, also showing the associated hose, two coolers and the second manifold.

the chiller, nearly done. i attached a few pieces of twine to temporarily hold things together and later switched to some copper wire.

eric posing with the new hardware. check out my next entry for some shots of the completed chiller in action.

another shot of the coolers + manifold.

progress on the manifold.

one half done, onto the other.

had some tasty oskar blues gordon and were just about to open a heavyweight lunacy. both were quite tasty.

jan took over and finished the second half of the manifold.

on to dinner and some sampling. tasty steak sandwiches (with cheese and carmelized onions), salad, deviled eggs, and fresh tomatoes from our garden. i’m pretty sure we were drinking the weihenstephan 1809 berliner weiss.

jan had recently returned from a trip to belgium and brought back a ton of excellent beer. here i was opening the first of three bottles from girardin, their 1882 faro. later we also had the 1882 gueuze white label (filtered) and the 1882 kriek. after that we moved on to a bottle of bar harbor cadillac mtn stout. great stuff!

a successful day working on some equipment, great dinner, and some excellent beers. does it get any better?

brewing day

belgian brewing 2

our last brew day here in markham included a belgian pale. basically, that batch was just a big starter for today’s beers: a belgian strong dark ale and a tripel. i chose white labs wlp530 abbey ale yeast (the one used by westmalle, achel, and westvleteren) for this batch, loosly aiming for something in the neighbourhood of westy 12.

scott came out to join us for this brew day. as a bonus, he lives right around the corner from grand river brewing and was able to grab the 2nd and 3rd growler that they filled on their first day in service. i actually enjoyed the galt knife old style lager a little more than the ploughman’s ale, which is saying something since i’m usually an ale man. the ale was also quite good, but i felt the bittering was just a little out of balance (something they’ve agreed with and scaled back just a little since then). this was quite a treat. unfortunately, my laptop crashed before i could save the reviews, so i still need to resample them.

back when we brewed up our imperial stout we pulled off an extra couple gallons at the end and boiled the hell out of it before adding a quart back into the main wort. we pulled off the first gallon or so for the strong dark, added our demerara sugar, and boiled the snot out of it while the sparge finished. this was added back into the main wort before it came up to a boil.

on with the photos!

there’s me loading up the barleycrusher. i love this thing.

strike water coming up to temp.

eric stirring up the mash for the strong dark and scott and i looking on.

gotta get out all the lumps. nobody likes a lumpy mash.

me verifying the temperature. needed a little bump to hit our strike temp.

the magic, er, monk’s elixer. gallon or so of first runnings along with 2.2lbs of demerara.

we boiled the heck out of it until it had reduced by about half and then added it back into the main boil. mmm, delicious!

the rest of the belgian strong dark. love that colour.

hmmm, is eric happy or did he just get caught doing something wrong?

the elixer after boiling.

and added back into the main wort. crazy how much shit there was floating around in there.

good strong boil going on the strong dark. this one kept getting angry with us, but we managed not to have any boilovers.

the tripel on its way to a boil. tons of stuff floating in this one too. i think it’s from the belgian pilsner malt, since that was the only new thing for the day.

scott flipping through brew like a monk, our bible for the day.

the chaos that is my garage. this was towards the end of the brew day, with most of the gear piled up under the brew table on the left. eric and i looking for something to do while the tripel was cooling.

jenn, best brew wife ever! which reminds me, we somehow managed to forget to take a photo of our fine brewday lunch. doh!

three phases of beerdom. madness, happiness, and quiet contemplation. or maybe just three random photos of me.

eric was on a mission, killing flies in the garage. seems kind of futile killing bugs in the outdoors…

the tripel going into the fermenters, with eric and i keeping an eye on things.

another successful brew day, and two damn fine brews.

festivals

GCHC 2007

each year the Canadian Amateur Brewers Association holds several homebrewing competitions, including the Great Canadian Homebrew Conference and Competition 2007. the biergotter crew entered 3 beers in this competition and were rewarded with medals in 2 of the 3 categories.

our first entry was the “eised” version of the single malt scotch ale [brew day report]. feedback on it was positive, and although it didn’t win a medal it actually scored higher than our bronze medal beer.

the first award went to our wheat wine [brew day report]. this beer took the bronze medal for 3rd place in the barleywine category. sweet!

the second award went to our Imperial Stout [brew day report]. this one stole the category, earning a gold medal for its first place finish. excellent!

i also got scoring sheets for all three beers. for reference, here’s the BJCP scoring guide:
world class (45-50): world class beer. great character and now flaws.
excellent (38-44): exceptionally exemplifies style. needs little or no attention.
very good (30-37): exemplifies style well. requires some fine tuning.
good (21-29): generally within style parameters but requires attention.
fair (14-20): does not exemplify style and/or has several major flaws.
problem (0-13): problematic. recipe or brewing technique needs attention.

eised smoked scotch ale (22B – other smoked beer)
form 1:
aroma: 9/12. slightly smokey aroma and good malt
appearance: 3/3. nice colour and head.
flavour: 14/20. smoke flavour up front, mellows out to malt sweetness.
mouthfeel: 3/5. sweetness and carbonation balance each other well
overall impression: 8/10. not assertively smokey which makes for a nice drinking beer. this is a well made beer.
total: 37/50

form 2:
aroma: 9/12. subtle smoke coming through, can still pick up malt.
appearance: 2/3. fine.
flavour: 14/20. subtle smokiness. a little sweet for a scotch ale, but nice never the less.
mouthfeel: 4/5. nice mouth feel. smoke doesn’t burn me!
overall impression: 7/10. more smoke aroma would have been nice, but nice balance.
total: 36/50

mini-wheat wine (19C – american barley wine). bronze medal winner in barley wine class.
form 1:
aroma: 9/12. nice spicy nose. malt predominates.
appearance: 3/3. ok.
flavour: 13/20. good malty flavour. hoppiness comes through, especially in the aftertaste.
mouthfeel: 3/5. good carbonation and syrupy mouthfeel. warming alcohol.
overall impression: 6/10. nice beer. well made. only fault is syrupy body.
total: 34/50

form 2:
aroma: 10/12. good maltiness. slightly spicy. ok for style.
appearance: 3/3. colour ok for style. head retention low. colour ok.
flavour: 12/20. syrupy taste very slight, nice bitter aftertaste.
mouthfeel: 3/5. slightly lighter body than style calls for.
overall impression: 7/10. nice entry with only minor flaws.
total: 35/50

magic elixer imperial stout (13F – russian imperial stout). gold medal winner in stout class.
form 1:
aroma: 9/12. alcoholic. high alcohols. rich and complex.
appearance: 2/3. dark and dark head, although not much head.
flavour: 15/20. complex malts. chocolatey, prunes, coffee, warming at the end.
mouthfeel: 4/5. has good body, creamy.
overall impression: 8/10. a lovely beer. can i have more?!
total: 38/50

form 2:
aroma: 9/12. slightly burnt aroma – ok for style. slight fruitiness also present.
appearance: 3/3. deep tan head. low retention.
flavour: 14/20. rich. malty, intense burnt flavour on finish. slight coffee-like taste.
mouthfeel: 4/5. full bodied (on low end) but to style.
overall impression: 7/10. good beer, very enjoyable. no major flaws. could drink lots of this.
total: 37/50

pretty darn good for our first competition.

the medals.

the guy from great lakes brewery talking about their orange peel ale and devil’s pale ale. he was nice enough to fill in when the scheduled speaker bailed at the last minute. unfortunately, i have forgotten his name…

a few shots of the crowd. first one is taken down the table from where i was sitting. other photos from the same location showing the rest of the room.

kevin helping john from munro’s meadery get setup. he had 6 different meads for us to sample. i think the raspberry was my favourite, but they were all nice.

john again. i actually sat across from him during the dinner and enjoyed talking with him. really nice guy. i hope to get down and check out the meadery at some point in the future.

the bronze!

the gold!

biergotter biotch!!!