All posts by grub

tasting

saison tasting

jan’s summer beer tasting, may 26, 2007.

initially this was planned as a saison tasting, but some other (excellent!) beers slipped into the mix. a beautiful day on the patio, with great beer, great food, and great friends.

first beer of the day: fantome saison hiver. in the background left, barely visible in a white shirt is craig (aka crwills), then jeff (aka tupalev) in the green+white shirt, and paul (aka blankboy) on the right in the black shirt. middle ground we have alexa (aka Lexx) in the light blue shirt and jan (aka biegaman) in the foreground in dark blue.

slightly better shot of craig in the distance, eric (aka Viggo) in blue, and me (aka grub) in the black. still missing from a photo (and acting as camerawoman) is jenn.

jan still admiring the hiver.

here you can see more of the lovely setting for this tasting. nice covered patio in jan’s back yard. perfect place for a saison tasting.

craig

this is a shot of the fridge fairly early in the tasting. tons of great beer. think we’ll get through them all? we’ll definitely try.

paul enjoying the cheese tray and jan working on a review. tons of great snacks were available in addition to the great beer.

jenn’s finger, eric and i talking about something, and jeff’s ass. and bugles!

even more finger, and me smiling for the camera.

i think by this point we were on to the jolly pumpkin madrugada obscura, dark dawn stout. quite an interesting and enjoyable beer. eric on pouring duty.

eric trying to get all fancy on us, posing for the camera.

i think this was the only place we got a picture that included jenn, since she spent the day rockin’ the camera.

here we have jan trying to shoot the cork out of a bottle. he wanted to send it flying over the pool, but wasn’t quite sure how to do it. eric tried demonstrating how to do it properly, but even jan knew he looked a little ridiculous.

on to another bottle. jan is being a good host and pouring for everyone.

hey, haven’t we seen this one before? i don’t think it worked the first time…

this looks more like the eric i know.

jan also did alot of reading from the bottle labels, telling us all about whatever we were going to drink.

those snacks came in handy with all that beer. here we also see jan’s dad in the background. he was hanging out, talking and sampling beer with us for a while. big thanks to jan and his folks for hosting us (and helping cook the excellent dinner!)

me again.

jan.

i think at this point jan was just finishing the barley island bourbon barrel aged oatmeal stout and jeff was starting to pour the church-key catch her in the rye.

the empties table when the first half of the crew left. we lost jeff, paul, and craig early. that’s ok, more beer for the rest of us!

dessert! jenn baked brownies, which we had along with some ice cream.

most of the remaining crew as the day wore on. we had many great laughs along with all the great food and beer.

one of the cats decided to clean up somebody’s dinner place after they left it sitting out. eric got a good laugh out of it.

are the ducks fighting or making out? you decide.

our excellent host late in the day.

cork carnage.

the table when jenn and i left. already full, with a couple more left.

the final lineup (i think in the order they were drank):

an excellent tasting. thanks to jan for organizing and to everyone who contributed.

brewing day

first markham brew day 2007

after taking a few months off, the first markham brew day of 2007 happened last weekend. on deck for the day was a big batch of hopocalypse, so eric and i could finally each have a keg to enjoy, and a belgian pale ale. the belgian pale would be something we’d never tried, and would give us a yeast cake to use on a bigger belgian beer. initial talk was to do a quad/belgian strong dark ale, but now it looks like we might split it and do this and a tripel. stay tuned for news on that…

start of the brew day. eric is cleaning up some gear before we get going.

there’s me, keeping the barley crusher going and tearing up the grain. have i mentioned how much this thing kicks ass?

warming up the strike water. small pot for the 5gal belgian pale, larger pot for the ipa.

still working on the ipa grain.

the grain bill for the belgian pale.

there’s eric doughing in the hopocalypse.

first beer of the day, moyland’s hopsickle imperial ale. “triple hoppy”.

both batches sparging. hopocalypse in the red cooler and the belgian pale in the bucket.

lunch is served. bbq burgers with cheddar and/or blue.

but before lunch i had to tend to the sparge.

burgers and doritos. mmmmmmm. jenn always hooks us up with a great lunch. we also had some tasty chocolate chip banana nut muffins early in the day.

eric likes his burger.

me too!

the belgian pale boiling. it started getting this wacky film on top. not the typical break (which we had already skimmed before adding hops), this was something different.

eric skimming the scum and first wort hops from the ipa. chunky!

the flameout addition for the ipa was 2oz of leaf amarillo. looks tasty.

it’s become a tradition that during the transfer to the fermenter we always listen to some iron maiden. start things off with number of the beast, then move on to a few of the other tracks i have. really need to get more…

the final lineup from the brew day and some evening tasting (left to right):

  • central waters brewers reserve bourbon cherry stout
  • central waters brewers reserve bourbon barrel stout
  • kuhnhenn extraneous ale
  • homebrewed christmas ale from a fellow homebrewer
  • moyland’s hopsickle
  • moyland’s moylander
  • north coast old rasputin x
  • another homebrew
  • duck rabbit rabid duck imperial stout
  • north coast old rasputin

another great brew day!

festivals

dark lord day 2007

back in january i put out a feeler to the other biergotter guys. i was considering attending dark lord day, the one day a year that three floyds sells their dark lord russian imperial stout. this year’s release would be on saturday april 28th and i was thinking of making the trip. most of the other guys thought they’d be unavailable, but eric expressed interest.

as the date got closer, we started to finalize plans. eric’s girlfriend alexa would be making the trip down from toronto, and even had a friend in downtown chicago that was going to let us stay there. free crash space = good! we decided we’d drive down on friday, stay in chicago friday night, head to dark lord day on saturday, back to chicago to crash saturday night, then back home to toronto on sunday. while in chicago we’d visit some local spots, and having someone from the area with us meant we should be able to avoid most of the traffic headaches.

if you’re not aware, dark lord day is much more than just a chance to buy the highest rated american beer, it’s a full day festival. three floyds are very supportive of the whole beer geek crowd. there is a tent and lots of tables for beer tasting. really, it’s a giant beer tasting free for all. everybody adds bottles to the tables and you’re pretty much free to sample whatever you like. there’s also a ton of beer trading that goes on. some folks set them up in advance, and just about everybody brings extra beer along to share and trade. 3F also had bands for entertainment and their own wares available for purchase.

so we had all the plans laid out, trades arranged, and everything ready to go. then we hit a bit of a snag… the monday before DLD started like any other. dropped jenn off at the go train and headed in to work. by about 10am, i wasn’t feeling that great. my stomach was starting to hurt and i was feeling a little nauseous. thinking i might be a little hungry, i had a light snack. still, but it didn’t help. i continued to feel worse, and the pain intensified. i started feeling dizzy and incredibly nauseous. by about noon i knew i couldn’t stay at work, but also wasn’t in good enough shape to drive myself home. i made a quick walk around the office to see if any of the guys on my team could drive me home, but it seemed everyone was either working from home or away at lunch. by about 12:30 i had mustered up enough strength that i thought i could get myself home, so i left, taking the back roads and taking my time.

when i got home i pretty much dropped into the bed and tried to sleep. i was still getting worse, and couldn’t fall asleep. it felt like my entire abdomen was in knots and i was really struggling not to be sick. shortly after this jenn arrived home, having left work when i talked to her before i drove home. she ran out to pick up some gravol, hoping this would help. it didn’t, and i continued to feel worse. i was also running a slight fever. it was like nothing i had ever felt before, so i thought something could really be wrong.

we decided to call telehealth and see what they said. when i explained my symptoms, the nurse said that i should probably see my family doctor, and if it got worse i might consider going to the hospital. we decided that the family doc would likely just send me to the ER, so we skipped the middle man and went to the hospital.

we arrived at the hospital at about 3:30pm and began the great wait. i was barely functional at that point and pretty much curled up in a chair. we sat there for what seemed like forever, continuing to feel worse. somewhere around 7:30pm i finally got in. i got to lay down, and they decided to do some tests. they took a bunch of blood and urine and hooked me up to an IV. the morphine and gravol did a good job of making me feel better, and around 12:30am the results were finally back. no problems in the urinary track. no obvious GI issues. i did have a slightly elevated white cell count and a lingering low grade fever. their biggest suspicion were either appendicitis or some kind of bug, but i didn’t have the usual localized appendix pain. since i was pretty much feeling better by that point, they sent me home and said to come back in the morning for an ultrasound to verify that there was no appendicitis.

i got home around 1am after a long and incredibly unpleasant ordeal and finally managed to sleep. bright and early at 7am the phone rang. it was the hospital telling me that i was scheduled for the ultrasound at 9:30am. i sent out a quick email to let work know what was going on and headed for the hospital. fortunately the ultrasound was negative, and they said that i definitely didn’t have appendicitis. woohoo! sigh of relief. but what the hell was that?!?? it sure didn’t feel like any bug i’d experienced before, and i sure hope i don’t again.

when i heard ‘appendicitis’, i figured that the trip would be canceled. i know that’s not the sort of thing that you do on tuesday, then hop in the car and drive 3500km on the weekend. i was unhappy, but glad to be feeling better. getting the news that there was no appendicitis was good, but it didn’t explain why i’d felt like that and if it was gone for good.

i took the next couple of days pretty easy. i talked to everyone i had trades setup with what had happened and that my status was uncertain. when wednesday evening came and i was still feeling great, we decided to go ahead with the trip. the only condition was that if i started feeling anything like on monday, we’d be turning around right away. jenn helped to map out some hospitals along the way, just in case.

when thursday afternoon came and i left work, spirits were good. i was still feeling great and the trip was looking good. eric and alexa took the bus up to my place and we started packing the car. wow, we had a lot of stuff. really. a lot. 4 passengers, 3 of us with weekend bags and one with a large suitcase. both eric and i setup trades, and we also grabbed extra local stuff to bring down for trading/tasting. i ended up bringing down some stuff for a few trades that jan had setup too. and some homebrew for a tasting that i was trying to setup at DLD. did i mention that it’s a little mazda 3? yeah, lots of stuff.

on friday morning we got the last of the stuff in the car and rolled out of the driveway at about 9am. the car was full to the max. the middle of the back seat was full, and both eric and alexa had stuff on their laps, with stuff at my feet in the front. jenn had volunteered to drive the first shift down to her parent’s place, where she’d be staying for the weekend.

we stopped in stoney point and dropped off jenn, stopping to have some tasty sandwiches for lunch.

from there it was off through windsor and over the border to detroit. our next stop was at kuhnhenn to pick up some growlers for trading (2x american ipa) and sharing (penetration porter and simcoe silly). we sat long enough for a beer (penetration porter for eric and i, banana stout for alexa), then headed out again.

the next stop was adventures in homebrewing to pick up some supplies. this is where i get most of my homebrewing supplies, and we needed to get a few things for our next few batches. i also grabbed a sweet old guardian glass, since i forgot to bring something for sampling at DLD. it’s become my favourite sampling glass.

with traffic between those two stops, we were running a little behind schedule, so we skipped our last stop at merchant’s and left for chicago.

the drive down was (pleasantly!) uneventful and we arrived in downtown chicago at about 8pm. we stopped at sam’s for a couple goodies, then went across the street to the goose island clybourn brewpub. we relaxed and enjoyed some food and a couple beverages. the english malt porter was awesome. we headed over to alexa’s friend’s place and crashed for the night.

the next morning we woke and left for munster. it took about an hour to get there, with a quick stop for some breakfast on the way. it was about 10:30am when we arrived, and the crowd was already growing.

crowds out front of three floyds.

it’s noon and the doors open! wooho!

the line was moving slowly.

getting closer…

finally inside the door (but still in line), i snapped a few photos.

this is about where the batteries in my camera died. i had an extra set, but of course they were in the car and i was trapped in line.

eventually i got to the front of the line and got my dark lord, as well as rabbid rabbit, robert the bruce, and black sun. i wanted a bottle of behemoth, but sadly it sold out before i got to the front of the line.

i brought my dark lord out to the car and started trying to resolve the last of my trades. it didn’t take too long, and soon i was finally able to relax and enjoy a few samples. we slipped inside to get samples of the barrel aged dark lord. another favourite was the thomas hooker barrel aged imperial porter. got to sample some nice homebrew too, though i wasn’t able to round people up for that homebrew tasting. maybe next year.

after putting the new batteries in my camera i went back inside and snapped a few photos. gotta love the piles of kegs, bottles, and the wall of 1000# bags of grain.

one of eric’s favourite parts of the day: imperial battle snake. he was talking about how awesome the band name was for the entire trip, so it was nice when they were pretty good. he even bought one of their shirts, and seems to have worn it every time i’ve seen him since then.

the alpha king.

6 barrels (left to right, top to bottom):

  • DL 07
  • BLACK SUN 11.14.06
  • ALPHA KLAUS 11.??.06
  • BEHEMOTH 12.16.06 (with what appears to be a cherry?)
  • BEHEMOTH 12.16.06
  • VB DL 07 (vanilla bean?)

piles of bottles, and the swag table in the distance.

peering over to the brewery.

late in the day, this guy was one of the most memorable moments. a six pack of alpha king, purchased (likely warm) inside, 4 down, 1 on the go, and 1 unopened. asleep at the wheel. hardcore.

not long after this we decided to head back to chicago. it had been a long, hot day and we were all pretty tired and sunburned. we loaded up the (still overflowing) car with the spoils of the day and headed out. after a brief stop at alexa’s place so she could pick up her car, we headed downtown again. our initial plan had been to check out the map room, but instead we just went back to the goose island clybourn brewpub again. dinner and a few more tasty beverages. exhausted, we left for alexa’s friend’s place.

then we had the pleasure of driving around for an hour trying to find a place to park. i was so tired and beyond frustrated, but we finally found a place (good one too!) and i basically passed out as soon as we were inside.

sunday morning i woke up early, and at about 7am eric and i hit the road. a pleasant and uneventful drive, and we were in detroit shortly after noon.

crossing the border was fun. since it was just eric and i, when i told them we had about 8 cases of beer, i knew we’d be paying duty. we each got a case duty free since we’d been in the US for 48 hours, but still had to pay duty on 6. this was complicated by the fact that all the beer was from trades and/or gifts, so we didn’t have any receipts. i told them that i’d brought about 6 cases of beer down to the US with me and had traded for things of equal value, so we just went with the approximate price i’d paid ($42/case). we each paid about $50 duty, which wasn’t too bad considering what we had in the car.

eric and i posing with the haul. yep, there’s that imperial battle snake shirt. he also had about a case and a half of beer waiting for him there, so the final total when we left for home was about 10 cases of beer in the car.

when i finally got home this is what i had. some stuff in the middle for jan, but most of that is mine.

dark lord day was one hell of a party. what a blast. though the 2500km in 2.5 days was a little much. even though i was driving and had to take it easy the whole time, i still got to try some great stuff along the way and bring home a ton more. some stats:

14x 22oz
1x 11.2oz
3x 750ml
42x 12oz
1x 64oz

total ~ 82x 12oz = 3.5 cases, 12 wants, 42 different beers, 38 that i’ve never tried.

that doesn’t include the approx 4 cases eric had, or the case i had for jan. i don’t think i could have possibly fit any more in my little mazda…

already looking forward to next year.

brewing day

two tun old ale

eric and i started talking about brewing an old ale a while ago. we knew we wanted it to be big, aiming for something like thomas hardy’s ale rather than the traditional old ale guidelines. we thought this would be a good time to revive the two tun madness we used for the imperial stout last november. that was a doble-ish setup with one cooler and a bucket and 45# of grain. this time we decided to go bigger: two coolers and 60# of grain. we figured we could pull the second runnings for some kind of hoppy brown ale. a little reading and some tinkering with promash and it was set.

the parti-gyle recipe (grain bill only), dirty old brown ale, and the two tun old ale. the grain bill on the old+brown are mocked up to get the gravity right for calculating the hop utilizations and such.

grain for the batch. special b, honey malt, aromatic malt, and maris otter. tim loaned us his cooler tun, seen in the background.

the rest of the grain. total for the batch: 60.5 pounds, which should give us two 10 gallon batches.

the two tuns, waiting for action.

and two kegs, each with about half the grain bill. one is a standard 15.5gal, the other is only 13, so one has a wee bit more than the other.

eric, looking a little rough this morning!

and me, showing off my beer advocate toque.

strike water coming up to temp.

morning snacks. banana bread, chocolate chunk cookies, tangerines, and some deadly awesome savoury shortbread.

coffee, music, promash, and designing great beers. all the necessities for an early december morning brewing.

me again, a little dusty from the grain.

lunch! some pulled pork sandwiches, bbq fritos, and dogfish head olde school barleywine.

the two tuns, sparging away.

we collected into separate vessels so we could be sure we were sparging at the same rate and got the same amount from each tun.

that’s 15 gallons of old ale at a gravity of 1.090. oh yeah, that’s also before the 2 hour and 40 minute boil.

continuing to sparge. second runnings for the “brown” ale.

both batches on the burners. the old ale on the left boiling away, and the “brown” on the right. we steeped some chocolate malt to try and darken it up, but it didn’t turn out very brown.

old ale starting to get angry.

both batches boiling now. the old ale started boiling 40min before the brown, and finished 40min after it.

both batches again. you can see my makeshift wind screen in the background and the scum skimming pot in front.

there’s me reviewing one of the day’s beers.

first hop addition on the “brown” getting angry…

a glass of something…i think this was the southern tier unearthly iipa. great stuff.

brew day beers: olde school, great lakes nosferatu, unearthly, and dogfish head world wide stout.

the “brown” happily fermenting. this one was kicking ass with almost zero lag time. 11gal at an OG of 1.057.

and the old ale starting to take off. 12gal at an OG of 1.102. didn’t quite get the boil off we wanted, so we ended up with 12gal at 1.102 instead of more like 10.5-11gal at 1.115.

the “brown” got pretty angry, so i had to put it in some bins to keep the mess contained.

and the old ale now going full throttle.

in all, this was a good brew day. the huge grain bill and two 10gal batches via parti-gyle was pretty fun. several good brews sampled. the weather was even pretty cooperative, staying above freezing most of the day.

final gravity on brown was 1.017 for 69% attenuation and 5.28%abv. final gravity on the old ale was 1.034 for 64% attenuation and 8.96%abv.

misc

hops!

this year i decided to grow some hops. i picked up four rhizomes from freshops: two cascade and two centennial. they were planted on may 22nd, 2006. here’s some photos i took at various points through their growth.

june 27th, 2006

hard to judge the height from the photos, but two of the plants are around 4′ tall now (well over waist height), the others are around 2-3′. the blurry ones at the end are me trying to get a closeup of the tiny little buds that have started forming since the weekend.

august 8, 2006

the hops are kind of nuts, so i took a few photos today.

centennial in the center and a bit of the cascade on the left.

me in the photo, for perspective.

shows just how nuts the cascades are going. they reached the top of the 10′ lines i put up and continued to grow. they got to the point where they had about 4′ dangling in the wind, then they caught back onto the original plant and started going up again. they’ve been throwing out side shoots all over the place too, so it’s a big, crazy, tangled mess. if i’d known they’d get this big i would have put the lines up the full height of the house…

the underpants gnome. he guards the hops from the groundhog that we think is living in our neighbours yard under his deck.

close up view of the top of the cascade plant. as you can see, tons of flowers on this one. really looking forward to the harvest on this one.

same thing on the centennial. not nearly as crazy, but there’s a few flowers there too.

here’s a couple blurry photos of phil the groundhog.

august 12, 2006

lots of little hop cones forming.

september 25, 2006

harvest time!

centennial

cascade

here’s me harvesting the centennials.

cascade on the left, centennial on the right.

the hops on my home made drying racks. centennial on the left, cascade on the right. would have been easier if i’d been consistent with the whole left/right thing.

close up view of the cascade, 0.4oz once dried.

close up view of the centennial, 0.1oz once dried.

brewing day

brewing roundup

there has been a bunch of brewing since my last post, so i thought i’d post a roundup and summary of them.

tim did his first fully solo brew, a pale ale on sept 24th. spent 8 days in primary, then 7 days in secondary with 0.5oz cascade. it was kegged on oct 9th. OG 1.051, FG 1.013 for 5.00%abv and 73.69% attenuation.

tim kegged his belgian wit on oct 15th. FG 1.012 for 5.4%abv and 76.58% attenuation.

jayw brewed up a rye pale ale nov 12th. kegged dec 2nd. OG 1.060, FG 1.016 for 5.81%abv and 72.34% attenuation.

tim brewed up a barleywine on nov 19th. OG 1.092.

eric and i were joined by jan and james for a brew day on nov 4th, which was national “teach a friend to homebrew day”. jan had attended a few partial brew days but was happy to come and see the process from beginning to end. james was visiting to learn how his christmas gift would be brewed. i decided to donate a batch of beer to our annual employee charitable fund and it was auctioned off. james’s wife won the auction as a gift for him. being a big fan of boddington’s he liked the idea of trying to brew something like that, and when he saw that i’d done raspberry porter in the past he was interested to try and put a raspberry twist on the english bitter. the result was dubbed “raspboddy“, a pale pink brew with a hint of raspberry. eric and i also finally brewed up the gumballhead clone that he’s had drawn up for a while.

didn’t take many photos, but here they are.

there’s me sparging the (not yet rasp)boddy.

and the runoff.

morning snacks

gumballhead sac rest

me and james keeping an eye on the boddy sparge

the gumballhead getting angry during the boil.

casualty before the brew day. we were supposed to be doing a dark saison, so i was making up starters. sterilized the flask, added the stir bar, and poured in the yeast. then i started to dump in the starter wort and it started pouring out all over the counter and floor. only then did i notice that the flask had blown a hole in the side. unfortunately, the yeast and wort was a writeoff…

festivals

volo cask day 2006

saturday was a great day for beer lovers in the toronto area, as volo hosted their second annual cask days festival. 20 breweries and two home brewers (including us) offered a wide selection of cask conditioned beers for an incredible one-of-a-kind event.

our last two brew days had a single purpose: the “secret october project”. although we dropped lots of not-so-subtle hints and thought everyone knew what was going on, not even everyone within the club knew exactly what the SOP was. the “secret october project” was this year’s edition of the volo cask days, specifically us not just being guests but also participants in this festival.

ralph initially asked us to brew up a hoppy west coast ipa (with some balls, unlike most of the stuff available in ontario). we’ve brewed up several american IPAs, so figured this was something we could do well.

so we did two pins (5gal casks), one for each session. we brewed up two trial batches to evaluate the beer under cask conditions and verify that it would carbonate ok and everything. did the same base batch, but with two different hop setups: one with lots of simcoe and cascade (eric’s setup) and one with lots of amarillo (my suggestion, similar to the wheatwine that jay and i brewed). the final brew was a hybrid of the two batches, with simcoe for FWH+bittering and amarillo the rest of the way (including 2oz of amarillo in each cask). the hopocalypse was born.

ralph also wanted to do an IPA competition of sorts, with all his taps devoted to IPAs, so we also decided to throw something in for that. we ended up doing something along the lines of a ruination clone. right around 8% and pretty damn deadly. it also had 2oz of centennial dry hops in the keg. i named this one devastation.

thursday evening i delivered the two casks of hopocalypse and the keg of devastation to volo. eric and i volunteered to arrive early on saturday to help out with setup, knowing that it would probably be a little chaotic and there would be a ton of last minute details to sort out.

we arrived saturday morning at 10am, an hour before openning. the patio was full of casks and the staff was busy preparing the cheese sampler boxes that went into everyone’s bags, and doing the final bag assembly. eric went to help ralph make sure our keg was hooked up and ready to go and i set to work putting up the labels for all the casks. a little rearranging inside and soon the doors were open for the first session (11:00am – 4:00pm).

the first thing we needed to figure out was which beer to sample first. since it was still morning and i woke up far too early, an imperial coffee stout seemed like a great idea. eric agreed and we each got a sample of dieu du ciel péché mortel imperial coffee stout. it surely did not disappoint and was definitely one of my favourites for the day.

from there we moved inside and hung out around where our beers were being served. it was fun to watch everyone’s reaction and to hear all the varied and interesting pronunciations people came up with for “hopocalypse”.

my favourite moment: talking with george eagleson about how breweries change and the old days of places like upper canada, back when they still made good beer. i mentioned my favourite beer ever, the limited edition drayman’s tawny porter that they produced around 1994. his response was ‘oh yeah, i brewed that’. i just might have to pick his brain and see if i can extract that recipe for future reference…

our biggest fan: perry and his friend from scotch irish. the hopocalypse was one of the first beers they tried and they raved about it all day. perry was telling everyone in the first session that they had to try the hopocalypse and was calling it the best beer there, even better than his own contributions. you just don’t get much higher praise than that. at this point i figured if nobody else liked our beer all day i’d still be a happy man, since we had received such praise from him.

so many people raving about the beers (or crying that they had missed it). i kept having variations on this conversation all day:

them: hey, where can i buy your beer?
me: you can’t
them: where are you based?
me: my garage in markham?
them: well when are you guys going commercial?
me: no idea, might happen sometime. who knows.
them: no really, when are you going commercial? seriously, you have to!

the first pin of hopocalypse ran out at 3:10pm. the keg of devastation died less than 10 min later. the second pin didn’t even last 4 hours into the second session and was gone at 9:50pm. only other keg/cask to run out before i left was the admiral perry.

although opinions varied the praise and appreciation for our creations seemed to be universal. eric and i truly had a blast talking with everyone all day. the names all blurred together after a while, we wanted to say thanks to the pros, the home brewers, the friends, family, and the fans. wow, even the idea of having ‘fans’ is a little crazy.

some links to other discussion of the fest:
thread on bartowel
thread on beer advocate
flickr photo group
Toronto Star article
GregClow’s blog post

now for some photos!

not directly related to the cask fest, but just something else fun and charity-related. at work we do a big fund raising event for the month of october, with all sorts of activities to raise money for lots of good causes. i came up with the idea to auction off a batch of beer, personalized to the winner’s specifications. this is the display i put together for the day of the silent auction (note the two stubbies featuring the devastation label). the auction raised over $1100 with my contribution accounting for almost 10% of the total at $105. maybe the lucky winner will want some hopocalypse?

two of the homebrewed entries for the day. robert hughey’s “GHB” (generously hopped bitter) and the first pin of our hopocalypse ipa.

the taps, some of which are different than they appear. on the right is our other beer, the devastation ipa.

in addition to the casks that ralph had previously announced, he also got some special stuff on tap. included for this event was Vaisseau des Songes (Dream Ship) from dieu du ciel and our devastation.

great lakes brewery devil’s pale ale
black oak brewery dirty bomb nut brown ale
granite brewery peculiar dark ale aged in bourbon barrel
trafalgar brewery strawberry anti-social brown ale

wellington brewery imperial russian stout
george eagleson pear ginger oatmeal stout
neustadt big dog beaujolais porter
dieu du ciel péché mortel imperial coffee stout

church key brewing west coast ipa
county durham brewery hop addict ipa
dieu du ciel corne de diable american ipa
scotch irish brewing admiral perry imperial ipa

camerons brewery hopburn ale
black oak brewery h & h overkill
mill st brewery tankhouse
st. andre brewery doug & larry’s harvest ale

cool brewery millennium buzz
heritage brewery smokin’ maple
king brewery king dark lager
beau’s all natural brewing lug tread lagered ale

the staff working on setup before the doors opened for the day.

ralph trying to direct the chaos of the final half hour before opening. on the right is one of the guys from scotch irish. i talked with him for a long time in the first session and feel terrible that his name has become a blur. all that beer and meeting 9823724 people has a tendency to do that…

there was a line forming a half hour before openning.

eric gives the thumbs up on the event, and that’s before we’d even had any beer!

and me, excited and ready for the day to start.

as soon as the doors opened the real fun began. here’s eric and i raising our glasses to this excellent day.

my lovely wife jenn came out to show her support, and even drank the hopocalypse. she doesn’t really drink beer, so that’s quite a compliment. she keeps us fed and hydrated on brew days so we couldn’t do it without her.

our biggest fan for the day was definitely perry from scotch irish. here we see him holding up the label from our beer and drinking it double fisted. he was telling everyone about our beer and kept coming back for more himself. having one of the best brewers in the province tell you that you’ve got the best beer at the fest, better even than his own contributions, is high praise that we were very honoured to get and couldn’t thank him enough. both eric and i spent lots of time talking with him.

by 3:10pm the first pin of hopocalypse had run dry. within 10 minutes the keg of devastation ran out too.

here’s eric having some coffee just before the start of the second session. we brought out the second pin and stuck the label i made for it on the back end. love the ‘hop and crossbones’ that i came up with.

and my turn to pose with our second pin.

the patio with all the casks also had a list of the stuff on tap, so that people wouldn’t miss out.

one of the posters with the new logo for this year’s cask days.

had to snap a shot of the picture for the péché mortel since it was on hand for the fest. chatted with several of the guys from DDC and look forward to trying more of their beers in the future. all three on hand today were great, but this one was definitely my favourite.

shot of the crowd during the evening session. was pretty packed, but everyone seemed to be very courteous and didn’t mind as you forced your way through to find more beer.

eric sampling some hopocalypse and the staff trying to keep up with requests. there was some great stuff at this station, so they were pretty busy.

the second pin of hopocalypse ran out faster than the first, drying up at 9:50pm.

more crowd shots, including some of the guys from DDC in the last one.

wow. what an amazing day. thank you to all the brewers who brought such great beer, everyone that we talked to for your kind words of support and encouragement, and most importantly to ralph and everyone at volo for making this incredible day happen and allowing us to be a part of it.

cheers!

update: stopped by volo on monday and there was still several casks that had not run out. tried a couple things that i hadn’t got to on saturday (the devil’s pale ale and the strawberry anti-social) and talked with some of the folks from saturday. as it turns out, the keg of devastation was not empty as we thought, but was still about half full. my best guess is that the hop bag must have ruptured and clogged up the works, so no beer was flowing out. too bad that nobody in the second session got a chance to try this one. now i need to see if i can get it working so i can enjoy some of it!

updated again: Volo is taking votes for the best beer in the fest, just send an email to vote@barvolo.com with your pick. if you’re reading this, maybe you’d like to vote for us, so i’ll make it easy and give you some links: vote for hopocalypse or vote for devastation (feel free to add in something in the body of the message thanking ralph and the volo crew for this great event and encouraging them to do this again next year!).

updated one more time: the results are in: hopocalypse has won the “best one off” category for the volo cask days! thanks to everyone who voted for us and to all the support we’ve received.

brewing day

solo tim and the secret october project

last brew day included our fred clone, but the real focus was our cask experiment. we wanted to brew up a good cask conditioned IPA and decided to try two versions with the same base and different hops. we also threw in my attempt at a clone of the cask-conditioned merlot stout that i had at the town hall in minneapolis.

all three casks turned out great and we settled on our “final” version of the cask ipa, dubbed Hopocalypse by eric. sounds like a great name to me.

one batch just wouldn’t be enough, so we decided to throw in another hop bomb: a clone of Stone‘s Ruination that we’re calling Devastation. tim also decided that he’d like to try his first solo run and brew up a belgian wit. after a little consultation with radical brewing tim and i came up with Witness Protection.

on with the show!

tim filling up the barleycrusher and me supervising.

the grain for the ipa, crushed and ready to mash.

a biergotter first: 3 burners for 3 batches all running in parallel. the usual two plus tim’s setup for his wit.

the three experimental cask conditioned beers we brewed up recently and were tapping for the first time. 10 gallons of IPA, split into two batches with different hopping, and 5gal of sweet stout that had merlot-soaked oak cubes added. It was our first attempt at cask conditioning and a definite success. the stout was great, but not yet merlot-y enough. the ipa’s were both fantastic and it was tough trying to decide between them. we loved the finish of the amarillo batch, but thought it needed something more on the front end. the simcoe+cascade batch was great, but not as nice on the finish as the other batch. so we ended up with a hybrid of the two: simcoe for FWH and bittering and amarillo the rest of the way.

tim’s wit, crushed and ready.

the amarillo ipa in my volo cask fest 2005 glass. just look at that huge, rocky head and the massive chunky lace. it doesn’t get much better than that.

tim working the mash for the wit and eric working on the ruination clone.

closeup of the ruination

and tim’s wit

there’s me checking on the works.

that’s me working the mash on the ruination and eric checking the temperature.

damn that looks good.

jenn hooked us up with another great brew day lunch.

the ipa approaching boiling and the ruination rockin’ along.

eric skimming the FWH and scum from the ipa. chunky!

tim’s wit approaching boiling too.

3 burners with 3 pots and 3 batches of beer.

the ruination looking chunky and angry.

the ipa boiling away too

and the wit.

me checking out one of the beers with the refractometer.

fast forward a few hours. the beers are all in the fermenters and eric and i were relaxing with a few choice beverages. here you have some great lakes blackout stout. damn good stuff.

some of the evening’s beers: bushwakker wheatwine in the cool ceramic swingtop, the blackout stout, and a bell’s expedition stout. not pictured was a great lakes burning river pale ale and a whole bunch of scotch ale when i wooped eric’s ass in some toblero.

the beers (ruination on the back left, ipa’s up front), happily fermenting away. fred aging the back corner. that crazy bastard hit 12.17% and 83.78% attenuation.

tim brought his wit home and pitched it there. as you can see, it was really happy and spewing out the airlock.

brewing day

return of the jay

since jayc relocated to PA earlier this year we haven’t had him around for any brew days, so when he said he was going to be in town for the weekend it seemed like a great excuse to brew something. we tossed around some recipe ideas and since i had a big bag of wheat and we’ve got a truckload of hops we decided to try brewing up a wheatwine with lots of amarillo. we put together an initial recipe, aiming for a gravity of 1.121 and over 50% wheat.

on brew day we got setup and weighed everything out. as always, the barley crusher tore through the malt without breaking a sweat. however, when it came time to grind the wheat that wasn’t the case. the first problem was that the extremely hard wheat was a little too much for the motor, so we threw the hand crank back on and got to work. that worked for a little while, but then something odd started happening. the hand crank and shaft were turning, but the wheat wasn’t moving. we scooped most of the wheat out of the hopper and could see that even though the crank was turning, the roller inside the mill was not. if i turned the crank backwards a little and then went forward it’d grind a little, then stick again. at this point i was panicing that the precious barleycrusher was broken and that we didn’t have anywhere near the amount of wheat we wanted. we decided to test whether it’d still crush barley, and it seemed to work fine, which was a relief. so we adjusted the recipe and replaced the unground wheat with maris otter. still a big, badass wheat beer, even if it wasn’t quite what we were aiming for. the final recipe for the wheatwine still looks damn good.

when Jenn saw that we had less wheat than we wanted (27% instead of about 55%) she dubbed the beer “mini-wheat” (something i often eat for breakfast). it seemed appropriate, but we kind of laughed it off…

the expected grain bill for the day. on the left about 45% barley, and on the right about 55% malted wheat.

i think this was during mash out…something that involved the mash sitting on the burner.

the hop bill for the day. simcoe and chinook for bittering and lots of amarillo.

mmmm, skum.

just one of the beers jay supplied for the brew day, the liquer de malt. the finest malt liquor i’ve ever had….but that still doesn’t mean it’s really all that good. of course, dogfish head knows that all malt liquor should be in 40oz portions and be served from a paper bag. the only problem with this is that it’s bottle conditioned and chunky as hell. even carefully pouring into pint glasses, the last glass was pretty chunky. i swear there was whole kernels of corn in there.

jay and i admiring some beer. i can’t remember if it was the LdM or not. we drank alot of beer that day.

there’s me skimming some skum.

jay loves his malt liquor.

first half of the bittering addition.

admiring the aroma of the hops.

and the second half of the bittering addition.

jay and i spilling some malt liquor “for our homies”.

right about now the beer got really angry with us. about 7 gallons in a 15.5 gallon keg and it was ready to boil over.

a long boil that was mostly uneventful, but we didn’t have quite as much boil off as we expected so we ended with just over 6gal at 1.088 instead of the 5gal at 1.110 we were expecting…another way this beer taunted us. at this point i accepted the title of “mini-wheat”.

the photo above shows the beer less than 4 hours after pitching and already blowing off like mad.

the beers we sampled on the brew day and the previous night. Jan dropped by and brought some authentic czech pilsiners and a bottle of speedway stout. i’ll never say no to some alesmith. lots of fine beers, including a bunch of homebrew that wasn’t pictured.

sly fox 113 ipa
marin brewing co ipa
lagunitas old gnarleywine
hair of the dog fred from the wood
brooklyn black chocolate stout 03/04
brooklyn black chocolate stout 05/06
dogfish head liquor de malt
alesmith speedway stout
stone 9th anniversary
rye barleywine
slatopramen
primus
original flag porter

after a week this one had dropped from 1.088 to 1.021, which is
74.76% attenuation and 8.92% ABV. tasted fantastic. if i didn’t know better i’d swear it had apricots in it. looking forward to drinking this one!

one final note on the barely crusher. even after the trouble i had with the wheat (and the same issue with the rye in our fred clone) i still love this thing. i emailed the manufacturer to tell them about my problems. Randy immediately replied and was very apologetic. he told me that since i had already figured out what the issue was there was no need to return my barley crusher to them for inspection. he said that if i felt OK with taking my mill apart and installing a new roller he’d ship me one out right away, otherwise i could return the mill to them and they’d happily install and return it to me. i gave him my info and less than a week after i emailed them i had the new roller in my hand. not only does the barley crusher kick ass, the lifetime warantee and customer service are also awesome. as their website says, homebrewers can be sure that “this will be the only grain mill they will ever purchase!”. i still can’t recommend them highly enough. buy a barley crusher. you will be very happy you did.

brewing day

the bastard child is born

this saturday rob and i celebrated canada day by brewing up a batch of beer. when it looked like nobody was available for last weekend’s brew day, i sent out an email asking about everyone’s availability and inquiring as to whether we should postpone. as it turned out, the only person available to brew this weekend was rob, and since rob doesn’t make it out to brew with us very often i decided that we should definitely brew somewhere on the 1st so he’d be included. since i was the only other person available, that meant brewing at my place.

since it was just rob and i, we started talking about our recipe options. rob didn’t feel like the chocolate vanilla stout from his wishlist, but said he’d be interested in an IPA or something for the summer. since we hadn’t done an IPA since last fall, i thought it was a good idea, and i even had yeast (wyeast 1056) and a variety of hops that would go great in an american IPA. his other suggestion was to make an arrogant bastard clone. i have read a few discussions on cloning the bastard on the homebrewing forum at beer advocate, so i knew that the recipe would require lots of chinook, a hop i didn’t have on hand. a little searching and i found a good clone recipe that seemed to have lots of positive response (both on that site and beer advocate). however, i also didn’t have the 120L crystal that was required. i quickly checked out paddock wood and was in luck: they sell both extra dark crystal at 125L and chinook. in total the order would come to about $20 for 1kg of crystal and 6oz of chinook. both rob and i were ok with the slightly higher cost for the batch, so i finalized our recipe and placed the order.

rob arrived shortly before 10am on saturday. i’d already measured out our water and had it heating and was working on weighing out the grain. finished off my bag of maris otter, so we had to suppliment with 10.8# of the generic british 2-row. with more than half maris otter and all the crystal and chinook, i’m guessing we won’t notice the difference.

the day went smoothly, with the only real problem being the wind. it was so windy that it seemed to take forever to heat things up (heating water, mashing out, boiling). it took 2 hours for the 14 gallons to reach a boil, which is much longer than usual. i kept turning up the burner, but it didn’t seem to matter much. i wasn’t too suprised by this when we were cleaning up and i saw that the bottom of the kettle was completely clean. usually the outside is black from the burner and sometimes the inside gets at least a little bit of stuff, but today both were clean. we just weren’t getting very efficient heating with the wind. not really a big deal though, since it just meant that we were able to sit around and relax. rob especially appreciated this, since his last two brew days were the insanely long and very cold imperial stout/rochefort brew day in november and the insanely hot and fairly long ipa/scottish brew day last june. sitting around and relaxing on a nice breezy saturday afternoon was certainly enjoyable.

by 7pm the cleanup was done and the carboys each had 5.5 gallons of our bastard child, aerated and pitched with a big starter of wyeast 1056.

after doughing in, you see rob checking the temp and me manning the mash paddle. we were still a little shy of our target temp, so we had to throw it on the burner for a bit to bring it up to 155F.

brew day snacks, and healthy ones too! jenn always takes care of us, making sure we’ve got food and beverages on brew day. today it was some strawberries and cherries. tasty!

this time we’re doing our mash out, with rob again watching the temperature and me stirring away. the first where we were actually working, and then posing for the photo.

looking good already.

with the mash out done, we loaded up the tun and got ready to sparge.

first runnings. didn’t take long for this to start running clear. great colour too.

and a while later we had collected 14 gallons, so that following the 90 min boil we’d end up with about 11 gallons of sweet tasty wort.

the hop bill for this recipe is simple: an assload of chinook. that works out to 2.5oz at 90min, 2oz at 30min, and 1.5oz at flameout.

on the burner and starting the (slow) journey towards boiling. here we see the first bit of hot break forming on the surface.

rob showing off my arrogant bastard pint glass, containing a bit of ed fitz. upon taking his first sip, rob said something along the lines of “oh my god, that’s fucking awesome”. exactly the sort of review i like to hear.

finally boiling. it was quite windy out, so it took about 2 hours to reach boiling. i really need to make some kind of a wind screen for the burner for days like this.

guess the burner managed to get pretty hot, because one of the feet sunk into the driveway about an inch, and the others made a smaller impression.

the tree next door was dropping pollen all day, and with the wind it was really getting everywhere (including into the boil pot). i joked that we would have to add “pollen” to the recipe. realistically, i don’t think enough got in to have any real effect.

just about done the boil. you can see the hops (4.5oz at this point) rolling along.

a shot of our handy measuring stick. i took a piece of 1/2″ dowel that was laying around and measured 1 gallon increments. i made a notch at each point, then cut in roman numerals to indicate every two gallons. works with our three converted kegs, and for the other 10 gallon pot we just use the stick and a tape measure.

the beer going into the carboys. we ended up with 11 gallons at 1.078 for 88% efficiency.

both carboys got aerated for about 90 seconds with pure oxygen through a 0.5 micron diffusion stone, then got a nice big starter of wyeast 1056.