tasting

saison tasting 2008

may 24th saw the return of jan’s successful summer saison tasting. we all had a blast last year and were looking forward to it again.

as always, jan had assembled a huge pile of food and snacks to compliment the excellent lineup of saisons and other fine beers, most pulled directly from his own cellar.

first bottle of the day. brooklyn local 1.

a few shots of the tasty food and snacks that jan had on hand. a little something for everyone.

the growing pile of bottles…

everybody and some desserts.

more bottles…

still growing…

towards the end of the day most folks started leaving to head back into the city.

one of jan’s cats. it was pretty much hanging out with us for most of the afternoon.

jan and eric

me

georgia, jan and eric.

badger badger badger badger.

jan’s dad ron and i.

once the sun went down it got a little cooler, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying more beer!

georgia and jan. georgia was enjoying some new glarus wisconsin belgian red.

more shots of everyone.

the bottles for the day…many fine brews…

we eventually moved inside for more sampling and euchre. i was also pretty excited to watch the celtics knocking the pistons around in game 3 of the nba eastern conference finals.

me enjoying the game.

eric looking a little tired.

jan busting out one of the last beers of the night.

when the day was done we’d gone through a great assortment of excellent beers:

thanks jan for another great year!

brewing day

Biergotter Philly is up and running!

After a long hiatus, I’m back to brewing. A few things sort of got in the way, namely switching jobs, moving to the US, having a baby, and buying a house. Once all of that was done, it was time to start thinking about making beer again rather than just buying it (though the commercial selection here is fantastic). Here’s what’s been happening since the beginning of the year….

The first job after Xmas was to pick up some new gear, since I sold off a lot to the boys in TO. I grabbed some stuff from morebeer, including a couple of Better Bottles, and ordered myself a Barley Crusher. Both of these items are highly recommended. I also stopped in at Keystone Homebrew Supply for ingredients and a variety of other necessities. I also needed a mash paddle for 10 gallon batches, so I used grub’s design and cut one out of a piece of red oak.

I also made a new bucket tun. These things are wicked for smaller batches, easy to use and clean up, plus the sparge seems to run super fast with them.

Robust Porter

First up was a porter (brewed on 23/02/2008), English style and a little on the robust side. It was a beautiful morning for brewing, but a little colder than I was hoping for.

The equipment was all assembled and ready to go.

Time to break in the Barley Crusher. Only 11.5# of grain for this batch. The drill just flies through the grain, so there’s no way I’m going back to hand cranking.

Mashing went smoothly, single step infusion at 154F. Sparging was a snap using the bucket tun. After a short vorlauf, it seemed like the sugars were extracted faster than I’m used to – the gravity had dropped to dangerously low levels by the time I had ~4.5 gallons collected. That’s an approximate figure, since I hadn’t planned ahead and figured out how to measure volumes of liquid in any of my vessels. I’ve since corrected that oversight.

Once the wort was boiling, it was time for the hops. 3/4 oz of Magnum for bittering, 1/2 oz Willamette at flameout. No problems with boilovers due to skimming the hot break as it came up to a boil.

Time to cool the wort. Took about 15 minutes and I got to water the (frozen) grass.

I ended up collecting ~3.5 gallons in the carboy at a much higher gravity than I needed – way more liquid boiled off than I expected. So I topped it up with 1.5 gallons of water. My yeast starter had been going for a couple of days, so there was plenty of slurry. I hit it with about 90 seconds of pure O2, pitched the yeast, and brought it downstairs to the beer cellar.

By the next morning things had definitely taken off.

FG was a little higher than I wanted, but that’s OK. It went into bottles on March 17 and has been drinking great for a while now. Not bad for my first solo brew day in forever and with a bunch of new, untested equipment. I started at 9am and finished everything (including cleanup) by 4pm. That also included finishing up the manifold for my bucket tun.

English Porter

Next up was another porter on 09/03/2008. No pics, but that’s OK. The setup is pretty much the same as last time. I planned the brewday so that I could transfer my first porter into secondary and put the new one right on top of the yeast cake. I didn’t change much this time around, just dropped the amount of black malt and pulled back on the hops a bit. I was aiming more for something between a robust and brown porter here. Things went a little smoother this time around. Though I still undershot my collected volume, it wasn’t as bad this time. My attenuation was a little better too. This one got bottled on 30/03/2008 and took no time to carbonate. Tastes fine!

Pineapple Kolsch

I figured that was enough porter for a while, so I moved on to something else for my next batch. I also wanted to try my hand at a 10 gallon batch to see how it would go with only one person, since I had no trouble with the previous two 5 gallon batches by myself. This time I brewed a new version of my pineapple ale recipe, based more on a kolsch rather than pale ale base. I found out that the only time I needed another person was when I lifted the brew kettle onto the table to get it high enough for siphoning. Not bad!

I figured I’d give my bucket tun a real workout and see if it could handle the 17.5# of malt in this recipe. It worked, but it was a close fit. I ended up collecting less runoff at higher gravity than expected again (I think this has to do with the bucket tun), so diluted a bit before the boil. 6 chopped pineapples went into the brewpot towards the end of the boil in order to denature the bromelain (this enzyme will continue to degrade protein during and after fermentation). In hindsight, this was a bad idea and I wish I would have taken some pics, since I won’t be doing it this way again. The pineapple flesh dropped the brewpot temp significantly and it took a long time to bring back up to a boil. It also got clogged in my racking cane and I just gave up on the last gallon or so of wort in the brewpot. Next time I’ll try collecting the juice from the pineapples and just adding that. Since I boiled the fruit, I set the pectin, and that makes your beer hazy. Fortunately, this is easily fixed by adding pectic enzyme to the primary, which is exactly what I did. I also stepped my starter up a couple of times so that I’d have enough slurry for two carboys.

Fermentation was pretty vigourous, but the basement temperature got a little cold for the yeasties, so I brought them upstairs for the rest of primary fermentation. Active fermentation was constant and took quite a while – noticeable activity finished after about 3 weeks. The carboys went back downstairs for secondary, since the German Ale yeast likes cooler temperatures for conditioning.

By the beginning of May the carboys were crystal clear, sort of eerie when you’re used to making dark beers. Final gravity was lower than I expected, at 1.005. That’s easily the lowest terminal gravity that I’ve gotten for a beer and the highest attenuation at ~90%. They were bottled 04/05/2008. I was a little worried the yeast would be tired by this point, but I had nothing to worry about – the bottles were fully carbonated within 10 days. And they’re pretty delicious too. There’s still a very slight haze that I need to deal with, but I’m hoping some of that will continue to settle out in the bottle. I was also amazed at how light in colour it is, even though that’s what I was aiming for. Just not used to brewing beers that light I guess. All in all, I think this recipe warrants continued refinement.

So not a bad start to the year! Next up is probably an ESB, (maybe) followed by English IPA, followed by an Old Ale.

festivals

Dark Lord Day 2008

after the fun that eric and i had last year, it was pretty much definite that we’d be heading back to three floyds for dark lord day 2008. we also convinced jan to come along for the fun.

this year we decided to skip heading into chicago and instead stayed right in munster. the hampton inn is less than a mile from three floyds, making it incredibly convenient and a favourite among DLD attendees. we even managed to score a giant room with two beds plus a pullout and a nice kitchen area. free hot breakfast and internet were also a bonus.

with the hotel secured, the next order of business was transportation. last year we drove my little mazda 3, which barely managed to hold all the beer that eric and i had. this year we knew we’d probably be bringing more beer down with us and with a third person we’d definitely be bringing more home. i managed to get a pretty good rate and unlimited mileage on a pacifica, which we figured would be cozy and have more than enough room.

the next thing we needed to decide on was our route. as with last year, we knew our first stop would be kuhnhenn, since it’s just too great to pass up. since we weren’t going into chicago, we figured we’d add an extra stop or two along the way. our first choice was to visit jolly pumpkin, but for the second year in a row they were going to be closed to attend a beer festival. dark horse is just a little farther down I94, so we figured that was also a good option. a little farther along the highway was bell’s. from there we figured we’d check in to the hotel and head over to the three floyds brewpub for dinner and drinks to cap off the night.

the thursday evening before DLD jan and eric came up to my place. we did some final prep and gathered up all the beer we were bringing down for trades and sharing. i also made sure to bring along some homebrew for everyone i was trading with and for sharing at the hotel+DLD (including our 2006 old ale [brewday blog], award winning 2005 imperial stout [brewday blog], fred [brewday blog], and 2007 old ale [brewday blog]).

friday morning began bright and early. jenn and i woke up at 7am, grabbed some breakfast, and headed out to pick up the rental car. picked up the car at about 8am and headed back home to load up. by about 9:15am we were on the road heading for my in-laws just outside windsor. jenn was nice enough to handle this leg of the driving since i’d be doing a good chunk after we dropped her off.

we arrived in beautiful stoney point at 12:30pm, grabbed some lunch and relaxed for a bit before heading back out on the road. by 3pm we’d made it over the border and made the short drive to kuhnhenn. as it turned out they had a bunch of great stuff on tap and available in bottles. after an hour and a couple of samples we walked out with 8 growlers and 2 cases of bottles.

from there we continued our journey towards munster. around 6pm we rolled up to dark horse. we sat at the bar for a bit and enjoyed some crooked tree ipa. the food smelled and looked awesome, but none of us were quite hungry enough to eat yet, so we just enjoyed a pint and headed out. after a quick stop next door to grab some double crooked tree and some snacks for the road we crossed the parking lot and grabbed some sweet tshirts and swag. shortly after that we were back on the road.

we rolled into munster at around 8pm. as we came into indiana, the rain was alternating between a gentle spit and a near-blinding downpour. before heading to the hotel we made a quick stop at the liquor stop, and the rain let up long enough for us to get out of the car. we scoped out the three floyds offerings (broodoo in particular), but ultimately decided to wait and see what the prices were at the brewery on saturday. we grabbed cold sixpacks of pride+joy and founders centennial ipa for hotel consumption and headed out. between the liquor stop and the hotel the rain really started to come down. traffic slowed to a crawl.

it was about 9pm when we made it to the hotel. eric ran inside to check us in and we drove around back hoping to find a close parking spot. the rain was still coming down pretty good and we got thoroughly drenched running between the car and the doors. we quickly found more DLD attendees wandering the halls. michael/SPLITGRIN and scott/EliteDigger were the first we encountered, which worked out well since both eric and i had trades lined up with scott and michael had lots of extras up for grabs.

we finished off a couple quick trades and ran for the brewpub. at that point it was about 10:30pm and we were all tired and hungry and we didn’t want to miss out on some tasty food+beer at FFF before they closed. i started off with some twisted wytch and ordered a carnivore pizza. the pizza was pretty damn awesome. a glass of behemoth was a great closer and we headed back to the hotel.

arriving back at the hotel around 11:30pm i was feeling pretty tired from the long day, but i figured i’d make a couple calls and see if i could resolve any more trades before crashing for the night. i managed to reach ben/WankerWeasel, who let me know that he and matt/mully had checked in. i had decided to send the Brews N Tunes BIF 3 on to matt, and since he was attending DLD i figured an in-person exchange would be easy and allow me to hook him up with a few extra brews. after talking with them for far too long i wandered back upstairs and hit the bed around 1am, finally falling asleep at about 2am.

saturday morning i woke up somewhere around 7am. the hotel had complimentary hot breakfast, which was pretty sweet. we repacked what we needed to bring with us to the brewery and headed out.

we arrived at three floyds around 8:30am and there was a small crowd forming around the tasting tables and also a strange line that seemed to begin at the road and continue down the street. everyone who had been to DLD before was at the tables and equally baffled by the line. DLD was always about hanging out, sharing some great brews and meeting fellow beer lovers and a line never really formed until shortly before the doors opened at noon. however, this time the line was quickly growling and wandering down the street…

i had brought a growler of kuhnhenn‘s creme brulee java stout, and that seemed like the perfect thing to start the day with. i wandered around and found a group of minnesota BA’s (JeffKrenner, mully, WankerWeasel) and cracked open the growler and poured us all a sample. as it turned out, this was the last i’d see of the growler. a few minutes later i got a call from one of my trading partners and i left the growler and headed for the car.

after finishing a couple trades i wandered back towards the tables. i met up with dan/kkipple just in time for one of the guys at his table to open up a growler of dark knight. goddamn was that beer good!

that’s pretty much how the morning went, alternating between the tasting tables and trading. finally got to meet unclejedi. had several brief conversations with dyan as he ran past our car working out trades of his own. may other trades and BAs, too many to list…

i was standing near the car when i heard the roar of the crowd as the doors opened. i quickly ran back and found where eric was holding down our spot in line. before i knew it we were inside the (now expanded) brewery and slowly making our way towards the purchasing tables. while waiting in line an excellent BA and past trader Aprilluvsbeer ran up and gave me a sample of the vanilla bean dark lord, since the regular barrel aged dark lord had just run out and it didn’t seem like i’d make it over there before the VB was gone too. thanks april!

i grabbed a mixed case containing my 6 dark lord, 2 hvedegoop, 2 behemoth, and 2 rabbid rabbits. i rounded the corner and found that april was holding down a table along with her husband and parker/PHawk. parker is a crazy texan who made the long drive up, even wandering through wisconsin and minnesota before hitting munster. crazy for the drive and crazy for his generosity in sharing some fine brews with us. he was also a super nice guy that we ended up hanging out with for a good portion of the weekend.

this year’s DLD also featured a bunch of guest breweries. funniest beer of the day: piece camel toe (who’s logo sort of resembles the beer name…).

eventually i managed to finish the last of my trades and was able to kick back and relax for the rest of the day. i wandered around the tasting tables, talking to many BAs that i met last year and meeting some new ones. many great beers were had.

i was happy to catch up with Phatz again this year and swap some homebrew. we talked brewing a bunch last year, but as he’d just started brewing he didn’t have anything to bring along. this year we swapped a couple things and also opened a few bottles for sampling. i cracked my last bomber of the gold-medal winning 2005 imperial stout [brewday blog] and it was very well received by all.

i also met a giant texan named charles/thickerfreankess. apparently a friend of his had tried some of our homebrew via a trade with eric, and when he heard that i had brought a bunch of our stuff along he came looking for me. i hooked him up with a bomber of our 2006 old ale [brewday blog].

the food lineups were a little easier to manage this year, and the food was top notch. dark lord sausage loaded with carmelized onions kicked some serious ass. while hanging in line with Phatz, april handed us a bottle of goose island bourbon county stout. we quickly popped it open and shared some with the guys behind us in line. the two of them were locals who came to check out the event. they were amazed both by how good the beer was and also that it was available locally and they’d never tried it. we gave them the rest of the bottle and grabbed some food.

eric was definitely having a good day. between the tasting tables and the lineup of guest taps, it wasn’t hard to overdo it. by mid-afternoon he was stumbling a little and talking about how he’d been wrecked since about 10am. when i asked what he was drinking, he said devil dancer. i have a feeling that a 13% beer might not have been the best choice at that time. especially when he said he’d downed a glass of behemoth just before…

by about 4pm things were winding down, so we loaded eric into the car and left. we made another run by the liquor stop, hoping to grab some broodoo since there hadn’t been any at the brewery. unfortunately, i think everyone else had the same idea. the several cases we’d seen on friday night were now all gone.

back at the hotel, eric basically passed out as soon as we got there. parker dropped by to see if we wanted to grab some dinner at the restaurant next door, so jan and i joined him. great food, great conversation, and a few glasses of alpha king. hard to beat that.

back at the hotel, eric was still passed out. i caught up with a couple more BAs to finish off my trading. steve/nflmvp and tom/MuenchenerKindl were staying directly below our room, so i went down and talked with them for a while. while down there i got a call from april, her husband, and aaron/leftmindedrighty. they were standing outside our room and nobody was answering. i ran upstairs and let everyone in, only to find that eric had risen from his bed and was somewhat coherent. he certainly did provide some entertainment. eric insisted that we watch danse la poutine far too many times, with some SNL digital shorts thrown in for good measure. i opened up a growler of pisgah valdez and shared it around.

after a bit the PA crew left in search of food and i went wandering looking for folks to share the growler with. we hung out with parker for a while and got to hear him reading some excellent sammyisms. i went wandering and hung out with the SC crew (dan, joe/khiasmus and friends) for a while. they thought it was hilarious that a bunch of canadians were sharing some of their best locals with them.

after killing the growler i headed back up to our room. we watched some sweet walken on saturday night live (“a giant invisible bird!”) and had more fine brews. parker was generous enough to share a bottle of alesmith barrel-aged old numbskull with us, a truly excellent beer. other people kind of came and went from the room throughout the evening. around 2am i was finally able to get everyone out so i could sleep for a bit, since i wanted to be on the road by 8am the next morning.

6:45am on sunday came far too early. i grabbed a quick shower and started packing the car. we managed to sort things out and pack it in fairly well, using pretty much the entire trunk space of the car. we grabbed some breakfast and hit the road at about 8:30am, a little behind schedule, but not too bad. i pretty much drove non-stop back to detroit, crossing the bridge and getting to customs at about 1:30pm.

arriving at customs, i was sure we were going to be paying duty. we had in excess of 12 cases of beer in the car, and even split between three people with a 48 hour stay in the states, that’s still a lot of beer. i told the customs agent that we had about 12 cases of beer, but had only purchased about 3 cases. i explained how we’d brought a bunch of beer down with us and traded it for a similar volume/price in american micros and didn’t have receipts for anything as a result. she was fascinated by a beer festival that would allow people to bring in their own beer for trading and sharing, so i probably spent about 5 minutes explaining dark lord day and the whole weekend of fun. she suggested that in the future we might want to at least keep receipts for the things we’d purchased in canada to bring down with us and told us to have a nice day. we pulled away from the booth and all started jumping for joy that we had managed to get through with over 12 cases of beer and not pay any duty.

from there it was a short drive back to my in-laws place on the lake. we arrived at about 2pm, had some lunch, and relaxed for a while. there was a little more rearranging to fit jenn’s stuff back in the car, but we managed to get everything in. at about 3:30pm we said goodbye and headed out.

we dropped eric off at about 7:15pm, jan at about 7:45pm, and pulled into our driveway at about 8:15. since we didn’t want to deal with the car in the morning, we unpacked and brought it back to the rental place at about 8:45pm. by 9pm we were home and i collapsed into bed somewhere around 10:30pm

when it was all done we’d travelled 1822km/1132miles in the rental car in the span of about 60 hours. a whirlwind tour, but one heck of a good time. already looking forward to next year.

on to the photos!

the back of the rental before leaving friday morning. somewhere around 8 cases of beer, empty cooler, and our bags.

the second stop of the day: dark horse.

the tap list at dark horse. lots of great options, but all three of us went with the crooked tree. you can also see some of their cool tap handles.

closer shot of the taps.

the back of eric’s head and the side of mine. you can also see the mugs hanging from the ceiling and walls. pretty neat, as each one is just a little different than the next. they’re also made by an artist in michigan too.

the menu and the end of my crooked tree. “good grub!!!”.

liked this bumper sticker. you can see some mugs there too.

right next door to the pub is wacky’s, a convenience/liquor store that sells most of the dark horse product line. here you can see jan walking toward the door. we all grabbed some double crooked tree and snacks for the road.

after stopping at dark horse we drove on to munster indiana and checked into our hotel. here you can see some of the room and the beer we brought up for trades at the hotel. we were told it’s the biggest room in the hotel, with two queen beds and a sofabed. it also had a fridge, microwave, and tons of space.

once we got settled in and took care of a few trades we headed over to the three floyds brewpub for a late dinner and some beer before they closed. the carnivore pizza was just so damn good that i had to snap a photo. “Andouille Sausage, Pepperoni, Bacon And Roasted Garlic.” what’s not to love?

jan and alexa

eric

jan trying to look pensive, contemplating how delicious the behemoth was. we also enjoyed some twisted wytch and a few other things i can’t quite remember.

the menu at the pub.

fast forward to saturday. we arrived at three floyds right around 9am and started hanging around the tasting tables and taking care of some trades. the first thing i did was open up my growler of kuhnhenn creme brulee java stout and start passing it around. coffee stout seemed like the right thing if you’re going to start drinking at 9am.

at this point it was around noon and i was nearly to the end of the line for dark lord. i’d gone through the old brewery and was moving through the new half towards the purchase tables. i took a few photos looking out over the end of the line and across the blockade towards the area where they were selling the various guest casks and where the band was starting to play.

looking back down the line into the “old” part of the brewery.

after getting outside i found that the crews were back trying to put up the tents. apparently they’d been there the night before, but the intense winds and thunderstorm had meant they just couldn’t get it up. i was told they came back early in the morning and tried again, but it was still too windy. they seemed to manage ok this time though.

this was the exit after purchasing your dark lord and beer from the guest breweries. the steps of doom, aka “litigation stairs”. higher than you’d expect, squishy since the top was fairly thin, and the front plate came up over the edge posing a bit of a tripping hazard. fortunately everyone seemed to take them fairly slowly and i didn’t see anyone fall.

cask beer: three floyds dreadnaught, surly bitter brewer, goose island pub belgian blonde, piece camel toe, two brothers, and flossmoor station really big ipa?

“did you fall asleep or did you pass out?”

this is the tent they were working on before, seen from the opposite side. they were selling beer at one end and there were some tables at the other. you can also see the wall of porta johns (much more than last year, though still a little risky by the end of the day) and the munster water tower in the distance.

turning slightly to the left you can see the brewpub entrance and the neverending line heading inside for dark lord as well as people everywhere just hanging out and sampling beer. someone down in front clearly having a good time.

here i was trying to get a view of the lineup. the line began far in the distance, coming toward the camera and then turning and heading to the right.

this is me and charles/thickerfreankess on BA. this giant texan tracked me down after a friend of his told him about our homebrew. he was raving about it and really wanted to try some of our stuff. i hooked him up with one of the last bombers of our 2006 old ale [brewday blog]. apparently he’s an avid reader of the blog and has even done some brewing inspired by our recipes. cool!

here’s eric looking a little rough around the edges. behind him i can see the back of Phatz’s head. Phatz is a good guy from out in PA who is also a homebrewer. when i met him at last year’s DLD he had just started brewing and didn’t have anything in bottles yet. this year he brought a few things along. we swapped a couple bottles and sampled a few more. he opened a chocolate brown ale and i cracked my last bottle of our gold-medal winning 2005 imperial stout [brewday blog]. i thought the chocolate brown was really neat. the imperial stout was also well received by everyone who tried it.

the food tent. there was a ton of great stuff available, and the lines were much faster than last year. i decided to go with the dark lord sausage piled high with some badass caramelized onions. that shit was crazy good. while waiting in line with Phatz, Aprilluvsbeer handed us a bottle of goose island bourbon county stout. Phatz gave her his glass of alpha king and we popped open the BCS, sharing it with the two guys behind us in line. they were both locals and yet had never heard of it – and were totally blown away by how good it is. i think goose just got a couple of new customers!

another crowd shot. in the distance you can see the the lineup fading down the street.

the “sign” out front of three floyds. from one side it’s the calumet queen, and from the other it’s the alpha king.

more of the crowd. the lineup is still going strong.

more sampling. the little guy in the middle with the chicago bears hat is Jay23. jay is a great guy that i’ve traded with the last two years. he was also nice enough to help out with a trade i was doing with someone in cali. thanks jay!

more tasting. front left in the brown sweater we have the back of jan, and on his right we have the side of parker, aka PHawk. we hung out with parker a bunch. super great guy and very generous trader. we’ll try to let the part where he’s a mavericks fan slide. in the distance behind him we also have the back of Phatz again and SPLITGRIN on his right.

tragedy strikes. this gentleman was on his way out when he dropped his box, breaking at least one dark lord. you can still see the waxed top in tact.

we left somewhere around 4pm and headed back to the hotel. my pile of beer was growing on the right, and my tradeable box on the left is empty.

when we got back to the hotel, eric pretty much passed out. parker, jan, and i went to the restaurant across the parking lot from the hotel and grabbed some dinner. hard to go wrong with $4 pints of alpha king and good food.

here’s eric, now semi-conscious after a several hour nap. on the left you can see our aaron/leftmindedrighty, Aprilluvsbeer, and her husband john in the distance.

jan

john, april, and aaron again. we were sampling the growler of pisgah valdez i got in a trade with walter/ncvbc. he shipped it up to wisconsin and scott/EliteDigger was nice enough to bring it down with the other beers we were trading. thanks scott!

eric watching danse la poutine. i think he subjected us to this 3 or 4 times over the course of the night. anytime someone came in who hadn’t seen it (which was basically everyone), he’d put it on again. you can see my glass of valdez on the right. it was some darn good shit. reminded me a lot of one of our locals, mill street coffee porter.

one of the hits of the day, alesmith barrel aged old numbskull. the incredibly generous parker shared this one with us. truly and excellent beer that i look forward to trying again. bottle #70/208 too. two others in the background that are no slouches either: lost abbey bourbon barrel aged angel’s share and a 2002 hair of the dog doggie claws.

eventually we managed to get everyone out of our room so i could catch some sleep before leaving bright and early to head home…

the car on the drive home. the cooler now had a bunch of full growlers and the beer was piled higher and deeper, with some of our bags moved to the back seat. we needed to shuffle a little more and pack them in even tigher to fit jenn’s stuff in too.

the three of us posing with some dark lord.

after the first leg of the drive we ate some lunch and relaxed on the lake at my in-laws.

we then headed out for the last leg of the drive, back up to toronto. we dropped off eric and jan and headed home, unloading so that i could return the rental. by 9pm we were back home and it didn’t take very long before i collapsed into bed.

this year’s haul, nearly double what i brought home last year. 4 growlers and nearly 6 cases of beer.

brewing day

frozen again

after our sub-zero brew day on november 2005 i swore i’d never brew again when the temperature fell below zero. well, the final brew day of 2007 was planned and got postponed a couple of times, and it looked like december 1st was going to be our last chance. early-mid week leading up to the brew day the weather was looking ok, but by about thursday the forecast had chanced and things didn’t look as good…

when we started the day it was frigid. unlike the nov ’05 brew day which started out OK and slowly worked its way below freezing, this day started out well below freezing and wasn’t forecast to make it above. the hoses and everything else was frozen solid. this meant constantly running in and out of the house to get water, clean things, and everything else. we needed to bring the hose and chiller inside to thaw them out before they could be used to cool the wort. anytime we spilled water on the ground – even near boiling sparge water – it instantly turned the garage into a sheet of ice. needless to say, this kept things pretty interesting…

only one brew was on the schedule, thinking it would make things shorter and easier. the downside to this was there was lots of lag time when we had nothing to do and ended up standing around rather than keeping busy.

our final brew day of 2005 was a big imperial stout, well suited to aging – and a gold medal at the 2007 GCHC. to cap off 2006 eric and i brewed an old ale in the tradition of thomas hardy’s. we decided to continue the tradition of producing a “vintage ale” each year. for 2007 we reprised the grain bill from the old ale minus the parti-gyle and switched out the hops for west coast american style hops, including a bunch of amarillo and my homegrown centennials.

when the day was done we had 8 gallons of 1.090 american old ale in the fermenters. a little lower volume and gravity than we wanted, but we were just happy to be done.

with all the extra chaos the temperature added, i didn’t end up taking any photos through the brew day.

after warming up and eating some dinner we continued our usual routine of euchre and beer. also on hand for tasting and comparison were two very fine meads: jadwiga and kurpiowski. eric hooked me up with the jadwiga as part of BC2, and brought over the kurpiowski for comparison.

here you can see the three of us posing with the two bottles and six samples poured and ready. both were great, but i think we all picked the jadwiga as the winner. if only i could get this stuff on a regular basis!

another year of brewing done for us here in markham, but we’ll be back again soon.

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!