Krausen Comando's meeting and a trip to NY.. with beer!

So we had the first ever Krausen Comando's meeting June 13th, 2010. It was *epic*. Had a few brews of home-made persuasion that were pretty good, and tasted the first (I think) Hefe from Cambridge, which the owner (Steve) was kind enough to bring up for us, gratis. Nice fellow, that Steve! Our sorta official home base is, of course, the Cambridge House on Main in Torrington.. and they treated us well. 

..which included a tour! Check this out.. one of the serving tanks located in the never-before-seen basement. And man, they'll let just about anyone in, won't they?

In addition, a couple days ago me and the fam went into NYC to catch a ballet and the Central Park Zoo.  The kids navigated and got us there in one piece..

..and when we were there, Cecily got to go dancing at the NY Ballet with a legit ballerina. Check it:

..and afterwards, we hit up Chelsea Brewing Co. for a few beers and dinner. The beers were awesome.. esp. the "Summer Ale", which although an uninspiring name, was a totally inspiring beer. Really well done. I should definitely figure out what that combo of hops was that they used, because it just flat out worked.

Honest.. I only had two. That one there in the picture is the Black Hole Stout, a rather big hitter that medaled at GABF a few times. Well done! The Summer Ale was way better, though.

In other news, I just barely got in under the wire for a homebrew comp that I entered with Tim and Geoff. I piggybacked a couple beers in a box with theirs on their way to the Ohio Beer Week competition. I sent in a 2007 vintage Imperial Stout to this thing, as it was one of the only things I had in bottles that I thought stood a chance of doing well. This beer was brewed with Pete W. *way* back in the day, before I may even have known most of the Commandos. Geoff entered a Scottish 80, I believe it was and Timmay threw in a DIPA of some variety. We'll see how we do.

Got some other updates to do later, but have to wait till tomorrow I think...

Berliner update, again... where's my damn camera?

Update. Without pictures. Still can't locate my stinkin' camera that I lost the other day.. drats.

When last I typed, I had just scored a heat-lamp from Deb A. next door and jumped the whole fermenter up on there. No dice! Nothing happened into the next day. At that point, I got scared I was gonna lose the batch to some other bugs, so I pitched my neutral strain and left for work. I did take a sample of the wort, though, and it was as clean and sweet as the day I put it in there. So, no worries on the sanitation aspect, I guess. By the time I got home that night, the ferment was pretty nuts from the neutral saccharomyces and it's pretty flatlined in there now, since they (bugs) didn't have much work to do. I have not had a taste of it since I put the neutral yeast in there. Geoff said his smelled like spoiled milk when he went to pitch in his second yeast, but he didn't taste it yet.  That's sorta where we stand right now..

So.. I wrote back to WYeast, and got this response: "There is a chance you will still get some sour beer, though I doubt it will be as sour as possible." So, we haven't lost hope yet. In any case, I'll have a tiny, wee little Wheat beer if nothing else happens. Hell, maybe Geoff's will be *so* sour, it'll be undrinkable unless we blend it with 5 gallons of non-sour beer (that I just happen to have!) to bring it back in line. You never know.. ;-)

In other news, the chickens are really slacking it lately. 2-3 eggs a day for the past week and a half now.. I'm wondering if someone isn't in for a molt or something right about now? Hmm.. also getting a lot of broken eggs with that one chick who lays the very brittle, weak shelled eggs. Poor thing.

Also as an aside, I'm still driving the wheels off the Rustler VXL I bought so long ago. It still runs like a champ, and I haven't broken anything in like, forever. Ok, like, March of last year it looks like.. I've put a pretty good kink in one of the cells of the liPo pack I've got, but hey, I flung it off the hood of my car a while back if you'll remember.. I'll just cut it some slack as a result of that. It still runs like mad with that pack, though.

Garden is going like wild. The peas just sprouted some flowers, and the chile's broke loose with some tiny little stalk things where the peppers themselves will grow, a couple of days ago.

Planning a beer to brew this coming Monday with Frank for the party at Uncle Mike's house on the lake.. Frank thinks he wants to do something with fruit in it. I think Frank has fruit in him. We'll document that brew as best we can with no camera.. drats.

Berliner Weisse brew day...

OK, here's some pics and an update on how things are progressing on the Berliner Weisse. This is a shot of the starters for the lactobacillus strain from WYeast in the foreground, and the raw grains experiment to grow some wild lacto (that was later ditched) in the background.

After the brew day was complete, which was a bit of a departure from the norm, what with a *15* minute boil duration, this is what we ended up with. A yellowish colored, sorta murky stuff. Registered at 1.032 corrected for gravity to 1.034 (I think.. might have been 1.033). We had to add a bit of water to dilute because our o.g. jumped up a bit higher than anticipated.. still trying to figure out the efficiency now with this pump doing constant recirculation. The efficiency does go up a bit, it seems.

Geoff, caught in the act of fudging the numbers via BrewSmith!

And lastly, a picture of Geoff's actual fermenter on the next day.. he's keeping his at about 85-86, possibly higher, because he's using a heating pad to heat from the bottom and he's measuring the temp in the carboy nearer the top.. and this is his result. Total lacto domination. I've just got a heat-lamp going over mine now, with a jacket wrapped around it for insulation and I'm getting only up to 83 degrees measured near the top. I have *nothing* like this sort of activity.. I've got wispy little strands of colonies  floating on the surface and bits of pockets of bubbles and that's it. Nothing nearly as exciting to take a picture of. When I saw this, I called the neighbors (Thanks Deb!) and scored a heating pad to put under mine, like Geoff did.. I'm still ramping up the temp as I type this and hope to have this sort of activity by the end of the day.

Additionally, m pH test strips are indicating a not-moved pH of around 5.2-ish.. a refract reading of 8.5 exactly, which corrects to 1.034 for temp, and a taste test which indicates nothing but sweetness in the jug. Taste test also indicates perfect sanitation, as there's no off flavors of any sort going on in here as well.. at least I've got that going for me!

Stay tuned, true believers..

Berliner Weisse beginnings...

I've been thinking heavily of Berliner Weisse lately. I've only had this style of beer a few times, the last time being last year on vacation in Jersey.. we hit up a place called the Tun Tavern that's a brew pub, and they had one on tap. Never really seen that done before in a brew pub. Sour beer, on tap in a brewery? Most would run scared. In either case, the beer was fantastic. Tart, dry, crisp, and very flavorful. At only 3% abv, you could drink this like fruit-juice and enjoy it all day long. It was awesome.

Anyway, I've been struggling with what to put on Tap #4, which at my place, has almost always been a sour or wild beer yeast tap line. I need something to replace the Brett Pale Ale that's running out of time there now.. and Berliner just popped into my head the other week and I've been thinking about it ever since. It's a weird beer. It's fermented with lactobacillus for the tart, sour notes it has and then finished up with a clean ale strain. The lacto continues to work it's magic until it nearly dries right up to nothing for final gravity. I've had lots of fun with Brett beers in the past year, and I enjoy them.. but they're no sour beer, which are my favorite. I also don't seem to have the patience for Flanders style hard core sour beers (think Rodenbach Grand Cru) and the ability to keep them in rotation all the while. Berliner Weisse, tho.. this seems to be a fairly quick turn around beer, because the lactobacillus is a faster acting souring mechanism. It throws out a bit of acid pretty quick, and then kicks the bucket because it can't tolerate alcohol very much. This style also has the distinction of being so obscure, and so weird to brew, that people just don't seem to want to brew the damned thing. Finding info on this process is not easy like it is for Stouts and IPA's. Which is to say, it seems like it was made just for *me*. Gotta be different, you know.. ;-)

Anyway, I got an old packet of lactobacillus (WYeast #5335, I believe..) from the brew shop in East Hartford, Brew & Wine Hobby, from the just-about-new owner there (sorry, I forget his name at the moment..) who is buying out the old owner. This packet was out of date by almost 5 months, so nearly a year old.. but the shop owner there gave it to me for nothing and said to give it a try, and that it would probably still work. Some emails exchanged with WYeast about this strain has me fermenting it in a bucket with a heat lamp suspended over it to hold the temperature at 80+ degrees to hopefully grow up a starter for this thing big enough to do a split batch of 10+ gallons. WYeast was very helpful with information for this weird bugger, and I think I' might have given up or just failed without them assisting me. I'm very grateful to their customer assistance program right about now. Before I get too far, I'd like to give a shout out to the new owner of the above-mentioned brew store. He's a younger fellow from the previous owner and seems MUCH more personable and beer friendly. The last fellow seems a little wine biased and a touch grouchy.. but this new fellow is certainly a pleasure to speak with. My future brew shop business will more than likely be in his direction. Give him a look-see, eh?

So, to bring this to a close, I turned to a trusted and valiant home-brewer from past beers, Geoffrey Dobos, to kick around the idea of brewing this funny beer. Geoff seems highly interested and we have plans to go forward with it's creation starting tomorrow afternoon.. wish us luck. This should be a good learning experience. I can tell already that this beer will be one of those that I brew over and over until I get it right.. so, if we don't get it just perfect this time, we'll hone in on it until we do.. keep an eye on this space for details of the brew coming in tomorrow.

Take care..

The Brutal Truth: Franks DIPA

And here we go, for another round of The Brutal Truth, where we tear apart the hopes and dreams of yet another home brewer who foolishly submits a beer for my evaluation! In this round, we're disemboweling Franks (and to a large extent, Robs as well..) Double IPA that he crafted at the Big Brew, 2010. I say party Rob's as well, because they brewed this together and did a split batch of it.. but since Rob's was fermented off site in another location and is also packaged as draft only, it can't be fully counted as just one review. On with the show!

This is what I'm presented with:

So far, I would be checking off the Acetaldehyde and Estery check boxes. *Very* low in the Acetaldehyde though, almost imperceptible.. Estery as far as an also mild fruity character goes.

Again, sticking with BJCP recognized forms and scoring.. Bottle fill was perfect. No rings or weirdness in the neck that I noticed.

Aroma: Mild fruity and caramel-ly aroma. Strangely, no hops detectable. Certainly there should be some hops evident in a DIPA? No off aromas detectable here.. fermented well enough, I guess.  5/12 is the score. For a DIPA, there should be hops here that I'm not finding.

Appearance: Head retention thus far is low, but persistent. I've got an orange colored, well carbonated bottle conditioned beer in a double walled Bodum glass in front of me. Its clarity is unparalleled. 3/3

Flavor: Low maltyness and a very minor caramel flavor present. Actually, vanilla might be a better descriptor, because it's less than caramel, but there's a very minor player in there that tastes almost as if this was oaked, with non-toasted chips. Plenty of hop bitterness, but no real big hop flavor is around here. There's nothing here that's bad, but for a DIPA, I'm expecting some hops that I'm just not finding. Perhaps I'm biased from my West Coast experience, where a veritable hop clubbing was received every time, but there should definitely be more here in this beer, for this style. Bitterness is spot on, however. 10/20 is the score.

Mouthfeel: A bit of an alcoholic taste is evident, but very background. Fine for the style. Fantastic carbonation, medium body and overall near perfect mouthfeel. Very well done in this regard. 5/5

Overall Impression: Overall, if you handed this beer to me and didn't tell me what it was, and I wasn't hell bent on figuring it out, this beer is *solid*. It's well fermented, nothing wrong with it from a brewing or fermenting standpoint. Strong as heck abv%-wise, and balanced right out. It's dry, and drinks like a champ. There's nothing wrong with this at all, except for the one thing you're really needing in an (D)IPA. If this had more hops, this foundation would be simply awesome.  If we're arguing that it's a DIPA though, I'll have to take exception. I would brew this again, exactly the same, but add more hops in the midrange and then dry hop this thing in the fermenter as well. Then, perfection might be achieved. 6/10 for overall impression.

Total: 29/50

Huh? Wait.. 29/50 indicates "Good: Misses the mark on style and/or minor flaws" per the BJCP sheet.. but wait. Does that make sense? Well, the math here is weird. I dinged this beer hard on Flavor and Aroma.. and to a large extent, Overall Impression. Yet, it still makes "Good". Well, the Brutal Truth says it *is* good! It's a DAMN good beer. It scored well in the other areas, which negated the pain a bit. I mean, really well done, balanced, big abv, and no remarkable brewing or fermenting flaws. I dare say, find another category (Old Ale? Biere de Garde (Gads!)) and this thing might score very well indeed. I think the issue here is, it's a newish recipe, brewed with a new crop of hops.. this just needs a couple more refinements and it'll be perfect. As it stands, it doesn't make the best DIPA, but it makes a mighty fine drinking beer. And, with that said, I drank this on an empty stomach and it just *killed* me... this is not a session-able brew! ;) Too big!

This was my breakfast yesterday. An English Muffin I made with my pal Crystal (well, we made more than one..), an egg from the backyard hens, and a slice of cheese made a pretty decent MikeMuffin Sandwich, I'll say.

If you think you (and your beer) is man enough for a Brutal Truth review, don't be scared to pony up and submit one for review. One 12 oz bottle is all it takes to have your heart ripped from your chest and dashed on the pages of Up's and Down's!

That's all for now. Carry on..

Been a long time.. here's some updates.

Sheesh, been a long time since I've posted here. Here's some stuff that's transpired in the past week and change. That wort pump box I built? MAGIC! Worked like a charm. Jody came over and we whipped up a basic pale ale (well... maybe not stone cold basic. We did end up tossing in a bit of crushed black pepper! Nick is gonna love this thing.. ) using the pump and it was like, well.. like we weren't working. 

I really liked the no lifting of buckets of hot water, the complete and total annihilation of the recirculation aspect, and the hands off self-swirling wort chilling part. Those are my top three fav's. Simply awesome.

In other news, the garden is really coming along nice. Few things happend lately.. I picked up a horseradish plant that Sarah so thoughtfully brought home from a scouting mission she was on. That got planted in the herb garden area. Check it:

It's not much to look at, nope. Sort of depressing, actually. Let's hope it looks up from here..

The regular garden beds are cooler, though. Check these out:

The far bed has tomatoes on the left, beans in the middle and red lettuce followed by a couple rows of green lettuce on the right. The near-er bed has some crap The Boss put in on the left side, and then two rows of three (six total) of my habaneros in the middle, followed by two rows of three Jalapeno's on the right. Down the middle of the Japaleno's are some other nasty vegetable that Sarah put in underneath as well.. not sure what that is either. The peppers are what we'll be focusing on mostly in my personal blog here, and maybe to some extent a minor mention of the lettuce, depending on how delicious it is in a lunchtime salad for me. 

In case you were wondering:

Sorta hard to see here, but the Cascades have wrapped themselves around the lower part of the trellis a few times already, and are starting to work their way upwards now. It's been just the past week where I've gotten any real growth out of them.. it's been so cold, they hate life. They're a couple feet taller now though. 

In the line of duty, there was a casualty.. 

Brett 'C' Chocolate Rye Stout, just killed moments ago. A keg of the Big Brew Brown I made up with Dan Tavelli is now in it's place... gona check on that tomorrow when it's cold and see what's up there. Dan says his bottled version is already up and running, so we hope to get together for a side-by-side comparo of the two pretty soon. Fingers crossed...

 Oh snap, rewind a sec.. forgot a cool side project science project thingy. Look at this weird invention:

This is called an Earthbox. It says so on the side, that's how I know.  Sarah got it somewhere last year and put some tomatoes in it up on the deck, thinking that if they were close by, she'd take care of them and not forget to water the things and maybe they wouldn't die. Well, Barbie came in a couple days later and kicked the royal crap out of the box by digging it up and eating the tops off the plants. Jerk! The Boss proceded to put a few rotten ol' strawberries and a few carrots in there afterwards in desperation, but the berries got eaten too, I believe, and the carrots came out all mutated and only an inch long or something. Game over, and she gave up. It's been sitting on the deck ever since. Can't believe it didn't break from being full of water all winter long. She said I could take it over, and since I had a few more habaneros I wanted to plant that I didn't have room for in the garden, I figured I'd put 'em in here. Anyway, the idea is, you put the dirt in here on top of the mesh flooring (sorta like a mashtun!) and the roots grow down and drink all the water they want. You fill it through the tube thingy in the upper left corner here in this pic, because the top get's covered by plastic stuff and only the plants poke out the top, like this:

Supposedly, this keeps out all the weeds and makes like, an everlasting cycle of water movement inside there. In addition, there's a huge amount of fertilizer in here too, right on top, that sorta get's evenly mixed in as the season progresses. This thing claims to increase your yield by two times or more. Oh, we'll see. 

Wort pump & Southern Hemisphere Harvest..

OK, so here's phase one of my electric brewery build up.. getting my wort pump back in action. Check this out.. the whole idea is based on some others I've seen online, where there's a small toolbox built up to support a wort pump and switches and outlets. The only thin I really didn't like about this arrangement is that there was an extra extension cord laying around.. I already have an extension cord, why do I want another? I consulted a friend of mine (electrical genius Dave Ellis!) for some guidance, and came up with this idea:

Standard March 809 wort pump (food grade pump) mounted in a small tool box..

Then, wire up the switch (upper left hand corner of this picture..) and the recessed male plug connector (the ingenious part, in the lower center of this photo.. stand by or more)..

The outside front view of this puppy, with the installed ON/OFF switch located just under the front cover of this top box flap thingy, the extension cord plug whoosey in the front and the pump connections located just to the right of the box.

And a shot of the plumbing here on the pump side.

The beauty of this is, there's no extension cord hanging about. You use it and then store it. You don't need to go out and buy one specifically for your pump box here. The toolbox also gives the pump a much more stable platform from which to do it's thing.. which is why I broke it so long ago to begin with, cause I flipped it over and snapped off one of the outlets. Now, I've got a stable base to work with so hopefully all should be well.

The next thing is this:

What you're looking at there is a 3500 watt heater element in my right hand and a 1" NPT locknut in my left. The locknut and element merge well together, straight thread and NPT threads notwithstanding, and will enable me to get said heater element mounted into the side of my HLT so I can electrify it for superior heat via 240 volt current. Yeah, we got that here.


In other news, I drank this up last night:

Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest. F'ing great beer! Taking notes on my iPod.. err.. I just found out the notes I took on my iPod were just totally wiped out. Huh? Ok, going from memory.. I recall a really wicked hop attack that followed a really nice, pleasant malt sweetness and mild.. err .. something. There was something there alongside the malt, I remember that much. The hops pretty much decimated the malty-ness a few seconds after you got a taste of it.. but I wasn't complaining. The hops were some kinda citrusy and something else I can't recall. That's pretty insightful, I know. Like I said, my notes were destroyed. Drats. All in all, I gave this bombshell a double thumbs up, despite it's huge blast of hops that was totally out of whack. I mean, that's why you're buying this beer. It's huge! It was easily as big as any of the West Coast IPA's I drank when I was in CA a little while ago.. but really well done, and arguably better than most of not all of those previously mentioned beers. Really well done. Go get one or seven of these right now. You'll thank me later. 


I have some more I'd like to write, but I'll have to handle it another time.. things to do, places to go. Stay tuned..