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 This packet was out of date by almost 5 months, so nearly a year old..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..

More electric thoughts...

Still pondering electric brewing.. I think I have the element in the kettle part sorted out now, but I keep coming back to the pump I have and hw I'm going to incorporate that. I came across a new idea today in that you mount the pump inside a small toolbox with just the pump head and valves exiting the box.. keeps the electric part shielded from any stray water and gives the pump itself a safe footing from which to do it's thing. Which is how I broke it in the first place.. not having a stable mount to put it on. There's also a switch mounted on the box, for on and off action, and I think I'll use a male-sided reverse plug on the box, so I can keep the extension cord I have in one piece and not have a big long cord attached to the box running into the thing for power. Less pieces to buy as well, right?

I figure, if I go with the toolbox idea, I can easily use it low (on the floor) or high (on a bench) in the brewery, plus still keep it portable if I wanna take it somewhere to use at someone else's house. The downside is, it's one more thing to move around that's not permanently fixed to the stand. I guess cleaning would be easier, though, since I could bring the pump inside to clean and not have to drag chemicals out there to the stand to get it done.

Now, if only I weren't so skittish around electrical work, this would all be so much better...

Some thoughts on electric brewing...

You guys are totally ripped off today. Only picture you're gonna get is this lousy one of a barely out of the ground chile plant:

Clearly, of the Jalapeno variety. The peat pot says so. This little guy, and one other friend of the six total I planted, came out of the ground like three days ago. Two out of six. Not as good as I'd hoped.. but I guess there's still time. I've also got my bakup plan in place, which is also till moving along just fine.. stand by for more on that.

In other news, I was talking with a friend last night, Jeremiah B. from way down south, about breweries. He's building a new one up from scratch and he had called to pick my brain about measurements and gadgets and whatnot that I had attached to mine. Wanted to know how I'd done it, what I liked, and what I'd change if I could. Told him a bunch of stuff.. but most interesting is we talked about HLT's and their fabrication. Knowing what I know now, I'm interested in going to at least part electric heating. The HLT, in particular, is perfectly suited to being electrically heated.. this stuff has been known for a while now, as there's several people online documenting their builds. But the bug to upgrade to that has started to bite me again.. since Jer is building his as we speak, I gave him some ideas to bounce around in his head on stuff to do.. and we'll see how he makes out. Depending on what he comes up with and his particular equipment build, we'll base my next upgrade off of that. I also shot him an idea for my newest sight glass idea.. so, stand by for some more on that later as well.

Calibratin' and graduatin'.. and a darned big egg!

Not a groundbreaker here, but figured I'd update on the mod's I'm making to the brew rig. Figured I'd do something today that I've been putting off for a really long time, just cause it's so boring.. and that's measurements. Boring. But it's important stuff, really. What I mean is, I'm marking graduations on the sides of  my boil kettle so can finally get an accurate measurement of how much wort I have in the kettle pre-boil. This measurement, plus a reading of wort gravity prior to boil, will allow me to do the math to figure out what I'm going to end up with, or *how* to end up with a kettle full of wort of the strength I actually desire, or planned for, with my software. It's just boring as hell to do. Plus, I'm measuring boil off rate now as well.. you know, it's only been like, 8 years now and I haven't done it yet. Figured I'd do it since I had a kettle full of hot water anyway, right? So, the clock started about 15 minutes ago and we'll see where we end up in an hour. Check the pics:

Here's a shot of the new graduations on the kettle:

As you can see there, I'm simply using the transfer hose run up the side of the kettle as a sight-glass, instead of building a new sight glass (which I could fairly easily do...). Not having a built in sight glass leaves one less thing to get crap all boiled and hardened into. That's the primary reason I don't have a permanent one on there.. but this idea works the same way and is just as accurate. Sweet.

Here's a pic of my por hops. Darned things got blown over couple days ago in the wind.. drats.

Here's a new bread I just took out f the oven, a couple hours ago. Standard sourdough boule, with a touch of spelt powder dusted over the top just before slashing to leave a bit of a design on the top:

And finally, a huge egg! This thing measures 98 grams... 3.45 ounces. A monster! the equivalent of two full size large eggs. It's so huge, the lid on the egg box won't close. Sheesh!

That's all for now, kids.. carry on.