BetterBeerBlog

Every since it’s doors have opened, the Trappist has packed in throngs of Belgian beer fans. It’s intimate space, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and commitment to an authentic Belgian beer bar experience has earned much respect and admiration from not only craft beer connoisseurs but of the community as well. The Trappist’s support craft beer extends far beyond it’s 16 or so taps or the hundreds of beers contained within it’s “Beer Bible” but onto the support it extends towards the craft beer community.

Last Thursday the Trappist played host to Pro-Am Night where 6 of the 10 Pro-Am beers brewed in California were on tap to sample. “Pro-Am” refers to the Professional-Amateur Competition held annually at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). The competition is supposed to foster collaboration between the amateur and professional brewing communities with the beer being brewed having been an award-winning homebrew recipes. Most professional homebrewers got their start as homebrewers so it makes sense a project like this would’ve been developed.

Here’s a list of what was poured and some specs to go along with it.

Between my wife, her best friend and myself, we were able to try all the beers on tap. Of the six I had, the most memorable for me were the Five & Dime Tripel, Hazy Frog and Elizabeth Street Bitter (ESB). The ESB had a deceptively complex malt character with depth and has classic English sensibilities which included a very manageable 5.2% ABV and low hop character. The Hazy Frog was a good example of a Robust Porter with it’s deep, roasted malt character with chocolate notes and black coffee undertones. The Five & Dime Tripel was a balanced tripel that was sweet-ish with good fruit notes and slightly noticeable alcohol character. A real treat was when Five & Dime brewer Nate Smith brought along the homebrewed version for comparison. The homebrewed version was drier and a little more “alcoholy” but equally good. It all came down to personal preference.

The six Pro-Am homebrewers were in attendance as well and of the six, I managed to interview three of them. The first brewer I spoke to was Mike “Tastey” McDole who brewed Janet’s Brown Ale. Named after his late wife, this beer got it’s start in the late 90s. Initially it was supposed to be a clone of Full Sail’s Amber Ale but Mike used a California Ale yeast while the Full Sail Amber used a English Ale yeast. At the time Tasty, as his friends call him, was brewing only for three years. Without a homebrew club to lean on for advice, his attempt to clone the Full Sail Amber ended up in a completely different, yet tasty, place. His wife Janet served as his sounding board and it was with her help that Tasty dialed in his recipe. The goal of the beer was to find a balance between the minty/woodsy character of the US Northern Brewer hops with the chocolate/roasty character of the chocolate malt which gives this beer a “Thin Mints” quality.

The second brewer I was able to talk to was Richard Brewer-Hay, creator of the Elizabeth Street Bitter. Originally from England, it’s no surprise that Richard decided to brew up an ESB. Richard got his start homebrewing in October of 2003. The very first batch of beer he brewed was a mini-mash version of the ESB where in it’s initial iteration, Richard only used about 4 different specialty malts. Fast forward to the present and the ESB recipe is now an all-grain recipe that calls for double the original number of malts, although some malts are there just to get the color correct. Richard feels this particular beer tends to hit its stride when it warms up a bit. Brewing at 21st Amendment was a mostly pleasant experience for Richard. The idea of scaling things up from his 10 gallon homebrew system to a 12 BBL professional system seemed intimidating initially but after consulting with 21st Amendment brewer Jesse Houck, it was determined that the homebrewed recipe would have to be multiplied by fifty to work on 21st Amendment’s brewery. The only downside of the day was when Richard burned his hand while taking a sample of the wort. The 218°F wort burned off a layer of skin and left Richard nearly single-handed the rest of the day. Richard is a prodigious homebrewer. He brews so much that his house is also known as the Elizabeth Street Brewery. In addition to the Elizabeth Street Bitter, he also brews up Daddy’s Chocolate Milk (sweet stout), Quincy’s Winter Warmer (a dry porter named after his second daughter), Addison’s Firecracker Red (Irish red ale brewed with raspberries) and Mummy’s Double Honey (a brown ale brewed with honey). As you may have already guessed, most of his beers are named after family members. Speaking of family, Richard and his wife eventually want to open up their own family-friendly brewpub modeled after traditional English brewpubs which are family-friendly.

The final brewer I interviewed with is Nathan Smith. Hailing from Oakland, his Five & Dime Tripel is a nod towards his east bay/Alameda county roots (the area code is, you guessed it, 510) as well as to the White Labs’ WLP510 yeast strain, which is the Orval strain. Originally inspired by the relatively new style of Belgian IPAs such as Houbon Chouffe, Nathan wanted to capture the delicate balance between traditional Belgian malts and yeast with the use of American hops. It was while at the Trappist he sampled a tripel from La Rulles brewery that Nathan found a beer that reall peaked his interest. After further investigation, Nathan discovered that the La Rulle Tripel used American hops Amarillo and Warrior but used the Orval yeast. The Five & Dime is his attempt at finding the sweet spot, the balance, between the fruity (pear and apple) esters with the citrus and oily character of the Amarillo hops. An interesting bit of trivia to note is because of time constraints, Nathan brewed up a 25 gallon yeast starter to culture enough yeast to form a commercial-sized quantity of yeast to pitch. Having brewed a Double IPA at Triple Rock last year with Rodger, Nathan was already familiar with Triple Rock’s brewing system and was able to hit the ground running. With the help of his good friend and Triple Rock brewer George Kumparak, Nathan was pretty much left to his own devices while Rodger managed the day-to-day operation of the brewer. At one point a pump had burned out and whirlpooling the beer seemed doubtful but Rodger handled the situation and salvaged what could’ve been a very long brew day.

If you weren’t able to make it to Pro-Am night to try these collaborative beers, you will have to wait until GABF. I know Nathan’s Five & Dime Tripel was a huge success as it was all tapped out last Thursday. I was told they would only have a single keg of each beer available so once they’re out, they’re out. All in all, this was a great event at the Trappist.

By the way, the one thing I forgot to mention was Trappist recently (about 3 months now) opened up their new extention. By the looks of it, Trappist has doubled in size making for a much more roomier experience. The new extension doesn’t have the same intimacy and look of the original space but with room to move around, I’m not complaining. The Trappist extension is not open all the time, just after 5pm on certain days. Hopefully I’ll be able to see some of you there in the future.

Audio Interview: Mike \”Tasty\” McDole* | Richard Brewer-Hay* | Nathan Smith

*Admittedly the audio for Mike and Richard’s interviews are horrible. I wasn’t planning on linking to them but what the hell, why not?

I decided to wrap up all the social events in one post. Mainly because I will be linking to photogalleries of the shots we’ve taken to the specific events. The other reason is that I don’t really need to recap a social event. We all know what we’re there do to: have fun! Drink beer! Talk to friends!

2009 NHC Pro Brewers Night

2009 NHC Club Night

2009 NHC Closing Dinner

Closing Dinner

Okay, I lied. I wanted to leave this as just a photo recap but I couldn’t leave the Closing Dinner without a few of my thoughts. First off, a big thanks to the Mad Zymurgists for being kind and gracious hosts and letting myself and Sammy stay at their table during the dinner. While Sammy and I are loosely (very loosely, more like on their email distribution list) affiliated with the Sudzers homebrew club, we were without a table that night. Instead of going freelance and getting a table to ourselves, we were able to stay at their table. Thanks again!

Second, a big congratulations to Greg Robles for taking a Silver at NHC for his Vienna lager. Once his name was called, our table erupted and we were all quite happy to see our table represented. If you were there, you’d have noticed the unofficial “duel” going on between homebrewers Greg Strong and Jamil Zainasheff. Both homebrewers took home a lot of hardware that night but Greg earned his as well. Here’s a link to the complete list of winners.

Seeing as NHC was over a little over a week ago, the memory is a little fuzzy. I don’t even think I can properly recap the dinner and pairings with any justice. If I tell you the food was good, would you take me at my word? Argh, I can’t resist… must… list thoughts… using… bullet… points….:

• Salad - Asian noodle salad paired with Mother Hefeweizen. Okay, I’m not entire sure if the name of the beer. I do know that all of our beer was supplied by Rogue Ales. I would’ve never thought of using ramen noodles in a salad before. Most of the salad’s ingredients complimented and echoes the flavors in the hefeweizen. A good pairing here. I believe Sean Paxton used a lot of beer to create the salad dressing as well.
• Entree - Pork with Rogue’s American Amber. This was an exquisite piece of pig. Very flavorful, very tender and juicy. The pork was soaked in 20 gallons of brine created with a Rogue beer called “Charlie”. The beer, a hoppy American Amber, was an okay pairing. I don’t know if the beer really improved upon the flavor of the pork, if anything, I remember the beer being a little too bitter for the entree.
• Dessert - Chocolate mousse with TCHO chocolate paired with Rogues Imperial Stout. What an awesome dessert. The mousse was light and served in a bittersweet, dark chocolate shell. The mousse was smooth and creamy yet light on the palette. It was an extra treat to top off the mousse with bits of TCHO cacao nibs and Hugh Baird malt. Very nice touch! As much as I liked this dessert, and its accompanying beer, I was expecting more. Chocolate and stout is, in my opinion, a fairly easy pairing to make, almost boring really. I was really hoping to have seen something new and different with the dessert pairing. I was hoping to get “Wowed” but my expectations fell short. Like I said, it was an excellent pairing, just a little expected.

The rest of the dinner was comprised of giveaways and going through the entire list of NHC medalist. It was a pretty drawn out affair but if you won, it was totally worth the wait. As I mentioned earlier, it was a duel between Gordon Strong and Jamil Zainasheff to see who could bring back the most hardware. In the end, I think Gordon edged out Jamil because Gordon was the receipient of the Ninkasi Award from Samuel Adams. Basically, he had the most points.

So there you go, my recaps of the 209 NHC is finally over with. Feel free to comment on the photos in the gallery or to leave a comment below in case I got my facts incorrect.

I suppose I owe my readers a bit of an explaination regarding my last post. After all, when I lead in with, “With the exception of some bullshit that happened during Pro-Brewers night…”, I’m bound to pique the interests of a few people. So, here it is.

Even now I’m a little reluctant to write about it, not quite embarassed by my actions but a little reluctant. Well, I’ll leave it up to you to decide if my course of action was prudent or not. At one point during Pro Brewers Night Anchor Steam decided to give away 1.5L magnums (big bottles) of their Our Barrel Ale, or OBA. My wife Sammy, short in stature but big in tenacity, is able to receive a bottle which she sets down at the table Firehouse Brewery is pouring from. I am there talking with Deb, Steve’s (Firehouse brewmaster) wife when this woman standing near me swipes the bottle from the table. She then accuses me of stealing her bottle of OBA and that she’s just taking back what’s hers. We argue, I call Sammy over, the guy at BJs comes up with a compromise: I get one of the BJs shirts if we open the OBA bottle so everyone can have some. Sammy, the kind woman that she is, agrees and before I can say anything the bottle is open.

At this point I am pissed, I am livid. Instead of causing a scene, I take a long walk to try and calm down. Truth of the matter is, I don’t even really care about the beer. What I am really pissed off about is that I am accused of stealing, I get stolen from, and the compromise is that we have to share our beer with the people who stole it from us. That is BULLSHIT. By the time I am calm enough to return, we don’t even have an empty bottle I can put on a shelf to remind me daily of this disappointment.

Now that’s off my chest, I can resume my recap of NHC Day 2.

Extreme Fermentables with Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head.

Oy. Sammy and I woke up, as with many other people, with a bad hangover. Despite my headache, I was only a few minutes late to my first session: Extremem Fermentables with Sam Calagione. Here’s the big, take-away from Sam’s session: the Reinheitsgebot is an antiquated form of art sensorship. He even made us repeat this outloud. This feat alone is a true testament to the man’s charisma; he was able to get a room full of hungover NHC conference attendees to be interactive.

Sam sees himself, and the brewers of Dogfish Head by extension, as artists who have decided to use beer as their canvas. A leisurely glance at the portfolio of Dogfish Head beers can confirm, at the very least, they have an artistic spirit when it comes to their recipes. Admittedly their worst brewer, Sam is responsible for conceptualizing their beers before handing off the general idea to his head brewer to source the ingredients and brew up on their Sabco pilot system.

I am sometimes awed at how Sam is able to hold a room. He spoke for a few more minutes sharing with us some of the funnier moments behind the creation of certain Dogfish Head beers. For example, the “Minute” beers are all continuously hopped over the course of the entire boil. Standard brewing practice would be to add the bulk of your bittering hops in the beginning and your flavor hops towards the end. While everything these days is all computer controlled and automated, early attempts at “automation” included the use of a repurposed, vibrating table top football game or a brewer having to stand there and add hops continuously for the duration of the boil. The original idea for this technique was inspired by a cooking show Sam once watched where the chef added black pepper throughout the entire time it took to cook a meal. The reasoning was to add a layer of depth to the food that a one-time addition could not give.

A 20 minute video showing the origins of their Palo Santo Marron beer played for the remainder of the session. While I found this video interesting, I really came to see Sam talk and not watch some video I could’ve probably found on the Interwebs someplace. I must admit that Sam does an excellent job of selling the idea that Dogfish Head is like homebrewing but bigger. He is a consummate salesman always pimping his beers out. I can appreciate what he is doing over at Dogfish Head but the session was a little disappointing because it felt like one of those paid advertisements you see on TV late at night.

Funkification, a 100% Brettanomyces fermented mind dump with Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River

In this session, Vinnie broke down the barrel aging program at Russian River. What makes their barrel aging program different from another brewery is their inclusion of different types of yeasts such as brettanomyces, lactobacillus and pediococcus. Here are my notes on this session:

Sanctification was poured during the brettanomyces portion of the session.

• Sanctification is 100% brettanomyces, although I think he mentioned they do take out 20% of the beer to spike it with lactobacillus and pediococcus after primary fermentation and then blend it back together. Sanctification is then bottle conditioned with fresh brettanomyces.
• Rules for Funky Beers
  • Be patient
  • Don’t look or taste everyday
  • Can’t be a control freak
  • Be natural
  • Listen to your beer. It will tell you when it’s done.
  • Making something drinkable is a success
  • Make 2 of everything
• 100% brettanomyces is relatively easy. Just brew your beer as usual and pitch brettanomyces.
• Brettanomyces is not a wild yeast

Beatification is a result of 100% spontaneous fermentation, aka “sonambic” (Sonoma lambic).

• Beatification is tart but the flavor remindsme of green raisins
• Fairly simple recipe, 60% barley/40% wheat
• Sour mash - Mash tun is opened up overnight and the natural bugs in the brewery are allowed to take root and sour the mash.
• Aged hops
• Resulting somanbic is then aged and blended together to make a consisten product
• Beatification is then bottle conditioned with a wine yeast

Vinnie is actually from wine making family and some of his techniques and ideas seem to come from that experience. For the homebrewer making funky beers, the plastic ale pail we all used in the beginning would make a perfect vessel for sour beers because of its porous nature.

This talk was a vast improvement over my first session as Vinnie laid down principles of how we could scale this process down for the homebrew environment.

Keynote Speech with Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada

This was an entertaining keynote speech where Ken Grossman pretty much ran through the humble beginnings of Sierra Nevada and then contrasted it with the Sierra Nevada of today. While it may take some time to find it, you can probably find the complete history of Sierra Nevada online, no need for me to repeat it here.

What I will say though is that the brewing sciences have come a very long way in such a short amount of time. In today’s climate, homebrewers have access to pretty much the same sort of raw ingredients and materials professional brewers have. Back when Ken used to own a homebrew shop, homebrewers used liquid malt extract from a can, sometimes hop flavored, to make their beers with. The liquid yeasts that are so ubiquitous today would’ve costed you hundreds of dollars 30 years ago. Fresh hops? Forget about it. Hops used to come in pink wrapped bricks that were often send to 3rd world contries as an additive to keep bread from spoiling. Even then, those pink bricks were of aged and dry hops, a far, far cry from the relatively fresh whole, plug or pellet hops we can get today.

Needless to say, we are spoiled by today’s technological advancements. Instead of learning to weld as Ken did to fabricate the equipment he needed, we can just search on Google for brewing equipment for sale. It’s ridiculous to see how far Sierra Nevada has come, how far the craft brewing industry has come and how far the homebrewing community has come over the years. Knowing where you’ve come from gives me a better appreciation of where the craft beer industry and homebrewing industry will be going. The beers of the future, as cliché as it sounds, are built from the beers of yesterday. I am excited to see what the future holds.

Mead Panel - Moderated by James Spencer featuring Charlie Papazian, Byron Burch, Curt Stock and Harod Gulbransen

Didn’t take too many notes but here are my bullet points:

• The best mead has been aging for at least one year. It’s possible to make a mead that’s only 7-8 weeks old but you really have to work
• Only one person does a full boil that lasts for only 2 minutes, just long enough to skim off solid particles in the honey.
• Generally speaking, adding fruit to “secondary” results in more fruit character. Adding during primary yields more subtle notes. Spices can be added much later down the line, easier to add more, can never remove
• You are able to resweeten your meads
• People get grumpy when they don’t get their meads. Maybe they should consider moving to the front of the room and shutting up

Going Pro Panel - Moderated by Justin Crossley featuring Sean O’Sullivan, Tomme Arthur, Vinnie Cilurzo, John Pinkerton and Keith Lemcke with Ken Grossman

I tried to take as many notes as I could but then I’d be missing something someone would be saying. I must say that Justin did a great job as moderator keeping the panel going, keeping the questions coming and managing time.

• Ken Grossman was a late addition while Keith represented Seibold Institute
• Vinnie believes that niche brewing has a future
• However much money you think you’re going to need, it won’t be enough. Make sure to get enough capital, roughly $1M minimum.
• Don’t skimp out on the brewery floor.
• Have a good relationship with city officials, it makes things easier in the future
• Actual brewing makes up only 5% of your day, 95% is the business of brewing
• Think carefully of the type of brewery you will want (production, brew pub) as each has it’s own set of pros and cons
• Think and plan for the future. Sean laments the type of liquor license he has as it prohibits him from self distribution
• Think about the area you will be starting your brewery in. Lack of a sustained brewery presence may be an indicator the area isn’t ready for a brewery

I apologize for the delay of the Hopinions post. This was supposed to go last week but I was at the National Homebrewers Conference in Oakland. There was very limited interweb access at the Convention Center and I didn’t feel like paying the Hilton $13/day for internet accesss so I’m having to make it up now.

Gearing up for the NHC got me thinking about homebrewing, specifically, the origins of my own homebrewing. I’m sure I may have talked about it before but I can’t remember which post (if at all). So for this issue of Hopinions, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and remember my initial stabs at homebrewing while bringing Mario (from Brewed for Thought) with me.

Feel free to share your own experiences with homebrewing. I’m always interested in other people’s stories.

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

The National Homebrewers Conference (NHC) is in full swing this week and it just so happens NHC is being held right in our “backyard” with the city of Oakland playing host. I will be attending the NHC as a participant this year looking to learn a couple of things to make me a better homebrewer as well as catch up with some friends and perhaps make new ones. That being said, I thought it would be a perfect time here on Hopinions to talk about homebrewing. Specifically, our own homebrewing experiences.

I first got the idea to homebrew looking through the Spartan Daily (the SJSU newspaper) and there was article about homebrewing. I kept the paper and visited the homebrew shop they quoted for the article, Beer and Winemakers of America. Like many other homebrew shops they sold kits with all the necessary equipment to get your started homebrewing. While I use glass for all my beers today, I still have the plastic bucket I started off with. In fact, most of my equipment is still the original. I only just recently replaced my hydrometer about two months ago when it finally broke. The ironic part was that I wasn’t even brewing at the time, just moving stuff around.

Do you remember your first beer? My first beer was an amber ale. I honestly don’t even remember the recipe, I never bothered to write stuff down in the early years. I remember being very nervous about brewing. I was scared to death about infecting my beer so I sanitized the hell out of all my equipment multiple times that day. At the time, I brewed on the stove top and I must say that it took forever for the water to heat up and it took just as long for me to cool it down. In hindsight, I’m surprised my early beers never got infected, especially when you take into account how long it took for me to cool the wort down. Unfortunately, cooling the wort down ended up being my undoing. I misread the thermometer and pitched the yeast when the wort was still too hot. Of course the yeast were killed and the beer never took off so I ended up dumping the thing.

What got you into homebrewing? Do you remember what your first beer was? What was the worst thing that ever happened while homebrewing?

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

Ah, my first time.  It was special, and I’ll always remember it.  Actually it wasn’t, and I vaguely remember it.

At the time I had just moved to ORegon and was living with my buddy in Corvallis.  He had homebrewed back when we were in college and since we were both such big fans of malt based adult beverages I thought it would be a good idea if I learned the art of brewing.

Since he knew what to do and gave me a hand with the process, I never had that experience of going into it blind, but I did ease my way into it.  I started with the Righteous Ale from Papazian’s Joy of Homebrewing book.  It’s a simple amber, 10 day primary fermentation then straight to the bottle.  For such a simple recipe and short fermentation, it’s a rather tasty brew, so it actually became my fridge filler when the stocks were running low.

Funny thing, this recipe also lead to one of my worst experiences.  Not sure what happened, but a few months later, using the same recipe, fermenting in the same bucket, keeping the beer in the same closet, same fermentation times, we got our first taste of autolysis.  Upon opening the bucket, we knew something was wrong.  I tasted it, and it tasted bad, but not horrible.  Being a new brewer I thought this  was one of the off flavors that might go away with time. So I bottled and waited ten days.

After those ten days later we had the worst smelling and tasting beverage known to man.  One mouthful of this scourge on mankind and you would be stuck with the flavor of burning tires.  No amount of water or beer could remove the flavor.  We should have known because even opening the beer stunk up the entire kitchen, yet everyone had a taste.

The funny thing is, I still have a bottle of the Asshole Beer (that’s it’s name) in my closet.  Would you like to try it?  It has now been kept in fluctuating temperatures for about 5 years and should be reaching it’s prime.

From: Peter at BetterBeerBlog

The Asshole beer sounds pretty hilarious. I should bring in a bottle or two of my almost 2-year old Russian Imperial Stout and Alt bier. Both have been kept in cardboard boxes in my office that also has variable temperature swings. Last I had the RIS, it still never carbonated it should’ve been and it’s already starting to show oxidative qualities. Next time I’m up, we should have a palette-challenging beer night.

It’s funny that you mention brewing from a homebrew book. I have about half a dozen or so homebrew books myself but I have never made any of the recipies contained within them. I actually learned the techniques and process of homebrewing from the Xerox copy of the process that came with my brewing kit. I’ve stayed true ever since. Whenever I needed a recipe, I’ve always thought about the commercial version of a style I really enjoyed and asked my homebrew shop owner to develop a recipe based upon that. I’ve never done side-by-side taste tests as I’m pretty happy with the way my homebrews turn out.

For the last beer I made, I dry-hopped for the first time. I don’t know, I’ve played it very conservatively with my homebrewing all these years and I’ve had some good beers to show for it. I feel left behind though as I read about all these other homebrewers who are brewing with very advanced techniques, such as barrel-aging, methode champagne, first wort hopping, hop backs and even triple decoction.

Do you think your own homebrewing experiences are heavily influenced by the books you read or by the beers you drink? Both? Neither? Also, what was the most challenging technique you’ve tried while homebrewing?

From: Mario at Brewed For Thought

You’re free to drink the Asshole beer, but not around me.  I won’t touch it and I’m actually scared to open it.

As far as recipe sources, I’ve tried it all, books, homebrew shop supplied, internet or even creating my own from scratch.  In the end, that’s all it is though, a recipe.

My brewing experience has been rather conservative as well.  I’ve focused more on perfecting a couple recipes in the past than trying new experimental things.  It’s funny you refer to those other techniques as more challenging.  Other than decoctions, I don’t know how challenging they are, beyond fiscally.  The most challenging “technique” I’ve tried has been to reproduce my previous results.

To answer your question, I think I’m most influenced by the people I brew with.  This would be my old roommate that taught me how to brew, the homebrew shops where I shop and the discussions that took place there.  Beers and books can offer inspiration, but wherever the idea may start, it gets mutated through various stages of conversation.

With the exception of some bullshit that happened during Pro-Brewers night, this conference and this weekend went spectacularly well. I learned a lot about homebrewing and just as much about the industry itself. I got to meet a lot of great people, taste a lot of good beer and had an excellent time. All-in-all, this event was well worth it and I am glad I decided to go.

Getting straight to the point, there’s was a lot of information I was able to take in, some better than others but a lot of information nonetheless. These series of National Homebrewers Conference Recaps will mainly focus on the sessions I attended, my notes and what I learned from each. I could spend a lot of time detailing every single thing that went on but that would bore the hell out of me recapping all of that mundane, as well as sublime and I’m sure it would bore you as well. Plus it gives me an area to focus on and for you to comment about.

The social aspect was a huge portion of this event with Pro-Brewers Night, Club Night and the Closing Gala Dinner. There was much to write about with that but I think I will let the photos speak for themselves. No need to write about how so-and-so was sooo cooool or how I so-and-so was totally drunk or whatever. My words could not do justice to all of that. It was definitely one of those, “you had to be there” sort of deals. So, as I said before, I will compile my photos and develope a slideshow you can browse at your lesiure.

2009 National Homebrewer Conference

While the official conference started off on Thursday, there were quite a few brewery tours run by various groups around the Bay Area. Unfortunately for me, I had to be at work on Wednesday and missed out. No matter. There was plenty of time to drink beers and get to know folks.

Thursday morning Sammy and I checked into NHC at around 9am-ish. I had totally thought that the first session of Thursday started at 9am and when we arrived, I mistook the lack of people for the sessions having already started. Turned out the opening toast didn’t even start until about 1:30 and the first session an hour after that. Sammy and just bummed around the Oakland Marriot City Center.

The Oakland Marriot City Center was ground zero for 2009 NHC. Attached to the Marriot hotel, it also served as the host hotel for the conference. Having booked our accommodations really late in the process, Sammy and couldn’t get a room at the Marriot. Instead we booked on Priceline.com (price, line, negotiaaator!) and booked at a Hilton that was less than 5 miles from where the action was. The distance as a non-issue as we drove ourselves around anyway.

As a convention attendee, you were asked to always carry your conference badge with you (a godsend as it allowed me to remember people’s names) which also doubled as your conference tasting glass holder. In addition to the usual paperwork you receive (program, maps, things to do, places of interest, sponsors, etc.) we were given two beers. The first is Brother Levonian Saison Ale brewed by Port Brewing out of San Marcos, CA (aka Lost Abbey). This beer was named after Dave Levonian, a homebrewer who died of cancer in 2008. The saison was his original recipe as interpreted by the brewers of Port Brewing. I’m not going to review these beers now but at a later date. Although if you want more backstory on this beer (and the next Conference beer), click here. Sippin on the Dock of the Bay IPA was brewed by Alpine Brewing Company. There’s not much of a bittersweet backstory to this beer, it’s just the Conference IPA.

Opening Toast

If I remember correctly, the opening toast was led by three people. First up was American Homebrewers Association Direction, Gary Glass. Second was by AHA founder Charlie Papazian. The final speaker of the opening toast was homebrewer extraordinaire Jamil Zainasheff. What I remember most came from Jamil’s speech. Basically, we are all attending the NHC not for the beers (gasp!) but for the community. We are all here for each other. I happen to agree with him. I’ve written many times in the past that the homebrew and craft beer community have been very embracing of new members. Some of the friends we’ve met because of the beer blog are now very dear friends of ours today. Granted, we mainly meet around beer but beer is not the reason we meet. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company, no matter if it revolves around a pint or two. If we were only about the beer at NHC, there’s no way we’d go through all the trouble and expense of being in Oakland for the conference; there’s no way we’d go through all the hassel and inconvenience of making our own beer. If it was only about the beer, we’d just go to the store and buy it. But it’s not about the beer, it’s about the people behind the beer and that’s why we’re at NHC. I’m sure Jamil was a bit more eloquent about our reasons for being there but that’s was it in a nutshell.

Wood Fermentation and Aging by Matt Brynildson

Barrel aging a beer seems to be the “in” thing to do right now. Many breweries are starting to experiment with aging their beers in used spirit (rum, bourbon, whiskey) or wine (merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir) barrels with various levels of success. While this may all seem new and exciting, in reality, barrel aging beers is the traditional way of making a beer. With all the latest advancements in brewing technology, stainless steel has made us forget about beer’s humble roots in wood and many of the cutting edge brewers are just now reminding us of why brewing beer in wood is a good thing.

Burton-on-Trent was the epicenter of pale ale brewing and wood aging. Many of the breweries in the area used a Burton Union as a way to make their beers. Simplistically put, a Burton Union was a configuration of wooden casks use to ferment beer. In many cases today, most brewers age their beers in wood, more of a final step before kegging or bottling. The Burton Union introduced wood early to the brewing process. When brewing with the Burton Union, a neutral oak was used to make the barrels as to not impart a huge amount of flavor to the beer. But why the Burton Union?

The Burton Union had a few advantages. Monks (isn’t is strange how monks seemed to be at the epicenter of all good beer?) discovered that the Burton Union created an exceptionally clear beer that could be served right from the cask. In addition, 100 BBL of beer would yield 500 BBL in yeast, this was an excellent way of producing yeast, which was collected from a trough above the fermentors. Today, Marston is the last Burton Union brewery.

Firestone Walker uses a variation of the Burton Union to brew their Double Barrel Ale. There are a few key differences between the Union system at Firestone Walker and the traditional Burton Union. The first is that Firestone Walker doesn’t harvest the yeast the process produces. Second, fermentation is initially started in stainless steel barrels before being racked into wooden barrels, which are then purged with CO2 to prevent oxidation. Firestone barrels are made from New American Oak which are medium-heavy, plus toast. Please note that the Double Barrel Ale is fermented with good old sacchromyces cervisae, or brewer’s yeast. They are not interested in the little bugs and critters that produce sour ales.

That being said, to replicate brewing with wood on the homebrew scale, you have the following options:

• staves - long, large stripes similar to barrel staves
• cubes - small solid pieces, can toast well
• chips - thin fragments
• powders - dusty with a fast reaction time

Which method works the best is entirely a matter of trial and error for the individual homebrewer’s setup, experience and goal for the beer. Keep in mind that oak comes in a variety of toast levels which impart different levels of flavor to your beer. Here’s a quick list:

• light toast - sweet, spicy oak aromas
• medium toast - vanilla, toasted bread
• heavy toast - chocolate notes, coffee, almond smoke (phenolic)

Lastly, if you will be brewing using a full-sized barrel, Matt recommends you do the following things when aging your beer:

• purge barrel with CO2 well before racking your beer into the barrel
• purge head space while sampling and moving
• “top up” barrels if evaporation is an issue. Wine makers report a 5%-10% loss each year, also known as the “angel’s share”.
• Keep things clean, sanitize the thief between samples every time
• If you’re using a used spirits barrel, the flavor of the spirit transfers best on a fresh barrel, or a barrel that was just emptied of its spirit.

Speaking of keeping things clean, here are Matt’s barrel maintenance tips:

• use it or lose it. Don’t acquire a barrel unless you intend on filling it within the week.
• hot water works the best to clean, no sterilization needed
• visual inspection and sniff test. If it smells bad, it is bad.
• SO2 (sulfur matches) will keep a barrel if you can’t fill it within a week
• CO2 purging will have the barrel last longer

All in all, I learned a lot of things about wood aging a beer and I’m looking forward to trying this on my own as well.

Brewing Great German Lagers with Michael Ferguson

This was a session I wasn’t sure I’d be interested in or not simply because I have brewed nothing but ales almost exclusively. Michael Ferguson is the Director of Contract Brewing for BJs. He got his start in brewing by working for Dan Gordon, of Gordon Biersch, at their GB1 location, better known as Palo Alto. He has always seen himself as a “lager lad” and is biased towards lagers. Since his youth, he’s since softened on this stance on ales. While is still lager-biased, he can now accept ales for being different, not necessarily better, just different. Michael is a great speaker, he’s funny and witty with a big, booming voice that reminds me of Santa. His sense of humor is shown when he said his other claim to fame was being “the other black brewer” (the inside joke being that Garret Oliver from Brooklyn Brewing Company) was the black brewer most people know about.

Homebrewing lagers has it’s own challenges. It is more time-consuming. You require more equipment. You need to have tighter temperature control, thus the necessity of refrigeration for a slow fermentation. Lastly, sulfur and DMS production is common.

Michael’s big take-away was that if you’re going to brew a lager, you might as well as brew it the right way by choosing the approprite ingredients and use the traditional methods. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it as the saying goes. The second take-away is that you “make your beer in the mash”. Translated, all the work for creating the flavors of the beer is primarily done in the mash, at least for lagers it is.

Use water that is good enough to drink. When choosing hops, keep it simple, keep it traditional, keep it noble. Of course, use a lager yeast. Lastly, use plain old Munich malt. Michael goes on to say that the development of crystal and caramels malts is because we are lazy brewers who don’t want to brew a beer using traditional methods.

In essense decoction mashing is a temperature controlled mashing method in which part of the mash is drawn off and boiled in a separate kettle before being added back to the rest of the mash. Decoction has many advantages:

• Enhances production of flavor and aroma compounds
• Reduces mash pH for better conversion and easier runoff
• Less trube in the main boil and at chilling
• Less chance of raw starch carryone to kettle
• Extracts, coagulates and precipitates tannins, proteins, and silicates (tannins are complex and some of it may drop in the decoction, thus you don’t have to be so careful with sparge temperature and pH)
• Allows thicker mash for earlier rests
• Better gelatinization of starch
• Breaks down protein matrix, thus releasing more starch and improving extraction
• It’s the traditional way to make some beers
• Darkens beer

Of course, decoction has its disadvantages as well:

• Complicated
• Requires more equipment
• Takes a lot more time
• Darkens beers (darkening through decotion was replaced through the use of crystal and caramel malts)
• Extracts tannins as grains are boiled (released tannins require long lagering to drop them out)
• Danger of scorching
• Uses more energy
• Must be careful about starch released in final decotion

In the end, I walked away with a greater appreciation of lagers and the decoction method. I realize that the rich, malt quality of some beers can only be achieved through the use of traditional brewing methods such as decoction. If anything, I’d like to give decoction a try just to see if I could pull it off or not.

This was the final session I attended on Thursday. Pro-Brewer’s night was set to start later on in the evening, around 8pm. I won’t write about this but I will post a slideshow as soon as I’ve developed it, sometime this week, promise.

The National Homebrew Conference (NHC) is happening this week, running from Thursday (6/19) through Saturday (6/20). This event is not unlike many of the other conferences you may have attended for business, only it’s beer related. I will be attending NHC this year primarily because it’s in my backyard. Because I registered for the event months ago, I’ve had it out of my head until this week. But now that I’ve had the opportunity to take a look at the Conference Schedule, I’m pretty excited.

While registration will officially begin on Wednesday, the actual conference and sessions will not begin until Thursday. Here’s a tentative list of sessions I plan on attending.

Thursday

• Wood Aging with Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker.
• Brewing Great German Lagers: Finding the perfect balance of traditional and modern techniques in your brewery with Michael Ferguson of BJ’s Restaurants.

Friday

• Great Brewery Tours Around the World: How to make the most of your beer travel experiences with Peter Symons
• Funkification: A 100% Brettanomyces Spontaneously Fermented Mind Dump with Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River.
• Mead Panel moderated by James Spencer with Charlie Papazian, Byron Burch, Curt Stock and Harold Culbransen
• Going Pro Panel moderated by Justin Crossley with Tomme Arthur, Vinnie Cilurzo, Sean O’Sullivan, John Pinkerton and Keith Lemcke

Saturday

• Troubleshooting Panel moderated by James Spencer wtih Tomme Arthur, Vinnie Cilurzo, Michael Ferguson and John Palmer.
• All About Proteins… or how to get great head retention and more with John Palmer
• Maintaining Ideal Yeast Health: Nutrients yeast need with Dr. Tobias Fischborn
• Chocolate and Beer with Timothy Childs
• Ingredients 5-10 with Tomme Arthur

This is just a tentative list and I may change what sessions I attend as I learn what each session will be about. I’m looking to learn a lot about brewing, the brewing industry, connect with fellow brewers and hopefully make meaningful connections with people. Here’s a link where you can view the rest of the speakers at the NHC.

As important as the actual sessions are, many attendees are mainly there for the social activities. Wednesday has a few pre-conference social experiences in the works, such as beer tours, MLB baseball game and a BJCP judge reception. Thursday night as the Pro-Brewers Night, which is basically a brew fest for homebrewers with many of the Bay Area local breweries, if not all, participating as well as breweries. Friday night features Club Night, where many local homebrew clubs get to show off their beers and skills. From what I’ve been hearing, none of the homebrew clubs I’m loosely affiliated with will be participating. Not sure why. Lastly, Saturday features a Grand Banquet and NHC Awards Ceremony. I’m hoping to have enough beer to have fun but not to much where I can’t remember all the good times. It’s a fine line that gets finer as I get older.

The Trappist

If you are a craft beer lover and have not yet visited the Trappist, you are missing out. I’ve written many posts in the past about this bar. They specialize in Belgian ale and have one of the best Belgian beer portfolios I have ever seen. They are my barometer by which I measure other Belgian beer bars really.

In honor of the NHC, the Trappist is having beer specials from Wednesday, June 17th through Sunday, June 21st where there will have ten special and rare beers on tap. Here’s the list:

• Cantillion Kriek, 100% Lambic, 5% ABV - $7/5 oz
• Allagash Hugh Malone, 8.5% ABV - $8/25 cl
• Allagash Confluence, 7.5% ABV - $8/25 cl
• Allagash Victor, 10.4% ABV - $8/25 cl
• Allagash Victoria, 9% ABV  - $8/25 cl
• Russian River Sanctification, 6.5% ABV - $8
• Russian River Mortification, 10% ABV - $8
• Russian River Consecration, 10% ABV - $10
• Russian River Perdition, 6.1% ABV - $6
• Russian River Benediction, 6.75% ABV - $8

In addition to serving all of those good beers, Duvel will be releasing Duvel Green on June 25th. Green is a “sessionable” Belgian golden ale that weighs in at only 6.8%. This is going to be an epic week of excellent beer. As I type this, I am getting more and more excited.

One last thing, BetterBeerBlog friends Beer by Bart, in conjunction with the Mad Zymgists, are holding a BJCP Beer 101 event where you can learn how to judge and appreciate beers similar to how a beer judge (like myself) would approach a beer. I helped them the last time they hosted this event and it was a blast and worth it. If they’re not yet sold out, you should check the event out. Here’s the registration page.

Without meaning to, this post got longer than expected. Thank you bullet points, ha! Anyway, if any of you will be attending, I’d love to meet up in between sessions, during lunch or at the various social events. You can contact me by leaving a message in the comments section and I’ll get back to you!

Hooray for beer!

As the title of the post says, 2009 GABF Pre-sale tickets available to members only are now on sale. There’s a 2-ticket limit for the Members Only tasting session but I believe there’s no limit for the other sessions. There are no special requirements to become a member of the American Homebrewers Association (AHA). Doing so allows you a couple of perks, the main one being access to the Members-Only tasting session at GABF. Here are some links for more information:

• Join today (Benefits and member registration)
• Great American Beer Festival (official event website)

We’ll be going there again this year. I’ll be purchasing my tickets tonight, after I pay my bills. Such is the reality of things.

The National Homebrew Competition, put on by the American Homebrewer’s Association, is one of the largest, if not the largest, international homebrew competition in the world. This year there were over 5000 entries and I signed up for my opportunity to judge some of the entries. Last year, this event was held at Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company in Burlingame. At the time, Sammy and I were both stewards at the competition but this year, I was a judge and she was a steward.

This year West Regionals were held at Lodi Beer Company in Lodi, California. From where I live, Lodi is about 1.5 hours away. With judging scheduled to start at 9:30am, Sammy and I were on the road by 7am. Even though it was a tough and long drive, we arrived in Lodi by 9am. I thought we were early but it would seem that half the judges were already there.

Lodi Beer Company is a very nice looking brewpub. Once you walk in through the front doors, you are greeted by two copper brew kettles. Surveying the dining area further, you can see all the beer-related artwork up on the brick walls. The artwork is of their regular beer styles, in label form, painted on their brick walls. There’s a lot of decorative iron work throughout as well as ornate woodwork. Judging was being held in a backroom that served as dining overflow, I think. Even though the brew kettles are visible in the front, I believe the actual brewing is done downstairs in their basement.

As a side note, the owners of the place are pretty good friends of BJCP Grandmaster Judge John Watson. From what John has told me, they all studied to be BJCP judge together. John went on to become a GrandMaster 2 judge while the owners decided they’d rather just make beer so they moved to Lodi and started a brewpub.

Running a competition of this size takes a lot of work and coordination. I’m probably forgetting a few people but here’s how a competition basically gets organized. There’s a competition organizer who organizes the entire event. There’s a site coordination that acts as a liason between the BJCP and the site of the competition judging. There’s a cellar master who handles and keeps the beers in optimal condition before and during the event. There are us judges who judge the homebrews, note our impressions and give feedback when applicable. Last but not least, there are the stewards who are lifeblood of the event. They take the beers to the judges and bring the beers back. They also pick up our scoresheets and double check our math. Without the stewards help, these competitions would run much, much more rough. Did I mention that all these people are volunteers? Yep, that’s right. None of us get any compensation for doing what we do. It’s all “for the love” and to help our fellow homebrewers improve their beers. Okay, I’m not being completely truthful, we do get some compensation in the form of food as Lodi Beer Company was kind enough to provide lunch for us as well as one free beer.

We were informed that we would be judging two flights of beers today. The first flight was to consist of at least 11-12 beers while the second afteroon flight would be about 5-6 beers. As I’ve found over the past year, judging usually happens in groups of 3. 3 is a good number of judges to have as the third judge is kinda like the “tie-breaker”. Because of the large number of entries in this competition, we were assigned into juding pairs. Some of the styles with a higher number of entries may have gotten 2 judging pairs but, for the most part, each style got a single judging pair. Unlike competitions in the past, all beers, regardless if we had passed them onto the Best of Show (BOS) round or not, were capped. This adjustment was implemented to preserve the beers further. Unlike other competitions, there a very limited number of bottles to go around so we had to be judicious with our samples.

We were assigned to judge various beer styles by the event coordinator. As names were being called out, I commented to a fellow judge that it seemed like we were getting drafted. To me, it felt like I was getting drafted into the NBA. You always want to get drafted into one of the more interesting styles, like Belgian Strong Ales or Sour Ales, and hoped to avoid other styles like American Lagers. I got “drafted” to judge the fruit beer category.

Fruit beers are an interesting bunch. A good fruit beer is an exercise in balance. You want to be able to taste the fruit in the beer without compromising the flavors or character of the base beer style. Some styles lend themselves to fruit additions better than others but in theory, all beer styles can have fruit added to them. Each judge is given a BJCP style guideline they can refer to during judging. The fruit beer style guideline basically says that a good fruit beer is balanced between the fruit character with the base beer character. As our judging group found out, this style guideline is woefully inadequate. Thankfully two of the judges brought their complete BJCP style guidelines for us to refer to. Considering that the beers we judged ranged from something as light as a Light American Lager all the way up to a Stout, these complete guidelines were a lifesaver.

Because none of the homebrewers have received their feedback yet, I don’t feel it would be appropriate to list the beers I had. I can say that the quality of beers a judge will be given is all about the luck of the draw. In my flight, the highest rated beer scored a 30. The other judging pair had a beers that scored 39.5, 37 and 33. I heard another judge say that for every high quality beer he had, had a corresponding bad beer. Unlike some of the other competitions I’ve judged, we all had to do a mini-BOS to decide what beers to pass onto the final round. Judging a BOS round is much easier than normal as we don’t have to re-score the beers. Judges take all the beers on the table and pretty much decide what beer best exemplifies the style, at least for a style BOS.

After our lunch break, I was reassigned to a different group. This time, I was drafted to judge Smoke and Wood-Aged beers. As with fruit beers, Smoke and Wood-Aged beers can have a wide variety. In this afternoon flight, we had 25 beers to judge, thankfully there were 4 judging pairs so the workload was equally distributed. My afternoon flight was much better than my morning flight but a lot of that had to do with the beer style versus the quality of beers. I think the highest rated beer of the afternoon for me scored about 33. As with the morning, the judging pair to my left had quite a number of good beers. The one thing that I found was a problem with judging this style was that some of the brewers didn’t list a base beer style for which we should be judging against. As per the rules, homebrewers were supposed to list what special ingredients they used. Some beers had just about everything listed except the base beer style. This makes judging difficult as we can say the beer was pretty good but at the same time, we could be judging from an incorrect premise. At the end of the day, we have to judge the beer on its own merits and truthfully, you can usually tell what the base beer is, well kind of anyway.

As with the fruit beers, smoke and wood-aged beers are difficult to make as well. Balance is a key, more so for wood-aged beers than smoked beers. Just like the fruit, you want to avoid the wood character from becoming dominant while trying to put enough in to be noticeable in the first place. Wood-aged beers are also interesting in that people add a bunch of different stuff in their beers to augment certain flavors. While I have no problem with this practice, I must say that balance is key. Personally, I like these secondary flavors to be a background note to the base beer style. Think of them as layers of complexity that are pulled back as the beer is allowed to warm and grow in sophistication. While it’s nice to notice things right off the bat, it’s also cool to discover things as you go along.

At the end of my second flight, I finally had the opportunity to cash in my one, free drink ticket for a Lodi beer. All throughout the day I have been surveying my fellow judges about the quality of the “house” beers. Unfortunatey I have to say reviews have been mixed. Some of the better beers were met with reserved praise (as in, “okay”, “eh” and “drinkable”) while the worst were generally noted to have some sort of defect or two or three. I ordered a doppelbock. Simply put a doppelbock is going to have a complex malt character and be very clean, meaning, it has no esters (fruit character). The malt character may be toasty but roasted is inappropriate. My doppelbock poured out like a soda. It sat in my pint glass with no head and a few bubbles clinging desperately to the side of the glass. It was essentially flat. While the beer was malty, it had a noticeable roasted malt character and a tart sourness in the finish. All who tried it agreed that it wasn’t a good example of the style. From what I’ve heard throughout the day, Lodi Beer Company were having some issues with “critters” but were able to get everything cleaned out to spec. I guess we were on the last couple of barrels  of the old stuff.

Sammy ordered the house framboise and liked it. It had the right color, flavor and tartness. Nothing mind-blowing but pretty good. In fact, I think most judges that day ordered the framboise. The one thing you can count on with a group of beer judges is that if there’s a good beer in the house, word spreads fast. As with many breweries I’ve had poor, initial experiences with, I will be visiting Lodi Beer Company again in the hopes that these out-of-style beers were just flukes. Call me a bleeding heart for being so forgiving but I like to try and support craft brewers.

I would like to say that, overall, judging at the NHC West Regionals was a very good experience. I would like to thank Lodi Beer Company for allowing us to judge at their location. The food they served for us was good and we all appreciate it. Once things got going, the actual judging itself went smoothly after working out a few early hiccups. This is a testament to the stewards and organizing staff for keeping things going like a machine. Lastly, I’d just like to say to any homebrewer who is getting back a scoresheet from either myself or another judge. The BJCP is primarily an all-volunteer organization. My wife and I drove 1.5 hours up and back of our own accord and on our own dime to help support the homebrewing community. In fact, most of us did. We do this because we all love beer and we all would like to see the quality of homebrewing increase. Please keep this in mind when you receive your scoresheets. I can’t speak for any other judge but I do my best to give the most accurate and complete feedback I can get. This includes suggestions for improvement. I put my email on each and every scoresheet so feel free to email me, or any other BJCP judge, with any questions you may have.

Wow. Talk about an unprecedented event. I can say that I am proud to have been around, alive and an active participant in the process that helped to put the first African-American in the White House. I’ve always wished… felt… that I would be alive to see this moment happen. I just never expected it to happen so soon. Still, as much of a triumph as that was, there were some disappointments as well. As they say, you can’t win them all. The title of this post refers more to the content below but I felt I needed wanted to follow up on my last post. Now that this is out of the way, let’s get back to beer!

Well, not exactly according to plan but my first attempt at Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day went exactly as I thought it would: alone and with a hangover. Sammy and I attended a Halloween party the night before on Halloween night. We slaved until 9pm that same evening finishing up my costume but it was worth it as Sammy and I ended up winning “Best Couple Costume” for our homemade “geisha” and “samurai warrior” outfits. We beat out another couple who dressed as the main characters from the movie Juno. Sammy’s friends showed up to the party dressed in a Batman-themed costume that featured Batman, “Nurse” Joker, Harley Quinn, Bane, Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Catwoman and Penguin. Had they stayed, they would’ve swept all the awards. There were some very impressive individual costumes (Sammy won “Best Female Costume”) as well as some sexy costumes. As soon as I get some photos, I’ll post them up.

Sorry, I get sidetracked. This is a beer blog and I was talking about my failed attempts at teaching the art of homebrewing to my friends. Sure it didn’t help that most of my friends were as hungover as I was. Plus it was raining. Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting anyone to take me up on the offer but that didn’t stop me from brewing anyway. Instead of having a marathon brew day where I planned to brew two beers, I decided to brew one beer on Saturday and the other one on Sunday.

I planned to start brewing around 12pm but my hungover ass didn’t wake up until almost 12pm. I made the drive to Beer and Winemakers of America, my local homebrew shop, to pick up my ingredients. Normally I’d stay a bit longer and hang out or get brewing tips from Rich (the owner) but I was on a schedule and needed to keep my time there productive.

Raspberry Wheat Ale

I had planned on brewing this beer as a BetterBeerBlog seasonal beer only, brewing twice: once in spring and once in summer. I like drinking this beer but not during the winter, it’s just not the right temperature. But my sister-in-law just gave birth to her little baby girl and her husband requested I brew this beer to commemorate the occasion.

This is a simple beer to make with a simple ingredient list. The base beer is a German-style hefeweizen that is later flavored with raspberries. I may not have taught any friends to homebrew on Saturday but that won’t stop me from sharing with you.

Malt:

• 6 lbs - Bavarian Wheat dry malt extract (DME)

Grain:

• 1 lbs - Bamburg Wheat (1.6L)

Hops:

• 1.25 oz - Mt. Hood (4.0)

Yeast:

• White Labs Hefeweizen Ale (WLP300)

Adjunct/Extras:

• 1 tablet Servomyces (yeast nutrient)
• 3 lbs, 1 oz Oregon brand seedless raspberry puree

Process

1. Steep 1 lbs Bamburg Wheat for 30 minutes at 155° F.
2. Bring water to a boil and boil 1.25 oz Mt. Hood hops for 60 minutes.
3. At the 30 minute mark, add 6 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME.
4. At the 40 minute mark, add wort chiller.
5. At the 50 minute mark, add servomyces.
6. Chill to 60° F to 70° F, pitch yeast and aerate. That’s it!

Original Gravity: 1.054

Final Gravity: 1.010

ABV: 5.5%.

Tasting Notes (wort): Cloudy, dark gold with slight green midtones and shadows. Some hop particulate in suspension. Wet bread/bread crust, soggy Cheerio’s aroma. Full body, sweet malt characteristics like Honey Nut Cheerios. Slight green/grassy flavors. Slight bitterness in the finish, grain-like.

Tasting Notes (after primary): Just racked this off to secondary today (11/9/2008) and so far, so good. Cloudy, opaque, dark gold in color. Banana esters and clove phenolics in the aroma with the balance leaning towards the banana, very slight bubblegum. Chewy, slightly grainy, maybe even wort-ish wheat flavors with banana and clove notes, very low bitterness. I just added the raspberry purée today and the beer is starting to get a little bit of that color. I took a gravity reading and the beer dropped down to 1.012, which would give me approximately 5.5125% ABV. I anticipate a slightly higher final gravity as the yeast will still be able to munch on the sugars from the raspberry purée.

Tasting Notes (after secondary): Cloudy/murky, lots of fruit particulate matter floating about. Dull caramel with reddish tint. Still, no head. Lots of fruit esters in the aroma. Banana, raspberry, slight clove, slight tartness. Raspberry flavors up front, yet not overpowering. Banana and clove-ish flavors in the middle with slight tartness in the finish. Fully attenuated, medium-low/medium body. Looks like the fruit took to the beer pretty well.

Tasting Notes (final): This beer is opaque and cloudy with suspended yeasts and fruit particulate. The color is a muddy, reddish caramel color with about 1/2″ inch, off-white, pinkish color. The aroma is very raspberry forward supported by banana esters, slight clove-ish notes and low tartness in at the end. The beer is on the sweet side, moderate amount of raspberry flavor, followed by some banana flavors and slight clove-ish, phenolic character with slight tartness in the finish. Often times, how a beer smells will be very indicative of how it tastes. Hop bitterness is medium-low/low. This beer is medium-low/medium in body (could seem to be fuller because of all the particulate matter floating around) with a medium/medium-high level of carbonation.

Sweet (Milk) Stout

This is my attempt/homage/clone of Left Hand Brewing’s Milk Stout. This beer won Silver in the Sweet Stout category at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival. Not only was this an award-winning beer, this was a damn good tasting beer. I told Mike and Bonnie that I would make this beer and here I am attempting it.

The biggest problem with making a commercial beer is knowing what’s in it. If you at least know what style of beer it is, that’s better than nothing. Still within each style, each brewhouse has it’s interpretation of that style and things can vary greatly. Some brewers will make their beers as close to the BJCP style descriptions as possible while others really push the envelope. Short of asking the brewer directly for their recipe, reverse engineering a beer just from tasting it is difficult at best.

Lucky for me, Left Hand Brewing publishes the ingredients of their beers on their website along with alcohol, IBU and specific gravity/plato numbers. This made it a little easier to reverse engineer. I’m not sure why they would publish that information but I’m not complaining either. Maybe they did it for the homebrewing community. Whatever their reasons, as a homebrewer, I appreciate it to no end.

Even with the ingredients list in hand and numbers to shoot for, I still had other problems. I had to convert their all-grain recipe to work for extract brewing. I have 32 batches under my belt but I am still learning with every batch I make. As much as I think I know about beer, I know enough that I don’t know it all. Not by a longshot.

Thank goodness for Rich at Beer and Winemakers of America. With over 3 decades of homebrewing experience, Rich is my “go-to” guy for homebrewing. All of my recipes are basically his suggestions. If they turn out well the first time, I keep them but if I’m not too happy, I’ll change them up to fit my palette (so I guess some of these are my recipes after all). I came to Rich not only to purchase my homebrew supplies but to ask him to help me formulate Left Hand Brewing’s Milk Stout.

As complex as I’ve made reverse engineering a beer sound, at the end of the day, it’s nothing but a guessing game. Even with all of his experience and an ingredient list, the recipe Rich came up with is nothing but his best guess. At the end of the day, I’d much rather go with Rich’s best guess than my own.

Malt:

• 6 lbs - Coopers Light DME

Grain:

• 1 lbs - Bamburg Munich (6L)
• 1 lbs - Flaked Barley
• 1 lbs - Hugh Baird Crystal (35L)
• .5 lbs - Belgian Chocolate (450L)
• .5 lbs - Hugh Baird Roasted Barley (550L)

Hops:

• .5 oz - Magnum (13.1), bittering hops
• 1 oz - UK Kent Goldings (4.0), finishing hops

Yeast:

• British Ale Yeast (WLP005)

Adjunct/Extras:

• 1 tablet Servomyces (yeast nutrient)
• 8 oz lactose

Process

1. Steep all the specialty grains for 60 minutes at 155° F. In order to get the correct color, a longer steep time is required.
2. Bring water to a boil and boil .5 oz Magnum hops for 60 minutes.
3. At the 30 minute mark, add 6 lbs Coopers Light DME.
4. At the 40 minute mark, add wort chiller.
5. At the 45 minute mark, add 8 oz lactose.
6. At the 50 minute mark, add 1 tablet servomyces.
7. At the 59 minute mark, add 1 oz UK Kent Goldings to finish.
8. Chill to 60° F to 70° F, pitch yeast and aerate. Like the Harvest Ale, I used a yeast starter as well. Fermentation began within hours. I’ll be using yeast starters from now on.

Original Gravity: 1.066 (a little higher than my target but not too bad nonetheless).

Final Gravity: 1.029

ABV: 4.86%.

Tasting Notes (wort): Nearly opaque, dark brown, like Indian Rosewood. For whatever reason, I’m picking up day old, slightly stale veggie pizza aromas along with a wet grain/cereal aromas. Hints of roastiness as well. Wort is sweet, like Honey Nut Cheerios with roasty flavors and bittersweet chocolate undertones. Hops are “green” and raw tasting. Hop bitterness is medium-low/medium in level.

Tasting Notes (after primary): Dark brown with red highlights. Still smells “wort-ish”, medium-low/low fruit esters in the aroma. Sweet flavor, maybe slight fruit, lots of residual sugars left, finish is roasty and chocolatey. Bitterness is “OK” for the style, medium/medium-low. Body is medium/medium-high, only slightly creamy.

I took a gravity reading and it’s on the high side: 1.030. Current calculations would put this beer at 4.75% ABV. While within the tolerances for the style, I think it’s lower than what I was shooting for in both final gravity and targeted ABV. I understand this beer is supposed to have some residual sugars left to give it a sweeter flavor but I think I can still attenuate a little further. Sammy also said that she tasted a low level of tartness. The low level of tartness may be from an infection but if this beer were infected, the final gravity would be much lower as the little baddies would’ve eaten all the remaining sugars. I think the tartness may be from some of the specialty grains I’ve used. Historic porter and stout recipes were slightly tart so it’s not too worrisome. I’m thinking I might have to pitch another vial of yeast but I’ll have to ask Rich at Beer and Winemakers of America what he thinks. Worst case, I don’t do anything and let this sit in secondary for two weeks or more.

Tasting Notes (final): Finally. A little over two months after starting this beer, I am finally able to tap it and drink. My Milk Stout pours out an opaque, black with off-white bubbles are are more soapy than fine. The aroma of this beer is of roasted malts, with coffee and slight chocolate notes. The flavor is similar, it is sweet, roasted with coffee notes and slight chocolate flavors. The hops definitely take a back seat to the malt flavors and are enough to let you know this is a beer. This beer if full-bodied, chewy almost, with low/medium-low carbonation. I do pick up trace levels of sourness in the finish.

When I compare this to the BJCP guideline for the style, I would have to say my beer is pretty close to style. It’s right there for aroma  (9) and color (3) but I think misses the mark somewhat in flavor because of the slight sourness I detect (12). It’s right there for mouthfeel (5) and, although I’m biased, think this is a very enjoyable beer overall that hits many of the main points for the style (8). Doing the math, I’d have scored this beer a  37/50. But like I said, I’m pretty biased about this beer. : )

Hopefully you’ll still be reading when these beers are ready. I am excited about both beers but even more so about the Sweet Stout. This is a style that I’ve never made before and as such, I get that “new beer” feeling. As I’m writing this, I hear my fermentors bubbling away. Ah, the sweet sound of fermentation.

Whenever I tell people that I homebrew, I often get a look of surprise. Apparently brewing beer at home still carries a lot of mystique. Inevitabliy, I will always get asked if homebrewing is difficult. This is a very loaded question to ask a homebrewer and beer lover. In the past, I would spend the next 20 minutes or so talking the ear off of whoever was brave enough to ask me. Now, I try to keep my answers down to about 5 minutes or less.

Well, the time has come for me to put up or shut up. This Saturday marks the first Saturday of November. While nothing out of the ordinary, the American Homebrewers Association has designated the first Saturday of November to be Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day. It’s kind of like how I celebrated Mead Day a few months ago. Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day is meant to introduce non-brewing friends to the homebrewing hobby as well as to support the local homebrew supply stores. This year marks the 10th year of this event. It’s a great reason to have friends over to hang out. I missed it last year but not this year. It’s been inked in.

This Saturday I plan on brewing two batches of beer. The first beer has some personal significance. My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful baby girl about a week ago and her husband has requested a special batch of beer to be brewed. So, to honor baby the little baby girl, I am brewing a raspberry wheat ale in time for the baby shower.

The second beer I am brewing is my attempt at an award-winning beer. Left Hand Brewing Company out of Longmont, Colorado won two awards at GABF this year; a Bronze for their Sawtooth Ale (Bitter or Pale Mild Ale category) and Silver for their Milk Stout (Sweet Stout category). The beer I will be trying to replicate is their Milk Stout. With winter on the way, it’s the season to be brewing heartier ales and sweet stout is just what the doctor ordered.

Here is a list of other sponsored Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day events.

If you live in the South Bay Area (San Jose in particular) and have always wanted to know what it’s like to homebrew, then shoot me an email, I’m at betterbeerblog(at)gmail(dot)com. I’m sure you can figure that out. I’ll be brewing all day, starting at around 12pm until I’m done. If there’s enough people, we’ll get a little potluck BBQ going and maybe throw back a few beers in the process. Hopefully I won’t be too hung over from a Halloween party I’ll be attending the night before.