Ale Asylum Hopalicious Review and More...

Ale Asylum Hopalicious is an American Pale Ale brewed with all Cascade hops.  There are 11 additions of cascades to this tasty beverage. This ale is unfiltered and according to the bottle brewed in sanity (love that tag line by the way!).  It pours a slightly hazy orange copper with a nice white cap. The aroma is citrus with some grapefruit and orange and maybe a little lemon? It smells like it is going to be a small hop bomb.  The taste is not entirely like the smell. There is a faint bitterness, but the character of the cascades really shines through. This is a great beer for people that really want to know what cascades can do for a beer.  The mouthfeel is good and where it should be and the hops linger on the tongue and the back of the pallet. This is a very sessionable beer and one that I would keep in the fridge as a go to in the summer. My only complaint would be that this beer needs to be drank young, I had a few on tap and it was WAY better, but it still tastes good out of the bottle. This beer leaves some nice lacing as shown here.  On an A-F scale I would rate this a B+.

Now on the the Gran Cru that I brewed a few months ago.  This beer really surprised me as I am not usually a fan of these types of belgianesque beers.  I am not really a huge fan of beers with coriander in them, but this beer might persuade me to rethink that.  This beer pours a clear yellow/straw to slight copper. The head retention is somewhat problematic with this beer, but it does leave some nice lacing. The smell is yeasty with the orange peel and coriander shining through, I can also smell the honey. The thing that I love about this beer is that none of these flavors dominate and they have all come together nicely.  The S-33 fermented in the upper range to get some esters out of the yeast and I am really happy that I fermented this hot around 75. I don't really pick up a ton of fusels which is great and the yeast definitely gave it some of that nice Belgian flair that I do like. Overall I am really happy with this beer and it is one that I would consider putting in standard rotation.  Here is a pic of the beer after a few sips. Cheers to good beer!

New Glarus Moon Man No Coast Pale Ale Review

I am sure that many of you have tried this beer if you live in MN and frequent WI.  I picked this up a few weeks ago when I was in Madison. To be fair here, I am a huge New Glarus fan, I love their beers and love the unchained series as well. I did not want to spend a ton on beer so I got a sampler pack of the New Glarus and it included one of my favorites Moon Man. This beer pours a solid copper to orange with a nice but small white head. The aroma is of citrus hops with a small hint of some pine resin. I can also pick up on the malty side of the brew, a slight sweetness in the nose. The taste is not all in line with the awesome aroma, the bitterness hits you but it is nowhere near overwhelming. You get just a hint of sweet at the finish to cut the hop bitterness. A really nice toasty malt flavor to tame the pallet of the bitterness.  The mouth feel is nice, not to thick or to thin. Over all this is one tasty beer. The claim of it being a nice hoppy session beer is definitely the case as I could drink quite a few in one session!  Cheers to good beer!

First All Grain Batch in the Fermenter!

UPDATE:
I am going to transfer from primary to secondary tonight as the brother in law and I are bottling the celebration stout. I took a gravity reading last night and it finished off at 1.008! Some great attenuation from the WL001!  I tasted the hydro sample and it tasted really really good, the bitterness is nice and the maltiness is nice as well, I am super excited to try this. Only about 3-4 more weeks and this beer will be in the belly and I cannot wait! I will update the post with some pics when the racking is completed.

Sweetworts first all grain batch is in the fermenter. I brewed an Amarillo American pale here is the bill:

10 Lbs domestic two row
8oz carapils
8oz crystal 60

Doughed in mashed at 152 for an hour, only lost one degree!
Collected a little over 2 gallons
Sparged with 5 gallons and collected 6.75 gallons of wort

1/2oz chinook first wort hop
1/2 chinook @ 60
1oz Amarillo @ 20
1oz amarillo @ 5
1oz amarillo @ flame out
1oz simcoe dry hop

I had a few issues but that is to be expected as this is the first go at all grain.  It took only 4 hours so it was not that bad.  My gravity was a little low at 1.048 but I am positive that had to do with my sparge, I used too much water and it was too hot as well so I sparged really fast and collected my first runnings a little too fast as well.  I also pitched a 1/2 gallon yeast starter of WL001! Here are some pics of the brew day!

Grain Bed

First runnings

The boil

Fermentation at 24 Hours

All in all it went well and I am happy, I cannot wait to taste this tasty beverage!  I will report back in about a month with the tasting!

First year Hops from NE Minneapolis!

Here is a video of my first year hops growing on the fence.  SWMBO wanted something to cover the fence as I planted some hops, a nice dual purpose compromise!  They look great and I am hoping to get at least a few ounces of hops this year!  They are budding like crazy and it looks like a good year for the magnums and cascades.  Cheers!

Epic - Phish Alpine Valley and Ale Asylum Beer

All I can really say is that the wife and I had a great trip to see the show and relive some memories in Mad town.  The show was pretty sick!  I was skeptical to see phish after the hiatus and this was my first show in almost 10 years!  I can honestly say that the musical vibe felt like this was 1997 all over again, they sounded great and this show ranks up there with some of the best music I have seen them play and I have seen some pretty solid shows over the years.  Here is a fine example:




On the beer front I brought some great Sconnie beer back with me. We brought back some of the standard New Glarus offerings and I also was able to try some of the Ale Asylum beers.  Those beers are out of sight and some of my favorite beers that I have had in a while.  I brought back a sixer if the Hopalicious that has 11 additions of cascades, it is super hoppy but not bitter and is absolute nectar!  I also tried their stout which was really really good and the bartender at breakfast was nice enough to hook me up with a nice sample of the Satisfaction Jackson DIPA which was damn tasty, look for a review of the hopalicious soon! UPDATE: The Ale Asylum beers while they are good they are not as good when you are not having a great time out and about in a place that holds A LOT of nostalgia.  Also the hopalicious is a good beer but it does suffer when it has been in the bottle for who knows how long. On tap the beer was outstanding but the sixer I brought home is not neatly as good.  IPA's are to be drank young and this one is not fresh enough for the nice taste that I had on tap. Also reflecting on the Phish show after listening to it a bunch is that it was even better that I thought. They were on fire that night and I am so so happy that they seem to be really getting their form back!  Cheers

60 Quart Igloo Ice Cube Mash Tun

My mash tun is completed, tested and just about leak free. I was really surprised how easy it was and being that I can now do 5 AND 10 gallon mashes I am pretty excited. I already had the cooler that I bought for a party last year and used once, but I think that I paid somewhere around 22-25 dollars for it. The manifold and valve cost about $19.  Here is the parts list:

10' CPVC 1/2" pipe (I only used about 6 feet) - $2.50
1 1/2" Slip to Male CPVC Adaptor - .35
5 90 degree CPVC elbows - .27 each
3 CPVC Tee's .72 each
1 1/2" brass ball valve female to female - $7.00
1 1/2 mip to 3/8 barb fitting - $2.75
10' 3/8 ID tubing - $4.25
1 Hose gasket

I then measured and cut the pipe with a copper pipe cutter, fit it all together and used a coping saw to cut the slits into the manifold. I filled up the cooler the first time and I had a leak on the outside of the ball valve.  I replaced the gasket before the second run and it was just a drip or two, so that will do for me. One problem/concern that I have read about with these coolers is that it won't drain all of the water from the tun. Well in my 3 tests that most water I was left with was less that 1/2 cup so I am not worried. Here are some pic of the tun, let me know if you have any questions...all grain here I come!

A little over a week!

I cannot wait!  Saturday Aug 14th @ Alpine Valley, this will be my 25th show at one of my favorite venues in the country, I haven't seem them since pre-hiatus so I am pretty stoked, enjoy!!!

Cream ale in its prime...

The cream ale has been bottle conditioned for two months now.  Man what a difference time can make.  The flavor is way better and the hop aroma has really mellowed but is now in the sweet spot.  This is a highly quaffable session beer at 5% abv.  When Dank Brewer and I had a tasting there seemed to be a little twang in the beer, that is now gone and the finish is really nice.  The 1056 had great attenuation, by my calculations this yeast attenuated at 91%!  That is crazy!  The SG was 1.044 and the FG was 1.004.  The yeasties really liked this sweet wort!  The result is a really dry finish.  The beer has a really nice aroma, a little malty with the nice hop aroma from the 3oz dry hop, 2oz of cascade whole leaf and 1oz of centennial whole leaf.  The bitterness up front is mild, I used 1oz of cascades pellets for 60min and split a second ounce at 20 and 5 and 1 minutes.  This beer is really in its prime now and is really tasty!  Here are some very crappy pic of the 12oz I cracked last night.  There seems to be a little chill haze in this bottle, it was only in the fridge for about 90 min so maybe all of the yeast didn't drop out, I will try to get a better pic later, but here is what it looked like.  Cheers!

ALL GRAIN HERE I COME!

I have finally decided to get the cooler MLT set up.  I have a 60qt igloo ice cube cooler collecting dust in my basement and all I need to do is spend 20 bucks and I can start doing all grain!  I am planning on getting the cooler completed in the next week or two!  I have decided that I am going to do an all grain version of the celebration stout so that I have something to compare it to.  One thing that I would like to point out is that I will still brew extract beers as well.  Being the father of a 19 month old time is of the essence.  I don't have 4-6 hours for every beer that I brew, I can get an extract beer completed in about 2.5-3 hours so I can come home from work, play with my daughter, get her to bed and then brew and get to bed at a decent time.  But for those days when I do have the extra time, I want to have a setup that can allow me to do all grain.  I will post pictures and step by step process for converting the cooler!  Keep and eye out for that!  CHEERS!!

Celebration Ale in the Fermenter!

If you want to just read about the beer skip to the third paragraph.

On Friday I had quite the day.  First off I took a few hours off of work to get everything ready but was thrown a curve ball when I got home.  I entered the yard and my dog Marley greeted me as he usually does, then I was sitting on the deck with SWMBO and the dog started to have a seizure.  Now this is not totally out of the norm, my dog has had two of them before about a year a part and it has been about a year of so since his last one.  The odd thing was that once the seizure ended he ran around the yard for about a minute or two, came back up on the deck and immediately started having another, more intense seizure.  This made me quite nervous so off to the vet we went.  To make a long story short he is fine and after spend a frw hundered dollars at the vet they basically said to just keep an eye on him.  He has seemed fine since then so I am not too worried, I just hope he continues being well!  Here is a picture of him with Dank Brewer's yellow lab Nala:

Crazy thing part two is that I encountered quite the road rage incident that same time on the way to pick the dog up at the vet.  I was the recipient of the rage and it was quite the specticle.  I was ducking through some neighborhood street on the way to the vet.  I came to a stop sign (this is in NE Mpls) STOPPED and looked, there were cars on both sides of the street, I did not see any cars comming and I preceeded through the intersection.  Another SUV was going through the residential area at a pretty good clip and I had to gun it to avoid it.  I gave a wave as an apology and was greeted by a nice long rip of a horn, no big deal I thought...how wrong I was.  This person got on my bumper, pulled along side me and gave me the business.  I calmly stated that I didn't see them and that I am sorry, it is not like I want to get into an accident.  I have never in my 32 years seen such rage, I was called every name in the book and threatened.  When they reached into the glove box I took off with abandon, only to have them keep pace on the wrong side of the street, I stopped and told them that I did not want any trouble, and I still got screamed at so I told them to go and blank themselves.  This was crazy and the first time that I almost got the cops involved, they followed me for a few miles to the vet then ducked off so the cops were not called.  Whew, that was NUTS!

THE BEER...that is what we are here for anyways right!  The Champ, Spanky and I brewed up a celebration stout for Spanky's coming offspring.  The brew went off without a hitch and smelled really awesome, some really nice roasted aroma along with some caramel and coffee notes.  Man those dark ones always smell the best to my nose!  One little boil over that was corrected quickly and all of the hop additions went smooth and chilling went smooth as well.  Cooled the wort down to 75 and pitched around 72.  Fermentation was active and smelling nice the next morning.  We will most likely flavor a small portion during bottling as an experiment.  I will let you know how that goes!  Cheers!