Orange Rye IPA Update and tasting of more beer...

Dank Brewer and I had a quick taste of the Orange Rye IPA last week, and I jotted down this post after the tasting only to hold it off as I wanted to make sure it was coherent as I also tasted quite a bit of Dank's beer, while the beer ORIPA is not totally ready, I thought it would be nice to give it a go even though it has only been in the bottle for about a week. I am excited about this beer and I think that it has some really nice potential, only time will tell. The color is a nice orange/amber color, reminiscent of autumn. The aroma is very distinct, the simcoe definitely shines through but it also has a nice c-hop type of aroma as well, a very citrus-y fare with the orange in the backround. The taste is fairly assertive on the hop bitterness followed by a nice citrus from the orange peel and a bready spicy hint from the rye, citrus also comes through on the tongue in the finish. The finish is also sporting some nice lingering bitterness which balances out the sweetness from the high mash temp. I cannot give a true verdict on this beer until it is fully carbed and chilled, but so far so good. Also I had a great opportunity to taste a nice variety of the Dank Beers. I was super impressed with the Dark Embrace and The Essence. Both IPA's and both totally different.  The dark embrace is a great take on the dark IPA. Early editions of simcoe come through really nicely and this beer does not leave one confused where the bitterness comes from, no malt bitterness from the dark grains, just pure hop bitterness with an awesome aroma, definitely one to try if you ever run across Nick. The Essence has really come along nicely. The only other time I has this beer it was very young, time was really good to this beer as it now has a wonderful pungent c-hop aroma and a crisp assertive hop bite. A touch of honey is also present and rounds out the beer nicely. One could look at the hop schedule and think No way that is going to be balanced, but it honestly is and it was a great beer, if you are a hop head brew it up, it is worth it, it checks in high on the ABV and higher on the IBU's but man it is a great beer. Stay tuned for more updates when I get the chance to post them, and a full tasting of the orange rye IPA.

Amarillo American Pale Ale - Update

The amarillo american pale ale is now in the sweet spot. The beer is crystal clear and all carbonation problems have worked themselves out. Time is really the key when having carbonation issues, this batch was bulk primed and I did not get the sugar mixed in well enough, so the last few bottles were gushers and the first ones bottled took over 5 weeks to prime. Another thing to note is the taste difference between the beer that were lightly carbed and the ones that were over carbed. The over carbed beers, at least early on, tasted so much more complex and fruity, the ones that were under carbed we harsh and extremely bitter. Strange to say the least as I thought that priming with dextrose did not change the flavor of the beer. That still may be true, if you wait long enough. Two things that I have had to admit to myself are that I am impatient when wanting to drink my beer, another is that I over bittered this batch a bit. Here is the true review of the first all grain batch I produced, the Amarillo American Pale Ale:

Pour - Pours a bright orange, almost crystal clear with a nice white two finger head.

Aroma - Citrus/spicy hop aroma. No sweetness in the aroma, a nice match of the spicy chinook hops and citrus fruity notes from the amarillo and simcoe hops, smells really nice.

Taste - Well carbonated, nice mouthfeel may be a bit thin, the bitterness is aggressive and a little over powering but not bad. Next time I would just do the 1/2oz chinook FWH and not add the other 1/2 oz @ 60. This beer would be much more balanced without the extra 1/2oz. But if you are a hophead you will like the bitterness, to an untrained palate it may taste a bit harsh and overbitter.

Finish - Lingering bitterness and some spicy notes, not sure where those came from simcoe/amarillo or just the combo? I really like the aftertaste and the flavor/aroma hops, this is a solid beer, not a competition beer. On an A to F scale I would rate this a B+!

Cheers to good beer!



Homegrown Hop IPA Brewday Update - Updated

This is kind of odd, I have not had a fermentation like this yet, here is the deal. As you can see in the video below the fermentation was really active and some krausen had formed. The video is about 14 hours into fermentation and I pitched on Saturday night. I went and checked it yesterday morning (10/26) and the krausen had already fallen. So I sat there and scratched my head as I usually have fairly long fermentation's and the krausen takes a while to fall for the majority of my beers. Also this was a fairly high starting gravity so I was really surprised. So I sanitized the thief and pulled a sample and took a gravity reading and this beer went from 1.075 to 1.025 in about 60 hours! Whoa! I am using two strains of yeast in this thing and I don't have any experience with either strain. I used Notty and WLP051.  I think the Notty took off early and then the WLP051 took over as I could definitely tell the difference in smell from the first time I checked it and how it smells this morning. Since I mashed high I am thinking that this beer is almost done, I am expecting it to finish around 1.020 - 1.015 so five to ten more points to go. I will leave it in primary and rack to secondary this weekend and start the dry hopping. Another thing that I found interesting is that when I tasted the sample of the cooled wort right after the brew session it tasted really super sweet, not a huge suprise but I thought that I would get more out of the 2oz FWH with the homegrown magnums. I did not get any bitterness in the first tasting. When I tasted it yesterday I defiantly got the bitterness, not quite as bitter as I wanted, but still enough to balance out the amount of sugars form the grist. I still have my fingers crossed but I think that this beer will turn out just fine! It tastes a little hot from the fast fermentation but it is not bad and it should mellow fairly quickly. Be on the lookout for more updates soon! Cheers.

P.S. Also congrats to Dank Brewer on getting his single tier set-up up and going! Cannot wait to see that thing in action!

SO the homegrown hop ipa is brewed up and happly fermenting. The post below has all the details, I will just tell you that brew day went extremely poorly, I started late and was rushed, but I know that I will end up with beer so it should be alright. My gravity is nice at 1.075ish and it is really sweet wort. I mashed a little high so there should be some nice sugars left over. The homegrown magnums did not get the bitterness that I was looking for but I will let you know how it turned out in about a month. Below is a pic of the sweet wort out of the kettle and a video of fermentation. Cheers!

Homegrown Hop IPA on Deck for this weekend!

I am really excited about this brew, my first with the nordeast homegrown hops! I will repost back with pics and notes from brewday.  Here is the bill for the HomeGrown IPA:

GRIST
65% 10lbs Golden Promise
6% 1lbs British Crystal 50-60L
6% 1lbs Biscuit Malt
6% 1lbs Munich Malt - 10L
3% .5lbs Cara-Pils/Dextrine

With 10-15 min left in boil
13% 2lbs Corn Sugar (Dextrose)
1 Whifloc Tablet
Yeast Nutrient

HOP SCHEDULE (ALL HOMEGROWN)
FW 60+ 2oz Magnum
1oz Cascade @ 20
1 oz Cascade @ 10
2 OZ Cascade @ flameout to 140 degrees
2 oz Cascade Dry Hop

Pitched a tube (no starter) of WL051 Cal V and
Since I didn't do a starter I also pitched a pack of Nottingham dry yeast (was worried about underpitching with a high SG)


Cheers and look out for the updates on brewday.

Celebration Stout Tasting

Ahh the crisp air of fall has arrived and so has the dark beer! If you remember a while back my brother-in-law and his wife are expecting an arrival in a few months. I decided we should brew up a celebration ale so that he has something to sip on when he can't get out the door to get some more beer. This was my last extract beer and one of the best extract brews that I did.  When the beer was young I had two of them and they were good but needed a little more time to come together. Well that has happened and it is ready for a proper review.

The pour - A nice black oily looking brew with an awesome head which is visible above. The head took 20 minutes to die down and a nice frothy cap lingered until the last sip!
Aroma - Dark malt, molasses, coffee, brown sugar tones dominate and it smells like a nice dry Irish stout and I felt a little like Pavlov's dog when I was taking in the aroma.
Taste - Fits in perfect with the aroma, a really nice coffee, molasses dark malt taste with just a hint of hops and a really nice dry twang finish that should be present in a dry irish stout. It is not extract twang, it is from the yeast and while I was not happy with the yeast when it was fermenting, I gotta say that it did a great job and imparted all the flavors that it should.
Overall impression - This is a nice winter beer, the mouthfeel is a little thinner than it should be but it is close, this is a highly quaffable winter warmer at around 5.8 abv. If I did brew this up again I would add some more hops for bittering and aroma, but that might upset the balance that is happening here, but I would love to give it a try. Over all I am extremely pleased with this beer and I think that the brother-in-law will be as well. So raise a glass in celebration and cheers to the expecting couple!

Black IPA and Home Grown Hops Update

UPDATE:
Chalk one up to not thinking things through! The black bitter with the homegrown hops went down the drain last night. I am bummed as this is the first time that this happened, but hindsight is 20/20 and I don't know what the heck I was thinking! I was harvesting some of the cascades and I didn't dry them and just threw them into the bitter, well that is really dumb as I tasted a little bit last night and it tasted like drinking a blended up plant with some malt in it, man it was gross. Guess I will just chalk this one up and not repeat the same mistake again.

I have racked the Black IPA into secondary and I added 1 oz of Ahtanum plug hops. I also got the Amarillo pale bottled as well (I will be sure to do a tasting of this one!). I also was able to rack the black bitter with homegrown hops into secondary and I picked some of my cascades and threw those into secondary. It looks like I will have a few ounces of cascades and magnums to use up straight from the NE Mpls soil! I am excited about this and I am also excited to try the black bitter and see how the homegrown hops stack up.  Here is a pic of some of the hops that I picked last night.  Cheers!



HomeGrown Goodness!



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

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!

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!

Wheat Summer Ale - With a twist - UPDATE

UPDATE Part 2:
The lemon basil wheat is in secondary conditioning.  It has cleared well.  When I took a sample for a gravity reading and to see where the flavors were at it tasted pretty good.  The lemon was there in the background but I could not taste the basil at all.  I have since soaked the zest of 4 lemons in 4 oz of vodka, I also soaked about 20-30 basil leaves in vodka as well. I let that sit for a few days and added some of the lemon and basil extracts and that will sit until next week at some point.  I will then batch prime it and give it a taste and add more extract as appropriate to get the taste that I am hoping for.  I am not expecting that this beer will win over everyone, but this was a really fun experiment and it seems that so far it has gone well.  I will do a full tasting and let you know.  Cheers!

UPDATE:
The Lemon Basil wheat has been brewed.  This is the first time that I felt like I actually got everything done with ease!  I steeped the grains for 45 min in 1.5 gallons of water on the stove while the other 4 gallons was heating up on the propane burner outside.  I mixed in the extract and brought it to a boil and added the 1 oz of palisades hops.  Boiled for 45 min, added the chiller and also added the zest of two lemons along with 20 or so basil leaves and let that boil for about 10 min and then added the aroma hops and steeped for another 10 or so.  Chilled the wort down to 75, racked into a 6 gallon better bottle and pitched some US-05.  Fermentation started about 12 hours later and I now have a nice 2 inch and growing krausen.  A side note here is that I was intending to pitch a smack pack of Wyeast 1010 American Wheat, but after giving it more thought and consideration, I went with US-05.  The 1010 is a voracious fermenter and I didn't feel like cleaning up a mess also I was concerned with the flavor profile.  I know that 1010 is a really clean wheat yeast, but it does have a tendency to get sulfur and also can impart the faint wit flavor.  I was thinking that I want the lemon and basil to come through but not be overpowering so I went for the clean and neutral US-05.  I am planning on making an infusion with more lemon and basil via the vodka method and add some in secondary and also add some at bottling.  I want to be careful to not over do it, bit I also want to be able to detect both flavors in the background.  I hit my OG right on and tasted the hydgrometer sample and I didn't pick up the lemon or basil, but I think it was because the hops were so prominent.  I will add the tasting to this post in about 3-5 weeks!


I have always loved to cook.  There are many new food trends every summer.  This summer it seems that it is all about infusions or herbs in drinks.  This made me think, what about beer.  Summer has inspired me to try something a little out of left field.  I am going to be brewing a wheat summer ale with basil and lemon.  If you have ever had basil lemonade then you know what I am shooting for.  I am going to steep about 20-30 basil leaves at 5 min until the wort is cool.  I am also going to add the zest of 1.5 lemons to that steep.  Then in secondary I am going to add the same amount of basil and lemon after a nice soak in some vodka to kill anything that may give me trouble in secondary.  There will be a full report of brew day/night and a full report on the tasting.  Cheers to different beer!

Brew Pub...

The family went northeast to the Hayward WI area over Memorial Day weekend and on the advice of Dank Brewer we hit up the Angry Minnow brew pub.  This place was really nice.  A nice old brick building with a nice beer garden in the back.  A nice bonus was that I am pretty certain that they were brewing at the time as the entire place smelled of sweet wort.  The server wasn't sure, so I didn't push it, but if she would have been certain I would have asked to see the process and meet the brewmaster, but I didn't push it and we didn't really have the time as we were on our way back to the cities.  The food was really good and the beer was great.  My wife went with the Wit, that was really tasty and had a nice funkyness that Wits should have.  I went with the Tre-Svends Imperial IPA which was fantastic, I had to pick up a growler of that!  If you are ever in the area, this place is worth the trip.  Here is a picture of the lunch I had, a really good pork sammy.  Also, the sippy cup is not for me!  You can see the DIPA and the Wit in the picture.

Walks like a duck...

And smells like furious!  I checked in on the dry hopping last night, removed the stopper/airlock on the better bottle and took a good whiff...man does this beer smell great!  The dry hop has really gives the furious aroma that I love, I have a feeling that this is going to taste close to furious but a little lighter bodied and a little less sweet due to the extract fiasco mentioned in the brew day post.  I am planning on bottling at some point this weekend.  Hopefully on Saturday if I am not stuck at work...The other thing that is planned for some time next week is the brewing of the cascade hopped cream ale.  I think that I am going to see how it goes and if it needs a little kick I may stop and get an ounce of Cascades to dry hop that with as well.  Stay tuned!

Fercious Update

Airlock activity has greatly slowed, and I have raised the fermentation temp a few degrees.  Fermentation strated at around 62-63 ambient air temp and yesterday I raised it to 63-64. This weekend I plan on taking a gravity reading to see where fermentation is at. If the gravity is close to the expected FG then I will rack into secondary (5 gallon Better Bottle) and dry hop for 7 days. After reading lots of brew forums and getting some advice from other sources it may seem like I am rushing a bit. There is tons of controversy amongst home brewers over the racking to secondary and when to do it and do the risks outweigh the benefits. Well, I am just going to listen to my hydrogmeter and see what it tells me. If I am close then I am going to rack, if not I will give it a little bit more time in primary. I am a little impatient as this is the first batch of beer all on my own, but I am just going to see what the batch tells me and go with it. Expect more updates and pics if time allows.

Minneapolis Ripe for more Craft Breweries?

One thing that I always has on my mind is that Minneapolis needs more breweries.  Obviously, we have a few here in Minnesota, but nowhere near the amount that other similiar sized cities/states have.  There are many Minneapolis Homebrewers, but not very many commercial craft brewers in the metro area.  As evidenced by the demand of Surly, Summit, and Flat Earth, there is more to be had in the Minneapolis area.  Why haven't more of them come to fruition?  What can we, as beer drinkers and homebrewers in Minneapolis, do to demand more top notch craft beer?  Surly is expanding as fast as possible, Summit sales have been on the up and up for years, and Flat Earth is also growing, why hasn't there been more individuals that will step up and take the chance?  What do you think and what would you like to see in the Minneapolis area?

Change in plan

OK so I was going to just venture into the world of all-grain but I have backed off of that for the time being. I will begin my brewing with extracts and most likely kits from the first few go's. There are a couple reasons for this, one is that I need some practice and need to refine some skills first and do some basic beers to get a better understanding of the process. The second reason is that I really don't want to go the cooler route. I figure that even if the plastics in the cooler are food grade, the plastic will be exposed to heat for extended periods of time for a while, some of that is bound to leech and I really don't want that. I am not overly concerned about the chemicals, I just want a stainless mash tun setup that can allow me more options when it comes to all grain and I think that it is worth the wait.

It has begun

There is a new homebrewer in Minneapolis! I finally started to gather up everything I need for becomming a novice home brewer. I got the burner and kettle ordered and on it's way and all I have to do now is run down to midwest to get the kit and off I go. I should be starting my first batch by the end of April...I know, work is crazy now and I need to get that under control before I have the time to brew a batch. I am going to do the following batch, a clone of furious for the first go, let me know what you think:

9.75 lbs. Pale malt - Golden Promise Scotland
1.50 lbs. CaraMunich Malt Belgium
0.25 lbs. Crystal 55L Great Britian
.5 oz of Warrior Pellet
.5 oz of Magnum pellet
2.65 of Amarillo Gold Pellet
3.65 of Simcoe Pellet