Beer Diary...

In this article I would like to explore the reasons we start the hobby of homebrewing and how we keep the hobby alive which ultimately leads us to more brewing knowledge and practices and consequently , better results in the quality of our beer.Most of us are motivated by a number of personal reasons when we start out making our own beer. Some might be... 1. The idea of duplicating a favorite beer 2. The challenge to creatively express ourselves through brewing 3. Saving money 4. Impressing family and friends 5. Furthering personal knowledge of the world we live in 6. The novelty of making an alcoholic beverage ....to name a few. No matter what our individual reasons are for beginning the hobby of homebrewing we all share a common desire, and that is to succeed in our efforts. To end up with something that is, if not an outstanding example of our favorite beverage, at least a halfway decent drinking beer that prompts us to move forward in our efforts. I'm not really sure what mot...

Si! Viva La Cebada en Mexico! Finally. It seems like it should have been an easy task to find a supplier of malted barley in Mexico, but it was quite difficult. I did extensive internet searches using English and Spanish words and phrases like malt and malto , barley and cebada , malta de cebada , lúpulo para elaborar la cerveza with no results until the other day. I was at the point of not caring if I found malt in Mexico or not when I just happened to stumbled upon http://www.maltayderivados.com/ The website indicated an entire inventory of brewing related materials and equipment but lacked details like individual items and costs. They did list a phone number and address ( estamos en la ciudad de pachuca hidalgoparque industrial canacintra av. b lote 14 a). I became very exited with the possibility of finding a source of malt, and rushed out to purchase a phone card to make the long distance call to their office. Returning home I scribbled out pertinent questions on a...

Drilling a hole by hand with a paddle bit. Using two packages of the Safale s-33 created quite the fermentation fury doing its job and settling out after only four days so I was able to bottle two cases of beer today. I once again have renewed sense of appreciation for kegging as the process of getting the beer into bottles was very labor intensive. Soaking the bottles over night, removing the labels, scrubbing inside and out, rinsing and sanitizing. Then racking the beer into another bucket with preboiled sugar, bottle filling and finally capping left me exhausted and thirsty for a good ale. Alas, I settled for another, you guessed it... Barrilitos . Now for two weeks of patience before I can enjoy the fruits of my labor. Of course I did some tasting during the process and I think this will be a good beer. The hibiscus addition was most evident with a tart dryness and since it is so young the flavor of yeast and residual sweetness is up front. The phenolics that I was expecting is ...

In my attempt to use local ingredients to add the flavor of the Mexican culture, I'm going to start with a wheat beer with the addition of j amaica (dried hibiscus flower) and tamarindo . Each has its unique flavor but they both impart a sour or tartness to the taste.The hibiscus is mildly tart and with tangy fruit and flower hints. The tamarindo is boldly tart with strong dried fruit flavors. I am using a Belgian style yeast ( safale s-33) www.fermentis.com/ that should contribute a large phenolic flavor and I'm hoping that the hibiscus and tamarindo will accent and support that with their tartness. Naturally, I was concerned about using too much of either of these so, I went with a conservative one ounce of the hibiscus and about a quarter cup of the tamarindo in my five gallon batch. The original gravity for this beer is 1.046 and I hope that it will ferment down to 1.008 but this beer is new territory for me so I will be happy if it ends up drinkable. One thing I w...

Dancers with Barrilitos on their heads. After a week in San Miguel I'm starting to relax into the Mexican way of life. We spent yesterday at the thermals enjoying a day of soaking in the hot springs and laying about the warm lawns playing cribbage and sipping cerveza . Today we went to a church gathering in a barrio north of town called Mexiquito for a celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Food vendors sold home made g orditas , enchiladas, tamales and chicharron while throngs of proud parents paraded their young boys, (whom they've dressed up like the historical Juan Diego after he had his vision or the Virgin), around the courtyard. In the mean time, I haven't done much in the way of preparing for brewing except to browse around the markets looking for the materials that I will need for my upcoming brews and considering the local foods that can possibly be used for added flavor and cultural appeal. Since arriving in San Miguel I've been drinking a beer (lager) ...

The trip to San Miguel de Allende can be long. In this particular case, very long. I won't bore you with the ugly details except to say that American Airlines delayed our departure from San Jose long enough to cause us to miss our connecting flight on Aeromexico in L.A., consequently we had to spend the night and arrived in Mexico City a day later than we planned. We arrived weary but exited in Leon, Mexico in the middle of our second night of travel, claimed our baggage and took our place in line at the customs inspection site. The woman in front of us showed her passport and was instructed to press a large button on a glass panel that is used to randomly select persons for further scrutiny. She did so and the window lit up green, (the all clear sign) and she passed through with her possessions . It was now our turn. We showed our passports, handed over our forms claiming that we had nothing to declare and then took our turn to press the large button. Unfortunately, the panel t...

The Duvel clone www.duvelusa.com/ is in the fermenter and should be ready to be racked to kegs in a couple more days. I used 17lbs. of am. 2-row http://www.certifiedfoods.com/ and 6lbs. of beet sugar for this 10 gal. batch of beer. Again, no Pilsner malt, which is what is called for and instead the 2-row because I want to use it up before my hiatus for three months. In the mean time, I am going to adapt the light socket in the storage unit where I will be stowing all my crap, to accept a 110v. outlet so that I can plug in my kegerator to lager the Chimay and Duvel clones. On another note, I received my Dry Malt Extract, bottle caps and dry yeast from the homebrew supply place and have gathered together some essential miscellaneous brewing materials that I can't purchase in Mexico (bottle capper, refractometer, etc.). The larger items like the boil pot, buckets and burner I will purchase down there at the Tuesday flea market. I will be using some local ingredients like 'meil ...

As zymurgeeks , we meet once a month to share and discuss the fruits of our brewing efforts and enjoy the company of people passionate about the hobby we enjoy the most in our lives. This month we met at member Brad's house for his homemade porter infused chili and and to partake in an assortment of oak aged beers presented by Dave Bossie . I can appreciate oak flavor in beer just like I appreciate the history from which those flavors are derived. The flavors of a time before the advent of stainless steel when the typical fermenting vessels were necessarily made of hardwood. But I have to say that I have a problem when the dominant flavor in a beer is of the vessel in which it is matured. Fortunately, all of the beers we tasted had supportive flavors of oak, adding to the character and complexity of the beer rather than overpowering. I was impressed with the Stone Brewing's ' Arrogant Bastard Oak' www.stonebrew.com/oaked/ as having a balance of malt and oak flavors ...

Chimay Tripel I'll be heading back to Mexico at the end of the Month http://www.atencionsanmiguel.org/ and I thought that I would brew a couple beers that I can put in storage for the three months that I will be gone. Additionally, I don't want to waste the grain I have by leaving in storage to get stale. I decided on two high gravity beers that would benefit from several months of winter storage. One, a Chimay Cinq Cent, http://www.chimay.com/en/chimay_triple_219.php Trappist trippel clone and the other, a Duvel , http://www.duvelusa.com/beer.php Belgian Golden Ale clone. Both are in the area of 8% abv . I would normally use Pilsner malt for both of these beers but the grain I want to use up is American 2-row, so I will substitute and accept that the beer will not be as light in color as I would prefer. Both beers are simply Pilsner malt (in this case 2-row) and light Candi sugar (in this case beet sugar). The Chimay will be fermented with a Trappist ale yeast W...

Salinas has a brew pub! I took the time today to head over to Salinas www.ci.salinas.ca.us/ for a sampling of beers at Monterey Coast Brewing. I entered the historic brick building on Main Street in the 'Old Town' part of Salinas and immediately approached the copper mash tun and boil kettle that are situated near the entrance. The warm atmosphere of the pub was enhanced by the rising steam coming off the kettle. I sat down at the redwood plank bar and set into tasting the nine different beers on tap beginning with an American wheat that was true to style and very refreshing. I tasted my way through the lighter beers, a Pilsner , Hefeweizen , and an Octoberfest style of lager. Each very drinkable and a little low on the bitterness scale for my taste. I continued my samplings with a nicely balanced 'Scottish Red Ale', a toasty Nut Brown, a Porter and finally a Stout that had a distinctive caramel assertiveness and a sweet finish. The food is your standard pub fare w...

The final day of Brewing School was literally a bitter sweet experience. The students brought in food to pair with the beers we brewed over the last 5 weeks of classes. www.beertown.org/education/pdf/beer%26food.pdf First we concluded the lessons by going over the mechanics of making your own kegerator out of a chest freezer. Also, forced carbonating kegs was discussed. Soon, the students guests started to arrive and we moved on to tasting beers, including a bottled Hefeweizen and a kegged IPA from the very first class. Also on tap were the Irish Stout from the third class and finally the All-grain English Ale from the fourth class. Students discuss the kegerator before the food pairing My goal when starting the beer school was to teach the students that anyone can make a batch of decent tasting beer with the simplest of equipment and ingredients. I think I accomplished that goal but along the way, as the brewing techniques became increasingly difficult, I found that it was n...

It's not about size! We (the zymurgeeks ) got together with the local mushroom gathering club http://www.fungusfed.org/ to celebrate the season of October by combining the earthy flavors of the mushroom with the heavenly flavor of fermented malt to give thanks to these gifts of nature these sacred gifts that make us whole as human beings. An abundance of great homebrew was on tap including a fantastic Vienna lager, two other oktoberfest lagers, a pale ale, IPA's and stouts to compliment a variety of delicious foods. Several of the beers were brewed at the Santa Cruz County Fair in August and were ripe for quaffing in the warm California October air. For a moment, I was nastalgic for the crisp cool air of my past life in the Pacific Northwest. The hint of a winter snowfall blowing in on the northern wind. Rain and sleet pushing me near the comforting flame of a cozy fire in the family room. Then again, 75f. on the deck, with dozens of friends drinking cold homebrew to beat...

Homebrew class of 2008 We brewed up 10 gallons of an Extra Special Bitter today using the all-grain method on my gravity feed system. 18lbs. of 2-row and 28oz. of Crystal #60. Our efficiency was huge which required us to add some water to the wort to get down to the gravity that we were shooting for (1.052). This ESB is a very quaffable beer and always scores well in the competitions. In the mean time we tasted the Hefeweizen and IPA from the first class and discussed a method of evaluating the beer. Then we rack the Irish Stout from last weeks class into a keg and forced carbonated it, readying it for the beer fridge to condition for a week before tasting next week at the potluck. The class was very engaged in the all-grain brewing process and all went well until the end when it was time to chill the wort. We had a large amount of pellet hop debris that clogged the outflow valve of the boil pot that required some reaming to correct. Once that was cleared the chilling went forwar...

I only wish I could be at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. I have to get by with the stories and images forwarded to me from my friend Chris, who happens to be in Denver working for the Democratic campaign . Chris is fortunate enough to be staying in a condo two blocks from the facility where the festival is being held. I got a call from him as he stood in line to get in on opening night Thursday . I suggested that he head for the gold award winning breweries first and take some pictures for me. I was a little jealous. Later in the evening I got a follow up call, Chris found his favorite beers of the evening and wanted to let me know how wonderful they are and what I was missing. Thanks. Apparently he ranked them in order of Gold, Silver and Bronze. He liked the Dogfish Head "Midas Touch" for the Gold category http://www.dogfish.com/ He found that the McKenzie Brewery was worthy of the Silver in his ranking for their "Scottish Ale" which must be new to ...

Over this last week the two beers that we brewed in class, fermented nicely and on time for me to take them back to the classroom for bottling and kegging. The fermentation attenuation was 75% for both beers. I'm used to 80% attenuation when brewing all-grain. I have to assume that the dry malt extract that we used for both beers was the reason for only getting 75%. The wheat beer has a distinctive banana aroma/flavor and some spicy clove. The pale ale we renamed an IPA because of the higher than expected gravity and hop bitterness that we achieved, primarily from boiling down to 4 1/2 gals instead of 5 1/2 gals. I managed to take both buckets of fermented beer back to the classroom without agitating the yeast bed too much. In the class the students got an earful from me regarding malt bill calculations, hop bitterness utilization and the math to figure the attenuation and alcohol of the beers. We spent some time learning to siphon and cap bottles then went to work bottling the h...

The brew class at Cabrillo College filled up quick. I limited the number of students that would be accepted to the class to 16 in order for everyone to be able to get some hands-on experience. 20 students signed up to attend, so unfortunately 4 went on standby but didn't get a chance to get in the class this time. Students hard at work. The first class was devoted to the importance of sanitation, basic extract brewing and a couple different ways of chilling the wort, an ice bath and an immersion chiller. All went well for the most part as we got our wort up and boiling and started adding the hops. As you can see by the pictures, we have an excellent facility to use for the brewing process. We are on campus in the horticulture room. This room is expansive and the ceiling is two stories high which leave plenty of room for heat and vapors to dissipate . Also, the room has a floor drain and all of the tables and work benches are stainless steel. Very nice. Reviewing my notes. As the...

Talking about the finer things in life 'Beer'! Here I am teaching the fine art of beer appreciation and how to define the subtle aromas and flavors of some classic beer styles on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Aptos , California. Nine students signed up to participate in beer tasting and they were enthusiastic and engaged. I came prepared with nine different beers including: Pilsner Urquell , Duvel Belgian golden, Erdinger S. wheat, Boon geuze , Roggenbier , Mad River pale ale, Moylan's dry stout, Schlenkerla rauchbier and a strong lager, Samichlaus . Dave Helps define a classic Pilsener . After getting everyone signed in I launched right into a brief history of ancient brewing, going back to the days of the Sumerians , Babylonians and Egyptians . Then discussed some more recent beer history including the American beer Renaissance (micro brew business) brought on by the changes in the alcohol laws the Pres. Jimmy Carter made allowing homebrewing again. Then each...

The Santa Cruz County Fair is in full swing this week and part of the festivities is the Microbrew beer sampling booth and Homebrew exhibit. The brew rig Different members of the Zymurgeeks are taking turns throughout the week demonstrating the techniques of making beer at home. Brewing beer, answering questions, promoting homebrewing are the tasks assigned to the Zymurgeek club each night. I took my turn at the boil pots on Thursday night and with the assistance of my brewing partner made a double IPA using 25 lbs. of grain and 1.25 lbs. of hops. Our original gravity came to 1.070 with IBU's well over 100. In addition to fielding questions I was pushing for people to sign up for my Homebrewing classes at Cabrillo College. Brewer Michelle Firehouse Brewing http://www.firehousegrill.com/ was on hand next to our booth dispensing four very quaffable beers. For the price of $4 one could sample 4oz. of each beer on tap starting with a thirst quenching American wheat and slig...

Well, out of the 6 beers that I entered in the brewing competition at the Santa Cruz County Fair www.santacruzcountyfair.com/ I only received a decent score on one, that was the Roggenbier . I was happy the rye beer made it to the 'best of show' judging and eventually came out 2 nd of the top three beers but dissapointed that my pale ale, IPA and hefeweizen all score poorly (27, 23, and 26 out of 50) for various reasons that I concur with. My Dry Stout scored well with an overall 35 out of 50 and my ESB did well with a 38 out of 50. I was confident in the ESB as it was the same recipe as previous years that scored well. I barely got the Roggenbier into the competition. It was kegged the night before it had to be submitted and bottled the next day. Fortunately, two weeks in the bottle before being tasted helped. Pitchable yeast from a prior brew. It still had a pronounced banana aroma that I didn't like but the phenolic flavors were large and the rye added an increas...

Schlenkerla I have to tell you I'm not a big fan of the smoked beers and the Brauerei Heller with their Schlenkerla Rauchbier www.schlenkerla.de/ did nothing to improve my opinion. I was at first surprised and intrigued by the uniqueness of the flavor. A huge smoke taste from beech wood that overpowers the taste of the malts. This beer is sweet with a thick, heavy mouthfeel and medium to high carbonation level. The head forms thick and tan but dissipates quickly leaving the surface without a trace of foam. When I drank this beer I was transported by a memory of an early morning campsite. I've just climbed out of my tent to a cool foggy morning, tempted by bacon sizzling on the coleman stove. I'm wearing the clothes I had on from the night before where we sat drinking around a roaring campfire being chased in circles by the relentless smoke. The acrid smell of the fire and my oily skin imbued in every fiber of my Levi jacket. After clearing my sinus's and spitting into ...

The American Homebrew Association rally took place at the Anchor Steam Brewing Company in San Francisco http://www.anchorbrewing.com/ to promote membership of the AHA and to promote homebrewing. http://www.beertown.org/ Dave Bossie drove his wife, daughter and me up to the event but first we stopped off at the 21st Amendment brewery www.21st-amendment.com/ for a couple of pints and lunch. I had an excellent English bitter followed by a Trumer Pils that was a classic example of a German pilsner, a light crisp lager. Th e 21st Amendment is famous for their watermelon wheat (American wheat with watermelon) so of course one was ordered to sample. It goes down easy with a surprising balance of watermelon, wheat and bready yeast flavors. Not something I would have regularly but I enjoyed the experience of the tasting. After lunch it was a short 5 minute car ride to the Anchor Steam Brewery and the s tart of a memorable afternoon. First things first we headed up to the bar where employees...