Beer Diary...

I picked up my grain and now it was time to stop and quench my thirst from the long drive. Photojournalist and brewing entrepreneur, Bill Owens opened Buffalo Bill's Brewery in the early 80's as one of the pioneers of the brewpub movement in California. I had a chance to swing by on my way back from Woodland where I was picking up grains from Certified Foods, Inc. for myself and some of the other Zymurgeek members. Buffalo Bills is located in the downtown part of Hayward, California. It's an old building with a lot of charm and the bar section has a hardwood floor that runs the length of the bar. A very comfortable and relaxed atmosphere in which to enjoy a good ale. I ordered a sampler platter of the beers on tap and spent some time working my way through them from light to dark beginning with an American lager followed by an American wheat, pale ale, red ale and ending with an oatmeal stout. I need a moment here to say that I have a problem with brewpubs that serve the...

If you're currently kegging your beer you probably experience a spasm of tourettes when the keg blows foam into your half full (empty?) pint glass. An empty keg causes me sadness, followed by a guarded surprise at how quickly I was able to consume essentially forty pints of beer. Then, a real regret overcomes me for not having bottled up some of what was possibly an award winning beer before it expired. Well, after enough disappointments, like a Pavlovian dog, I have finally learned to draw off some bottles of beer from what I would consider those exceptional kegs of homebrew to be submitted later at local contests. Halfway through the keg, the beer has come of age and will have good clarity and I will fill and cap four bottles and set them aside. I place a label on the cap with the beer style and the date I originally kegged the beer. These will then go into the refer or the shelf in my kegerator. Later, prior to submitting the three beers that most completions require, I will hav...

It was a casual gathering at a friend of a friends house and I didn't know many of the people in the room. I padded over to a couple that seemed open to new conversation. They introduced themselves and I, me and then I immediately forgot their names. After some small chit chat I launched into what I believed was a interesting story about instant non-alcoholic beer which dove-tailed nicely into a another anecdotal tale of light American lager, when halfway through my soliloquy about early American brewing history I noticed a suppressed yawn contorting the face of the person I'm talking to, an astute observation considering how captivated I was with my own story. I paused in mid sentence, at a loss for words and at once directionless. I sputtered some nonsense about the extensive cheese platter on a nearby table in an effort to change the subject. The person leaped at the opportunity to make the break towards a new line of interest and simultaneously, physically backed away from ...

If you're about to convert that old keg or pot into a mash tun, hot liquor tank or boil kettle, then you may be needing a valve installed to drain the liquid. In my case, I have a three tiered, gravity fed system utilizing discarded Sanke beer kegs. Each vessel has a ball valve installed to allow the liquid to flow down from one vessel to the next, cascading down from the hot liquor tank (HLT) in to the top to the mash tun (MT) and finally down into the boil pot (keggle). I use valves that do not need to be welded in place but are held secure with compression fittings. The valves are installed several inches above the bottom of the keg and I have attached pick-up tubes which enable me to extract virtually all of the liquid from the keg. The parts that make up this assembly are: 1/2" npt to 3/8" barbed adapter 1/2" x 1/2" (female to female) s.s. or brass ball valve 1/2" npt to 3/8" compression fitting (male to male) heat resistant washer 3/8" co...

The beer tasting class this weekend was a great success. Students got a chance to sample nine different beers from around the world. I tried to provide a selection that would represent a wide variety but still fall into three categories of West coast, German and Sour beers. Then ascending from mild to hoppy and sweet to sour. The following is a list of the beers in the order of the tasting. Duschutes "Summer Ale" Paulaner "Helles" Brouwerij Verhaeghe "Duchesse" Green Flash "West Coast IPA" Franziskaner "Dunkelweizen" Lindemans "Kriek" Paulaner "Dopple bock" S'Louis "Gueuze" Anchor Steam "Barley Wine" It was hard to incorporate the sour beers into the mix because I didn't want to taste all the sours together, I liked the idea of the contrasting flavors between the non-sour with the sour. Fellow Zymurgeeks Dave and Mark were very helpful and supportive in presenting a couple of the beers an...

English Ales Brewery is a modest place to sit back and quaff an English ale. Quietly located outside the tourist hub of Monterey it is located a block off the main street in Marina, California. You'll be impressed with the army of ceramic beer steins hanging in neat columns from the ceiling as you enter. The name of the patron penned on the bottom for easy identification. After that, what caught my eye was the hand pump at the bar next to a busy row of tap handles that dispensed seven different beers that are brewed on premise. I settled back with a sampler of all but the stout which was unfortunately unavailable while I was there. I waited for an order of bang er sandwich and fries as I sampled the beers. All were very quaffable. Light in alcohol, low carbonation and mild in flavor. I worked my way from the lightest, a "Big Sur Golden" that had a minimum of hop flavor and aroma, and continued on to the "E.P.Pale Ale" which has a slight hop perfume and a slight...

Alright, here are the conclusions I have come up with about this long standing wives tale about sugar adjuncts being the cause of apple/cider flavors in your beer. When I say apple/cider flavors I'm talking about the flavors associated with acetaldehyde. In this case I'm not tasting it at all. This beer was made with 50% cane sugar (see original post) and the volatile compound that supposedly derives from refined sugar during the fermentation process is not present. On the other hand, the beer doesn't taste very good. The body is thin and there is a pronounced astringency that seems to be from the high alpha hops. The flavor of the Amarillo and Cascade hops comes through in a big way, overshadowing any malt attributes. Add to that the fact that I used just the basics of 2-row and a small amount of crystal #60 to be able to judge the results of the flavors in this experiment, the beer is two dimensional and lacks the maltiness I prefer in a pale ale. In conclusion, in spite...