Beer Diary...

Santa Cruz population is 60,000 If you plan to visit the Monterey bay area and Santa Cruz in particular, here's a heads up on the brew scene and if you like beer you should stop by all of these for good local beer. All within minutes of each other. considering the size of the town, there are a lot of beers avail beach and surf beach and boardwalk ocean and mountains Ale Works Marc Rosenblum (need to make an appointment) my favorite hefewweizen beers - Seabright Brewpub Jason  (Open every day) my favorite Saint Hubbins beers- Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing Chad (open every day) The pale ale beers= Uncommon Brewers Alec (need to make an appointment) Siamese twins beers- Up in the hills- beers- Coming Soon__ Corralitos Brewing Luke Taylor (will be avail ?) beer type - Sante Adairius Rustic Ales Tim Clifford (will be avail ?) beer type -

Problem solving during the brew day leads to innovative ideas that can be utilized on a regular basis. For the longest time I've struggled with how to proceed with the introduction of hops at zero minutes or the so called "flame out" addition. These are hops that are added so late in the boil that they impart a lot of flavor to the beer without much in the way of international bittering units (ibu's). Typically this is done for American style pale ales, IPA's and imperial IPA's like Hammer Head , Pliney The Elder and Hopstoopid  giving them that huge hop character. Floss to the rescue I haven't come across any clear consensus in the homebrewing community as to what the exposure time should be after adding at flame out. Do you dip them in and immediately remove? Leave them in until the wort is chilled by an immersion chiller? Maybe, experiment with different times over a number of batches until the perfect amount of ...

I thoroughly enjoyed this beer! I'm not that familiar with the Belgian Strong style category but plan to look for other brewers that produce a Belgian strong dark in the future. Oebier  is a complex beer with a lot going on in terms of aroma and flavor but halfway through it occurred to me that the reason I liked it so much is that it reminded me of a good Oud Bruin like Petrus  or the classic Flanders red  "Duchesse" but with all the characteristics amplified to the nth degree. The beer is a beautiful rich mahogany color with ruby highlights and a full lingering tan head from the carbonation. The aroma is what first led me to the comparison to the Flanders beers as the acidic dark fruit smell rose with some hint of alcohol. The flavor is big and bold at first, mostly from the fig, raisin and caramelized malt but this overshadows the wood and pepper notes that come out as the beer warms bringing with it the phenol's of...

I've been wanting to add this tool to my arsenal of brewing gadgets for a long time. In the past, in order to monitor the temperature of the wort going into the fermentor, I've been sticking a thermometer in the stream of the wort as it runs out the end of the transfer line. Depending on the temperature I would slow down or speed up the pump that pushed the hot wort though the plate chiller and my post chiller chilling coil. (Go here to see the post chiller set-up I use that gets the wort down to lager temps) . This has worked fine but is awkward to handle and a possible source of bacterial contamination. With this new in-line thermometer I can relax a little more during this crucial stage of the brewing process.  Notice that the Thrumometer's lowest temperature is 58f. Naturally, I had to make a minor modification to the Blichmann's Thrumometer because of a serious limitation. The manufacturer of this fine tool did not provide the temperature reading range need...

The pull to return to San Miguel De Allende is strong but this year the plan is to stay in California. One of the reasons is to avoid the hardship of giving up a great rental in one of the most difficult places in the world to find affordable decent living space. It is very distressing to come back to Santa Cruz and find a nice place to live that is affordable because of the shortage of housing and the high demand put on the market by all of the University students. In addition to this stress, the effort of packing all of our belongings into storage takes its toll. So, this year I'll stay and work to save for next year. In the mean time, I'm taking advantage of the cool Winter season to get some lagers brewed and in storage for a couple months of lagering. The overnight temperatures are now in the 40'sF. and with the fermentation chamber I've built in my storage unit (equipped with a thermostat and heat source) I can keep the fermentor at 50f., perfect for the beers ...