The snow is falling, Buster hates going outside, I have to go find my jacket, and my beers always stay in the perfect fermentation temp... yep, its wintertime again! I never thought I would be the guy to say it, but damn it, I love the winter. Since I have not done a brewing update in a while, I figured now would be a good time to just post my brewing adventures of the last couple of weeks.

The first thing I did when I got home from tour was malt a batch of wheat. It took FOREVER, I assume because of the colder temperatures. The first thing I brewed with that batch of wheat was my hefeweizen recipe. Same recipe that I always make, but this time with HOME MALT! I just pulled a sample of this batch the other day and it tastes great, only a week in.

The second thing I brewed was a dunkelweizen, kinda. What I did was I toasted 1.5 pounds of my wheat malt in the oven @400 degrees for a half hour, and I also used S04 instead of 06, hence the "kinda." Heres a picture of me preparing for my brew day ritual. Isn't that grist pretty?
Today I started a new batch of barley malt
AND tasted my pumpkin ale, which is tasting pretty damn awesome right about now. I'm trying hold out until my mom visits to keg it, but I don't know if I will make it that long!

Other than that, I've just been enjoying the weather and enjoying my beers currently on tap. Right now, its my copper ale (which is the tits), my Chinook IPA (tasting pretty good as well) and apfelwein, which I can't get enough of. Life is great.

With this current batch of barley I will be making a "how to" on how to malt grain. So stay tuned for that, keep warm, and DRINK HOMEBREW!

While browsing the Homebrewtalk.com forums, I came across a recipe for a hard cider that it seemed everyone (mostly) raved about. Its called apfelwein, and the particular recipe I made was created by a guy on the forum named EdWort. So, after reading all the great reviews on it, four week ago I whipped up a batch. Its really easy, here is the recipe from the site:


Ingredients

5 Gallons 100% Apple Juice (No preservatives or additives) I use Tree Top Apple Juice
2 pounds of dextrose (corn sugar) in one pound bags
1 five gram packet of Montrachet Wine Yeast

Equipment

5 Gallon Carboy (I use a Better Bottle)
Carboy Cap or Stopper with Airlock
Funnel

1. First sanitize the carboy, airlock, funnel, stopper or carboy cap.
2. Open one gallon bottle of apple juice and pour half of it into the carboy using the funnel.
3. Open one bag of Dextrose and carefully add it to the now half full bottle of apple juice. Shake well.
4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3, then go to step 5.
5. Pour in the mixture of Apple Juice and Dextrose from both bottles into the carboy.
6. Add all but 1 quart of remaining 3 gallons of apple juice to the carboy.
7. Open the packet of Montrachet Yeast and pour it into the neck of the funnel.
8. Use the remaining quart of juice to wash down any yeast that sticks. I am able to fit all but 3 ounces of apple juice into a 5 gallon Better Bottle. You may need to be patient to let the foam die down from all shaking and pouring.
9. Put your stopper or carboy cap on with an airlock and fill the airlock with cheap vodka. No bacteria will live in vodka and if you get suckback, you just boosted the abv.

There’s no need to worry about filling up a carboy so full when you use Montrachet wine yeast. There is no Kreuzen, just a thin layer of bubbles (see here). I'm able to fit all but 4 oz. of my five gallons in the bottle. Ferment at room temperature.

It will become cloudy in a couple of days and remain so for a few weeks. In the 4th week, the yeast will begin to drop out and it will become clear. After at least 4 weeks, you can keg or bottle, but it is ok to leave it in the carboy for another month or so. Racking to a secondary is not necessary. It ferments out very dry (less than 0.999, see here)

Apfelwein really improves with age, so if you can please let it sit in a carboy for up to 3 months before bottling or kegging, then let it sit even longer. 

I followed this exactly, and last night, I kegged it. I have to say, it is

AWWWEEESSSOOOMMME!!!!!

I have made ciders in the past, some good, some not. None of them were nearly as good as this particular recipe. Dry, yet sweet, and still has a nice apple flavor hanging around. Also, its very strong... like Hercules strong. Here's a  picture, only the second pour out of the keg so its still clearing a bit:

And as fantastic as this stuff is by itself, it also makes an amazing winter/fall warmer. Here's what I did:

1. Pour off about a cup of apfelwein.

2. Put it in a saucepan with a 1/2 TBS raw sugar and about a half of a small cinnamon stick.
Let that simmer for a little on LOW heat. If you make it too hot, you might accidentally boil off some of the alcohol. (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!).

3. POUR IT IN A MUG AND DRINK IT!
Its great on a nice cold evening... or morning... and it will jam some fall spirit right down your throat.

I highly reccomend making some of this! Its totally easy, especially if you don't have any actual brewing equipment. I used a Homer bucket from home depot to ferment it. Anyone can make it, although without a keg you would have to bottle and carbonate that way.

Happy Halloween!

Bleep blorp. Since I've been home, I've done a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. Drinking my new beers and smoking my Leedy pipes have been keeping me fairly busy throughout the day, but two days ago I just got so bored I couldn't stand it. Since all my primary buckets were full, I decided to bust out old skool Cramped Space style and brew up a one gallon batch!

I have not done much experimenting when it comes to actual BREWING lately, so I figured I would use the small batch opportunity to try out two things: caramelizing my wort and saving hop flavor/aroma while using my newly adopted no-chill method. What is no-chill? Well, recently I started to genuinely HATE chilling my beer after the boil. Its not fun, it wastes water, and in the summer it takes way too long. So I did some research, and found a process that the Aussies have been doing for quite some time: NO CHILL BREWING! Basically, instead of using an immersion/CFC/plate/what-have-you chiller, you just dump the boiled wort into a food safe bucket, seal it, and let it chill over night. The next morning, dump in the yeast. Since learning about it I have been using it with great success, and I don't plan on ever going back.

The problem with this method is that the hops spend more time than usual at near-boiling temperature, which turns pretty much any hop addition into a bittering addition. Dry-hopping obviously helps with aroma, but I have been having difficulty getting the hop taste back into my beers. Couple this with my desire to make a dark beer the way our ancestors used to before the really dark malts, and I had myself a fun experi-brew-day.

So first things first... BEER
Mashed in. One thing I didn't think about was the difference in thermal mass between a 2 pound grist and a 5-7 pound grist. I tried to mash at 158, but for the life of me I couldn't get it to hold any higher than 150. Lame. I should have done it on the stove like the olden days.

 And added my only bittering hop addition. Set my timer for one hour and let her continue to rip.

At this point, I ran off another quart of wort, got it boiling and measured out .3 oz of Chinook.

I then boiled the Chinook for 5 minutes, then added another .4 oz of Chinook and boiled that for an additional 5 minutes. Then I strained the liquid and put it into the freezer to cool off.
After the boil, all that was left to do was to dump the wort into a Homer bucket and let it chill. With a one gallon batch it only took a few hours to cool down to pitching temps. Then I mixed in the hop mixture, pitched my yeast, and VOILA!

So lately I have been doing some SERIOUS malting. The first batch of wheat malt I made ended up in a terrible beer. TERRIBLE. But I now have four batches of beer made from all home malted, home toasted, 100 percent Colorado grains.

Today was a crazy day. Brewed a beer, and I assumed my usual 75% efficiency when I put the recipe together. I also decided to do a REAL fly sparge... and it took forever. An hour to be exact. Apparently the word "sparge" literally means "to sprinkle," which is what I did. Sprinkled water over the grain bed til I eventually had all the sweet wort I needed to brew.

Problem is, I kinda sorta forgot about it, and I ended up getting a gallon more than I needed without realizing it. I really don't know how this happened, it just did. Anyways, as I was getting near the end of the boil, I checked how much wort I had, and it was 4 friggin gallons. Great I thought. Now Im gonna have a super weak beer. So, I came to terms with it, and I proceeded to start cooling down my wort.

This is where things get awesome.

After cooling the wort, I took a gravity reading, 1.055. Which was only 4 points under what I was aiming for if I had THREE gallons of wort. With 75% efficiency, and an extra gallon of wort, it should have been around 1.044.

So after a lot of checking, double checking, Google searching, forum trolling, and soul searching, I finally was able to except an awesome fact. Even if only for today, I rocked a 93.8% brewhouse efficiency.

So. Friggin. Awesome.

The End.

Today was awesome. I had the whole day off and Amanda was out working on her new business (which Im so excited about as well!), so I figured today would be a good day to figure out how to keep my beers cold. About damn time; Ive been kegging now since Christmas and until tonight I have never poured cold beer from a keg into my glass. Its been a long time coming.

ANYWAYS, I started on good ol' Craigslist. I knew I would rather have a chest freezer to convert into a cool looking keezer down the road, so I, you know... searched for one. I found a 8-point-something cubic foot Kenmore that was in great condition, but they were asking 100 bucks for it, which was a little out of my budget. So I decided to lowball em and offer 60 bucks, and they accepted! Hurrah! I went down and loaded it into the ol van.

I was FILLED with excitement. I was driving home with the very thing that was going to make my life exponentially more awesome, and the freezer in itself is almost a never ending project.

Baby's first keezer.

I got home, loaded it into the office. I decided to go ahead and keg my two beers I had waiting around; an amber ale and an imperial stout, both of which I brewed with this nerd.
It really felt good to be doing BEER STUFF again. The house was taking up so much of my time, it was really nice to be able to put my time and money towards the thing I love the most. Here's some SICK KEGGIN SHOTS AWWW YEA
My brewing space isn't so cramped anymore, is it? HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA... Im so funny.

So just a few short hours later I had some cold Amarillo Pilsen Ale and 2 new brews carbonating in my new beer freezer.
I cant really call it a "keezer" yet since it doesn't look cool. In due time though, I assure you. Im not sure which route I want to go down yet, but what I do know is that its going to look friggin' awesome. I think Ill pour one more in celebration!

There is one more thing I want to add before I sign off here. A lot of dudes that build these things also have to drop 30-90 bucks on temperature control modules and what-not so that their beer doesn't freeze. On MY freezer though, there are your regular coldness settings (OFF to 10), but there are also a few little notches between OFF and 1. When I keep it turned to the notch right above OFF, it stays pretty constant just below 40 degrees. Which totally rules, because everyone likes to save time and money! Cold, LIQUID beer without the extra work. Hurrah!

Beer rules. Building stuff for beer also rules. Life is great. Brew more beer.

Yesterday I brewed. It was a great time, as usual, but I made an awesomely terrible mistake that I thought would be fun to share with everyone. What mistake? I boiled the yeast!

Now those of you that have brewed before might be trying figure out just where in the process this is even possible to do. I am here to tell you that it is indeed possible... for me anyways. I'm sure by the time I croak I will have committed every brewing crime there is, and I will be damn proud of it.

I have been trying to get into the habit of re-hydrating my yeast lately. I don't really know why, except that I know it helps the yeast survive better, but I have never had under-pitching  issues, so there isn't much of a reason for me to be doing it in the first place. But, alas, there I was, dumping my yeast into some extra wort, and I realized too late that I had let the wort cool off too much. So I thought to myself, "hey self, I have an easy solution... lets stick it on the stove!" Keep in mind that I had not much business re-hydrating at all, and furthermore it wasn't THAT big of a deal that the wort wasn't exactly 100 degrees. Nevertheless, the solution I came up with for my made up problems was to stick the pot onto the stove for a little bit.

Then I got sidetracked. S*&^.

As I was doing other stuff like sanitizing carboys and drinking scotch with Brandon, I smelled something burning. It didn't take long for it to hit me... "IM KILLIN' MAH YEST!!!" I took the yeast off the stove, but it was already too late. I had heated them up to around 150 degrees, and effectively committed mass murder on my undeserving yeast buddies. A perfectly good batch of S-33 went to waste. Bummer. Its a good thing I had a jar of freshly cleaned S-05 in my fridge, because my beer is now bubbling away as I write this.

In the end it wasn't such a big deal, and it will be a fun story to tell in the years to come. The main reason I kick myself over it is S33 the one yeast I use regularly that I don't have a jar of sitting in my fridge. I hate buying yeast, and now I'm just gonna have to buy another packet of it next time I brew. Like some frickin' noob. Which apparently I am, since, you know...

I BOILED MY EFFING YEAST.

So I was on the road AGAIN for about a month with my band A Billion Ernies. We had a great time, played some good shows and had some serious bro down time with our buddies in Caddywhompus and Greg and D Ray from Community Records. I miss them all dearly. The good news is that I GET TO BREW BEER AGAIN! Hurray!

The first day of tour was in SLC, where my parents live, and I brought two kegs of beer with me. Went through both of them in two nights. One had three gallons, the other had probably around two. So needless to say... tour got off to a great start. The only problem is it decimated my pipeline, so now I have three empty fermenters and only one full keg! I haven't been in this desperate of a beer situation for a long time. Time to get going on filling these bad boys back up.

Today Im brewing with my new pal Brandon, and we will be brewing an amber ale that started as a Mack n Jack's clone. This will be the 4th time Ive brewed it and the 4th variation on it, so now I think its safe to say that its my own recipe. Its a damn good beer, and every little tweak makes it a little bit better.

In other news, the guys from Thank Heaven For Beer are starting a real live actual brewery!!! They have a kickstarter up HERE that I would encourage everyone to donate to. They are going to be living the dream, and I know they are going to do amazing things. On a side note; if you're reading this, sorry it took so long for me to blog about it dudes! Tour is time consuming.

Thats it for now I think. I'm going to make a post in the next few days about my thoughts on the scourge of craft beer... BEER SNOBS. But for now, I'm out.

PEACE

Do as the Vikings did. Or at least close to it! Today Im brewing sahti, the Viking brew of choice. No hops, baker's yeast, no boil and a 6 hour mash! This is going to be fun.

UPDATE: Aight, I decided to just update this post as I go. Before I did anything, I made sure to fire up my new Nordic style pipe, hand carved by mister Tom Leedy, and to make sure I had my weapon of choice ready for battle...

Aw yea, ready for action.

Spring is starting to show itself here in Denver. We have had a week of absolutely beautiful weather, and I couldn't be happier. Yesterday I blew a keg, which means I had a free fermenter, which means BREW DAY! Huzzah! So I busted out Beer Smith and worked up this little number.

Date: 3/27/2011 Brewer: bryan Boil Size: 3.43 gal Asst Brewer: Boil Time: 60 min Equipment: My Equipment Taste Rating(out of 50): 35.0 Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.00 Taste Notes:  

Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
4 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)	Grain	63.49 %
1 lbs	Biscuit Malt (23.0 SRM)	Grain	15.87 %
8.0 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM)	Grain	7.94 %
8.0 oz	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)	Grain	7.94 %
4.8 oz	Carapils (1.6 SRM)	Grain	4.76 %
0.30 oz	Amarillo Gold [8.60 %] (60 min)	Hops	14.9 IBU
0.20 oz	Amarillo Gold [11.20 %] (45 min)	Hops	11.8 IBU
0.30 oz	Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] (15 min)	Hops	7.3 IBU
0.30 oz	Williamette [4.80 %] (10 min)	Hops	3.0 IBU
0.50 oz	Williamette [4.80 %] (5 min)	Hops	2.8 IBU

  Measured Original Gravity: 1.010 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.005 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.47 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 0.65 % Bitterness: 39.8 IBU Calories: 43 cal/pint Est Color: 14.4 SRM Color:

Color

I was aiming for an amber ale. No real reason why, except that I had a terrible amber from Breckenridge Brewery the other day called Avalanche Amber. Think amber colored Pabst. Ugh. I guess I did have a reason why... to prove that I can do it better.

I'm not really one to stick to specific style restrictions, but... it will be amber colored, and it sure as  hell won't taste like Pabst! I used Amarillo for bittering mainly because it was in the fridge. I have always loved Williamette, and figured this might be a good opportunity to use the two together.

The brew day was very smooth, and I ended up with this beauty
Come to think of it, all my brews have been exceedingly smooth lately (knock on wood). I didn't even take a gravity reading... in my mind I performed the process of brewing pretty much as good as can be expected, so why bother fussing with the hydrometer and turkey baster? Ill still be making beer, even if I missed my target gravity by a couple of points.

O yea, and good news... 15 bucks til I get a free batch from my LHBS! I feel pretty lucky to not only have a homebrew shop nearby, but to have one that has a kick ass rewards program. Spend x amount and get 15 bucks in beer shiz for free. My batches usually run around $12-14, unless its an IPA, so hell ya. Free beer is good beer.

CHEERS!

Great day today... besides me being sick. I was a busy boy. Got taxes done with the ol' ball n chain, and then hit up the homebrew shop for my first brew day in a couple weeks! I was going to do my tried and true hefeweizen, but I decided to take that recipe to turn it into more of a witbeer. No fancy spices, just good old hops, water, and barley... the way the Germans like it.

I also kegged my tripel, which tastes great! Harvested the yeast from that beast as well, like a pro. I get better at it all the time. Looking forward to that one being carbed up. Hopefully its good enough for everyone going up to Paonia with me next week, I guess we will know if the keg comes back empty!

Im liking this whole "full pipeline" thing. It makes days like these that much more relaxing and enjoyable. Hopefully when I move to a bigger place, I keep the same process... but I have a feeling that I will be buying a few more kegs and carboys if that ever happens. O well, MORE BEER IS GOOD BEER

Feels good. 3 fermenters and 3 kegs all full of beer. I ended having to dump a terrible stout that I had in one of my kegs... first time Ive ever had to do that. O well, I guess there is a first time for everything. Ill never use Windsor yeast again.

Im happy about this mainly because now I will have to kill a keg before I can keg another. I'm hoping it will force me to let my beers age longer then I have been lately. Ever since Ive gotten a kegging system I have been pretty much racking from the primary once I hit my TG straight to the keg, force carbing, and drinking. The beer has been great, don't get me wrong, but in the back of my mind I always know that it could be BETTER if I had given a couple more weeks. And it takes one dude a long time to drink 3 gallons of beer... especially when this particular dude has 3 different beers to choose from, so it looks like I won't be actually brewing another batch for at least a couple weeks.

Next project I believe will be a box for all my beers to go in, with pimp lookin taps and everything. Hopefully Ill get started on that this week!

Recently I was thinking about my buddy Kenny and an idea he had. He was talking about how there basically is no good non-alcoholic beer, and he was right... the choice is pretty much  O'Doul's, and even if you find another kind it will definitely just be a bad lager. I was in the mood to experiment, so I grabbed the gallon of winter warmer I had in the fridge and decided to give it a go.

Ever since I built my converted cooler MT, I have had sparging problems. I was using a mesh paint straining bag as my false bottom, and it was just too much trouble to get it to sit high enough in the MT. I was always burning myself with sparging water, spilling wort, getting stuck sparges... nightmare brews.

Epically epic brew day today. First, I got a great deal on a new fermenter and brew paddle... 12 bucks for both!

Good news, hop heads! I discovered (for myself, as Im sure its been done a million times over) a way to get your hop fix in the morning without the risk of being labeled as an alcoholic! I call it, HOFFEE. Its like coffee, but with a smack of hops to it! Do you love hops? Do you sometimes have fantasies of waking up to a nice fresh double IPA? If so, read on, because this is for you!

So my buddy Andrew and I have been brewing together lately. He just got into it, and last night we cracked open the 2nd brew we ever made together. Holy crap is it awesome. Its a milk coffee stout, and I really can't believe how great it turned out. If anyone gets a chance, give it a try! Here's the recipe:

Is an awesomely violent, healthy fermentation! Here's a video of my latest brew doing its thing. Its funny... if I ever saw that without knowing what it was, I wouldn't drink it in a million years. But now when I look at it, I can see past the grossness and think those great words coined by Homer Simpson... "mmm, beer." Godisgood is good.