45 Million Year Old Beer?

Bottle Washer called my bluff, and as it was near his birthday, and since he made the road trip (with brand new baby in tow, no less) I let him pick the beer we'd brew. His choice, dunkelweisen. Drunken-what? It's like at Hefeweisen, but a bit darker. It's meant to have a sort of banana flavor and be a bit richer than a Hefe.

And so it did. I was a bit worried with the amount of dried malt extract that the recipe called for, and it is a bit sweet, but it actually has a nice rich flavor with a hint of banana.

In fact, my friend David, who fancies himself a beer conniseur proved his mettle and picked out the banana without coaching.

The Espresso Stout turned out pretty good. I had added a liter of strong coffee plus about 5 Tablespoons of coffee grounds as detailed in an earlier post. I would either decrease or leave out the grounds, but otherwise I fully intend to do this one again. Some stouts have a heavy feel to them, but this one was nice and light. The coffee went hand in glove with the dry stout. At this point I find myself craving it, and I'm nearly out.

The chocolate was not dominant. My wife, the resident chocolate expert, said it had a chocolate nose. I had to explain to her that beer does not have facial features. No laughs but I did get the eye roll and almost a smile.

I may try to introduce chocolate next time to the boil, but again, the end result was quite good as it was, so I may just leave it out altogether.

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More Beer sent me a postcard to notify me of a big event with tastings and discounts, etc. My wife intercepted it, which turned out to be a good thing, as it was handed to me with that look of resignation "I guess I know where you're going on Saturday". No groveling required. Just ingenious marketing right there.

So under the pressure of a 15% off sale, I finally broke, and came home with a Cornelius keg, a CO2 tank, and all the fittings.

However this presented yet another problem. What do I fill it with?

So my friend Rene has been living out of town, and has just moved back to the San Francisco area. We go way back, so I figured I would honor her return by letting her select the next beer to go in the pot.

"I don't know," she says. "I like ales". "And Lagers".

If you are not laughing (or at least chuckling) let me explain...

All beers are either Ales or Lagers. This is largely deliniated by the type of yeast used and fermenting/conditioning temperature. Ales use yeast that ferments on the top and brews at 65-75 degrees. Lager yeasts prefer the bottom of the bottle or bucket for fermenting, as well as a chillier temp- about 55- 65 degrees.

So I have a few options here. Then I think of a smart ass way to fill the request. A steam beer, or California Common is a lager brewed at Ale temeratures. I could give her both an Ale AND a Lager!!!

So I had a brew day this past weekend, and it is still nice and active. So next weekend, no bottles to wash (I might bottle a gallon or two to share- I am told that if kept cold and under pressure, the beer should keep about a month. i can't drain 5 gallons myself and the wife will tolerate only so many social gatherings in a week).

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Earlier this week I came across an article claiming someone in Northern California is brewing beer with 45 MILLION year old yeast. Turns out it's true- Jurassic Park style, found preserved in Amber. And out of 150 types of yeast, 149 would not be brewers yeast, but this one actually was!

So here is a link to the story from the Contra Costa Times. Check it out!
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_12924553?source=most_emailed

What's Good for the Bottle

It's bottling day, and I am waiting for the sanitize cycle of the dishwasher to finish so I can get this stout on to the next step of it's journey through it's short but important life.

The stuff you see on the sides are the coffee grounds, from the post-pitch shake. We are 9 or 10 days into fermentation and this wort is no longer sweet. I usually wait 2 weeks, but since it has more or less stopped bubbling, I declare it beer.

I gave it a taste test yesterday. The original recipe was modeled after dry Irish stouts, like Guiness, however this one won't have the creamyness nor the nitrogen bubbles. At least not this batch. The flavor was indeed reminiscent of a classic Irish stout, malty but dry, and the kick was complimented by the coffee.

So the bottling bucket is soaking in sanitizing solution, along with all the tubes and nozzles. This evening, I will be employing 15 swing-top bottles of various sizes and colors, 4 Martinelli's bottles and 20 or 21 12-ouncers. Yeah, I know, I swore off the Martinelli's bottles, but I had put the rest of my stash in the fridge to extend the life, and as it turns out after a couple days in the arctic, the crispness is back. To that end, I am planning to expedite the purchase of a mini-fridge, rather than wait to buy the whole kegging kit. Better to have more cold beer on hand anyways.

I had mentioned in the last post that I was thinking of it as an ice mocha stout, but the more I think about it (and after my tasting) the more I think that name doesn't fit. I have acquired some dark cocoa blended with dutch cocoa. I will add the cocoa to the conditioning sugar mixture. This is 100% cacao, mind you, so I'm not adding sweetness here. Any sugar I might add would be consumed by the yeast for carbonation, and if I tried to add more it would at best make it over carbonated and at worst send shards of glass through the air at high rates of speed. No lactose was added to the boil either, so it won't really fit. It would be more like a rich dark chocolate espresso. I don't know, how about Dark Chocolate Espresso Stout. I'll know in 3 weeks if it's worth naming.

The bottles just finished their heated dry and are freshly sanitized. They are very hot so they might kill the yeast. I'll let them cool a bit while I tell you about the cream soda.

*******

So I brewed some cream soda a few days ago to bring to my sister's birthday party. To avoid issues with unequal extract portions and the messy bags that come with splitting batches, I decided to brew the whole 5 gallons. I have been collecting the A&W Root Beer bottles that are 20oz and dark brown plastic. They are thicker than normal bottles and the texturing gives them panache strangely reminiscent of the Willie Mays Hayes VW Bug with the Rolls Royce grill.

Anyways, the recipe called for 4lbs sugar and 1lb honey. Again, it called for throwing dry yeast in. Since I was using the ale yeast-- the same ale yeast that ruined the Dr. Cherry when used as directed-- I opted to activate it in a cup of lukewarm water before pitching.

The nice thing about ale yeast is that it goes dormant at fridge temperatures, so you can keep it for quite a while. But it has a bit of a funny taste, for lack of a better term.... well, yeasty. Not great in soda. The champagne yeast has a cleaner taste and smaller bubbles, however it doesn't go completeley dormant. I found a root beer that had slipped behind a shelf in the fridge, and after 3 months, there was a noticable arc to the cap (don't worry, it was in the A&W plastic root beer bottle), and when opened half the contents bubbled out into the sink.

For the pound of honey I experimented a bit. The wife had some orange blossom honey (about 4/10 of a pound) and I added 2/10 of a pound of agave syrup and the rest was standard honey. I would probably go back to champagne yeast for this one and nix the agave. In fact, I liked the whisper of orange so i would go with a full pound of it. The extract I used was Gnome brand, in a silver pouch. It's a good extract, and comes out soda color instead of the usual cream soda beige.

*******

OK, enough vamping, back to the beer at hand. The bottles are cool enough to use, so I am going to go bottle. pardon me for about 45 minutes while I bottle.

*******

Wow, you have the patience of a saint! So I put my chocolate simple syrup into the bottling bucket and started siphoning in the wort. I can smell the chocolate, definately the beer, the coffee is there too. I have to try this. Hold on....

OK I have a small cup of the primed beer. Mind you, this will be a little sweeter than the final product, but here goes..... Wait, I'll smell it first. The aroma is mostly coffee with a subtle hint of chocolate. Now taste. Ok I'm wading through the sweetness, and I am picking up some bitterness. The stout itself has survived it's journey intact, and I can tell we have a pretty good alcohol content. On the second sip, the bitterness subsides, and I have to say, coffee and chocolate are playing great supporting roles. And I'm not talking Val Kilmer in Tombstone stealing the show type of supporting roles. They complement the stout well. Off the cuff, I think I may reduce the cocoa to 2 Tbps (I had added 3 Tbsp).

OK back to bottling. See you in a bit.

********

Another note on the cocoa. A lot of it ended up on the bottom of the bottling bucket. Not sure if that's the best I'm going to get from cocoa, or if it needed to boil a bit longer. The resident pastry chef is off duty and asleep, so I'll ping her tomorrow for advice.

I put some of the nectar in the freezer while I bottled to get a sense for the cold taste, and it did clear up a bit. So there is definately some complexity there, a roasty-ness that comes from the grains (black roasted, black patent and chocolate) and the..... enhancements.

I will check it again in two weeks. In the meantime I intend to brew again Father's day weekend. Perhaps if Bottle Washer reads the blog regularly as he says he does, he can come over for a brew day....

A Stout Challenge

My friend Frank is visiting again from Mexico, and so I thought I'd take him by the local brew store. We checked 0ut the kegging systems, and talked about different types of beer that we could brew.

Being the good host that I am, I gave Frank the option, and he chose stout. To be specific, he took the standard Irish dry stout as opposed to an Imperial stout.

As we got the boil going, my wife came in and made a request for coffee. So as we were brewing a pot of coffee, it clicked. I used to enjoy the Red Hook Espresso Stout; why not bring it back in an un-official capacity.

I do a partial boil, so once that was in the carboy, I added a liter of freshly brewed strong coffee, and then the rest of the water. Then I added about 5 tablespoons of coffee grounds into the carboy before adding the yeast.

I got this crazy idea about brewing an iced mocha stout, and had ground up some cocoa nibs, but we had a change of heart. As it turns out, adding chocolate to the primary fermentation inhibits the yeast and could spoil the beer. Luckily, Frank has culinary expertise and was there to keep me grounded. So what I might do is add cocoa powder to the priming sugar, and introduce the chocolate in the conditioning phase.

Frank and I did the brew on Sunday (yesterday), and as of this evening the yeast are exuberant. They seem to be sharing the top with the coffee grounds without complaint so far.

I'll do another post to detail the conditioning and provide measurements if I decide to go for the Ice Mocha Stout.

As my eldest son is turning 7 and having a lego party at the house, I will also brew some cream soda this weekend.

Cheers!

Keg Is King

As time goes on, I am noticing that home brew loses it's hoppiness. No preservatives, and over time, I guess, even beer gets old.

Some observations.

I spent some time collecting bottles. First it was getting larger bottles to reduce the amount of work for bottling. Then it was swing tops. I found some clear 33.8 oz bottles. I found brown 33 oz bottles. I even found a half-gallon bottle that held some German winterbrew.

I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to bottling, size counts. against you. I posted earlier that the flavor in the 25.4oz Martinelli's bottles was not crisp. My theory was that the green glass was letting in light that was spoiling the beer.

So what happens when you use the larger brown bottles? Same thing. The taste is just not there like it is in the smaller bottles.

Conclusion: Go with 12- 20 oz bottles. The crisp flavor is worth the extra cleaning bottling and capping.

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My neighbor down the street brews as well, and he came by and invited me over the following Sunday. He and his buddies were gathering for the opening day of the Formula One series in Australia, and they were kicking things off with their first attempt at kegging.

I like the idea of kegging, but my concerns are: (1) How long will the beer keep once you've cracked the seal, (2) It's spendy for the gear and (3) It can be hard to keep track of how much you drink.

Sunday came around, and I swung by. We exchanged some brewing experiences and best practices. It was nice to know I shared some common challenges with other brewers.

As I tried to glean what knowledge I could about F1 racing before the start of the race, they cracked open the keg. What came out of the tap was a resolution to keg.

My neighbor had brewed an IPA with a full fruity body behind it. But equally impressive was the freshness. You really can't beat draft beer. I tried the same beer in a 12 oz bottle, and it still had all the flavor, but that draft freshness really elevated the experience.

So apparently you can keep the beer in decent shape for about a month. But of course, I will have to research it myself, before posting it as ipso facto on "My Brewed".

I am in the process of pulling coins out of the furniture and my wife is amazed at my sudden interest in laundry. I will slowly amass my fortune in spare change and turn it into pure amber gold.

I have resolved to keg.

It will cost me about $185 plus cooling to start. This will give me the refurbished soda keg (5 gallons), regulator, Co2 tank, tubing and spigot. For cooling, the plan is to get a mini-fridge I can use to keep kegs cold (no room in the fridge without massive reconfigs, and I actually do eat more than just beer). Should be able to find one on the cheap on Craig's List. And then when the time comes, with a few more bucks, I can convert it into a full kegerator. With two towers.

Three Batches Later

Where do I start?

I guess the first question is whatever happened with the Bass? First the pour. Still darker than Bass, aroma was right. Then the taste. Yeasty, but in a fresh bread kind of way. A bit of a bite. Nice malty...sweetness. Adequate. Clean finish. Need another sip. The sweetness is not the caramel flavor, and kind of subltle. Very adequate!

As it turns out, it wasn't as good as the ESB. But it was very drinkable. It seemed to take on more of the caramel flavor you get with Bass when the temperature rose. So it could be consumed either way.

In the meantime, I made another venture outside the world of kits and used a recipe from Food Network's Alton Brown. In his show "Good Eats", Alton Brown features an episode called "Amber Waves". After watching this initially around 3 years ago, I was left with the feeling that I could brew beer. My wife got me a mini kit from Bed Bath & Beyond. In 4 short weeks I would have a six pack of beer!!

I made my wort per the instructions, cooled it, added my powdered yeast and..... nothing. No bubbling, no fermenting. It actually took a month or two before I came to the realization that it probably wasn't going to happen. The "I can do it" feeling subsided, and the idea faded with time.

Thank God for TiVo. A couple years later I got the bug again when I reviewed "Amber Waves" from the DVR (you think I'm a packrat with the shows, you should see my garage). This time, I hinted Santa might look at a big boy brew kit, and I even stopped by my local beer store and picked up a brochure to help clarify the hint. And I circled the kit in the brochure. Then brought it to her attention. Twice.

Anyways, here is the recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-brew-recipe/index.html

Some of the user reviews are a bit rough, regarding his process, but the important thing he impresses on you is the necessity for being fanatical about sanitation.

So I used his recipe. I meant to get light liquid malt extract, but I accidentally got extra light. Also the recipe called for Crystal Malt but was not more specific. I used 40L.

Fast forward 2 weeks, and one of my friends, Marcos, is flying in from Alaska for his birthday (for accuracy's sake, his birthday is the day after Christmas, however he has rejected this and replaces it with the Oakland A's season home opener). He has requested IPA. "It's all I drink" he writes.

So Saturday I bottle the Alton and on Sunday I brew the IPA. I could have gone two directions. There was a Brittish IPA, that is brewed using oak chips, and there is an American IPA that has a nice full flavor with a fruity finish. I like the idea of the oak chips, but I have kicked this thing off with 3 consecutive Brittish recipes, so I decide to go with the American IPA.

After brewing and cleaning up, I am feeling brewer's fatigue, and decide to take a break from brewing. I decide I may try the Brittish IPA or something completely different. In a few weeks.

Two weeks later, the Alton Amber is ready. First taste, very hoppy. A bit bitter, and kind of a watery finish. Company is coming over Friday with expectations (that I set) of fresh home brew. That Thursday, it is the same way. There is a bitterness and still a lack of body.

In the meantime, I have discovered that the few bottles of ESB that I had hid away, had lost some of their hoppyness, and there was kind of an odd taste that I could only classify as "old". I had been saving these for special occasions, and now they were stale and past their prime.

Strike Two. It's Friday.

I open the Alton, and it's simply a different beer. The hoppy bitterness has blended into a nice sharp bite and a very flavorful malty finish. Smooth, and body is well provided by the equilibrium of malt and hops. Day saved. The lesson learned is that 3 weeks in the bottle is better than two. A beer is just not ready until it is ready. I recommend this recipe.

The larger Martinelli's bottles are lagging behind. In fact with both the Bass and the Alton, the flavor is a little different in these dark green bottles. Not as crisp. I decide they are good for bottling soda, but not beer. I vow to replace them and never to use them again.

I make a run to BevMo looking for brown swing tops, find that Groelsh is bottling beer again, and find a few other swing's to bottle with.

But for the IPA it is too late. I have a wife and two kids, no longer in college, no longer young, and am unable to consume enough beer before bottling day. So the Martinelli's bottles go back into service.

Next post will cover a discussion with a neighbor that turned into a resolution, and Marcos arrives from Alaska. Will the IPA be ready? Will it turn out OK? Will he be thawed out enough to drink it??? You'll just have to wait. It'll be shorter that 3 months this time, though.

The Root of my problem

Bottling went well with the Bass-clone. The yield was 1 clear 33oz bottle with swing top, 12 25.4oz crown top (re-purposed Martinelli's bottles), 3 22oz. brown swing top bottles, 1 16.9oz crown, and two six packs of standard 12oz. bottles.

The following day I decided to brew the rest of the root beer. If you recall my post from a few weeks ago, I wished I had added more honey instead of sugar. I vowed to adjust the recipe to add honey. And I did. But this time, the root beer flavor was not as strong. Diagnosis: uneven split of the extract from last time to this time.

I actually measured it on a digital scale the first time, but assumed the remainder would be equal. It wasn't. The flavor otherwise was pretty good, but not totally root beer. So my conclusion is that I will brew the entire 5 gallons of soda at once.

I tried it with all sugar; I tried it with honey. Now I aim to sample some different types of sugars.

My wife is into food product development, so I am exposed to different varieties of sugars. I get sent on these missions to Whole Foods with wacky shopping lists. I usually have to drag one of the clerks into my obscure food puzzle. I once walked in with a shopping list that included Evaporated Cane Juice.

I started in the juices aisle, then by the evaporated milk, confused at least two clerks until it occured to one of us (probably not me) that it might be in the sugar aisle. For those not already laughing at me, evaporated cane juice is evaporated. Not like the milk. Definately not like juice. Like sugar. Granulated. Except the crystals are bigger.

There is also turbinado sugar, which is slightly browner and with even bigger crystals. There is also Agave syrup, which is like honey but thinner and not as sweet. I will have to sit down (with supervision, of course) and sample different sugars and figure out what might be added to the soda's to give them some unique flavors.

But back to the root beer cause analysis... If I don't split batches and brew 5 gallons at a time, then I have a new challenge. I will end up with 45 bottles that need refrigerating within 2 or 3 days. So I will have to find volunteers up front who will take soda home to their fridges. I'll also continue to use more plastic containers to mitigate risk of shards of glass appearing suddenly.

The next batch won't be for a while, but it will be cream soda. Get your orders in now....

Next time, the great boil from this past weekend, using Alton Brown's English Ale recipe.

Bottling Day - Bass 1

The pictures to the left are the start and the end of the brew day for Bass 1. Above left is the fermented brew awaiting bottle sanitation. Below left is the beginning of the mash for the grain portion of the boil, done on Superbowl Sunday.