Michaewa

Squeezed it in yesterday, here is the recipe for 10 gallons:

• 10 # 2 row
• 4 # wheat malt
• 12 oz 40L crystal
• 1 oz roast barley (english)
• 2 oz hallertau 60 min
• WLP575 Belgian Ale Blend

Mashed at 156 for 1 hr, 60 minute boil, chill, and pitch.

I’ll let it go for 10 days or so and then rack 4 gallons into each of 2 carboys with 1 gallon of Knudsen’s cherry juice.

The english roast barley and the yeast were an audible due to the lack of selection at the homebrew shop. I think it will turn out just fine.

Now I just need to come up with a name. Since the cherries traditionally come from Door County I was thinking of something that would pay homage to the lizard king. Roadhouse Red perhaps?

I had it for the first time at the GABF last year. When we got into the venue, about 85% of the total crowd was standing in a long, snaking line in front of the New Glarus booth, and as soon as they finished their first sample, they cycled back to wait again. Definitely a good sign.

I am lucky enough to come into a bottle here and again but with no real regularity. Zymurgy published a recipe using Knudsen’s tart cherry juice rather than real cherries, and I’m going to follow that as much as some local ingredient limitations will allow.

10 gallons, coming up…

Better late than never, I decided to document the recent trek to Oregon before I completely forgot the details. Jill organized trip as a birthday present for me, and we left the day after Thanksgiving for a week on and around the coast with a few days in Portland.

A side benefit is that Portland is rich with wineries and breweries, and we sampled some excellent wares. The first night we went to McMenamins after a late flight. They had a nitrogenated porter that was very smooth and choclatey. We also tried the Hammerhead Pale and the Sleepy Hollow Nut Brown, both of which were very nice.

The first morning we walked around Beaverton and tried not to get lost in the thick fog. Once the day cleared up a little bit, we headed south to McMinnville and hit several wineries along the way. Archery Summit was the first stop, and we did a pricey tasting of all their red wines paired with cheese, pâté, and other tasty treats. It was a great location, and the underground cellars were a great backdrop. From there we went to Argyle and tried some sparkling wines and listened to a little live music. Being that is was the weekend after Thanksgiving, most of the wineries were having open houses and turning up the entertainment factor a notch.

Across the street was the Ponzi tasting room where we had a handful of their wines and a few others. Seeing as it was almost noon we decided we’d better get some food to soak up all the hooch and sober up a little.

After one last stop, we headed south to Depot Bay for our second night’s lodging at The Channel House. Our room had a hot tub on the deck overlooking the ocean and we didn’t waste much time in taking advantage of that.

That night we went further South to Newport to stop at Rogue. I’m a big fan of their Dead Guy Ale and had been looking forward to trying a few other beers. We pulled up in the lot and it looked more like a warehouse than anything else, it was a little hard to tell if we were going in the right entrance or not. You enter through a giant red silo, and walk directly onto the brewery floor among the fermentors and equipment. There was a hodgepodge of supplies (bottles, etc) stacked all around, and we eventually made our way to the restaurant upstairs. The food was great, Jill had a Kobe beef hamburger which was pretty fantastic. We tried a few beers with dinner and then went next door to the bar to sample a few more.

• Young’s Special Bitter - One of my favorite Rogue beers. Great body, very well balanced, very muted bitterness.
• Yellow Snow - Very pale and sweet, smells a little bit of biscut malt with no hop aroma
• Organic Brown - Very nice, mild brown.
• Monk Madness - A crazy belgian style beer, a bit like a Dubbel
• Brutal Bitter - Similar to YSB, very clean and crisp with more hop bitterness.
• Chipotle - Much, much smokier than I expected - more like a rauchbier. This was pretty challenging to drink, it was very tasty but I’m glad I just had a small taster
• Old Crustacean - Almost cloying sweetness, and a little hot. This was on tap, and I think it would have benefitted from a little more aging to round out the flavors. Perhaps my taste buds were just cooked from all the tasting that day.

The next day we did a little sightseeing, and went to Devil’s Punchbowl and Cape Foul Weather. Everything we saw along the coast was fantastic, but none of the sights we read about stood out a great deal - the whole coast was incredibly scenic and rugged.

That night we went to hear a Hawaiian lounge singer at the Sea Hag (great clam chowder) and a great dinner at the Tidal Raves restaurant.

Our next stop was Cannon Beach, and it was another great drive up the coast to get there. We took a long walk through town after arriving to find some grub. We went to Bill’s Tavern & Brewhouse and had lunch and warmed up after our long cold walk. Had a few of their beers, nothing that blew me away. They were out of the DuckDive Pale which I was a little disappointed about, but they had a very good porter, with a nice smoky, roasty finish.

On the way back it started to snow pretty hard, so we opted to catch the shuttle back to our hotel - The Ocean Lodge. It was an extremely beautiful spot situated right on the beach. Our room was very comfortable with a nice big fireplace at the foot of the bed.

We stayed in Cannon Beach for a few days and really enjoyed it - the downtown had a lot to offer and we found some really great spots just south of town for hiking. We woke up every morning and took a long walk on the beach - still quite cold but an excellent way to start the day. We took a day trip up to Astoria and walked around their downtown area. We stopped for lunch at (surprise!) the Astoria Brewing Company. We had some more great clam chowder and some tasty brews - their Shark Spit IPA was our favorite.

We had some amazing pizza one night at and another really nice meal at Newman’s. But the best meal of the trip was next door to our hotel at the Stephanie House. They have one seating each night, and the chef comes out before each course and explains what they made and how they made it. Very intimate and excellent food.

Before heading out to Portland we found the DuckDive Pale from Bill’s served at the Warren House Pub. A lucky find, as this was probably my second favorite beer of the whole trip. The pale was fairly cloudy and light in color, with an amazing hop aroma - centennial jumping out of the glass.

Our next stop was Portland, where we stayed in the Marriott right by the water. The room left a little something to be desired after our last two spots but was definitely sufficient. While in Portland we continued our gustatory recreation, and walked through most of the downtown area. We stopped at Lucky Lab for a snack and a few samples - this place looked more like a coffee house than a brewery. There were business men and students scattered around the industrial looking building, working on their laptops and sipping a pint of ale instead of a latte. The Scottish Holiday was probably my favorite, although their beers were all well above average.

Roots was quite interesting, it was decorated inside like a Tiki hut, complete with surfing videos playing on a flat screen in the bar. A few beers worth mentioning were the Berghead Heather which is ’seasoned’ with heather flowers and no hops making for a very different flavor. They had a toasted coconut porter that was a little gimicky but interesting - another one that is great for a sample but might be a little much over the course of a pint. My favorite named beer was their ‘Festivus’ served on cask - this was smooth and sweet with a nice hop balance, and not nearly the alcohol heat of the other barleywines we had on the trip.

We also went to the Holiday Ale Festival downtown one night and tried a whole host of strong, old, and imperial beers. It was a good event but the tastes they served (for $1 each) were a little too large given that most of the beers were 10% ABV or more. If only I was disciplined enough to pour them out rather than downing the whole thing…Some of the ones we tried were:

• Hair Of The Dog - Jim. Belgian Dubbel
• Laguntas - Brown Sugga. Strong Ale, quite tasty
• Pelican - Full House Ale. Imperial American Brown
• Kalamath - Cabin Fever
• Chimay - Tripple
• Collaborator - Sled Crasher
• Pyramid - Snow Cap
• Walking Man - Ho Ho Homo Erectus
• Brauerei Schloss Eggenberg - Samichlaus. Strong Lager

We had some great Thai food and a really good Indian meal on our last night in the city. Downtown Portland felt extremely safe, and we walked across nearly the whole downtown area after our dinner on the last night.

Two more breweries to mention that we hit on our last day, New Old Lompoc and Bridgeport. NOL was a dark and cozy pub that looked to be filled with locals. I gave their Holiday Ale a must miss, it had an overpowering taste of cinnamon. Their Condor Pale Ale was nice and hoppy. Bridgeport had a lot of good but not great beers. Their facility was very chic, lots of exposed brick and mood lighting. The last beer I tasted was my favorite of the trip, called Hop Harvest - served on cask. It was smooth and creamy from being on the hand pull, and had an incredible fresh hop bouquet.

Here are some pics @ shutterfly. Enjoy.

The drought is over…I fired up the brewery last weekend and cleaned some goods out of the freezer. Created a batch of the aforementioned Ginger Peach Wheat with no input from the brewery, I just sort of made up a recipe.

It went a little something like this…
5lb White Wheat
4lb Pale 2-Row
.5 oz Cascade 60min
1 oz Cascade 5min

I replaced one gallon of the brewing liquor in the initial mash with some strong tea (8 teabags in a gallon) and proceeded as normal.

Nate gave me some Pacman yeast and it is chomping away. I’ve yet to taste it after the kettle, at which point there was just a little tea flavor left. My guess is that most of the tea flavor will have been scrubbed out by the boil and the fermentation, which will leave me with…sniff…wheat beer. I can think of worse fates.

Next will be an English pale ale, followed perhaps by an imperial IPA - I tried Goose Island’s a few weeks ago in Lincoln and it was mighty foine.

Recipe, anyone? I was at the 2006 GABF a few weeks ago and tried a sample of this brew from Dogfish Head. It was quite tasty, and not cloying as it sounds. From reading the blurb at the brewery’s website, it sounds like it is made with at least some measure of tea in place of the water. I’m thinking somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-3 gallons, but I’m a little nervous that it would taste like the tea at the Cheesecake Factory.

In other news, the reason I haven’t been here in months? I got a job.

The working man is a sucka.

Less mess.

I had been wanting to upgrade from my fridge for a while and keeping an eye out for a chest freezer to convert. A few weeks ago, I saw an ad on CraigsList for a giveaway one that was plenty big enough for my needs.

I took my friend Ryan over to pick it up and it was redneck central. Within 2 minutes of our arrival a swarm of cabbage-smelling barefoot gypsies surrounded us and watched us struggle to lift the monster into my truck. We sped away and I began the conversion process.

It was rusted and quite filthy, but cleaned up pretty quickly with a little bleach, and a nice coat of black spraypaint made it look very 1990’s. I built a collar out of 2×4’s and attached an outer layer of 1×8’s to that to hold it in place.

I drilled through the hinges as the holes didn’t line up, and once attached it sealed quite nicely with the addition of a little weather stripping under the collar. I attached a thermostat to keep it at 40F, and moved my co2 tank outside with the manifold mounted on the inside of the collar. A coat of stain, a few holes drilled for the taps and I was ready to roll.

It will hold 8 cornies, with a little room over the compressor for bottles, yeast, etc.

I’m sure I’ll be back in the states from time to time, but some things are just too good to pass up.

Yesterday I jumped back in the ring, deciding that waiting for my kettle was simply not a possibility any longer. I had a throwback of a brewday, going back to basics and doing most everything the way I did on my very first batch. I’ll be interested to see how it turns out with the relatively simplified process.

I used an aluminum kettle and had enough room for about 3.5 gal initially - I didn’t steep any specialty grains so I boiled the water on my turkey fryer setup and stirred in about 1/2 of the extract. This is on some recent reading and listening I’ve done. The boil proceeded as normal until about 15 minutes left, when I turned off the burner, and stirred in the balance of the extract. The theory here is to keep the wort close to OG during most of the boil to avoid scorching and darkening of the extract.

On to the big bucket o’ ice, and I chilled the wort down to 80F in about 20 minutes by swirling the pot around (lid on) in the bath pretty frequently. Added a few gallons of filtered water to get to 5.5 gal, and pitched a starter (1 pint of water / 1/2 C of DME / yeast vial) made the day before. Fermentation looked to be starting up by the time I was getting ready for bed. The picture above is at about 15 hours after pitching. The only ‘modern’ device I used was my oxygen stone, I hit it with about a minute and a half of oxygen after pitching.

Plan is to secondary in one of my new corny kegs, and see if I’m feeling inspired enough to move to a serving keg or just go from the 2ndary. More likely the latter.

The recipe was very simple:
7lbs Pale Liquid Malt Extract
2/3 oz Centennial pellets (60 min)
1/2 oz Centennial pellets (5 min)
WL California Ale yeast (WLP001)

Swapped out my empty CO2 tank yesterday at a welding supply shop. I was a little nervous after reading that some others had been denied filling / exchange service because their tank was stamped ‘Pepsi’ or similar. Mine, of course, was - but the guy either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

I also recently gained access to the inner workings of my kegs, which at least for me, was a little challenging. They have a wide variety of fittings, so I ended up having to buy three different deep sockets to go on my new socket wrench in order to get them open. Cleaned them up inside and out, and had one earmarked for a batch of Champagne that I started up on New Years Day this year.

Last night I thought it would be a fairly quick process to keg it, but as per usual, it was a bit of a struggle. The first problem was my ignorance about the regulator. The first few times I tried to hook it up I was met with a blast of CO2 when I opened the tank valve. Finally I got the ‘quick’ disconnects on the keg posts, and ran some sanitizing solution through the cobra tap on the out side.

Partway through this process, a hose blasts free from the regulator and does a stunning impersonation of a snake charmer snake on methamphetamines. I managed to turn off the gas without losing an eye, and called the sanitizing process good.

Then getting the disconnects off took at least an hour and the majority of the skin from my hands and knuckles. I think that at some point the gas and liquid posts got reversed, and the disconnects must be slightly different sizes - in any case neither would come off without herculean effort and no small amount of damage to the disconnects themselves.

At the end of the day I wound up with one keg full of champagne that will be primed naturally (assuming, of course that the seals on the keg hold) and we’ll find out several months from now if it is even possible to serve champagne from a keg (obvious violations of social norms aside).

The other project was the building of a counterflow chiller, as per the design in the Jan / Feb 06 issue of Brew Your Own. The 1/2″ threaded by 3/8″ compression fitting must be a west-coast only item, as everyone looked at me like I was crazy when I was looking for it. I decided that plumbing is more of an art than a science anyway, and got 3/8″ compression fitting on one end with a 1/2″ sweat fitting on the other end. That way I won’t have to ream out the fitting as described in the article, we’ll see if it will hold water. Have all the parts for that one but I’m going to wait a bit to start assembly after proving to be a danger to myself and my environment last night.