Single hop ale – Cascade

First runnings

Probably the last beer I’ll brew until Fall unless things work out for the better.  It’s the first week of May and unlike last year, we have yet to turn on the air conditioner.  So we could have brewed a batch but again, time is short now a days.  After Denver brewed an IPA using Dry English Ale yeast as Stone Brewing does, Brian and I had to get on the bandwagon.  As I’ve done with all the beers I brewed this year, we’ve stuck with lower ABV targets, all under 5%.  But brewing on Gratis Brewing’s system gave us a better efficiency.  Even with a yeast mistake this single hop Cascade pale ale still attenuated to 5.5% ABV.

oxygen insertion

By no means can I say I’m knowledgeable of  all hops, but I might know someone who is.  I do know which ones I have brewed with and of those that I really like.  Cascade would be the major one that I really enjoy.  There are many commercial examples of beers that solely use Cascade hops.  It is also one that falls in the bittering and aroma category.  Thankfully Mark over at 5 Points Growlers and Home Brew Supply opened a fresh bag of Cascade leaf hops for me.  Posting a full Ziploc bag holding six ounces of Cascade hops had quite the remarks on BookFace.  Using Gratis’ setup warranted some recipe changes since I’m not fully familiar with brewing what I would consider double batches.  I have yet to brew a really good beer on his system too.  But I have no problem wearing a rookie shirt and brewing in the minor leagues still.  One day though, right?  I think I ended up adding 5.25 oz of Cascade hops.  I should have asked Brian to dry hop the two carboys, which would have been tough with those .75 oz of Cascade hops in my fridge at home.

Cascade carboys

The yeast mistake garners the minor league pay too.  Using a very fresh vial from 5 Pts. I propagated it to 1 liter.  Then I split it, using not quite half of it for the White Pale Mutt along with the German Hefeweizen yeast.  That beer did turn out really well.  Still too much banana and bubble gum from that WLP-300 yeast strand, but the WLP-007 dried it out nicely.  So I took the harvest Dry English Ale yeast from the fridge and propagated that to 1L, then I stepped it to 2L and would use that to pitch with.  My FG was only 1.o20 which isn’t bad, but I was hoping for more like 1.013 FG.  With the super efficiency of the soon to be known Southern Brewing Co. pilot system, it still shot over our 4.8% ABV and ended up with 5.5% ABV.  The beer is drinking nice with a mild bitterness and some subtle sweetness with the higher final gravity.  My hop schedule was 60 minutes, 30, 15, 10 and finally 5 minutes.  Without the yeast mess up and some dry hopping, this would be a great beer.  It’s going to be just fine as a good beer to get us through the Summer months.

cheers to rainy days

Now if we want to talk about great beers brewed the same day using the same yeast strain then I have to mention the SBC Racing Mud Puddle IPA.  Last night served kind of like the release party for SBC Racing.  Brewed with a first wort hopping of NZ Hallertau, then bittered constantly throughout the boil with Motueka and finally dry hopped with Citra.  It runs the color of a murky Georgia red clay mud puddle and drinks like a peach NEHI.   Such a great beer and check out SBC Racing on BookFace.

Later we’re going to talk about our first attempt at brewing parti-gyle style.  An ancient brewing style that uses the same grain to produce different batches of beer, all being lower in ABV from the original.

Cheers race fans!

SBCR mud puddle IPA

SBC Racing Mud Puddle

Yeast week

WLP007 1L starter

So this past week saw a scheduled Friday off.  A day that is usually consumed with way too many chores scattered through-out the day to plan anything fun.  Even if it’s just lunch downtown with the wife.  Even though I caught a little expected grief on missing lunch I was excused to finally brew at the house.  I also threw some meat on the smoker.  It’s an inexpensive one from Academy but will do the job once I figure things out.  The second smoking was better than the first, so hopefully I’ll have it figured out next try.  It’s not near as bad as brewing beer.  I haven’t dumped a smoked butt yet.  It all gets eaten!  But I digress.  Back on topic of yeast.  I recently posted about washing yeast for the first time.  This is the process of saving $8 per brew to reuse yeast from the previous brew.  “Shit actually works!”

WLP007 & WLP300 starters

We wandered into 5 Points Growlers Beer & Brew Supply awhile back when Amber & Ty were in town for fills.  I always check out the yeast cooler to see if they have what I want or I’m curious about.  I found the only vial of White Labs WLP-007 Dry English Ale yeast and its fresh w/ a best before by date of 4/11.  Which means it was packaged on 1/11 this year.  Most beers aren’t that fresh.  Usually Monday before brewing is just recipe creation day, but I have more up my flask this week.  I made a 1 liter starter with that WLP-007 vial.  Denver used this in an IPA and it kicked ass.  This yeast is highly flocculent with high attenuation, which means it makes a clear beer and eats lots of sugars to produce a dry finish.  I want to use this yeast in a pale ale brewed at Gratis, so I can’t ‘waste’ it in this week’s brew.  Which means on Wednesday I ‘stepped’ it to 2 liters.  I crash chill the starter for the day and make a 2 liter starter on Wednesday after work.  I decant off the beer and pour the yeast slurry into a new starter.  I wake up Thursday morning to find it’s blown through the airlock.  Thankfully I save Star San while these things are happening.  I pull the airlock to cleanse and sani it before work.  By the time I make my sandwich for lunch the krausen is already pushing into the airlock.  “Hope it (the airlock) stays wet until I get home!”

I also got a 1 liter starter going with the White Labs WLP-300 German Hefeweizen yeast along with 1/4 tsp of yeast nutrient.  When I checked on the yeast Thursday morning I was overly excited to see this yeast going strong.  Success!  A quick manual stir and the krausen woke up and spit right out of the air lock.  Now I’m not only cleaning up krausen from the WLP-007, but I have foam running down the cabinet doors in our laundry room.  If I shut the door with the HVAC vent open this room will stay almost exactly 70*F all the time.  Which is near perfect for ale yeast fermentation.

Thursday I finished a recipe and decide on a white pale ale.  This style recently came to life from a few select brewers and is still not recognized by the BJCP.  Some of the more famous beers are Deschutes Chainbreaker IPA, Westbrook White Thai and the Founders Brewing collab with Green Flash for the Linchpin White IPA.  The differentiating here is that I’m doing a pale ale, or a pale wheat and using a blend of WLP-007 and WLP-300.  While I didn’t measure yeast counts, I feel like I had a bigger slurry of 300 over 007, thus hoping to have a dry finish with a cloudy beer.

Friday rolls around and NO WORKY FOR ME!  I realize quickly that I’ve driven over my good water hose end and it’s inoperable, SOB!  So out comes the old hose which thankfully isn’t frozen.  I get the coolers sanitized to get some ice and Gatorade in them.  Finally get some charcoal burning in the smoker and get the pig’s bottom and whole yard bird on there with hickory chunks.  It’s too bad it’s Friday and no one is in the cul-de-sac to salivate other than me.  I’m pretty impressed with myself in that I get the mash water heating up at noon and by 5pm the yeast is pitched.  The grain bill is simple in Brewer’s Malt, White Wheat and some Cara-Pils along with some Sorachi Ace hops from Japan which are known for their lemon/citrus flavor.  Throw in the common American Cascade hops at 15 minutes and 5 minutes along with some fresh orange zest at 15 minutes and we should have a great citrus white pale wheat with around 5% abv just in time for front porch homebrew this Spring!

Don’t forget that the Classic City Brew Fest is just around the corner.  Go ahead and buy tickets, you may get a chance to brew with The Southern Brewing Company on their pilot system along with a tour of their new space before it’s open.  I’ll post links tomorrow, or just Goggle tonight.  Hope to see everyone there.

Slainte!

White Pale grain

oranges

mash

1st runnings

gravity sample

smoked out

WLPOO7 harvest

WLP007 history

Sixpoint in 5 Points

Sixpoint line up

Wait, what? Yeah, Sixpoint Brewery out of Brooklyn, NY will be in 5 Points on Thursday, March 7^th at Aromas Craft Works, formerly known as Aromas Wine Bar.  Well still known as Aromas to all of us.  Sixpoint Brewery has finally made it to Georgia.  They produce some great liquid in beers such as their IPA, Bengali Tiger and Resin, a DIPA.  Also 3 Beans, a Baltic Porter brewed with three beans.  This unique beer is brewed with Romano beans in the mash, cacao beans in the boil and coffee beans before being aged on oak.

Resin – epitome of pool beer

One of the better things about Sixpoint is they only fill kegs and aluminum cans.  This makes them a perfect pool beer, if your pool is within walking distance like ours.  I’ve been able to bootleg some back from business trips in Kentucky.  In fact Resin is the epitome of pool beer.  Thankfully now we can start out with some Sweet Action or The Crisp.  One Resin on a 100 degree day wading in a pool for hours is the same as  moonshine in the midst of winter.  One of the more unfortunate things is that Athens won’t see any 3 Beans from Sixpoint.  A tweet from Sixpoint says it’s only for loyal accounts.  My reply that I’d drive eight hours for their beers didn’t garner a reply.

Back to the release on March 7^th at Aromas, this will be hosted by local distributor Leon Farmer and Co.  Find out more from Kathleen’s post on their website.  I would love to meet up with everyone and talk great beer with great friends, but UGA’s last home basketball game against Kentucky tips off at seven.  It’s only a 12 minute walk according to Google, but logistics ruins any chance of making both since the wife works near-by and we refuse to have two cars out at once.  But if anyone does a release right, it’s LF & Co.  I’ve never been to one of their releases where I left feeling like I didn’t learn something.  I’ve been to other releases that were actually published in newsletters or social media and you never actually meet anyone.  Also, if you didn’t know from the release notes you wouldn’t know anything was going on.  Quite sad, as most of us self acclaimed beer geeks like to meet the brewers or reps and talk beer.

Righteous Ale

I was lucky enough to acquire some samples and I’m working my way through them in a really random order.  I’ve had Bengali Tiger and Resin before, which may very well lead the way for their beers.  Tonight I started out with the Righteous Ale, a rye beer, which was nice and spicy with a huge, great hop aroma.  Next was Brownstone and again, I’m not a brown fan.  This won’t beat Back 40’s Truck Stop Honey Brown, but it’s damn tasty.  Lastly tonight I had a 3 Beans. Instead of singing, “fat guy in a little coat?” from the movie Tommy Boy, it’s more like big beer in a little can.  Great mouth feel and almost has the smell of a good espresso.

3 Beans pour

I’m sure Atlanta will see Sixpoint this week too, if not already.  In fact if you can’t wait to Thursday, Chops and Hops already has The Crisp and Resin on tap.  So in closing, please make it over to Sixpoint’s release at Aromas Craft Works on Thursday.  Who knows, I may stop in for a pint of Diesel before the game.

Cheers!

Chase the Rabbit gets easier

tanks, tanks, tanks

25 ton grain silo peaking around the corner

Recently I was able to sneak along on a lunch time trip to Red Hare Brewing in Marietta, GA. If you recall, Sarah and I visited Red Hare back on Cinco De Mayo with Amber and Ty. So this wasn’t a totally new endeavor for me. But skipping work to hit up breweries isn’t so bad. The view however has changed drastically since May, with new tanks going in constantly. This was the first time I’ve talked with Roger, co-partner to Bobby, their head-brewer. They are now 8 employees and estimate to see 14,000 visitors this year. They are nearing some added capacity that will bring them to 9,000 barrels a year in terms of productivity. They’ve also erected a new 25-ton silo just outside for mass grain delivery and storage. Their biggest installation for me is their canning line, capable of 32 cans per minute. Jessica, marketing and tasting room manager gave us a tour and showed off the new canning line. We were fortunate enough to see a brew day in progress, but I was really hoping for some canning to be in process. I’ve seen the awe of speed when cans are manufactured, but have yet to witness the beauty of canning. Which I feel kind of resembles a broken folding lawn chair.

topless Gangway IPA

The really exciting news is what 2013 looks like. Their flagship Long Day Lager is already available in cans. The Gangway IPA is now out in cans, though still scarce. Soon the Watership Brown Ale will be getting canned for the first time. Their artwork is great, so these all look great canned. Much better than what a bottle would portray. The plan is to package the lager in 12 packs also. They are also thinking of releasing the IPA and brown in bigger boxes down the road too. And are also hoping to get these cans out to golf courses around the area. In the past they’ve done four Rabbit Reserve beers, five if you include the rare Atlanta Craft Beer Week coffee cream stout. The original chocolate porter (which is great), an imperial red IPA, a good Saison, then an Oktoberfest. This year will only see two Rabbit Reserve beers. In February a new double black IPA and in October, the ACBW coffee cream stout. There’s also potential plans to offer these in 22 oz bottles. 2013 will see three seasonal beers, in March, August and October. Those may be past RR beers, but that wasn’t laid out, nor was packaging.

That’s not all the great news for next year, but I will just suggest to follow Red Hare on Twitter and like them on Bookface. Along with checking out their website, Red Hare Brewing, which unlike some other breweries, they keep updated.

Cheers to the entire Red Hare for a great midday hosting!

Canning line presenter Jessica

#IPAday PWNd

Social media has indeed changed the world as we once knew it.  Even the title of this post is the result of social media.  Which actually reads India Pale Ale day owned.  The hash tag is a result of Twitter while PWN comes from the online gaming world.  Back to the subject at hand, August 2nd marked the second annual IPA day.  IPA day started in 2011 by The Beer Wench, Ashley Rouston and friend Ryan Ross, in an effort to educate more people about craft beer.  It’s described as a

“grass-roots movement created to unite the voices of craft beer enthusiasts, bloggers, and brewers worldwide, using social media as the common arena for connecting the conversation together.”

Just like everything else in life, which each new year you have to try to go bigger or better.  I believe that was accomplished, I know we did our best to go for gold (if #IPAday was in the Summer Olympics that is).  But with that, and like everything else in the news lately, people think that they are entitled to force their opinion onto the masses.  Friend AJ posted about why he wasn’t ‘hopping’ on the bandwagon of #IPAday.  He brings a valid point, why have a day dedicated to a certain style while trying to educate the masses about craft beer.  There is already a craft beer week every year, so why not have #IPAday embedded in that week?  There’s no doubting that the IPA isn’t the flagship of the craft beer movement.  Ask most any guy or gal drinking good beer in a bar, pub or restaurant what their favorite style is and IPA will win hands down.  But Ashley has a great post over on Craftbeer.com about the style and while I’m knowledgeable of the style, until it’s put on paper or lcd monitor it’s hard to see how diverse the style truly is.  The BJCP organization has three categories of IPA, English, American and Imperial (double).  But the post lists another 11 ‘other’ IPAs, including Belgian, Black along with newer ones like White IPA and Session IPA.  White and Session have really begun to populate beer coolers the past half-year or so.  I’m fond of both styles too.

Another blogger by the name of Craft Suds tried to push his perspective of #IPAday over on The Beer Wench too.  His point of view was much the same in that it’s solely focused on social media.  The statistics that Ashley wrote about all involved how large of an event it was on the social media world, mainly Twitter.  He doesn’t see the point of it and asks how does that educate those not already in the loop.  He probably wasn’t expecting the face palm he got in return.  The most interesting fact and one that is large enough to confirm the sole purpose of #IPAday, to educate, was that Craftbeer.com saw 15k more site visits on Aug. 2 than any other typical day.  There’s a good chance that every one of those 15k visits learned something.

#IPAday beers

So you ask why all this fuss and nothing to show for it?  Well, we celebrated at our house this year. Chef Richard, Denver and Caleb all dropped in knowing the requirements of a secret handshake plus two bottle limit would gain entrance.  If we learned anything it’s that the youngest brewery represented was everyone’s favorite beer.  I opened a bottle of Nantahala Brewing Company‘s second Trail Magic bottle release.  This is only the second beer they’ve bottled and is a lemongrass DIPA.  It’s awesome and I’m glad they all agreed.  I have one more left along with their first release which was a barrel aged RIS.

One last side note on my level of nerd.  I made the list of most #IPAday tweets at 16.  Looking at my other Untappd check-ins, that could have been almost 20.  My last comment to Ashley and those involved in Stout Day, please PLEASE make it a Friday from now on.

Prost!

One for you, one for me

The ALEZ homebrew club was having a sub 1.050 brew competition. Meaning you could enter any brew with a SG of 1.050 or less. This is easy to carry out in terms of execution and it could be done inexpensive too. So I’m really craving a peach beer for summer and I write two recipes revolving around the use of peaches. Little peach pail (see what I did there? Pail instead of pale), would be a mild hopped pale ale and sub 1.050. Big peach pail would be a ridiculous hopped IPA with peaches still shining through. Now for the hard part, which to brew? I need the little beer but want the big beer. As time is running out to brew and finish a beer in time for the competition, I realize the lemon hefeweizen missed its target mark of 1.052 to end up with a SG of 1.048. Perfect! Now I can enter that and brew the big peach pail.

So I’m in Blockader picking up the stuff to brew with and realize I’ve forgotten to bring the beers for the competition and today is the deadline. Thankfully a few others have problems and the deadline is extended a few days. I go back the next day and drop off my two beers and even leave Evan a pale ale, the gold medal pale at that. Weeks go by and I read nothing on the judging, or how Evan liked the free beer offering. I finally take to Facebook to ask and a couple of others reply asking as well. So it seems like a great way to get some free beer from people who have slaved away to make a beer that can be judged. Lesson learned.

Back to the real reason I’m on the patio watching the clouds swiftly blow by backwards as TS Beryl pushes in off the Atlantic. Ok well it’s really so I can see how well the WordPress app is on Sarah’s new iPad while it’s cool and windy outside. But back to the topic of brewing the big peach pail. After I leave Blockader with ingredients in tow I realize at the local stores that peaches aren’t available yet, not even frozen peaches. I’m still a couple of days away from brewing so what am I going to do? I remember seeing several types of oak chips in Blockader and notice mango is in season. But I don’t want to wreck a good beer with ingredients I’ve never used, so let’s split this batch! I like trying new stuff since I’m still early in my brewing adventures and after having success first wort hopping the Belgian IPA we brewed at Gratis, I’m going to try that too.

Brew day – The first wort hopping involves taking a finishing hop with low alpha acids and sparging on top of it, while leaving the hops to boil the entire time. There’s some kind of scientific mumbo-jumbo that happens to prevent these hops from being too over powering. We have a wedding to attend the next day in Greenville and we’re spending the night. With a fermenter full at six gallons and not being around for when the blow off tube gets clogged, I try not to worry. We make home from a great wedding and a great weekend to find the blow off tube full of krausen, but thankfully still releasing Co2. Fermentation finishes after a week and we end up with a good beer that’s crystal clear when I rack and split the batch to secondary. Peaches still aren’t available, so mango it is for Sarah’s half of the batch. I decide from three or four types of wood chips on regular American oak chips. Now for the hardest part of this whole attempt. I cut the three mangos and drop them in a new hop sack. Measure out two ounces of oak chips and drop them in another new hop sack. Next is trying to fit each of those through the opening of my plastic carboys. After lots of finger magic they both go into each of their vessels. I can’t wait to try to get them out.

Time to bottle – I wasn’t fearing bottling near as much since I was planning on doing each of them on separate days and using 22 oz. bottles. I end up bottling them both the same night and finish around one in the morning. The mango basically fell out when I realize most of it was gone. Worrying the oak chips would swell after absorbing beer, they come out after a small amount of tugging. I did bottle six regular bottles if I decide to enter these in competitions. So after two weeks I grab a small bottle of each out of their hiding place and chill them for a bit. Smaller bottles will carb faster than bombers, so they each open with a nice gush of pressure. The mango pours a nice, big white head and perfectly clear. It has hints of a little funk on the back side, maybe from the mango dissolving or rotting, haha. It’s slightly sweet on the nose with subtle mango flavor. Hopefully Sarah will like it since she is a fan of DFH Aprihop. The oak pours with very little head, possibly from some oils or something in the oak chips. It smells like a huge bourbon in a rocks glass and tastes nearly the same. The oak will need some time to calm down and fade. Both have a nice, balanced hop bitterness that should hang around a while thanks to the first wort hopping.

Naming the beer – We’ve all had some fun of late giving our beers names. When Brian and I were bottling the Belgian IPA the bottling bucket fell off its pedestal. Brian with his back half to it some how feels it falling, reaches out with one arm and snags it. Hence the name Single Arm Snatch. So I have a fear of odd numbers. The thermostats are always on an even temperature. The volume in the car or at home is always and even number. This recipe will be all 7’s. Seven SRM for color. Seven percent ABV and 70 something IBU for bittering. It ends up 7.4 SRM, 7.86% ABV and 70.18 IBU. All even numbers!

I hate odd numbers. Cheers!

6oz of kettle hops

first wort hopping

krausen over kill

the additions

oak chips and mango ready for racking

mango (l) and oak aged (r)