The month in review: Lessons learned, batches saved, beers conceptualized, and the "Rapture"

It's been over a month since the last posting. If it makes you feel any better, it's been a month since a home brew has been finished too!

In the past 5 weeks, we have brewed 3 beers. Starting with Rogue Dead Guy clone that Brendan put together. This was our first time using a yeast primer and I'm not quite sure that I like that process. Basically, you place the dry yeast into a bowl of water and let it re-activate. Then you add wort from your carboy until the yeast = the same temperature as the wort, then you pour the yeast into the carboy...I prefer the dry ale yeast...pour and play. This beer is probably done, but I'm waiting for batch-master Brendan to give the word to bottle (it's been sitting in a carboy for about 4 weeks).

Second was a Black IPA that I dubbed "Jeremiah Black IPA". It was a recipe that was passed along to me by a fellow home brewer, Jeremiah, at a mutual friend's birthday party. The meeting was serendipitous and so is the beer so far. In a week and a half, we'll be drinking that sweet dark nectar. So far it has a great taste, and has been described as "complex". I think it tastes chocolaty...if that's even a word.

Jeremiah Black IPA was the first batch that I thought that I had lost. I thought this because my calculations indicated that our final gravity should have equaled 1.018-1.020. Our gravity was holding at 1.030. If you haven't reached final gravity then you still have fermentables in the beer. Adding priming sugars for bottling to a beer that isn't at FG will equal disaster. Your bottles will more than likely explode and you will need a large mop to clean up all that wasted beer. So I was high 10 points and the beer wasn't going anywhere for 5 days...I called my local HBS and they suggested adding Biotin (yeast food) in hopes of jump starting the yeast to finish off the batch. If that didn't work...I would have to pour out the batch. So I arrived at the HBS to pick up my biotin and we recalculated all of the numbers...multiple recalculations indicated the same thing...the beer was done. Apparently, all of my fermentables were gone despite not being at the mathematical final gravity....phew...so we bottled the next day. No explosions yet. Lesson learned: when calculating FG, only add fermentables to the equation. Batch saved.

Around this time, I began drafting an original IPA using a fantastic website called hopville.com. The IPA recipe that we had been manipulating was good, but I was kinda done with it, 40 bottles is enough to get sick of anything, and so I needed a change. I started researching all of the ingredients that I had in mind...first start was to use less dry malt extract and to use more crystal and specialty grains. I chose lighter crystal and specialty grains (20L-30L) basically creating a beer that was more gold to copper in color, rather than the ale colored IPAs to date. Then came the fun part...hops.

The hops took some crafting. Using a hop boiling schedule graph, and a hop chart with characteristics of each hop, I set out creating my own hop schedule. In short, the aroma, flavor, and bittering characteristics of hops are brought to full potential depending on the amount of time that they are boiled. Hops boiled for 60+ minutes are going to be used primarily for bittering as the bittering oils tend to reach fruition at 60 minutes. Hops used primarily for flavor should be boiled around 20-30 minutes, and hops used primarily for aroma are boiled for 5-15 minutes. Any hops added later (dry hopping) will be primarily adding aroma. Knowing this kind of stuff can be helpful when you want to create your own beer.

I knew that I wanted a very bitter IPA (100+ IBU), that had citrus and floral aromas and flavors...So I choose the most bitter bittering hops, the most citrusy and floral aroma hops, and a great, all-purpose, and unique flavoring hop, Simcoe. We added almost half of a pound of hops to this 5 gallon batch. We will also dry hop this batch twice! The first dry hop was during the cool down that occurred post boil, and the second dry hopping will be after primary fermentation is complete and the beer has been transferred into secondary.

This batch, hopefully to be dubbed "Rapture IPA", was brewed on the supposed Rapture, May 21st, 2011. We won't officially call it the "Rapture IPA" until we confirm that it doesn't suck...although that would be seeming appropriate if it did. So far it's off without a hitch! The wort tasted awesome and so we have high hopes for its development over the next two weeks in fermentation and the next 4.5 until we can drink it out of bottles for the first time. The true judgment day!

A Sign of Things to Come

It's been a little while since the last posting. Part of this has been my life outside of work, but the other, and more applicable part, has been the fact that beer can take a while to finish.

Which brings me to my next point.

Our first IPA juked us. This particular IPA was supposed to "condition" (sit in bottles and carbonate) for 2-3 weeks. At the two week mark, we pulled out two bottles and gave them a taste (what can I say, we just couldn't wait any longer). Let's just say, it was very disappointing. The only thing that we could taste was this overwhelming hop juice with no finish. Oh f---. We immediately regretted our decision to brew a second batch with the almost the same ingredients. We started speculating. Was the malt too light? Too many hops? Should we switch to something else? Something easier? The process went through out minds...where could we have failed?

We departed ways after the tasting kinda feeling lame.

A weekend passed. I had to travel to Texas for some family things. When I arrived at Texas my parents wanted to grab some beers so we traveled to the local grocer. Nothing. I had been forewarned though by a friend who is an Oregon transplant currently studying and living in Texas. She warned me that beer in Texas sucked. So, I picked up a 12 pack of Texas micro called Shiner Bock and set about my ways, already missing that consummate PacNW IPA.

When I returned from Texas, I looked in the fridge and the only beer that was cold was some Coors Light (remnants of a house guest I assure you). So I grabbed a few of the IPAs out of the closet and put them in the freezer for a quicker cool.

Maybe I was extra thirsty. Maybe the new Foo Fighter's CD was sending me to Nirvana, or maybe it was the Trader Joe's Ahi Burger that I was eating, but the IPA was FREAKING AWESOME.

So I had two.

Then people started coming home.

Then Jeb stopped by.

Consensus? Our first IPA, and second batch of beer ever made, was delicious. Jeb even decided to bring some home to his father who is allegedly a beer snob too (his review to come?). I am going to attempt to create a profile for this IPA using the Beer Flavor Profile in the Joy of Homebrewing and my own IPA hop-headedness.

1. Appearance:
     - Head Retention and Appearance: Head retention is mild. This is largely a matter of preference, but generally desirable.
     - Clarity: We used Irish Peet Moss to help with the "haze", but typical of IPAs, especially dirty NW ones, this beer is pretty opaque.

2. Aroma: Smells malty. Of course this would make sense especially because there's 12 pounds of it in there. I believe that I'm mostly smelling hops and they smell herbal with a hint of butterscotch.

3. Taste: This is a full bodied, balanced beer. There is plenty of hop to complement the malt bomb (which I guess is the point). It has a pretty good mouth-feel, although I'm not quite sure that I can speculate on that yet...The aftertaste doesn't linger. It's a really smooth, clean finish which is surprising because it's supposed to be uber hoppy. Carbonation is perfect. Not too bubbly, not too flat. Just enough carbonation to make you feel like you're drinking a real beer! Lastly, drinkability. Ultimately, this beer is drinkable. I really appreciate how this recipe has attempted to clone the Ruination by Stone. It's not a very close clone, but it's a great IPA recipe. We will definitely be using this recipe as a base for our future brews. In fact, it's already the base for our second IPA which is currently in bottles conditioning!

Prost!

Keep tuned. We're brewing another batch (not an IPA) on 4/17/11! Bring on the American Dark Ale!

IPA 2.0 Complete

Today we finished our second IPA.

In creating our second IPA, we chose to tweak the recipe that we had used for our first IPA. This could have been a daunting decision to make. There are really only four ingredients in a standard beer: water, malt, hops, yeast. Of those four, (besides using a water filter) you can really only purchase variations on three. Of those three (unless you have your own crazy-ass yeast) you can really only mess around with two: malt and hops. Of those two, we decided to mess with the hops. Which brings us to this next sub category...

Hops: The beer that we are brewing incorporates three different types of hops added at six different times throughout the wort making process. The first two hops are added at the 30 and 40 minute mark during the boil. Hops added at this interval are primarily responsible for bittering the beer. Since Jeb and I like hoppy beers, we decided not to mess with the first two hop additions since they are two of the more bitter hops that one could buy at our local HBS. The last four hop additions are all the same hop and they are primarily responsible for aroma and "character" building. Those seemed like the ones to mess with.

The benefit of only changing the character hops is that you can do side-by-side taste tests between each of the IPAs and better understand the affects of the hops on the beer. At least that was our mentality. The other bummer is that that kinda of data gathering would take a very long time as each IPA takes about a month before you can even drink it!

I guess brewing is a "hurry up and wait" hobby...I'll keep my mountain bike around for instant gratification.

Some pictures of brew day. For more, check out the Tumblr site feed on the top right of this blog.

All the brewing materials.

I really like how it layers...although it's a little gross at first....

92 Bottles of Beer

When we bought the beer brewing kit at our local HBS, we were all told, "First you are cleaners, then you are brewers." We laughed at the subtle implications of this statement. We were so ready to brew that nothing else really seemed to matter.

Oh boy.

Brewing a great batch of beer is all about keeping it clean. Everything that comes into contact with the wort and beer must be sanitized, and not just dish washed, but soaked in PLC, rinsed, and then soaked in Idophor. Allegedly, any impurities can create an off-flavor a beer, even the oils from your fingers...Of course, for a darker, "dirtier" ale, like the ones we will most likely be making, this probably has a subtle effect, but depending, you can ruin a batch of beer. Our first batch of beer had a slightly sour tinge to it and I can't help but to think that it may be contamination related.

It takes some patience for this process. Sanitizing a carboy, for example, takes 30 minutes, with stirs every five. Every time we test for specific gravity (about 4-5 times), the racking cane (a giant hollow straw used to pipette beer from the carboy into testing tubes) must be sanitized and protected with our lives.

To date, there was no process as tedious and time consuming as preparing bottles for bottling...

The first part is fun. Grab a few 24 packs (of if you go to Costco, the Sam Adams 28 pack!), grab some good buddies and brewing teams, and drink...If you don't care about the shape of the bottle, there are only two stipulations.

1. The bottles must be pop tops...no screw tops. Since carbonation occurs in the bottle, the bottle cap needs a little extra support. A screw top evidently can't contain the pressure! If you notice, a lot of craft brewers also use pop tops. There was a show on Discovery that followed brewers. It just so happened to follow one of my top five breweries: DogfishHead. DogfishHead feels so strongly about pop tops that they decided not to release an entire batch of their Punkin ale because they had accidentally ordered screw-top bottles and couldn't guarantee that their product would have the quality standards that they believe their beer can only be consumed at.

2. The bottles must be brown. Ever wonder why Corona tastes like urine? Or why Heineken always tastes skunked? Sunlight destroys beer. It only takes a few moments in the sun for some beers to go bad. Just imagine: a distributor is stocking your local grocery and leaves a few cases of beer in the sun for a brief moment...all of a sudden, you may be drinking skunky beer. Now, if your motive is to G.F.U. then maybe this doesn't matter...but for those of us who love our beer and cherish ourselves, just drink from darker bottles and save yourself the heartache.

So between my cohorts and I, we have managed to collect 92, brown, pop-top, bottles of beer. Now what? The words echoed in my head..."First you're a cleaner, then your a brewer"...

For those who may be interested in home brewing for themselves some day, I've listed bottles of beer by the ease that their labels comes off, starting with the best and easiest. You can laud us for our quality of beer drinking later...

1. Samuel Adams: this label comes off very cleanly. After soaking for a bit, the glue pretty much rubs right off!

2. Dechuttes Brewing Company: the glue is a little tackier than Sam Adams, but the labels peel off nicely and the bottle is adorned with little hops along the shoulder of the bottle. It's a nice generic bottle with no advertising. Oh, and you CAN'T GO WRONG with a Dechuttes beer!

3. Widmer: big "W" on the side...

4. Bridgeport: interesting shaped tall bottle, but holds your requisite 12 oz.

5. Sierra Nevada: I call this a "squat" bottle.

5. Kirkland Select: THESE BOTTLES SUCK. The labels were stubborn. If you can finally manage to get all of the labeling off, it's a super generic bottle which is nice...but damn!

"Why not just buy empty bottles?"

Actually, because it costs about the same to drink them...and we like beer. I like to think of us as conscientious recyclers with an ulterior motive.

I'd like to thank my utility sink for making all this possible.

"Don't Get Greedy"

It's hard to believe that it's been 6 days since the start of IPA madness.

After the first 5-7 days, the beer has to be transferred from the original carboy into the second carboy for secondary fermentation. This is a usual next step (not always necessary evidently) for brewing, especially in our case. Since we're brewing beers with lots of stuff in it, we tend to have a lot of sediment. If beer is left in the first carboy for too long with this sediment, it will skunk the beer. So today, Mike assisted me with the transfer which is a basic syphon process. Even though this is only my second time doing this, it's still amazing how much sediment collects on the bottom and top of the carboy.

The number one rule to this process (besides keeping everything sanitary) is not to get greedy. So far, as the picture suggests, I'm a little greedy.

"Beer Greed" noun. a state of mind that leads one to take too much beer from the primary fermentor because one wants to maximize the amount of beer transferred for secondary fermentation.

The issue with beer greed is that you run the risk of drawing up sediment from the bottom of the carboy (spent yeast and all those floaties that you saw in the video). These things are what you were avoiding in the first place by transferring carboys...As a beer lover and hop-head. it's hard to see that little bit of beer left in the bottom of the carboy. In reality, out of a 5 gallon carboy, you will only end up bottling about 4 gallons of finished product. The rest goes down the drain...sad. Still, I'm told that 4 gallons is a lot of beer.

Bye bye beer.

The last thing you do before re-applying the fermentation lock is to take a specific gravity reading. Results below.

Original Gravity (when the beer was first added to the carboy after brewing): 1.074

Specific Gravity (today's reading): 1.021 (final gravity needs to be 1.050-1.080)

Current Alcohol by Volume: 6.7%

Tasting Notes: Oh baby, you can taste those hops.

I'll post about Original, Specific, and Final gravity at a later time...

Cheers! Now I have dishes to do...

An IPA is Born

Before the successful completion of our first batch of beer, Jeb, Mike, Brendan, and I decided that we were going to venture into IPAs.

Before starting, I had spoken to a co-worker who is also home-brewing. We had discussed our love for IPAs and decided that we were hop-heads. Ironically, his love for IPA had prevented him from brewing one because he feared that he would ruin his favorite beer...and break his future brewing spirit. It seemed that he was putting the IPA on a pedestal...

Fortunately, I didn't not share his philosophy. If anything, I wanted to get the first one under my belt so that eventually I'd be able to create a fantastic IPA. The first thing I figured I had to consider was what I liked most about IPA.

In my experience with IPAs, IPAs tend to be amongst the hoppiest, most bitter, enamel ripping beers that one could drink. Additionally, IPAs have awesome hints of citrus, floral notes, and a nice sweet malt body. As somebody who drinks his coffee black, tea strong, bourbon neat, and wine dry, an "extreme" beer like an IPA seems to fall right in line with my beer alter-ego.

***Disclaimer, IPA is not for everybody (sorry Mike...your redemption will come later...) Start with a Pale Ale if you want everything an IPA has sans enamel tearing bitterness...***

So as a second batch brewer, how can you capture all of the things that you love about IPA? Step one: walk into your local home brew supply store. Ours has a recipe book with "replicas" of popular beers, and a few that local SpoBrewers had made successfully and had warranted a pass on. Jeb, Mike, and I walked in the day before Brew Day 2 to browse this anthology of local beer nirvana. While browsing, we stumbled across a recipe for a "Ruinator IPA". This was a take on one of my favorite IPAs (Ruination) by my favorite Brewery (Stone Brewing Co). The decision was clear.

While the materials were being gathered and calculated, it was no wonder why IPAs taste the way that they do. This particular batch included 9 pounds of malt (sugar basically), and about a cup of hops (our first batch only included 1 oz of hops...). I was in heaven.

I couldn't wait for Brew Day 2 to come. I spent the whole day watching Lost and cleaning the "beer lab".

After great success brewing I woke up the next morning, went to work, and came home to this...(see video)

The yeast was alive!!!

*Beer Making 101* For those who don't know, or who are in denial, beer first starts out as wort (sugary grain tea/soup made from malt and specialty grains). While the wort is boiling we add hops for bitterness and flavor (you can also add hops during phases in fermentation also known as dry-hopping). After the wort is cooled and placed in a carboy, the yeast is pitched. Yeast is why beer is beer. Yeast is an amazing live culture that feasts on sugar and poops out alcohol and CO2. Yes...beer is yeast poop. The initial CO2 is released during fermentation and allowed to fill up my coat closet...after fermentation is done, we add more sugar (to reactivate the yeast), bottle, and allow the yeast to wake up and eat again...this time, the bottle is capped and the CO2 becomes carbonation in the bottle.

When I showed the above video to my friend and brewing team...it was decided that our first venture into IPA was a success, if only because now we had a yeasty lava lamp to excite our visual senses.

In the beginning...

It started over a beer. A group of idealistic friends sitting with a cold Imperial Stout pondering what the next 25 years of their life would bring. Two beers later, the statement of a century:"We should start a REAL brewery in Spokane".

Spokane has a brewery. It used to have 1 and a half breweries. When a brewery in a neighboring city was uprooted over apparent landlord issues, this left one brewery in the Inland Northwest. There is no paucity of beer here however! Being in the Northwest means that we have access to some of the finest craft beers in the world with all of the materials for beer-making essentially growing in our backyard! Regardless, unlike Seattle and Portland, our "city-grown" beer is limited to one. Even smaller PacNW towns like Bend, Eugene, Ellensburg, Levenworth, Hood River, have one brewery each (and they are awesome). So, it's only seems logical that Spokane, the second largest city in Washington, should have at least two! One problem...we didn't know how to brew beer...

So we set a date...February 26th was Brew-day.

This is not about our first batch of beer (although there are pictures abound). This is about our second batch of beer and subsequent batches. Our first batch not only brewed into a nice little pale ale, but it also brewed an enthusiasm for beer that ignited a hobby...and better beer drinking!

So, here we go. Let the brewing begin. And the blogging. Cheers.