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Made in the Shade beer festival

Slightly late post...we went with some friends to the beer festival in Flagstaff a couple weekends ago. Lots of great beer and good weather. Also, I remembered to bring the camera! Entire gallery is here.

Waiting to get in. We arrived about 45 minutes early, and bought the VIP tickets. We were about 20th in line maybe, and by the time the gates opened, there were probably 150 people behind us. The non-VIP line was just as long, but they had to wait an extra hour to get in. :-D

Another VIP benefit, shaded seating, and an extra group of New Belgium people. There was no available seating at the rest of the event, so this was much appreciated.

This is what it looked like during the first hour, when lines were relatively short or non-existant. In retrospect, the key was to drink as much beer as you could in this first hour, because after that you were waiting 20+ minutes for a refill.

Same scene, a couple hours later. Obviously many more people.

Fantastic idea - just mount all of your beer taps to the side of the van!

Free fajitas in the VIP area. :-)

All in all, it was a great time. New Belgium, Pyramid, Rogue, Dogfish Head, and lots of others I can't remember right now (but enjoyed thorougly). Will definitely go again next year!

Beer for those that can't find a kit to their liking

Last week, Evan decided to follow through with his idea for brewing the biggest (most alcoholic) beer he possibly could, and ingredients were ordered:
12 lbs of amber liquid malt extract
2 lbs of light dry malt extract
2 lbs of Belgian candi sugar
3 oz Yakima Magnum hops
1 package Alcotec 48 Hour Turbo Super Yeast

The key ingredient being that yeast - the package claims it can generate 14% alcohol in 48 hours, or 20% alcohol in 5 days. It's not even really meant for beer. I'm fairly certain the whole batch is going to taste terrible. :-P

The real excitement came the next morning, when I was walking down the hallway and smelled beer. Walk in, the carboy is foaming quite rapidly.

Even worse, I look up and see this.

The massive fermentation popped the stopper/airlock out of the carboy, and stuff went everywhere. It was on every wall in the room. It continued to foam all day, and I'd estimate that perhaps 30% of the beer was lost, it was amazing.

So, we'll see how this batch turns out. I'm expecting the worst, so anything that's not terrible will be a pleasant surprise!

More bottles

More beer bottles! Jon and I decided to have a Belgian ale blind taste test. He stated that Chimay is the best Blegian period, while I contend that there are many American-made Belgian ales that are every bit as good (or better) for less money. For reference, Chimay at a liquor store for about $9 for a 750ml bottle. Many of the American brews are $4-5 for a 22oz (about 650ml) bottle.

For the comparison, we sampled two real Belgians (Chimay Blue and Tripel Karmeliet) and three American Belgians (The Reverand, Brother David's Triple, and Trippel by Green Flash Brewing).

At the very least, we'll find out which spelling of Tripel/Triple/Trippel is the best. ;-)

We basically tasted them all, and ranked them by preference. The general consensus was that the GFB Trippel was excellent, especially for the price. The Chimay was right behind, and BD's Triple shortly after that. The Reverend didn't do so well, and Tripel Karmeliet was way in the back. Both it and the Chimay didn't taste like they were right (the Tripel Karmeliet was picked up at the suggestion of someone at Bevmo). So, given that GFB Trippel was up at the top at half the price of Chimay, I'd declare it the clear winner.

More on the beer front

As I'm finishing up my first batch of beer, it was time to start the second, from a kit called "Packs-a-punch Porter". Learning from my past mistakes (which still resulted in a drinkable product), I was now free to correct those mistakes and make all new ones!

I steeped the grains at the right temperature. I added the hops at the right time. I used better yeast. I took out the useless filter in the funnel. Everything went smoothly...except...I let the brew pot boil over. Instruction sheets for beer kits only have one line in all caps, and that is "DO NOT LET THE WORT BOIL OVER". So of course I had to do just that.

It was taking forever to come to a boil after I added all of the malt extract and hops. I put the lid on so it could keep some heat in (mistake #1). Then, I went and did something else for about 3 minutes (mistake #2). I come back to see wort EVERYWHERE. I thought I wouldn't have enough heat to bring it to a boil. I thought my pot was so big it could never boil over. I thought it wouldn't happen to me. :-P At least now I have something to improve upon next time!

This was my first time using the hydrometer that came with my kit as well, and it started out measuring a reasonable 1.060, which is right in the range specified by the kit. This past week I transferred it to secondary, and it had gone down to 1.020. Hopefully after two weeks in secondary it'll drop a bit lower, then I'll be ready to bottle. Should be drinking the next batch in about a month!

Beer update

After a couple weeks of carbonating in bottles, Evan and I decided to try some of it. Honestly, I wasn't very optimistic.

The two bottles cracked open with a familiar phsssst, relieving my fears that they might not have carbonated. Pouring the beer out...it looks like beer, smells like beer. Leave the sediment in the bottom of the bottle, and take a sip - even tastes like beer! Fantastic!

I present the finished product:

From Brewing

It's not great beer, but it's pretty good. Good enough that I'd gladly drink it again. The next batch being planned is a porter, hopefully I have similar luck with that one!

A post on beer

Costco trip count for January (final): 24
Costco trip rate for January: 1 trip per 1.29 days
Costco trip count for February: 2

Bottled my beer last night, and ended up with 24 22oz bottles plus 6 12oz bottles. Should be ready in 2-3 weeks. I took a sip of extra beer after I had filled all of the bottles, and at the very least it wasn't horrid. It tasted like beer anyway, though a lot more watery than I would like. I don't know if that's common for this stage or not; maybe the carbonation process will beef it up.

One thing I did somewhat incorrectly in the initial brewing process was when I added the hops - as I understand it now, the longer they're in the water the more you get the hop flavor, while the shorter they're in the water the more they contribute to aroma. Well, I added all of my hops fairly early, didn't save any for a late aroma addition, and I think it shows. Smells like beer, but not much.

I decided to take some pictures of the beers I've been drinking in the last few week. To some extent, "needing more bottles" was a good excuse. ;-) These are all 22oz beers, available from the local BevMo. If you go to my gallery, I've added the text on each bottle as a caption to the image.

First up, Wipeout IPA by Port Brewing. I had this one fairly recently, and I thought it was great. Really hoppy aroma, but not unpleasant by any means. I thought it was pretty smooth compared to some other IPAs I've tried, but then, I had several beers before this one, so maybe that's not the best time for evaluation. :-P Would definitely buy again.

From Beer bottles

Maximus by Lagunita Brewing. Another IPA, but this one just didn't do anything for me. It was definitely super-hoppy (as the name might imply), but I don't know enough to pinpoint just what I think was wrong with it. Don't think I'll be picking this up again.

From Beer bottles

Chocolate Stout by Rogue. I don't buy this one to drink so much as I buy it for waffles. :-D I didn't think it tasted all that chocolatey when I did drink it (can't waste leftovers from the waffle recipe), but in the waffles themselves, it seemed to help bring a somewhat chocolately flavor through the whole waffle. I tried another batch of waffles with a different company's chocolate stout and it wasn't nearly as good, so apparently it makes a difference.

From Beer bottles

Trippel by Green Flash Brewing. I don't really know what to say here, but I have yet to drink a Belgian Trippel that I didn't like, and this is no exception. In fact, this is one of the better examples I've tried, imo. Would definitely buy again.

From Beer bottles

Brother David's Triple by Anderson Valley Brewing. Yet another good triple, but with a different spelling. At a massive 10% ABV, one bottle is typically all you need. :-P My only annoyance with this bottle is that the cap is covered in gold wax, and it was kind of hard to get a bottle opener through that.

From Beer bottles

Red Rocket Ale by Bear Republic Brewing. I tend to like red ales, so it wasn't much of a surprise that I liked this one as well. I wish I had written about it sooner, as I don't remember many specifics about this one, but I would definitely buy another bottle. Oh well.

From Beer bottles

Brewing continues

Costco trip count for January: 17

Transferred my beer from primary to secondary fermentor a week ago today, which means I should be bottling next week, and a total of 3-4 weeks away from actually drinking the beer.

Siphoning away...

From Brewing

And...complete!

From Brewing

First attempt at brewing

Costco trip count for January: 4

After picking up a box of ingredients at my local brew store on Sunday, I decided I was going to be brewing on Monday. All I needed to pick up was a big metal pot (16qt+), a big metal spoon, and 5 gallons of water. Easy, right?

I started out by leaving work at 4 and heading over to Harbor Freight, as they had a big aluminum pot in their catalog for cheap. No luck, but I picked up some wobble extensions I wanted to try. :-P On to Pay n Save next, a similar type of store, and similar lack of a pot. Fry's grocery store was next - no pot to be found, but they had the water. Next up was Sur la Table, a kitchen gadget type store. They actually had two things that would work, an 18qt steel pot and a 24qt aluminum pot, both marked at $60. I wanted aluminum, but I thought the price was a bit high, plus it was way bigger than I needed. The salesperson suggested trying Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, or even a sporting goods store. All of these were located right across the freeway on Ray, so that's where I went.

JC Penny was on the way to Target, but nothing there. Get to Target, check it out, nothing there either. While I'm at Target, Evan calls me up to tell me about a kitchen supply store. I call them, they have a 20qt aluminum pot for $27! Computer says they have it in stock. They close at 6, it's 5:30 now, and they're near 32nd st and McDowell, while I'm at Ray & I-10. I make my way up there, and show up 5 minutes before closing. Ask the guy behind the counter where I can find this pot, and he says "I'm sorry, but after you hung up we went to check in the back, and we don't have any." >:-O Great. So now I need to had back south at 6pm, just about the worst possible time.

On my way back I take a short detour to the Smart and Final. They had large pots, but way too expensive. At that point I resigned myself to going back to Sur la Table for the big aluminum pot. It rings up as $45 though, not $60...probably cheap enough I would have bought it the first time I was there. :-P I finally get home at 7pm, three hours after I left work, having finally purchased the pot at a store five minutes from home. Nice.

And here it is:

On with the brewing!

The bucket with parts being sanitized, and the plastic carboy ("Better Bottle") where primary fermentation takes place.

Evan helping.

Evan helping, for real this time.

Ingredients for an Irish Stout:

Go beer go!

The cooling wort, waiting to be added to the rest of the water in the carboy.

Evidence of fermentation! The airlock is bubbling away. There was no activity Tuesday morning when I left for work, and I came home to this. :-)

The last time I checked, that foam was coming up out of the airlock. :-O I might have added to much water to make up for losses from boiling, I don't know. I made the mistake of not checking to see where the 5 gallon mark would be in the carboy. It should be in the primary fermetor until next Monday or so, then moved to a secondary fermentor (a 5 gallon carboy) for two weeks, then into bottles to carbonate for three weeks.

Even if this batch doesn't turn out that great, I learned a number of things and found out that I made several mistakes.

The first step is to put the grains in a grain bag, let them sit in hot water for 20-30 minutes, then remove them. Here I actually did two things wrong. First, I didn't realize that it was supposed to be 160° water at a maximum, and I put it in right after it had started boiling (though off the heat, so it was cooling for those 20-30 minutes). Apparently getting the grains too hot is a bad thing, though that wasn't in my instructions. Two, I squeezed water out of the grain bag, and I guess you're not supposed to do that either!

I added all of the hops at once, rather than adding some at the beginning and some at the end. It's a minor point, but I'll fix that next time.

A strainer on the funnel is more than worthless. It got clogged up so quickly that it took me 10 minutes to transfer from the pot to the carboy. It would have been just fine for all of that stuff that clogged it up to go in the carboy, as it doesn't make it in to the final product, but whatever.

Finally, I was worried that I had somehow killed the yeast. I followed instructions for checking the yeast - add it to some 95-100° water, then add a small amount of sugar water to test it. If it foams up, then it's still good. I did all of that...and no foam. :-( I was not optimistic at all, and fully expected to not see any fermentation after a day or two. Of course, I was quite happy when I saw the above picture!

Now I wait. Six more weeks until a have a fridge full of beer. I think I'll be ordering up another kit to make as soon as my fermenting bottles are free.

As soon as is reasonable, I think I'd like to get my beer into kegs, rather than bottles. Five gallon kegs are readily available, and it's only one storage container to clean, rather than 50. ;-) It also cuts the carbonation time down from three weeks to about three days, so it can be enjoyed that much sooner.

Slightly larger photos than what are linked above can be found here.