People's Amber and Other Coalition Goodies

So Thursday I managed to drag my very tired and achy butt out of bed and hauled it up to Coalition to rack the Amber into secondary and clean out the carboys. We thought it might be ready to go on tap next week but they're only going to be open for two days, so we decided against it and instead will put it on the week after.

I was asked to make a batch of beer for an anniversary party in February and hopefully the law will have been changed by then, otherwise...I was thinking of making a belgium but that's kind of out of season, but I have it in my head that I really want to make something with elderberries and so I'm thinking I'll make an Elderberry IPA because I really want something purplish. I think I'll call this one Heart of Darkness.

So the bag of hops was one that Elan gave me as a thank you for coming in and racking and cleaning up after myself, which I thought was really nice of him. It's a 1# bag of Perle, and I think I'm going to use that one this spring to make some belgiums and give a bunch away because there is no way I'm going to go through a bag of Perle with just a few batches of beer.

The Pant(r)y Sweeper will be ready to rack onto oak this coming week and I'm planning on making something stronger this week to rack onto the yeast cake. Might as well try to get on a more regular brewing cycle. I'm really looking forward to getting a mash/lauter tun in a couple months so I can move to all grain, instead of these partial mashes.

People's Amber Update

This morning promised to be productive and fun, though I'm pretty sure those will be two separate occasions.

I knew I needed to get up and head over to Coalition Brewery to check on my Peeps, the Amber, before I got the rest of my day started. Today is going to be busy with job searching and writing back at the house but for the few brief moments of peace I was going to enjoy checking my beer and updating my blog and revising a couple of recipes.

The photo on the left are the babies with fresh airlocks on them instead of blow-off tubes. The photo on the right is after I'd taken a hydrometer reading and was tasting my sample. After only 7 days we had dropped to about 1.030 from the initial 1.054. I attribute the slow ferment to the much cooler temp of the space and the much cooler temp of the initial wort. When I had made this at home, getting the temperature down to 78 was difficult enough and even mixing the wort with cool water still didn't drop the temp to as low as I would have liked. It would ferment in the laundry room at around 68 degrees but I think the initial getting the temp to that might have made a bigger difference. My beers tend to ferment in pretty warm spaces.

Tasting the sample is had more esters than I had tasted in previous samples. I could smell the fruity notes in this and figure this should fade as it settles and ages. The hop flavor at the moment is really understated, though it's noticable. Even less than the other batch I'd made.

People's Amber (AG)

14# American 2 row
2# Crystal 60L
2# Crystal 75L
1# Flaked Wheat
.30oz Centennial @ FWH
1.81oz Centennial @ 60
1.25 Mt. Hood @ 30
1oz Willamette @ 10

For water treatment we added 1 heaping teaspoon of gypsum in the mash. Strike water was heated to 165 and our mash ended up being around 154 degrees for one hour. I was shooting for the lower end of it anyway because if I remember correctly that brings out more maltier flavors. This particular recipe is hoppier than the previous batch I'd made and I'm happy to say that it's not terribly noticeable. I figure I'll take another reading in about 4 days and see where I'm at.

Forever and a Day

I haven't posted since I was thinking of brewing that CDA, which I did and it turned out fantastic. I took it to Chris and Megan's Halloween Party where it was a huge success. That beer was the last beer I was going to brew until I moved into my new apartment. My new roomie and I had a checklist of things that our new place had to have and mine was that it had to have either a patio, basement, or garage. We have a patio.

So many things have happened since I last posted but the biggest one was hearing back from Elan of Coalition Brewing and setting up a day and time to brew a beer for their Coalator Program, where they invite a homebrewer to brew on their pilot system any beer they desire and then they serve it in their pub. Brewer gets to name it and everything. I applied sometime mid summer and heard from them in like late October and we'd set the date for November 29th. I had originally planned to do the CDA but settled on an Amber that I liked when I found out they have never had an Amber on tap and no one had made one.

This is the same Amber I'd made this spring, the AG one.

Brewing day was great! It went super smoothly, we were out of there in 4 hours not 5. I hit right in the range of my target gravity and the color was fantastic. I did a first wort hopping (Thank you, Chris Oslin for turning me on to that!). I totally fell in love with the Blichmann and want one or two of those bad boys. I also definitely need a cooler mashtun. Recipe was pretty simple and the plan is to ferment for 7-8 days then rack to a secondary and toss it into a cooler for a couple days and then carbonate and serve. I'm pairing this beer with something warm and tasty, my second favorite dessert, bread pudding with bourbon caramel sauce. I'm going to see if the chef can do a slightly hop infused bourbon for the sauce.

As for the naming of the beer I decided to call it Peoples' Amber, in honor of People's Brewing the first Black-owned brewery in the United States. It only lasted 2 years and considering it was from '70-'72 and in Wisconsin, I think that deserves a lot of credit. They had a lot to contend with, breaking into a very popular endeavor, which a strong, european and white american history, in a very racist time and place, and from every thing I have been able to get my hands on they did the best they could with the situation they were dealt.

As an African American woman homebrewer I can definitely see where there might be some issues, and I'm truly grateful to the great brewers I've encountered who after their initial shock, take me seriously. Though I will say it would be nice to see a few more faces of color at events and club meetings, there are certainly more than there were 10 years ago. That said I think there needs to be a hell of a lot more.

Here's to the successful brewing of People's Amber at Coalition Brewery. It should never be the color of a person's skin that is important but the quality of the beer.

Playing with recipe tools online.

I think I like Promash better but Beertools works for when
I'm just messing around on the computer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
CD 2.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

General
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  Category: Specialty Beer
               Subcategory: Specialty Beer
               Recipe Type: All Grain
                Batch Size: 5 gal.
             Volume Boiled: 6 gal.
           Mash Efficiency: 72 %
       Total Grain/Extract: 14.36 lbs.
                Total Hops: 2.75 oz.
     Calories (12 fl. oz.): 285.9
          

Ingredients
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
       5.99 lbs. Golden Promise Pale
       5.94 lbs. Pale Ale Malt
       0.34 lbs. 2-Row Chocolate Malt
       0.14 lbs. De-Bittered Black Malt (Mout Roost 1400)
       1.95 lbs. Caramel Malt 120L
       1 oz. Centennial boiled 60 minutes.
       0.75 oz. Simcoe boiled 45 minutes.
       0.5 oz. Cascade boiled 30 minutes.
       0.5 oz. Cascade boiled 10 minutes.
          Yeast: WYeast 1272 American Ale II

Notes: 4oz Oak chips in secondary for 2 weeks, No plans to dry hop.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

BW Beer in Secondary

This morning I racked the BW into a the secondary. I kept putting if off because the krausen hadn't fallen away. It was like this burger of yeast, a layer on the top and bottom and the relatively clear beer in between. I figured a little time in secondary, then a crash cool, then bottled. I tasted it. It was still a little thin but it tasted light and refreshing and the hop flavor was pretty mild, which is a good thing for such a light beer.

Racking 3B to secondary

Today the weather is making me feel tired and productive at the same time. I'm tired in body but my mind is working overtime. I woke up with the goal of getting some writing done. Writing in general not necessarily on my dissertation, but on a few different things like this blog post for example. The posting is important because Barnaby is out of the country and I'd at least like to keep him abreast of the Buckwheat happenings.

I let it go a little longer in primary than I had initially planned, mostly because what I'd read of buckwheat beer and dry yeast is that it tended to be slow to get going and slow to ferment. So a few extra days in primary isn't a bad thing. I'm going to move it to a 3 gallon carboy to do a bit more bulk aging and then then crash cool it and bottle.

I have forty five more minutes of writing to do today and then I'm going to head home and get some cleaning done and read and move some files to my little laptop from my external hard drive, wash out carboys and jugs and stoppers and airlocks and get them ready to fill with beer tomorrow after I come back from my two hours of writing at the library. I will get into a routine. I will finish what I started 7 years ago and I will get a beer brewed in the coming weeks.

I'm on the RADIO!!!

So a few weeks ago while working a gig with extrasonly on the set for Leverage I met this guy. This sounds do "blah!" but what happened was that I had taken out my book Designing Great Beers and my knitting and then got up to go talk to the makeup artist to make sure I looked ok. I came back and this guy in the seat next to me asks if that book belonged to me. I said yes, and then he asked if I brewed, again I said yes. If you've spent any time talking to me, you know that I will talk for hours about beer.

Well it turns out he has a radio show on beer. It's an internet radio show and usually they interview folks in the profession but they've wanted to do a show with homebrewers. I believe it was fate, or at least good fortune. After a few weeks of getting our schedules to mesh we came up with a day. I bottled up some of the IPA and toddled on downtown.

I was really nervous and friends who've heard the show remark that I sound more reserve than they are used to but that I do sound like that in real life. I thought my voice sounded weird but that's just me.

I think 32 will be a lucky number for me, that's the episode for BrewHappy I'm in.

Colour on the Vine!

I meant to put this picture up after I got back from the vineyard in Wilsonville but I completely forgot in my exhaustion. We'd spent two days covering all the plants with netting so the birds and deer can't get to them. Both early days but not terribly long days but all the bending and squatting (thank goodness for knee pads!) and a few moments of crawling really left me hurting. I think I came home and went to bed pretty early both days. This vineyard has color gathering, and the one in Alsea didn't. I wonder what that means for production overall?

3B recipe

3.8# Malted Buckwheat
1.5# corn sugar
1# rice solids extract
1.5# Buckwheat honey
2oz Hallertaur @ 45
10z Willamette @ 10
1oz Styrian Goldings @ 30
.2 oz Amylase enzyme added to mash at 148 degrees for 1 hour.
Nottingham dry yeast

Mash in at 110, protein rest for 30 min, 1.5 gallons
Raised temp to 150 held temp between 140-149 with the added amylase for 1.5 hours.

OG 1.041/ 4 gallons

I ended up with a much lower gravity than expected and not a full 5 gallons, so we decided to not add more water and leave it at 4 gallons. I may decide to add more rice extract dissolved in a little water to see if i can get the yeast ferment further when I move it to the secondary.

Krausen!!!

Well the panic has been thwarted! I was worried yesterday when I didn't see more activity. Apparently the little beasties have gotten over their shock of being moved from a small glass container or warm water to a gigantic container of food. I might have to do a bit of feeding this batch with some honey and water in a week. I'm going to be doing some reading up on adding body to gluten-free beers that are not lagers.

This little baby is sitting in the laundry room where it stays in the mid 60s. I think at the tail end of the fermentation I'm going to crash cool it in the fridge for a few days and try to get as much yeast to fall out as possible. I think I might also do a secondary aging for a few weeks to a month or so depending on how it tastes.

Cool down in record Time!

This deserves its very own post. I did not check the weather before I started brewing today. Imagine how not happy I was to realize that we were going to be in the 90+ weather and I was going to have to cool the wort down to under 80 quickly.

I had that chiller prepped and running and sanitizer before I brought the pot out. I dunked it in and then ran in the house and started to rehydrate the dry yeast. I was desperately hoping that I could get it down to under 80 in like 20-25 minutes. I guess the brew goddess was with me today because I got it to 78 in like 20 minutes, which was better than I hoped for. I had to do this in the yard close to bushes because that is where the shade was at 3pm.

Brought it in the house and poured it into the carboy with the waiting 1.5 gallons of cold water. It seemed to take longer because I had to clear the funnel screen of all the irish moss that clogged it. Barnaby had come over to see how things were going and get a taste of the wort and he said it was a little thin. That's what we were afraid of...well that and a super low gravity. If necessary I can add some water and honey later to during the fermentation process but right now I'm not terribly concerned. We ended up with about 4 gallons of wort and a gravity of 1.041.

With this information I can tweak the next batch of buckwheat and not make it gluten free, but I think I'll look online and see if there are other ingredients we can add to it to build body. This would explain why GF free beers are lagers, they tend to the thin side in comparison to ales in my opinion.

The Mashout and the Boil

Oh so heavy! I really need to think about rigging something to hold the grains suspended over the pot so I don't physically have to do it. My delts got quite the workout. On the right is the bag of BW in a strainer over a pot to drain. On the left is the wort on the verge of boiling. I decided to only do 45 minute boil because I wasn't looking to have a lot of hop flavor just enough. Not to mention that I was using really low Alpha hops, aroma hops to be specific. I'm sure there's a reason that you don't use aroma for bittering, besides the obvious.

This went relatively well, especially because this time I put the hops in a bag and not let them run willynilly all through the pot, like grade schoolers. I was always a firm believer that children should be confined, and now I think the same should go for leaf hops. Once I got the boil going on I could do the extract additions whenever I wanted, except for the honey I added that at the 10 minute mark.

The Mash

Ok so now we've moved into the official letting it sit for 45 minutes until conversion. I added the enzymes and soon will be heating up the sparge water and then it's off to a boil and extract additions. This GF is done without any sorghum extract, which I believe is somewhat unusual.

Barnaby wants a low alcohol, lightly hopped, fairly dry beer. I'm hoping I can make that happen. I took a reading of the decoction and I had 0 brix. I had a 0 brix in the mash. Now I'm about 30 minutes into it after adding the amylase at under 150 degrees and I took a reading and I got a brix of 5. A significant jump which tells me that there is conversion happening. I don't expect the efficiency to be high on this at all.

The picture to the right is a sample I took. It would be awesome if the end resulting color was that but I think it might end up a little darker. To the right is the decoction. I think it went ok. It definitely raised my temperature and I was mashing at temps between 140-149 because I was adding amylase enzymes.

BW Brew Day!

So today I woke up at 845am and knew in my bones that I just had to brew today. I've put it off and put it off for about a week. I know the reason. I haven't wanted to undertake a task as big as partial-mashing because not only am I PMing I'm also doing so with BW, an ingredient I have never worked with. My notorious procrastination tool is to read, read, read about a subject in the hopes of circumventing any problems that come my way.

As you can see I'm using that nifty partial mash technique I found on HBT where I mash in the pot on the stove and use the mesh bag to teabag the grains (though technically BW isn't a grain it's a fruit).

My various pots on the stove. The really large one in the back is the brew kettle but I'm mashing in this smaller one. I'm really hoping I get some fermentable sugars from the BW and not just a nice dark color.

BW didn't take as long as I expected

Other than it being 90 degrees outside the roasting didn't take as long as I thought, only close to 4 hours total. I didn't need to have them in as long as I expected. I'm not sure if that is because they were wet or because the oven was a convection oven.

To the right is cooked BW and the left is the raw laid out on a cookie sheet. Cooked it tasted nutty, and reminded me a little of caramel malt. I toasted the second batch lighter than the first to hopefully give it some balance. The plan is too do a test batch of 5 gallons this week.

This is after the first hour! I was really surprised at how brown they were getting in what I thought was amount of time. I took them out and moved them around to get the more cooked ones into the middle and the less cooked out towards the side. It looks like the top rack is less than stellar place to be in the oven so I put the more done looking tray on that one when I put the BW back in for it's next stage. I upped the temp to about 225 and set the timer for 30 minutes. It smells really nutty here in the kitchen. The pungent sprouty smell is almost gone and now it smells almost meaty and nutty in here. There's no way I could have just set these in the oven and walked away until the timer went off. I believe there will be a small window between well roasted and done and completely fucked. I'm hoping to not sail through the window headfirst and fall screaming to my death.

So my friend comes by after walking the dog and walks in and the first words out of her mouth are, "God, that smells awful!" I kind of laughed. After the sprouty smell I think it smells fine. I'm tempted to taste a few when they come out.

During the course of this post I've made a temp adjustment to 250 and put the clock back to 30 minutes. It's roasting out nicely. Some are truly getting charred and toasty (the smaller ones) and others are in the mid range.

Sprouts are finding their way to the oven

Today was a good morning to do the BW. It's cool outside so I can have the kitchen door open and
nice breeze is blowing in. The whole place smells like bean sprouts, it's going to get pretty cloying really quick I have a feeling.

Ok so back to the roasting. I decided not to do the roasting at the house I"m living in,even though it's only 2 doors away, because I didn't want to carry cookie sheets of sprouts, and I realized after I'd filled the fourth cookie sheet and hadn't even gotten the rest out of the bowl that this was going to be more involved than planned. It would be better to take up more space in the house I started the project in than try and move everything and realize what I need is back at the first place. So I had to make sure that my notes said where I was doing this, so that I didn't try to duplicate the process. Barnaby and Olga of Teutonic Wines have a convection oven so I'm hoping I can get at least 2 racks at a time done in there and cut down on needing to be at this all damn day. Thankfully, they're both out and about today so I'm not in anyone's way.

I read that you could roast BW wet or dry so that solved the problem of waiting to long to roast. I worried that the little sprouts would get too long and the BW would lose viability. It seems like they've doubled in length overnight. I was pleasantly surprised when I came in and saw them. this picture doesn't really do them justice, I just wanted to show them on the cookie sheets.

I preheated the oven to 300 degrees on regular bake for a half hour, per instructions from the owner of said tempermental oven, and then dropped the temp down to 200 and switched it to convection. There was room in the oven for three cookie sheets evenly spaced so I put them all in. I'll keep checking and if needed I can take one out and rearrange so there's more even heat distribution. It'll bake for 1 hour at 200 and then you bring up the temp 25 degrees at a time for 30 minute intervals until you reach the color you want.

I'm resisting the urge to check on it constantly since I know that drops the temperature and causes longer cooking time. There's still at least another 2.5# to roast today.

Success!

It was touch and go for awhile but I woke to this. The buckwheat, from here on out to be known as BW, had started sprouting little rootlets. Not all, but a good many. I'm planning on talking with a friend who is food science teacher about the process, including what kinds of container would be best so I don't weigh down the seeds.

The next time I do this I'm going to do less than the four pounds I initially dumped into a bowl and I don't have to let them soak for 2 days. Maybe a few hours and then put them in a colander. The rinsing is the key I think because these babies get really slimy and seem to be constantly oozing starch. We've had weather here in Portland that has been over 95 degrees and I was a little concerned that it was a little too hot but the kitchen is pretty comfortable. I had initially put them in Barnaby's wine work area but changed my mind and brought them up because I was worried about mold and bacteria and what those would do to the BW. I'm really sensitive to mold and I always get stuffy and sneezy when I spend to much time in their basement. Besides I was being over-protective as usual and wanted the BW where I could keep a constant eye on it.

The next step is drying and roasting the BW.

Fresh Buckwheat Hell

Buckwheat is a pain in the ass. Right up there with pellet hops.

I had to separate the buckwheat into two colanders because we'd just put too much into the first pan. Those little suckers swelled like fat ticks and now I have two aired containers oozing gelatinous goo. They better spout or I'm going to be really disappointed...and then pissed, moving straight into frustrated anger. I do have a plan for what to do with the remaining 4# in case this attempt is a bust.

I would have taken pictures of the process but I would need someone to hold up the colander so I could get a picture of the greyish goo dripping from the container. I'll have to wake up through the night and check to make sure goo doesn't over flow all over the table.

From Food Matters

How to Sprout Buckwheat: Place 1 1/2 Cups of buckwheat groats into a bowl and cover it with 2- 3 times as much room temperature water. Mix the seeds up so that none are floating on the top. Allow the seeds to soak for about an hour. Drain the water in a colander and let them stand, rinsing 3 times per day with cool water for 2 days. You will notice a gooey substance on the buckwheat, which is starch. Make sure that you wash this off thoroughly. Spouts will form after a day or two.

So because this was my first effort every little thing appears to be the tip of the failure iceberg. After soaking and rinsing the buckwheat in water for two days my friend Barnaby, whose house we're doing all this in, calls me this morning and says it's possible that the buckwheat was already processed and not going to sprout. Both of us were thinking that it was a good thing we picked up amylase enzyme to put in the mash. Before I totally threw in the towel I searched online and found this food website which gave clearer directions than any of the entries written by the brewers that malted. I have to remind myself to write a better entry when I post my recipe.

Nature at its finest

These are chardonney grapes (I think) from Barnaby's backyard vineyard. I took this picture and many more pictures a few weeks ago when I dog-sat for Sophie and Sabrina. I had just visited a couple of days ago and it was amazing how much growth there was in the span of a couple of days. I can't imagine what it will look like when I head over later today.

Today's weather was a nice reminder of the Portland that I love and missed. The cool, overcast and grey days that seem to stretch on for weeks. The days of endless sun just seem to make me pissy and introverted. Of course, it could be the lack of any brewing happening in my life that is making me pretty unhappy. The lack of space to work and money to get some last minute equipment is disheartening. I know it's important to prioritize and basic necessities always trump everything else, but it's really starting to wear on me.

My plan for today is to walk over to the library and drop of some books. Walk around the neighborhood and take some pictures and come back to the house and do a little writing this afternoon, then head over to the neighbors house to socialize.

Writing a resume and looking at 7bbl brewing systems

I feel torn about my life goals (note the plural).

On the one hand I'm determined to finish my dissertation whether or not I really want to continue on as a traditional academic or not. I just feel if I'm in for a penny I might as well be in for the nearly 90, 000, as it currently stands. Don't get me wrong I love teaching, I even like my students for the most part, and I find teaching does in some ways feed parts of my soul...the parts that demand a high fiber, low caloric and no processed sugars diet. Beer and wine making on the other hand are definitely my fats, carbs, juicy fruits and roasted veggies diet. I believe I need both in order to survive and be happy but both in moderation and a few at excess at least twice a month.

So currently I'm sitting at Fuel Cafe writing out a resume to take to the job fair tomorrow morning. I'm also waiting for my friend Levi to have coffee and give him the cabbage I have so he can make Kimchi. Let me first say that the day started out a little sketchy withthe clouds and the coolness and I initially dressed for warm weather but almost changed at the last minute. Glad I maintained my faith that the sun would come out TODAY. I think a hoodie and jeans would have been absolutely miserable for me.

Fire Dancers, Hot Cake House, and Peach Jalapeno Wine

I am sometimes at a loss for words to explain the way that crafting beer and wine make me feel. It's not just a hobby, it's a calling, in the sense that we all have something which turns the light on in there heads and hearts through which we channel feelings and thoughts. If nothing else I've learned that ignoring the demands of tending to my beer has often had detrimental effects on my state of mind. I can always depend on having a clear head after I've worked with my wines or worked on some beer recipe I want to try. When I lived in Minneapolis my kitchen was a closeted rainbow factory, with all my beer and wines in cupboards or under blankets. When I brought them out on bright days the sun shining on them made my kitchen light up and spirit even more so. I think that's what so heartbreaking about not really having a place to live that's my own space is that I feel like my happiness is confined to a dark cupboard but with no chance to come out and shine. It's hard to remain cheerful and even harder to be motivated to create.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I dream. I dreamed last night about a wine made of peaches and jalapenos. I know from experience that if I didn't write it out and try to figure the proportions I would continue to dream about it in some way or another this wine would haunt even my waking hours.

It began with Beer and Boobies night with friends with whom I usually do happy hours with on Fridays. I posted that I was looking for a ride to the festivities and the person who would usually let me tag along with them couldn't, so I had originally planned to just go to the one stripclub and head home after. Then I got an email from a friend that he was going because he didn't have to work and he would be willing to drive and even pick me up.

So the first place we met up at was our standby Union Jacks but it was really slow, even the dancers looked a little bored. After an hour we left and went to Devil's Point because rumor had it there was a fire dancer there...and there was. She was no joke, really impressive.

There is a point to this story, the wine comes in soon I promise.

So at around 11:00pm there was only 3 of us. Well chris called it a night and left but to be honest I was having such a good time talking with my driving buddy that we decided to not call it a night. Instead we went for breakfast at the Hot Cake House on Powell. We must have talked non-stop for over and hour about lots of weird things about the world and ourselves. Well it turns out he doesn't really drink a lot and doesn't really like beer. I know I should have just walked away from such blasphemy but I was seriously intrigued by the notion of not liking beer. He was quick to point out that he liked Framboise, which is a beer. He's a fan of Mike's hard lemonades. He mentioned that he liked the peach margarita, which I do as well and I mentioned that I had once made a jalepeno wine.

I got home around 1:30am and fell asleep a couple hours later. I dreamt about peaches and jalapenos last night and woke up thinking about them. I spent a couple hours looking through my wine forum to get insights on making wines from peppers and fruit together. I imagine something light and a little on the sweet side with a bit of jalapeno undertone and spiciness. I don't want the heat so much, though if it was a darker wine and had the right balance of sweet and tart that might carry the heat a little better than a light wine.

Anyway to make a long story a little longer I mapped out a tentative peach jalapeno recipe and think I'll get started on that sometime this fall.

Summer Gose Way Too Fast

Monday in mid-July has snuck up on me and I haven't even tasted a 1/4 of the beers I've wanted too. Sadly, during the hottest days of the summer I've experienced here in the last few years I was not drinking beer, mostly water to stay hydrated. Today the weather is overcast with decent unexpected sun breaks to remind us that it is still summer, but a whole lot cooler than last week.

I'm sitting in my favorite pub and in keeping with my usual luck the first beer I toss out to my favorite server, is out. She just hadn't had a chance to cross it off the beer list, the Ninkasi Radiant which is their summer ale. I've never been disappointed with Ninkasi and their Total Domination IPA is a crowd-pleasing standby I like to keep around the house. So no, Ninkasi for me today. Instead I pick the Cascade Gose. I needed a brief reminder on the description of the beer style. My mind remembered it was a wheat beer but the odd flavor characteristics I wasn't sure of. What stands out is the salty aftertaste. At first I thought it was just a bad food choice, because of my bad habit of choosing foods that don't sit well with the beers I am drinking. Today's choices were mac and cheese and plain chicken wings. I'm in a bland mood today.

I wanted salt in my mac and cheese not my beer but after a few sips of beer and bites of pasta I'm enjoying the beer more. The Gose is a beautiful golden color, cloudy (it's a wheat beer after all) with hardly any head, though there are constant streams of bubbles I can see. I can taste the sharpness of the coriander in the back of my mouth, and the saltiness is a little over powering. If I was eating some thing that didn't actually need salt, I don't think I would like this beer, but because most of the food I'm eating is in desperate need of salt I'm ok with this. This beer actually makes the cheese taste creamier. It's not a favorite. I think I would need to be considerably more desperate from the heat and activity on a summer's day to order this again. I can see it's appeal as a refreshing beer and one that many would find tasty. Just not me and not today.

It's off my beer bucket list so I feel proud of myself with that one. Nice spur to get me thinking about my next brew day though. The plan is to make the braggot this month and the brown ale next month and somewhere in there get a couple gallons of apfelwein made and maybe one made from a seasonal fruit.

Taste of Bliss

I have to pat myself on the back for this one. I finally got the beer cooled down enough to pour a glass. The last few days have been super hot and I have to admit I was hoping that the beer would be slightly less than stellar so I wouldn't have to share it. Unfortunately, this beer was as much a winner as the first one, so I guess I'll have to give it up.

The high points of this beer is the how the hop favor comes through. Initial taste has some hoppiness but the overall sweetness of the malt and caramel taste are really more forward. Midway through is when the hops come in and it's definitely a "WOW" I can taste them. What I like about this is that the hop flavor lingers long after you've swallowed and it's not the bitter aftertaste though there is quite a lot of bitterness. Aroma is the other aspect of this beer that I like. The aroma lasts throughout most of the drinking and becomes more fragrant as the beer gets warmer. Flaws for this beer is that it's really cloudy w lots of yeast in suspension. I'm hoping that as it ages it will clear up, because that is what happened with the amber. I think there's more flaws but I don't know what they are. I'll have to have someone with more experience tasting beers give me their opinion.

My recipe for braggot is on hold until next month but I like the recipe I have for it.

With everything going on in this world: The execution of an unarmed black man and the officer getting off with a measly manslaughter charge in LA. It seems silly to be focused on beer, but honestly, the other doesn't surprise me. The unfairness and cruelty acted on people of color by whites in power doesn't surprise me. That's just another day in the life. But something I can effect, my beer, well that keeps me sane.

Wedded Bliss 2010 IPA

I just popped the IPA that I had carbonating for two weeks into the fridge to get cold. I did a quick test to see how it would pour and it had a nice bit of foam which makes me think that I was successful in carbonating it the old-fashioned way. I need a new hose faucet, especially when I have more than one keg that's filled. Soon I'll have two kegs occupied.

I think I'm going to try using kegs for long term storage instead of carboy secondaries. They block out light, I fill it with CO2 to push out the air and fill it and then top it off with CO2 and that keeps it from oxidizing. They don't break. They're smaller and easier to store. All of these are good reasons for using kegs for my long term beer and braggot storage and aging.

I'm expecting my new burner in the next couple of days, so I can start the braggot when the weather cools down. At least I'll have that going and in a keg and out of my way until the fall. I do want another beer on tap for drinking after this Amber that's in the keg is gone. The keg is feeling pretty light, so it should be soon.

Suddenly everything just spiraled out of control

The last two weeks have been filled with activities and news. I'll briefly mention the big one hitting the homebrewing community of Oregon and that is the reinterpretation of the ORS 471.403, which states:

"No person shall brew, ferment, distill, blend or rectify any alcoholic liquor unless licensed so to do by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. However, the Liquor Control Act does not apply to the making or keeping of naturally fermented wines and fruit juices or beer in the home, for home consumption and not for sale.”

This has ultimately meant that the homebrew and wine-making competitions have been cancelled because OLCC has interpreted that judges are considered "public" and removing alcohol from the home is illegal. Needless to say this has caused a flurry of worried emails, calls for civil disobedience, push to write our state representatives to put forward a new law to amend the current and, suggestions for circumventing the current law until a solution is reached. In the meantime brew clubs have said that members cannot bring their homebrew to meetings. All competitions have been canceled for the foreseeable future.

Personally, I think that this whole thing came down because someone kept asking the OLCC what if questions until finally the OLCC had to come down with a definitive answer, after 30 years. Just me speculating, not substantiated in any way. What has been really funny is reading the string of emails from the two camps: the let's make change in a way that works with the system, write your rep, be proactive in working with our government; and the camp that tosses out ideas to hold underground competitions, who to complain or blame, devising ways to have judging that involves way more effort than is reasonable to expect of anyone.

I'm hopeful that the next year will resolve this in time for me to be able to submit to competitions next year.

Racking the IPA to the keg

I'm right on schedule. I'm racking the IPA off of the oak and into the keg. The environment is not ideal, but hopefully for this it shouldn't take too much time and the risk of beer coming into contact will be minimal. Currently I'm waiting for my priming sugar to cool down enough to add to the keg.

3pm- I just finished racking the beer into the keg with the priming sugar. I took a final reading and came out to a FG of around 1.009 which gives me a final ABV of around 6%.

I gave it a little taste and smell and I have to say that I am impressed. It has a noticable hop aroma even uncarbed. I could taste the hoppiness. I believe I might be totally in love with this beer. We'll see how it tastes in a few weeks.

WIPA update

This is WIPA with the blow-off attached a few days ago before I racked into a secondary onto oak chips for a week. I'll be racking it into a keg to carbonate with priming sugar on Thursday. It should give me a good two weeks of carbonation time and ready just in time for the reception. I'm only oaking the IPA for a week instead of the longer time suggested because I wasn't sure what kind of flavor it would give. I'm going to bottle a few for aging a couple months.

Dead Bunny Braggot revisted

This was my very first attempt at a braggot. What could go wrong did. Mostly in part to my lack of brewing experience and knowing that hop utilization was dependent on heat. That mess there was when I put the hops in with the wort and the yeast and hoped for the best. This was a batch that fermented out at 10% abv and then I added champagne yeast to see about getting the abv up just a little higher, because better judgement seems to fly out the window when experimentation with alcoholic beverage comes into play. I managed to get 18 bottles out of the 2 gallons. I also learned a very important lesson about priming sugar...boil it. For some reason that little bit of information slipped my mind. Do you know what happens when you just dump priming sugar into a bottling bucket, add braggot, then bottle.

Nothing.

I never gave any of these away because after a month I opened a bottle and surprise surprise, no carbonation. I had a perfectly still braggot, which is no big deal because they can be still. It wasn't the stillness that was a problem, it was the fact that it had so much alcohol my mouth burned. Thankfully, there was enough residual sweetness to make that bearable. I drank the whole bottle and was pretty well feeling the same intoxication level I would feel had I drank 4 beers.

Why this trip down memory lane? Well I was flipping through my recipe book and thinking I would like to try this again with a little more experience under my belt.

My original recipe:

3.3# Wheat Malt
3# Honey
1oz Cascade
1tsp Acid Blend
2tsp yeast nutrient
London Ale yeast

This new recipe will be a little less aggressive on the wanting to have a high alcohol. I'm not even shooting for 6% I'll be happy to have a session level alcohol, with nice flavor and drinkability.

I'm thinking something like this:
4 lbs. Wheat Liquid
1 lbs. Oats Flaked
6 lbs. Honey
1 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
1 oz. Willamette (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 30 minutes.
.5 oz. Willamette (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
2 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) (not included in calculations)
Yeast: WYeast 1028 London Ale

The AA% is a general estimation from the recipe program I use. This one would be a 5 gallon batch. I'm posting my recipe on a homebrew site for some advice from more experienced mead makers.

Beer-Mom Moment

So my widdle Wedding IPA is was tucked away in the back of the laundry room and at first I had a regular s-lock on it. I wasn't expecting it to burst into a really active fermentation but as the night wore on I realized there was only a few inches from the bottom of the neck of the carboy to the beer. My first batch was only about 4.5 gallons so there was more room for a krausen to form, but on this batch I was well over 5 gallons. I really need to invest in some 1 gallon jugs for overflow.

Wednesday evening was spent cleaning and pondering what I should do about the airlock system. Just as a precaution I rigged up some large tubing to a regular bubbler airlock and put it aside. My sleep was a series of regularly timed (every hour) bolts out of bed to check on the WIPA. Finally, around 2am I broke down and mixed up sanitizing solution and replaced the S-lock with this lovely contraption you see here. I know that if I hadn't I would have been looking at a huge mess and considering how closely packed the laundry room is, cleaning up sticky wort would have been an impossible task.

I've changed out the sanitizer because it starts to look gross and sadly I know that it is lost beer. I'm confident that it should ferment out in 7-9 days though I might let it go for a full 10. I plan on dry hopping it for 2 weeks and and oaking it for about a week. The recipe calls for oak, which completely blew me away. I didn't know that IPA's could be oaked. I had to decide on boiling the extra 1oz of Willamette I had in the fridge or dry hopping it. I went for dry hopping because I definitely wanted something that when it poured it would waft up and over your nose.

Brewing with Love

Today was the day I brewed the IPA for my step-daughter's upcoming wedding. Though they cannot have alcohol at the actual wedding and reception because it is in a state park, they will be drinking it at the after the wedding party we plan on having at her mother's house. The original plan was to brew 3 beers but instead I'm only going to brew 2.

Brewing is not just about the mechanics of it all but about the connection between what is going on with us as people and how that effects what we cook. I am reminded of that saying that "something is made with love." The idea that what we are thinking and feeling infuses what we are making. Though I do not cook for pleasure, I do believe that my mood effects what I make when it comes to beer and wine. For example, after the break up of my last relationship I made a mead. I knew I wasn't going to be drinking it for at least a year...I named it Dissolution. I'm hoping that a year will be enough heal time so that by the time I do open it, it will not taste of the bitterness and pain that went into making it.

These latest beers were made with love and enthusiasm. I listen to happy music, I chat with my cat and there were a few moments in the kitchen where I busted a move or two. Even though I felt slightly apprehensive about how these batches would turn out I still went in with good feelings. The beer I started today is for the wedding of my ex-partner's daughter. I wanted to make them something that was unique but would be something they could share with everyone. I am also short on funds but long on spare time, so all of these factors make for a thoughtful and practical gift. Granted choosing a hoppier beer in no way is a reflection on my own personal feelings about marriage as an institution that reinscribes oppressive patriarchal patterns of dominance. I'm going to make a another batch which is more malty with subtle hop flavor and strong aroma.

But back to the love. I know that great globs of happy feelings were rolling about in the boil. I was listening to "Falling in Love at a Coffee shop" by Landon Pigg and I think the beer was definitely infused with that whimsy of love at first sight.

Mother's Little Helper Amber Ale

Update: With a little over 4 finished gallons in a keg in the basement fridge I was worried that my beer only tasted good to me. You know that idea that ugly children are beautiful only to their mother kind of thing. So I'd hesitantly been giving out bottles of beer to friends to try and so far it's been a hit. I believe one person actually said they'd buy it. That made me feel really good about my first attempt at AG brewing. I took a good look at it last night and it has a really nice deep amber color to it. It wasn't as clear as I would have liked it to be. It doesn't have good head retention but that is probably due to my carbonation process. One person noted the distinct floral aroma after she'd poured it and that it was a nice balance of sweet and hoppy.

I'm going to be back to partial mash or extract brewing for a while until I can get my hands on better equipment. The next beer will be an IPA.

Monday in a Vinyard

Right now, the weather is dreary, my eyes hurt like hell and my whole body feels sore. I'm sitting my classroom, waiting while my students take their final exams and wondering what I'm going to do with the rest of life. Originally the plan was to play World of Warcraft while they are taking the exam but I forgot that Tuesdays are generally the day when they upgradeso all the realms are down all morning. That put quite a crimp in my otherwise smooth plans for the morning.

The alternative is now to quietly write whatever comes to mind while my eyes burn under the flourescent lights. They burn for a good reason. Sunburn. Well that wasn't the good part of the reason. The good part is that they burned because I was outside all day helping my neighbor prune is vineyard. I'd never done anything like that before. Most of my experience winemaking as you know involved science experiments in 2 gallon buckets in my kitchen in Minneapolis or opening large kit wine containers for large batches. It never involved the actual grape itself, unless you count the time I used grapes from target to make wine that was barely tolerable.

Back to a lovely Monday spent toiling in a vineyard pulling vines. It was back-breaking work and not just because I am out of shape. I think the work would have made anyone hurt after a while. The wonderful part of the day was the shared conversations and listening to Barnaby talk about grapes. In the humid heat we discussed the what possibilities may lie in men's studies, not the assumption that it is reasserting men as the center but really looking at how society constructs masculinity from the perspective that it disadvantages them because the archetype of masculinity is one that is unattainable. We talked about how to raise or talk to the men in our lives in ways that bring them to an understanding of how they both collude and are harmed by the oppression that women face. It was day of light and weighty issues, the humming of bees provided a soundtrack that cannot be duplicated and honestly I don't think could ever be shared with others in way that the impact could be felt. I think the vines took it all in and who knows what they think of all of the mundane humanity they were privy too.

We started around 930am and finished around 630pm. By the time I got home my legs were cramping and my lower back was screaming for a hot shower and some chocolate cake. OK possibly only my stomach was screaming for cake, but the hot shower my whole body could agree on. Sleep didn't come easy for me, I was thinking about what I should be doing with y life and how it was all going to work itself out eventually but possibley not in the way I wanted it too because I wasn't working at anything just letting the world work around me. What did I want to do in this life before I leave it. What contributions can I make that leave a lasting mark. My teaching I suppose, even though it doesn't make me as happy as the hobbies in my life do. I pondered how I could link my loves together and still be able to do the things I need and want to do. If money were no object this would be a no-brainer, but it is and so I must use my brain to figure out a solution.

Barnaby and I tossed about ideas for building my beer label, getting my beer out to the masses but staying small and contained. I don't know the first thing about running a business or about financing an endeavor or about the kinds of equipment I would need to make large batches of beer. I guess I would be happy to be able to supply a few local bars with my beer on an as needed basis. All of these ideas and many more blanket his vineyard, like the pruned vines we left on the ground.

First All-Grain Batch

Saturday I did my first batch of All-grain.

I woke excited at 6am, ready to face the long day. I had planned on starting to brew at noon, which turned out to bea good decision because while getting dressed I remembered that I didn't have any Irish Moss or a thermometer. Mind you I had just made a Steinbart's run on Friday, but I still forgot those 2 things. So after getting dressed I hopped on the bus and headed out to get them. The store didn't open until 9am which gave me plenty of time.

My plan was to start brewing at noon. I got everything setup and ready and was lighting the burning at 11:55am. Right on schedule. The setup was a little heavy but manageable I just had to arrange everything so that I wasn't doing a lot of unnecessary lifting and carrying. I had to plan how I was going to get the hot liquor to the brew kettle in a short amount of time.

My friend Allan came by to just as I was getting ready to mash in. I unfortunately didn't hit my strike temperature and i ended up mashing in at 150 instead of 155. It may not make that much of a difference but I'm not sure.

Excited!

So not enthused about the whole Valentine's Day thing but love knowing that in 5 days I'll be racking the finished beer into bottles when our AG class meets again. I wish I had some of my own to share but I'm confident that soon I will able too.

My pictures are ready I just have to go and pick them up.

Monday After

A long brewing weekend is over and I'm finally in a space to take the time to mull it over. I have done more in the 2 days with brewing than I have in 4 months. I miss my equipment. Now begins the search for cheap burners and fixtures for my keggle. I took plenty of pictures which hopefully will be up on the site by next weekend. I had to do it the old-fashioned way and use a disposable camera. I considered using my cell but sometimes the pictures come out smaller than I like, in order to see details of some equipment.

Currently, I am sitting at the Concordia Ale House drinking the Caldera Pilot Rock Porter by Caldera Brewing. It is the perfect first drink of the day for me. Some times it is a hit or miss, but this porter is not too heavy, has a good body and I don't have this urge to just keep drinking it, it's a good sipping beer. Goes good with the chili I'm eating.

Moving towards AG brewing

Just registered for an All-Grain brewing class. I'm really excited about it. It made sense to check out what great minds are already out there doing instead of trying to muddle through it myself. I
had gone to the meeting for the Oregon Brew Crew on January 14th. I was astonished by the turn out. There had to have been at least 50 people there, maybe even more. It was a potluck, with the theme of comfort food and not prepared to do anything but shyly sit in a corner some place, I was too nervous to eat or drink the homebrew going around.

I know I must have looked like a deer in headlights and I appreciated the gesture made by this really nice guy named Craig who was the first person to come up and speak to me. If that was an indication of the level of friendliness I could expect I was off to a better start than anything I had witnessed in Minneapolis. People were cacrrying around cupware and bottles and everyone was urged to try a little of this, while the brewer would proudly regale you stories of its origins, the mishaps and triumphs as well as the ingredients. That is what I love most about this culture of homebrewing, every beer has a story and even if some sound similar you can always see the ways that their differences make them unique to the creator...kind of like kids...only waaaay better than children.

I met another first-timer, a chiropractor by the name of Ryan, who was wanting to get back into brewing. Not knowing anyone there we kin of glommed onto each other. I believe we shared more than just our experiences with beer, we ended up talking about his teaching and mine and why he moved out here and I moved back. I probably shared more with a stranger that night than I had with any other at any time. If I thought that among 50+ people I could disappear I was wrong.

They had a portion of the meeting where they take the sign-in sheet and asked that new members come on up to the front and introduce themselves. Yeah, not fun because I stand out enough, I don't need to be pointed out in a crowd. At the end of the meeting I was stopped by another man, whose son lived in Minneapolis.

Highlights: The first person to greet me was Julie, who it turns out handles volunteering for the spring beer and wine fest. She also does AG and likes to do as much of the work herself as she can even though she has problem with her hands. I was not the only person of color there, which was awesome. I was certainly not one of a handful of women either. Though of course men outnumbered the women, the number of women I did see was significant, out of 50 I'd say that there were at least 15 to 20 women. These are good signs for me.

Announcement

I know it's a long way off but I figured if I didn't put it on my blog now and then delete it from my inbox it might get lost in the next few months.


April 2 & 3, 2010
Friday & Saturday from 12:00 noon till 11:00pm
$5.00 admission
Volunteers wanted

Oregon Convention Center
777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd.
Portland, Oregon

• Hop aboard the Tour de Cheese
• Mingle with artisan brewers, vintners, distillers & cheese makers
• Nibble on tasty gourmet delights
• Get schooled at the Chefs Stage - and eat your homework
• Groove to tunes from hot NW bands

While you're sipping on fine craft beer, wine, spirits and cocktails, do a little shopping! Our arts and craft vendors and exhibitors offer unique treasures and interesting items. Or chill out in the attached heated outdoor smoker's tent, a comfortable lounge area offering additional beer selections and a cigar vendor purveying fine tobacco items. And don't forget: Admission is free the first two hours each day.

The Spring Beer & Wine Fest may be about education, but school has never been this much fun!
http://www.springbeerfest.com

I moved!

I hadn't realized the lull between posts had been months. Months of not brewing or wine making and I though I noticed it, I don't think it registered how much I miss the process of preparing a recipe, gathering my ingredients and actually doing the work.

I just moved back to Portland, Oregon in order to finish my dissertation and have the space to really brew more seriously. I'm going to be a little space challenged so I'm looking into using the basement space of a friend. Both he and his wife are big beer drinkers and he's pretty handy with the building of things so I figure between the three of us we have a good team of drinkers and makers.