Though I've been brewing I haven't been blogging.

I'd like to see that change in the upcoming weeks but I think that will depend on whether or not I find a job and can cultivate a bit more stability in my life. While I'm figuring out whether or not the goal I'd been working toward for the last eight years is one I really want or if it's time to focus on my passion I thought I'd post a few of my better recipes.

This is by far my favorite beer. I made this one for Coalition Brewery's Coalator Program. Not too hoppy, color was spot on with a rosy red hue. The only critique given was about the carbonation level, which I agree does effect how the flavors sit on the tongue.

People's Amber

14# Pale malt (2 row)
2# crystal 60
2# crystal 75
1# flaked wheat

1/2 tsp gypsum

1.82oz Centennial (10.5% aa) @60
1.25oz Mt. Hood (5.9% aa) @30
1oz Willamette (5.2% aa) @ 10

wyeast 1332

OG range 1.052-1.054

I had a lot of leftover grains and I wanted to use them before they got old. I kind of threw together this one and used some dry yeast I had sitting around. I was really pleased with how well this beer turned out. I'll probably make something similar for the Collaborator competition, but using all grains instead of extract.

Pant(r)y Sweeper

3.5oz CaraAroma
3.5oz Belgium Debittered Black
2oz Extra Dark Crystal
4oz flaked wheat
14.6oz Light DME
4# LME
1.6oz Malto dextrin

.5oz Centennial (10.6%aa) @fwh
1oz Cascade (6.1% aa) @ 60
.6 oz cascade @30
.4oz cascade @10

safale us-05

OG 1.061

Zwickelmania. Finally some down time.

February 19th marked my attendance at my first ever Zwickelmania. For folks who don't know what that is, in a nutshell it's the most important beer holiday in February. When all breweries are open and giving tours and tastings of their wares in all the land. It's pretty amazing actually. Here in Portland, where if you throw a rock you'll hit a brewery/brewpub/homebrewer there is no shortage of places to visit. The hardest decision my fellow homebrewer Joe and I had to make was where we wanted to go and whether or not we could hit over 5 breweries in one day if we weren't driving. We meticulously mapped out our route and come 1030am on Saturday we were in front of Breakside, patiently waiting for them to let us in and dazzle us with their creations.

I have to say that my initial visit to Breakside in January wasn't great. I wasn't terribly impressed with their selections and I thought that their concoctions were a little to out there and at times seemed like they hit you over the head with the flavors rather than take the subtle route. I was more interested in their 3 barrel system more than their beer, but at Zwickelmania they blew me away with their imperial brown poured through a randall filled with cherries and vanilla beans. They also had a gruit on tap that I made me want to go right out and try making that for some summer drinking.

Next up Joe and I took the bus to Upright and got there before the crowd hit the place. I tasted everything but the rye beer and the IPA, since I am still in the no hoppy beers part of the year and I just dislike rye. My favorite was the Saison. I could drink that everyday and still find something to love about it.

The rest of the day was pretty much a blur sadly. I don't think I had eaten enough to counter the serious amount of alcohol that I was imbibing. I know we went Widmer, Green Dragon, Beer Mongers and for some reason the Jolly Roger.

I can't wait for next year.

PCTBB

Finally, got around to brewing my entry for the Cheers to Belgium Beers in April. At the dart toss, I got low and light and having never brewed a Belgium before I am a little nervous. Joe offered up his Biere de Garde recipe for me but in my stubborness I decided to go it alone and brew my own recipe.

It is styled as a Belgium Pale and I hope with the fruit and spice addition in the secondary it will end up pretty tasty. Today was also the first time I had a chance to brew with my new kettle. My efficiency was off, a lot lower than I would like. I ended up with an efficiency of 69% but I was shooting for 75%. I manage to have exactly the right amount of water for the mash and the sparge, so no wasting water this time.

I did have Joe helping me today. Thankfully, he takes direction well and curbed his numerous urges to offer "suggestions" when I was brewing. I duct taped the airlock on the carboy and I'm hoping that helps it not blow out when it takes off fermenting.

I was tweet-worthy

@Beervana Jeff Alworth
Just had a righteous amber ale @CoalitionBrewin for their Coalator project. Mashinda Hedgmon was the homebrewer, & it was a perfect session.
7 Jan via web

Jeff Alworth of Beervana tweeted about my beer on Friday. How freakin' cool is that!

I have to say that the moment it was all over on Friday my mind immediately moved to new recipes, upgrading brewing stuff, and working on that chapter of my dissertation on women of color pedagogy. I really need to get that finished and off my back, then I'll feel better about writing that business plan and doing more research on People's Brewing. I've been thinking about writing a grant to see if I can get someone to pay me to do research on them. Unfortunately, I really need to finish up all these other projects before I jump into something new.

The elderberry IPA is coming along nicely. I do like the fact that the closet in the apartment stays really cool, mid 60s, and all my fermentations are taking longer but I think the results will be a better beer. I'm only slightly pressed for time on this one, but I think what I envisioned it to be will be right on. It'll spend a little time on oak and elderberries, before force carbonating. The aroma of elderberries was really prominent in the boil and when I changed to airlock from blow-off. Another 6 days in primary, I hope.

People's Amber Debut

I'm breathing easier today.

My beer was released on Friday, January 7 at Coalition. I was over the moon thrilled with the number of people who came out to try it and it made my heart swell to see that many brought friends with them. When I walked in Ben, the bartender, leaned over the bar to tell me that he had already sold 2 of my beers. The couple at the end of the bar specifically asked for my Amber. I later met them and it turns out they'd seen the announcement that my friend Joe had posted on the Oregon Brew Crew listserve.

I am happy to say that I didn't have to kill the kegs myself, an endeavor which would most certainly have sent my ass to the hospital and being uninsured that would have ended badly. I was blessed to have really supportive and thirsty friends who came out and ordered not only 1 pint but in many cases pitcher after pitcher of my beer. I got the first announcement that we'd blown the first keg at around 6:40pm and to say that I was a little floored would be an understatement. I was hard pressed to not guzzle down my beer and order another, but I was bound and determined not to be drunk that night.

Best intentions. I forget what a little booze and a gush of adrenaline will do to me. Couple that with no solid food in my stomach and I was doomed before I even made it halfway through my first pint. I'm going to go on record and say that I don't even think anyone noticed how drunk I was, and that is a testament to my ability to hold my alcohol and my father's genes. I'd like to think he would have been proud of me, considering he used to take me into bars with him when I was just a baby.

There's a slew of people I want to thank for making Peoples' Amber such a success. I know I won't get them all but my heart remembers you even if my head doesn't.

The women from my 30+ lesbian social group meetup, especially Trina, Kari, Diana, Laura, Nancy, Shi, Tana, Carmen, and the folks I didn't get a chance to meet.

My happy hour cronies, who have given me many happy hours, Sandra (special thanks for inviting your friend Jeff), Mark, Chris, Megan, Lysa, Levi, Sarah, Jen, Krishna, Will, and Elizabeth.

My mom, my sister Qiana, and my good friends Doneena and Sarah R., it was great to have my family there with me. My mother tasted it and said it tastes like beer, well as long as my beer continues to taste like beer I'm going to be pleased about that.

Thank you Joe, my brewing buddy, for sending out an announcement out to the Oregon Brew Crew listserve.

I wish I could say it was a night I'll never forget but honestly around 9:30pm I was so drunk, a lot of the evening became a haze. I do remember Holman's and a bus ride at midnight but after that it's a blur.

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.