Inventions in Time

I am conditioned to pour a giant head on beer. I've ruined (or delayed the enjoyment) of many of Brian's beers by my "distinctive" pour. Carbombs are no fun when they're 90% head before the shot even gets dropped. With extreme patience, I can get a good pour if I tilt just right. But then I get so excited by my great pour, that my next pour turns to shit.

Behold... the anti-Lisa.

I am in the job market at the moment...

I don't know what is more astonishing...that the job of ale taster exists somewhere, that anyone would ever give it up, or that no one else would seem to want it.

Letting Go

I bottled the Caramale tonight. Final gravity is 1.012, which brings the ABV to about 5.9%. It attenuated fast, and I didn't want to leave all the bottling to the weekend if I didn't have to (the Mole Porter is still going...it usually takes a while.) I'm not sure how it's going to turn out...usually, I tend toward beers with strong flavors, and this is a much milder brew. As a result, it doesn't taste like much of anything at the moment. Not bad, just not much there. Hopefully a little more age and carbonation will round it out a bit. I did end up dry hopping with one oz. of Chinook, so the aroma is quite nice at this point. Also, the color is gorgeous.

I poured out a few bottles left over from last year, something I've never done before. It felt pretty wrong, but I knew I wasn't going to drink any more overhopped/overgassed IPA. Plus, I needed the bottles...

It's good to let go sometimes. Life is just too damn short to drink substandard beer.

Weekend Brewing Extravaganza!

Yesterday, I decided to make beer. Twice.

I'll probably regret this when it comes time to bottle*, but I decided to make two batches yesterday. Though this meant being in the kitchen from about 3 in the afternoon to about 10 at night, it was totally worth it for no other reason than I only had to clean up once.

Plus, I got to spend most of the day making/drinking beer.

I figured with Christmas coming up, and the fact that (for once!) M and I aren't flying anywhere this year (I love both our families dearly, but seriously, I was starting to dread Christmas because of the traveling--and that's just not healthy), we should be well-stocked with seasonally appropriate homebrew.

The first batch was the 2005 edition of my nearly famous Mole Porter (recipe included in link). This year's batch is almost identical to last year's except I dropped the jalepeno and didn't split the dried chilies. The beer kept getting spicier as it aged, to the point where I didn't really think it tasted like a "mole" porter as much as "capsacin" porter.

Hopefully these modifcations will result in more nicely balanced beer.

Next up was a beer tentatively named "Christmas Caramale". Inspired by the many holiday offerings of America's great craft breweries, this is a pretty basic, lightly hopped mahogany ale, nothing too fancy, except I spiked the wort with some freshly made caramel (just sugar heated on the stovetop--hard work, but kind of fun). Also, I didn't clean the brew kettle between batches, leaving a tiny bit of the residue from the Mole Porter boil to go into the Caramale. I'm hoping that just the slightest hint of the smoky/chocolate/cinnamon/vanilla/spicy flavors of the porter will seep into the background...we'll see, I guess.

The recipe is as follows:

2 lbs 80L American Crystal
1/4 lb roasted barley
4 lbs plain amber malt extract
fresh caramel made from 2 cups granulated sugar (see below)
1 oz Cascade (4.9% alpha, in boil for 30 min)
1 oz Mt Hood (6.0% alpha, in boil for 20 min)
White Labs English Ale yeast

Grains were steeped for 30 min at 150 F in 2 gallons of water. I made the caramel during this time by putting 2 cups of sugar and maybe half a cup of water into a stainless steel frying pan, and heating it up. The water may have been superfluous (it has to boil away before the sugar can caramelize) but my theory was that it would help get all the sugar heated up at more or less the same rate and lessen the chances of burning it. (I may be completely full of it on this.) The key to this seems to be to keep the sugar moving, use moderate heat, and don't let it clump up. I did this with a pastry scrapper, but be advised that it will get pretty hot. A sturdy metal spatula is probably best. But I didn't have one handy. Anyway, you have to continually "cut" the sugar to keep big hunks of it from forming. Eventually, it will start to brown, and once it gets hot enough, it will liquify. (This took about 15 minutes on medium heat). Be VERY careful with that stuff--if it is in liquid form, it is REALLY hot, and if it gets on your skin, it will immediately harden, burn the living shit out of you, and not come off very easily. (I have a blister to prove it.)

Once the caramel is more or less homogeneous, you want to move it very quickly from the pan to the wort, which should be boiling or close to it by now. As soon as the heat comes off the pan, the caramel will start to harden, so you have to do it fast, and know that you won't get 20-30% out of the pan in time anyway. (I scaled up the amount of sugar to use with this in mind.)

After hop additions as indicated above, the wort was cooled to 75 F, diluted to SG of 1.055 (about 4 gallons total volume) and the yeast was pitched.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Depending on how it smells after the primary, I might add some dry hops for aroma to the secondary.




*I can already hear some of you out there saying "why don't he keg?" The answer is manyfold, but in addition to space considerations (our house is really quite small), I find bottles more convienient in the drinking stage. Much easier to transport and disperse among people. If I ever get to a point where I spend more time brewing than I do drinking, I might look into kegging.

Hefeweizen II Update

First, too hoppy. Should have followed my original plan and kept the hops content lower. So I added about 60% more than origianlly intended. Very tempting when you're probably going to just throw the excess away. Guess I should have trusted that IBU calculator. Too much bitterness for a hefe, at least for me.

Second, not enough ester formation. Nowhere near as much aroma as when I used the White Labs Hefeweizen IV yeast. And a little more meaty, like an American hefe. Not cool. Widmer Bros. is okay, but I'll drink a Paulaner first any day.

So, lesson learned. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But for the good news, my Puerto Rican taste tester seems to be absolutely in love with the stuff. And that's the true litmus test. Whether or not you can get your friends to drink it.

Beer Gas

How dependent on gasoline are we? So much that it's becoming cheaper to buy a gallon of beer instead! As a matter of fact, that might not be a bad idea. It eliminates the need to drive. Unless you need more than a gallon in which case I'd recommend a designated driver. Unfortunately, these guys aren't talking about drinking it (or fortunately if it's extract of horse bladder beer).

How's that for some green chemistry? Of course, it leads me to the question of why they don't reclaim it to put it back in the beer. But without the numbers, I'm thinking that the yield is insubstantial when compared to the batch volume. But when you're making ten metric assloads of mediocre beer, it probably adds up quickly.