Been A Busy Few Weeks

Now that I have my chest freezer out of storage I have been gearing up brewing to try and get my inventory built for competitions. Here is a quick run down of the springs brewing activities.

On April 12^th I brewed an American Rye. The recipe was pretty straight forward with 2-row pale malt making up 47% of the grist, 29% rye malt, and the rest being pale wheat malt. I used a single rest mash at 154° F and batch sparged it. I used Wyeast American Wheat to ferment it. I was surprised how well it fermented without a starter. The beer is quite cloudy and after two months shows no inclination to clear anytime soon. The flavor is great, malty and wheaty with a light spicy character from the rye. It would be a perfect lawn mower beer, if I had a lawn that is. I am quite please with the way it came out and I think I will add it to the regular list.

Then on Big Brew I made what I had been calling my Tax Man Barleywine. I call it that because I use part of my tax refund money to buy the ingredients since it is a big beer. This was also the first recipe that I ever created on my own a few years back. The only problem is that once I looked at the recipe in detail with my more advanced knowledge, I realized it is actually a Russian Imperial Stout. The recipe is solid and I have won medals with it, but I have been calling it the wrong thing. I still have half a case of a 2009 batch that is showing all sorts of wonderful age related character.

The big weekend was on May 29^th where I did two brews in one day. I started with a run at a Munich Helles. It seems a bit dark for the style, so I think I will actually be calling it a Vienna. I could not find my grain bag for steeping grains so I made a tea with the melanoidan malt. I think that is where I ended up with too much color. Next time I will be sure to find the grain bag and do it right. The primary fermentation is now complete for that beer and I have racked it into a corny keg to lager.

The other beer that I did that day was a Gose (rhymes with Rosa), which is a historical style of sour beer and is seasoned with coriander and salt. I have only tasted one commercial example of this beer and it was quite tasty. My version smells quite a bit stronger in terms of coriander and I intend to let it sour as much as I can. I did add a bit of flaked wheat to the extract that I used for this. The idea was to provide the haze that wheat beers traditionally have. I also pitched it with a tube of White Labs Berliner Blend. The yeast seems to have run its course, now the laccto needs to do its work.

The most recent beer I made is a total crap-shoot. I am trying to recreate an obscure German beer called zoiglbier. There is not a ton of information about this beer on the Internet, and I only have a few notes about the one homebrew version that I have tasted. But I decided why not give it a try. If that was not enough I added a few new techniques to the process as well. The first thing that I added was a decoction mash. The guy that made the one I have had insisted that decoction was required to make it correctly. That part actually went pretty well. I did not scortch the decocted portion, it cleared up as it came to a boil so I know the starches had degraded. When I put that back into the main mash it hit the next rest temp perfectly. Overall I was very happy with that portion.

The other new technique was to do a fly sparge over my older batch sparge process. I had recently found an old Home Depot gift card with $32 and change on it and Home Depot sells 10 gallon water coolers for around $35. I had the hardware for the valves and fittings from my old mash tun and someone had given me a sparge arm before I left Kansas City. So I got a nice new hot liquor tank for less than $5. This process was a bit harder to gauge than the decoction. The reason for that is this is a small beer, so the actual amount of the sparge was small because this beer was only boiled for 10 minutes. My recipe notes say 2 minutes, but I just did not have the nerve to go that low. This is the way to go, but I will have to make sure I am doing it right.

The final new trick was to do first wort hopping. Basically instead of adding the hops to the kettle after the boil has started, you add them as soon as the wort starts draining into the kettle. I left them in for the boil, but I will have to check to make sure that was the right thing to do.

None of those reason are why I have my doubts about this batch though. The beer never had a proper hot break, nor did it seem to have much of a cold break. The wort is the color it should be, but the examples I have seen are clear and mine is quite cloudy. Of course it could clear up during the lagering phase. I drained it onto the yeast cake from the Munich Helles batch and it took off and it seems to have fermented out already. I am going to let it go though the diacetyl rest and rack it off, so it can lager while I am in San Diego.

BJCP Exam Study

I am studying to take the BJCP exam again this spring and I thought while I did it would be some easy fill for the old blog. Since all of the questions are readily available, I don't think I am revealing any secret information here.

So what I am going to do is post a question and my response to it. Hopefully the process of creating the post will help the information stick in my brain.

Identify three top-fermenting beer styles where the minimum
original gravity is 1.070 or higher. For each style provide a statement describing the style as well as the differences and similarities between the styles by addressing the following topics:

	Russian Imperial Stout	Imperial IPA	Belgian Tripel
Aroma	Rich & complex, roasted grain & fruity esters, dark fruit, hops are light to quite aggressive	Prominent, intense hop aroma from American &/or English varieties. Dry hopping can give an optional grassy character	Complex with moderate to significant spiciness, moderate fruity esters, low alcohol and fruity esters. Esters often smell like citrus
Appearance	Color ranges from deep reddish brown to jet black. Deep tan to dark brown well formed head	Color ranges from golden to deep reddish copper. May be hazy in unfiltered dry hopped versions, otherwise clear. Off-white head with good retention	Deep yellow to gold, good clarity. Long lasting creamy, rocky head with “Belgian Lace” on glass
Flavor	Rich & complex with roasted grain & fruity esters, dark fruit. Hop flavor and bittering vary	High to absurdly high hop bitterness. Low to medium malt flavor. Long lingering hop bitterness in finish	Marriage of spicy phenols, fruity esters, & soft malt character. Low to moderate hop character. Alcohol is soft often with a sweet flavor
Mouthfeel	Full to very full bodied with velvety texture which can fade with age	smooth, medium-light to medium body. No harsh hop derived astringency. Carbonation can give a dry sensation overall	medium-light to medium body, high alcohol adds a creaminess, but no warming sensation. Always effervescent, never astringent
Ingredients/Background	Brewed in England to export to the Baltic countries, was popular with the Russian Imperial Court	A recent innovation for American Hop Heads looking for ever hoppier beers	Spiciness is derived from the yeast, not ingredients.
Classic	Bell’s Expedition Stout	Russian River Pliney the Elder	Westmalle Tripel
Similarities	Ale, OG >= 1.070	Ale, OG >= 1.070	Ale, OG >= 1.070
Difference	Dark roasted malt	very high hop bitterness	up to 20% sugar to lighten body

Port Townsend Day Trip

I had January 3rd off and decided that it was high time I got out to Port Townsend. I love the Olympics and have gone over there several times, but Port Townsend is a bit out of the way so I have not been going up there.

I caught a ferry out to the Olympic Peninsula and was rewarded with a great view of the mountains. I really enjoy taking the ferries up here. Depending on where you are going they can be a huge time saver. At the very least it is a relaxing bit of time to enjoy the view.


Once on the other side I headed straight for Port Townsend. It is a pretty little town with a waterfront that looks like it came straight out of a Steven King novel, the early part before the horrible evil is loosed upon the Maine countryside. The town also has a quaint little downtown area and all of the storefronts are painted up nice and pretty. Except for the spot where Water Street Brewing used to be. Apparently they were engaged in some sort of rent dispute with their land lords and closed down in June. Sampling the brew there was part of the reason I drove out here on a fine January day.

Another part of the reason I went to Port Townsend was to visit Port Townsend Brewing Company, thankfully they seem to be doing just fine. A little hard to find despite being right off the main drag through town. Their signs don't show very well from the main road and you can drive right past them like I did, twice.



As is my normally habit when I first go to a new brewery I decided to order the sampler. When the bartender asked if I wanted a full sampler, or to pick some out; I did not realize that a full sampler was a dozen. Here are my quick impressions of each of the beers. For those playing the home game, the samples were done left to right across each row.

1. Chets Gold - malty beer lightly hopped with cascades, smooth and clean.


2. Pale Ale - quite a bit of c hops, more like an IPA than a pale with a bitterness that lingers


3. "Reel" Amber - the grapefruity c hops overwhelm the malt.


4. "Bitter end" IPA - good malt flavors support the hops, but the balance it to the hops, Northwest type hopping.


5. "Hop Diggidy" IPA - loaded with cascade hops, intensely bitter, cloudy - probably from dry hopping.


6. Boatyard Bitter - inoffensive


7. Brown Porter - dark roasted malt, smooth, chocolate notes and a touch of astringency.


8. "Peeping Peter" Scotch Ale - Peated malt gives a medicinal phenolic note in the aftertaste. True Scottish Ale get their smoke from the yeast, not the grain.


9. Straight Stout Irish Stout - smooth dark, inoffensive


10. Winter Ale Old Ale - caramel malt dominates with some vanilla and toffee notes.


11. Barleywine - Caramel and treacle, hot fusel alcohol in the finish with some astringency. This would probably be much better in a year.


12. Winter Rye - malty, some rye spice, smooth and clean, some banana esters, this is quite good, but the flavors are not quite in sync yet.

BJCP Exams

Last year I took the BJCP beer exam for the first time. The test is pretty detailed and takes more effort than one might expect. First, the questions are fairly detailed essay questions. There are only nine of them, but each requires quite detailed responses. Since the test is only 3 hours long that breaks down to something like 15 minutes for each question (there is a multiple choice section too).

If that were not enough, during the exam they bring you four beers to evaluate, these responses are also evaluated. While you are tasting the beers, a National level judge is in the next room doing the same thing. Your evaluation is then checked against thiers to determine your grade on that part.

When I took the exam, I did not score as well as I wanted too. My combined score was in the mid 60's. The tasting score was higher, but the written portion is waited as 70% of the score. True to form for me, most of the information gelled in my head about two months after the exam was over.

This comming April I plan on taking the exam again and this time I have a stategy. There were many things I spent time studying last time that I am going to blow off this time around. For example last time I tried to memorize the stats for every subcatagory of beer. Turns out there is a distinct list of beers that are part of the exam pool, so this time I will focus on those beers. Also there are several "compare and contrast" questions in the pool. This time I plan to have a list of three beers memorized for each of these questions. Then I will only have to write what I know rather than trying to think of three beers each time.

The other major thing that I am going to do is blow off the tasting portion of the exam. I have a decent enough score on that part and it will not do much to pull up my exam even if I score perfectly on it. When they calculate your current score they take the HIGHEST score from each section and use it. So if I get a score in the mid 80's, I can get my score up quite a bit.

The other nice thing is that if I should get a great written score, but not quite enough to get what I want for a score, I can then take the tasting portion without worrying about the writting. Thus I can work on one section at a time until I get them where I want.

The only fly in ointment here is that I am going to be taking the BJCP mead exam in March so I will have to devote some time to that as well. But I am a fairly decent mead maker and that exam is pass/fail at 60% with no tasting portion.

I'm Not Dead!

Wow it has been a while. Part of it was being broke, I did not have much in the way of exploration to be sharing, then I got a job and things got busy. So my early New Year's Goal is to actually update this thing once a week or so.

Today I am going to talk about Anchor's Christmas Ale 2010. This one actually snuck up on me. I was sort of keeping an eye out for it, and lucked into the last six pack that Full Throttle Bottles had. I wanted to get a couple of them for a project that I am launching, but I had to settle for what I could get. The project is to keep an inventory of the Christmas Ale from year to year, allowing it to age and do vertical tastings each year.

I got this idea from my friend Marc Gaspar. He was an incredible brewer and a very kind mentor. When I first started going to meetings at Kansas City Bier Meisters homebrew club, Marc would always be willing to taste my beer with me. He would then give pointers as to what we were tasting. What the problems were, and offered suggestions on how to fix them. He made me a much better brewer and never made me feel bad about my early efforts.

In any event, when they cleaned out Marc's beer cellar they brought it down to the memorial we held for him. In among the bottles of homebrew there were several years worth of Anchor Christmas Ale. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, Anchor changes the spices they add to the beer each year. They don't go over the top, just enough to give it a unique character from year to year. Second, being a dark beer it does age quite nicely. Marc inspired me to begin my own project this year. I only have one six pack at the moment, and I drank one of those as we will see below. I want to get my hands on at least one more six pack to age around 10 for the base of the project.

Here are my tasting notes from bottle I drank tonight.

Aroma: Dark roasted malt, low hop aroma, caramel notes and faint spice.

Appearance: Dark brown with ruby highlights, tan head with medium persistance and a fine texture.

Flavor: Bitter roasted malt. Notes of orange, chocolate malt. Light hop flavor, variety does not show. Warming alcohol, Clove? Grains of Paradise? Aftertaste fades from lingering bitterness into coffee flavors. As it warms it presents more malt sweetness, some sour twang, and faint anise flavors.

Mouthfeel: Medium carbonation, light body with some astringincy.

Over All Impression: Unlike many winter warmer and Christmas beers, Anchor's Christmas Ale is a standard 5.5% ABV. This helps to keep it from being too filling to drink more than one at a time, and may make it harder to age. The tannins should help this beer age gracefully, much like they do in big red wines. It will be interesting to see how this beer compares back to these notes over the next few years.

On a more personal note, I am now employeed so I hope to be able to get out and expereince what Seattle has to offer in the future. I have attened many things I should have shared with you, such as the Cider Festival and the Winter Beer Festival, but life was sort of crazy at the time. I said early my New Year's Goal was to update this more often. Note I did not say Resolution, the only one of those I ever kept was to quit making them. Now I set goals for the year to come. Sometimes I do alright, sometimes I suck.

Cider Summit N.W.

Last Saturday I attended the first ever Cider Summit N.W. at the South Lake Union Discovery Center. This was organized along the lines of a typical Washington Beer Festival. A set gate charge that got you a tasting cup and a set number of tasting tickets. Each of the samples is then a number of tickets based on the cost of the cider in question. Extra tickets could then be purchased for an additional charge. One nice thing about this one is that I could take the bus there and back so I did not have to worry about parking or how much I drank.

I was really looking forward to this as I really like cider. There was a time in American history when almost everyone drank cider every day. As pioneers pushed west into the virgin land they carried apple seedlings with them to plant on their new farms. The apples were then used for food, preserved, and made into cider. The cider was then drunk and some portion was allowed to go to vinegar to preserve the other produce from the garden as well. Then the Temperance movement convinced many farmer to chop down their trees, or worse yet do unholy things to their cider to keep it from fermenting. Now in America if you say you are drinking cider, most people picture a cloudy, insipid, still, non-alcoholic beverage.

There were cider makers from all around the area and a few from overseas as well. Almar Orchards were there will their JK's Scrumpy organic cider. A nice cider that is widely available and that I quite like. Making it over from England was Aspall Cider, their product line is readily available here and in Kansas City so I decided to use my precious tickets elsewhere. France was represented by Domaine Familial Louis Dupont Etienne Dupont Organic Cidre Bouché Brut de Normandie and Domaine Christian Drouhin who brought a Perry. Both of these cider makers are in Normandy. I tried them both, but I have to admit that I was more interested in the Perry because you rarely see those commercially made. The final entry from Europe was Possman from Germany with their Frankfurter Apfelwein. This was very tasty, hopefully I will be able to lay into a supply of this in the future.

One of the cideries that caught my eye was Carlton Cyderworks in Carlton Oregon. What first caught my eye was they have a cider named in honor of Carry Nation, who along with Father Welch did more damage to American Society than the "social ills" they were fighting against. Carlton also has a Citizen line that is a traditional cider made with traditional cider apples including Kingston Black and Dabinett. I think Citizen was one of my favorites of the day.

Crispin Cider came up from California, and I have to admit I was a little indecisive about them. They had a large banner up about putting cider over ice, which I think is a bad idea on general terms. The only things that should be served on the rocks is certain liquors and mixed drinks. But they also had a cider that was fermented with trappest yeast too. I decided that I had to give that a try. It was good, the flavor was interesting, but it was not really good either. It had a little too much funk on it for most people. It was even a bit much for me, and I like funky beer and blue cheese.

There was a Ginger Cider from Eaglemount Wine and Cider over in Port Townsend. This was also one of my favorites of the day. The ginger flavor was not overpowering or hot and the was in balance with the flavor of the apples.

There was a cidery down from British Columbia in the form of Sea Cider from Victoria. They were pouring two ciders, thier Pippins and Rumrunner. If I had to choose I would say that Rumrunner was my favorite of the day. There was plenty of vanilla toasty character from the barrel without the cider being acetic.

The last place that caught my eye was Wandering Aengus from Salem Oregon. They had a couple of interesting ideas. One was thier Anthem Hops a hopped cider. The bitterness was quite low and I could not smell or taste the hops at all. I think you are wasting money if you can't detect them, and I suspect if you could the flavor would clash with with the flavors of the apples. They also had a "single vaietal" cider made with Wickson apples. This was pretty good, but it seemed to lack that jena se qua that you get from the interplay of different varieties of apples, each contributing its own strengths to the whole.

There were many more cider mills present, but I focused on those that I can not get locally, or that I had not tasted at other event.

Beerstock 5060-2

Last weekend I attended Beerstock 5060 which is a homebrew festival started last year to celebrate a change in the law that allowed homebrew to be transported and served at meetings and such. Just 150 of you closest friends out for a day of beer and camping. I went as a memeber of BREW, but decided to also look at other homebrew clubs to see if I liked one a bit closer to me, but more on that later.

This was the first event I attened like this. I guess it is a bit like club night at NHC but on a smaller scale and camping. There were 7-8 clubs there with thier own booths and each serving 5-6 beers. So if you tried all of them you would be pretty roasted by the end of the evening. As per most home brew events I only saw a few people that were out of control drunk, plenty too drunk to drive, but only a couple unable to walk drunk.

One of the things I find most interesting about any homebrew event is the wide variety of people the hobby attracts. There are Technicians who can recite to you the specifics of every batch they have ever made. Some guys are Artists that make great beer by feel, they don't write anything down and some of them make etherial beer, but they never make the same beer twice. There is the guy that only makes one recipe, but he does it very well. The New Guy who compares himself to people that have been doing this for 20 years and needs reassurance. Then there is New Book Guy, this is someone that just recently read a new brewing book and got fired up for something and he is going to make it and share with everyone. Normally these guys are most easily identified after reading Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers because they show up with a corny full of "Wild Rosemary and Bog Myrtle" Pale Ale. To distinguish them from Hippie Brewer you need to see what else they have on tap. Hippie Brewer was a rare commodity back in the Midwest, but I expect to see more of them here.

Another thing we did as part of Beerstock was to hold a Beer Judging Clinic. Since I am a BJCP Recognized Judge I took part. This was not a competition (but they did hand out a prize), but rather a chance for brewers to bring in a beer and have two judges taste, evaluate and discuss it with them. We were supposed to take shifts, but I ended up doing the full three hour run. I encountered everyone of the brewers listed above at my table. One guy showed up with his second and third batch and took notes while I talked. Another guy barely remembered his mash temp. I did not taste any that were truly hideous, a few bad ones, and one or two where I could not offer much advice because they were so good already.

Since I did not have beer to serve I brought a few bottles of my mead to share around. One guy in BREW is apparently the Mead King of Washington so I made sure to give him a sample of everything. He had some constructive critizim for all of them, but I am not sure if some of that was because I am new competition or not. He is an old school mead maker that thinks you should leave it in the carboy for 5 years before it is ready to drink. I think I made enough of an impression that people will know who I am when I show up.

During all of this when I visited clubs I was looking for a new home. I really like BREW, but Everett is not exactly next door. There is a club nearby that I have been trying to find a meeting to attend. They don't seem very well organized, online anyway. They did show for Beerstock so I went over to have a look. First thing is I did not see anyone that was older than college age, which is not a defect. However I did not see much more in the way of organization at the booth, which is a defect. I am looking for a club that is organized and has a plan. I am afraid that if I get involved with this bunch I won't have fun because I will either be bitting my tounge, or running roughshod over them to get things moving. Another nearby club did not show at all so I could not talk to them. The most interesting part of this came from a club that I never even thought about.

To give a bit of history. When a friend of mine moved back here from the Midwest he went to a club meeting near his place and was told, basically, that he had to attend three meetings before they would vote on letting him into the club. We are talking about a guy that had 9 beers go through the first round of NHC in this region and took a silver in the second round. When he lived in the Midwest he was High Plains Brewer of the Year for three years running, some of those years he was second of third on the club listings by himself. This is not the way you should treat people in the homebrew community. Last February he was back in the Midwest for my club's competition and he told me this story. So now I come to the great Northwest and am looking for a club. I got in touch with my friend and found out which club had given him the brush-off and marked them off of my list of potentials. So now we get to Beerstock and I am talking to clubs and making it clear that I am set on BREW, but could be wooed away. Representatives of the blacklisted club actually gave me the hard sell for joining them. Not once, not twice, but seven times they talked to me. It is nice to wanted, but I am not going to drive a long way for three months and hope that I get approved in some election.

All in all Beerstock was a lot of fun, but I think next year it will have to be somewhere else because 150 odd people on three acres of land is a bit much in terms of parking and logistics.