Searching for the line between "hobby" and "obsession"

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My beer competes at nationals today

As a prior post on my blog details, one of my beers that I entered into the National Homebrew Competition got 2nd place in category 18d (Belgian Golden Strong ale) within the regional leg of the competition. I shipped this beer out to Seattle two weeks ago to compete against roughly 30 other beers in my category that had all scored well enough to advance within various regional competitions throughout the U.S. and Canada. I also advanced last year with my Scottish 80/- but didn’t place at nationals, so I’m guessing the same will be the case this year. It’s fun to make it that far though, especially since I’ve only been brewing for a couple years.

It’s kinda fun to ship beer, as I don’t think you’re technically supposed to. They ask you what’s in the box and you tell them “computer parts.” This year, I just gave UPS the destination address, omitting the fact that it was a brewery. I suppose they could look that up quickly via Google Maps, but whatever. Doesn’t matter. The package made it out to Seattle in just three days in time to beat the submission deadline. $41.00 to ship. Not too bad I guess. Read the rest of this page »

New Glarus Cherry Stout

My wife and I did a little night cap comparison recently between my zinfandel oak-aged imperial chocolate cherry stout with New Glarus’s cherry stout. Dan Carey, New Glarus’s owner/brewer is a magician. He makes consistently amazing beers, especially his thumbprint series brews. This cherry stout of his incorporates the same fruit infusion method as does his Wisconsin Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart. I can tell. Now, exactly how he gets fruit into his beers is something he keeps secret, as his fruit beers have won him awards all over the world.

My wife loved New Glarus’s Cherry Stout and so did I. My own choco-cherry stout didn’t really compare (chocolate, roast, oak and zinfandel aren’t in New Glarus’s version). Though I wasn’t shooting to make a normal strength cherry stout, I can say I’m still getting too many tanic notes due to the high fermentation temp I accidentally employed when brewing my version.  I’ve got about 1/3 of that batch set aside to age for a year or two under oxygen barrier caps so hopefully it calms down in time.

New Glarus’s Cherry Stout was an absolutely delicious dessert beer and would also be tasty with duck and cranberry sauce. Not too much roast in this stout, mostly caramel. Any food emphasizing fruit and caramelized onions or meats would do well with this. Read the rest of this page »

Fulton Brewing Company

 

I finally checked out Fulton Brewing Co.’s new Minneapolis brewery on Memorial Day. My wife and I have friends that live very close by, so what better to do than have a happy hour on their patio, then grab a growler and some Black Sheep pizza to go? Tasty.

Fulton has broken out into doing a pale ale, which I would have liked to try but it wasn’t available in growlers and I wanted to give Lonely Blonde another shot while we were there. Still not anywhere near awesome, but It’s grown on me a bit. I skipped Sweet Child of Vine, as I just haven’t ever had a great experience with that beer. Tastes like hop oil and not a whole lot else. Not in a crisp fresh way either, rather just a muddled, oily hop mess. And don’t get me started on chill haze. :) Yes, I have problems with chill haze more often than not. I’m also a hobbyist. Lonely blonde didn’t have this issue, so I know they’re capable of producing a clear product. C’mon guys!

They’re tap room was quite large, taking up at least half if not 2/3rds of the building’s square footage. I wonder if they’ll knock down a few walls to expand back into the tap room in a few years… or maybe the plan would be to do away with the tap room at that point and just completely focus on being a production facility. I could see that happening. The tap room is just as much a promotion tool as it is a source of income. If they become larger, maybe cost/benefit will dictate that they use the space on fermenters instead of a large tap room. Time will tell. Read the rest of this page »

Fraz(zled) Wheat 3.0

Back by popular demand for the third year in a row, I crammed in a double brew day back in May so I could have some Fraz(zled) Wheat raspberry hefeweizen on hand for the coming summer months. Though last year’s 2.0 version didn’t do so hot in competition (“too much raspberry flavor overpowers the base style”), it sure was greatly appreciated by anyone who was able to snag a bottle. This is the only seasonal brew I’ve done each year I’ve been brewing, starting off as an extract version in 2010, moving to all-grain in 2011 and of course again this year as well.

I tried a new base hefeweizen recipe for Fraz Wheat this year, taken directly from the book Brewing Classic Styles by John Palmer and Jamil Zainasheff: Read the rest of this page »

Holy hops!

Year two of growing hops in my backyard is crazy compared to the first. Granted, we’ve had an extremely warm spring and a wet May, but DAMN. It’s mid-June and I’ve already run out of vertical (and for some plants, horizontal) space for them to grow. What are these plants going to do for the next three months??? I’m hoping the answer is “make hop cones” instead of consuming my family like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

These pics were taken in mid/late May:

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Osktoberfest

Though my dog Leinenkugel gets most of the attention on this blog as Barking Dog Beer’s official mascot, what better time to give my other dog Oscar a shout-out than while naming my first attempt at an oktoberfest bier. Thus, “Osktoberfest” was conceived.

The recipe I used is basically one I pulled out of Brewing Classic Styles, the book I bought from co-author John Palmer when I met him at a book signing at Northern Brewer back in April. I think the only tweak was the yeast, as I had to use a White Labs and a Wyeast O-fest strain because Northern Brewer only had one White Labs O-fest vial left. I already know the FG on this one because I’m super behind in writing this post. I brewed this batch on May 12th, same day I brewed a hefeweizen, hence the two different types you see in the adjacent pic.

Here’s the recipe: Read the rest of this page »

2nd place in the NHC 1st round

For the second year in a row, I have a beer going to the final round of the National Homebrew competition! This year, my In the name of doG scored a 38.5 out of 50 in category 18d, Belgian Golden Strong Ale (check out results for my region here), putting me in 2nd place within that category and affording me the opportunity to compete once again at the national level. As an experiment, I also entered this same beer in category 16e, Belgian Specialty Ale, where it scored 33. This beer has competed in category 16e twice in the past where it scored 33.5 (Upper Mississippi Mashout 2012) and 35 (MN State Fair 2011). Looks like category 18d is a better fit, even though some of the non-malt fermentables in this recipe came from honey instead of solely candi sugar as would be more fitting to style.

I’m very excited to be shipping my beer to Seattle for judging on 6/21. There were 7,823 entries submitted by 1,735 different homebrewers in round one this year. As cool as that sounds, I must admit that those numbers are essentially divided into 10 different U.S. and one Canadian region. Within each region, brewers have 28 categories in which to submit fermented beverages. There were a total of 31 entries in category 18d, so the truth of it is I got 2nd place in that particular grouping. Still something to be proud of, for sure.

The other two beers I entered were my pumpkin rye ale and chocolate cherry stout, both of which performed decently, but at the minimal level I expect of myself. I know exactly what went wrong with the cherry stout (fermented too hot, thus it’s a bit tannic and boozy) but just wanted to see the judges confirm/deny (confirmed). As far as the pumpkin rye goes, I brewed it last July and I think it’s just lost it’s rye luster (experimenting with an Irish ale yeast normally reserved for Stout probably didn’t help much either) and they noted it wasn’t quite hoppy enough for an amber (I’d entered it this time as an amber ale-based beer per feedback from the Upper Mississippi Mashout competition) so the judges didn’t get out of the beer what I set them up to expect by labeling this as a pumpkin spice rye amber ale. Oh well. Read the rest of this page »

The barrel is full

And thus commences the souring of the beer. 14 members of my brew club, the Nordeast Brewers Alliance, got together on 4/28 and filled the 59 gallon honey wine barrel with the sum of our collective brews (the recipe we all used is found in a prior post here and here is a post on the entire project). The collective FG on 4/28 was 1.013, so there is a decent number of fermentable sugars for the bugs to feast on as well as plenty of long-chain sugars left over from everyone employing a higher mash temperature. We pitched a huge slurry of beer-souring bacteria Nick has collected and propagated over time as well as fresh dregs from sour beers we were drinking that afternoon (New Belgium’s La Follie, Lindemans Cuvee Rene, Surly 5, a handful of Jolly Pumpkin brews and others I can’t recall).

Now… we wait. The plan is to take a sample 6 months from now (Halloween!) and every consecutive 3 months thereafter until we’re satisfied with how it has soured and matured to pull each of our five gallons back out to do with as we please. Along the way, we’ll likely need another five to ten gallons more to syphon into the barrel to account for evaporation, which may be a good opportunity to add beer that’ll pump up the body of the final product if needed. Nick has some ideas about adding beer made with a higher than normal percentage of oats to thicken it all up. Should be interesting when it’s completed!

Most of the pics featured in this post were taken by club member Daniel Snow, professional photographer. I think they look awesome. Check ’em out: Read the rest of this page »

Lager time!

Ok, game on. I picked up a 15.3 cubic ft. chest freezer off of Craigslist for $75 and a Johnson Controls temp regulator to turn it into a fridge. You know what that means? Lager time! I’m going to try my hand at an Oktoberfest in the coming weeks and will probably do a dunkel this fall.

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Brewers yeast pancakes

I’m not sure if you’re really supposed to do this but… I made yeast pancakes with brewing yeast. I just took a basic yeast pancake recipe I found online and substituted about 1/4th packet of Safbrew for whatever bakers yeast they had me using. T-58 I’d had sitting in my basement for over a year. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well. I definitely saw some rise to the batter after 45 minutes and noticed the cakes were much aerated than the normal thin pancakes I usually make.

As I write this post, I’m to the point where I’ve made yeast pancakes a few times. I’d say the biggest drawback is that you nave to hydrate the yeast and wait for 45 min. or so for the batter to rise before you can start cooking. This lengthens the process in the morning, making it less practical. Usually I have the time to do this on a Sunday morning, but sometimes would prefer not to wait.

Here are some more pics: Read the rest of this page »