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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Beer Gardening II, the Sequel
Most sequels aren't as good as the original. There are, of course, a couple exceptions. Aliens, the 1986 sequel, was at least as good as the original 1979 movie, Alien. With that in mind, I'll try to make this blog entry at least as interesting as the first "Beer Gardening" entry. The previous one dealt with me watching the (barley) grass grow, so I think I've got a good shot here.
My hops are doing well. The Mt. Hood and Cascade plants have both grown to around four feet (1.2 m) tall, and the others are right behind them. The Mt. Hood and Cascade are in the best position to catch the most sun, which probably explains most of the difference in growth. I trellised the hops by sinking hook and eyes into the side of my house, right up near the roof line. I ran two lines down from each hook and eye and, when possible, trained two shoots to each line. (A couple of the rhizomes only sent up a few shoots, so I may plant some pole beans to run up the few empty lines.)
The hops I have growing in containers are also coming along well, although I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them next year. They get better sun than the one's planted at the side of the house, but I haven't found a good way to trellis them in their location. I have found a few mediocre ways.
The barley and wheat are coming along nicely. In both crops, there are a few leaves extending from the central stalk and the plants are about 12 in. (30 cm) tall. There may also be a tiller on some of the plants. (A tiller is a stalk other than the central stalk. In barley, one seed may produce a plant that forms more than one seed head -- one at the end of the central stalk and others at the end of tillers.)
Here are a couple random facts about barley:
Barley is the fourth most widely grown crop in the world. Most of it is used as animal feed.
Barley (Hordeum vulgare) and it's wild progenitor Hordeum spontaneum are both diploid and can freely interbreed. The biggest difference in the two species (some sources call them subspecies) is that the rachis holds the seeds together in modern barley, even after maturity. In wild barley, the rachis shatters when the plant is mature, scattering the seeds. (The rachis is basically the structure surrounding the seeds in the spike.)
I'll have more Beer Gardening blog entries as the season progresses, but I also hope to brew something soon.Labels: barley, garden, hops
Posted by Chris Colby @ 8:39 AM Link This
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Monday, March 31, 2008
Beer Gardening
In my last blog, I mentioned growing and malting my own barley as a project for 2008. And, thanks to a run of nice weather, I had the time to plant two 5' by 9' (1.5 x 2.7 m) blocks of barley. I also got one 5' by 9' block of spring wheat planted. I planted the first blocks of barley and wheat on Thursday and the second block of barley on Saturday -- and the first two blocks are already up! (Yes, I am excited about watching grass grow.)
I also planted a row of hops next to my house. I planted a big Mt Hood rhizome, two big Cascade rhizomes and "regular-sized" Centennial, Chinook, Zeus and Newport rhizomes. These sprouted within a few days and I now need to get the trellis strings to them in the next couple days. I also have my hops in containers that I've had for a few years now.
I'll update my blog regularly to update you on my progress through growing, harvesting, winnowing, malting and mashing the grains I grow. And, hopefully, by this fall I'll have a beer brewed "from scratch" (although I will be using commercial yeast).Labels: barley, garden, hops, wheat
Posted by Chris Colby @ 8:51 AM Link This
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Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Resolutions and Resolve
I don't make New Year's resolutions. As with most people, when I do, I end up dropping them before February. However, many times during the year I will make plans, or what I call "overplans." An overplan is a purposely overly-ambitious plan, meant to inspire me to get the core of my plan done. For example, back when I was in graduate school, I injured my knee. Once I was up and walking again, I set a goal to run in the next Boston Marathon. I never did run the marathon, but I did log a lot of time on the jogging trails that year. As a consequence, I lost some weight and generally got into pretty good shape, which was my "real" goal.
Here's my 2008 Overplan:
Develop the "Beer-GUT" — the Grand Unified Theory of Brewing. Or at least, read as much as I can about brewing science and get one solid homebrew experiment finished.
Form the metal band Böiled Wört and rock the known world. Or at least, pick up my guitar often enough to be able to play a few of my favorite rock anthems proficiently.
Solve the problem of making insanely malty beers at home. I think it has something to do with water chemistry (along with, of course, proper malt selection). At a minimum, do some important "research" (glug, glug) with some tasty German lagers and Scottish ales.
Write the Great American Novel, or at least a Pretty Good American Short Story. Maybe the homebrewing protagonist saves the world when he finds out that his Amarillo IPA kills the space virus causing the zombie plague. (Each your heart out Cormac McCarthy.)
Forget the hop crisis and brew some serious hop monsters.
Figure out how to grow big watermelons that don't develop blossom end rot.
Grow and malt my own barley. Brew beer with this homemade malt and some of my homegrown hops. (This is left over from last year's overplan. However, I now have some Robust barley seed — and also some spring wheat — and am looking at a big home food dehydrator to dry, and maybe even kiln, the grain.)
Run in the Boston . . . OK, just eat better, exercise regularly and lose a little weight.
Brew the biggest, lightest-colored all-grain beer in history. Oh wait, I did that last year. (See my article on reiterated mashing in the December '07 issue of BYO for more.)
Posted by Chris Colby @ 2:52 PM Link This
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Monday, December 17, 2007
Two Big Brews
Well, my 15-gallon (57-L) batch of pale ale is brewed, fermented and kegged. Everything went well, though I did worry a bit during the fermentation. I fermented the beer in a 20-gallon (76-L) garbage can. The lid closes, but doesn't seal tightly, so it was a quasi-open fermentation. The open part didn't bother me much, but not being able to see or hear an airlock bubble as a confirmation that fermentation had started was a little disquieting. I didn't want to open the lid to look until I was sure things had kicked off and there was a protective layer of kräusen.
I ended up not peeking at all until the fourth day. I figured that I had cooled and aerated the wort adequately, pitched the proper amount of yeast and kept the fermenter in a place where the ambient temperature should have been fine for an ale fermentation (even after the fermenting wort heated itself up a few degrees). So, everything should have gone well. And, when I peeked on day four, it was obvious that it did. There was still kräusen on top of the wort, but the fermentation had clearly just about run its course.
The next day, around noon, I decided to peek again and saw that the kräusen had fallen into the beer, leaving the top of the beer exposed to oxygen. I quickly grabbed the demi-john and racking cane (which I had already sanitized) and racked the beer to a closed secondary.
Once the beer was carbonated and ready to go, I was psyched — it was probably the best hoppy pale ale I've ever made. (I upped the amount of gypsum I brewed with this time and it gave me that great hop character I was looking for.) And, I had 15 gallons of it! I still may dry hop the beer, but it tastes fine as it is.
I also brewed a reiterated mash beer at Joe Walton's house. Joe, Jim Michalk and I brewed the beer and decided to name it Mongo, after the character in Blazing Saddles. The recipe was 100% Belgian Pilsner malt hopped with a mixture of high-alpha hops (Summit and Magnum). We did three mashes of 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) of grain each, then boiled the wort for 90 minutes. The wort was racked onto a yeast cake of Trappist ale yeast from a previous beer of Joe's. It's fermenting now.
I've got ingredients for yet another one of these, and a few ideas on how to shorten the brewday slightly and also improve the extract efficiency.
For the past couple weeks, I've been soaking some oak cubes in red wine (a Zinfandel I made from a kit awhile back). I've changed the wine a couple times because I'm tring to get most of the aggressive, new oak flavor out of them. In the next couple days, I am going to rack my Flanders Red to a carboy and add the cubes. I'll keg the beer after a week or two of contact time. I just want a hint of barrel in the beer, not to a Lümberbräu.
I still haven't racked my Vienna lager to keg yet. But it's sitting in my stainless conical and the yeast has been dumped, so it should be doing fine.
Finally, I need to add some kräusen beer to a couple of my big lagers one more time to get them down to a reasonable FG — this would be a great thing to do before the holidays, except I've already got some other brewing stuff planned.Labels: pale ale, reiterated mash
Posted by Chris Colby @ 2:24 PM Link This
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Monday, November 26, 2007
Start Me Up
I'm always busy when we put together the September, October, November, December and January-February issues of BYO. Most years, the once-a-month schedule means that my brewing gets scaled back a bit, compared to when we put out an issue every other month. This year, we were busier than usual and now I'm almost out of beer.
So now that editorial on the Jan-Feb issue is wrapped up, it's time to get brewing. I decided to get things started by making a big batch. I normally brew either 5-gallon (19-L) batches for my "regular" beers or 3-gallon (11-L) batches for experimental brews. In the past, I've shied away from making larger volumes of beer because I don't like cleaning and sanitizing multiple carboys and kegs for a single batch. This time around, however, I've (mostly) corrected for that with a few extra pieces of equipment I've picked up over the last few months.
My new pieces of equipment are a food-grade 20-gallon (76-L) Rubbermaid Brute garbage can to use as a primary fermenter, a 15-gallon (57-L) demijohn for a secondary fermenter and a 10-gallon (38-L) Corny keg for serving. (A demijohn is like a big carboy; home winemakers frequently ferment in them.)
I plan to make 15 gallons (57-L) of wort, ferment it in the garbage can, rack it to the demijohn for secondary and package it in two kegs -- my new 10-gallon (38-L) Corny and an old 5-gallon (19-L) keg.
Tonight, I made the yeast starter. I dissolved 14 oz. (0.40 kg) of dried malt extract in 1.5 gallons (5.7 L) of water, heated it to 180 degrees F (82 degrees C) and let it sit for 15 minutes to let the heat sanitize the wort. I usually boil the starter for 15 minutes, but decided to cut my heating and (especially) cooling time by shaving about 30 degrees F (~18 degrees C) off the top. Malt extract has already been boiled, so why boil it again if you're not boiling hops?
After cooling the wort in my sink, I transferred it to a 3-gallon (11-L) carboy, aerated (with a one-minute shot of oxygen) and pitched the yeast (an XL smack pack of Wyeast 1056).
I plan to brew on either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on how the starter does and will post a blog entry when I do. I also have a few other brewing projects to start (or finish) in the next few weeks, so I should have updates to this blog every few days for next week or so.
Posted by Chris Colby @ 12:46 AM Link This
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Top 10 Recipes
Ask any editor to name the greatest editorial invention of all time and he or she will likely say the Top 10 List. Top 10 lists are easy to compile and, since they're just someone's opinion, you don't need to fact-check them. They take virtually no work at all to get on the page. Plus, readers love them. (Even knowing they're just a way for editors to escape work, I'm still curious to read about the "10 Ugliest Sports Uniforms," the "10 Worst Automobiles Ever" or the "10 Most Influential Alternative History Novels of All Time.")
Plus, Top 10 lists are the gift that keeps on giving. After publishing the list, you're certain to get at least a few "I can't believe you forgot 'X.'" or "How could you possibily include 'Y' on your list?" letters to fill up your mail page. Top 10 lists do everything but write themselves.
With that in mind, I present the Top 10 BYO Recipes. This list exhibits all the editorial laziness that Top 10 lists are known for. Plus I turn it up a notch - I haven't even put them in any order, I've only included recent recipes that I'm familiar with and there are actually 13 recipes! (Take that Rolling Stone editors! I can't believe you imbeciles left "Van Halen" off the "Top 100 Influential Albums of All Time" list. Duh, I can't think of any guitar players that were influenced by Eddie's guitar work on that album.) I have excluded clone recipes from this list.
Top 10 BYO Recipes
Standard Robust Porter (Jan-Feb '03)
Terry Foster obviously didn't waste any time thinking up a fancy name for this beer, but his porter recipe is fantastic.
Black Pearl Oyster Stout (Jan-Feb '04 -- and Mar-Apr '05, in our "10 Wildest Recipes" article)
An awesome stout with real oysters in it. Sounds like a gimmick, but it's an awesome stout. Joe Walton and Jim Michalk (both Austin ZEALOTS) brew a batch every year and bring it to one of our meetings.
Grab My Heinie (Jul-Aug '05)
Want to brew a light "international lager" like Heineken, Becks or a zillion other beers? This recipe will get you there. The neat quirk here is that your mash pH is established by using very soft water and adding acidulated malt, rather than adding calcium to your brewing liquor. Gives an authentic "rounded" taste to the beer.
BYO's 10th Anniversary Ale (Sep '05)
A big, dark, stout-like ale that clocks in at 10% alcohol. Surprisingly -- almost dangerously -- drinkable, given the strength. Jim Haller (a ZEALOT) and I brewed the official batch of this one day when it was 110 degrees Fahreheit outside. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw him again. I also brewed a batch with Trent Johnson (another ZEALOT) one day and then I brewed it once on my own. My father-in-law really likes this one, so I might be brewing this again soon.
Cranberry Zinger (Oct '05)
Super easy to make, but it turns out great every time. I serve it on Thanksgiving every year.
Red Ball Express (Jan-Feb '06)
My version of a Vienna lager. (My older Vienna lager recipe, which won a silver medal at the NHC one year, was in the Jul-Aug '05 issue. I called that one Wiener Blut.)
Patrick Henry Pale Ale (Mar-Apr '06)
I won 1st place in the balanced beer division with a non-dry-hopped version this recipe at the most recent ZEALOTS Homebrew Inquisition. (I renamed the beer Pretzel vs. President Pale Ale for the contest because the recipe changed slightly.) Brew this with water low in carbonates and high in calcium sulfate (add gypsum). The hop character actually improves with age for a couple months.
Kelheim Weissbier (Jul-Aug '06)
This is Horst Dornbusch's homage to Schneider Weisse, which I love. (I said clone recipes were excluded. This is a homage.) Keith Bradley, from the ZEALOTS, brewed a batch and it turned out great, except for the fact that it was overcarbonated. In true ZEALOTS fashion, he complained about it every time he saw me rather than simply venting the keg a few times. Still, the beer was yummy beyond belief.
Colby House Porter (Oct '06)
I've brewed this beer roughly twice a year for the past 16 years. Add carbonate to your water if it turns out thin and acidic tasting.
Cause of Death (Dec '06)
Thanks for the hangover, Johnny Max.
DewBrew Flanders Red (Jan-Feb '07)
Great sour beer made by Dan and Joelle Dewberry (both ZEALOTS). It won Best of Show at the Homebrew Inquistion a year or so ago. My wife and I went and brewed this beer with them earlier this year and I have a bucket full of it sitting in a back room. Should be ready to bottle fairly soon.
Copper Ale (Mar-Apr '07)
A balanced, crowd-pleasing beer that isn't any recognizable beer style.
Beelzeboss (Oct '07)
I've been known to brew some odd beers -- Jolly Apple Rancher Lambic (May-Jun '03 and Mar-Apr '05) and Tubers for Victory (Mar-Apr '04) come to mind -- but my current favorite oddball beer is Beelzeboss, a "wheat beer" made using Mt. Dew (the sodapop) as brewing liquor.Labels: recipes
Posted by Chris Colby @ 8:07 PM Link This
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Monday, September 10, 2007
Back to Blogging
Yikes! It's been awhile since I've blogged about what I've been up to.
What have I been up to? Well, my wife and I drove to the National Homebrew Conference in Denver. My club, the Austin ZEALOTS, had a booth there on club night. The ZEALOTS brought the most beer of any out-of-state club and had more members in attendance than all the other clubs in Texas combined -- and we're just a little, unorganized club from Austin, not one of those mega-clubs from Dallas or Houston. Most importantly, we all wore spiffy Viking helmets to the event.
Nobody expected it, but the ZEALOTS held our competition -- The Homebrew Inquisition -- again this year. The number of entries we received stayed about the same (in the ballpark of 150, mostly from the Austin area). Judging was a blast and I was psyched that my pale ale -- basically the Patrick Henry Pale Ale recipe from the March-April 2006 issue -- got a 1st in the Balanced Beer category.
I've brewed a couple batches in the meanwhile, one with an interesting mash schedule that I am going to write about in the December 2007 issue and another made with Mt. Dew as the brewing liquor. (The recipe for this "beer," which I called Beelzeboss, ended up in the October 2007 issue.)
Unfortunately, I injured my shoulder last month sometime and haven't had any brew days in the recent past. I hope to get a batch of something going in the next few weeks, though. I've got the ingredients for another batch of my IPA. (Both my wife and I have been on a bit of an IPA kick recently. She's starting to say "where's the hops" whenever she tries any beer under about 50 IBUs.)
Posted by Chris Colby @ 7:00 PM Link This
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