Learn to Homebrew Day with the BrewKings

On October 27^th, the BrewKings hosted a “Learn to Homebrew” event at the Innovation Village Apartments.  Rose was gracious and offered up the patio at her apartment complex which was a great venue for the event.  We had a wide range of brewers in attendance.  There were a couple people that were just interested in getting started, a couple people made very simple batches, while some decided to go all out and haul the full system out to the patio to brew full grain batches.

Fastest Brewed Beer Award: Six beers and two ciders were made from 9am to 3pm on Sunday.  The award for fastest brewer goes to Dale with his simple cider recipe.  He dumped two gallons of apple juice into a sanitized carboy and inoculated it with the White Labs Edinburgh Ale yeast, took him longer to drive to Brookings from his home east of Aurora than it did to mix up his cider.

All-Grain Brewers: On the other extreme were the all-grain brewers which worked hard for an average of 5 hours over multiple burners, pots, and a mash tun.  John P brewed up a Vienna Lager, Craig M brewed an IPA, Kris B made a Maibock, and I (Rich) made a Smoked Ale.

Extract Brewers: Then the extract brewers found the happy medium with about a 2-3 hour process with Jim B making an ESB, and Rose H making a Dark Side Vanilla Porter clone recipe.  Rose also mixed up a honey cider.

All totaled up I believe about 40 total gallons were brewed at the gathering.

Among the audience were new brewers looking to learn more and aspiring brewers that were trying to familiarize themselves with the process and get an idea of what equipment they need to get started.

If there is one thing any new brewers will learn fast is that brewing is a very capital intensive process and there will be a significant investment on the front end before you will begin to reap the rewards after a few batches are in your glass.

All brewing aside there was also some sampling to go along with the fun.  Rose brought her fresh hopped ale, and a cranberry/chokecherry wheat.  Dale brought a Juliet from Goose Island.  I (Rich) brought a couple variations on the Zombie dust clone brew, a couple different batches of sour bomb, and a Barrel Aged Single Malt Sour from Brau Brothers.  Craig shared a WarMullet from Three Floyd’s.  Angie brought some of her Dark Singularity from Wooden Legs Brewing.  Dale also brought some Brooklyn Lager. 

Many beers were brewed and consumed among old and new friends.  We will continue the fun on November 14^th at the next BrewKings meet-up.  The meet-up will be spearheaded with the battle for the golden keg Stout Edition.  All homebrewed stouts are eligible, come one, come all.  

Next Event Details:
When: Thursday Nov 14^th at 7:00pm
Where: Innovation Village Apartments Community Room

Cheers, Rich

The Great Zombie Dust Brew-Off

There is this hop phenomenon that is currently occurring in craft beer.  There have been several new varieties of hops developed in the last 5 years that are being selected for their intense tropical fruit aromas and high alpha acids.  Among these varieties are the likes of:

• Mosaic

• Nelson Sauvin

• Calypso 

• Citra

The one that has really taken off the most from what I have seen is the Citra.  It’s name says it all, and that’s exactly what the hop heads are looking for, a big citrus fruity aroma to balance out the bitterness of the big hoppy pale ales, IPAs, IIPAs, IIIPAs, Rye IPAs, Black IPAs, Belgian IPAs. You name it, if it’s hop forward, brewers are piling in the Citra hops by the truck load and the masses are loving it.

One of the newest beers on the scene that features the Citra hop alone as a single hop beer is Three Floyd’s Brewing Company’s American Pale Ale entitled Zombie Dust.  Zombie Dust, with its clever name, and amazing zombie cartoon packaging packs a wallop with 60 IBUs and 6.4% ABV with aroma that jumps out of the glass and slaps you with tropical hoppy goodness.  Before even tasting this beer you are in belief that it is one of the best beers ever, and it is.  This beer garners a perfect 100 rating on RateBeer.com, 4.5 caps on Untappd, and a perfect 100 on BeerAdvocate.com.  Making it basically the best pale ale on the planet, which we have come to expect from Three Floyd’s reputation, being voted best brewery in the world 3 times.

So, obviously this is a beer that we all would love to drink right?  Well, we can’t,  because they literally cannot make enough of the stuff to go around.   We must brew our own!  And this is what lead us to the "Zombie Dust brew-off".  There are a couple different recipes available on the home brewing forums but we basically all settled on the same grain bill and hop schedule:

• 81% 2-row Pale Malt
• .75oz Citra First Wort Hop
• 7.5% Munich 10L
• 3.5% each of Melanoiden, Dextrine, and Crystal 60L
• 1.25oz Citra @ 15, 10, 5 & 1 mins left in the boil
• 3oz Citra Dry Hop

Varying yeasts were used from S-04 English Ale, to London Ale 3, and one other that escapes my memory. 4 entries were entered in this bi-monthly brewing competition, to the winner goes the Golden Keg. The beers were rated by ten people blindly, grading them on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being an exact clone, and 1 being brew-worthy of a golden toilet, not a golden keg.

Results

1. Bud Molyneax (75 pts of 100)
2. John Page (72 pts)
3. Richard Drawdy (53 pts)
4. Derek Soukup (52 pts)

The consensus was that Bud’s batch was the closest to the real example for its great citrusy aroma and smooth hoppy flavor that's not too bitter, similar to how the commercial example presents itself.  A conclusion was drawn as to why Bud won and John came in second by such a large margin of victory:

John and Bud both used Pellet hops, while Derek and myself used whole cone hops.  We all got our hops from Taylor’s Pantry in Sioux Falls, and they were all Hop Union packages.  I had always read about the effects of age on hops and shelf stability is greater in hops that are pelletized as opposed to being in whole cone form.  Hop Union packages their hops in nitrogen flushed opaque packages and Taylor’s Pantry stores their hops in the cold box for optimal preserving, however the pellet hops definitely proved themselves to be superior in this brew with having the more distinct Citra aroma that everyone was looking for in this brew.

Now there are several other factors that could have played into this which are out of our control.  Hops are an agricultural product and consistency is impossible, so all I can do is assume that the top quality and similar quality hops were put into those packages which were similar in characteristics on the day they were packaged, but one was pelletized and one was left in its whole leaf form and the pellets win in the shelf stability contest.

In conclusion I plan to be purchasing pellet hops in the future and dealing with their down falls of ease of use in the kettle if I am unaware of their quality or freshness, since pellets will most likely be more shelf stable and yield a better product.

Whew, now on to brewing this one again with some fresh 2013 hops since these were undoubtedly 2012 crop. Absolutely amazing recipe and I recommend anyone that likes hoppy pale ales to give it a try. You may not brew Zombie Dust but you will end up making something delicious with some similarities to the real Zombie Dust.

Cheers - Rich

My First Home Brewing Disaster

Last week was a busy home brewing time for me, as I was trying to get the most in during a week where I didn't have my son. So first on Wednesday I bottled a Russian Imperial Stout that has been sitting in the secondary fermenter for around 6 1/2 months. My friend Josh came over to help me out, and I'm extremely thankful for that, as anyone who has bottled before knows, it's a long and tedious process. So by Josh helping me out, he definitely saved me a couple hours of work.

All ready to bottle!

Then I followed it up the next day on Thursday by brewing up a new batch of beer. This was going to be a clone of 3 Floyds - "Zombie Dust", and I was going off of the recipe that is posted on HomeBrewTalk.com. If you can't tell by the name of this post....it was an absolute yard sale.

Zombie Dust Clone Recipe:

• 6 lb Extra Light Dry Extract
• 1 lb Munch 10L
• .50 lb Cara-Pils or Carafoam
• .50 lb Crystal 60L
• .50 lb Melnoiden Malt
• 9 oz of Citra Hops
• S-04 Fermentis SafAle dry yeast (I went with S-05 instead via recommendation at Taylor's Pantry in Sioux Falls, SD)

"Grocery shopping" at Taylor's Pantry for ingredients

This was probably the most organized and confident I've ever been on a brew day, I had all my equipment cleaned, my checklist of everything I needed, so I was all set to brew this thing up right after work. After filling up my propane tank after work (just in case my other one ran out) I went home and ate something really quick because I wanted to get started. Now take in mind this was my first time ever doing the entire brewing process by myself, however I am getting more and more confident with the process as I brew more beers, so I wasn't too scared about doing this alone. So I got my garage all setup and the ingredients on hand, utensils and the kettle and burner ready to go. Now this was the first time I've had to crush grains as a part of an extract recipe, so I had to borrow Rich's mill to do it. Rich said all I needed was a drill to turn the mill and crush the grains, so I didn't worry about it, I have a drill in my garage. Well as I'm sure Blake would attest to, my drill is not the most powerful one on the market. So when I hooked it up to the mill after measuring my grains out, it wasn't even strong enough to turn the mill at all. I tried charging it up for awhile to no avail, it still wouldn't crush any grains. So I had to get on the phone and start texting all my friends because I have to get these things crushed in order to move on, so I was stuck in limbo. Finally Wade was able to bring over a drill that he had, and he helped me crush the grains and dump them into a steeping bag. AT this time I'm already running about 1 1/2 hours later than I had hoped.

Thought I was all set and ready to go...

Rich's grain mill.

Wade stuck around for awhile and the next few steps weren't too hard, we steeped the grains for about 45 minutes, then cranked up the heat and got it boil, then stirred in the DME and added the first addition of hops and set the timer for a 60 minute boil. Wade ended up leaving after awhile to go back home, but this part wasn't too tough, I just watched the timer, kept to the hop schedule, stirred the wort and made sure I didn't have a boil over. So aside from just being delayed a long time, I was starting to feel good again about brewing because I had calmed down and actually opened a beer to drink.

Steeping the grains.

Where everything started to go down hill, was cooling the wort down after the 60 minute boil was over. I have a stainless steel wort chiller and had already cleaned/sanitized it, but I finally got the hoses hooked up and the water turned on. I sat there dunking that wort chiller in there for a long time back and forth and was struggling to get the temperature any lower than 73-75 degrees....which wasn't good, I was aiming for mid to upper 60s. I started looking up home brewing tips on my phone and came across someone saying that when it's really hot outside, it's common for the water coming out of the ground and through the house to not be cold enough to cool the wort down very far. It then went on to suggest putting your remaining water that you have to add to the water, in the fridge, so I ran inside and I put one gallon in the fridge, and one in the freezer. So finally after a couple more minutes of using the wort chiller, I brought the kettle into the house and set it in the kitchen.

I am now coming to the part that I had not thought through, of how I was going to get the wort from the kettle, through a filter and a funnel and into the glass carboy. After several different awkward attempts, I finally got into a system of sitting above the glass carboy, put the kettle up on the table, and used the siphon and tubing to pour through the strainer and funnel that I was holding. The next problem was due to all the hops there was a lot of muck built up in the strainer, so I had to bring in a clean/sanitize spoon and the garbage can so that I could keep moving it around in order for the liquid to drain through. This became a very long process, and during the middle of it, I had heated up a glass container to get ready for hydrating my yeast, and while I was transferring, I heard the glass container shatter into a million piece in the kitchen. This caused me to jump, which resulted in me losing control of the tubing so it shot wort on the floor and all over my lap before I got it back towards the carboy. This was pretty much my breaking point where I was so close to just saying "Screw this!" and going to bed.

Even thought I was never really able to calm myself down, I got up and cleaned up the kitchen and swept/vacuumed the floor from all the glass that shattered, finished transferring the beer, and boiled up some more water to hydrate the yeast. Then I was able to add the cold water that I had put in the fridge, and it definitely helped bring the temperature of the wort down to 66-68 degrees. My OG turned out to 1.048 which was a lot lower than the recipe had indicated (1.066 I believe). After some brief/quick clean up efforts following pitching the yeast, I went to bed with my heart still pounding and slept like absolute crap. I kept thinking that I just messed up this beer, and that's $70 wasted in ingredients.

I have calmed down since, and have realized that there were three main things that I learned from this whole process that would've made it gone smoother:

1. Need to have a backup plan in case it is really warm outside and the wort chiller isn't able to get the temperature down far enough.
2. Get a more powerful drill.
3. NEVER BREW ALONE.....EVER!!

While I may be familiar with the entire and process of home brewing, I will never do it alone again due to the all the different awkward processes I encountered. I am still paranoid on how this beer is going to turned out (especially since I was gone all weekend so I wasn't able to see fermentation activity in the airlock), but after talking with several other home brewers, it seems like everyone has a disaster story like this at some point during their home brewing journey.

Home Brewed Beer Judging Experience from the Sioux Empire Fair 2013

Judging  Beer

Beer judging sounds like a dream job right?  Well I had the opportunity to judge an amateur brewing competition in Sioux Falls this past weekend. It was a blast and I met several amazing people. Out of the 56 beers entered in the competition I judged 9 the first evening and 8 in the second round on Saturday afternoon.  This was both a challenge and a great learning experience. Frustrating at times and mouth numbing at others the competition judging environment is quite the experience.  At first you think this is going to be a walk in the park, "oh hey yeah I like beer, I brew beer, I am pretty sure I know a lot about beer" but, boy was I wrong.  Not only do you need to know a lot about beer you need to know every little intricacy of about 52 different beer styles, several of which I have never had.  The task was given to not only drink the beer but to critique it on 5 different categories, 4 of which are out of your control you must discern how accurately that beer in front of you adheres to a strict or sometimes loose set of guidelines.  You can see how this could get interesting. Twelve of the fifty points are for the aroma alone, adjectives such as diacetyl, sulfur, and DMS can describe the aroma, if you are baffled you are not alone! Imagine being the guy who has to decide if be does or does not smell something that he has no idea what it is! But we soldier on,  next is the appearance for 3 points. The trifecta can be converted easily if it looks like the beer, has the right color and head, may as well be a layup for a well brewed beer.  After the appearance comes the flavor. This is the mother load if you will worth 20 points.  What you are looking for here is for that beer to taste like the style that it was brewed to, on the bottom of the style guides they have a nice list if commercially brewed versions of the style that you can use as a guide to know what you are shooting for. For example if you are judging pale ales then the beer should taste like a Sierra Nevada pale ale or something similar in order to be considered "to style" and remember here that is what we are trying to do. We are not trying to decide whether we like the beer or not, only if it matches up with what is supposed to be. Common off flavors that you are looking for in the flavor of a beer can be things like hot/burning alcohols, harsh hop bitterness, or the buttery diacetyl flavor. Then comes 5 points for mouthfeel: does it feel like it has the right carbonation, body, and finish that you are looking for in the style? For instance Belgian tripels can be highly carbed, light-medium bodied, with a warming finish.  While on the other hand pale ales should be medium carbonation, light bodied, with a clean crisp finish for example.  So now we have 40 of the possible 50 points complete, last is the section where you can be more subjective and decide whether you like the beer personally or not and comment on why or why not you think you would drink this beer again if given the opportunity.  And we are done! 45-50 point beers are rare, they are one of the few world class examples of the style. 38-44 is an excellent beer, 30-37 is a very good beer, 21-29 is a good beer but struggles to match the given style, 14-20 is a fair beer and may exhibit several minor to major flaws, then finally 0-13 is a problematic beer that is most likely undrinkable and probably shouldn't even be called a beer.

I believe that the bulk of the beers that were entered in the competition I judged were in the 30's which I would assume is a commonality among competitions then if a beer scored in the 40's it most likely is an outstanding beer and made it to the second round of 15 of 56. There were a few duds that I judged but nothing that got below a 20 from what I remember.   We were encouraged to converse with the judges around us that were tasting the same beer and help us coach ourselves through the process which was a huge help. We were then also encouraged to ensure that our scores were not wildly different and within about ten points of each other at least.

So all in all judging a beer competition is fun, and most of them in the area are open to the public with all volunteer non-bjcp sanctioned judging so next time you see a competition pop-up don't be afraid to go volunteer and try your hand at judging! It was a fun and exciting learning experience for me and I look forward to the next opportunity I have to try it again.

Beer Judge Certification Program

Cheers! Richard Drawdy

August Homebrew Club Meeting

Notes from the August '13 - SDSU Homebrewing Club Meeting

Wings and Brew Festival at Swiftel - Saturday, August 17th

• Taylors pantry is going to be there and do an extract brew - Derek is doing a "brew-in-a-bag" batch.

• Talked about bringing out homebrewed beers to give away for sample (asked Mike @ Swiftel) - Still not sure if that is okay yet for this year.

Craft Beer Tasteing competition

• Given 5 samples, you guess what beer you think it is, then choose your favorite.
• from this list we can determine a winner (most accurate taster) as well as the overall favorite beer of that style for the club.
• after a year we can determine our favorite beers from all the categories, and have a final voting to determine the favorite beer of the club.We pick a variety for the each month.

• 5 beers, need a 6 pack of each
• Roughly 3oz for each taste
• 6 pack of each
• $10 for entry
• 24 person limit

Items we'll need

• steward
• nice clear plastic cups
• voting sheets - have a guide for voting, and list what beer you think it is

Other Notes

• Flyer to put up in the liquor store to advertise meetings, give the flyer to Bob.

• Getting new glasses

• getting a different style glass?

• get smaller sampler glasses?

• get flights?

• Submitting dues?

• New club name, getting rid of the "SDSU" tag, perhaps everyone brings a suggestion and we vote on it as a club.

Homebrewing "competition" monthsWe decided to go to an every other month approach to give everyone more time to plan and brew something for that months style.

Here are the list of what styles:

• September - Zombie Dust

• November - Stout

• January - Christmas ale

• March - Bock

• May - IPA

• July - Session beer (less than 5% abv)

• September - wet hop seasonal -  Lee suggest having a grill out, bbq, camp out get together at the Anderson Hop Farm

Meeting Next Month (September 17th)

• Zombie dust clones - so if anyone wants to make it and have it ready to drink by then. We will score them and determine a winner.
• Steve has a bottle of zombie dust so we can compare to see how close everyone came.
• Taste Testing Competition:

Octoberfest

1. Sam Adams
2. Leinenkugels
3. Schell's
4. Summit 
5. Becks

"Hans Thomas Ale" - Wedding Beer

This story starts off with a good friend of mine getting married and I thought it would be nice for a wedding gift, to make him a batch of beer based around one of his favorite beers. It's amazing I still thought about doing this, even after he moved down to San Antonio, TX - which is home to one my most hated professional sports teams.....The San Antonio Spurs. I figured this would be "cease-fire" gift and we could forget that fact that he actually lives in that city.

So I asked him what his favorite beer was, to which he responded - Blue Moon, so Rich helped me pick out a Witbier recipe from Northern Brewer and I placed the order. I wanted to take it a step further and come up with a customized label for him based off of Blue Moon's label design and keep it as a surprise until we actually got down to San Antonio, TX the week before the wedding.

With the batch making roughly 50 beers, I also made a limited edition "Swollen Face" edition, based off a picture from when one of the groomsmen (Valdie) got stung by a bee and his face blew up like a blimp. We got a copy of the picture a couple years ago and I'm really glad I hung on to it so I could use it for this special occasion.

"Hans Thomas Ale" on the right; "Swollen Face" Limited Edition on the left

We had a pretty good group around for a mid-week brewing day, and my buddy Nick Davis who's been staying at my place while he's been working in Brookings,  helped out in all 3 stages (brewing, transferring, racking and bottling) so I just wanted to give him a shout out (also gave him some props on bottom right of the label).

Brewing Day (with Nick and Joey)

Bottling Day (with Nick)

Then the week before the wedding came, myself with 2 other groomsmen (Blake and Valdie) decided it was a good idea to take a big road trip and drive down there the Monday prior to the wedding. One thing that did make it somewhat fun on the way down, was that we decided to make scheduled stops along the way in certain cities to break it up, each of us was given 2 cities to plan an activity for and the end of our driving shift. My two cities were Topeka, KS and Forth Worth, TX., however since it was going to be around 4am for my stop in Fort Worth, we moved it up to Thackerville, OK (because there is a large casino there right off the interstate - WinStar).

Road Trip to San Antonio

So for my first stop in Topeka, after several strenuous hours of searching on the internet, I chose to visit the Blind Tiger Brewery, which was the first brewery in the city and is the largest brewery in Kansas.

Interesting story behind the name which I learned from their website:

"The Blind Tiger Brewery was named after the Prohibition-era custom of displaying stuffed tigers to alert patrons to speakeasies or the availability of alcohol."

I wish I would've taken more pictures because this place had plaques all over the walls from winning all sorts of awards at all these different events. So I went with the Top Gun and Tiger Bite IPA - I'm a big IPA/hop kind of guy, and both of these were REALLY good! It was also around supper time so we ordered some food, and we all went with different variations of the smoked rib beef tips (or something like that). These things were sooooo good and I don't know much about beer and food pairings, but it really tasted good with IPA's. I was a little disappointed that the weather didn't cooperate, I was hoping to hang out on their really nice patio area, but the rain prevented that from happening. After talking some college football with the local folk at the bar, it was time to get back on the road and continue the road trip.

Rib-Beef Tips

Top Gun IPA

The only other brewery that we stopped at on the way down was compliments of Mr. Valdie Magstadt. This one was the River Side Brewery in Wichita, KS. My first beer was the Tornado Alley IPA (which was fitting considering the large tsunami that we just drove through), this was a really hoppy beer that I thoroughly enjoyed, then after that I decided to take a break from IPA's and went with the Old Town Brown Ale, and this was nice beer to take me down from all the hoppiness I've been having.

Great quote on the wall

Tornado Alley IPA

We ended up sharing pictures from the storm of the century that we went through and how the interstate closed down with the bartender, and she took my phone around the bar to show this picture to everyone else that was seated around the bar. It should be noted that since this storm, we have now added Kansas to the axis of evil.

That is actually the median overflowing with water from the north bound lanes on the interstate.

Having a beer after going through the Tsunami in the stupid state of Kansas

So we rolled into San Antonio Tuesday morning after a grueling night of driving, didn't even unpack and crashed for about a 5 hour nap.

Finally Arrived....21 hours later

I did show Tony the beer bottle labels once he got back from work and we decided to try one before heading out for the night. I've been really nervous this whole time that the beer would turn out good, there were a lot of people that knew I had made this beer and was bringing it down, so I was just hoping that everyone liked it. We cracked open a bottle and I heard the really good sound of carbonation so that is one concerned I could cross off, then we poured it into a tall glass to pass around, and everyone said that it tasted good and most importantly Meredith* like it!! HUGE RELIEF! (*special shout-out to Meredith for putting up with 10 different people their place and being really cool about it, couldn't have been better).

Over the course of the next couple days as everyone flew in (instead of driving.....cheaters) we kept opening more and I never heard a negative response, I'm not sure if everyone was just being nice and said it was good, but after tasting it myself I was pleased. I wish the orange peels and coriander that was used during the brewing process stood out more, it kind of blended in, but I was still happy with how clear the beer turned out and the overall taste. If you ever end up coming over and having one, it's even on Untappd and you can check-in to it!

Overall I had a great time with friends making the beer, bottling it, transporting it and drinking it, so thank you to everyone involved in any/all steps of the process.

Tony "Hans" Thomas (left) and Valdie "Swollen Face" (right) posing with the limited edition bottle.

Thank you Tony and Meredith for getting married otherwise none of this would have even happened!

The Online Homebrewing Community

When I first started home brewing in December of 2011 I was given the basic brewing kit from Midwest Supplies and two all-grain brewing recipe kits.  The basic brewing kit comes with about everything you need to brew a batch of simple extract beer except for the boil pot.  Since I was given all-grain recipe kits I needed a whole lot more than what came with this basic kit so I was left to the wolves to find my way.  Without the internet and all it's glorious resources available I can imagine that my home brewing journey would have been a much more arduous endeavor.  In an effort to assist in speeding that evolution from aspiring brewer straight to all-grain brewer I figured I would go ahead and compile all the resources that I found helpful to me.

The resources available fall into a few categories: forums, youtube, blogs, podcasts, and magazines.  Forums are usually hard to navigate and tend to be full of unnecessary and potentially inaccurate information that can be confusing to a new brewer.  Youtube has proven to be a great resource since it combines a few methods of communication which has a tendency to be much easier to understand for the uninitiated. Blogs can also be great and all-inclusive, it is a great medium to hash over topics in great detail.  Podcasts are a great way to pass the time and can be a fantastic resource for brewing knowledge if you can pay attention and take some notes while listening.  Then lastly there are magazines which are a great professionally produced medium for communicating written home brewing knowledge but the topics covered may not be exactly what you are looking for at the time of publishing, once you build yourself a library of magazines you are in good shape.

My favorite video when I was researching for my first batch:
Easy All Grain Brewing - Batch Sparge Method

This video is great, I probably watched it ten times before my first batch and a couple times while working on my first batch.

I also found this one helpful once I realized that chilling 5 gallons of wort without an immersion chiller takes forever:
How to make an immersion wort chiller.

Don has several other great videos and even a few of him reviewing some of my brews that I made and sent him in thanks for his helpful videos:

• Reader Review #1 - Blonde Ale and DIPA from Rich
• Reader Review #2 - Belgian Pale Ale from Rich
• Reader Review #16 - Rye IPA and Cynic clone from Rich

I also found his website to be very helpful and have fashioned several of my batches off of his recipes:
www.donosborn.com


YouTube Channels 

Some of my other favorite YouTube channels that I highly recommend to home brewers are:

• BrewingTV
• BasicBrewingVideo
• NorthernBrewerTV
• ChopandBrew

Forums that I have found to be useful at times are:
HomeBrewTalk.com - the largest brewing forum on the web, within HomeBrewTalk you will find several great clone recipes, here is a link to a recipe database: Can You Brew It Database
BrewingNetwork.com: http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/


Blogs

Here are the best blogs that I have found, usually you can scroll through and find any topics that interest you:

• The Mad Fermentationist - the biggest, most followed blog in home brewing.
• The Beer Engine - former host of BrewingTV.
• Northern Brewer Blog
• Mash Sparge Boil
• Sodakbeer - South Dakota beer reviewer and home brewer, Dale Miskimmins.
• Minneapolis Brewing Club
• BeerSmithBlog

Podcasts

My favorite podcasts, usually there are new episodes weekly or biweekly and the archives lend a wealth of knowledge, you can jump around in the archives or start from the beginning if you are a glutton there are over 5 years of episodes on most of these.  I find it easiest to access these via the iTunes store, Podcasts app on the iPhone, or the TuneInRadio app on your phone:

• Favorite - basicbrewingradio.com
• Great for clones - The Jamil Show
• Home Brewing with Beer Smith
• Brew Strong
• Commercial Brew Reviews - BeerDownload

Magazines:

• Brew Your Own Magazine - great magazine that I subscribe to.
• Zymurgy - I would like to start getting this one, comes with your Amercian Homebrewers Association subscription.

Grand Opening of Wooden Legs Brewery

The other week was the grand opening of Wooden Legs Brewery in Brookings, SD. Sure it's been open for awhile, but this was a 3 day event in where they were launching a new beer and their kitchen has finally opened so they are in full swing. It all started with a movie on Thursday night, ribbon cutting an live music on Friday night, then "Pork and Pints" on Saturday, I had my kid this past week and weekend, so I was able to get a babysitter for Thursday night, and brought him down on Saturday for lunch.

Thursday Night - Showing of "The Beer Hunter"  documentary of Michael Jackson
So Thursday night  I went to Wooden Legs Brewery for a special screening of the movie "The Beer Hunter" which is a documentary of Michael Jackson, the world renown beer writer (and apparently for whiskey). I got to Wooden Legs a little before the movie was scheduled to start (7pm) to take my time and order a beer, I went with 11th Hour IPA from Crow Peek Brewing Company, great beer. We ended up going into the side room where it was setup with chairs, tables, Wooden Legs coasters, a projector and the best part....chex mix. I haven't had chex mix in a long time but quickly remembered how addicting this stuff is, especially when combined with beer.

Overall I thought the movie was very interesting, I had never heard of Michael Jackson (the writer) before, and left feeling the urge to checkout what different books are available on Google Play for me to purchase. The biggest one seemed to be the The World Guide To Beer which I will definitely look to get, first check the local library (because it's free) then see how much it is on Google Play and/or Amazon. The majority of the filming seemed to have been in Michael's last days, and at first I didn't know what to expect, he seemed very groggy and had long scraggly hair and a long beard...but when he spoke it was with a certain clarity and was so engaging no matter who he was talking to, an owner of a brewery or the cab driver that we went in and bought a beer for and brought it back out to him. It's a classic case of not judging a book by it's cover, because he was very interesting and very personable when he spoke, and that made the movie very enjoyable. I loved the 15 minute beer break intermission in the middle of the movie, the screen simply went black with white text saying "15 minute intermission, go grab a beer!" which of course we did.

The only negative critique I would have is the audio, it would go from being able to hear the narrator very clearly, to all of a sudden barely able to hear what either Michael was saying, or the person he was talking to. There would be instances where he was in a crowded bar for an appearance, and he wasn't mic'd up so you could hear ever conversation in the place and it made it really difficult to hear what he was saying. Even with the audio going in and out, I did like the movie and will look to perhaps rent it at home in the future to try and see if I can hear more.

Saturday - "Pork and Pints"
Starting at noon you could arrive at Wooden Legs and they had a huge smoker out front where they had been cooking 400lbs of pork! The deal was $5 all you can eat (which included potato salad, beans and chips) and it was $5 pints of beer. I met Rich at his house and we played daddy daycare by loading our kids in a Radio Flyer and walking down for the festivities. You could smell the pork from about a block away, and we were nervous at first if this was going to be a "family affair", something about taking your kids to a brewery just didn't seem right. However there were plenty of families with their kids there all having lunch, we loaded up a couple of plates and sat down for some good eating. Once we got settle Rich went up to the bar to order us a pair of the new What We Got - double IPA that had just been released the night prior. I have no idea what types of beer go with what types of food, but I do know that the double IPA tasted amazing with those pork sandwiches and potato salad. Ran into a lot of friends and coworkers that were down there for lunch as well, so it ended up being great food, company and most importantly.....beer, haha.

I look forward to Wooden Legs now being fully opened (now open daily at noon!), and definitely plan on making it down on a regular basis and help support the work that they are doing.

The Flavor: Sour

Greetings citizens,

Today's flavor of the day on Sesame Street is: Sour.  The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about sour is my favorite candy, sour Warheads!  I have tried all the sour warheads products from the traditional hard candy to the breath mints and sour spray.  To my knowledge they do not make a beer yet, but they should!  My first sour beer was quite the experience: La Folie by New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO.  Think cherry warheads, cold, carbonated, and wrapped in a mild brown ale background.  It was my first and still stands to this day as being my favorite, at least the 2010 vintage anyways.  After buying 8-10 bottles over the course of about a year from the Brookings Liquor store at $13.99 a piece they finally ran out of that 2010 vintage.  At this time I knew that I must learn more and brew my own.  The main thing that scares me about trying to make something like this is that it is expensive for a reason, and it says so right on the bottle "Reddish brown ale fermented 1 to 3 years in french oak barrels for mouth picking perfection".  I would have to commit a $30 fermenter and about $30 of ingredients for 3 years in order to make this stuff?  My accountant brain said the NPV of a fermenter, a brew day and ingredients exceeds the return I would get in 3 years so, I had to find an easier way. 

Fast forward about a year to the summer of 2012 and I find myself consuming more and more different sour ales, and I happened upon Oarsman by Bell's Brewery of Kalamazoo, MI.  Oarsman is a light in color and body, sour mashed wheat ale.  Picture a light, tangy, lemony, tart and refreshing beer that would take everything you love about a shandy and crank it to the next level by blending it with a sour beer.   First thing I was thinking, as after every new beer style I find, is that I had to do some more research on how to make me some of my own!  My discovery was astounding, I found out that I could make this sour mash ale in not 3 years, 2 years, or 1 year, I could make this stuff in just 2 weeks for a total cost of $12 for 5 gallons.  In the words of Phil Robertson(Duck Dynasty), "Now we are cookin' with peanut oil!"  Needless to say I had to try it, and it was the weirdest brewing I have ever done.  I was quite skeptical.

I will try to keep this simple but an all-grain brewing knowledge would be helpful.

Here is what I did:

5 pounds Briess Pilsen Malt and 4 pounds Rahr White Wheat Malt mashed at 154F for the duration of the Brookings Bobcats vs. Yankton Bucks Boys BB game with a 1.25 qt/lb grain ratio.  Added the rest of my brewing water for the whole batch to my igloo cooler to lower the temp to 120F.  Toss in .9 more pounds of uncrushed Pilsen malt , flood the head space in the cooler with CO2 and cover with a few layers of saran wrap.   Come back in 48 hours (yeah, 2 days!).  It will most likely smell like your garbage can on a hot summer day, but that is a good thing. Then pull off a majority of the mash into a pot and bring to a boil and add it back to the cooler in order to raise the mash temp to 170 for the run-off(mash out).  Bring to a boil, add in just enough hops to call it a beer and boil for 15 mins.  Cool to 65F and toss in a packet of Fermentis S-04 yeast.  It finished fermenting in a couple days and I kegged most of it with some making its way into a 64 oz growler with 20 little carbonating tabs. 

Here are the results:  A murky lemonade looking, headless treat with a taste that follows the appearance.  It is everything that I ever imagined I wanted a sour mash ale to taste like and more.  I am both amazed and excited to see that this is so easy, cheap, and quick!

 

Intro to Fermentation

Hello all, my name is Richard Drawdy, a husband and father of one son, an employee at Daktronics, and the part that leads me to this blog is a home brewer of about 27 months now. About a year ago I began talking to Matt about his homebrewing adventures which I originally discovered through this blog.  Then a couple months ago I got the chance to brew with the AnderHoff duo.  I noticed that they are in the beginning stages of the home brewers learning curve with myself being a little closer towards the apex.  At that point I figured there may be a few things that I could lend in the way of advanced brewing tips that could be a helpful contribution to the blog.  In my tenure I have made about 300 gallons of the home made libation we all love, totaling about 50 different recipes. It's not all about volume in this art its more about quality which leads me to my first topic I would like to present in my series of initial blog posts about improving your home brewed batches: quality fermentation.

There are many things that go into producing a malt sugar filled liquid which brewer's call wort, I will focus today on handling that wort once you get it into your fermenter. There are many variables that go into fermentation: wort composition, wort temperature, yeast variety, yeast cell count, yeast health, and fermenter size.  All of this may seem like a lot to worry about and it is! But, to keep it simple you can follow these couple of steps in preparation for your brew day:
Review the specifications for your yeast. This will tell you important things like pitching rate requirements, temperature tolerance and alcohol tolerance.  Effective fermentation is easily accomplished by shooting for the middle range on each of these requirements for your batch of home brew. Once you know the pitching rate requirements for your yeast you can use calculators available at yeastcalc.com or mrmalty.comin order to propagate or know how much to buy for your specific wort. Under pitching your yeast quantity can cause the wort to finish short of the targeted alcohol content as well as increase the amount of abrasive flavors produced by the yeast. Over pitching your yeast is less harmful but can cause the yeast to produce less flavors that you may want in the finished product.
Once you have the correct amount of yeast in your wort you then will want to focus on temperatures for the fermentation. Shooting for the lower end of your temperature range will restrain yeast flavor production, while the opposite will cause flavor production, some of which may be undesirable in the higher temperature ranges.
Now that we know the basics of fermentation lets walk through an example: Northern Brewer's Dead Ringer IPA Kit. When you buy the kit you also need to consider your schedule and whether you will have the time or equipment to make yeast starters, if not you will need to buy more than one liquid pack of yeast. This kit calls for a fermentation volume of 5 gallons of wort at an original gravity of 1.064. Yeastcalc.com says that this requires 222 billion cells of yeast or a pitching rate of 11.7 million cells per milliliter of wort. The Wyeast American Ale 1056 that comes with the kit contains 100 billion cells of yeast at the day it is produced. Based on the production date of the yeast pack you would need to buy 2 or 3 yeast packs. Or make a starter with 1 packet with a volume of 2-4 liters of starter wort again depending on the yeast packet age.  I will assume that the yeast pack is 1 month old, meaning I will have 85 billion cells to start with. I will either need to buy 2 more yeast packs or make a 2.8 liter yeast starter to get to 222 billion cells needed for this healthy fermentation. Wyeast American Ale 1056 has a fermentation temp range of 60-72 F, 15-22 C. For this IPA I do not really want any yeast flavor contribution so I will shoot for 62 F on this fermentation.  In order to achieve this temperature with some consistency but there are a variety of methods available.  You could be sure that you brew during a time of the year that you have a room in your house will be the optimal temperature, or you could build yourself a fermentation control system with a fridge like I have done.

Thanks for reading, and happy fermenting! Cheers - Rich

Additional References:

Jamil Z on Pitching Rateshttp://www.mrmalty.com/pitching.php

Youtube videos from Wyeast:http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgOVeEqw5B8PdWeqg3s8tqI_jycItwf-p

Other great youtube instructionals:http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgOVeEqw5B8MkKdSZVKMHWdWpxNqn3uRv

Catching Up

Alright....been on a little bit of a break again and a lot has happened since the last post. Not to make excuses, but I know see myself being able to blog on a more consistent basis since I finally got my keyboard/docking station for my tablet computer. So I've wanted to do posts of all the different things that have happened, but in an effort to catch everybody back up, I'm going to break this post up into small summaries of each event, first starting out is:

Big Brew Day - Russian Imperial Stout
Last month (February 2nd) was the Big Brew Day by the SDSU Homebrewing Club, and this time a Russian Imperial Stout, a really strong beer that we were aiming for a 10.5% ABV.

The idea for how to start this Big Brew Day had good intentions (9am meeting at Heist brewery), .....however we did not take into account the fact that most of us would be out that Friday night prior, and you could say that nobody was moving fast in the morning. I am guilty as well after going to my first Brookings Blizzard hockey game, where you can buy "VIP Tickets" for $26 and it includes entrance into the game, as well as all you can drink beer and all the food you can eat (catered by BBQ shack).....simply incredible.

So we ended up getting a late start on the day, had to make a pit stop on the way to Heist and get some coffee and Casey's breakfast pizza...mmm. Once I got to Heist and we started getting everything set up, Rich and I had to run back to his house to get the yeast starts that he did the other night. Soon enough we had everyone at the brewery and started crushing the grains and making some beer! Everyone brought different kinds of beer to share and put them in a big ice bucket, I bought a 4-pack of Ivan The Great. I was pretty excited to try this beer, until it became apparent that all 4 were incredibly flat and tasted like borderline syrup. I have experienced more carbonation out of a Bud Light that was sitting in a cooler for a couple days while at the cabin/Apple River. Thankfully others brought some really good AND carbonated beer so I wasn't at a total loss for the day.

I can't remember what prompted this, but I had written a quote down from Rich: "Beer with cheese...it accentuates the funkiness".

Me filling up my carboy

After we got done and it was time to start filling up everyone's carboy's, we realized that we may have a little bit more than expected, so instead of some of us getting 5 gallons, we got 6 (which I was not going to argue with). Then we had an aerator to help create oxygen prior to pitching the yeast, this was the first time I had used one of these, and wow does it definitely make it easier than picking it all up and swishing it around constantly. So we all got our allotted amount of beer, aerated, and pitched the yeast then loaded up our vehicles and head our separate ways.

Rich getting the hops ready

SDSU Homebrew Club February Meeting
This was the first meeting in quite awhile that I didn't have my kid and was actually able to attend. These meetings are so much fun, if you're a fan of beer, and a fan of trying different kinds of beer while meeting new people....there is no reason to not check out an SDSU Homebrew Club meeting. At this meeting, Rich showed everyone how to make their own labels and how to get them to stick to the beer bottle. After printing off a design on a colored laser printer, simply coat the back of the paper in a saucer of milk and press it to the beer bottle firmly and hold. I couldn't believe how easy this actually was and I think many others were surprised as well and now we all feel comfortable being to start making our own labels for the beers we make.

One of my best friends from college ended up coming into town so I had to cut the meeting short, but before I left I did try someone's beer that was actually rated at 28% ABV.....as soon as I heard about that I knew I had to try it. Wow! This pretty much tasted like drinking straight rum, sweet of course but some good flavor and not what you would expect from a beer, felt more like I was drinking alcohol straight. 

Bottling Dead Ringer IPA
Blake made a trip up to Brookings to help me finally bottle the Dead Ringer IPA that we brewed about a month or two ago. We took a final gravity reading and it came out right around where we wanted it to be for a 6.5% ABV. I am a fan of bottling day, though as much work as it may be, something about filling up bottles and capping them really hits home that you made beer....and I love it. We are using bigger bottles instead of the 12oz ones so we don't have has many to fill, so it's the best of both worlds.