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.