Category Archives: Beer

Autumn Mead

Mead, ,

We had the first bottle of mead just before Thanksgiving, and we’re pretty pleased with the results.  It has a very sweet, delicate honey flavor and is nicely dry.  There is still a little yeasty funk, but mostly from the sediment.  It was a nice accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner.

So of course we’re already thinking about the next batch (which will probably have to wait for summer).  Some improvements we’ve got in mind:

  • Add a stronger-tasting honey (like Tupelo or Everglades) to the mix for a bolder flavor.
  • Using apple juice instead of water, again for a bolder flavor and a more cidery taste.
  • Switching to a yeast more suited to Champagne or cider.

We’re also thinking of brewing some cider, so we might do a few different batches with different combinations.

Kegging, Interrupted

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The dubbel finally got done fermenting, after a good shake and another week in a warmer room.  So I headed down to my local homebrew shop, and picked up a used soda keg.  I was hoping to find a new one, because the price difference wasn’t that big and I’ve heard used soda kegs can have reliability problems.  But they haven’t been able to get any new ones in stock recently, and only had two used kegs left, so I picked the one that looked like it was in better condition.

Getting the beer in the keg was much easier than bottles.  It was easy to sterilize and siphon the beer into the keg.  But that’s where the smooth sailing stopped.  First, I found that I’d gotten ball-lock couplers and a pin-lock keg.  So back to the homebrew shop I went and picked up the right couplers.  Then I found that my store-bought 5/16″ gas line wouldn’t fit the 1/4″ pin-lock gas coupler.  I had never imagined that they might use different gas line sizes (I’ve been fiddling around with kegs and plumbing long enough to know better, but for some reason I still expect things to work out by default).  By the time I figured this out, the homebrew shop was closed and the Thanksgiving holiday was upon us, so the beer sat refrigerated but unpressurized over the long weekend.

Once back in town, the homebrew shop was still closed, but luckily my local hardware store helped me jury-rig an adapter.  So I hooked it all up and pressurized to my normal serving pressure (8-10 psi), but the keg was leaking CO2.  I tried reseating the lid and greasing the O-ring, with no success.  I’ve also read that increasing the pressure will help the seal (and speed up the carbonation process), so I cranked up the pressure to 25 psi.  As I increased the pressure, the sound of the CO2 leak changed in pitch, heading from a benign hiss to a worrying whine and then, just before making me truly worried, changed into a satisfying gurgle as the seal took hold and the keg started to pressurize properly.

It was then, crouched behind my kegerator, adjusting the pressure on the regular with a small screwdriver, feeling the frozen condensation on the gas line and regulator shaft, that it occurred to me that I should be worried about the whole Rube Goldberg contraption exploding.  Just in time to rock the 25 psi keg around to help the carbonation get going.  Standing on the other side of the kegerator made the CO2 canister less dangerous, so actually rocking a pressurized keg around on the floor didn’t seem so bad.  Now that’s done, and in theory we should have drinkable beer in a few hours.

Xmas Beer Roundup

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Our local brewery just released their winter seasonal beer, and we’d seen a few other Christmas beers around town, so we gathered a few and had a tasting.

  • We started out with Swamp Head Hoe Hoe Hoe — which they describe as their Cottonmouth Wit infused with ginger, cranberry and Tupelo honey. I like Cottonmouth quite a bit (it was the first keg in our kegerator). This beer isn’t much different — there’s just a hint of honey and spice, and we couldn’t find any cranberry at all.  It’s also unusual to make a light Wit as a winter seasonal, but I guess you have to make allowances for Florida.
  • Next up was another semi-local beer, Sweetwater’s Festive Ale.  I think this is the first Sweetwater beer I’ve had, though I often see them around town.  In sharp contrast to the Hoe Hoe Hoe, this beer is a very dark Winter Warmer.  It has a smoky coffee bitterness like a porter, but also a big malt and aromatic spiciness that provide a good counter-balance.
  • St. Bernardus Christmas Ale is very similar to their Abt (which is one of my favorite Belgian beers), but with a sharp ginger note added.  This seemed very jarring, but perhaps I should actually follow the temperature guidelines on the bottle instead of drinking at fridge temperature.  As the beer warmed up, the sickly sweet malt mellowed a bit, and the spiciness didn’t seem as sharp, and they seemed to make a better blend.
  • Affligem Noël fell into the same trap as Hoe Hoe Hoe — there was just not much difference from their Dubbel.  I like the Dubbel just fine, and the additional of a little spiciness is a nice improvement.  But I was hoping for something a little more distinctive.

The Sweetwater Festive Ale is the clear favorite here.  I really enjoyed the balance between the spicy/sweet and bitter/smoky aspects.  Though, unlike the other beers in this bunch, I haven’t had a similar beer from Sweetwater, so that could be a factor.

Unstuck

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carboy next behind computerIt’s been a couple of weeks since we put the dubbel in second fermentation, so I checked the gravity yesterday expecting it to be about ready to keg.  Alas, the gravity was still way too high, only about halfway down to where the recipe calls for final gravity.  We hadn’t seen any bubbling at all recently, so I did some googling on stuck fermentation, and I think the problem is one I never expected in Florida: my beer got too cold!  We’ve had a few chilly nights recently, and it’s possible the beer got down to 60° or so, which can apparently make the yeast go dormant and settle.

So I moved it to the hottest part of the house — right behind my computer.  Our home office is reliably the hottest room of the house, several degrees warmer than other rooms, and we keep our aquarium in there for the same reason.  I gave the carboy a good swirl to stir up the yeast again (above and beyond the sloshing involved in getting it to the other end of the house).  24 hours later, it’s still bubbling every few seconds, but not going nuts like the initial multiplication stage of fermentation.  So I’m feeling good that the fermentation is back on track, and we’ll be able to keg it next weekend.

Pumpkin Beer Tasting

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Pumpkin Tasting LineupWe’ve had a couple of pumpkin beers this fall, and picked up a few more in Asheville last weekend, so we had a little side-by-side tasting.

  • Thirsty Dog’s Pumpkin Ale.  This surprised me at how light-bodied it was, since I generally expect fall seasonal beers to be malty, dark, or both.  But this was almost like a pilsner, with a little twang.  The pumpkin taste was very subdued.  But overall, I’d say this is nice, and easy-drinking.
  • Southern Tier’s Pumking.  This brew had a definite pumpkin aroma, but the flavor was overwhelmed by vanilla and spice.  In fact, I had a hard time picking up anything else.  Wind likes this much more than I do, and the ratings online are pretty high, but I find it just barely drinkable, and not very pumpkiny at all.
  • Cigar City’s Good Gourd.  This is my idea of what a pumpkin beer should be, with definite spice and vanilla notes, but not overwhelming the pumpkin flavor.  This beer has a little more sweetness and body, and has the highest ABV at 9.5%.
  • Starr Hill Boxcar Pumpkin Porter.  A decent porter, if a little thin.  Unfortunately, the pumpkin is drowned out by over-strong smoke and coffee.  Finishes a little too bitter, but with more pumpkin at least.

Overall, I’m a little disappointed.  I expected beers with pumpkin in the name to have a more pronounced pumpkin flavor.  Only the Good Gourd met my expectations on that score, and is definitely my favorite of the bunch.  The Thirsty Dog Pumpkin Ale would be the runner up, and I’m definitely glad I picked up a bottle when I had the chance.

Just Got Back From Asheville

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Local Beer Sampler at Luella'sWe just got back from a trip to Asheville, NC.  I first visited a few years ago for a conference, and liked it so much I dragged the family up the next Fall.  Now we think of it as visiting Autumn each year, as the 80° temperatures in Gainesville grind on through October and November.  It was nice to enjoy cooler temperatures, mountain vistas with the fall colors, and of course sample several new beers and a few old favorites.

There are a bunch of great restaurants to choose from — like Tupelo Honey Cafe, Mayfel’s, Jack of the Wood, 12 Bones, and Luella’s.  The barbeque in particular is divine, and typically comes with just a little dry-rub, fantastically tender and flavorful without sauce.  All the restaurants have a ton of local beer on tap.  Even the Biltmore has their own house beer now (though I suspect it’s contract-brewed since their website carefully avoids saying they brew it themselves).

The best new discovery was probably Pisgah’s Pale Ale.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a big hop fan, and I find even most non-IPA pale ales to be over-hopped.  But this brew was nicely gentle, with a little sweetness like a cream ale.  Though I also enjoyed having Green Man ESB both at 12 Bones, and the cask version at Jack of the Wood — it’s always great to taste a beer both before and after cask treatment.  Though the cask version is dry-hopped and was right at my resiny bitterness tolerance, it definitely gave the beer some extra character.

Unfortunately, I failed on my attempt to not have the same beer twice — I broke down and had a second pint of French Broad’s Wee Heavy-er (definitely my favorite Asheville beer).  I also picked up a couple French Broad bottles at Bruisin’ Ales — along with a few of the beers I’d been trying to find for my Belgian Research Project, but hadn’t been able to find locally yet.

Mead in Bottles and Dubbel in the Carboy

Beer, Mead, , ,

We bottled our first batch of mead this weekend, after being in secondary fermentation for about 5 weeks.  The advice I found online about how long to leave it fermenting was all over the place, but mostly ranged up to 6 months to a year.  But we’re impatient and didn’t want to wait 6 months to see if it came out or not.

It was nicely clear, and apart from smelling strongly of yeast, was very nice.  The final gravity was down to 1.006, for a final ABV of 8%.  We used the same honey we brewed with for priming sugar (thanks again, Uncle John!).  We’ll let the bottles carbonate a couple weeks, and probably have the first bottle at Thanksgiving.

As long as we had the all the gear out and sterilized, we also pulled the Dubbel into the carboy for second fermentation.  It looked and smelled fantastic, so we’ve got high hopes.

Belgian “Research” Project: Second Round

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I continue to make progress on my project to sample a wide variety of Belgian beers.  Here’s another set of notes:

Orval Trappist Ale

Interesting Trappist beer in cute glass bottles with dolphin heraldry. Very luxurious head, took a while to pour a small bottle (11.2oz) into a pint glass. Very light and sour, with a bit of resin in the finish, from dry hopping.

Chimay Grande Réserve (Blue)

Probably the first Belgian beer I ever had was some Chimay Tripel a friend brought to a party many years ago — I found it very strange and unpleasant.  My tastes have changed over the years, and I knew that I’d like the Chimay Blue much better than their tripel.  I was not disappointed: this beer if very sweet and smooth, with a hint of dryness and mild earthy hops.

Girardin Gueuze 1882 (Black Label)

Intensely sour, with a little fruitiness and funkiness.  More like Champagne than an average ale, both because of the effervescence and because of the rich layering of flavor and aroma.  Definitely confirming my intention to find more gueuze to try.

St. Bernardus Wit

Delicious — a perfect hefeweizen. Just a little touch of honey adding sweetness but not overpowering.  I want to see if I can find any of the other St. Bernardus beers around town.

Delirium Tremens

I avoided trying this beer for a long time — I didn’t take it seriously because of the silly pink elephants on the label.  What lager should be: sweet and light, with a little sour reediness that almost reminds me of a pilsner.  The overall effect is closer to a cream ale than your typical tripel.

Delirium Nocturnum

If you’re going to have one beer with pink elephants on the label, you may as well have another…  This is the sister beer to Delirium Tremens — this time a dark, strong ale. Very fruity, with a strong similarity to DT (same pilsner/cream ale taste, which is a little incongruous in a darker ale). But sweet and malty, too.

Recipe: Beer Bread

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This is my favorite bread recipe at the moment: it doesn’t get any easier or faster, and it makes a nice dense rustic bread that everybody in the family likes.  And if by some chance you have a batch of homebrew that didn’t turn out perfectly or just some spare beer you’d rather eat than drink, this is a great way to put it to good use and free up the bottles for the next batch.

Ingredients:

3½ cups flour
3 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1½ tsp. salt
12 oz. beer

Directions

  1. Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.  Add beer and mix until just combined.
  2. Knead in the bowl.  For a smoother consistency, turn out onto a floured board and knead.
  3. Form into loaf and turn out into bread pan, or onto a baking sheet.  For a crisper crust, brush with an egg beaten with 1 Tbsp. of water.
  4. Bake for 50 minutes at 375°F.

Source: Slightly adapted from USA Weekend “Recipe: Homemade bread in under an hour“.  The original recipe says to bake “about 45 minutes”, but every time I’ve sliced a loaf after 45 minutes, it has had a pocket of uncooked dough in the middle.

First All-Grain Brew (Belgian Dubbel)

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We had one of the first cool days of Fall yesterday, cool enough to justify real shoes — with socks!  It probably won’t last, but we’ve been pining for cooler weather and the darker, heavier beers that go with them.  Beers that could plausibly go with shepherd’s pie.  So we took advantage of the nice weather and spent the whole day inside slaving over a hot stove, brewing a batch of abbey ale, using a recipe based on Westmalle Dubbel.

We had (almost) all of our equipment ready, and took the plunge and did our first all-grain batch.  This was also our first liquid yeast, and between those two things, it went about as well as could be expected:

  • Apparently, liquid yeast needs to come out of the fridge 3-6 hours before you can pitch it.  Luckily, I remembered to check just in time.
  • 5 gallons of sparge water took a long time to bring up to temp — roughly an hour.  And I thought I was being clever when I remembered to start heating it 20 minutes before the mash was supposed to be done…
  • It took roughly 8½ hours from starting to heat the water for the mash, to getting the fermenter tucked away in the pantry.  Mashing, collecting wort and the boil combined took 4½ hours, so the other 4 hours was spent waiting for water to heat up (or cool down), filtering wort into the fermenter, etc.
  • Our fancy new kitchen faucets don’t have a standard tap that the wort chiller can screw into.  So I ran a garden hose into the kitchen and hooked it up.  Of course, the hose had a leak and sprayed water everywhere.  Even with copious duct-taping, it still leaked a trickle.  Eventually, I had the hose angled down into a dish pan, collecting the runoff.  But that took a surprisingly long time to get right.

Unlike some previous batches, I actually remembered to take gravity readings at several points.  With the help of a handy little tool for temperature-correcting gravity readings, we got exactly the gravity called for in the recipe.  So we’ve got high hopes.