Welcome back beer lovers!

Well, we Barely Brewers have been slacking the last week and we went a bit long on the primary fermentations for the last couple beers. Shouldn't be a problem though! A couple of days ago, Spargemeister Tron returned to the San Anselmo brewhouse– I mean, kitchen– with his brother Jack, and new roommate, Mr. Suddaby, to keg the Scruggs-Style Rye-PA and rack the Blinding Light Pale Ale and the newly named Twang Theory Amber. The Spargemeister and I had gone to SF Brewcraft with the Cornelius keg, regulator, and CO2 tank that our friend from The Free Theatre, Andy, lent us to check it out and talk to them about kegging our first beer. The guy who gave us the most advice didn't even work there; he was just an avid brewer and friend of someone who does! With a filled CO2 tank, a general ok on the keg, and some replacement seals for the keg fittings, we got to work!

Barely Brewer Taylor, Spargemeister Tron, and Mr. Suddaby Kegging

Sterilizing a keg is a little bit more labor intensive than sterilizing 50 bottles for us since we use the dishwasher to sterilize our bottles but was not too bad. This be a Rye-PA, we poured 750ml of Bulleit rye whiskey (minus a small sip for each of the brewers, post-racking) into the keg first and syphoned the beer over that.

We set the CO2 tank to force carbonate the beer and we are hoping its working as the gauge on the regulator is pretty finicky and we were told not to trust it anyway...


After kegging the Rye-PA and re-sterilizing the carboy it came out of, we racked Arthel Watson's Blinding Light Pale Ale, dry hopping it with 1/2 oz each of Willamette and Cascade hops. After more sterilizing we cracked the top on the bottling bucket (and crossing my fingers that it remained sterile since we'd never used it before) we took a whiff of what we are calling Warren Hellman's Twang Theory Amber Ale. Smelled like beer! We racked that one, too, and called it a day. Whew!

The jokey box we are planning to build for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is coming together, too, after receiving some advise at SF Brewcraft on that, as well. So that's it for this time around, beer lovers. Stay tuned for more updates on our Hardly Strictly Brewgrass plans!

Brewing Bonanza!

Welcome back, beer lovers! On Sunday, Spargemeister Tron (as he now prefers to be called) and I brewed up a batch of what we're calling Arthel Watson's Blinding Light Pale Ale, after another bluegrass giant who passed on this year, Doc Watson. If my first name was Arthel I'd come up with some awesome nickname like 'Doc', too. It's an American Pale Ale that I've done before with a couple of alterations. The brew went really well but I was housesitting that night and when I got back home the following day, the fermentation was vigorous enough that it had started to bubble beer out of the airlock. When I pulled out the bung to put in the blow off tube, the pressure inside shot this wad of hops and yeast out of the carboy and right into my face!


Today, the Spargemeister, his twin brother, and I brewed up gallons 11 through 15 of our Hardly Strictly Brews, a yet-to-be-named amber ale styled after Boont Amber Ale. The name will be Warren Hellman-centric but we haven't yet come up with the right one... This beer's creation marks a Barely Brewers first: three beers fermenting simultaneously! As a result, however, we have to ferment this one in a 6.5 gallon bottling bucket because we only have one 6.5 gallon glass carboy. This shouldn't be a problem but we've never used it before so we will see...

Until next time! Cheers!

Rye-P-Update!

Well, after less than 24 hours of fermentation, the Scruggs-style Rye-PA is going nuts! I just had to put in a blow-off tube! You can hear how fast carbon dioxide is being forced out of the carboy in this video.

Scruggs-style Rye-PA

Wow- It's been a long time... Barely Brewers is back and we are crafting beer for the fall and winter right now. We bottled our second batch of our highly successful mocha stout last week and this week we had a guest brewer in the brewhouse – uh, I mean – kitchen! Sam and I had the idea to brew up a beer (maybe three, even) for the wonderful, marvelous, one-of-a-kind Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in October. This year was a sad year for the genre of bluegrass and the Festival with the passing of some of the bluegrass greats - Hazel Dickens, Doc Watson, and Earl Scruggs – and one of its greatest supporters, Warren Hellman.
Sam, not really a brewer, asked me if it would be possible to incorporate rye whiskey into a beer and, of course, I did a bit of research and decided not only is it possible but awesome! So yesterday Sam and I brewed up batch #1 of what we are calling Scruggs-style Rye-PA.

It's a malty IPA base with some rye grains that we will add some rye whiskey to in the secondary. Grizz, owner and head recipe-maker at SF Brewcraft, recommended we use oak chips soaked in whiskey to get the flavor we wanted but I'm pretty sure he misunderstood our intentions and gave us a recipe for simulating aging the beer in an oak former whiskey barrel.

The recipe is below:

6.5# Malt Extract
1.5# Marris Otter
3/4# Rye
1/2# 30-37 Crystal
1/2# Oats

1 oz. Centennial @60min
1 oz. Cascade @30 min
1/2 oz. Cascade @ 15 min
1/2 Cascade @5 min

London Ale Yeast

The brew is fermenting away in the living room with a huge krausen and plenty of activity! Check it out here!

We are going to dry hop it with 1 oz. Centennial hops and add a yet-to-be-determined quantity of rye whiskey to the secondary. I'm super excited about this beer! Stay tuned for the second installment of our Hardly Strictly brews in the coming weeks...

Developing a Recipe

Welcome back, beer lovers! I realize I've once again fallen into a posting schedule that is too few and far-between for my own liking and I'll try to post more often.

Let's start with a quick update on what's been brewing: The gluten-free pumpkin spice ale has been bottled. I attempted to cold crash the beer for about three days prior to bottling but with no fridge and the warmest winter on record, I think I was unable to keep the beer cold enough for long enough for the cold crash to noticeably clarify the beer. It went into the bottles pretty hazy but a cursory taste of the young beer revealed some nice flavor. The spices were a bit heavy on the palate but from my research on using those kinds of spices in beers they will mellow and blend as the beer ages. Bottom line- I think it will be a tasty beer, if not our most beautiful. The Boont Amber ale clone was racked to the secondary fermenter on New Year's Day and will be bottled fairly soon.

Today I'm going to talk about formulating a recipe from a concept. My dad tried a Brazilian dark lager called Xingu not long ago and really liked it. He detected some dark fruit notes, blackberry in particular, that he really liked and hadn't really experienced in a dark beer before. So with the intention of creating another beer like our Scottish strong ale, one that needs to be aged for a long time before it reaches its peak of deliciousness, we decided to brew a blackberry stout.

We've done a couple of stout-y beers in the past, the mocha stout and the Scottish strong ale, but this one called for some changes in style. Firstly, stouts are usually characterized by the roasted and highly kilned specialty grains like chocolate, carafa, and black patent to provide a roasty flavor and that wonderful silky black color. With this beer, we really want the blackberries to come through in the final flavor profile so I scaled back the quantities of dark malted grains in order to allow the fruit to shine through. I also read that it is essential to hold back on the quantities of hops used, particularly late-boil hop additions for aroma, in order for the fruit aroma to come through.

I started by looking at the recipe we used for the mocha stout and by doing some research about how to incorporate blackberries into beer. I cut out black patent grain from the grain bill and scaled back the rest of the dark roasts slightly. I decided that we should try a new hop strains, Willamette, that I'd read goes nicely with dark beers and provides some fruity notes on its own that I thought would pair well with the blackberries. I increased the quantity of malt extract in the recipe by a half pound to up the alcohol content slightly to make the beer more age-able. Higher alcohol content beers age well in part because the alcohol makes unwanted bacterial and fungal contamination less likely. For yeast, I selected a strain that will (according to my research and the guy at Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley) produce some diacetyl alcohols as well as the standard ethanols. These diacetyls add a slightly fruity flavor and some buttery tones and textures, as well. The buttery textures compliment the stout style while the fruity flavors, like the Willamette hops, will hopefully reinforce the blackberries.

The blackberries are to be frozen, then thawed, pureed, strained and added to the secondary fermenter. Freezing the berries accomplishes two things: first, it has a chance to kill some of the bacteria that could infect the beer. Secondly, freezing breaks the cell walls of the berries, allowing the flavor and sugar compounds to more easily be incorporated into the beer.

So here's the final recipe I settled on:


Blackberry Stout

6.5 # Malt Extract
1.5 # Maris Otter
1/2 # Flaked Oats
1/4 # 120L Crystal
1/4 # Roasted Barley
1/4 # Chocolate
1/4 # Carafa

1 oz Willamette Hops
1 oz. East Kent Goldings Hops

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast

6 # Blackberries, frozen, thawed, pureed, and strained added to secondary
1/4 # Chocolate nibs, isomerized in vodka for 24 hrs. added to secondary

I showed this recipe to one of the guys working in Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley and got the thumbs up from him, boosting my ego just a bit. This is only the second recipe that I've come up with myself (the first being the recent GF Pumpkin Spice Ale) so getting the thumbs up with no changes from one of the "experts" feels pretty good.

We'll brew this on Tuesday and I'll write another post then about how it went. Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

Merry Christmas!

Hello beer lovers! Welcome back to Barely Brewers!

Almost three weeks ago I brewed my first attempt at a gluten-free beer for a friend of mine. The gluten-free pumpkin spice ale has now been racked to the secondary fermenter, moving it off of the huge quantity of trub this brew produced. Much of the trub was, as usual, coagulated proteins, dead yeast cells, and hop solids but having forgotten to add the clarifying whirlfloc tablet near the end of the brewing process led to a lot more suspended matter in the beer. The beer has been sitting in the secondary for a week and a half and some of the cloudiness has settled out, particularly near the top of the carboy. I'm hoping that a few more days will allows some more of the suspended particles to precipitate out but I have a back up plan!

There is a process called 'cold crashing' that helps to clarify beer. Prior to bottling (or kegging) a brewer can chill the beer to somewhere about 40°F for a day or two. Before launching into the scientific reason for how this works, there's an important distinction to be made: that between particles existing in suspension and those in solution. A suspension is composed of a liquid medium and particles small enough to appear 'dissolved' but large enough to eventually settle out. A solution is defined by a homogenous mixture of a dissolved substance in a liquid medium that will not eventually settle out. From a scientific point of view, there are a number of reasons this helps to clarify the beer. First, colder temperatures force yeast in suspension to enter dormancy, slowing cellular respiration and causing yeast cells to flocculate (clump together) and settle out. The cessation of respiration also slows the motion of particles and medium in the carboy, allowing additional sedimentation to occur. Cold liquids, with slower-moving water molecules, are less soluble than warm liquids because there is less available 'space' between water molecules in cold liquids. So cooling the beer forces some of the larger soluble molecules to precipitate out as the cold beer no longer 'has room' for the exotic particles.


The only problem with my brilliant cold-crash back-up plan is that we don't have a dedicated fridge to keep our fermentation temperatures constant so I don't really have a way to cool the beer cold enough over a long enough period of time. Fortunately, mild winters in Northern California may save the day! My plan is to fill a large tub with water, put the carboy in it, and leave it outside for a couple of days. The reason islands like Hawaii have such nice climates year-round and day and night is because water has a high 'specific temperature' and doesn't change temperature easily. During the day, water around the island slowly heats up and evaporation keeps temperatures relatively cooler. At night, water slowly cools, releasing the heat it accumulated during the day and keeping the temperature from dropping precipitiously. With temperatures at night in California dropping to the mid-30s, I figure the beer in a tub of water will get cold enough during the day and stay warm enough at night to accomplish my goal.


The final update for this post is significantly less technical! My dad and I brewed another batch of a Boont Amber clone as soon as the GF pumpkin spice ale was out of the primary and it is bubbling away in the living room right now. We drank our whole first batch of this beer in a couple of weeks last time so we're very much looking forward to this beer!


Until next time, faithful readers! Cheers!

The Return of Barely Brewers!

So I kind of let the blog go for a while... I've been traveling in Asia for the last 2 months and am excited to be back and brewing! I was traveling with a good friend of mine, Caitlin, who was teaching in Thailand for the last year. She also happens to be gluten intolerant. While Asia is great in terms of gluten-free (GF) food options, it's not really possible to get a GF beer over there. I pledged to try to brew a GF beer for her when we returned and after a couple weeks of jet lag, I got right on it! A few friends, including Caitlin, were interested in participating in the brew so we all got together for a fun-filled evening of brewing.

I'd done some research on GF brewing and the base is nearly always malted sorghum or malted sorghum extract. I decided to use the extract, having malted sorghum replace malted barley extract as the main source of fermentable sugars. In addition, some molasses and raw turbinado sugar will provide the rest of the fermentables. 

I also bought some roasted buckwheat, kasha, and roasted it further to darken it and bring out some more caramel-y flavors and colors. While the buckwheat will provide very few fermentable sugars, I'm hoping that the nutty flavors I read are associated with brewing with unmalted buckwheat come through a bit.

After giving Caitlin some options on styles and components of the beer, she settled on a pumpkin spice ale. So I we used the flesh of 5 sugar pumpkins, roasted to bring out the flavors and sugars, as well as the usual suspects of pumpkin pie spices: cinnamon, all-spice, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves.

I grated whole nutmeg

The pumpkin was integrated into two different stages of the brew: the mini-mash and the boil. It was mashed slightly for the mash, allowing more surface are in contact with the wort. The hop schedule was very simple, only Northern Brewer.

Adding the pumpkin to the boil

The whole process was incredibly smooth with so many hands on the brew pot it was really fun to brew with friends, teaching them a little bit as we went. The only thing that went wrong I didn't realize until much later: I'd forgotten to add the whirlfloc tablet, a clarifying agent made from refined Irish moss, a red-algae sea weed. So the beer may be a bit cloudier than our usual output but hopefully with a good long rest in the secondary fermenter it will clear up on its own.

My buddy Jack pouring the wort

The beer is bubbling along now though the process is certainly playing out differently than with gluten-full beers. For one, there is no krausen, the foamy yeasty layer formed at the top of the beer during rapid fermentation. It does indeed smell like delicious beer and I'm excited to see how it winds up!

Sam aerating the beer