Beer Obsessed: Beer and Brewing Journal

With what was really quite a smooth trip from San Francisco to Minneapolis, I have now landed in the middle of the National Homebrew Conference.
I’ve hooked up with a few friends that I have met over time and I have tried some really tasty beers. The Brewing Network put on a show from the hospitality suite and I attended the meadmaker of the Year Seminar.
The one thing I was really looking forward to in a Homebrew Conference in this area is mead, and I have not been dissapointed. The mead panel had what is probably the 5 most knowledgable meadmakers on the planet. The meads poured during the seminar were great and the standouts have been the chipotle meads. I have tried a couple and being fruit meads (melomels) they have fruit on the top with a very gentle heat on the finish from the chipotle. Absolutely fantastic.
The seminar was very well attended which shows how much mead is appreciated in this area. The atmosphere was relaxed and light hearted as the panel pretty much just took questions from the audience. The entire time, delicious meads were being poured that the panel had produced earlier in the year.
I’m writing this up prior to club night which starts at 8pm tonight. Clubs from throughout the midwest and beyond will be represented. This is basically the largest homebrew party in the world.
I need a little rest before I go but please enjoy the photos (clicky for a higher res version)

The meadmaker of the year panel.

Mead being served thorughout the panel discussion

The panel was well attended showing the interest in mead in this part of the country.

The Brewing Network doing their thing up in the hospitality suite. The forum was “can you brew it” and it was basically an open mic for questions with plenty of entertaining stories between, Jamil and Tasty style.

Alas, my one month paternity is over and I am back at work. Did manage to do a couple fun beer related things to ‘celebrate’ my return.

Enjoying Triple Rock Ales
Had lunch at Triple Rock on Tuesday and enjoyed their excellent Amarillo Single Hop beer and one of their award winning Red Rock Ales. Brewmaster Rodger Davis was there and we had a conversation about his upcoming trip to England, Amsterdam, and of course Belgium. I sampled his double IPA that still has to carbonate but tasted fantastic and I had no problem drinking it flat (er, cask-like). I believe that one should be on tap today or tomorrow. General Manager Extraordinaire, Jesse, was there and he brought a bottle of Deschutes XXI out to taste. I’ve only had the tap version so far and the ‘word’ I’ve getting is that the bottled version is better. I really enjoyed the bottle version, more so than I recall with the tap version…but it has been a couple weeks since I had it on tap. 

adding nutrients to the fermentation

510 ‘estate’ mead
I’m now fermenting a mead with honey that was produced by bees from Oakland. I have a friend in West Oakland who happens to be in the landscaping and horticulture business. At her house, she has the bees in her backyard. I caught up with her this last weekend and she had tried to make a mead from her honey with no success. I encouraged her to bring 10 pounds over to my place and we’ll get something going. She did just that last Monday. We put together a batch that was about 80% her honey (very clover like) and about 20% Orange Blossom that I happened to have on hand. We mixed up about 3.25 gallons with a gravity of 1.110. The yeast we chose was D47.

stirring to release CO2

Fermentation had taken off by the next morning and we are looking forward to trying an Oakland 510 ‘estate’ mead in a few months.

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The hours I have spent studying yeast. The worry that fermentation has caused me. The overall stress that this has all caused in order to brew as perfect a hombrewed beverage (mead or beer) as possible.
If it wasn’t worth than I wouldn’t do it. The benefits are many and I do love researching my hobbies. The problem is I ran across a mead recipe that uses Fleischmann’s bread yeast and instructions that state “don’t stir the yeast, don’t shake the carboy…just pour the yeast in, put the carboy in a dark closet and don’t look at it for two months. You’ll have a delicious beverage in the end”. OK.
I did just that and I ended up with….a delicious beverage. So good that most of gallon got swallowed up at work. I had to hide the rest so that I could bottle off a little (got 2 – 22oz’ers in the end).
So what the hell? No propagation or culturing, no worrying, no shaking, no nothing? Perhaps I have been stressing a little too much about yeast. I certainly think the basics are in order for any beer or wine culture: sanitation, temperature, oxygen, pitching rate, and nutrients but I also realize I don’t need to go past that really.
I suppose the bread yeast is a fairly robust yeast strain and the oranges and cinnamon also probably help to hide any flaws the yeast may cause. Given that, I will probably try pitching bread yeast in just honey to see what exactly I do get left with besides alcohol.
I had originally called this recipe ‘hooch’ but I think that is a little unfair at this point. I now have two fresh batches going that should be ready in time for the holidays. I added cranberries to one of them for that extra Xmas touch. If you are bored, look up ‘JAO’ on the internet.

Cheers

Last June, pretty much right after the National Homebrewers Conference, I decided to whip up a batch of mead at work. The recipe is JAO or joe’s ancient orange. It’s clover honey with an orange, cinnamon stick, a couple of cloves, and a handful of raisins. My only guess as to why they have ‘ancient” in the title is because you use bread yeast to ferment. The “joe” portion is after Joe Mattioli, a guy who developed a bunch of mead based recipes using standard grocery store ingredients. Folks who have used his recipes seem to really enjoy them. To me, it seems like a rite of passage to make one of these recipes and for my own education in the mead world. Given all of this, I have lovingly named my batch ”office hooch”.
Fermentation took place under my desk and the one gallon fermenter spent all of its time enshrouded in a t shirt soaked in water. After two months, I had clarity in the mead and the oranges had sunk to the bottom. Barring major procrastination, I plan to rack it off very soon. In hooch style, I think I’ll serve to my staff and others straight out of the jug.
The alcohol level is a guess since I never took a sugar (gravity) reading prior to fermentation but I am going to guess about 14%. Aroma has a great spicy orange edge to it. Review coming.

young cherry melomel still needing to clear

Mead making is easy, juggling fermentations and rackings is tricky. While I have enjoyed putting together many different meads, I forgot the extra commitment there is during fermentation and subsequent rackings (as compared to beer, which is nil). I have six meads right now that I have to track on a spreadsheet in order to know when one is coming up for racking, or a nutrient addition, or general stirring. So far, it has been a great experience and I have learned a ton about honey, dry yeast (dry wine yeast in particular), and managing the fermentations of.

Cherry Melomel notes
I initially racked two gallons of Orange Blossom honey mead onto four pounds of stemmed and pitted Tulare sweet cherries. All of this went into a 2.5 gallon corny keg for three weeks. I pushed the liquid off of the cherries via CO2 to keep things within a closed environment. New carboys were backfilled with CO2 as well. I estimated the original gravity (amount of original sugars in the must), with cherries, to be about 1.106. Final gravity is 1.000 giving about a 14% ABV alcohol level. The kitchen was filled with the smell of cherries and alcohol.
I had read on the web that sweet cherries should be avoided due to “cough syrup” tastes. I also read that those flavors will dissapate over time. I didn’t have any cough syrup notes at all. The melomel seems pretty balanced with firm tannins (felt like my gums were getting cleaned). One of the reasons I pulled the cherries off after three weeks was to avoid any issues with long skin contact time. The tannins I did get much more mellow with time. This one seems to be shaping up well.

Joes Ancient Orange fermenting under my desk

JAO
It seems that when you are new to a topic and you start exploring it, you run across an acronym that everyone refers to but you have now idea. Searching on the acronym in the forums ususally leads to “your search term is too short” or something to that effect….probably a by product of spammers searching forums. With mead, it was “JAO”.
So I finally found the answer: Joe’s Ancient Orange. This is a pretty intriguing, simple to put together recipe that uses bread yeast….hence the ancient part(?). Many users swear that after a couple months you are left with a very tasty beverage for not much work. I have one gallon now sitting under my desk at work. If anything, I’ll name it “office hooch” and I’m sure we will all enjoy it. FWIW, fleischmanns bread yeast is a vigorous fermenter. The orange and raisins help but as you can see the airlock is full of yeasty must and some has even settled out in it. I actually left some headroom in it. When the vigorous portion of the ferment subsides, I plan to top up with honey water.

the last couple of weeks have been spent with my second daughter who was born on May 27. Family and I are all doing well and the time off together was great. Now that we are getting a new flow going to our lives plus one, it’s time to get back to the business of beer.
Thanks to all the kind words from everyone!

Corny Keg Fermentation.
I wanted to split out a batch of mead so that I could rack some of it over fruit. I knew one of my 2.5 gal cornies would be the way to go but I needed a way to get an airlock on. There are expensive corny lids that you can buy out there that have a drilled out hole and coupler welded over it so that you can attach any variety of hoses, etc. but I knew there should be a much cheaper solution out there. My solution? How about free!
I took off the gas in body connector and dip tube and replaced with a short section of 1/2″ hose. From there I inserted a short piece of 3/8″ hose and inserted airlock into the 3/8. Done and works great. Click on the detail photo for a bigger view of it all.
So what is in there and why? I had 3 gallons of orange blossom honey mead fermenting away in a secondary and got the wild idea to put some of it on fresh bing (Tulare) cherries. With my nice new high performance cherry pitter (13.99 at Andronicos), I was able to stem and pit 4lbs of cherries in 15 minutes. Prior to pitting, I steamed both the cherries and their nylon bag for about 10 minutes to help sanitize. The mead was running about 8% ABV at that point so I wasn’t too concerned but wanted to steam and clean nonetheless. Cherries went in the sack that was tied shut and pushed into the carboy. I then co2 pushed the mead out of the 3 gallon carboy and filled a 1 gallon carboy…leaving the remaining 2 gals to the corny. With 2 gals of mead and four pounds of cherries, it came close to topping off the corny.
As of a week later, airlock is still bubbling nicely with it’s new sugar source. I’m sure the cherries have also buffered out any low acid levels that I may have had and I know the yeast appreciates that as well. More later.

21st Amendment Brew Free or Die recipe change??
My beer drinking has been light since I had been on call to run my wife to the hospital for the delivery of our second daughter, but also I was very tired afterwards and I needed to be awake to help out and get settled. Well, I was pretty excited to pick up a sixer of brew free or die and have a nice IPA after all of this. But whoah! from my first sip to the last, this was a different beer. Where was all of that lovely munich malt? It was gone. One of the things I loved about this beer was a healthy dose of munich which gave it a nice malty, ballsy balance to the hops. I couldn’t belive my eyes (er, tongue and nose). I’ll finish this sixer to double/triple check and I also have a friend who has some older cans to compare….all of this just to be sure. Anyway, for now it seems like their beer has gotten rid of most or all of their munich malt. Ouch. I liked it with that malt. Maybe research showed that people don’t? Before I speculate too hard, let me go back and confirm this.
Comments are very welcome here.

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, I did my research and “brewed” a mead. The big appeal is that prep time to get to fermentation is less than an hour. This beats out a beer brew day by about 5 hours. After our second child is born, I thought sneaking in a mead every now and then would keep my fermentation lust at bay until I have time to return to the longer beer brewing day.
The photos are of the racked mead from about a month ago. The carboy is still slowly bubbling away which is really good news. My original gravity on this mead was 1.100 and at racking it was 1.036. For those who don’t know these numbers, I need to be below 1.010 for a dry mead on up to 1.020 for a sweet/dessert mead. Looks like I should get there. While “brewing” mead is easy, it does require patience since it is about six months before it is drinkable and delicious.
I plan on racking this one again and making one or two more batches on top of it. Since my father-in-law has a tart cherry farm I’d like to rack one of the batches over a few pounds of his cherries and hopefully get a truly pleasurable taste out of it in the end. We’ll see. More on this mead in a month or two….

a mead and a porter co-existing

I tried brewing a mead once with horrible results. Leave it to the Jamil Show to not only get me back interested in making a mead but giving me the information to do it right the first time.
With a second child on the way, I have quietly gotten a bit forelorn because I know after May, I probably won’t be brewing for perhaps up to a year. Brewing all-grain as I do it is about 6-7 hours of work to get to where the yeast take over and do their portion of the work (propagating up yeast, measuring and milling grain, mashing, lautering, boiling, prepping and sanitizing, etc, etc). Well guess what, it only takes about 1 hour max (and usually less) to get your mead must ready for fermentation. Heck yeah. Not only do I love beer but I love the process of fermentation. It looks like there is hope to keep my love of fermentation going during the first year of my second Daughter’s life! Beer? always easy to drink it and will be able to keep enjoying it until I can get back to brewing.
How do you make a mead? Well, very simply mix a high quality honey with water and add rehydrated yeast to it. It’s a little more detailed than that but I would recommend listening to the Jamil episode linked above or buying Ken Schramm’s excellent book, The Complete Meadmaker.
My Mead used orange blossom honey and I used 3 pounds per gallon. I have 3.5 gallons total and it started at 1.100 gravity. It is now almost a week and a half later and gravity is now at 1.048 (about 7% alcohol by volume), this should go down by about 30 more points in the end. At that point, I’ll rack to a glass carboy and let it sit for a few months til it clears. I suppose this is the one thing about Meads, you have to be patient.