Beer Obsessed: Beer and Brewing Journal

As mentioned below, one of my favorite IPAs: Brew Free or Die by the 21st Amendment tasted different to me lately, the munich malt that I loved so much had all but dissapeared. 
If you drink the hell out of this beer because you love its malty goodnes then be patient. 21st has no intention of changing the recipe, they have just done a little tinkering. Brewmaster and Co-Founder, Shaun O’Sullivan saw my entry and sent a response:

“I saw your post about our IPA in your blog and you are dead on right. We have been tweeking the recipe and incorporating new malts to achieve that Munich malt flavor. Unfortunately, we are not a huge brewery so the beer drinking public is getting to taste test our R&D. I am confident that we will get there. In fact the last batch is particularly good and has a good healthy charge of German Munich malt with the addition of caramalt.  We have been also trying a new way of dry hopping the IPA where I think we are picking up more aroma, which can be so elusive when you package an IPA. Thanks for trying and thanks for the comments. “

…and thank you Shaun for checking out the 22oz blog.
Folks, actually a great opportunity here to enjoy some of that R&D and try some interesting tweaks to the IPA in a can that you know and love. Save what you have now, run down to your store and grab some more to see if you have one of the tweaked recipes. Grab some more down the road to see the final version. Compare and contrast the different tweaks and learn a few things in the process. Send 21st your feedback. I’m sure they would appreciate to hear how folks are taking to it.

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.