2011 Recap - Looking Forward to 2012

Well I have not written here in a while and since it is 2012 I figured that I will add a resolution to my list. Brew bigger, better and blog about it!

So after I sat and went through my notes, while sipping on some of my coveted blueberry wheat, I ended up brewing 18 batches of beer this past year. Granted I had some brews I brewed a few different times but brewing this year was far better than my 2010 brew year. That said, I also upgraded some of my equipment and acquired some new stuff as well. I am working into doing small all grain test batches and practicing my all grain techniques which is definitely time consuming but produces a better, clearer beer. I have also switched from a spoon to a paddle which in my opinion is ten times better in my opinion. (I would recommend it if you do not have a paddle)

I also have upgraded to kegs, which is a lot of fun but one hell of a learning experience. I seem to keep over force carbonating my beer. Does anyone have any tips how to fix that? Kegging is fun but I do also prefer to bottle some beers because the bottle conditioning is fun and the aging is also fun to taste beers after a while.

The next and last upgrade came not in 2011 but pretty fracking early in 2012. I have acquired a Beer Meister. It is a single tap kegerator, with a stainless steel tower. It is for a Sanke tap or 15.5 gallon keg. I will need to do some converting for I figure up to 3 Cornelius Kegs. I will also be putting on a digital display temperature controller. This is my 2012 project. I will also be using it possibly for lagering.

As per the big brews, I will perfect some fruit beers, and my English ale. I will aslo brew up a few seasonals this year as well. I will also attempt a lambic and stick to brewing as often as I can. I hope to find a brewing partner that hopefully we can brew as often as possible. I will also take suggestions for beers to brew up.

I guess this sums it up for my first post of the new year. Cheers! Raise your glass and drink up!

Weed Ales and Lagers (Mt. Shasta Brewing Company)

A few weeks ago I went on a road trip to see my grandmother for the weekend. On the way back I decided to find a brewery to stop at for a late lunch/early dinner so that I could push through the night to get home. What a better place than to combine my love of beer and food for a brand new brewery trial. I found the Mt Shasta Brewing Company, of Weed, CA. It is located right off of the I5 and you can't miss the place. It definitely has a vintage feel and is a unique place in Norther California. 

At first walking in I was one of three customers in the bistro and right away I was offered a beer and the staff was very friendly. There were 9 different beers there and I tasted all but 2 of them. I must say, damn good beer.

The first one I tried was their Lemurian Lager. This beer is brewed like a Bohemian Pilsner, which I do not usually like because they all taste like straw, but this beer was one of the best lagers I have ever had.Clean, refreshing and delicious.

The next beer I tried was the hefeweizen finished with hemp seeds. First off I was skeptical of trying it but it was amazing! Light and refreshing with a strong finish. The hemp seed has a unique flavor, and the seed did not over power the wheaty lightness of a German hefeweizen. The beer was also quite clear implying that it is a filtered wheat.

I then tried the Weed Amber which is one of the best ambers I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. I enjoyed it so much that I purchased a 6 pack. It has a cool crisp finish, and not a lot of amber taste which I highly enjoy. It also has a great clear amber color.

Delivery Truck

The next one I had was the Weed Golden Ale. This one was delicious but I did not like the dry hopiness of the ale. Other than that it was damn delicious.

 This brewery I feel is amazing and the next time I pass through Weed, California, I will stop in again.

2011 Best Beers

So I just picked up the latest Zymurgy Magazine because every July/August edition has the best beers lists. How awesome is that. Well I have a few things to say about some of the lists.

The first list is the Top-Ranked Beers list

1. Russian River Pliny the Elder - A knock out!

2. Bell’s Two Hearted Ale

T3. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA

T3. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout

5. Bell’s Hopslam

6. Stone Arrogant Bastard - My Favorite

7. Sierra Nevada Celebration

T8. Sierra Nevada Torpedo

T8. Stone Ruination - Delicious

10. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale - Refreshing

11. Stone Sublimely Self Righteous - No Words

12. Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine

13. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout

T14. Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter

T14. Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale

T16. Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA - Delicious!!!

T16. New Glarus Belgian Red

18. North Coast Old Rasputin - Great Imperial Stout

19. Bell’s Expedition Stout

T20. Deschutes The Abyss - Chewy!

T20. Left Hand Milk Stout

T20. Odell IPA

T20. Samuel Adams Noble Pils

T20. Surly Furious

T20. Troegs Nugget Nectar

T26. Rogue Dead Guy Ale - Delicious

T26. Samuel Adams Boston Lager

28. Anchor Steam - Great Beer

T29. Bear Republic Racer 5

T29. Ommegang Three Philosophers

T29. Oskar Blues Ten Fidy

T29. Three Floyds Alpha King

T29. Three Floyds Dark Lord

T34. Avery Maharaja

T34. Dogfish Head Indian Brown

T34. Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

T34. Three Floyds Gumballhead

T38. Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA

T38. Lost Abbey Angel’s Share

T38. New Belgium La Folie

T38. New Belgium Ranger

T38. Oskar Blues Old Chub

T43. Ballast Point Sculpin IPA

T43. Great Divide Yeti

T43. New Belgium 1554

T43. Russian River Blind Pig

T43. Ska Modus Hoperandi

T48. Alesmith Speedway Stout

T48. Dark Horse Crooked Tree

T48. Green Flash West Coast IPA

T48. Summit EPA

T48. Victory Prima Pils

I must say that I was not surprised to see Pliny the Elder winning again for the third year in the row. I must say that I was not surprised to see only a few Oregon breweries on this list but I was also surprised how low some of the Oregon breweries scored. I know that Oregon has the most breweries per capita and coming in at a whopping 93 breweries in the state! One reason I believe that more beers are not on this list are because a lot of the breweries do not commercialize their beers. This I believe most of the breweries do not want to go big like Samuel Adams(Boston Brewing) who just had their microbrewery status revoked because Sam Koch got a large head like Sam Caligione that arrogant prick.

Anyways as you can see I added in a few comments of the beers I have had and I need to get my hands on the rest. The Pliny I am unable to find around Portland. Anyone know where to get it?

The Wandering Monk

So, after a 2 month hiatus from brewing due to many a weddings and the activities that go along with weddings, I have decided to get back to brewing. During my hiatus I found a book called Beer Craft. In this book it is written by people like me who brew in an apartment. These people brew up one gallon of all grain batches and so I decided to double a recipe for a 2 gallon batch of a Belgian Abbey Ale or more commonly known as a Dubbel. These recipes are also all all grain. SO I can move on to all-grain brewing but in small batches with all the equipment that I have without buying new stuff for 5 gallon batches.

The Wandering Monk
5lbs Belgian Pilsner malt
1lb Munich malt
8oz Special B
4oz Biscuit malt

20g Fuggle Hops
8oz Dark Belgian Candi Syrup

Pre-boil TG: 1.046


I am brewing this up tomorrow so I will let you all know what happens and how it turns out as the process goes on!

Well so far brewing has gone well. I mashed at 154 for 1 hour. Pre-boil gravity was 1.044 so I cannot complain with it being close to the target gravity.

The boil has started and my Fuggles have been thrown in. I have started to put everything into nylon and fine mesh bags to reduce the amount of extra nonsense that has come into my beer.

Everything went well! The beer is in the fermenter and yeast is pitched. We will give it a few weeks and see what happens! It is fermenting beautifuly. Gravity not where I want it to be so the Monk will sit for a few more days.

Well after 10 days in the secondary, the beer is delicious but it definitely needs some bottle conditioning time. The beer has a potential alcohol content of around 6.8%. At first tasting it is a little thinner than I had hoped but we shall see after about 1 month of bottle conditioning.

The Root Colbeer

Well I know this isn't beer to go with my miniature brewery that I got going on in my small apartment, but since my lady doesn't like real beer I made root beer. So I really had no clue how to make a root beer so I went to Brew Brothers and milled around the two soda making books that exist. As it so happens that same weekend the two brewing proprietors were out of town and they had some loyal customers as helpers. I got to talking with one guy and he said that he made something closer to sarsaparilla. I ended up getting

7.8oz of sarsaparilla root
5 vanilla beans - whole
5 star anise

with the hopes of finding some sassafras root which I will have to venture to the east coast to find it. It grows naturally over there. Also apparently it is carcinogenic so it is not allowed for mass sale in the US. Anyways I ended up getting some root beer extract to cover the sassafras flavor.

After doing some research I did find that the sassafras root give root beer it's rootness. So because I had to find to go with the root beer extract I was a little disappointed in the fact I couldn't find the sassafras root.

Put 3 gallons of water into stockpot.

After steeping my stuff in around 140F degree water, for 80 minutes, at around half way I added in 2 tablespoons of the root beer extract to my root beer mash. When all that was done with the boil and all I put it in one of my beer primary buckets and added water up to 5 gallons. then transferred with my AutoSiphon into my keg. Now I am just waiting for it to cool so that I can force carbonate the bad boy!

Well after force carbonation this guy is delicious. It does not taste like commercial root beer which is fine with me. The carbonation is low which is alright with me. Now maybe I shall see what it tastes like with  ice cream in it foe root beer floats!

Kegs! Oh how sweet it is

Well so I have ventured into kegging...

5 gallon keg

I found some cheap kegs on craigslist or at least a certain craigslist sleuth I know found them for me. I picked up two pin-lock kegs for 60 bucks. The difference between the pin-lock and ball-lock or Corny kegs was the posts. As you can see the picture I posted you can see some little pins on the side and they will hold the accessories on with a simple push-and-twist.  The ball lock posts act like airhose fittings and snap on easier. The reason the two kegs have different posts is because Coke and Pepsi didn't want their kegs to be able to interact with each other. I understand why but hell, it's stupid. A keg is a keg and these pin locks will work just fine for me.


Anyways, I went to Main Street to pick up my keg set up and with it I got all the hoses, the connectors, another 5 gallon keg, a Picnic-style tap, a 5lb CO2 cylinder, regulator, and for a few extra bucks a gas manifold that will let me gasify two kegs with out having to daisy-chain the kegs together. How cool is that! It is identical to the picture below.

I am quite excited for this. Eventually I will add onto it for a 4 keg gasifier or manifold. These things aren't cheap but for now I can move back and forth between kegs. I can also use the kegs to force carbonate my beer and then see about moving to growlers for people or maybe bottling? We shall see how it turns out. All in all the investment into kegging was not as cheap as I thought it would be. The kegs were 30 bucks apiece and the manifold was 33 bucks. There are some other ones out there but they cost about 40 bucks apiece and I will eventually purchase one or build one. We shall see. The CO2 tank will only cost 12 bucks for a trade in. How awesome is that! I am pretty stoked.

Th only problem I will have with kegging is that I do not have a way to keep my kegs cool yet. I am not made of money for beer making but we shall see where this leads me. So those of you who come over for a beer and it comes from the keg, no bitching that it isn't cold. You will get either the finger or a 'bugger off.'

Well UPDATE: When I ventured into the kegs I figured that I would be able to have carbonated beer at a warmer temperature. Oh how I was wrong. It turns out that when you force carbonate the carbonation is not the same as when you use corn sugar to carbonate in bottles. SO to be able to kep the carbonation I am going to have to figure out a way to keep my damn kegs cool. I am debating if it would be cost effective to construct a Jockey Box into which my kegs can go anywhere with cold beer. PoorHouse Jockey Box  I figure I could make an even more elaborate one but I figure Ill go cheap for a while maybe even see if I could make a double jockey box with a small ice chest.

Rogue Public House and Brewery

So this is one of my favorite places to go when I am on a brewery tour or just wanting some good Oregon local food. This place also has some amazing beers. Not only do they have up to 20 beers on tap they usually have one to three rotating taps of something special they have brewed up that doesn't usually go to bottle. Also when I visit here I usually have at least one tasting flight and 3-5 pints.

Rogue Brewing Website

I always love the Dead Guys because it's light and delicious. I also have been enjoying Barley wines lately. These are usually malty and delicious with big aftertastes and lots of flavors. Usually very light on hops. I also make it a point to try something new every single time therefore I can have a great rounded view on their beers and not just a limited view. They also almost always have some sort of a seasonal beer that is just as delicious as the rest of their beers.

Another detectible fact about the Rogue is that they try to use the freshest and the most local ingredients that they can use. They use Kobe Beef and homemade cheese from the Rogue Creamery. Damn near as good as the Tillamook cheeses but the best part is this cheese is from Rogue therefore making it that much more delicious.