In case this blog is not evidence enough: I spend a lot of time thinking about beer. Usually, this is a good thing, as it’s a hobby that has brought me a lot of joy over the past few years, as well as a great number of opportunities to learn about something completely different what I spend my day doing. To think I have practical uses for chemistry is pretty nifty, as I was always a bit of a closet chem nerd trapped in a liberal arts mindset. I’ve met some really interesting people in my beer travels, shared stories with the closest of friends and complete strangers alike, and tried some of the rarest and sought after beers in the world. It’s all in good fun, and I enjoy pretty much everything surrounding beer culture.

The biggest problem I have with beer and brewing, however, is that the more you know, the more there is to learn and do. That’s the problem I’m struggling with right now: I know so much more about brewing today than I did 18 months ago, but there is still so much to learn and try. The more I learn, buy, and play with, the more I want to try something new and push my limits as a brewer. This is the problem with all hobbies to some extent, but beer present an interesting challenge in the sense that it takes about a month before you really know how good your beer really is, if not considerably longer.

Of course there are exceptions, but for the vast majority of brewing, it’s a calendar month before your beer goes from grains and hops to bubbly, delicious beer. As such, many of the lessons to be learned as far as sanitization, so-called “off flavors” from poor mashing technique or temperature control, carbonation, body, mouthfeel, texture, etc. are difficult to impossible to really know for sure before you have a finished product. By the time the finished product is ready to be judged, however, I often will want to not only have brewed again, but brewed several times.

There is definitely an internal struggle I have with this issue. On the one hand, if you wait, your next batch will be all the better. You know exactly what your beer did right and what occasionally (okay, often) your beer did wrong. There is a much lower risk of an error being carried forward from batch-to-batch. On the other hand, if you waited a month between batches on a regular basis, you’re only brewing 12 times a year at best, and like anything in life, the more time you spend doing something, the better you’ll get at it.

The best solution I’ve found thus far is trying to find a way to strike a happy medium: brew something different in consecutive batches. For example: I brewed a Black IPA/Cascadian Dark Ale earlier this year as a gift to my stepdad for Christmas. I worked the recipe around his taste preferences, and we brewed it together. It was the first beer I had used a partial mash on, but decided then was as good a time as any to branch out and try something new. A few weeks later, I brewed a completely different beer (a Belgian Wit), this time focusing on the addition of non-traditional beer items, such as coriander and citrus zests, but avoiding much mashing. By the time I was ready to brew my next batch after that Belgian, my Black IPA was finished and mostly consumed, and I had the chance to decide what I wanted to change about it, as well as determine my mashing had worked sufficiently. My next batch was that tweaked recipe.

Especially as I started brewing, it was all completely different styles every time. I still branch out every 2-3 batches or so to something I’ve never brewed before, but I spend a greater deal of time now solidifying my recipes to my tastes and adding in new brew knowledge or capabilities to the mix. And my beer is better because of it.

Continuing in this tradition, I believe I am going to brew my ESB again next week, but this time, it’s going to be all grain, no extract. Big boy beer, as I call it. Pro style. The recipe easily converts from partial mash to all grain, and I now have the mash tun capability to get the gravity necessary to go all grain. Plus, I have 2 cases of ESB from last time around that I have been constantly trying and taking mental notes on what exactly I’d do differently should I brew it again. The method I inadvertently subscribed my brewing to has created a pretty solid system…and I have to say I’m pretty excited about it. After this next batch, I think I’ll do something completely new and different from what I’ve done before, but incorporating the mash tun and seeing what I can add to continuing the upward trend towards better, more-professional beer by Craig. At least I hope so.

Baby steps towards bigger steps

Last post, I discussed the purchasing of my mash tun and the plans to brew the chocolate stout from the Fisk Boys days. Thursday night, I did just that, although tweaking the recipe to be a partial mash batch rather than an all-extract batch. Except this time, when I mashed, I used my mash tun instead of mashing in a bag. Baby steps towards the big step of all grain, but an important step nonetheless.

The picture to the right is pretty much my idea of bliss. Brewing my next batch with a fresh homebrew in hand. Or in this case, on top of my mash tun. Had to take a picture. . . I mean, it was simply too glorious not to.

Last time around, I mentioned that I would post my recipe from the chocolate stout, and here it is:

6# Dark Dried Malt Extract (DME)

5# 2-Row

12oz US Chocolate Malt

8oz Crystal 60L

4oz British Chocolate Malt

4oz Caravienne

4oz Roasted Barley

2oz Galena (13.4% AA) 60 minutes

2oz Fuggles (4.4%) 2 minutes

Wyeast #1098 British Ale

In my mash tun, I mashed the 5 pounds of 2-Row with the 2 other pounds of grains for 7 total mashed pounds of grain. My efficiency wasn't perfect, as I did not sparge with more than just my first runnings, but that's okay; I wasn't gunning for a huge efficiency anyway, since I didn't want the beer to run too alcoholic this time around. Plus, I was brewing a 5 gallon batch for a 5 gallon carboy. . . which is a stretch in the first place. If I had hit my maximum efficiency with those grains, I'd be pushing 10% ABV, and now I'm hovering right around 9%, which is more of what I'm going for this time around.

To put it simply, the higher the starting gravity, the more sugar you have in your wort, and therefore the more potential alcohol for your beer. You can under-attenuate your beer intentionally to make sure that it doesn't get to the maximum potential ABV, but you'll end up with a lot of residual sweetness from those unconverted sugars. And that tends to not be a good (read: tasty) thing. So, by not sparging my grains, I probably left about .007 to .01 gravity points on the table, and I'm okay with that. As it is, my original gravity was about 1.078, which, if my yeast performs like I expect it to, should hit about 1.012 for a final, meaning I have about an 8.8% beer. Which is what I'm going for this time around.

My yeast was so primed and ready when I pitched it, it had reached a solid krausen less than twelve hours later, and by the time 18 hours had passed, my beer was churning so hard you could hear it in the closet with the door closed, bubbling away from the blow-off tube into the sanitized water cup. Like I said, about 4.5 gallons of beer in a 5 gallon fermenter doesn't leave a ton of room for the krausen, and I'm aware that I probably need to address that in the future. With a big batch, however, this can potentially lead to some problems. Which I encountered. But having learned my lesson from last time around with this stout, a blow-0ff tube from the start is ESSENTIAL.

This time, when the krausen became so ferocious, instead of sending my airlock flying and covering my closet with sweet, delicious chocolate beer, it just went up into my blow-off tube and into the water cup. This did not last for more than 4-6 hours, but it was more than enough to turn the cup of water into what looked like a pint of stout. After changing it out, however, the beer is not through the primary phase of fermentation and coasting into the secondary. I think I'll rack it over to the secondary later this week, where it will rest for the next 10 days to two weeks.

I have never done a secondary before, and here's why: I don't usually need to. A secondary fermenter is not essential for many styles of homebrew, especially ones that are lower in alcohol or that do not need filtering. A secondary allows you to "brighten" your beer, racking off a lot of the waste, husks, and excess crud in the beer (known as "trub") and into a clean fermenter, where it can round out the remaining sugars in relative peace. It also allows you to rack your beer onto new ingredients, called "dry-[insert item being added here]." This naming convention came from dry-hopping, which is a process of adding more hops to beer after the boil and primary fermentation has been completed. It lends a wonderful hop aroma, packing a great floral punch, but lends nothing to the flavor. Recently, brewers have started adding other ingredients to the beer in a "dry" manner, such as vanilla beans, cocoa nibs, spices, herbs, tea, bourbon, coffee, you name it. A secondary allows you to do that. I will probably be using a secondary on this beer, if for no other reason that I need to do it sometime, and my carboy is completely caked on the inside with krausen residuals.

When it comes time to bottle this stout, I have something special in mind. Namely, bottling it in three different phases, leaving me with roughly 7 different bottles with different flavors. The three phases are going to be the original, unaltered chocolate stout, and the other two will have cold-pressed coffee and homemade vanilla bean extract added to them, respectively. Homebrew club, you've been warned. Now here's to hoping it works out!

Will keep you updated on how it turns out. And in the meantime, I'm going to get to stewing on what to brew next, and I think it may be time to go all grain.

Seminal Transition

Today marks a rather seismic moment in my brewing skills: I spent more than I should have and bought a mash tun.

This may not seem that exciting if you don’t know me, but any other brewer who has cut their teeth brewing on extracts or dabbled with partial mashes (as I have for my past half-dozen batches), you will probably appreciate why this is such a fun (if not slightly terrifying) step.

As a brief explanation of how a mash tun works, you need a cursory understanding of how beers are made. Of course, beer primary of (and almost exclusively of) four ingredients: water, grains, hops, and yeast. Water is easy, as it comes from the tap. Hops are all the rage in beer, since they are so varied in their smells and flavors and produce wonderfully delicious tastes. Yeast is what gives us our alcohol, converting the sugars from the grains into alcohol, and turning wort into beer. The grains, however, are the definitive backbone of any beer, as they are what give the yeast the sugars to feed on, the color of the brew, and much of that flavor profile as well.

The grains, however, don’t just waive the white flag at boiling water and release their sugars. Extracting the sugars from malted grains (usually barley or wheat, but occasionally oats or corn) requires quite a few steps, time, and a very specific temperature range. Most entry-level home-brewers don’t have the time, equipment, or conceptualizing of how the grains release their sugars to get all of their fermentables from malted grains to simply use the grain for sugars. The process of extracting sugars from malted grains is called “mashing,” and terrified me mightily my first dozen batches. All of the really good homebrewers did it, and I knew I wanted to do it, but every time I started looking into it, I threw my hands up and said “my beer’s good as it is right now. Someday I’ll learn how to do it…but not today.”

An overwhelming majority of homebrewers start out using pre-extracted sugars for their fermentables, a process called “extract” brewing. These come in powder or liquid form, and are simply the sugars extracted from grains during mashing, but in a simple, add-to-you-boil-and-voila kind of way. You can make excellent beers from extract, especially if the extract is fresh. I’ve made beers that I loved from extract, and had others that were even better. It’s also considerably faster to brew extract batches, as they do not require the lengthy process of mashing your grains (which often takes about an hour and a half or so to complete).
So why not stay with extract? It’s faster, easier, and produces great beer. A number of reasons:

1. Extract costs about $4.00 a pound. Grains cost a quarter of that. It is considerably cheaper to mash your own grains in the long run, often cutting the cost of a batch in half, if not more. However, you do have to buy equipment to do so, which often offsets any savings for quite a few batches.

2. You have a great deal more control over your flavors, as you are controlling down to the smallest amount what sugars are in your beer. This allows you to do much more complicated beers, as well as beers that have to be mashed, as there is an ingredient that does not have an extract (like oatmeal or corn, as well as some other barley varieties that add body or color).

3. The most important reason: it’s awesome. It’s how beer was made for centuries before extract existed, and personally, I think it’s awesome if you can make great beer from the more complicated process.

So long story short: I spent the money today and got a mash tun, which is a piece of equipment that allows me to mash grains. It’s essentially a Gatorade cooler like you see at high school sporting events or in the NBA, modified to have a perforated mesh bottom that allows water through, but not the grain husks. It also has an industrial spigot instead of the push-down tap, which is way better for handling very hot water. To make a complex process as simple as possible, essentially you dump your grains into this cooler, pour hot water on at a specific temperature, and stir it all together. Most of the time, the water temperature needs to be held around 150-154 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour. During this time, the water cooks the grains to a hot enough temperature to release their starchy sugars, but not too hot to destroy the enzymes that help convert those starches to sugar. It’s a happy medium. Too hot, no enzymes, and a beer that is very sweet. Too cool, no sugars, less alcohol. Both are not fun problems to have. The cooler works so well because it’s so insulated, losing temperature very slowly, and can keep that heat very even and controlled. After an hour, you run off the water in your mash tun into your kettle, running some fresh hot water over the top of your grains to get every last bit of fermentable sugar out. And voila! You’ll have your wort to brew from grains instead of extract from the store!

But now I have that equipment, and I’ll be putting it to use on that chocolate stout tonight. Hopefully it turns out and is as delicious as last time, since if so, it’ll be from a much higher degree of difficulty. And therefore that much more satisfying. Recipe and results to come later, but wish me luck…hopefully I’m not going to need it.

History of and Adventures in Homebrewing

Finally getting to brew again tomorrow, and I couldn't be more excited about it. I've got a recipe lined up that should bring back memories of one of my first batches of beer; the first batch that wasn't just surprisingly okay, but actually good. Like I would readily and happily buy it.

The Chocolate Stout.

Back in college, I lived with two other beer enthusiasts, Trav and Andrew. We all developed our palates around the same time, often splitting the cost of buying several nice beers that we'd all wanted to try and then each getting our share. We grew into loving beer together, and to this day, a good portion of our conversations when we catch up tends to be beer-centric, at least to some degree. Along with our roommate Chad (and later Brandon), we were the Fisk Boys. And we loved us some beer.

Back on point: I started homebrewing on my 22nd birthday. For my birthday, I picked up a homebrewing set from the Home Brew Mart in San Diego, along with an absolutely worthless burner from a Chinese kitchen supply store. How it ever boiled five gallons of water, I'll never know. We used garbage bins filled with ice water for cooling system, and I was the only one of the three of us who'd actually read anything on how to actually turn our ingredients into beer, so obviously I was the expert.

The process couldn't have been more idiot proof; the beer was an extract Hefeweisen, and all we had to do was boil water, add the extract and the first set of hops at the outset, and another set 58 minutes later. Absolute cakewalk compared to most brewing, but hot damn was that exciting.

I knew from the get-go that brewing was going to be something I enjoyed, but being a college student with very little income handcuffed that process a little. Trav and Andrew were always very interested in the final product, and would often sit out on our back patio with me when I brewed, but really if the beer was going to get brewed, it was on me to make sure that happened.

After a few batches, I floated the idea of doing an Imperial Stout, something we all loved (and still love) to drink. I was hesitant at first, since I hadn't done anything approaching the ABV we were gunning for, but we decided that that shouldn't hold us back any more than it already had. So we crafted a recipe, using a ton of chocolate malts and really pushing our beer knowledge at that point to the max.

The brewing process was filled with hiccups, including an incredibly active fermentation that caused a monstrous krausen volcano to blow the airlock off and create an awesome mess in the closet. Still, despite all of the moments where looking back I cringe, the beer turned out wonderfully, and each of us got an allotment of bottles to bring to family, drink with friends, etc. Unfortunately, we all figured the others would be holding on to a few bottles for later, and all of it got consumed within a three month period. Which was heartbreaking, since we all wanted more of it when it was gone, and by the time we realized it had evaporated, we had finish college and were no longer living together.

It turned out that there was a bottle left over in Andrew's possession, and he, Trav, and our friend Chad had it about a year after brewing it, and claimed it was incredible. Due to my no longer living in California, I was not able to take part, but it has inspired me to do a revisiting of the stout, and to tweak it with my matured beer knowledge. This time around, I'll keep all of the specialty grains, but mash them, and mash more of my fermentables, using only a fraction of the extract from before. And who knows? Maybe doing a split fermentation, using some vanilla beans, cocoa nibs, and/or cold pressed coffee. Should be fun. Look out for updates, recipes, and progress on that.

Also, I was invited to join a homebrewing club this week, and I have to say, I'm pretty excited about it. The first beer meet-up is centered around Holiday Beers and Stouts, and I think this Chocolate Stout 2.0, along with some of its vanilla or coffee iterations, may have to make an appearance. Except this time I won't drink it all before I get to see how it mellows out. . . yum.

In Your Honor, ESB

About a month ago, I had the sad misfortune of hearing Deschutes discontinued their distribution of the Bachelor ESB (or Extra Special Bitter). Deschutes is not in the business of losing money. I'm sure it simply wasn't selling, and beer, like everything else, is an industry. When they sell out one beer and can hardly meet demand while another of their beers lingers on the shelves, it only makes sense to brew less of that non-seller and double up on the big sellers.

I get that. I respect that. And I even can appreciate where they're coming from.

That does not mean I'm happy about it.

ESBs are a very underrepresented style in American Beer Culture. There is a booming market for Pale Ales, the entry-level, often lower bitterness and less hoppy beers, ranging from the most novice of brew swillers to long-time beer enthusiasts. Their alcohol content tends to be lower, hovering around 5%. There is also an exploding demand for IPAs, or India Pale Ales, over the past several years. IPAs are the embodiment of everything people who don't like beer tend to not like: bitter, floral, and hoppy. In that same vein, they are also stronger than the traditional Pale Ale, often ranging from 6-7%, and with the related "Double IPA" style ranging from 8-12%. Recently, IPAs have really enjoyed a boom in popularity, and, like their Pale Ale brethren, are being brewed by pretty much every brewer in the business of selling beer. And with great reason: both are fantastic, and can be a great profile for hop varietals and wonderfully floral aromas.

If you want hops, you go for an IPA; if you want something lighter and less-hoppy, you go for a Pale. The ease of recognition, as well as a basic indication of what you'll be getting when you order one of them, has really both facilitated the growth of those styles. It has also, however, softened the demand for the middle ground between the two beers that has long existed. And in this middle ground exists what I consider to be a happy medium: the ESB.

ESBs originated (like Pales and IPAs alike) in British pub culture, often being served out of fresh casks from a hand-pump from a keg located in a cellar. They, like Pales and IPAs, have a range of Alcohol by Volume (ABV), but tended to range from the very mild (3%) to the stronger, more-special varietals (6%). The ESBs often brought a biscuity, cookie-like malt sweetness that is often more readily present than in IPAs, yet still paired with a healthy dose of hops. These casks of beer had a very rapid turnover time, often lasting only a few days, meaning the beer was quite fresh. Due to that freshness, the hop character (which can diminish rapidly over time) was floral and flavorful, but often without the higher alcohol levels that IPAs bring. It really is like a best of both worlds: the flavor of an IPA with the alcohol levels of a Pale and a bit more maltiness. Delicious, right?

The beer culture in America, however, seems to have largely overlooked the ESB. Which is highly unfortunate, in my estimation. Why might it's success be hampered here in the states? One theory I've discussed with friends relates to the fact that in America, we have a tendency to want to do things big. The bigger, the better. In a lot of cases, this leads to some absolutely stunning, world-class, there-is-nay-better-beer-anywhere-else-in-the-world beers, but in other cases, it has led us away from some real gems of lower-level beers.

So, when I heard that Deschutes, maker of one of my absolute favorite ESBs (not to mention one of the only breweries to really make an ESB period) was discontinuing their distribution of it, I was heartbroken. The market had spoken: the ESB isn't respected.

In honor of Bachelor's demise, I decided to brew an ESB of my own recently, in a very traditional British style. While I haven't come up with a true name for it yet, I think "Honorable," "Middle Ground," or "Common Ground" are fitting titles. It's fighting the noble fight. A fight that needs fighting, in my estimation. I hope to bring my ESB to different events, hopefully sharing it with some friends and acquaintances, hoping that they too can share in the love of the ESB.

I'll post my tasting notes for my ESB, along with the recipe, sometime soon. I've had it a few times already and I have to say: think I may have to keg this one next time. Yum.

A Brief Introduction

Friday was my birthday, starting out Year 24. While it's cliche to say "you're just a day older than yesterday," that's all it is, in the long run. When you take a minute to look back, however, you realize that quite a lot happened during the last year. It's important to take a minute to see where you've been, how you've grown, and what has changed over the last year since you last celebrated you life. At that mile-marker, it's an easy reflection point, and a chance to put another collection of memories, events, happenings, and discoveries on the shelf of life.

During those reflections in the week leading up to my birthday, I started thinking about one of my favorite subjects: beer. Over the past several years, I've really developed a love for the craft. It started with a simple "if I'm going to drink beer, at least let it taste good" and developed into "how much better can this get" (still don't have an answer for that one)? People often ask me what is it about beer that I enjoy so much, and I have often found it hard to encapsulate what it is exactly that I love about beer. In a weird way, that inability to explain it is exactly what I love about it: there is no one aspect of it that makes it enjoyable. It is both ancient and on the cutting edge of modernity; it is so simple, yet incredibly complex; there are so few ingredients, yet so varied in sensory appeal.

Beer is the drink of the masses. People have drank it for thousands of years, and is the second most consumed beverage in the world (behind tea). Unlike wine, it is infinitely repeatable, as the ingredients (while varying slightly) are usually able to be recreated. Wine, with its fickle grapes, cannot. Spirits are usually too high in alcohol to be enjoyed in volume, or difficult to pair with food. The Craft Beer Movement embodies a great many things I admire: a push for more flavor, more variety, more flavor, and less crap. Beer brings people together, including the people who brew it, bringing out a wonderful air of collaboration and a desire to mutually improve the craft they love.

Those of you who know me know that brevity is not my strong suit, and beer may be my least brief subject to discuss. In short, this blog is about celebrating all things beer related. In long, this blog is about celebrating all things beer related in great depth. Everything from notes I pick up in my discussions with fellow beer lovers, brewers, uninitiated family, to people who have never had a beer in their lives. From my random beer research and readings to "wow, I never knew that"s. But more than anything else, this blog is about why, exactly, beer is, simply put, proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

This blog will include tasting notes from me, anecdotes about my beer mis-adventures, recommendations about beers I've had, want to have, and may never have, and as a chance to share tidbits that I find particularly rewarding or interesting. I hope that somewhere in the midst of all of it, you find something you enjoy even half as much as I enjoy writing it.

If you want to know more than that, let's have a pint. I'll be happy to elaborate.