Happy Brew Year!!

Well, I'm only 2.5 months late!!!

The lack of posts hardly means a lack of news and changes in homebrewing so far this year. In fact, there have been exciting changes and I've almost brewed as much beer this year than I did in 2009 and 2010 combined!!

As many of you already know, in November some homebrewing friends found a rental/artist space on the SODO neighborhood. It's a cool spot in a big old building that used to house the Alaskan Copper Works. Kind of a big barn with separate rooms that have a bunch of cool other businesses - blacksmiths, rope makers, knives forgers, etc. It's like a super homebrew co-op kind of thing. It has water, electrical and all that and sinks and drains were put in.

After seeing the space and discussing with Colin, I felt the opportunity to expand and grow my homebrewing skills was too good to pass up. So starting in January, I was paying rent and my first all-grain beer was on January 8th!!

Many more posts, updates and recipe details to follow soon.

Here are some pics of the space:


http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e27/motsies/SODO%20Brewspace/?albumview=slideshow

Introducing the 2010 Oil Spill Series

Been a while since I did some labels, but I had some fun whipping up these up on Photoshop for my summer beers...

Top Kill Triple
Blowout Blonde
Oil Sheen Saison
Everything's Peachy Keen
Barrels of Bullsh*t

Beer Updates

Don't have my detailed tasting notes with me right now, but I'm really happy with the Saison, Belgian Blonde and Berry Wheat. The Belgian Triple is very strong and not really to style, but tastes pretty good.

I've only opened one 12 oz. of the Peach/Mango Wheat and it was WAY over carbonated. Ended up with only 1/3 of the beer after all the foaming and quick pour into a glass. Flavor-wise it didn't taste infected or anything, but I think the problem stems from the filtering problems during siphoning/bottling and maybe too much residual sugar left in the fruit. The Berry Wheat on the other hand (bottled with same amount of sugar) has a really nice carbonation level. More reports to come as I open more bottles.

Here are photos of the Belgian Blonde and Saison - both very tasty!

Eastern Oregon

A few photos from a 4th of July weekend road trip to Eastern Oregon....

Dreams of kegging......

Just finished up a bottle marathon of four batches over 3 days......four batches, nearly 20 gallons of finished product - I will keg someday, I will keg someday, I will keg someday, I will keg someday :)

A few photos of the fruit beers pre-bottling and over the samples. Huge color difference obviously from the fruit treatments. All the pulp and fruit mush gave me some trouble during bottling/siphoning, esp. all the pulpy mango and peach. They both smell and taste great - in three weeks I'll know for sure!!

Fruit Treatments

June 15, 2010

Split my wheat beer into my 3-gallon carboys (gravity was 1.011 at transfer) and added two different fruit treatments. Both were a mix of fresh and store-bought frozen fruit. The fresh fruit was cleaned, frozen and then thawed for blending.

Mango/Peach Blend

• passionfruit not in season, so went with peach and mango
• 2 big, fresh mangos (green skin)
• 4 small, fresh mangos (yellow skin)
• 2 fresh peaches
• 1 lb. frozen peaches
  
• blend resulted in ~ 4.75 cups fruit puree
  

Berry Blend

• 1 qt. fresh raspberries
• 1 qt. fresh blueberries
• 1 qt. fresh blackberries
• 1 lb. frozen wild berry blend mix
• blend resulted in ~ 4 cups of fruit puree
  

Batch No. 24 - American Wheat w/ Fruit

American Wheat Ale

Inspired by a recent issue of Zymurgy, the plan here is to brew an american wheat, split in half and treat each 2.5 gallons with a different fruits in the secondary. Current idea is to treat one half with a mixture of passionfruit and mangos, with the second half getting a mixture of berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries).

Brewed - June 6, 2010
Style - American Wheat
Source - Zymurgy / NHB

June 15, 2010 - Fruit Treatments

Ingredients:

• 6.0 lbs. Wheat LME
• 1.0 lbs. Bavarian Wheat DME
• 1.0 lbs. German Munich Malt (partial mash)
• 0.7 lbs. Flaked Wheat (partial mash)
• 0.5 oz. Mt. Hood (60)
• 0.5 oz. Mt. Hood (30)
• 1.0 tsp. Irish Moss (15)
• 0.5 oz. Cascade (10)
• 0.5 oz. Cascade (KO)

• Wyeast #1056 American Ale (2 packs)

OG – 1.056
Primary - 8 days
Secondary - TBD

Bottled - TBD

FG - TBD
Attenuation - TBD
ABV - TBD

Notes:

• Partial Mash 2 gals @ 150 for 60 mins; sparge 2 quarts 170 water
• 750 ml starter
• used two packs of old 1056 yeast (maybe in my fridge for ~ 11 months?)
• net 2 gallons from sparge
• will split this batch in half and treat each with different fruits
• I was concerned about the yeast and slow start, but this was down to 1.011 at transfer
• Fruit blends added 6/15/10

Starter made in a growler now since I smashed my big beaker