Temperanillo Barrel Flanders Red

PAUL KEY

I've been wanting to get a group of homebrewers together for a barrel project together for years now, and of course the crucial missing piece of the puzzle was having someone who owned a house with a basement to host the barrel. This all changed when my friend Walker Pruett, who brews for Old Market Pub, bought a house in SE Portland with a big, dry, spacious basement. As soon as I saw it I had to ask if he was interested, and he was very excited to take on the project. I see barrel aging sours as one step above the carboy-aged sours that I have been playing with in the past. There's just something about the wood character, and the microporous environment that really seems to make a difference between a very good sour beer and a great one. My carboy sour beers have been pretty good, but seem to lack the acidity of the best commercial sours. I guess the next step beyond aging homebrew in a barrel is aging homebrew in multiple barrels, so you have blending options, and there may be some potential for that in the future, but for now this will be a great start.

The group consists of myself, Walker, Sean Burke (who is currently at Siebel taking their 6 month American/German learning program), Paul Key, Rik Hall, and Ben Parsons. I pitched the idea of a wine barrel-aged Flanders red for 2 reasons: The first was having tried an incredible pinot barrel-aged Flanders red from Mike Tonsmiere, and the second being that we already had 15 gallons of Flanders brewed that would be a source for souring bugs.

THE BARREL: LAST USED FOR 2009 EVESHAM WOOD TEMPERANILLO, MADE WITH GRAPES FROM ILLAHAE VINYARD, ALSO IN OREGON

I sourced the wine barrel from Eveshem Wood Vinyard, on a recommendation from Paul that they made excellent Pinot Noirs. However there was a bit of a miscommunication, and we ended up with a used Temperanillo barrel from them instead of a Pinot barrel. I think this will be great though; I wasn't too set on the wine varietal, I just wanted to use a barrel that had aged Oregon-grown grapes. The barrel smelled great when we got it and had already been emptied and treated with sulfur a few weeks beforehand, so all we did was give it a couple of cold-water rinses before filling. The barrel was in excellent condition with not even a tiny leak that needed patching.

WALKER PRUETT, TESTING OUR STAINLESS STEEL NAIL FOR SAMPLING

We gathered for filling the barrel at Walker's house on March 4th, the day before my 32nd birthday, and it was a great birthday gift to start a barrel project with such a fun group of talented brewers. We had brewed a total of 60 gallons, which almost topped off the barrel, and we are hoping to brew a "top-off" batch soon to fill the remaining head-space and provide filler for the "angel's share" which will evaporate off through the wood (or be diminished by taste tests!) in the coming months or years. Currently there is about a 4-inch head-space in the barrel which I would like to eliminate sooner than later, to keep any acetic acid producing bacteria from turning this into the world's biggest batch of homebrewed malt vinegar. That would take a lot of pommes frites to soak up!

RIK HALL

A LITTLE FUNK-PELLICLE ALREADY?

OUR "BARREL RACK", EVIDENCE THAT WE ARE NOT GREAT CARPENTERS, WAS MADE OUT OF AN OLD PALLET.

JOLLY PUMPKIN AND CHEEZ-ITS. YEAH, WE'RE THAT CLASSY.

BEN PARSONS

ADDING SOME COMMERCIAL FUNK

Here is what has gone into the barrel so far:

- 5 gallons of month-old "Jamil Zainacheff" Flanders Red, brewed by Sean Burke and fermented with the Roselaire strain from primary

- 10 gallons of a year-old Flanders red that Paul and I brewed using Al B (now East Coast Yeast)'s "Rodenbug" blend. This was tasting very good at one year, but my batch had definitely soured more than Paul's, I think because my batch was aged at room temp while his was aged at basement temp.

- 45 gallons of new Flanders wort based on the Wild Ales recipe, average O.G. /F.G. of 1.064/ 1.022, 12-15 IBU's, fermented with clean ale yeasts

- Dregs from 2 750 ml bottles of Jolly Pumpkin ales, 1 375 ml bottle of Russian River Supplication, 1 375 ml bottle of Russian River Sanctification (more dregs to follow, almost definitely including Cantillon / Drie Fonteinen).

The plan is to get together every 3 months or so to taste what's going on in the barrel. When we rack out, we will probably just let people collect their portion in carboys or kegs to do as they please, either adding fruit, or blending it with other batches, or serving it straight-up. We have also talked about turning this into a single-barrel "solera" project, racking out only half the beer when it's ready and adding something new. Who knows, maybe we will add one more barrel to Walker's basement too. In any case, I hope the beer turns out great (I think it will at least turn out very good), and it will be a great learning experience no matter what. I can't wait to see how it develops in the coming year!

Saison De Duas Notas So

Saison season has opened! That's right, we are in the middle of Oregon's mild excuse for a summer (it's currently 63 degrees at 2:30 pm). This would typically warrant only saison homebrewing in many other cities, but here the only difference is the groundwater temp goes up a bit and it's a littler harder to chill the wort properly with your heat exchanger. I was planning on doing another Saison Dupont clone attempt, but when I went to the homebrew store, all they had was $2 an ounce, 2008 crop American Goldings sitting in a refrigerator. No way I am gonna get jacked like that, so I had to come up with a different idea.

Luckily, I had an idea earlier that week to try some Northern Brewer hops in a saison, and they had a good selection of NB from 2009. This is a hop I have hardly used at all, and I want to isolate it by using it as the only hop to try and get a feel for the flavor and aroma potential. I decided to leave everything else very predictable and clean, to really let those hops shine through. So, I went with 100% Pilsner malt and 100% Northern Brewer, and Dupont yeast. If the Northern Brewer proves to be a good hop for this, I might try to substitute some American malts next time to get a real "American" saison.

The name of this recipe comes from a play off an old Samba song called "Samba De Uma Nota So", or "One Note Samba". This is my 2-note saison.

Above: THE MAN, Joao Gilberto!

Saison De Duas Notas So

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-booil, 6.2 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.007 ABV 6.4% IBU's 32

10 lb. Weyermann Pilsner malt

14 gr. Northern Brewer whole 7.8% AA (First Wort Hop)

12 gr. Northern Brewer pellet 9.8% AA 90 min

45 gr. Northern Brewer whole 7.8% AA 0 min

Mash: 4 gallons H2O + 4 gr. gypsum + 4 gr. calcium chloride

Mash in to 128, hold 15 min

Heat to 147 over 10 min, hold 35 min

Heat to 158 over 10 min, hold 10 min

Heat to 170 over 10 min, hold 5 minutes and begin sparging.

Add First Wort Hops to kettle before sparging.

Sparge with 5 gallons H2O at 170, over 40 minutes

Collect 7 gallons at 1.049 = 90% efficiency

(I checked my last runnings which were at about 1.014)

Boil 90 minutes, additions as noted

Wyeast nutrient & Whirlfloc at 10 min

"Topped off" the kettle with some water to 6.2 gallons at the end of the boil.

Whirlpool & rest 15 minutes while setting up heat exchanger.

Ran through plate chiller over 10 minutes, to 76 degrees

oxygen for 60 seconds

Pitched a 1 liter, stirplate starter of Wyeast 3724 Belgian Saison yeast.

Fermentation rose on it's own to 81 over the first 24 hours

Raised to 88 degrees by day 3, left there until day 5, when I lowered the thermostat to 84.

***Racked to secondary after about a week so I could collect the yeast. Kept at above 80 for 6 weeks total, the damn beer was still at 1.020!!!***

Alex from Upright hooked me up with a krausening wort from his fresh hop beer. I pitched about a quart of this into the beer which helped get it going. This was the De Ranke isolate.

Racked to keg on 11/8/10. The sample tastes freakin' awesome. 1.007. I also filled a growler and I am going to bottle condition it. Can't wait to do a tasting of this beer and maybe do a side-by side with keg & the bottle conditioned growler.

Mr. T's 30 lb. Necklace: Part 2 Sucka!

Mr. T's first incarnation was pretty darn good, but it's latest incarnation will hopefully kick even more ass. It has kind of evolved from a Golden Strong ale that tasted more like a Tripel, to actually being a Tripel, and hopefully a much better one at that.

For numbers on ABV and IBU's I stuck pretty close to Westmalle, my favorite Tripel. I also used the Wyeast equivalent of their yeast. I did however use what ingredients I had on hand, so most of the base grain is organic 2-row instead of pilsner. For sugar I used sugar in the raw. I was a little worried about the unrefined sugar adding too much of an odd rummy flavor, and I considered splitting the huge sugar load between that and corn sugar, but in the end I just went for it. The sugar does have a noticeable aroma that I really like, so hopefully it will work well with the beer and not throw it too far off the style. If this beer turns out really well, I could see it being a great beer to do for Christmas presents again, because it will be even stronger and better aged by the time Christmas comes along. I'm planning on bottle conditioning this, most likely.

Mr. T's 30 lb. Necklace, Part 2 Sucka!

Brewed on 6/14/10

Recipe is for 6.75 gallons pre-boil before sugar, 5.9 gallons post boil, all grain

O.G. 1.083 F.G. ABV IBU's 38

9 lb. Great Western organic 2-row

2 lb. Weyermann Pilsner

.5 lb Munich

2.5 lbs (!) organic cane sugar, like Sugar in the Raw

30 gr. Sterling pellets 7% AA 90 min

21 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 30 min

21 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 3 min

26 gr. Sterling pellets 7% AA loose dry hop

16 gr. Simcoe pellets 12.2% AA loose dry hop

Mash: 4 gallons + 3 gr. gypsum + 3 gr. calcium chloride

Mash in to 148, fell to 145 over 45 minutes.

Raised to 160 over 10 minutes, rest 10 minutes and begin sparge.

Sparge with 5 gallons at 170

Collect 6.75 gallons at 1.055 = 89% efficiency.

Boil 90 minutes, sugar at beginning of boil.

Wyeast nutrient & Whirlfloc at 10 min

Chill with plate chiller to 70 degrees, oxygen for 90 seconds.

Pitch 1/2+ cups thick yeast slurry of Wyeast 3787 generation 2.

Chill to 65 in the next hour, slow ramp to 72 over 12 days. Left in the primary at ambient temp for 4 weeks.

7/14/10 Racked to keg, flavor sample was good but gravity was stuck at 1.020. First time I've had an under attenuated beer in quite a while! I pitched a little of a krausening starter of Cali 001 for the IPA brew into the keg, attached a blow off hose, and it seems to be slowly fermenting the remaining sugars at room temp.

8/9/10 Racked to a second keg which will be my bottling keg. This beer tastes great but the mutherfucker still won't dry out! It's sitting at 1.018 currently. Think I'm going to have to have a talk with Mr. T, maybe he is just getting too old. Next step will be to add a little Dupont yeast from the latest saison and give this sucka another month to dry out. I'm in no hurry and I won't be happy until it's under 1.012.

6/9/11 This beer was kegged off and refrigerated for the move in October but it never fell below 1.016. Must have been unfermentables from the raw sugar? The beer tasted very cloying so around February or March, I decided to pull it out, de-carb it, and add brett. Added bottle dregs from 2 750's of my strong brett saison. This dropped it to about 1.010, and tasting it tasted really good. I decided to add the dry hops, after that I'll either keg or bottle.

PCTBB Recipes & "Round Table" Tasting

A few months ago my buddy Angelo, a local beer writer and founder of Brewpublic, asked me to be an contributor for the website. I think it will be a cool opportunity to add a homebrew-y perspective to an already great craft beer publication. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to write about, but I'll just write when I get an inspired idea. I don't really want to do the "Brewery X releases yadda-yadda limited release" thing, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's being done plenty well by plenty of beer writers already.

For my first piece I invited some local homebrewers to my place to do a "round table peer review" of our Portland Cheers to Belgian Beers homebrew entries. It was a lot of fun for everyone involved, and you can read the full article here, including a tasting of the 2 recipes below.

Here are the 2 recipes I submitted to the PCTBB competition. Neither of them placed, but they scored well and I am happy with how they both came out. I'm not sure how many Belgian Specialty ales were entered exactly, but it was probably around 20.

The first beer, which I entered as a "Dry hopped Belgian Bitter", was inspired by De Ranke XX Bitter, but it tastes more like a super hop-fruity saison, a lot of tangerine and citrus going on with some bitterness and also some residual sweetness.

Brewed on 3/5/2010

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 5.7 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.067 F.G. 1.010 IBU's 63 ABV 7.5%

6.5 lb. Great Western Superior pilsner malt

5 lb. Belgian pale malt

.25 lb. aromatic malt

11 gr. Nelson Sauvin (2008) pellets 11% AA 60 min

28 gr. American Perle pellets 7.5% AA 20 min

28 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% AA 10 min

28 gr. Czech Saaz pellets 3.1% AA 0 min

21 gr. Hallertau pellets 3.1% 0 min

14 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% 0 min

42 gr. Sterling pellets dry hopped cold for 12 days

Mash: 4 gallons + 4 gr. gypsum + 1 gr. calcium chloride

150 for 1 hour

Sparge with 5 gallons

Collect 7 gallons at 1.054 = 84% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, with additions of whirlfloc and wyeast nutrient at 15 minutes

Oxygen for 75 seconds

Pitch Wyeast 3724 Farmhouse Ale Yeast at 66 degrees

Raise to 80 degrees over 10 days, then finish ferment at 75

Racked to secondary after 13 days to harvest yeast for the second batch.

Racked to keg on 4/10/10 and force carbonate, also dry hop in keg.

The second brew I did was a "Cascadian Dark Saison", which is basically very similar to the "fresh-hopped black saison" I did last October. Of course I used the Farmhouse yeast strain to make it eligible for the competition, as well as lowering the amount of base grain to get the alcohol down a bit. I used all dried hops this time, concentrating on American varieties that I thought would compliment a saison yeast but also be very up-front in the aroma.

Brewed on 3/18/10

Recipe is for 7.1 gallons pre-boil, 6 gallons post boil, all grain

O.G. 1.063 F.G. 1.008 IBU's 55 ABV 7.25%

6.5 lb. Great western Superior Pilsner malt

2.5 lb. Weyermann Pilsner malt

1.5 lb. Munich malt

.75 lb. caramunich 60L

.5 lb. Carafa Special III 600 L

28 gr. Magnum whole 12% AA 60 min

28 gr. Amarillo whole 8.6% AA 15 min

28 gr. Crystal pellets 3.2% AA 15 min

28 gr. Amarillo whole 8.6% AA 0 min

28 gr. Crystal pellets 3.2% AA 0 min

Mash: 4 gallons H20 + 5 gr. chalk, 3 gr. gypsum, 1 gr. calcium chloride, 2 gr. baking soda

148 for 60 min, then raise to 160 over 8 minutes, rest 15 minutes.

Sparge with 5 gallons, collect 7.1 gallons at 1.053 = 86% efficiency.

Boil 90 minutes with whirlfloc and Wyeast nutrient at 15 minutes

Oxygen for 75 seconds

Pitch 1/2 cup thick yeast slurry of Wyeast 3724 from the first recipe.

Warmed to 74 over 3 days and left it there for 7 days.

Finished out at 80 and racked to keg on 4/14/10, force carbonated.

Just for fun here are some photos from the PCTBB event hosted at Hopworks. It was a really fun day! I got drunk. Lots of great beers to taste and a few bad ones.

Belgian Ale with lemon verbena, yarrow, and grains of paradise

Herbs from top, clockwise: Lemon Verbena, yarrow, grains of paradise.

I picked up a lemon verbena plant from the farmers market recently, and its incredibly perfumey, lemon-oil aroma (Paul calls it baby wipes, but we'll have on disagree on that) had me inspired to try it out in a beer. I have only seen one lemon verbena reference in brewing, made by Ron Jeffries in his blond recipe in Brew Like a Monk. Actually I was thinking that a light pilsner base Belgian ale of not too high gravity would be the perfect base beer for this herb, and maybe I was thinking back to that recipe when I came up with my recipe idea. I also think it's a great idea for a beer to have during the supposedly warm months coming up, although I am starting to wonder if they will ever actually come...

I don't use spices or herbs much in my beers. I tend to really enjoy playing with malt, hops, and different yeast strains, sometimes bacteria and brett too, and I get a little scared of brewing failure when it comes to using other culinary spices. But I have become a much better brewer since my first over-spiced hombrew attempts, so I think I have a better chance of brewing a well-balanced spiced beer than ever before. What I tried to do was keep the spice additions low, and use complimentary spices. The lemon verbena has a high fruity note, so I looked for spices that would hit on some other flavors. I had some wonderful smelling grains of paradise that also have a lemony note, but also a spicy kick that could add a nice finish. And I had some yarrow, this is still the same yarrow that I picked at Brewery Ommegang 3 summers ago and dried for brewing use. It has been kept frozen all that time and smelled pretty much exactly the same as when I dried it: Tea-like, bitter and herbal, with also a funky slightly medicinal note.

I made individual teas of all these botanicals to get a feel for how much to add, and I kept the additions really restrained, at least I think I did, we'll see. I would highly recommend making some spice, herb, or even hop teas next time you are planning a brew to get to know your ingredients better. It can be really enlightening.

Here's the recipe, whose name comes from some funky Mambo music that came on while I was weighing out the grains.

Mambo-Mambo: Spiced Belgian Spring/Summer Ale

Recipe is for 7.1 gallons pre-boil, 5.7 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.011 IBU's 21 ABV 5.8%

8.5 lb. Weyermann Pils malt

.5 lb. carafoam malt

.5 lb. turbinado sugar

17 gr. Sterling pellets 7% 60 minutes

14 gr. Sterling pellets 7% 10 minutes

2 gr. grains of paradise, crushed in mortar & pestle, 0 min

2 gr. fresh lemon verbena, finely sliced, 0 min

3 gr. yarrow leaves, dried, 0 min

Mash 4 gallons H20 + 4 gr. calcium chloride + 4 gr. gypsum

Mash at about 150 for 60 minutes, then raise to 160 over 10 minutes.

Sparge with 5 gallons at 170

Collect 7.1 gallons @ 1.041 = 88% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes with sugar at beginning of boil

Wyeast nutrient & whirlfloc at 10 minutes

Spices added at flame out, with a 10 minute rest while hooking up plate chiller

Chilled to 70 and pitched a starter of Wyeast 3787 "Trappist High Gravity" (Westmalle)

Fermentation peaked at 74 at 24 hours. kept at 70 degrees after that.

Racked to keg on 6/6/10. Flavor was good, still a bit sulfury, but I think that will go away in the next week. The most dominant herb is the yarrow, which is funny because it's 1/2 the amount I used in the last batch. The lemon verbena is subtle but there. Should be interesting to see how the flavor develops in the coming weeks/months.

Oh yeah, this yeast really is a rambunctious top-cropper. I didn't use a blow off tube at first and ended up with an incredible mess! I really want to use this yeast more, I have a feeling I will like it a lot more than the "Chimay" strain.

Breakside Test Batches

Ben and Tony getting fired up

On Saturday, the 13th, Tony, Ben and I got together to do some test batches for Breakside Brewing. We decided to start off with a test batch of the Wit, and our Rye ale, the 2 recipes we felt the least confident on how they would turn out. We also wanted to split the Wit 3 ways in order to test some different yeast strains and pick a house Belgian yeast. We don't have the stuff moved into the brewery yet, so we spent a long day hanging out in Tony's garage and doing a double batch.

The Sabco Brewmagic system is pretty awesome. It seems pretty easy to get a handle on. I don't know why they don't stick a pump in between the HLT and the mash tun, since they are at the same height and therefore not easy to gravity feed. Instead of pumping over to the mash tun you have to keep filling the HLT as you go to keep the water level above the level you want in the mash. Mash temp is held by recirculating the wort through a small electrical heating unit, and mash steps are done manually by adding bottom heat while recirculating. The boil is pretty straightforward, and we use a Therminator plate chiller with in-line oxygenation and thermometer to cool the wort.

(Tony recirculating the first runnings, which we found to be unnecessary since the mash is recirculated the whole time.)

The Wit is a pretty standard recipe using about 50% wheat flakes, coriander, dried sweet and bitter orange peel, and chamomile. We split the batch into 3, 4 gallon batches, fermented separately with Wyeast 3787 (Westmalle), Wyeast 1388 (Duvel), and Wyeast 3711 (Theriez). The 3 yeast strains we decided to use were picked for their potential to ferment many different kinds of Belgian ales, although I'm not sure the French saison yeast from Theriez is the best choice for that. Maybe we should have tried the LaChouffe strain in stead, but I thought the saison yeast would be fun to try. The unfermented wort tasted really spot-on for a wit, with the chamomile being very up-front in the aroma, but that will most likely change with time and fermentation.

The Rye recipe uses 30% rye malt, pale malt, and some honey malt. It's designed to be a blond session ale but it came out a little darker than we had expected, more of a pale ale color. We used Perle as a first wort hop and Sterling as a 60 minute addition. It seems like this beer is not really settled in its identity yet, Ben likes the idea of it being like a light English summer ale with a Marris Otter base, while I thought it should be a hoppy blond or kolsch kind of base beer, with significant hop aroma but coming from German or hybrid hops. I kind of think it will be better with some late hop additions but I also think that using only early additions in the first batch will give us a better idea of what the rye malt is doing to the flavor and aroma. We split this batch between the classic Cali ale yeast and the WLP007 "Dry English Ale" yeast. My vote is for Cali as our house "clean" ale yeast, because I think it does way better for hoppy beers and is a little more tolerant to slightly warmer fermentation temperatures.

All these beers are fermenting away in Tony's house and I can't wait to try the beers to see which yeast strains prevail. We might hold off any additional brewing until we move into the building, but I will keep the blog updated on our future brews.

Saison Dupont "Clone", Blackeyed Blonde tasting

I'm getting a little behind in posting my recipes so I'm just going to put this up with very little introduction. I've done a lot of saisons but I've never tried to clone Saison Dupont exactly. Even this is just close in the malt (they use 100% Dingemans Pilsner) and yeast (this is some sort of isolate from the Dupont culture, but I truly believe they are using a multi-strain yeast. Saison Dupont is one of my favorite beers on the planet, if not my ultimate "desert island" beer. The first time I had it, early on in my homebrewing days, was truly a life changing event.

When this beer is done, it will be fun to a side by side comparison with a bottle of Saison Dupont, even though I doubt it will be close enough to truly call a "clone". I'm going to try and bottle condition at least a six pack of this beer to see if it makes a better saison. I suspect it might, not because of the "increased complexity" from re-fermentation that a lot of people claim, but because the presence of yeast and unfiltered proteins add a lot of mouthfeel to very dry beers. When I keg saisons and they are almost crystal clear after a few weeks, they can be very "unforgiving", with little mouthfeel to bring the other elements together.

Saison DuPont "clone"

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 5.9 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.051 F.G. 1.007 ABV 5.8% (6.2% after bottling sugar)

28 IBU's (this would be a low estimate as the large flame out addition is not included))

7.5 lb. Great Western Pilsner malt

2 lb. Belgian pale malt

(All hops were 1 year old pellets, in sealed mylar packaging. I did not adjust AA% down)

14 gr. Styrian Goldings 3.5% AA First Wort Hop

28 gr. East Kent Goldings 4.8% AA 90 min

28 gr. East Kent Goldings 4.8% AA 0 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings 3.5% AA 0 min

Mash: 4.5 gallons water + 4 gr. gypsum + 2 gr. Calcium Chloride

Step mash using bottom heat on stove, total 90 minutes:

126 for 15 minutes

Bring up to 148 over 10 minutes and rest 30 minutes

Bring up to 157 over 10 minutes and rest 10 minutes

Bring up to 170 over 10 minutes and rest 5 minutes, then start lauter.

Sparge with 4.5 gallons at 165

Collect 7 gallons at 1.043 = 84% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, hops as noted. Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Whirlpool 1 min

Rest 6 minutes while setting up heat exchanger

rack to carboy over 6 minutes, cool to 76

Oxygen for 60 seconds

Pitched a slurry of WLP 566 at 76, ramping to 84 over 5 days. Held steady at 80 until finished.

Bottled / kegged on 2/17/10

Dosed each 12 oz. bottle with 1 tsp priming sugar, each 22 oz bottle with 1.75 tsp.

Blackeyed Blonde Tasting:

As part of my "liquid resume" for my job search, I've been dropping off a lot of homebrew samples to the local breweries. As you can see above, I put the whole recipe on the beer label as well as my contact information. The other night I was very pleased to get an email from one of the brewers at Laurelwood that they were very impressed with the "Blackeyed Blonde", which is a Belgian Blond ale. Not only was I happy that the brewers liked it a lot, but I was touched that they actually made it a point to email me and let me know. Thanks, Hans. Ben Love from Hopworks also said he liked it, picking out a nice spicy phenol profile and very subtle alcochol.

Here's my tasting assesment:

Aroma: Big bubblegum / banana character at first, jumping out of the glass. Clove, mixed with a sweet grainy malt. Apple esters, and some warming alcohol is noticeable but not fuselly. Hardly any hop aroma. A discernible "flinty" mineral character in the finish which I think is from the beer, but might possibly be from the glass.

Appearance: Deep gold, crystal clear, medium-high carbonation. Head retention is not very good. Pretty much went away within the first minute.

Flavor: Big mouthful of sweet malt character, bubblegum esters, slight toasty & grainy pils malt quality. Clean bitterness on the end cuts away any sweetness and leaves a subtle noble hop flavor (this is pretty subtle as this beer is 4+ months old and was not incredibly hoppy to begin with). Combo of bitterness, alcohol warmth and CO2 dryness really help to dry out & clean up the finish.

Mouthfeel: Big, round gentle body with mouth expanding CO2 levels. The beer actually expands in your mouth as the CO2 comes out. Some prickly Co2 bite as can be expected. finishes dry and clean with lingering warming alcohols, not hot or harsh.

Overall: The few months keg conditioning and bottle aging have been kind to this beer, cleaning up the burst of sulphur that was apparent when I first kegged it (probably too early as I needed the yeast cake). I'm not a huge fan of the big banana character that the Wyeast 1214 throws off, and I can't say I'm a big fan of that yeast for both performance issues and the incredible amount of banana it creates. Overall this beer has a lot of complexity, and a definitive trappist signature flavor. It's also getting me a bit tipsy and it's not even 1 pm! I hope I can stay productive today...

Plate Chiller and Hop Taquito Tested, and a Strong Saision with Brett

Because I'm a poor, unemployed bastard, I spent Christmas Eve out here on my own instead of traveling to see my family, which may not be the best way to spend the holidays, but it does make for some great brew sessions (wait til you see what I have lined up for tomorrow). Mainly this brew session was all about testing the new "Hop Taquito" as I am calling it since it's a smaller version of the "Hop Taco" I based it off of, and testing out the Shirron plate chiller that I am borrowing from Alex. He also gave me a couple bottles of Seven to take home recently, which made a nice accompaniment to the brewday.

I took some pretty detailed notes on the plate chiller's performance, and I'll post them here. I had not used it or even hooked it up to test it before the brew session, so I was expecting something to go awfully wrong, but wort cooling and straining went off without a hitch. In the winter, at least, when the tap water is cold, the plate chiller works like a charm. In the summer, I imagine you might need an pre-chiller of some sort (like running the line through a bucket of ice water to get it below 50 if possible).

I'll go ahead and set out the beer recipe and then go into the pictures and detail of the chilling process. A strong Brett-ified saison is not original in the sense that it's probably been done unintentionally for over a century, as well as currently being brewed intentionally by many breweries both foreign and domestic, but it's exactly what I wanted to brew. The commercial example I was really inspired by was Russian River Publication. If this beer turns out anything close to that or Ommegang Ommegeddon (a good bottle, not a too young or overly funky one), I'll be very happy! This should be ready in time for late spring/summer drinking.

Currently un-named Saison

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 5.9 gallons post-boil

O.G. 1.066 (effectively 1.070) F.G. 1.006 (at bottling) ABV 8.5% IBU's 40

8.5 lb. Great Western Pils malt

1 lb. wheat malt

.5 lb. torrified wheat (just something I got for free and wanted to use up)

1.5 lb. Munich malt 8-10L

.5 lb. Munton's crystal 50-60 L

.5 lb. turbinado sugar (fairly dark)

(.5 lb. Malto-Dextrin powder added after transfer to secondary)

26 gr. Magnum whole hops 12% AA 60 minutes

56 gr. Willamette whole hops 4.7% AA 0 min

Water: Going for a hoppy profile, added 3 gr. gypsum/ 1 gr. calcium chloride to the mash. Same amount to boil kettle.

Mash in 4 gallons of water, 149 for 30 minutes, then 152 for 30 minutes.

Sparge with 5 gallons at 168

Collect 7 gallons at 1.053 = 81% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, hops as noted.

Wyeast nutrient & Whirlfloc at 10 min

(See below for chilling details)

Pitched yeast from a 2 liter stirplate starter of WLP 566, 4 month old tube. (This shit took off like gangbusters despite the age, so once again I think Jamil's yeast viability calculator is a bit on the pessimistic side. It said the tube would be at 10% viability.)

Oxygen for 90 seconds

Start ferment at 66, warmed to 83 degrees over 2 weeks.

Racked to secondary on 1/12/10. 1.008. Tastes really nice, bitter and hoppy but balanced. Removed about 1 qt. to force carbonate, just to get a sample of the clean beer with 566 only.

Added. .5 lb. malto-dextrin powder dissolved in boiling water to the secondary to give the brett some food, upping the O.G. to 1.070. Added 1 pack of Wyeast B. Brux.

2/24/10 Pulled a flavor/gravity sample. 1.006, 8.5% ABV. Brett fermentation has been active and the brett character is very pronounced. Estery, light acidity, and light alcohol notes. Flavor is bitter and hoppy with brett barnyard, but a fairly sweet malt presence at the same time. No signs of fermentation stopping yet...

3/24/10 Racked to keg, which I will use as a bottling bucket. Damn, this is a brett bomb! In a good way, but not a beginner brett beer. Definitely for the afficionado. A brassy, perfumey aroma with a sour baby diaper funk.

OK, now here's the data I collected of the cooling and straining process. I had the bright idea of attaching a "fermometer" to the bottom of the carboy to get an early reading on what temp I was running off the wort at, and that seemed to do a great job. I actually started in a little cold at 64, so I increased the wort flow out of the pot to warm it up a bit.

Final Boil Volume: 6.1 gallons (accounting for shrinkage that would be 5.9 gal after chilling)

Whirlpool stirred for: 1 minute

Whirlpool settled for: 10 minutes

Cold water temp: 44 degrees

Cold water flow rate: 1.25 gallons per minute

Hot wort flow rate: .5 gallons per minute (10 minutes to fill carboy to 5.5 gal)

Wort temp in Carboy: 65-66

Wort left over in Kettle: less than .5 gallons

Towards the end of runnoff, I tilted the kettle to help drain out most of the wort. That's what was left, and I can probably get even more if I rotate the pickup tube down a bit more. I still need to try the Taquito with pellet hops, but using whole hops, it was a tremendous success!

Oh, and one last note on cleaning an sanitization of the plate chiller: I'm sure there are numerous viable ways to do this. Since I don't have a pump, recirculating hot wort is out, but I wanted to do a "Hot Kill" phase. That could either be done with boiling water or I've heard of some people doing it in the oven. Before brewing, I took all the tubes off and did an overnight Oxiclean soak and then sanitized it. On brewday, I got a little pot of water boiling and poured it into the wort and water sides of the plate chiller and let it soak for 15-20 minutes. It really got hot, and stayed hot, which was a relief to me. No way I am trusting this thing to get sanitized with chemicals when I can't even see inside it! The tubes were soaked in the sparge water pot for 15 minutes or so, and then everything stayed in sanitizer until I was ready to hook it up. Cleaning is as simple as an Oxiclean soak and sanitizer dip.

Merry Christmas Brewers and Beer Geeks! Here's hoping you get that special bottle, or brewing equipment you've been wanting under the tree.

Senior Wonton

Back to the *FUNK* with a Flanders Pale Ale

I have to do this blog entry without the photos because it looks like I might have left my camera sitting in the Caldera Taproom in Ashland, Oregon last Saturday (great beers, check it out if you're in Ashland). That would be a shame to have lost not only a camera, but also pictures of my brother's family and my 2 awesome nephews, who we got to visit for the first time in a long time this Thanksgiving weekend. Also, some pictures from the mecca of American breweries, Sierra Nevada, were on there. My brother lives only a couple hours from Sierra Nevada, and it was on the way down for us.

The camera also had some photos from the funky "Rodenbug" brew I did last Tuesday before we left. AlB of Babblebelt fame generously provided this bug blend of his own creation and balancing, which I'm planning to brew with for at least a few generations, and it's going into my next Flanders Red, which may be part of a barrel project, we'll see. Then I'll do another Deliverace Kentucky Sour. I'm still on a quest for a dark, sour rye beer that's so good it will make you "Squeal like a pig!". Thanks again for the bug blend, Al. Expect a nice package of homebrew and some Upright beer soon!

Here's the recipe for the Flanders Pale Ale. If it ends up anything like Petrus Aged Pale, I'd be very happy, although this is not really a clone attempt. I will probably add some oak later for flavor. I'll just take it in the appropriate direction later once it's got at least a year on it. I was a little scared of how hoppy I made this, but then again this beer is meant to age quite a while and the bitterness should mostly drop out. I added Glacier hops as a 100% first wort addition, as it's supposed to carry through a smooth hop profile with some flavor and surprisingly, aroma.

Old Gregg's The Funk Pale Ale

Recipe is for 7.2 gallons pre-boil, 5.9 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.060 IBU's 27

10 lb. Great Western Pilsner malt

1 lb. Crystal 15

2 oz. Special B

42 gr. Glacier pellets 4.5% FWH

Water adjustments: Going for a balanced chloride:sulfate ratio, added 2 gr. Gypsum and 3 gr. Calcium Chloride to the mash. Same amount to the sparge water.

Mash: 4.25 gallons, mash in to 156 and keep in the mid-150's for 1 hour

Sparge with 5 gallons at 170

Collect 7.2 gallons at 1.049 = 84% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, hops went in the kettle before the wort.

wyeast nutrient & whirlfloc at 10 minutes

Chilled to 70, aerated by shaking for 3 minutes

Pitched AlB's Rodenbug blend, plus a rehydrated pack of Safale US-05

Fermentation temp started pretty low as we were out of town with the heat off, but I got it up to 75 on the 4th day. Going to try to keep it in the 60's during secondary if at all possible.

Now the hard part...patience.

12/22/09 Racked to secondary, 1.016. Kind of weirdly funky and hoppy but not sour yet.

Collected 3 pint jars of the yeast slurry for the flanders barrel project.

Tasting of 3 recent beers

Ah man, this week sucks hard. I was sitting down starting to grind up grains for an IPA yesterday with some Newport hops I picked up from Upright, when I reached over a little too far and somehow threw lower back into a spasm. It hurt, but I thought if I took it fairly easy through the brewday, it would probably loosen up eventually. Sometime during the runoff, it seemed to spasm even harder and I was in a world of pain. So I had to totally cancel the brewday and luckily I wasn't halfway through the boil, when I would have wasted hops too.

Today I'm just sitting around the house, laying on a heating pad, tranqued up on advil, codeine, and reading For Whom the Bell Tolls. This sucks because I was supposed to help Upright with 2 brewdays and help another brewery do a bottling run on Friday, all of which I will probably have to miss. I'm currently consoling myself with a Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale (I have a soft spot for traditional pumpkin ales around this time of year) and an episode of Brew Strong. I thought, what better way to do a little beer tasting since I could use the muscle relaxing properties, and apparently I won't be brewing this week. Wah, Wah...

Starting light to dark:

All Brett Wheat Session Ale: Fruity, clean aroma, mainly of apple & pear, light hoppy spicyness, pils malt background. Light vanilla sweetness, light phenols. No classic brett or barnyard. Blonde and appealing color with a big head, which slowly recedes to patchy islands of foam. Great lacing. Flavor is somewhat phenolic with a touch or horse hair & earthy/smoky nuances. Very clean, drinkable beer with a light sweetness. Bitterness is low but balanced. Medium body, medium-high carbonation. Finishes somewhat tart, but just a twang, in no way a sour beer. Very easy to drink in volume. Overall: A good session ale but nowhere near as much brettanomyces character as I had hoped. No evidence of further fermentation in the keg, so I don't think it's worth aging, but it's probable that it would have picked up an more classic brett character with time. It was the crowd favorite at Clarissa's birthday party.

Clarissa's Sweat Meat Saison: Hints of fruit in the aroma with some higher alcohols. A dry graininess that is a little carboardy. Very hard to describe, but not very inviting. Nice orange color and nice head, no problems there. Flavor is fairly sweet up front, even though this beer finished very dry. Again, a dry grainy quality and more alcohol than I would like, but not terrible. Mouthfeel is fairly dry, but with good effervescence. Overall: Not my favorite beer. It seems to have a variety of strange flavors that do not mesh well, at least yet. The fact that it dried out so much puts all the flavors out in the open with no body or sweetness to bring them together. This is, however, the first saison I have spiced that did not come out over-spiced! Sorry Clarissa, I will try to make you a better birthday beer next year!

Fresh-hopped Black Saison: Aroma is somewhat hop-resinous, with a big rose note & perfumeyness. Dark malts are mainly in the background with no roastiness noted. Noticeable alcohol presence but pretty light for an 8% beer. Appearance is a very clear dark brown, almost black with cherry highlights, what you would expect from a dark schwazbier or a robust porter, with a big head which fades to an even 1/4 inch. Flavor is of hops up front, but fairly balanced with sweet malts. Light caramel/molasses, not prominent. Bitterness I would guestimate at 45 IBU's. Finishes a little bitter but overall very balanced. Perception of medium body even though it dried out to 1.007. Overall, I really like this beer, but it is something I would drink a goblet of and probably switch to something else after that. It turned out much more balanced than I expected, much of which is probably due to the hops that we had on hand (I designed the recipe around big citrusy American hops, and we received a lot Willamette, a much more subtle hop). This was the crowd 2nd favorite at the party.

Overall, I think these beers turned out pretty well. I went in knowing that they would be experimental, and with experiments you always get some surprises, some happy, some a let down. I might try to bottle off some of the brett beer and the fresh-hopped saison, to see what they do over the next 6 months.

Oh yeah, and the Belgian Dark Strong I did recently took 3rd in the Roots Competition (I'm not sure out of how many beers). Not bad for a 20 day old beer at 10.8%!

Svenska Köttbullar Säsong, Meetification part 2, and a new video.

The Beerquest Pilot Video that we helped out in finally came out. Check it out! It features Sixpoint, Brooklyn Brewery, and Kelso/Greenpoint Beer Works. And...us! Enjoy. Damn, I miss my brewing brothers back in Brooklyn. I hope you guys are doing well & brewing strong.

One note on our vignette, they actually asked us to make fun of Steve and be a little standoff-ish at first, so if I seem like a jerk, it's not my fault (for once!) I'm also in the background of the Sixpoint shoot cleaning kegs.

A week ago I did a 10 gallon batch of saison with my friend Josh. This is a really straightforward saison, where I was attempting to resolve some of the problems with my first Portland brew. I wanted to remove any chloramines from the water (using campden tablets), leave out the carafa which seemed to leave an ashy taste even at 1 oz., and pitch the yeast at a more ideal 68-70 degrees, followed by a ramp up to 80 degrees. We are thinking about dry hopping one of the carboys for experimentation.

I ran out of German pilsner malt, so we switched to Great Western "superior pilsner" malt. We noticed some HUGE protein chunks floating up in the boil, which were about the size of IKEA meatballs or even bigger. They looked kind of like this:

But with a gravy on them:

That's why we named this beer Svenska Köttbullar Säsong, which translates to "Swedish Meatball Saison". I'm still not sure what to think about this North American Pilsner malt, or if I would use it in lager.

Recipe is for 13.75 gallons pre-boil, 12.3 gallons post-boil, all grain

O.G. 1.059 IBU's 29 F.G. 1.003 ABV 7.5%

16 lb. Great Western Superior Pilsner malt

4 lb. Vienna malt

2 lb. flaked triticale

8 oz. aromatic malt

9 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% 60 min

30 gr. East Kent Goldings pellets 4.8% 60 min

14 gr. Magnum pellets 13.6% 60 min

56 gr. Willamette whole 5.1% 10 min

56 gr. Willamette whole 4.7% 0 min

Mash: 7 gallons of water + 2 tsp gypsum, mash in to 142.

At 10 minutes, raised to 148 using 1 gallon of boiling water.

Total mash time 90 minutes.

Sparge with 8.5 gallons at 170.

Collect 13.75 gallons at 1.053 = 87% efficiency. Either we got really great efficiency, or this is a particularly high-yielding batch of malt.

Boil 90 minutes, additions as noted.

Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes, no whirlfloc.

Chilled to 68, collected about 5.5 gallons per carboy.

Oxygen for 1 minute per carboy, pitched an appropriate sized starter of Wyeast 3711 French Saison yeast (3rd generation).

Started fermentation at 68 degrees, ramping a few degrees per day to reach 80 degrees by 1 week. Krausen fell at 6 days. When fermentation was almost negligible, I turned off the heat and let it finish out slowly. Racked to keg on 11/6/09. Tastes and smells great!

Then 2 days ago, I did another batch of Meetification, which is kind of an "extreme pale ale", if you believe in that sort of thing (I do). It's designed to be a little more sessionable than an IPA, but with an extreme dose of hop aroma and flavor. I have been craving a hopsickle lately, but I have had the Belgian yeasts going, so I just wanted to get a few batches out of them first.

I stuck with exactly the same recipe as the first time, but I mashed in a few degrees below at only 150. I really need to learn to control my mash-in temperature, as I have had erratic results using the new cooler mash tun. I changed the mineral additions on this one too, using 2 tsp of Burton salts in the mash, and 1 tsp in the boil.

"Meetification" Pale Ale

Recipe is for 7 gallons pre-boil, 6.2 gallons post boil, all-grain

O.G. 1.056 F.G. 1.008 ABV 6.3% IBU's 48

9 lb. 2-row American pale malt
1.5 lb. Glen Eagle Marris Otter
8 oz. Victory malt
6 oz. British Crystal 70

6 gr. Summit pellets 18.1% AA 60 min
28 gr. Summit pellets 18.1% 20 min
28 gr. Centennial pellets 8% 15 min
28 gr. Cascade pellets 6% 0 min
14 gr. Amarillo pellets 8.6% 0 min

Dry hops: 34 gr. Amarillo pellets, 22 gr. Summit pellets in the keg (in bags), dry hopped cold.

Mash: 4.5 gallons H20 + 2 tsp. Burton Salts.

Mash in to 150 for 60 minutes.
Sparged with 5 gallons water at 180
Collected 7 gallons at 1.050 = 84% efficiency.

Boil 60 minutes

Add 1 tsp Burton salts

Whirlfoc & Wyeast nutrient at 10 min.
Chilled, racked to carboy, and added pure oxygen for 60 seconds. Pitched an appropriate-sized starter of Wyeast 1056 at 68 degrees.

Fermented at 68 degrees for 10 days, then cold-crashed to 50 for 3 days

Racked to keg on 10/26/09. Some of the dank oniony qualities are coming through from the Summit.

Hood River Hops Fest, and a very un-hoppy Belgian Dark Strong

Above: new 70 quart mash tun with a Celebrator goat that Jamil gave me at NHC.

I've been trying to brew as much as possible for competition, and Roots is collaborating with the Oregon Brew Crew on a competition for an upcoming pinot noir/bourbon barrel aged brew. Only 2 categories are open for this competition: Baltic Porter and Belgian Dark Strong. My personal feeling is that a Baltic Porter might be a better beer to age in these barrels. But with limited time and a healthy yeast cake of trappist ale yeast, I went with the Belgian Dark Strong. There's really no way that this beer will have matured properly in only 21 days, which is the entry deadline. But, since I can just bottle up a few bottles with the Beergun, it's no big deal. I'll just keep rest of the beer in a keg until it's time to bottle the rest.

Below, you can see the detail on the new mash tun. I actually turn the pipes upside down when brewing so the slits are facing downward. Cutting and fitting all the pipes, and then using a hacksaw to cut the slits in the copper pipe was extremely time & labor intensive process! So my advice to anyone is to go with the stainless mesh tube in the bottom of the mash tun if you're doing a conversion like this.

So, I brewed the Belgian Dark Strong on Friday, and then on Saturday we took a trip to Hood River Oregon for the annual Fresh Hop Fest. The weather was supposed to be great, but unfortunately it was pretty rainy. This didn't seem to phase the Oregon beer revelers though!

There were tons of great beers there. As a brewer, I felt that it should have been better marked as to which beers were 100% fresh hop beers, and which used a mix of wet & dried hops. My favorite fresh hop beer, which not only used an excellent hop variety, but also displayed it perfectly by holding back on the crystal malts, was Widmer's Hopturnal Emission. It was brewed with fresh Summit hops, and the aroma was so inviting! The flavor was intense and hoppy.

I also really enjoyed: New Old Lompoc's Harvestman Red, which was brewed with fresh Crystal hops, had a juicy malt backbone and subtle hopping. It was an excellent session red ale. Rock Bottom's Octoberfist (yes, I spelled that right) was an excellent malty lager, with a touch of extra hop character from the fresh Hallertauer hops. Maybe the reason that some of my favorite beers were on the malty side is that after a whole day of drinking hoppy ales, my pallete was craving a change. There were many other great fresh hopped IPA's from other breweries, the full list of which can be found on the Hood River Hops Fest website.

Back to the brew: This is Jamil's Belgian Dark Strong recipe brewed pretty much straight up out of Brewing Classic Styles. The differences are:

• Recipe calls for WLP530 Abbey yeast. I used a blend of Wyeast 1214 and WLP 530.
• Recipe uses Hallertauer hops as a 60 minutes addition. I used Perle and Magnum.
• I had a little issue with not getting as good efficiency as I hoped for. I was at 66% instead of 70%. What I should have done is add a half pound of DME to make up for it, but instead my cheap ass spent an extra 40 minutes collecting the last runnings in another pot, boiling this on the stove at the same time as the regular boil, and then adding the runnings to the main pot once they could fit. While this was a big time-suck, I did hit all my numbers dead-on, and I don't think I picked up much extra caramelization.

Recipe is for 6 gallons post boil, all grain + sugar

O.G. 1.103 F.G. 1.023 ABV 10.7% IBU's 30

15 lb. Pilsner malt

3 lb. Munich malt

1 lb. caramunich 60

1 lb. aromatic malt

1 lb. special B

8 oz. Melanoidin malt

8 oz. Wheat malt

1 lb. corn sugar

15 gr. Magnum pellets 13.6%AA 60 min

6 gr. Perle pellets 7.1%AA 60 min

Mash: 6 gallons + 1 tsp gypsum, mash in a little low to 149

at 10 minutes into the mash, added about 1 gallon boiling water to bring up to 153

Total mash time 65 minutes

Sparge: 5 gallons at 170 degrees

Collect 8 gallons at 1.071 = 70% efficiency

Boil: about 2 hours, started in 2 pots. See above notes.

Sugar at beginning of boil.

Once boil volume was down to 7 gallons, started the timer at 90 minutes

Hops as noted, Whirlfloc and Wyeast nutrient at 10 minutes

Chilled to 68, whirlpooled, and collected 5.25 gallons

Oxygen for 2 minutes

Pitched 2 cups (half a yeast cake from the blond) of Wyeast 1214 & WLP 530

Ferment at 68 degrees for first 48 hours, then let slowly come up to 72 degrees over 1 week.

Took a gravity reading at 10 days, 1.023. Target was 1.024. Pretty good! tastes/smells pretty solventy, I guess that's to be expected at this age.

P.S. I just lined up a one day a week internship with Upright Brewery. Very exciting! Even if I'm not getting paid yet, it will be great to be brewing and learning.

Cheers & Brew Strong.

Sean / Chupa / Senior Wonton

New Kegerator, The search for a brewing job goes on, and a new beer is born.

Today I took a taste of the 2 wild ales I brought all the way across the country in cornelius kegs. Above, on the left is the all B. Bruxellensis session ale. I'm letting the sample de-gas to take the F.G., but it's very dry! The flavor is not incredibly brett-like or horsey, but it does taste like a good session beer. I'll do a full tasting later once it's fully carbonated.

On the right is me & Ray's Flanders Red, which is tasting good, and is has developed a moderate level of sourness, while retaining some sweetness and caramel flavors. I might take this keg back out and let it sour up for another 6 months.

In the middle is a mix of the 2 that came out of the beer line on my new kegerator. It tasted really good! Maybe better than either of the 2 beers separately.

Speaking of new kegerator:

I just finished up installing the gas and liquid lines on this baby yesterday. I went a little over budget on it, but thanks to a generous friend who shall remain nameless, I got a great deal on the faucets and all the liquid & gas hookups. So I went for a 3rd tap, couldn't help myself!

So I can now fit 8 kegs in at once, or 4 kegs and some fermenting lagers, plus some additional space for competition beers. Cool!

I also racked my first Portland (saison) brew to a keg, which is kind of perfumey, incredibly dry (1.004), and hoppy. I'm not sure what I think of it yet, but I am drinking it uncarbonated & at room temp. I think it leaves a somewhat cardboardy finish, which is not from oxidation, but maybe the extreme dryness is making the hops seem harsh? There is also the issue of Portland water, which contains some chloromines, and I haven't found time to by a water filter yet. It would be a nice thing to rule out, more than anything.

This week also marks 1 month that I have been in Portland. Although I haven't written anything on this blog about my job search out here, I am looking for brewing work, and believe me, it's not as easy as it might seem. So far my efforts have included going door to door to breweries and brewpubs to introduce myself, ask about work and give them a resume and a few homebrews, which I brought out specifically for that purpose. So far, only one or two breweries of maybe 12 has said that they were even hiring, and my main hope ended up hiring someone who has about 14 years experience as a brewer.

Instead of getting bummed, I have tried to keep my focus positive, and just do my best to truly immerse myself in the brewing scene here. That includes the work I have done making connections at breweries, as well as homebrewing a lot to give out more samples, and joining both the Oregon Brew Crew and the PDX brewers clubs. I'm also planning on entering as many local homebrew competitions as I can, and start stocking up beers to enter in the National Homebrew Competition.

This week I helped 2 breweries with their bottling days. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. Upright Brewery initially really impressed me with "Flora Rustica", a saison brewed with some kind of flowers (it was an awesome saison, but I'm not sure what type of flowers were used or what they were supposed to smell like). They also have many other beers using Wyeast 3711 as a primary fermenter, and if you haven't tried them out, you should, because many of these beers are outstanding. I was particularly impressed with the "4", a session saison, and "Reggae Junky Gruit" which is spiced with lemongrass, szechuan peppers, and uses no hops at all. Yes, the name is a Ween reference. Upright uses a custom built bottling line for bottle conditioning 750 ml bottles. It is completely hand operated, and fills 6 bottles at a time. It's not an extremely fast setup, but with 4 people, we were able to prep, bottle 6 barrels of beer, and clean up in about 6 hours. Not bad!

New Old Lompoc 5th Quadrant brewpub produces a number of tasty beer styles, and has a fairly extensive barrel collection going on right now. They use a roving bottle filling business called Green Bottling. It's basically 2 guys running a labelling machine and a filling machine, which are unloaded from a truck into the brewery. I helped clean and pack the bottles into cases, and we got through 24 barrels of beer in about 4 hours! There were a lot of cool folks to get to know, and they sent me away with a backpack full of bombers.

So, the search for brewing work goes on. I'm just trying to stay positive, work hard, and brew strong! In the mean time, here's a beer I brewed up for the upcoming AHA club-only competition for Belgian Strong Ales. I brewed it up to be a Belgian Blond ale, but we'll see how it tastes once it's bottled and decide which category to enter it in. It bares a striking resemblance to Mr. T's 30 Pound Necklace, which did well as a tripel. I will probably not have time to bottle condition this one though. I'm planning on using the Beergun.

I used 2 different yeasts on this beer, because I had a starter of Wyeast 1214 (Chimay) yeast going, but I didn't see any activity in the starter after 8 hours! Wassup, Wyeast? I bought an additional tube of Whitelabs 530 (Westmalle) and pitched that in as insurance. It took awhile, but 24 hours later is was going strong. I think it will be just fine.

Blackeyed Blonde

Recipe is for 6 gallons post boil volume.

O.G. 1.068 F.G. 1.011 ABV 7.7% IBU's 27

9.5 lb. Pils malt

1 lb. wheat malt

4 oz. aromatic malt

2 oz. melanoidin malt

1 lb. corn sugar

8 oz. unrefined cane sugar

24 gr. Perle pellets 7.1%AA 60 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 30 min

14 gr. Styrian Goldings pellets 3.5% 0 min

3.5 gallons mash water +1 tsp gypsum + 1 tsp Bruton salts

Mash in to 151, keep between 149-151 for 60 min

pH was 4.9 on the ColorpHast strips, 5.2 on the cheap strips.

After 60 minutes, raised to mash out 170 degrees

Sparge: 5 gallons at 165-170

Collect 6.9 gallons at 1.049 = 82% efficiency

Boil 90 minutes, sugar at start of boil

Hop additions as noted, Wyeast nutrient whirlfloc at 10 min

Chilled to 70, whirlpooled, and racked to carboy.

Oxygen for 70 seconds.

Pitched 1 qt. starter of Wyeast 1214

Also pitched 1 tube WLP 530

Fermentation did not take off for almost 24 hours, but then it was vigorous.

Ferment at 68 for 3 days, then let rise to 70 degrees.

Racked to keg on 10/2/09, I thought I picked up a bit of residual sulphur at this point.

I left the keg out for a few days, occasionally venting the headspace to let any sulphur out, and refilling it with CO2.