Blackfriar, and my big Guinness Discovery

Inside the Blackfriar

My first stop was the slightly touristy Blackfriar Tavern, just on the north side of Blackfriar Bridge. They have good pub grub here, so I had a bite to eat, and tried a couple of the cask ales they had on tap. I first tried the Deuchar’s IPA, on cask. This is a British IPA, and it’s a pretty good one, but it’s not anything like an IPA in the states. The hop presence isn’t nearly as pronounced, and it’s not nearly as strong a beer. However, it is a well-balanced beer that’s very refreshing, and very easy to drink. I would order it again, but I didn’t, because I wanted to try as many beers I can’t get in the US as possible. So my next beer was Guinness.

Guinness Extra Cold at Blackfriar Tavern, London

The very first thing I noticed upon taking my first sip of the Guinness was how unbelievably cold it was. Even in the states they don’t serve it this cold. This was particularly shocking given that I’d just had a wonderful cask ale served at cellar temperature. Why was it so darn cold?

I took a look around the bar for clues, but there were none, so I asked the bartender why the Guinness was so cold and she said “Ah, it’s Guinness Extra Cold”, and she pointed at a tap that was clearly branded by Guinness with the “Extra Cold” label on it. My heart sank. When I asked if she had any other Guinness on tap, she said no. Oh man. Was all of the Guinness in London going to be like this? Turns out it wasn’t. It’s actually quite unusual in my experience to *not* be offered a choice when one orders a Guinness in London.

So how do they get the Guinness to be so cold? Do they put it in a separate fridge or something? Is it some kind of spooky glycol cooling system? What’s going on? Well, there’s no separate fridge. Guinness (or perhaps the distributor) provides a small refrigerator box that is small enough to be placed unobtrusively under the bar. The kegs are kept with the rest of the kegs in the cellar, so it is around 12C (around 54F) at the point where it’s tapped, but then it runs through this cooling box, which brings it down below 5C (around 40F). It’s far too cold for me. I serve the beer out of my kegerator at home at somewhere between 48-54F, and that suits me about right. I was not at all surprised at the beer temps in London as a result. When beer has actual, desirable flavors, this temperature is very pleasant!

Here’s the “Extra Cold” tap, for those on the lookout:

Guinnes "Extra Cold" Tap Branding

Note that it’s right next to what is perhaps the only lager in the place: Foster’s, which is also served super cold, and which I learned later also utilized a cooling box under the bar. Lots of pubs in London serve lagers that americans would recognize on tap, and they serve them very cold. The interesting thing is that if you’re in a pub frequented by locals, these beers seem to be seen as “alternative”, and you very well might not see them at all!

I read everything there was to read in this tavern, and it was a bit of an eye-opener. They had a pamphlet that would guide you along what I believe is a fictional trail of a mayor of London from long ago, hitting pubs along the way. All of them, I believe, are owned by the same company. You can tell because the food menus are largely the same, and the signs with pics of the food are exactly the same. Even some of the “guest ales” are the same between the different pubs owned by the same company.

To sum up my experience with Guinness, having now consumed it at several different pubs all over London, it’s not really all that different from the stuff you get in the US. It’s a great beer, yes. It *is* slightly different, and there *is* a difference between Guinness at different pubs in London, but it’s not the huge, sweeping, it’s-a-completely-different-beer type of experience that people talk about. For that, as I’m told by the locals, you really do have to go to Ireland. Someday.

The Toucan: Obsessive About Guinness

In the meantime, if you’re in London, and looking for folks who are obsessive about how the Guinness is served at their bar, check out The Toucan.

The Toucan recommended to me by a couple of locals as “the” place for Guinness in London. It’s in Soho, not a block from Soho Square. When you see the crowd outside, DO NOT be discouraged. As an American, when I first saw one of these crowds, I turned around and went to another pub. Turns out, it’s not a good indicator of how many folks are inside or how long it’ll take you to get a beer. See, in London, it’s perfectly legal for you to take your beer and step outside for a smoke, or to escape the bar’s interior, as most pubs are NOT air conditioned. Seeing the pic of the Toucan above, it looks like a good-sized pub, with a good crowd, but I was really shocked when I went inside: the entire interior of the bar is probably 10′x15′. People don’t come here for the scene, they come for the Guinness, and I figured out why upon being served my first pint.

I didn’t think too much about my first pint. It was served according to the rules and procedures I had learned myself as a bartender in the states. I took my beer and cleared away from the tiny bar to allow others to be served. I set it on the ledge to let it settle, and before I could take my first sip, the bartender walked over from behind the bar, and asked if he could “fix” my beer. I took a quick glance and didn’t really see a problem, but out of curiosity, I replied “that’d be great!” He took my beer, flopped off a bit of the foamy head, and repoured a bit back in. The result was what he was after:

The line should bisect the word “PINT” on the glass. His complaint about the beer he had just poured was “it’s falling a little low” — meaning the head was at or below the bottom of the word “PINT”.

As if that weren’t enough, after he handed it back, and while I was letting it settle again, another bartender came by with a perfectly clean cloth to wipe of a tiny bit of foam that was just starting to slip down the side of the glass. That’s obsessive.

The Guinness there was extremely good. Does being completely OCD about the beer make it better? Perhaps not, but this kind of attention to detail insures that everyone has a wonderful experience, and this is the only bar I’ve ever seen where *everyone* on the staff seemed wholeheartedly devoted to fantastic Guinness. Not good. Not great. Fantastic. And it was.

By the way, for the record, while in London I *did* see a pub patron return to the bar with his untouched beer to say “we have a problem”. All he did was point to his beer, and the publican knew what the problem was. She took back the beer. It was DUMPED. He got a new glass, and a brand new beer, filled to the proper level. My mind was blown (that was at The Lamb — see below).

Branded Houses

Some pubs in London are “branded”. Many pubs have, in large letters, or on some sign, prominently displayed, a particular brewer’s name and logo. Inside you’ll only find that brewer’s beers on cask, though they may have some other beers on tap. Usually crappy ones. Well, those and Guinness. I’ve been to maybe a dozen pubs or so, and I only saw one single pub who just plain old didn’t serve Guinness, or any other beer not brewed by the brewery that owned them.

Anyway, this whole branding thing becomes a consideration when going out to a pub — or it can become a deciding factor in what beers people drink. It’s a double-edged sword. If you don’t like Young’s beers, but that’s the closest pub to you, you might drink it because it’s the best beer you can get within stumbling distance of your place. On the other hand, maybe you used to like Green King beers, but the pub nearest you that serves it has gone downhill — you might start frequenting the Fuller’s pub nearby instead and develop a taste for that. This kind of thing makes the entire beer drinking experience in the UK quite different.

It wasn’t clear to me whether branded houses were necessarily owned by the brewery, or if the pubs just had distribution agreements with the brewers directly. A local mentioned that these places were owned directly by the breweries. Seems like a whole lot of overhead for breweries to take on, but I guess if they can dictate their presence in the market, and in addition have an iron-clad grip on quality control from the brewery all the way to the pint glass, that’s pretty compelling.

The Lamb, and A Look Inside the Cellar

The Lamb - A Young's House

Not all pubs are branded houses, and some of them serve great beer. But I think my best experiences at pubs in London happened to be at branded houses. One was a Young’s house called The Lamb. This place is renowned by locals, in part because there are very few tourists there, and very few suit-and-tie types. The Lamb really is just a bunch of locals, and some excellent beer, and all of the good stuff was on cask. I had almost every beer Young’s makes that night, all on cask.

The Lamb is like a good number of other pubs in the city which are described as “Victorian” pubs, which usually means that there is a very large amount of ornate wood and glass work in the bar. This is pretty stuff, and lends to the sort of “authentic” London pub feel.

I got into a conversation with a publican at The Lamb, and we got to talking about the differences between how beer is stored, cared for, and served in the US vs. London. There are lots and lots of them. First, there are three different sized kegs, which I had no idea about. There are 9-gallon “firkin” kegs, 18-gallon kegs, and the more common 11-gallon (50 liter) kegs. In the US, all US brewers as far as I know use standard “half barrel” kegs: 15.5 gallons. Of course, if a bar in the US serves a foreign beer on tap they might get a different sized keg, but generally kegs are 15.5 gallons.

Another enormous difference is attributed to the serving temperature. In the UK, beer– especially cask “real ale” is served at cellar temperature — about 54F (12C). I didn’t really understand how enormous a difference this makes in the cellar itself until my new publican friend invited me into the cellar to see their operation. Here’s the thing: what we call a “cellar” in the US is really a walk-in refrigerator. What they call a cellar in the UK is, in fact, the ENTIRE cellar level of the building. See, when you’re only cooling a basement to 12C in an area that’s only barely above that even in the summer months, you can cool the entire cellar pretty cheaply and use the entire cellar as a refrigerator. However, in the US, it would be prohibitively expensive to cool an entire cellar to 34F (1C), which is the temperature that most US mass-produced beers are served at (unless you can get them colder!)

There’s SO MUCH room when you can use the whole cellar. See that white thing sitting on the floor? That’s a vessel that holds line-cleaning fluid. Since you can pretty much leave it there all the time and change it without wrenching your back climbing on top of the kegs, you can clean the lines more often. In fact, The Lamb cleans the lines between every single keg! I was floored by this. I thought the guy was pulling my leg, until another pub, unsolicited, told me they do the same thing! I assure you, Americans, this is not the case in US bars. At least not in the vast majority of cases.

Another difference is more specific to the kegs themselves:

There’s a bung there. It’s made of plastic. After a keg is delivered, it’s allowed to chill and settle for a few days. Then, a few days before serving, they insert a plastic pin in that hole called a “spile”. This first plastic pin is called a ’soft spile’, and it allows some beer and gas to escape. At some point (and I’m not clear how they know when to do this), they take out the soft spile and put in a wooden one called a ‘hard spile’ which completely plugs the hole. This is all a part of the conditioning that takes place, and I believe it’s specific to cask ale — I don’t believe any of this takes place for plain old kegged beer served on tap, pushed by CO2.

Too. Much. Writing.

I had such a great time in London and I got to see lots and lots of pubs, and the people I spoke with were amazingly candid and friendly about their operations. I could write a book about London pubs, and would happily do it, but I can’t do it here on the blog. If I think of an interesting topic that would make a good blog post, I’ll post more, but until then, we’ll get back to homebrewing beer, drinking beer, and the regularly scheduled program, as it were

First thing I did was make a 1,000 ml starter using 2 oz of DME and a few hops. Since I have an electric stove and it is not recommended that you place flasks on the coils I opted to make the starter on the stove in a pot. Basically I am preheating it to dissolving all the DME. Also I get the yeast vial out of the fridge so it could warm up to room temp. Otherwise you risk the shocking the yeast. Once everything is dissolved I moved it into the 1,000 ml Erlenmeyer flask and drop in the stir bar.

• in order to keep everything sanitary I wrap the top with some tin foil and boil it for 15 minutes on a fondue pot stand and burner. I then let it cool down to room temp. I aerate it by shaking it carefully trying not to hit the top of the tin foil with the wort. Once it cools down and I am ready to pitch the yeast I sanitize a new piece of tin foil with star sans. I then spray the air with Lysol and use a healthy amount of hand sanitizer. I wait a few moments to let the air settle and I get my creme brulee torch ready. The next few steps happen kind of fast. I get the white-labs yeast vial and break the seal but don’t open it all the way. while still the holding vial I light the torch, take a deep breathe and pull the foil off the starter. I then torch the flask opening, open the vial completely dump it in and re-torch the opening of the flask. I use the new piece of tin foil that was soaking in star sans to recover the flask. Then I exhale. Then it goes on the stir plate. You can see here it is just starting to krausen. This particular starter is being used in a batch of beer that we were doing but I decided to make an agar slat of it for future batches. Basically the prep for the slats is the same as doing a culture. A 1,000 ml hopped starter is made with DME boiling for 10 minutes in a pot. Instead of putting into a flask you remove it from the heat, add 6 grams of agar to it and let it soak up for a few moments. heat it back up until agar is fully dissolved. I then put 2 oz of this mixture in 1/2 pint mason jars. it is important to place a piece of string between the jar lid and mouth and loosely close the lid. Do not close tight. Then it is off to the pressure cooker for 15 minutes @ 15 psi. This will reach internal temperatures of 250 degrees F. Efficiently sanitizing the agar solution and mason jar. After that I let the jars cool down on an angle until the slats were set.Once the slats are set I then spray the air with Lysol and use a healthy amount of hand sanitizer. I get a new piece of foil sanitized. I wait a few moments to let the air settle and I light my creme brulee torch. I flame a metal inoculation needle until red hot. I keep the needle with in 6 cm of the flame. Once again the next few steps happen kind of fast. I get the yeast starter, take a deep breathe and pull the foil off the starter. I then torch the flask opening, I dunk the needle into the fermenting wort. Then I remove the needle, re-cover the open flask with the new sanitized foil. Then I open the agar slat, swipe the needle on the slat flame that opening and close it up. Then I exhale. with in a few days you get healthy colonies of yeast growing on the slat. the slats will last 3 months before I have to re-culture them. I another post I will cover the “growing up” a few cells from the slat to a pitchable volume for a 5 gallon batch of beer.

The astute reader will notice that I said “carboys”. Yes, that’s right folks, we’ve moved up to 10-gallon batches. We have broken through that point of resistance in every home brewer’s life that is the now-infamous 5-gallon batch. We can now do partigyle fermentations without splitting up and measuring yeast. We can each add our own adjuncts. One can dry hop while the other adds apricot. The possibilities are endless.

We are a danger to ourselves and others.

For those that are considering moving to a 10-gallon batch, I have a few words:

1. It’s not nearly as big of a change as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s just about zero change from a 5-gallon batch.
2. You really need two people to move things around if you don’t have a 100% pump-driven system or some other setup that means not moving 75+ pound kegs around.
3. Get a spray bottle, and fill it with water. Your kettle is going to have possibly 14 gallons of liquid in it (we do a 90-minute boil, so we have 14 gallons in our keggle at the start). If it looks like your boil is getting dangerously close to boiling over, spray it furiously 4 or 5 times, and it should settle down. I swear this works. Flawlessly.

We’ll get the recipe stuff up later this week. Hacker’s Knuckle and Black Asphalt are both loosely based on recipes from the book “Brewing Classic Styles”.

The yeasty part will probably subside. What happened was, while it was still in the carboy fermenting, I took a refractometer reading. Don’t do this. Turns out, alcohol greatly affects the readings, which makes perfect sense. I thought I had a stuck fermentation, so I shook up the carboy to wake up the yeast. Then I realized my mistake in using the refractometer, and took another reading with a hydrometer. Turns out I had nailed the final gravity. I kegged it only minutes later… with some yeast still in suspension. This probably explains some of the yeastiness.

Now I have a converted keg system. I also have a pump. I also have a nice plate chiller, a ‘whirligig’-style sparge arm, a grain mill, a temp control for my fridge… a lot has been added, but I haven’t spent much time getting all of these things put together in such a way that they get set up the same way every time and everything ‘just works’. Hell, I have all this stuff and still don’t even have volume markings on my vessels! I’m still eyeballing all of my volume measurements, and I still, to this day, don’t take any gravity readings during my brew day.

The gods have smiled upon me for a long time. I’ve made some good beer. I’ve made more good beer than bad. And even the beer I didn’t like, others did. But I’m getting less happy with “lucking out” on brew day, and I’m starting to take some steps toward a better process.

This most recent brew day went like this:

12:30 – put 8.5 gal water on burner
12:45 – it’d be nice to cut the entire top off of the hlt so I can pour from it. Dunno how to get 4 gallons into the mash cleanly. Gotta transfer using a 1-gallon pitcher I guess

12:50 – windy as hell. Killing the boil times. 20+ minutes, still only ~120.

1:10 – decided to heat strike water to 185F since I’ll lose heat transfering it to the mash

1:33 – struck with 4 gallons. Transfered using 1-gallon pitcher, into the cajun boiler pot, then all 4 gallons at once into the mash. I stirred, and just measured the temperature. I’m hovering near 154F. Target was 152F. Almost as close as I’ve ever come to nailing my strike temp, and it was the process with the most opportunity for error (though the simplest as well – no hoses or pumps were used, so maybe that’s debatable).

2:08 — temps are still just about perfect.

2:40 — forgot to boil sparge water. Just turned the burner back on.

2:48 — with the lid off for the past 8 mins, mash temp only dropped to 148F. Not bad.

3:23 — just put on burner to boil. Not sure what volume I collected. Gravity about 2 mins before I stopped collecting was still around 1.015+

3:45 — wort is now boiling

3:55 — added 1.5oz crystal pellets @ 3.8%AA

4:10 — added 1oz crystal pellets

4:35 — added tsp. irish moss

4:45 — added 1.5oz crystal pellets

4:55 — flame out.

5:08 — all in fermenter. I lost a LOT to the boil. I’m adding a gallon of water to it now.

Ok, so there are some corrections that need making, and I’ve brewed enough batches now that I can see a pattern in where things go haywire, and where I can’t see patterns, I can see other issues

First, there should never be a point at which you have no idea how much fluid is in a vessel, no matter which vessel we’re talking about. Even if it’s the mash tun, you should know that you’ve put in, say, 4 gallons of strike water. You should know that, so far, you’ve added 3 gallons of sparge water by looking at the water level in the HLT, and you should be able to derive the amount in the mash tun at any point during the sparge by looking at the level in the HLT and the kettle. If you have no markings on any of the vessels, doing this becomes difficult.

Second, you should know how much you lose to equipment alone. Today, for the first time, I tested to see how much water I lose to the mash tun, and I learned something really valuable: where you put your spigot matters even if another tube goes all the way to the bottom. Here’s the story:

The Mash Tun Lesson

I have a converted keg with a store-bought false bottom made for converted kegs. The keg holds 15.5 gallons of water, but I don’t need to fill it all the way up to do the test. I put 10 gallons of water in there, and nothing else. I only used that much because I wanted to mark the volumes on the outside of the vessel — not because they’re useful on a mash tun — they aren’t. I did it because my kettle is also a converted keg, so I can be reasonably sure that the measurements are similar (I’ll mark up the kettle separately tomorrow). Anyway, what I wanted to know is “If I put 10 gallons of water in here, how much can I get *out*?” I put the water in, and opened the valve, and let the water run into a 1-gallon pitcher. I did this repeatedly.

When the water level got near the top of the spigot, there was a very noticeable drop-off in pressure from when it was full. Having dealt with my fair share of siphons and various vessels and stuff, I could see what was going to happen, but I was still surprised. My notion had been that, as long as the fluid keeps running, it’ll run all the way to where the bent tubing reaches to, and the placement of the spigot is irrelevant unless you stop the flow at a point below the spigot. This is only half true.

The reality is that the water will keep flowing past the level of the spigot if there is a siphon point below the spigot. It makes absolute crystal-clear sense when you see it, but I hadn’t been picturing it that way in my brain. When I saw the pressure dropping, a light bulb went off, and I went to grab a hose. I stuck it on, bent it upward so the trickle from the spout would fill it with water, and then let it fall downward so the water would flow out, creating a siphon. The pressure increased dramatically, and I got 9.75 gallons out of that vessel.

Why is this important?

Because if I didn’t understand this, and I temporarily stopped the flow out of the mash tun to take a gravity reading toward the end of the flow, turning on that valve again won’t get me much, and I’ll be wondering why I’m 2 gallons short going into my boil! The center of my spigot is right at the 3 gallon mark! Now that I *do* understand this, I can try to avoid this problem, or at least know that I can probably start a siphon again even if I stop the flow when there is less than 3 gallons in the tun. This *will* make a *large* difference.

The Kettle Lesson

The first thing I thought when I was done running off the wort into the kettle was “I have no idea how much that is”. I guesstimated that it was about 6.5 gallons, and after looking at some pics I took during the session, and marking up my mash tun, I think I was pretty close on that guesstimation. The real lesson though had to do with how fluid is lost during and *after* the boil.

For whatever reason, I completely forgot, until I was staring at the bottom of the murky, emptied kettle, that you lose fluid to the kettle itself, over and above evaporation. Some fluid is absorbed by the hops, and plenty is left at the bottom of the kettle because… well… it’s sludge. In the future I’m going to figure in about a half gallon of loss right there.
Also, I lost *a lot* to evaporation. I boiled (I mean, the wort was actually boiling) for 70 minutes. If you consider that I started the boil with ~6.5 gallons of wort, and lost a 1/2 gallon to the bottom of the kettle, and that only roughly 3.5 gallons made it into the fermenter, that would mean that I lost something like 2.5 gallons to evaporation in a 70-minute boil! Of course, this doesn’t mean that I lost 2.5 gallons per hour. In reality, the kettle was on the burner for 90 minutes, and evaporation was taking place for just about the entire time. But even so, it means I was losing at a rate somewhere around 1.5 gallons per hour, and probably better than that during the time that the boil was really rolling.

And the boil was *really* rolling. This is only the 2nd batch with the new burner, and the first batch with it was about a year ago (I had my first child in the interim, so you’ll excuse the lack of brewing activity). The boil was downright violent. Much more rigorous than anything we had with the old burner. Maybe I just shouldn’t be too surprised that I lost so much to the boil.

I’ve learned two things about boiling in general – one I’ve known for a long time, and the other I just learned:

A long time ago I learned that you should *not* put a cover on your boil, because one reason you boil is to get rid of volatiles that can cause off flavors. One that comes to mind is some kind of sulfur compound created by the hops during the boil, but there are others as well. What I only just learned, though, is that there is an actual target to shoot for with evaporation rates, and there is such a thing as over- and under-evaporation, and either situation (in dramatic form, I imagine) can have an impact on your beer. See this.

My wife and I had our first child, our daughter Molly, in May 2007. Since that day, I have not brewed. I haven’t had the time. At all. Really. However, I do find that I’m home a lot more. My wife and I eat at home far more than we used to, and I cook a lot more than I used to (PS – I have always enjoyed cooking). I need something to drink with dinner!

There used to be a liquor store near my house that carried some absurd number of beers that you could buy by the bottle. Unfortunately, their selection was rather inconsistent, and the freshness of the beer was sometimes questionable. After some time, it got so bad that I opted to travel the extra few miles to another place that had a pretty good selection, and was cheaper and fresher. I’m lucky to have two places anywhere near me that have such a good selection of beers.

But now, the old place up the block was taken over, and the guy handling the beer part of the operation (it’s a full-fledged liquor store) really seems to care about beer. Good beer. I’ve tried tons of beers. All of a sudden the shelves were bursting at the seams with beers I had asked about when the old owners had the place, and I got lame excuses about. They’ve also gone back to stocking bottled versions of those British beers that have started going to those pub draught cans that I don’t care for.

I’ve tried tons of stuff, and I’ve come to a few interesting conclusions over the past, say, six months or so:

1. Saison is the only Belgian style of beer that I really like. I’ve tried several over the years, and figured maybe I just wasn’t trying the right ones. Then I tried Chimay Bleue, which scored, like, a 100 on RateBeer, and I don’t like that either. It’s not that they’re not well made – I’m sure they are! The thing is that there’s this flavor in Belgian ales that is sort of a hallmark of Belgian ale, and it so happens that that flavor drives me nuts. I don’t like it. Saison, on the other hand, is unlike any other Belgian I’ve ever had. I’m so glad I found Saison. I only found it a couple of years ago, and I’ve *never* brewed it, but I’d really like to, because it’s probably among the lightest, most refreshing beers you can brew without lagering. While it’s true that it’s kind of a light, fizzy beer, this is a beer with bite, and bold, sometimes peppery flavors. Fantastic.

2. Rogue is not capable of making a bad beer. I tried their XS this year. It pours like old engine oil dripping into the pan. It’s intimidating to witness, but when you drink it, it’s just awesome. It’s amazing how they actually got the hops to pop in a beer like that. I’m also a big fan of their Brutal Bitter, and whatever they called their Christmas beer – I forget the name, but it has a pic of santa claus on it, and it totally rocks, and I’m not someone who normally buys beer with Santa on it There *are* beers I’m indifferent toward. Dead Guy Ale and their Hazelnut offering don’t do a whole lot for me, but I wouldn’t turn one down, either. Today I bought another bottle of the Brutal Bitter (very good, British-style, not as hoppy, fizzy, or clean as some of the more pronounced American-style Bitters), and I also noticed the Mocha Porter on the shelf. Because of the label’s coloring, I thought this was Rogue’s Juniper beer, but noticed the word “mocha” at the last second before I passed it by.

3. I”m not as big a hophead as I thought I was. Back in the mid-90’s, I thought I was a hop head. I was the only person I knew who drank anything like a craft beer. I loved (and still do) Sierra Nevada, and occasionally liked an Anchor Steam. If I was in a restaurant I’d try to find some interesting hoppy beer. In the mid-90’s there weren’t a lot of restaurants that had interesting, hoppy beers. I tended bar at a place that did for a while, and I tried dang near every beer in the place (they had about 60 beers there, which was a lot at the time). I loved Geary’s Pale Ale, Harpoon IPA, a couple of the Brooklyn Beers were good, Wild Goose IPA was pretty good too. None of these, however, can really be called “hoppy” anymore, though. Not with Stone Brewing, Dogfish Head, and others who seem to be attempting to see how far they can push their fans. All I have to say is this: when you have cottonmouth after drinking a 12 oz beer, there are too many hops in your beer.

4. My palate has matured somewhat. I like a lot of beers now that I didn’t care much for years ago. Malty beers used to *all* seem cloying and chewy to me. Nowadays, I love Belhaven’s Wee Heavy Scottish Ale, Schneider Aventinus Eisbock, and a few other beers on the maltier side of the fence.

5. I’m still not tired of Guinness Extra Stout. No pub draught for me. I still like the beer that, at the tender age of 15, I coined “ol’ rusty pipes”. I’m really happy to see all of the other stouts and porters on the market, because I love stouts and porters, but I’ll just as soon pick up a six pack of Extra Stout. Maybe it’s part nostalgia? As for the newer ones I’m now able to get my hands on, I’m finding that, if it says ‘porter’ on it, I’m probably going to like it. Surprisingly, the same is not true for stout. Black Douglas I found really just boring, for example. Also, Imperial stouts aren’t something I’m going to go out and get a six pack of, though Old Rasputin is pretty good stuff if I’m gonna have one bottle.

6. Germany makes great beers. Used to be I stuck strictly to American and British beers. Adventures into Belgians were sometimes painful (though I’m glad I went through it, because it’s how I found Saison), and I found that diving into the beers of other regions available to me were mostly pretty boring. For example, France doesn’t have much to offer in the way of beer. Again, I’m glad I got adventurous with beer, because I found, for example, that Poland makes lots of beer, and one brewery there even makes a pretty good porter (I’ll have to come back when I remember the name of it). But 99% of the beers I’ve tried from Africa, Japan, France, Slovakia, Russia, etc., are a good bit like Budweiser. Anyway, I’ve added Germany to the list of countries that I am officially a fan of in terms of their beer making. I’m not sure I’ve yet had a bad Hefeweizen, though they differ quite a lot. I’ve also tried the dunkels, and bocks, and lots of other German styles. I have to say that I don’t like all German beers, but the *reason* is that, within each German style, there’s so much variety that it’s almost impossible not to come across something you just don’t care for. I’m not a huge fan of the really heavy doppelbocks I’ve had, but I’ve had some interesting Rye bocks and lighter doppelbocks. The only German style for which I cannot find an example that I like is Marzen (a.k.a Oktoberfest). These beers exhibit that same hallmark flavor as some of the Belgian ales that drives me nuts. If someone knows what ingredient or process causes that flavor, or what chemical is the cause of that flavor, let me know so I can research ways of making sure it never gets into the beer I brew. I just can’t seem to acquire a taste for it!

So, that pretty much catches you up on what’s been going on beer-wise. What you might not know is that Matt got married, and they’re having a huge party in Maine, in July. Between now and then, the plan is to brew 4-6 batches of beer to bring up there with us. It should be quite an interesting early spring! I don’t believe there’s an official list of beers we’re going to brew, but for sure our Red Ale is going to make an appearance. We’ll probably also do a standard bitter. Aside from that, who the heck knows? I’d like to try doing a Saison for those at the party who like lighter beers, and a wheat beer for people who don’t like hops and like to put lemons in their beer and stuff. We haven’t talked about it much, so who knows what Matt has up his sleeve

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I ordered a measuring pitcher, which I’m actually really excited about. It’s a little painful to use the 1 Gallon growler for measuring and marking things. I also ordered a pair of those polysulfone quick disconnects. I’m hoping and praying with all of my might that they’re the right size and they work like I need them to. If they do I’ll be able to achieve another goal I have: a “no knife” brewing system. By “no knife”, I mean no knives are ever required to remove tubing from a brass barb, and (ideally) no tubing ever needs to be cut on-the-fly during a brew session.

We have a little adjustment to make to our kettle. we tried putting this solution in place to get the wort out with as little of the break material getting in. It didn’t work like we wanted it to, so we’re on the lookout for solutions to that. Our kettle is just a standard keg with a weldless fitting. However, because the bottom of the keg extends down a ways beyond where it’s practical to place a hole, there’s probably a good two inches from the hole to the actual bottom of the keg. What’s the best way to get as much beer as possible without getting the break material in there, and without getting frequent clogs? I’ve seen more than one person just take a copper tube, bend it in the shape of a “z”, then attach one end to the fitting and the other end has a screen on it. Seems to work for a few different people, and it’s a dead simple solution (we like those), but I’m happy to hear other ideas and viewpoints! Not surprisingly, the finer points of the brew kettle are rarely bragged about when people post pictures of their brew rigs. :-/

Anyway, once these bits fall into place, the next step would be to build a proper stand, with casters, to sort of “contain” the brewery, so it can be rolled in and out of the garage. Once the setup is stable, we can start shooting for making everything completely stationary, where we don’t ever have to move any of the kegs at all, ever, during the entire brew session. From there, almost everything else is gravy. Move to copper tubing instead of plastic? Add a pump? Whatever.

On the fermentation side, I’m considering getting a temp controller for a refrigerator in my basement, not so much because it’s too warm down there, but because a) it *sometimes* can be too warm down there, and b) the temperature is *not* stable down there at all. Anyone ever use a temp controller to maintain a steady 66F in a refrigerator? It’s just an old, upright, rather small, standard fridge with the freezer on top and fridge on the bottom. Nothing fancy. Advice solicited.

Also on the far end of brew day is what to do about packaging. I’ve bottled every brew I’ve ever made. That’s a lot of bottles. I probably have around 8-10 cases of 22oz brown glass bottles. Maybe more. Kegging might be in the near future, because we’d like to go to 10-gallon batches, and bottles just aren’t gonna cut it – at least not for *all* 10 gallons. I don’t know much about kegging, and the used keg systems all say that the kegs may need work. I know *nothing* about kegs, so I’m tempted to get a new keg, but they’re god awful expensive, and I’m kind of a DIY-er anyway, so I’m not opposed to learning about kegs as long as I’m not opening my beer up to undue risk. Advice and links to howto’s on corny kegs are solicited too 

Our last brew was the Bamf Porter, and we brewed that only like a week or two after the Hefeweizen. September was a busy month. On October 21st, we had the first annual Oktoberfest, and it went well. We unloaded a decent bit of our homebrew, and had our fill of German food. Nobody there was German, but how can you say no to sausage and kraut? A good time was had by all.

Shortly after, I received a ThruMometer for my birthday, which is a great complement to our wort chiller. We’ll be able to see the temperature of the wort as it leaves the chiller and adjust the pressure of the water coming from the hose to get just the right temp for our yeast. That has been the only addition to our setup.

There will be little tweaks to our procedure, though – and that doesn’t involve any new equipment. We found on our last couple of batches that we missed our original gravity pretty significantly. Turns out it didn’t matter much for the last two beers because they were heavy enough anyway that the resulting beer was perfectly drinkable. We hadn’t left the ballpark, but we were off.

We attributed this to a couple of things. First, we should be pulling more from our mash tun. We were using markers on our boiler (another keg) that we thought were halfway marks. Well, they weren’t halfway marks. Important lesson: Everything needs to be measured and marked by the brewers.  The second thing is we need to either boil longer or more vigorously. We really don’t seem to lose very much volume during our boil at *all*. The only notable volume loss is when we leave the boiler, and that’s because we haven’t been really working at getting the maximum amount of wort out of the boiler.

We’ll get there. In the meantime, the beer is great. We’d just like to be able to hit our mark with a little more accurracy.

If time allows, maybe we’ll brew something simple some time in the coming weeks. We’ll let you know if it actually happens

There are risks involved, to be sure. You could be scalded by boiling water or wort; you could have a boilover; you could come face to face with a stuck sparge. Matt and I have seen all of this and more. And lest you think you’re out of the woods when the brew day is done, let me remind you that the fermentation process kicks off a non-trivial amount of pressure as the yeast produce CO2 gases. A clogged blowoff tube could potentially result in a rather colorful display of hop and yeast residues on your ceiling. This risk becomes all the more tragic if you bottle your beer and apply too much priming sugar, or bottle too early, which could result in nothing short of an explosion of beer and glass shrapnel (which is why we put beer that is conditioning in bottles in closed boxes).

We’ve lost one batch. We’ve run into situations that have forced us to move from a well-oiled, pump-driven system to all-gravity in minutes, and at a moments notice. We’ve had to get creative with on-the-fly fabrication. Matt and I have also had to team up and think fast to avoid disaster. This sometimes means you have to take the best idea that comes up first if you can’t see it leading to utter catastrophe. You can’t always study a problem. It has to get solved. If you’re slower that day, too damn bad. Hang your ego at the door.

I can’t say I’d never want to do a full-blown all-grain batch by myself. At some point, every budding pilot yearns for his first solo flight. Matt got me into brewing, and taught me a lot. He also pointed me to some good reading material. I’ve learned tons of stuff on the internet, from websites, and, now, podcasts. Though I’d like to do a “solo flight” of my own some day, I’m in no rush. I like having a teammate to bounce ideas off of, and to learn from. For all I know, Matt could pack up and move to Philly or Vermont one day, so when that day comes, I’ll have my solo flight.

I only discovered beer on the internet within the last 6 months or so. It’s only from people on forums that I learned that a lot of people brew because it’s cheaper than buying beer. This shocked the hell out of me, because the investment in the home brewery has the potential to become fairly hefty. We’ve had a bit of luck in acquiring some of our equipment, and we’ve fabricated a lot of stuff ourselves. The money we saved we eventually used to buy a pump, a kick ass wort chiller, and a sizeable amount of 3/8″ ID food-safe, high-temperature plastic tubing.

We still don’t get deep into the science of brewing. We know enough to get by, and we have references for the rest. We’re not guys that you’re going to have long conversations with about the intricacies of how a step mash can help enzyme x break down long protein chain y, even with highly modified malts. We’re not chemists. We’ve been exposed to the stuff, but just enough so that if something pops up that seems off, we can recall having read something about it once. We don’t plan our beer around chemistry. We plan our beers around what we like, or what we find interesting.

In the end, I say, “Just Brew It”. Don’t let anyone say that you absolutely must do anything in any particular way. Take anything you read or hear with a grain of salt, because your tongue and/or your experience could very well prove all of it wrong. “Musts” in home brewing are exceedingly rare. Here are the ones I can think of:

• You absolutely must maintain a sanitary brewery, and know about sanitation (which sanitizers are safe to use on what metals, and how to use them, etc). Bad sanitation makes for bad beer.
  

That’s pretty much it. The all-grain process can be performed in any number of ways. You can go off in various different directions: HERMS, RIMS, batch sparge, fly sparge, plate chiller, immersion chiller, PIDs, pumps, gravity, control panels, open fermentation… there’s an endless number of choices. No matter which way you choose to perform any specific task, the process is pretty forgiving, and you’re really not very likely to make undrinkable beer as long as you keep it sanitary.

We’ve made less-than-wonderful beer. We’ve fermented at temperatures that were too warm, we’ve mismeasured our runoff and unknowingly diluted our wort, we’ve missed every missable mash temperature, pH reading, gravity reading… any reading, we’ve had sparge water that was too hot, we’ve had hot-side aeration… we’ve had issues. The beer is always drinkable.

It’s when you start getting fussy about your target that things get trickier. “I want drinkable beer” is a fine goal. The minute you achieve that, though, you’re gonna move right into “I want a red ale with an OG of 1.047 and an SRM of 40, and I want it to taste something like this great red ale I had 2 years ago in New Hampshire, which had nuttiness, but a backdrop of fruity esters.” At that point, you will probably find yourself researching how to get fruity esters and nuttiness into your beer, you’ll learn about yeast and its effect on flavor, how fermentation temperature affects the yeast and the flavors it produces, and how to emphasize nuttiness over sweet or roasty malt flavors. Next thing you know, you know a little bit about how to craft a beer.

But for now, just brew it. Keep things as simple as you possibly can. Go as cheap as you can on everything when you start out, because your process and your brewery should evolve together. Don’t go buying a pump until you have a specific problem area that the pump can be applied to in your current setup without interrupting your entire brewery. You can brew award-winning beer without a pump, without a plate chiller, without conical fermenters.

Get a Coleman cooler, some pvc or copper tubing to make a false bottom with, and your mash/lauter tun is just about finished. Sparge arm? Forget it. Just take a large bowl, turn it upside-down on the grain bed (wash it first), and dump the sparge water onto the bowl. It’ll spray out just like a sparge arm. You can make a counterflow chiller out of a garden hose and copper tubing from Home Depot, or you can invest in some ice, put it in your bathtub, and put your kettle in there to cool to yeast pitching temperature. Fermenter? If you can’t find a glass carboy, go to a deli and ask them to save you a couple of those 5-gallon food-safe buckets that pickles come in. They can save the lids, too. At that point, everything else you’d need that I can think of will fit in a grocery bag. Things like airlocks, stoppers, and little cheap things that just make your life easier (I’d hate to have to fabricate a stopper or an airlock).

If you’re thinking about brewing, I hope you do it. I hope you do it all-grain, too. I’ve never done a batch using extract, because I just never learned that way. Matt was more experienced and taught me all-grain from the beginning. It’s only as hard as you make it. Admittedly, we’re getting to where things get a little harder, but only after mucking with the coleman cooler and counterflow chiller for enough batches to know that this was a hobby that we loved enough to warrant additional investment and commitment.

Best of luck. See you on the forums

brian.

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