The Zythophile has a very interesting post about Irish and Scottish heather ales, showing connections to a Viking past.

Alan writes in defence of corn, pointing out that it can be something more than a cheap industrial ingredient.

And, veteran writer David Bell, who is Stonch's father, writes about rural English pubs so seductively it has you reaching for your hiking boots.

The Reinheitsgebot is a beer purity law which was implemented in Bavaria in 1516. It was literally a law introduced into Germany as a means to govern the quality/purity of beer produced. Roughly, it stated that beer must only be made of water, hops and barley. Yeast is not mentioned as it was not fully understood as a key ingreident until the 1800s. Vats would be set up to ferment the brew naturally (presumably with common bacteria in the open air similar to how Lambic beer is produced) or they would use sediment from a previous batch to kick start the fermentation.

1987 led to the lifting of the Reinheitsgebot from a ruling in Europe. Now any ingredients allowed in food products was allowed in beer. The Provisional German Beer Law was introduced in 1993 which relaxed some of the rules initially set out in the original law but kept its general ideals.

In modern day the Reinheitsgebot is not something that need be adhered to in its strictest form, however it be may referred to for its key intentions: make a quality beer using fresh and pure ingredients of the highest possible calibre without excessive use of preserving agents.

I had access to a couple of old (ten years or so) plastic barrels. One of these should do fine, though I was a little unsure of how carbonation would maintain enough CO2 as the barrel was becoming empty. Therefore I thought a gas-injector cap would be a good idea. As luck would have it, one of the barrels already has one. As it hadn't been used for a while and uses the standard CO2 bulbs it was suggested I give it a test before barrelling in case it didn't work. Good idea. It didn't. All that happened was the CO2 came back out through the safety pressure hole in the carbonator. Not useful. So we decided the best bet would be to fit the standard release-valve-only cap from the other barrel and if necessary buy a new carbonator.

Time to find the barrels.

They had been left in a shed with the taps open so were a little bit dirty, inside and out. Well, when I say a little, I mean the bottom was covered in gunk - dead spiders, old yeast growing on the remnants from the last brew, you know, gunk. In fairness they weren't all that bad, but cleaning could have been an issue as the opening is about 2" in diameter. In the end I used a length of plastic microbore pipe and a scouring pad to get the gunk off, then followed the standard weak bleach-solution sanitising method. All in all it took about an hour to clean and get ready.

Cleaning the hose was easy. Sink, little bleach, rinse, leave water in until ready. Done.

This is where I thought my plan of buying a fermentation bin with a spigot would see its fruition - no need for siphoning, just push the hose over the end, put the other into the barrel and off we go. No faffing with siphoning. What I found was that some air remained in the hose until I turned the tap on full. From what I've read aeration at this point is bad, so getting nice bubbling noises in my flowing wort didn't give me the best of feelings. But never mind. As I emptied the bin I found the yeast has settled into a nice trub at the bottom, and so meant I lost only 50ml or so beer. Excellent. The only downside was again the nice bubbling noises the tap and hose were making once again towards the end. Ah well...

Beer in barrel to carbonate, settle and age a bit. I had a taste of it at this stage and it was very green. You could drink it, but you wouldn't really want to. I'll leave it for a week and see how it is then.

Cleaning the fermentation bin was almost a pleasure after faffing with the barrel. Nice wide opening, bit of washing-up liquid, bit of warm water, rinse, done. Though I do feel I shouldn't be throwing the trub away; there has to be a way to use it for something else, though I'm not sure about keeping a culture alive for the next brew. I don't really have to seeing as I bought four packs of decent yeast to replace the dead stuff...

I hydrated the yeast with some 25degree celcius water. The hop bag was left in the boiling water for 15 minutes to create a hop brew which was added to the beer. I also added a flavapack which was brewed for 30mins, you can see the end result below:

The weather is pretty warm at the moment with predicted forcast of 29 degrees on thursday. This brew will be done in no time!

With a purposeful growl and a terrible sound
He pulls the rack of kegs all down
He picks up a bottle and he throws it back down
As he wades through the kegs toward the center of town
"Oh no!", they say, "He's got to go go Dogzilla"

Quoted from the label of a bottle of Dogzilla

This is my first ever review of a beer on my site.   Truth to tell, the real review would have been if you could have been sitting over my shoulder watching me type about sixteen errors in the first five sentences.  :D

Dogzilla is brewed in Ponderay, Idaho by Laughing Dog Brewing.   Fred Colby and Michelle Douglass are the owner/operators of the brewery.  Dogzilla is an India Pale Ale (IPA) which has a dark malt twist to it; it is black and very hoppy.  My impression was that the taste was very smooth and the beer offered little to no aftertaste.  My very first swallow actually felt warm as it reached my stomach.  IPA's are not normally one of my favorite beers but Fred and Michelle have put a serious hurting on that belief with this brew.   The flavor is sharp and unique but not bitter like most IPA's.  Although I have not had one in years, I think that this brew would go very well with one of my fave cigars - the Macanudo.  DogZilla is bottled in 22 ounce (yeah that's more than a pint) bottles which isn't a bad thing either; at least from where I sit.

As a side note, the Pale Ale is also one of my favorites from Laughing Dog and is my choice when out at my favorite dining establishments like this one and rumor has it that there will be a new brew coming out very soon.   If you haven't had the opportunity to try one of Fred and Michelle's brews, do yourself a favor and make the opportunity;  you won't regret it.

As far as Dogzilla's concerned; be careful of him.  This is one dog that not only walks over the top of buildings but he is an expert at hiding behind them and sneaking up on you when you're not looking.

First, the story was hostile. Belgian brewer InBev set its sites on the St. Louis-based brewing giant Anheuser-Busch and was not going to let go until AB was in its growing portfolio of beer brands. InBev already owns Anheuser-Busch Canada. It wanted AB so bad that they threatened a hostile takeover. First, they were going to pull an FDR and pack the board with InBev-friendly board members. Then they were going to take the case directly to shareholders in hopes that they could gain control of AB for a cut-rate price, but that wasn't necessary and AB was sold to InBev for $52 billion dollars, making St. Louisans sad. Even Obama is sad about the sale.

Of course, InBev realizes that this is the best time to buy possible. The dollar is weak against the Euro, and AB is a $50 billion dolllar-plus bargain.

InBev claims that things in St. Louis won't change much. Anheuser-Busch headquarters will still be housed in St. Louis, they say, and they will continue substantial charitable donations. Of course, millions of dollars float around St. Louis not-for-profits today, and there is no certainty that these charities will receive any money once the takeover is complete. My friend who works at a local art museum can't count on having job next year if InBev does indeed pull their funding of local arts and charitable organizations.

AB has already had plans in place to cut costs. They've recently renegotiated benefits for employees to cut costs. They are no longer filling open positions and more people could be losing their jobs in the future.

So is this another nail in the coffin of the St. Louis economy? The automotive business has moved out, slowly but surely, as the local Chrysler plants have announced that they will be cutting thousands of good blue collar jobs. Now the monument of St. Louis corporations, Anheuser-Busch is no longer a St. Louis company and there's no guarantees that AB will stay in this city, state, or even country.

I'm reminded of the eighties documentary Roger & Me, directed by Michael Moore. While St. Louis is no Flint, Michigan, we are certainly facing an uncertain economic future. On the plus side, with the weakening dollar, we become more attractive to foreign business. We have a large, qualified work force, ready and willing to take on the challanges of running a successful corporation or assembling complicated, high-tech products.

So is the InBev takeover really a nail in the coffin of the St. Louis economy? Well, that remains to be seen.

Your best bet would be to try to get a bottle from the Swedish Systembolaget, where the beer is released in Mid-July, probably a few bottles each in their flagship stores in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. They charge 480 kroner for this - about 60 Euros.

As for me, I got a package from the brewery. The customs declaration said Yeast sample for analysis, which is stretching it a bit, but not totally untrue.

I'll keep this in the cellar for some weeks, and I'll let you know how it tastes.

I'll post some pictures soon of my new 5-gallon batches (the photos in the earlier post are of my 3-gallon system). About the tip, I'm not sure why, but I still got dough-balls using your method. I ended up having to very slowly pour in the grist, while constantly stirring, to prevent them. Perhaps I have a finer grind, and the substantial amounts of flour make dough-balls an inevitability. On balance, I think this was easier than adding the water to the grist though, so I will continue to do it this way.

Changing gears, I want to quickly describe an experience I've gone through home-brewing, hopefully it will add to the general level of knowledge about homebrewing (i.e. others avoid my mistakes!).

I live in Toronto, and rather bizzarely for a large city with an active beer culture, there are no home-brew shops. There are one or two brew-on-premises places that sometimes sell a bit of extra grain or hops, and maybe a place way out in the hinterlands of Brampton (not an great option for the car-less, or car owners for that matter - it is a substantial trip of unproven utility). But otherwise homebrewers are limited to mail-order, or banding together to buy wholesale via a very helpful local microbrewery.

In short, getting malt is a real hassle. To stretch my malt, I use whole wheat flour as an adjunct - usually equal in wieght to about 1/3 of my base malt. As well, I found an Italian coffee substitute called Orzo that is simply roasted barley (kind of like black patent?), and a Korean 'tea' made from lightly roasted barley grain (SRM of around 65?). Unfortunately, I ran out of Orzo, and kept forgetting to go up to Corso Italia on St. Clair Ave to buy some more - realizing this only after I had already started a brew session. So in a pinch I just used ground coffee. Yup, just dumped about 100 g of it into my mash.

The results? Well, regular roast coffee has less darkening power than I would have thought - maybe around 250 or 300. And I believe it adds an acrid taste to the finished beer. Perhaps if I had added brewed coffee, rather than the actual grounds, I could have avoided this - but that would have involve a bunch of new variables, so I never did that (not realizing that it would end up tasting weird). The other unknown is the flavour effect of the Korean tea barley. I made a little trial batch with a bit of pale malt and the tea barley - didn't taste great, but I did end up boiling off most of the water, and had to keep adding more to maintain a boil.

In the end, I was able to get a selection of malts including Carafa from Justin. So in my last batch I did not use either coffee or the tea barley - I may never know which the acrid taste actually came from.

ベアードビールニュース＆タップルームイベント情報ｅメール配信サービス　2008　＃16

タップルームに集う仲間たちとベアードビールファンの皆様へ：

フィッシュマーケットタップルームは2000年7月20日に誕生しました。それから8年、多種多様なビールがいったい何パイント注がれたことだろうか、そしてビールに負けないくらい個性的で素晴らしい仲間が集まり、常連となり、そして友となり・・・。タップルームに集う皆を本当に心から誇りに思います！来る三連休は（7/19～21）フィッシュマーケットタップルームの8周年をそんな仲間と共に祝いたいと思っています。このイベント中のハイライトは：

＊フルーツビールフェスティバル：

採れ立て新鮮なフルーツを使ったユニークで個性的なビールは、ベアードビールの季節限定の一つの代名詞のような存在になってきました。そしてこのイベントのために、最近仕込んで、デビューしたフルーツビールを1樽（中には数樽）確保！このイベント中に注がれるフルーツエールのラインアップは以下の通り：

（１）フィッシュマーケットタップルーム8周年エール（シトラスIPA-夏みかん使用）

（２）大工さんのみかんエール（19日正午には初試みの木樽熟成版も登場！）
（３）みかんウィートスタウト
（４）静岡サマーみかんエール
（５）スウィートシトラススタウト
（６）お寺の庭ゆずエール
（７）だいだいダークウィートエール
（８）山梨ぶどうエール
（９）山梨りんごエール
（１０）日本物語エール2007（青梅使用）
（１１）カントリーガールかぼちゃエール2007
（１２）ストロベリーミルクスタウト2007
（１３）スノーストームストロングダークエール（いちごとベルギー酵母使用）
（１４）セゾンさゆり（きんかん、夏みかんの皮使用）

このイベント中、全種類のベアードビール（フルーツエール含む）は、パイント700円、グラス500円、テイスター250円の均一価格で提供します。

＊1000円食べ放題ビュッフェ：
毎年恒例の1000円食べ放題。連日正午より午後10時まで、一人1000円で一日中楽しめます。お袋の味から本格ビールのつまみまで、どうぞお楽しみに！

＊スペシャルフルーツビール料理：
フルーツビールに合わせた特別な一品料理もタップルームのシェフチーム(高仲新店長、しょうこさん、さゆり）が考案中！フルーツビールを原材料に使ったり、相性ぴったりのフードを提案します。

＊野外バーベキュー：
イベント開催中、午後3時から7時まで、１階でバーベキューをやります。沼津ならではのおいしい干物や、昨年好評だった海鮮串など用意しています。２階でぶらぶらカップ（ベアードロゴ入りプラスチックカップ）にビールを注いでもらって、１階で沼津港からの海風を感じながらビールとバーベキューなんて、最高です！

＊ブルワリーツアー：
イベント開催中の３日間、ベアードブルワリーツアーをやります。19（土）と20（日）は午後2時と４時。21（月・祝）は午後3時のみ。タップルームからブルワリーまで徒歩５分程です。ツアーの時間になったら出発しますので、参加したい方は自由に参加してください。

内容満載のタップルーム８周年記念。是非遊びに来てくださいね！スタッフ、（四姉妹も？）一同お待ちしています！

乾杯！

ベアードさゆり
Baird Brewing Company
Numazu, Japan
ＨＯＭＥＰＡＧＥ

Shizuoka Sake
Shizuoka Shochu
Shizuoka Sushi
Sizuoka Gourmet

Please check the new postings at:
sake, shochu and sushi

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Baird Beer & Taproom Events Bulletin 2008 #16

Dear Taproom Friend & Baird Beer Enthusiast:

The Fishmarket Taproom opened its doors for business on Saturday July 20, 2000. In the ensuing eight years many pints have been poured to an extraordinarily diverse and interesting group of patrons, many of whom have become intimate friends and all of whom we are proud to have an association. We will be celebrating the Fishmarket Taproom's 8-year anniversary during this upcoming three-day holiday weekend (Saturday, July 19 - Monday, July 21). Event highlights are listed below.

Fishmarket Taproom 8-Year Anniversary Celebration (Saturday, July 19 - Monday, July 21) (Noon to Midnight each day):

*Fruit Beer Festival:
The use of fresh, whole fruit as an integral beer ingredient has become one of the hallmarks of Baird seasonal brewing. We have reserved kegs of fourteen styles of recently crafted fruit beer just for this special event. The fruit ales that will be poured during the festival weekend are:

(1) Fishmarket Taproom 8-Year Ale (Citrus IPA made with natsumikans)
(2) The Carpenter's Mikan Ale (including the tapping at noon on Saturday of the first-ever wood cask-conditioned version)
(3) Mikan Wheat Stout
(4) Shizuoka Summer Mikan Ale
(5) Sweet Citrus Stout
(6) Temple Garden Yuzu Ale
(7) Daidai Dark Wheat Ale
(8) Yamanashi Budo Ale
(9) Yamanashi Apple Ale
(10) Japan Tale Ale 2007 (brewed with ume)
(11) Country Girl Kabocha Ale 2007
(12) Strawberry Milk Stout 2007
(13) Snow Storm Strong Dark Ale (brewed with strawberries and Belgian yeast)
(14) Saison Sayuri (brewed with kinkan and natsumikan peels)

All Baird Beer during the festival (including these fruit ales) will be available by the pint for 700 yen, the glass for 500 yen and tasters at 250 yen.

*1000-Yen Buffet:
We will be serving a hedonistic buffet of wonderful beer fare each and every day of the festival (noon until 10:00 pm). Best yet, it is 1000 yen per person, eat until you can't see!

*Special Fruit Beer Cuisine:
Our crack team of chefs (Takanaka Tencho, Shoko-san and Sayuri) are busy as I write concocting a phenomenal menu board of fruit beer inspired cuisine. Each of these special a la carte items will be designed to pair with one of our festival fruit ales.

*Sidewalk Barbecue:
We will be grilling some wonderful Numazu specialties downstairs on the sidewalk each festival day from 3:00 to 7:00 pm. Order you beer upstairs in a plastic "bura-bura" cup and enjoy it outside in the glorious seaside summer weather while feasting on sumptuous sticks of seafood barbecue.

*Brewery Tours:
We will be conducting tours of our Fishmarket Brewery each festival day. On Saturday and Sunday, tours will commence at 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm. On Monday, one tour will be conducted at 3:00 pm. The tours will leave from the Fishmarket Taproom at the appointed times (you may, of course, bring your beers with you as the brewery is only a short 3 minute walk). Reservations are not required. Anyone is welcome.

Please plan on joining us for what promises to be one hell of a celebration!

Cheers!
Bryan Baird

Baird Brewing Company
Numazu, Japan
HOMEPAGE

I rehydrated the yeast, taking double care the water was just lukewarm, and already I noticed the yeast looked better. The water itself turned murky very quickly and the yeast dissolved leaving none of the small hard pellets associated with dried yeast. I added a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in boiled water (after it cooled, of course). Within 15 minutes the solution had grown a big lump of scum in the middle - I'm not sure if I can call it krausen if it's not in beer.

Added it to the wort. Hopefully it'll be OK. Otherwise I've wasted £20 on the beer kit, although it'll give me an excuse to try a speciality grain recipe without having to first finish this batch.

This merger of two of the top 1000 companies in the world, InBev and Anheuser-Busch, (at #149 on the US list, Anheuser-Busch falls just below the global Fortune 500 threshhold- #148 Fluor ranks globally at #500) creates the world's largest beer maker and shrinks the playing field some more.

When I look at the map, I have covered a fair number of countries since I started blogging. 23, to be exact, and that means 23 countries I have visited in this three year period.

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Ireland, Scotland, England (yes, I count England, even if they don't have their own parliament!), Wales, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Cyprus.

Some of them, admittedly, for only a brief stay, but others where I have been able to go deeper into the beery heart of the nation.

Should I pick six of them as beer destinations?

Denmark, the Czech Republic, Germany, Scotland, England, Belgium and the Netherlands. Sorry, that's seven. But they would make a mighty fine tour of Europe.

A general word of advice is to go for the brewpubs. The beer is fresher, the barmen know more about what they sell, there is more enthusiasm. I'll give you my top ten some time.

Croatia is coming up, if I'm lucky with a side trip to Slovenia, but I don't think they will make the core list.

There are still glaring white spots on my map of Europe, including Poland, Portugal and Russia. But there are also other continents to consider....

With the surging prices for food commodities, it was only to be expected that liquor would be the next to take a hit. Craft beer prices are surging, giving people the option of buckets of piss from Budweiser (relatively undisturbed by the scarcity of hops) or $6 a bottle Arrogant Bastard Ale.

Or you can make it yourself. It's not so hard.

In essence, brewing is taking a container of sweet liquid (honey cut with water, apple cider, molasses) and adding yeast. The yeast then transforms the sugars from the liquids into alcohol for the enjoyment of you and 20 of your closest friends. There are lots of websites that detail the many chemicals you'll "need" to create a mead or (dare I say it? Well, to note, it's illegal to make hard liquors in America...) rums and vodkas.

But, really, you don't need all that. So as usual I'm taking my own experience in the endeavor and simplifying it.

One Gallon Sweet Mead
What you'll need:

• 1 vial of Yeast
• 3 pounds of honey
• Little under a gallon of spring water. Not distilled or tap!
• Milk jug or (better) glass jug. Make certain it can hold a gallon of liquid.
• Fementation lock - this is a rubber seal + lock that holds water and allows gasses from the yeast to escape while keeping contaminants from entering. It's a one-way door so to say. This is very important, but will only cost you about $3.  A size 6 1/2 generally fits all our jugs and milk jugs.
• Boiling Water (VERY IMPORTANT - sanitize the bottles and lock with this boiling water, as well as the spoon or ladle you use to stir/pour the honey water later)
• Optional: Bottles for later. Make sure they're sanitized. You'll want to stop fermentation before you bottle.

The yeast is available from most home brewery marts, or you can use a box of raisins from the farmer's market which has wild yeast. Ale yeast will make a drier mead. Lalvin D47 or White Labs WLP720 (which we usually cut later with more honey water).

Boil the water, then add the honey and turn off the heat. Stir until incorporated. Pour into your glass jug or container and wait for it to cool to room temperature. Add yeast. Put on fermentation lock. Leave in a dark spot (I suggest inside a paper bag in a dark room) for 3 months. 3 months later, drink. If it isn't sweet enough for you, add about 1 cup of honey water per liter for a perfectly sweet and deceptively alcoholic mead.

It's really not terribly hard. Cider, if you can get some unfiltered gallons at the farmers market, can be made into hard cider by just adding some yeast and a bit of yeast starter. You don't even actually need to go buy yeast and an airlock, but it makes your life sooo much easier. 1 bottle of white labs makes 5 gallons, so we just make 5 1-gallon batches, since it allows us to mess with different flavors (add halved peaches, herbs etc) in small batches without ruining all 5 gallons if it doesn't turn out well. We've had very good success with mandarin oranges from the cans.

My next brewing experiment will be done using maple syrup. :D

Anyway, I am assured that *this* mead will taste nothing like the hideous, gloopy concoction we drank that new year. This mead will be light and sparkling and refreshing. It will resemble nothing less than champagne. It will be a beverage revelation. I remain to be convinced. But it does, it has to be said, look rather lovely in the bottles into which we put it yesterday:

It contains elderflowers, lemongrass, and raspberries, hence the pleasing pink colour.

One of the reasons Mr B is so enthusiastic about this mead is because of Charlie Papazian, by whom it was inspired. For those of you who do not know, Papazian is some kind of home-brewing god, and his brewing bible, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing (yes, I know) contains a long, and very animated, section on home-made mead. The mead about which Papazian is most rapturous is made with prickly pears (none of those here, unfortunately), and he has a novel method of bottle-aging. He buries it near the summit of one of his favourite mountains and, at carefully chosen intervals, ascends the mountain to uncover, and sample his creation. I quote:

"In October 1992, two friends and I had the privilege of enjoying a bottle of prickly pear mead that had been aged on a mountaintop. Among the clouds swirling around us, threatening rain and snow, we opened one well-aged bottle, and cautiously sipped. There never has been nectar tasting as close to godliness as that mead. Without any exaggeration, I must confide that we all agreed that this mead, on this day, on Mead Mountain, was unanimously 'the best drink we ever had.'"
(Complete Joy of Homebrewing, 3rd ed., p.341)

Can you guess what happens next?

Yesterday we went up our own mead mountain, and buried the mead. This was a precise and careful operation. There was much discussion about the most appropriate location. Having settled on this, we ascended mead mountain at dusk with trowel and bottle. A hole was dug close to the summit, and the mead placed ceremoniously inside.

And we made extra sure we would be able to find the mead's location again, by placing a virtual flag on the spot with Mr B's GPS device.

The mead will wait for us until Winter on mead mountain.

On Christmas morning, we intend to ascend mead mountain, to sample the mead. I am full of expectation already. Has anyone else done anything similar with their home brew? If so, I'd be really interested to know.

Since I stopped in for lunch and had a wedding to go to later that day I knew that I'd only have a couple of their brews. Double Mountain offered 8 beers on tap. My first beer ordered was their Hop Lava. This is an IPA that offers 75 IBU's at a 7% ABV. I could definitely taste the centennial and cascade hops. The most interesting part about this beer is that its use of Munich Malts gave it a strong backbone so the high IBU's did not offer too much of an overwhelming taste. I liked this one a lot. Since I enjoyed the Hop Lava so much my next beer ordered was their Molten Lava, the next step up with it being an Imperial IPA. This one was very hoppy with 90 IBU's. In addition to the centennial and cascade hops this bad boy was brewed with simcoe hops. A very tasty and hearty beer. 

During these two beers I ordered and ate my lunch. Double Mountain's menu is a bit small that features pizza and sandwiches. The pizza looked and smelled delicious and was raved about by the bartender. I ended up ordering the smoked bratwurst. The brats they use come from Old Country Sausage Co. located in nearby Portland. This was a great tasting brat. One that I'd not expect out on the west coast. The brat is served on an equally tasty toasted roll with lots and lots of sauerkraut alongside some chips. I added the recommended Beaver Brand Deli Mustard and this brat was just fantastic. Even better than ones that I've purchased from my local Paulina Meat Market. 

Later that evening at my friends wedding I had Double Mountain's IRA (India Red Ale) on tap. This was a perfect choice for the outdoor reception. A nice lighter bodied beer that is brewed with a Belgian yeast strain. A combination between an IPA and a Red Ale. Pours a nice copper red color with some great Pacific Northwest Hops that greet your taste buds. Its a well rounded beer that went down all too easy!

The ale pours a nice light amber color. As the carbonation process is only half-through, it didn't pour a head.

The aroma is a floral, fruity scent and is pretty subtle.

It has a light body and a very smooth mouthfeel. The taste is fruity, with a slight banana flavor that is actually pretty pleasant. The ale has a nice hoppy bitterness on the finish, but is not as hoppy as some other pale ales.

Overall, I'm very happy with how it tuned out. It's definitely better than the two kit beers I made before. I think using unhopped malt extract and real hops really does a lot for the flavor and smoothness of the beer.

I'll probably give it another week before I drink anymore, so that the carbonation can finish. I can't wait to have another one.

There were a few notable differences from the brewing kits:

1. I used two different types of unhopped malt extract (dry amber and liquid pale), as opposed to one can of hopped extract.

2. Since the malt was unhopped, I used two different varieties of hops, Northern Brewer for bittering and Cascade for flavoring.

3. I pitched more yeast, and also rehydrated it (by putting it in some warm water) before pitching.

Here's the ingredients:

Dry amber malt extract, liquid pale malt extract, Northern Brewer hops (pellets, for bittering), Cascade hops (plugs, for flavoring), and Safale s-04 ale yeast.

The brew process went like this: mix dry malt into three gallons of water, bring to a boil, boil until the hot break (the point when proteins in the wort start clumping together) occurs and the foam dies down, add hops in three different stages, add liquid malt, cool the wort, add the wort to the fermenter with three more gallons of cool water, and, finally, add the yeast (rehydrated in warm water) and seal up the fermenter. Whew..

Overall, things went pretty smooth, but I did hit a few snags. The first of these was that my stove's largest burner is too small for my five-gallon brew pot, so bringing the wort to a boil took nearly an hour and a half.

The second was that there was a lot less foaming than the book had indicated and, consequently, the hot break was hard to discern.

The third snag was that I didn't have enough ice to cool the wort as quickly as I needed to. After the boil was finished, I put the brew pot in an ice and water bath to cool it, but the ice melted in about a minute. All of the ice I had on hand went into the first water bath, so I ended up having to replace the water about every ten minutes. As a result, it took an hour to cool. Hopefully this won't affect the beer too much. Next time I'll be sure to have a few bags of ice on hand.

Making this brew was a lot of fun. It was interesting how the aroma of the brew changed with each ingredient addition. Adding the bittering hops gave it an almost vegetable-like aroma, while adding the flavoring hops changed the aroma to an herbal, floral aroma.

Also interesting was how rehydrating the yeast before adding it to the beer affected the start of fermentation. I added the yeast at about midnight, and by 9:00 the next morning some extremely vigorous fermentation was going on.

This brew went through a single-stage fermentation for three weeks before bottling, after which it will sit for a total of two weeks to carbonate.

There is only one beer on draft here, Oldgott, brewed behind the counter. This is a chewy, grainy, sweet and sour amber beer. Frehness is the key word here, this is constantly being brewed in small batches. Flowery and dry finish. An outstanding beer. Too bad I had no time to linger, this would have been great for lunch and a few more beers.

Follow the signs to the souvenir shop, where you can pick up a few bottles of their strong bottled beer to take away. And suddenly you find yourself in a modern shopping centre, blinking at the bright light. A rough return to reality.

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This project is a work in progress

The basic idea was that you could simply dump your apple juice and other fermentables onto the yeast left over from a previous batch of beer.  Having four gallons of the Christmas Cyser that needed racking, this seemed the perfect time to test the method out, and one-up it.  Not only was the yeast used to reproducing like mad in apple juice, but the spices were still in the bottom, and so would impart some of the cyser flavor to the new brew.  After a quick $10 visit to the grocery store, I added 3 gallons of unfiltered apple juice and 3 cups brown sugar to the remnants of the cyser,  coming out to a healthy 1.065 original gravity. Hopefully it takes on the character of the original, as it looks like a quick and easy way to make 'seconds' of more complex brews.  We'll see how it all turns out in a few months.

10 Gallons of Slummerville Wit! 07.13.2008