Baby, Brews, and Brewery Tours

Since the Future Brewer has arrived, I obviously haven't had a ton of time or energy (thanks, sleep deprivation!) to do much writing in the Blog lately. However, there has been plenty to write about.

First off, the Future Brewer(FB) is doing great! Apart from a few nights where she doesn't want to sleep very much, it's been a dream having her around. We're here at just about 6 weeks, and she is really starting to enjoy being around us as well. She smiles at us all the time now. Especially when she hasn't seen one of us in a while. Coming home from work is even a bigger joy now.

Since the FB is out and about now, the SWMBO can drink my beer again! A few weeks ago we cracked open the first of Jennifer's Cherry Wheat. Unfortunately, it's underwhelming. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this beer, apart from a bit of over-carbing, it just didn't get that cherry flavor that I was going for. I used 2 pounds of Cherries in the recipe, but I probably should have used something closer to four or five pounds. Apart from that, it's a very easy drinking beer. Very light on the palate, just slightly bready, and with a bit of fruity esters.

This weekend I intend on getting around to brewing the Wedding Weizen. This is going to be brewed for my sister's wedding rehearsal dinner in a couple of months. I plan on making this beer with a pretty simple recipe. It will just be Wheat DME, a touch of hops, and Wyeast Weiheinstephan Yeast. This should bring out quite a bit of clove flavor for this Hefeweizen. Since this will be a group function, I don't really want to use a bunch of bottles for strangers. I plan on making the first, although pretty small, step into kegging: Party Kegs! These are small 5L kegs that will carb naturally, and can use a small tap with small CO2 canisters attached to pour with. I figured this would be much easier to deal with than 40 bottles scattered about the place.

In the final bit of news; I got to get out this past weekend and check out Triangle Brewing Company, in Durham. The tour of the brewery is well worth your money (it's free!) and the beer (also free!) isn't too shabby. The tour itself is pretty basic. You find out about the very basics in brewing beer, but details and specifics are left out for the most part. This is a tour more focused on the uninitiated and "new to craft beer" types. The beers themselves were hit or miss. Being the hop-head that I am, I started off with their IPA. This was an excellent offering. Finally, an American-style IPA that this area can be proud of and isn't just bitter beer. Maybe someone got the message? I also tried their Extra Pale Ale. Meh. An overly easy drinking beer that really has no character (especially hop character) and isn't worth writing home about. I had a sip of their experimental Habanero Ale, which tastes similar to the Pale Ale, just with some pepper flavor, and heat in the mix. An interesting beer to try, but there's no reason to have more than half of one. The other beers they had available, I did not try. I was hooked on the IPA and kept with that.

I'll try to keep the PPP updated with bits on the Wedding Weizen, and how the new "kegs" go in the future.

The Future Brewer is Here!

She's finally here! My little Assistant Brewer has finally come out from hiding. A week ago today, Ella was born weighing in at 7lbs and 15 ounces, and stretching out to 20.25 inches!

It may be the sleep deprivation speaking now, but I can't wait to have her help me with some brewing. It'll still be a few years before she can actually help out, but sitting and watching your ol Dad is helping. Right?

The Cherry Wheat Transfer

Earlier today I transferred Jennifer's Cherry Wheat over to the secondary. The final gravity of the beer was measured at 1.014. This means the beer is at about 6% abv.

However, when I racked to secondary, I added another pound of cherries to help further sweeten and add more cherry flavor to the beer. This time, I didn't add all of the juices from the can, just the cherries. I did slice the cherries up a bit, but not too much. I wanted to let more flavor come out of the cherries, but not have a bunch of pieces of cherry floating around in the beer.

I'll let it sit for a good 2 weeks before I bottle it and get it ready for drinking. The SWMBO will be ready for it by that point. The baby should be all born and made by that point!

Meanwhile, in Hurricanes news: We're almost mathematically eliminated from the playoffs! Even if we win out, there's still a slim chance we could not make the playoffs. Even with the teasing that we've gotten in the past two months, we were that much worse back in October and November that it didn't matter in the long run.

Perhaps next season, we won't get off to this horrible slow start that will haunt us later on in the the season. But, perhaps that's too much to ask...

The Schitz! Barleywine Tasting

Tuesday was the one year anniversary of our cat, Schitzie's, death.

A little less than a year ago, I posted that I would brew up a big Barleywine in her memory. Well, it was brewed up quite a while ago, and has aged for almost a full year. Tuesday night, it was time to try it out.

I had tried The Schitz! Barleywine before Tuesday night though. However back then, the beer had only bulk aged for about a month in the secondary. It was extremely hot flavored, with a very prominent alcohol flavor. Thankfully, after almost a year the beer has really mellowed out.

The Schitz! turned out to be a pretty strange color. A medium brown color that has some strong red and orange highlights. This bottle, which was a large 16 ouncer, didn't have much head retention or carbonation in it. I'll need further research to see if this is just from this bottle, or for the entire batch of beer (oh no!).

The smell of The Schitz! was very malty and caramelly sweet with some fruity esters fairly prominent. The hop aroma and flavor have either aged out of the beer, or just were never present. There's no real way to know since I hadn't tried one till now. The flavor is very similar to the nose. Very malty with lots of caramel flavor and a bit of fruity esters. Overly not bad, but there should be more hop flavor for this to truly be considered an American Barleywine. It can still pretty much pass for an English Barleywine though.

This is still a very strong ale. At somewhere between 10-11% abv, this beer will kick in with just a quarter of it in you. I'll have to make sure to be careful around The Schitz!, she's definitely going to sneak up on me!

Finally! Jennifer's Cherry Wheat!

For anyone who's been following what's been in the Pipeline for the 9 months or so, you'll know that I've had "Jennifer's Cherry Wheat" in the "On Deck" position for quite some time now. Well, it's finally come to pass that this beer has been brewed!

I brewed it up on Saturday in between the USA demolishing Finland in the Semi-Finals of Olympic Hockey, and the USA losing a heartbreaker to Canada on Sunday.

The SWMBO has long loved Sam Adams' Cherry Wheat beer. It's been one of her favorites for quite sometime now and I told her that I'd do my best to brew her a clone, but with the incubation of the future brewer in her belly the beer had to be put on hold. But, since we're getting so close to the due date, I went ahead and brewed it up so it'd be ready by the time she'd be ready to partake again.

Here's the recipe:

5.5 lbs of Dry Wheat Malt Extract.

4 oz of Crystal 20L

.5 oz. of Magnum 11.2% at 60 min.

.25 oz of Cascade 5.2% at 10 min.

With 5 minutes left in the boil I added 1 pound of cherries that I pureed in the blender.

The Original gravity came out to 1.060. Beersmith had guessed 1.048 without considering the added sugars of the cherries. The true Original Gravity, and first Final gravity is anyone's guess though. That's because once the beer is finished in the primary, I'm going to throw in another pound of cherries in with the beer in the secondary. That will probably restart some fermentation with the additional sugars. So it'll be really hard to tell how much alcohol will be in this beer, and how sweet it will be. It could range anywhere from 5-7% ABV. Just don't tell the SWMBO, something like that might knock her socks off!

The only glitch in the recipe is that I had to use Wyeast American Ale I instead of the American Wheat Ale yeast I had originally planned for. The local homebrew store had run out the yeast I needed.

This will be the first beer I've made with real fruit made with it, and I'm hoping for a final product that doesn't taste like cherry cough syrup!

The Hop-Shot

Last night I bottled the Belgian IPA. For a few of the bottles, however, I tried something a little different.

I've been reading around about hop tea, and the added hop flavor that it can add to your beer. There's not a ton of information out there on the subject, but it's basically how it sounds. You steep hops in hot water to extract some flavor from the hops. Supposedly, this adds quite a bit of flavor and aroma, but since there is no boiling involved, no alpha acids are isomerized. So, no bitterness should be added to the tea.

Well, I decided to take this a wee step further. Instead of simply steeping the hops, or put them in a coffee maker, I threw some in my espresso maker. I figured, with the heat, and added pressure, there may be a bit more flavor drawn out. This created some fairly potent hop tea. I added about 4 'shots' of 'hop-spresso' to the secondary along with my hops for dry-hopping. This sat for a little over a week, and was bottled last night.

To take it one step further, a few bottles were set aside, and into them, I added just a bit of hop-spresso. Maybe half an ounce. These eight bottles will be a test to see if my 'hop-shot' idea works. Hopefully, they will just burst with hop flavor and aroma.

We'll see in about three weeks!

If anyone has any experience with hop tea, or putting it into beers, let me know. I'd love to hear how it went.

Finally!

Welp, this has taken a bit too long to get back to writing an entry here. However, not too terribly much has happened since then!

As a review:

1. I did get a new laptop for Christmas, so I don't have the excuse of not being able to write a blog entry just about anywhere, anymore.
   
   
2. I haven't done much brewing since the last entry. I've brewed once. I ended up trying out a "Belgian-style" IPA. I made it with tons of Saaz hops, and used Belgian Abbey II yeast from Wyeast labs. It's bound to be fruity, hoppy, and a bit banana-y. It's currently in the Primary, awaiting me to stop being lazy and put it in the secondary and dry-hop it some.
   
   
3. The Canes are still hovering around last place in the NHL, however, there has bit a bit of excitement lately. A few weeks ago JR made the decision to take away the Captaincy from Rod Brind'Amour and give it to Eric Staal. This caused a minor rift in Caniac Nation of those who agreed with JR, and those who thought Roddy should have remain captain until his eventual retirement.
   
   Honestly, I agreed with the move. Brindy had become a shadow of himself for the past 2 seasons and has always been a "lead by example" captain. Well, he can still lead by example in the weight room, but his on ice performance inspired no one. The team next season will be comprised of youngsters and it will need a younger captain to lead it.
   
   Since the change, the Canes went on a tear. They won 5 of 6 games, including a 4 game win streak. Eric Staal has especially responded to being given the captaincy. He's been a scoring machine since, including a hat trick his first game as captain.
   
   The news as of late in the impending Trade Deadline and Winter Olympics Roster Freeze. Both could mean big time trades for the Canes. Whitney, Cullen, Corvo, Wallin, and Walker are just a few of the players the Canes hope they can get a return for. Hopefully, they can at least get something.
   
   
4. The SWMBO's finally in the third trimester. The Home Stretch! Just another two months and some change left! We're in the home stretch, and believe me, the SWMBO can feel it. Unfortunately, we've still got plenty of work to do before we're ready for the little assistant brewer to pop out.

That's it for now, I'll try to keep a bit more updated. Especially with how the Canes' trading goes here in the coming weeks.