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 Oh good, its been a month, I guess can post again. I never mentioned on the blog that we did a double brew a while back. I don’t think I updated the much-neglected “Beers” page either. I will get on that.
One of the beers for our double brew was an American Wheat for my sisters birthday. It got a little bit infected and while it still had some of the citrus smell and taste that you might expect from a beer of this style, it had a nice little tang that I don’t think was supposed to be there. Maybe next year.
The other beer was as much as a success as the wheat was a failure. We did an IPA and dry hopped with leaf hops instead of pellet hops for the first time. I was impressed with this beer although I guess I should have known it was going to be good. Answer me this: can my recipe be considered original if I started with a Zymurgy-published Pliny the Elder recipe, kept the malt percentages but changed a few malt types, kept the hop varieties (when available), and cut the hop schedule back to make a standard IPA? I think that is just inspiration. Anyway, my beer naming machine kept with the historical theme, calling our beer “Genghis Khan.” Anyway, it had a great hop aroma and bitterness that was just enough to taste good, not so much that it strips all moisture from the back of your throat on the way down. It has lost some of its freshness after a month in the bottle. I don’t know how the pro brewers keep ‘em fresh but I need to work on that.
Coming next: an entry in the DuClaw HERO homebrew contest. While I will say that DuClaw is not my favorite local brewery (mostly because of their super-intense naming standards), I will like them a whole lot more if they pick my beer to brew and distribute. Spoiler alert: DuClaw doesn’t feature too many beers with fresh, food-type ingredients. My main ingredient for that entry is going to be buckwheat honey. Buckwheat honey is like caramel, molasses, and clover honey mixed together. It is so pungent and rich. I must use it in a beer. As of now I am still undecided on any other ingredients but I had a possible epiphany last night on one more fresh ingredient. The beers is most likely going to be a porter and hopefully it will be super delicious. I tried adding small amounts of the honey to store-bought porters to get a sense of how it would taste ala Brewmasters but lets just say that it didn’t go well at all.
 Beer 25
Name: Belgian-Style Dubbel
Brewery: Choc Beer Company
Location: Krebs, OK
Brewing Since: 1909?
Sight: Beer-bottle brown.
Scent: Fruitastic.
Texture: Small bubbles, smooth mouthfeel.
Taste: What you (and I) would expect from a dubbel.
Thoughts: This was a pretty good Dubbel. If you don’t believe me then believe the “Gold Medal at 2010 Great American Beer Festival” sticker on the bottle. I want to say that I remember trying Choc while I was there but if I had to bet (who’s going to make me?) I would bet that I did not. The company’s website is crazy: too many spinning beer bottles. Why do they spin? And why so fast? There is also a lengthy story about the history of Choc beer. I read it. It made me want to try a few of the other beers they make so I guess the story did its job.
How to Drink: First, announce that you will attempt to drink and write about a craft beer brewed in every state. Start of pretty quickly and then slow to a walk, then to a crawl, next to whatever you call the way an inchworm moves, and then stop for about six months. Tell yourself that it is not your fault that you haven’t finished the country’s beers. After all, only so many beers are available in Maryland and you can’t ship them in. Hang your head in shame. Then, one winter day, while travelling for work, find a bottle of beer brewed in Oklahoma and revel in the fact that you are now, finally, half-way finished. Exhale contently. Then realize at this pace you will finish all 50 beers in the year 2063. Lower head back to shame level.
 Beer: Our Very Holiday Very Spiced Dubbel is delicious. We did a sneak-taste of a few bottles last Sunday. Its official debut will be at the SFB Christmas Party in two weeks. It smells fruity like a Belgian does and tastes oh so spiced. Some may claim that it is too spiced. To those I say “bah” and suggest your tastebuds need a good kick in the pants (assuming they even wear pants — you know how tastebuds are!).
The Danil and Jamil Project: So I finished entering all the recipes from Brewing Classic Styles into a spreadsheet for easy one-fifthing. It was a great experience just reading through all of the recipes. In processing through the book, it became obvious to me that it is the work of two (or more) people. I notices a few little differences between the recipes. Sometimes it was “Fuggle,” other times it was “Fuggles.” Sometimes it was “Pilsener,” other times it was “Pilsner.” Sometimes the recipes used amounts all cut to the nearest quarter pound or ounce, other times the recipes used amounts with decimals out to the hundredths. In thinking about the fact that two (or more) people wrote the book, I have decided that I can no longer call this project “The Danil and Jamil Project” out of respect to John Palmer. I still working on a new title.
Image: I like this little guy. I found him by again searching the Microsoft Office Image database for “beer.” He may be SFB’s new mascot. I’m calling him A.C. until I think of something better. Just look at him. He’s happy, expelling Carbon Dioxide, and giving you the thumbs-up. If only he was winking too. I might be able to do something about that…
 Tofurkey! Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. While I’m not making one this year, Turtle Island puts out some of the most authentic-meat-tasting products available. Tofurkey tastes especially like real turkey when served cold on a sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. However I don’t suppose any of you became vegetarians so that you could go around eating processed meat-like ovals all day long. And neither did I. Once a year, though, its pretty good.
This week we bottled the Spiced Dubbel. It certainly has the fruity aroma of a Belgian-style beer. It also, most certainly, has an unusual taste. Thats a switch from before when the beer smelled horrible but tasted good. I will reserve final judgement until after it has been bottle conditioned and chilled. I think its going to be good.
More on The Danil and Jamil project: I’m still working on converting all the recipes in Brewing Classic Styles into one-gallon sizes. My spreadsheet is getting large and complicated. There are 93 recipes in total and if I want to brew them all in 2011 I still have a lot to do. I need to gather equipment and do a brew to test the one-gallon process. I also need to figure out the order in which I will brew the recipes. I don’t have a fridge to lager so I might have to put those off for a while. There are a few beers that need to be bottle conditioned for several months and one (so far) that needs to be conditioned for at least a year. The project is to brew all of the beers in a year, not to drink them all in a year so maybe that is not as much of an issue as I think.
 I’m told that the beer we brewed last week has been happily bubbling away and should be ready for rescue soon. Sadly, no pictures are available.
This one is a Dubbel with some extra spices thrown in for holiday cheer. So, a dubbel — with left over jaggery instead of candi sugar (Mosher said its ok) — with peppercorns, grains of paradise, cloves, and one little star anise. A few notes about the above spices. I threw the star anise pod into the boil by itself at about 20 minutes remaining. The rest of the junk I put in zip lock, smashed with a crab hammer, and then emptied the bag into the boil at about 10 minutes remaining.
The star anise pod almost immediately released a wonderful odor from the boil. It floated around the top until I turned off the burner. The smashed spices behaved fine and may have also been floating on the top of the boil but they were too small to see. After chilling, while getting the wort out of the brew kettle, our siphon got stuck several times. Why? A star anise pod at the end of the siphon tube. Lesson one: get that little guy out of the wort as soon as possible.
I pitched Safale T-58. I will have to see if that turned out to be a good idea or not. We’ve had such good results with dry yeast that I am wary to change my ways. If I had some yeast starter equipment I might be persuaded to branch out to the vials. This week we am going to rack the beer to a clean carboy and throw in one vanilla bean, some cacao nibs, anywhere from one to a handful of cinnamon sticks. Some might say that I am just throwing all the spices I’ve ever wanted to use into this beer without concern for the final product. They would be right. The first part anyway. I think that (besides the cinnamon) all of these spices may work well together to form a delicious output. If they don’t, at least now I’ll know.
Coming soon (most likely in the form of a premeditated new years resolution, and just in time for the opening of his new brewery): ala Julie and Julia, I plan to brew all of the recipes in Jamil Zainasheff’s (and John Palmer’s [sorry John, three names just work]) Brewing Classic Styles recipe book. A few caveats: I will be changing my name from Daniel to Danil in order for this project name to roll off the tongue a little better, I will be brewing one-gallon all-grain versions of the recipes in the book (five gallons x 90 or so total recipes is a lot!), I will be documenting my process (including any heartwarming revelations) on this site. So keep your eyes peeled for the debut of “The Danil /Jamil Project.”
 The sad thing about this dark picture of Duff Goldman tapping a firkin at the opening ceremony of Baltimore Beer Week is that the screen on the iPhone in the lower right corner looks clearer and brighter than the entire picture on my phone.
Besides this picture, the opening ceremony was pretty good. There was a good number of people there and a good set of beers to choose from. My favorites were Brewer’s Art’s Sun King, Evo’s Menagerie a Trois, Alagash’s Victor, and, for historical reasons, the Wye Oak flavored Loose Cannon. Another favorite was the outside area which was much cooler than the museum interior.
Tonight is (also sadly) the next BBW event I will be attending: The Homebrew Showcase at Little Havana’s. It is from 6:30 to 9:30 and costs $3. SFB will have two beers on tap. One is a breakfast stout and the other is a hoppy red. Hopefully, everything is OK inside the kegs and they will expel their contents properly. There should be about a dozen homebrewers there (based on the number of email recipients) and prizes will be given to the brewers who are judged to have the best beers. So come on down tonight and vote for SFB your favorite beers. I, for one, am excited to try the other homebrews but mostly to size up others’ equipment and setups.
 Last week we brewed the first of two beers we hope to have on tap at an upcoming Baltimore Beer Week event at Little Havana’s!
The first beer is a rebrew of our Oatmeal Stout to which I will try adding coffee. It looks like I may have overfilled the carboy a bit but at least we got vigorous fermentation. And that is what unfinished basements are for, am I right?
The second beers is going to be a hoppy, West Coast-style red. While I realize that SFB and reds do not get along very well, we have had such consistent fermentation lately that I am willing to try again.
Both beers will be kegged and (hopefully) served to attendees with the proper amount of carbonation. Nevermind how carbonated the last beer we kegged became. There is nothing like a deadline plus the threat of public humiliation for motivation.
The event, labelled a “Homebrew Showcase,” is October 13th from 630 to 930. According to the site it is $3 for all-you-can-drink samples. I have no idea how many homebrewers will be there or how many beers they will offer. If SFB was good at believed in networking, I would say this is going to be an excellent opportunity to do such.
If I learned anything from the Great American Beer Festival it is that you must have an exciting booth. Extra points are given if you provide swag. So what I need is 1. something to give away and 2. something to decorate. I have no ideas for either.
GABF Edition! Denver was fun, as it probably always is in the time surrounding the Great American Beer Festival. There was an abundance of good beer, if it even needs to be said. Since I’m still in a listing type mood (and since I can’t think of a better format) here are some GABF thoughts:
- Pretzel necklaces — Where did that idea come from? Big pretzels, small pretzels, chocolate and yogurt covered. Some people had slim jims on ropes around their necks, others had string cheese. One guy had a bottle of Pepto Bismol on his necklace. There are a few pictures below.
- Costumes — Always a good idea. There are pictures below of a few choice groups. I suggested that my three companions and I go as Mount Rushmore next year and I called Lincoln. Not everyone was enthused as I was with that idea.
- Ohhhing — Every 30 seconds or so the crowd omits an extended “ohhhhhhh.” It takes a few of them before you figure out that each oh immediately follows someone dropping their tasting cup. This game becomes extra fun during the Saturday Members-Only session in which your tasting cup is glass instead of plastic.
- Farm to Table – In a quiet corner of the convention hall, through a set of guarded doors stood the Farm to Table Pavilion: a dozen tables covered with food and paired with beers. Excellent. There was no “ohhhing” in here, no costumed revelry: good beer and good food backed by people knowledgeable about both. This ticket is a must buy for my next visit as well.
- Crazy Booths – Sierra Nevada did it right with their booth (see picture below) consisting of an 10-person bike-mobile. You wait in line, you get up there, you pedal, and they pour you beer until all the sand falls out of the top of the giant hourglass. The booth doesn’t power anything nor do you move but it was still fun.
- New Breweries / New Beers — Because some beers that I would like to drink are not usually available in Maryland, it is always fun to go to, say, California, and drink beers by Pizza Port or Russian River. I also liked that I got to try Bitches Brew which sold out of stores quicker than I can fathom, beers from Cigar City Brewing, and Utopias which was surprisingly smooth. Looks like I’m going to have to start “randomly” showing up at Max’s on that one-guy-who-orders-it-each-year’s birthday to befriend him.
- Mediocre Offerings — Maybe I’m asking too much but I think, for the GABF, you should bring your A-game. Quite honestly, if you are some bobo brewery, you must entice me to come over and try your beer. Too many breweries were content with the standard yellow sign and random volunteers pouring.
- Saturday – This year (my first) I bough tickets for the Friday, Saturday Afternoon, and Saturday Evening sessions. If I am ever to go again, I will change that to either Thursday and Saturday Afternoon or Friday and Saturday Afternoon. On Saturday there are more people and less beer plus I think two days is pretty much all you need.
- Beer celebrities – Sam Calagione, Jim Koch, and C-PEEZY are about the only national beer celebrities I would recognize in a room with 39,997 strangers so it makes sense that those were the ones I saw. I thought I might recognize Greg Koch or Ray Daniels but I guess not. I saw a few bloggers, one lady whose likeness appears on a Rogue bottle, and a whole bunch of people around town with brewery credentials hanging from their lanyards. I don’t know who they were but I saw them!
Old #1 re-brew: delicious.
Munich Helles: bottled.
Beers page: updated.
Three carboys: empty.
Next brew ideass: sloshing around in my head.
2ndfloorbrewing.com: still despised.
GABF tickets: in hand.
Burial of Olde School: coming soon.
 My tour of Oregon and Northern California continues.
As I write this I am in Healdsburg, CA — home of Bear Republic Brewing. I stopped by their Brewery and Restaurant today and had a Peter Brown Tribute Ale. It was delicious and entered my belly rather quickly. I’ve had a few other good beer-related stops including the Barley and Hops Tavern in Occidental, CA where I had a Pliny the Elder (my first one) and a Death & Taxes from Moonlight Brewing in near-by Fulton CA.
I had a few good local Portland beers as well and it seems that craft beer logos are on every set of tap handles I see. Today I stopped at the Hop Kiln Winery which — before grape vines grew a-plenty in Sonoma County — used to dry hops from local hop farms. The main building should be my Wordless Wednesday tomorrow.
At another winery I got to taste the grape “wort.” It is the juice from the crushed grapes before fermentation. I expected it to be sugary and hard to drink but it was delicious, perhaps more so than any of the wines I sampled today.
So far so good. Six days to go.
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