Oak Glen Cider Run Cider 2011

One of the things I like best about belonging to multiple homebrew clubs is that it has given me the opportunity to do things that I wouldn't have done on my own, such as fermenting fresh from the orchard cider.

Last year Shawn arranged for a group of us to travel to Oak Glen to collect fresh cider to turn into hard cider.  He even called ahead to have one of them, Law's, press from unfiltered or preserved cider just for us to use.  This is the best type of cider to use when making hard cider as it is free from anything, you can even leave it be and it will self ferment.

I had a great time last year and enjoyed the first cider I made so for the second year in a row Bonnie and I got in the car and took the girls up to Oak Glen to get more cider. Bonnie's anniversary party for work had prevented us from joining Shawn's group but he had picked me up a couple of gallons from Law's that I could let go wild.

We left mid Sunday morning for hour and a half drive up to Oak Glen.  We ended up having pretty bad luck weather wise and it was cold and rainy when we arrived, in fact it even snowed a couple of times.

Bonnie and Sydnie staying dry

Our first stop was at Law's where I picked up an additional 2 gallons of cider as Bonnie had read that one of the mills, Riley's at Los Rios Rancho was closed.  Law's cider is said to be some of the best on the mountain and they still had a couple of gallons left over from the week before.

Our next stop was at one of our favorite places on the mountain, Snowline... unfortunately we weren't able to really enjoy it as there was snow on the ground and in the air.  The first thing I did was grab a fresh dozen of thier awesome mini doughnuts and walk around the store. After grabbing a gallon of apple cider for myself and a gallon each of the fruit blends for Eric, Bonnie and I bundled up and took the girls for a little walk.  It didn't last long as we decided it was too cold and wet to stay out so we grabbed another dozen doughnuts and headed over to Riley's at Los Rios Rancho to see if it was really closed.

It wasn't.  Having already acquired 5 gallons of cider (2 Wild from Law's via Shawn, 2 unfiltered from Law's and a gallon from Snowline) I didn't need anymore so I just grabbed a tri-tip sandwich to split with Bonnie before heading back down the mountain. I believe the closed issue might have been Riley's Farm and not Riley's at Los Rios Rancho, oh well better luck next year.

Snow at Snow-Line

Upon returning I sanitized a carboy and combined in it the 3 tame gallons along with 3 campden tablets to kill off anything present in the cider. The cider sat overnight so that the campden could do it's work. The next day I feed it some nutrient and hit it with O2 before pitching WLP775 English Cider Yeast.

To date I've been feeding it and the wild gallons nutrient every few days.  I even built a special airlock system for the wild gallons that will come in handy later for mead.  It should be ready in a few months.

Cheers

-SNB

Additional Pictures

Snow-Line's line up

Ingredients for this years blend

All combined

Tucked away with the wild cider

Airlock system for the wild gallons

Brewdemo and Scott's Session Series 4: DG's Mild

On Sunday I did a extracting brewing demo at Addison Homebrew Provisions.  I planned it with Eric several months before but it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to brew.

I toyed around with a bunch of ideas and tried to get some feedback on them. They included:

A Flemish red
A sour session over peaches
A viking porter
A session wheat (maybe open fermented)

A California Common over fruit (probably peaches)
An Old Man Winter

The biggest theme ended up being my desire to have some more session ales on the Crate.  

While flipping through the Stone book The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance that I got off of Amazon I came across the recipe for Lee's Mild and decided to give it a go.

Besides converting the recipe to extract the only change I made was to sub the Northern Brewer bittering hops with Columbus (which is a Northern Brewer Sub) and add some Cascade hops for flavor and aroma.  I still keep the IBUs very low.

Here is the recipe I ended up with

Scott's Session Series 4: DG's Mild
Mild
Type: Extract Date: 10/9/2011
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Brewer: Scott Bennett
Boil Size: 7.37 gal Asst Brewer: 
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Volume 6.24 gal
Final Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.038 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.009 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 3.8 %
Bitterness: 29.2 IBUs
Est Color: 18.1 SRM

Ingredients

Extract and Steeping Grains
4 lbs 4.0 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)
9.8 oz Brown Malt (65.0 SRM)
9.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -150L (150.0 SRM)
3.2 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)

Hops
0.50 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.25 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min

Other
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 mins)

Yeast
1.0 pkg Dry English Ale (White Labs #WLP007)

Steep grains in 1 gallon per pound of grain at 160 for 30 minutes


While finalizing some equipment I wanted to borrow from Eric he mentioned that his brew kettle was 15 gallons.  A light went off in my head and I decided to scale the recipe to 10 gallons to split batch. I love the concept behind split batch recipes and I wanted to do one on my own for a while. I choose to do 5 gallons to the recipe and for the other I would do a starter of my WLP670 strain and pour the fresh wort over some frozen peaches from whole foods that I would pasteurized and cool during the demo.

I overshot the temp on the steeping water which wasn't a problem as I showed the crowd hot to remove a gallon of the 180 water and replace with additional filtered tap water.

After the 30 minute steep we filled the kettle with 10 gallons of water and added the 8.5 lbs of DME which I had a volunteer stir until dissolved while I turned on the heat to start bringing the temp up.

At the start of the boil it looked like we were easily around 14 gallons wort ready to go.

I then put 3 lbs of frozen peaches in a separate pot to pasteurize.  I needed the small burner for this so I simulated running out of propane mid brew and carefully with more audience participation moved the main pot onto Eric's brew stand.

In total we boiled a little over 60 minutes

The measured original gravity corrected for temperature ended up at 1.042 SG

Here's the pics I took.

Crowd Shots

Two grain bags steeping in 2.5 gallons of water

Propane and my DME/Peach pot

Getting ready to boil, now that's a lot of wort

Hops

60 minute addition

Hops moved to the brew stand

Boiling away

Cooling down

Collecting some of the hot run off to clean up with later

I used a cooler filled with Ice water to help get the beer cooled down the rest of the way

Trub Island after the whirlpool

The peach version with WLP670

Inside the fermenting cube with a blow off

4 hours later another shot of O2

The next morning - that's why I use blow offs

Random Tuesday Tasting

Warmed up with some rum

A few Tuesdays ago my buddy Eric of Addison Homebrew Provisions stopped by to hang out and have a few beers.  I took advantage of the opportunity to get some one on one feedback on my Rhino Stout (not to be confused with Imperial Rhino Stout still in secondary), discuss the schedule for some demos I’m going to do for him in October and give him a New Glarus Belgian Red I knew he would enjoy.   My wife Bonnie joined us sporadically as she was cooking and taking care of our daughter.

After getting feedback on the Rhino, too thin and green, it was time to start opening some bottles.

Nice little surprise

The IPAs

I’ve been a little lupulin deprived lately so we decided to start with some IPAs.  This presented a great opportunity to open some of the extras I’d received in some recent beer trades.  We started with the Old Man Hopper's India Pale Ale from Rust Belt that I received in The Barrel Aged Yeti Trade.  Overall it was a pretty good IPA; it wasn’t overly bitter or harsh just well balanced. Some hop aroma was present, could really tell if it was dry hopped or just had a solid aroma boil addition. Definitely towing the line between a pale ale and an IPA. 

Fight Dead Hop Flavor
Drink IPAs Fresh!

Next up was Arctic Panzer Wolf from Three Floyds. I got this beer as an extra in the Math Trade #4 - The Quad Lazer.  Killer name, killer label and killer beer, I’ve had some many bad imperial/double IPA that I’m pretty gun shy about them, so the fact that this was really good was a nice surprise.  Lots of really nice piney hop aroma with a gorgeous color and well balanced flavor profile. No mistaking the bitterness here but again it was nicely focused.

Ended this section of IPAs by opening a year old Stone 14^th Anniversary Emperial IPA.  I guess the only thing that annoys me more about using the term Imperial on any beer not a stout is a random spellings of it.  Last year when it was fresh I had a debate with my buddy Marshall on whether or not the beer needed to age.  I personally enjoyed the beer fresh while he thought it could use some age.  I wish he could have made it over so I could grab his notes on it now.  Definitely lost what made it good a year ago, Eric and I described the aroma as dead hops.

Bambic in my broken Zeno glass

The Sours

As I’ve been really into sours lately and knew Eric was an enjoyer of them as well I decided to open a few bottles I’d been dieing to try, starting with Jolly Pumpkin’s Bambic.  The story behind Bambic is pretty cool; it’s a blend Bam Biere and Batch 2 & 4 Lambic done to celebrate Winking Lizard’s, a beer tavern in Ohio know for their World Tour of Beer, 25^th Anniversary.  Now this was an excellent beer, the sourness was up front, great nose with excellent notes of the oak.  I got a good laugh when I gave Bonnie a sip, she just doesn’t do sour beers.

More of a dark sour then a stout

After that we opened a bottle of The Bruery’s Tart of Darkness… I’ll be honest this is a good sour beer, but not as fantastic as I’ve heard.  The sourness was a little one dimensional and while the label lists it as a stout there were no stout in it outside the color.

It’s really just a dark sour. I have a couple more bottles that I’m going to sit on and to see if it changes with age. 

The Rest

After the sours we sort of drifted into opening random beers from the beervault.  Eric had brought over an Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence that he wanted to try so we popped the cork on it next.  For most of the time we’d been drinking we’d also been letting this bottle warm so it was at a really nice temperature when we started to drink it.  It had a lot of good bitter chocolate notes on the palate and in the nose which paired nicely with the coffee undertones. The label lists it as a Belgian style chocolate stout but I didn’t get any yeast notes that would give me Belgian style.  Eric who does not like coffee wasn’t a fan which Bonnie the coffee connoisseur loved it.  Bonnie’s Notes: It had deep coffee flavor, possibly a French roast/Italian roasted coffee (dark roast) and a nice note of chocolate.  It was dyn 'o mite. Shouldn't be called chocolate indulgence, should be coffee goodness. First stout I’ve really liked in a long time. 

More like coffee goodness - BJB

I decided to then open the last bottle of brother Ryan’s pale ale that he brought back the last time he was in town.  This was the second time I’ve had it and everyone agreed it tasted off.  It might have been his hop choices, but I really believe it comes down to temperature control for primary fermentation.  This is a subject that can, should and will be its own post.

 

Bonnie had the next choice of what to open and decided to grab out her bottle of Ballast Point Sculpin that Total Wine now feels is a limit one kind of beer.  This was not the Sculpin that’s been swimming around the top of the craft beer scene this last year. It was definitely off and just didn’t sing to anyone of us.  Bonnie was let down as she really loves this beer.  Bonnie’s Notes: inconsistent, have had fresher (odd considering it was a fresh batch), too sweet on finish.

At this point I needed a palate rinser and my cider wasn’t getting it done so I reached for a ribbon, a blue ribbon that is.  I drink and enjoy PBR as it is a perfect example of a light American adjunt lager.  After that I cracked a Yeti which is one of my favorite imperial stouts.  Either it was off or my palate was off because it didn’t taste right.  It had a mineral graininess on my tongue that I didn’t care for.

Overall I had a great time.  There are few things I enjoy more these days than sitting in my garage drinking and discussing beer with a good friend.  The ability to talk about homebrewing was an added bonus.

Cheers

-SNB

The Line Up (Left to Right): Rust Belt - Old Man Hopper's IPA (nice IPA but almost a pale ale), Three Floyds - Arctic Panzer Wolf!, Stone - 14th Anniversary (aged IPA experiment - better fresh), Bambic - AWESOME!!!, The Bruery - Tart of Darkness (Get the stout off the label this is a dark sour), Homebrew Pale Ale, Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence (do you like coffee? yes - you'll love it, no - just ok), Ballast Point - Sculpin (was the batch off?), PBR (always a winner), Yeti (either it or my palate was off).