Dueling Brews

My girls all hanging together

On the Fourth of July, Bonnie and I celebrated the birth of our homeland by brewing two beer side by side... at the same time!  This momentous event was made possible by the generous trade of a pretty full tank of propane for some future beers by my buddy Ryan O! I have to tell you it was great to be able to do and nice to know have a backup tank for normal brewdays.

For her beer Bonnie went with the Petite Saison d'Ete kit from Northern Brewer that'd we'd picked up during the Buy 3 Ships Free promotion. She followed the recipe pretty straight forward but instead of brewing it with the recommended yeast we instead tossed it on the very thin yeast cake from Weiss the Hell Not.  This should give it a bready slightly sour character which will be further refined by aging it on some canned raspberries.  The name given to this beer therefore will be Petite Framboise d'Ete and it should be ready by the fall.

For my beer I decided to take the Dead Ringer kit that came in the promotion and turn it into an IPL using washed yeast from Bonnie's latest batch of Costa del Sol.  I think it's pretty cool that to ferment our beers this round we used the yeast (and bugs) harvested from each other's previous batches. The Dead Ringer kit is essentially a pretty spot on clone of Bell's Two Hearted which is a highly rated all Centennial IPA.  It also happens to be the beer that my brother Ryan B bought for Darkness Day and shared with whomever in line wanted some.  Once it is done I plan on washing the yeast once more for a second run at Bitter Sweet Symphony.

That's it, nice, short and straight forward, probably a sign of posts to come.  Recipes below

Enjoy,

-SNB

Pilgrimage for the Tao Brewers Fellowship

The pilgrims

I mentioned in my post on Societe Brewing that the Tao Fellowship (one of the many brewing groups I'm in) was planning a pilgrimage down to see them.  A couple of weekends ago a group of us (Steve C, Steve S, Greg N, Daniel F and myself) got together and headed south in a rented mini van (complete with a free screw in a tire).  Our journey south of the Orange Curtain took us to several destinations, some good, some bad and some outstanding.

We met up at the historic home of Greg Nagel (world renown beer blogger) to assemble and try a few beers.  Once Daniel and his lovely wife HsiHou (who had graciously volunteered to be our DD) arrived we loaded into our "screwed" minivan and took off to sit in traffic for nearly three hours.

Pizza Port Bressi Ranch

Our first stop of the day was the brand new Pizza Port Bressi Ranch location which sometime this year will become their production location canning Pizza Port beers.  Hopefully one of the first through will be Poor Man's IPA but I highly doubt it.  It was a gorgeous and shiny facility, I want to say that they were still in the middle of a soft opening as I'd not seen any official grand opening announcement.  The only reason I knew it was open was cyber-stalking some of my beer buddies on Untappd.

I got two beers while I was there and split a pizza with Greg.  The first beer I had was El Toronado an IPA they brewed up for the San Diego location's 5th anniversary.  Overall it was a solid IPA loaded with pine and citrus aromas and a clean bitter taste.  The next beer up was a half pint of RuinTen from Stone.  I really enjoyed Ruination Tenth Anniversary last year, I even split a bottle with Bonnie to celebrate our Tenth Wedding Anniversary.  I therefore wanted to give RuinTen a try, however tracking down a bottle was proving tough so I was jazzed to find it on draft. Another top shelf dank IPA with even more resiny pine and citrus resin.  The pizza I paired the beers with was a brilliant jalapeno and pineapple that Greg suggested.

After filling up on pizza and beer we set out for our next destination. 

White Labs Tasting Room

I've been using White Labs yeast almost exclusively for the last couple of years and enjoyed what I've read in the Yeast book co-authored by Chris White.  I'd also noticed on their site for their new tasting room that they were offering pours of beers brewed with different yeasts.  I thought that was a great way to really understand the effect yeast could have on a beer.  It was therefore on my recommendation that a group of homebrewers stop by... unfortunately nothing that I drank there lived up to the promise of the concept.  

The biggest problem was the quality of the base beers did little to highlight any noticeable differences produced by the different yeast strains.  Overall it tasted like mediocre homebrew that was fermented without temperature control or water profile adjustments.  While I was glad to have gone it's definitely not a place I can recommend and if I was to do the trip again I've opt to go to AleSmith or Ballast Point instead.  

Leaving disappointed we headed to our next and final destination... 

Societe Brewing Co

There's not much more to say on Societe outside of my previous post but once again Societe proved to be one of the highlights of our journey.  I enjoyed a glass of the latest Bachelor, which is their series of single hopped IPAs this one with Mosaic hops. I also had half pours of Pupil, Apprentice and the Widow and got two fills to send to my Minnesota buddies.

Overall it was a great trip and I would love to do it again soon.

Skål

- SNB

Costa del Sol b4

To say that Bonnie's batch of Costa del Sol hit it out of the park would be an understatement.  After few weeks on tap it hit a point of maturation that just made the hops sing!  From that point on people couldn't get enough of it.  It became on of those beers at a tasting that people would appear with a full glass of it in loo of a small taste.  I myself helped myself to plenty of weeknight pints based largely on it's low abv however the good times were not to last as just like all great beers that you only have 5 gallons it wasn't long till you poured air...  Fortunately we have the ability to make it again and set out to do just that over the weekend.

The only change in the recipe was changing the first wort hop (and primary bittering) from Centennial to Simcoe solely because I "thought" we still had enough however when I went through my bags of hop bits in the freezer Centennial was nowhere to be found.  I'm interested what effect, if any, this change will have.

We decided to run a double brewday with me brewing up Weiss the Hell Not.  So as with her the previous batch, I left her mostly on her own.  After I set everything up, I answered only a few questions here and there before heading to the gym.  I returned at the very start of her boil to see she still had things well at hand.  Since we only had one propane tank I transferred 34 to a keg (see the pictures in Weiss the Hell Not)  while I waited.

Now comes the hardest part, waiting the required 6-8 weeks till I can drink it again. For her next batch we bought the Petite Saison d'Ete kit along with some others during Northern Brewer's Buy 3 Ships Free promotion. We are thinking of taking the kit and tossing it on the yeast and bugs from Weiss the Hell Not along with some raspberry puree.  It should be fun.

Cheers

-SNB 

Weisse the Hell Not

Brew sheet and starter

It had been a couple of months since my last brewday.  For the most part I've been working on figuring out what I wanted to do for a brewstand and taking the opportunity to save some money in the process.   I've made somewhat decent use of my slightly extra time by keeping the "brewery" tidy and finally bottling both of my meads (Boysenberry Riff Mead and Amy's Backyard Honey Mead aka Trilobite). Still, I was feeling the itch to brew and seeing my beer reserves tumble, especially the not 10% plus beers.

While I love all grain brewing, helping and watching Bonnie brew up a couple of her own batches (Wee Bonnie Lass and Costa del Sol b3) reminded my of a lot of the benefits for extract brewing.  To be ultra clear here, there is not a noticeable difference in flavor between a well brewed extract and well brewed all grain beer.  The benefits of all grain relay more on cost and recipe freedom than quality of the finished product. Extract brewing (when using a quality product) benefits from a shorter and less complicated brewday, perfect for someone short on time and looking to fill a keg with a quality beer.  I guess what I'm trying to say is watching Bonnie brew opened me up to the possibility of brewing an extract beer here and there while remaining primarily an all grain brewer.

It was with this more open mindset that I came across a post in the homebrewing section of BeerTrading.org - Extract - Berliner Weisse, anyone got one? I've come to really enjoy Berliner Weisse over the last couple of years.  They are a wonderful summer beer with their tart crispness and low abv (generally 2.8% to 3.8%).  I'd had desire to brew a Berliner Weisse since coming a across a video presentation by Jess Caudill of Wyeast Laboratories during National Homebrewers Conference 2012 that Northern Brewer had documented and put on YouTube.  The presentation focuses a lot on the yeast driven components of the style more than the grist (grain).  I therefore felt that this would be the prefect time to brew up an extract version and started that taking notes on the presentation.

Getting ready to boil...
for all of 15 minutes

Boy did I end up taking a lot of notes, so many that I ended up putting up them into a PowerPoint presentation containing not only my notes from the presentation but my recipe and the history of the style.  I've put the presentation online and a PDF here.  I won't summarize here but will say that putting it together definitely helped, especially in the area of recipe development.  Originally I was going with a primarily wheat driven recipe till I learned that Berliner Weisse is usually made from roughly 25 – 30% pale malted wheat. I therefore bumped down my ratio to align with what I'd learned... until I shared the presentation with the Tao of Fermentation group where Daniel pointed out that Briess' Wheat DME is 65% wheat 35% barley. He suggested that I therefore adjust my recipe to 1.75lbs Extra Light DME and 2.00lbs Wheat DME which would give me a 47% Pils, 35% Wheat and 19% Pale recipe.

Talk about the easiest brewday I've had since I moved from Mr Beer to extract. With no steeping grains and a 15 minute boil the longest part of the day was bringing it to boil. From there is a almost a mad dash to find, put together and sanitize all the pieces of my chilling equipment.  It's almost funny as the chilling worked so well, cooling it down too low for my intended fermentation cycle, that I had to speed up the run off to warm it back up.  I still think I'm fermenting it a couple of degrees to cold.  At some point this week I'll put together an additional starter for clean yeast and pitch it this weekend.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about I suggest reading my notes or watching the video.

Cheers

-SNB

Firestone Walker Invitation Beer Festival 2013 #FWIBF

Hanging out with my favorite brewer Todd Haug of Surly

I've been to a bunch of beer related festivals over the years and my hands down favorite is the Firestone Walker Invitation Beer Festival held annually in Paso Robles.  This is actually the first year I could use the word annually in the correct context as last weekend happened to be it's second annual.  It really is a fantastic fest both in concept and in execution with one of the greatest selection of breweries I've ever seen at a fest.  The basic concept is that Matt Brynildson, Firestone Walker's head brewer, reached out to brewers he knows and respects from across the country and invited them to participate by bringing a minimum of two beers, something rare and something session (low abv generally below 4%).  Also included with the ticket is a great selection of food offerings

For this year I was joined by my stepfather Hugh Hamm and my good friend Daniel Fernandez. Once inside we headed straight to Surly were I had hoped to bump into Todd and Linda Haug however they we're out and about doing their own exploring. While I was enjoying my first beer, Schadenfreude (a dark lager and one of the few Surly beer's that I'd never had) the OC's premier beer blogger Greg Nagel of the OC Beer Blog found us.  The four of us then set out to explore the tremendous offerings that had been selected.

My beer of the day
Brandy Barrel Hunahpu

The first time I lost Hugh was when I stopped by to talk to Linda at the Surly booth.  While I was catching up she asked if I had ever met Mikkel Borg Bjergsø (Mikkeller) and Tore Gynther (To Øl), when I said no she asked if I wanted to. I've had a lot of really cool experiences over the years but having Linda introduce me to Mikkel and Tore was pretty damn awesome.  To it top off Mikkel himself grabbed me a glass of Lil' Mikkel and let me have my picture taken with him.  He also took a picture of me with Linda.

After I found Hugh we headed over to listen to Todd's Behind The Beer Session hosted by the Brewing Network. Ok I'll admit it, with Surly being one of my favorite breweries Surly, while not the main focus, was a big part of this years fest for me. Also, I did get to ask Todd a brewing related "homebrewer nerd" question on the difference between mash hoping and first wort hoping which I had been interested in for some time.  You can see the whole interview here with my question coming in at the 14:08 mark.

For the rest of the day we worked our way around the fest trying tons for great beers and food.  I lost Hugh again when he took off to use the restroom while I manned the abandoned Dogfish Head booth which I used to serve up "barrel aged high fives".  Once I found him we tracked down Greg and Daniel to finish the fest.  We ended up hanging out in the back with Linda and Todd culminating with me talking to Gabe and Julian of Beachwood BBQ & Brewing.  I'm trying to get Julian to be a part of QuadFest 2013 as his  Jean-Quad Van Damme is a nice clean example of the style.

Greg Nagel of the OC Beer Blog on assignment

It should come as no surprise by now that one of the highlights for me was getting to visit and hang out with my friends from Surly Brewing.  I love that in true Surly fashion they brought two of the lower abv beers to the fest; Bitter Brewer (a great american style bitter) and Schadenfreude.  Hopefully next year they'll pull out some Surly Mild and some Bender variants, who knows maybe even some Darkness? On the beer side, my favorite of the day was Brandy Barrel Hunahpu.  There was some much wonderful stuff going on in it with tons of vanilla and cinnamon mixing in and out with the brandy and the wood aromas, truly a wonderful beer. The main highlight however was bumping into and hanging out with friends within the community some of which were in from out of state.  There are two breweries I would love it see invited next year, Squatter's and Noble. I think they would be a prefect fit and I might even put up a post in the future outlining why.

I really can't wait for next year!

Cheers

-SNB

Societe Brewing Co.

Logo'd chalice filled with Publican 

Do you like IPAs? Well I love them! It seems like it's almost a requirement for every new brewery that pops up to have an IPA, especially in San Diego which is widely known for perfecting the style.  The big problem is most get their IPAs wrong.  Too much crystal malt, too many types of malts, hops that just don't play well together. The end result is a beer that while bitter, lacks a lot of the subtle nuances that makes a good IPA great.

A perfect example of a new San Diego brewery that understands what it take to make a great IPA is Societe Brewing Co. Founded in 2011 by Travis Smith and Doug Constantiner, both of whom have a rather impressive brewing pedigree having work at such icons as Russian River and the Bruery.  In the short time since they opened (May/June 2012) they have been knocking beers out of the park and their IPAs continue to be some of the best I ever had. 

I remember the first time I was finally able to have one of their beers.  It occurred while enjoying dinner at Churchill's Pub. I had heard a lot about The Pupil so I was jazzed to see it on the menu.  I can clearly recall the first sip, it was very reminiscent of the experience I had when I first tasted Alpine's Duet as I was blown away by the perfection of the hop profile. Absolutely one of those transcendent beer experiences that I'll always remember.   I even took Bonnie to Churchill's the next day so that she could try it. 

The world's nicest growler

A couple of weeks later, as part of a larger bachelor party, I planned a brewery crawl for my buddy.  I set it up to stop at a lot of breweries from Orange County in San Diego with the ability to cut breweries out if need be.  There were however a few breweries that I insisted we stop at one of them was Societe which was a perfect transition location for the evening.

Getting to see the brewery and try their Belgian inspired brew really drove home the point that these guys get it. My buddy Daniel was especially geeked out by their very in style Belgian inspired beers. He was able to pick up the yeast they were using commented about how great water profile was.  He was so impressed that we are planning a Tao of Fermentation pilgrimage back on the 22nd of June.

During the bachelor party visit  I unfortunately confirmed that they have no plans on bottling their IPAs as they want to maintain complete control of their freshness.  If you do want to get their beers to go you have an option of a glass growler with a pewter handle or a stainless steel one, on my second visit with Bonnie we opted for a stainless version filled with the Publican. When I go back down on the 22nd I'm hoping to grab a fill of the Pupil.

The next frontier for them is their wine-barrel aged sours which have been quietly aging in their barrel room for a while. Given their track record with everything else, I can't wait to try them. 

Cheers

-SNB

Firestone Walker Brewing Company - Barrelworks

The excellent setup for the taps

Nestled in the hills of the Santa Ynez Valley in Buellton California you will find the latest venture for Firestone Walker Brewing Company and a strong candidate for beer nirvana Barrelworks!

The building, which also holds one of the Firestone Walker Taprooms, is perfect location for such an undertaking as sour beer production.  Located 92 miles away from the main brewery in Paso Robles the physical separation lowers the risk of unwanted bugs finding their way into Firestone's core lineup.

Walking in through the side door emblazoned with the Barrelworks logo you are immediately greeted by the hundreds of barrels currently making up Firestone's growing sour program in addition to a large oak fermenter aka foudre.  Just past the foudre you come to the heart of Barrelworks, its tasting room.  It's not the smallest nor the largest tasting room I've been to but it's the perfect size for the intent of Barrelworks, which is to provide explorers with the opportunity to truly sample a large range of oak influenced beers. Having set out to deliver a tasting room experience all pours are limited to reasonably priced 3 oz tasters.

The best part of Barrelworks overall is because they are focused on being a tasting room they are able to put on beers you'd be hard pressed to ever find.  This includes their highly elusive and sought after sour beers, a rotating selection of Proprietor's Reserve Series, some of their Anniversary beers as well as the individual components that go into them. Another cool thing that they are doing is single barrel tasting where they put on beer from a single barrel.  I was able to sample a lot of beers some of which I'd been wanting to try for years.

In my between two trips I was able to try the following.

The taplist

• Barrel #22 Dry Stout
• Barrel #66 DDBA
• Barrel #94 Rufus
• Barrel Aged Rufus With Brett - Wow. The aroma stopped me mid-sentence while I was talking to the bartender
• Bravo Barrel Aged Brown Ale
• Bretta Weisse
• Helldorado (Cask)
• Lil' Opal (2013)
• Parabola (2012)
• Parabola (2013)
• Parabola (Cask)
• Reginald Brett
• SLO-ambic - FINALLY. I've been wanting to try this for the longest god damn time.
• Sticky Monkey - One of the last Anniversary components I've never had
• Velvet Merkin (Cask)

While you can't get a growler fill of SLO-ambic or Sticky Monkey to go you are able to buy beers there. In addition to being able to pick up a couple bottles of the latest release of Parabola, I was given the opportunity (but did not execute on it) to buy all of the latest Proprietor's Reserve Series (Double DBA and Sucaba) as well as various vintages and Anniversary Bottles back to 13. The vintage bottles are vintaged priced which is what affords the ability to keep them available 

In short, my trip to Barrelworks excited my already lofty expectations and you can bet whenever I find myself in Buellton during their hours of operation (Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m) I'll definitely stop by.

Cheers

-SNB