So the move is almost complete......

New house, new base, new job and new ideas for beer.  On our long trip, driving 5045 miles from Anchorage, Alaska to Valdosta, Georgia, we stopped in Atlanta for a bite to eat and to visit Hop City.  Hop City is a nice little beer store with extremely friendly and knowledgable staff and a small selection of beer brewing equipment.  Fortunatly, I was able to find the larger brew kettle I was looking for, their last one at that.

The 16 Gallon Polar Ware kettle with spigot and a place to insert a thermometer.  Deciding to use it as my new Mash Tun until I'm ready to upgrade to 10 gallon batches.  I hit up Lowe's for some PVC pipe and fittings to make my new draining/filtering apparatus.

I tried to ensure it would be removable for later when it no longer performs as my Mash Tun.  I also bought ingredients for an American Amber Ale and I'm itching to try my new equipment and especially try the new beer!!

Strawberry Honey Mead....Finally!!!!

For a couple of years now I've tried to attempt a Strawberry Honey Mead with no success.  There was always something wrong or something didn't work out the way I had planned for it to work.  The first time I tried, strawberries were not in season and I didn't want to attempt it if the berries weren't the best quality.  The second time I attempted to make the Strawberry Honey Mead, I grabbed a small package of strawberries and cooked the fruit down into a syrup like paste and put that into tea bags to put into the mead.  The result was a normal Honey Mead with absolutely no strawberry flavor or color at all.  The cooked strawberries jellied and never allowed the water/yeast to do anything with it.  After that attempt I asked my local HBS for advice and told the owner what happened.  After she stopped chuckling she said to get any flavor or color out of the fruit when making mead you need to add equal to twice the amount of honey used for your batch size and you only need to cut the fruit, no boiling, cooking, or in anyway mess with the natural properties of the fruit.  I always use the #of gallons = lbs. of honey method so that meant I needed 5-10 lbs of strawberries.
       Four successful batches of fruity mead later, (...Grape Honey Mead, Pear Honey Mead, Mango Honey Mead, and a small test batch of Kiwi Honey Mead.......and yes "we" sliced 10 lbs of grapes...lol) I was ready for another go at the infamous Strawberry Honey Mead.  As a bonus my Beautiful Wife Heather found boxes of fresh Florida Strawberries at a great price and bought me 10 lbs the other day, and brought home 5 lbs of honey as well.
     Attempt #3 was underway, course this time I'm documenting it so if it goes wrong again someone can tell me why.........lets begin......

First gather all your ingredients...

I like to use the cheap bread yeast.  They come in packs of three pretty cheap which means to packs makes three batches of mead.  Second ensure all your equipment is clean and sanitized.

Next I like to add the honey to the bucket.

Because I will be adding warm water to increase the volume as well as help get the yeast rehydrated and going again, I add warm water to the containers of honey to get every last bit of honey out.  Next start chopping up the strawberries.  I just used a regular knife but if you have a sturdy mushroom/egg slicer they work nicely.

Make sure to cut away the stems and leaves and don't add them to the mixture.  They may have some unwanted creepy crawlies you don't want in your mead.  But add the sliced strawberries to your honey.

Once all 10 lbs of strawberries have been chopped and added, fill the bucket with warm water ensuring to leave enough room for yeast suds/head at the top of your bucket.  Then you will need to toss the yeast onto the strawberries/honey/water. 

Two of the three packets is what I use.  Some like to stir it in like I do while others just leave it on top, your choice.  Just remember if you stir, sanitize the spoon first.  Next place the lid on tight and add vodka to your bubbler/airlock.

Only thing left to do is place it in a cool place where it won't be disturbed.  My last house had a perfect closet under the stairs I would use but this new place only has room in the garage.

Five months from now I will be able to open the mead and bottle it.  Once the sediments in the mead settle and the mead clears, it's ready to drink.  Enjoy!

My apologies to Alaska, my apologies to the beer......

In my attempts to make good tasting beer and get away from the "Kick you in the crotch, knock you on your rear" high alcohol content beers, I haven't been able to make a beer that is the average 5% abv.  So for that I'm sorry to the beer.  As for my apologies to Alaska, I have a rule about my beer naming process.  I will not name a beer until I am in the brewing process because I feel each beer has its own personality and it allows for me to capture that essence with the name.  However, I really wanted to name my latest beer, a Scottish Ale style beer, Wet Willy's.  The beer did not disappoint.

I'm sort of a pyro so I like to play with fire from time to time, as you can see above.  My playing with fire though may have kicked the weather into a tizzy and thereby allowed for me to officially name my beer Wet Willy's.  You see, the weather warmed up just enough that the fair amount of precipitation that was about to fall probably changed from snow to RAIN.  For the next 8-10 hours it rained which turned Alaska, at least the Anchorage/Elmendorf AFB area, into a skating rink of slush and ice.  So, Alaska, I'm sorry, but not completely because I was able to name my Scottish Ale, Wet Willy's.  Now onto it.......

I'm always trying to make each and every recipe I make my own, as a matter of fact this recipe didn't take shape until I was actually standing in the grain room of my local home brew store, Arctic Brewing Supply Co here in Anchorage, AK.  I was talking to my wife about what kind of recipe to use and even had her search on the Internet on my phone for one.  I finally, using another recipe as a guide, came up with a make-shift Scottish Ale recipe.  7.25 pounds of CaraMunich, .5 pounds of Crystal 120, and of course .25 pounds of Roasted Barley for body and color.  I also went with some hops I have never used before but I must say I'm impressed with, Northern Brewer, I used one ounce each for bittering and aroma for 2 total ounces.

I've been having issues with trying to figure out just the correct amount of water to use for my all grain adventures, but programs such as Beer Smith and my iPhone app Sparge Pal are a great help.  This was my first Beer Smith beer, I'm using the trial edition now but I will be getting the full version soon.  If you haven't seen it or used it, even after only one beer I'm saying get it and use it.  Following the amounts given, I started the beer, and like last time, covered the cooler with a blanket to help keep the temperature where it needed to be.

Nighty night beer......

Once you get the first run off after the grains have sat long enough in the water, you want to pour that back over the grain bed to filter off as much of the grain husks and bits that made it through your SS braided tube in the bottom of the cooler.  Doing this over and over again until the sweet wort runs clear is the process, but its difficult to pour the wort back over the grain bed without disturbing the grains without creating "tunnels" to the bottom or breaking up the grain bed altogether.  Last time I didn't do that cause I didn't have anything that would help with pouring the wort back over the grains.  This time, in my quest to do things as easy as I possibly could, I made a contraption that would help me.

I took an old plastic Folgers coffee container, that has a handle built in on the side, and drilled holes in the lid as you can see with the smallest drill bit I had.  The only drawbacks to this rig, is there is no insulation between the handle and yourself so I would suggest wearing a glove to use this rig, and it doesn't have a vent hole for air to come in.  I solved the later by poking a hole in the bottom of the coffee container, which of course means while its filling you need to have that hole plugged, again a glove will come in handy at this point.  Here is the rig in action, you can see it doesn't disturb the grain bed and gets the job done.

Its a very slow process, I think this actually took about an hour in itself, for both the runoff and the remaining hot water to complete your wort volume for your boil.  Then of course its onto the boil, like I said earlier, I'm sort of a pyro....

You can see the dark color of the beer in the brew kettle on the left here, running clear as far as grain bits in the wort but a nice dark color.  I had some issues getting the temperature up to a boil when I started with it on the fire because of the cold, wet weather.  It eventually started boiling and I got the process moving.  Unfortunately my iPhone died on me about 10 minutes from the end of the boil, so I have no pictures for the rest of the night, but the last few processes of chilling and adding the wort to the carboy, pitching the yeast, and then of course cleaning up, when just as you would think.  I'm anxious to get this beer in the bottle and see just how its going to taste.  I'm a little upset that I used Fermentis Dry Ale yeast instead of paying the 11 dollars more to get a Scottish Ale Yeast, I'm reading that I'll miss some of that smokey flavor consistent with a traditional Scottish Ale, but I was going for cheaper.  Shrug and Press On.  There is always next time..........

A Beer Review......

I may be partial but my official review of my first all grain beer is in a word......wonderful.  If anyone has had Widmer Hefe, it tastes a lot like that.  Low alcohol content at 3.8%, but a nice beer to drink.

I'm still working on clarity but I'm a big fan of my new all grain obsession.  Its a good looking beer for sure with a light sweeter taste.  The dry hopping didn't over power the beer which was nice.  Here are another couple of pictures of  "Ya Know What?"

As you can see my Brown Bear with McKinley in the background glass beer mug, makes the beer look even better.  But over all, it was a great learning experience and a good beer.

Until next time.....

A Beer Making......

The adventure of all grain brewing has begun.  I was successful in making the beer, and now I get to finally share with you how it went.  I will also include the tasting, cause we all know I'm impatient and have to drink it as soon as i can.

First and foremost, I'm still confused as to the strike and sparge water amounts, so anyone who can help me out with that it would be appreciated.  I will say that many things went wrong in this batch.  First, I didn't know for sure how much water to use, but it didn't look too bad....

After the Strike water was added we allowed it to sit for one hour.....and since we were doing this in a garage in Alaska, we wanted to make sure it stayed warm.......it worked.  Only a 7 degree swing from beginning to end.

I may be a softy for  beer, but the smell in the garage was amazing, and interestingly enough, Kehn, Hollenbaugh and myself were about to take the grains after we were done with them, add sugar in a bowl and eat them.  It was tasty.  Second problem with this beer was the fact i didn't have a proper way to pour the water back over the grains to allow the wort to run clear.  So I started the boil with cloudy wort. 

Third problem we ran into was the fact the boil only lasted 20 minutes.  I know, its supposed to be 60 minutes, but my propane tank wasn't as full as I thought it was so i ran out and didn't have anymore.  Human error of course and we ended up with 6.5 gallons of wort for the fermenter, a problem if you only have a 5 gallon carboy like I do.  To make up for the loss in boil and addition of the last set of hops, I soaked the last set of hops for 10 minutes and then dry hopped the brew.  Dry hopping is the addition of hops in the Primary fermenter that will sit in the carboy for the length of the fermentation process.  Here is the brew with the hops working their magic....

After all was said and done, we needed a name for this beer and we settled on, "Ya Know What?"  Nate Kehn and myself always brew beer or mead and have something go wrong or find out something that we could have done better and one of us always says, "Ya know what?"  So since a lot of things went wrong on this batch we thought it fitting to call it "Ya Know What?"

In my next post I'll review "Ya Know What?"......till later.......

A Mead Making......

Another one of our adventures involves Mead.  My background involves a deep history in all things Norwegian.  I'm 50% Norwegian and enjoy learning all about Norway's history.  Which of course includes Vikings.  But Nate, you say, why would I ever enjoy learning about Vikings when I'm a Packer fan?  Not that kind of Viking, true I'm still a Favre fan, but I bleed Packer Green and Gold.
Anyway, Mead was a honey wine that would take close to 5-6 months to make.  If you would like to make a mead it is very very simple to do.  Get your fermenter and put one pound of honey per gallon of water in the fermenter and seal it up with yeast.  Wait 5 months, bottle, wait till its clear, then drink.  If you want to play with the recipes a bit, you can make another type of Mead, called Braggot.  My buddy Nate Kehn, seen bottling Garrison's Red Cap in an earlier blog, decided he wanted to do a Braggot and then make it his own.  Thus, Big Dirty Braggot was born, a.k.a. Black Thunder, cause it ain't White Lightening.

To make a Braggot you make regular Mead but you add grains to add flavor and body to the mead.  Some say you can even add hops to have more of a beer flavor to it.  For this recipe Kehn added 2 pounds of chocolate malt and steeped it until he was happy with the color and flavor.....FYI the flavor he got was coffee.   Above is the grains steeping......and.......

This is the grains still steeping, only you can't see the bag anymore....that's a dark brew.  Like I said it tasted like coffee and after we added the honey, it tasted like sweet coffee.  To make matters worse, (or better to be honest) he added four sticks of Tahitian vanilla, just for kicks.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time.......

A Quick Review......

Now that I have decided not to be lazy anymore and actually keep up with this blog, my first item of business is to review the beer I started to talk about earlier in this blog.  Garrison's Red Cap was born, brewed, bottles and drunk.  Here is the official review..........It wasn't great.  Sorry Travis.  But then again, I will say that it was a number of things that led to the down fall of this brew.  Time and freshness, as I am now realizing, really and truly plays a role in how well a beer will taste and how well it will be received.

You can see above, two of my friends and co-workers helping me bottle Garrison's Red Cap, we truly do it the easiest way as you can see.

After about 7 days I opened one beer to check the carbonation.  To carbonate your home brew in the bottle, a "catalyst" is needed to boost the yeast's activity in the last 7-14 days.  This will increase the pressure in the bottle and allow for the beer to "self carbonate."  I made the mistake of bottling too early one time, and ended up with no beer.  All the bottles I had blew up from too much pressure, so please ensure your beer is finished in the Primary fermenter before bottling, some use a secondary fermenter.  Anyway, back to the beer review.  Above you can see the first beer opened from Garrison's Red Cap.  At first I was really excited to try the beer, preliminary tests from it were promising.  In a few words.....The beer was sour.  I don't know how a beer can go sour, but my guess is the ingredients were bad.  You see, both Travis and myself are in the military, he was about to move and I was getting deployed to Afghanistan as mentioned in a previous blog.  Before I was deployed for 6 months, Travis brought me the ingredients to brew the beer because he wouldn't be able to, and I didn't get the chance to brew before I left.  So, they sat in my garage for 6+ months until I was able to brew.  This is what I believe led to the downfall of this beer, the recipe was good, the ingredients were bad.  I feel this beer needs to be re-brewed with fresh ingredients and it will be a great beer.

It does look really good though, very photogenic

Another picture of the beer, only this one was allowed to clear a bit before opening.  FYI, Leinenkugels is one of my favorite beers, hence the glass.  I'm sure you will see more of them along the way

This one is really for Travis, he knows this view very well.  Its a picture of his beer, on my back patio in ALASKA, while i was grilling, in the rain.  Can't beat it!

Well, I will be writing a few more, keep reading and I I'll see ya next time......