Hard work deserves a cold beer

Well, it was one of those Sundays where I had some time and decided to finish up a few projects that I had started and never got back to. So the first was the floor in the wood stove room. Originally it had some carpeting that left a lot to be desired, plus we have a relatively new puppy, Opie:
Now he looks sweet and innocent, but he has been a really pain in the ass to housebreak. So we needed a floor that could be easily cleaned up and wouldn’t soak up the dog pee and or spills. So we decided that we would go vinyl tiles, they are easy to install and if you ruin one, you can pull it up and replace it. So I started this project probably 3 weeks, maybe 4 weeks ago and was 95% finished. I just had to do all of the trim and cutting pieces around the mantle. Now I knew that it would be a tedious project and that’s probably why I put it off. But this morning, I just had had enough and decided to finish it, so I could start on putting up the trim molding. So here is a finished picture.

Not bad right, so feeling pretty good about myself, I decided to conquer my next project. FRANKENBLOWER:

Now Frankenblower is a 1970 Ariens Sno-Thro 10962 snowblower that was handed down to me from Dinker, who had it handed down to him from his Pop. A gift this special has to be cherished and babied, you need to learn the ins and outs of it and really treat him right. Now because Frankenblower is so old, its hard to find the correct parts when he needs something replaced, so what happens most times is that you find a part that is close enough or good enough that you can jerry-rig it to work. See Muffler, lol. Hence, because of his mix and matched parts, he is Frankenblower.
So the story is, we got hit with a ton of snow and we have drifts that are chest high. I went out and fired up Frankenblower, got him all warmed up turned on the auger, put him into drive and then NOTHING. He was still running like a champ, just not going anywhere. Great. So now I am thinking that when I engaged the drive that I snapped the belt, because that happed in the past and the replacement belt, well, lets just say its not a Ariens’ replacement part. So I shut him all down and tip him up and undo the guard on the bottom, and see that the belts are all still in great shape. Huh, what the hell is Frankenblower up to? I’m muttering to myself, but not too loud because I don’t want him to hear me. That old bastard can be finicky. So I lower him down and fire him up again without the guard to take a peek at his bits while “he’s on the job” so to speak. Ahhhhhhh, there it is. With all of the blowing and drifting snow, snow had gotten up into the gear case and frozen the brake in the on position. So I shut him down again, crammed my monster hand up into the gear case, cleaned out the snow, gave Frankenblower a little “How’s your father?” and reattached the guard. So now I fire Frankenblower up for the fourth time and VICTORY!!!!


After about a half hour, I had the driveway all cleaned up and Frankenblower put back to rest for the night.
By the time all of this was finished it was time for dinner and then a hot shower and man did I need both. So with a full belly and smelling so fresh and so clean I decided that all of that hard work deserved to be rewarded with an icy cold beer. The beer that rewarded my efforts was:

Yep, that’s right and ice cold Old Milwaukee, and I have to say that it was quite refreshing and damn delicious. So I know that I tend towards the higher end beers, but you really have to hand it to the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company, they brew one damn good beer. If you don’t believe me, pick up a twelve pack and give a shot. Enjoy!!

Bock Tasting, Take Two.

Well, unfortunately a week of sitting in warmer conditions did nothing to bring the yeast back to carbonating my Bock. I was holding out hope that the little cold snap that the bottles went through wasn’t enough to kill all of the yeast, but it looks that way. Oh well, it still tastes pretty true to style and that’s pretty cool to me, it just is flat. It will still get drank either way.

Well, on with the review. This is the initial pour. I was pouring it roughly right into the center of the glass to try and generate as much head as possible, but this is the result I got.

Now you can see that there is a little head that forms, but in comparison if you poured another properly carbonated beer into a glass like this it would foam out the top before you got to the top.

The head quickly dissipates, but the aroma is still there. I can smell some a hint of roasted malt and the faint aroma of hops that seem slightly spicy. The color is beautiful, it is a nice light brown with almost perfect clarity. It has slight copper/red highlights when held to the light.

The taste is smooth, but sweet. The sweetness throws you off at first. It leaves almost a slick feeling coating on the tongue, its not bad just different. It has notes of sweet fruits, maybe plum, I’m not real sure, I only caught it for a second, because it is quickly overtaken by sweet notes of maple/maple syrup.

Overall, I would not buy this beer if I had tasted it before and I didn’t brew it. It has a few flaws as far no carbonation and the overly sweet flavor. However, I would brew it again and try to correct these flaws. So we shall see, if and when I brew it again. But in the meantime, this beer will still be drank by me and my friends. It is still a good beer and will be put to good use. So I’ll finish this one and probably another, so until next time. Prost!!

Bock Tasting..... yeah, about that......

Well, the magical day arrived yesterday. I had waited patiently for weeks to have a nice cold Bock that I had brewed all by myself. It was my first lager, would I be victorious or would I crash and burn? Right now it looks like I am starting to slide down the crash and burn route, I am trying to correct my slide and pull it out, but only time will tell.

So here is what happened, Bock Tasting Day had come and I was all ready to crack open one of those frosty delights. My buddy Dinker happened to stop in yesterday, so I thought perfect I'll get two taste reviews on this beer. I went into my "lagering room" and pulled out two bottles. It was about 40 F in there so they were all ready nice and frosty. I grabbed two glasses and I popped the top to hear the very slightest, faintest of a hiss. Uh oh. Maybe no carbonation? So I did a rough pour and just poured the beer directly into the glass without slanting the glass. OK, there is a little life to the beer, it did produce some bubbles, but they quickly dissipated. Yep, damn it flat beer.

So here is what I think happened. After lagering for 4 weeks at roughly 40 F, I transferred the beer and bottled it. (See previous bottling blog). Everything went well, as I transferred it the beer was still lively and producing CO2 and foamy. So I finished bottling and where did I put the finished bottles? Yep, you guessed it, right back into that damn cold "lagering room". So I think that the stress of bottling plus the fact that the room got below 40 F a couple of nights shocked the yeast and may have killed them, leaving me with a flat beer. However, I do have hope. My plan of action is to move all of the bottles out of the room and place them in the downstairs where it is a nice 65 - 70 F. My hope is that all of the yeast have not died and that the gentle warming for a week will re-energize them and they will finish carbonating the beer. So that is my plan and I have scheduled a second Bock tasting for this coming weekend. So I will wait and see how it turns out.

On another note, the beer was delicious. It was a nice nut brown color with some reddish tints/highlights and tasted perfectly true to the style. The only flaw was the absence of carbonation.

A couple of reviews

Well, word got around about me reviewing a few beers and someone asked me if I would review a beer for them. Me being the helpful guy I am decided to take them up on their offer and do a review, plus it was another excuse to drink beer (c’mon did you really think I would miss the opportunity to drink a beer?).

So it turns out that my buddy Dinker wanted me to review Blue Moon’s 2009 Grand Cru. He said that he had had other Grand Cru beers before but he wanted to know what I thought of this one. So I made my run to Wegman’s with the specific goal of buying a bottle of Blue Moon’s 2009 Grand Cru.

  Now, I think that just about everyone has had a Blue Moon. It is a typical Belgian White style ale, normally served with a slice of orange in the pint glass. It really is a decent beer if you like wheat beers. So I was interested in the term “Grand Cru”, in wine it is used in France and has a legal issue tied to it. Only wines that come from vineyards that have the legal distinction as Grand Cru vineyards can be called Grand Cru and it means that the wines are of the highest quality. So was it the same with Grand Cru beers, as it turns out not even close. Here in the US any brewer can call a beer Grand Cru, but it typically is saved for special edition, big beers or beers that were brewed for a special occasion. So from the bottle of Blue Moon, it says that this 2009 Grand Cru was a small batch of carefully crafted beer that was brewed to drink on New Year’s Eve to ring in 2010. Well, whatever, all I knew was I was going to drink it. So here goes:

It poured really well and produced a clean bright white head. It turns out that there was more in the bottle than my glass could hold so I had two servings. As you can see the from the initial pour the beer was straw colored and hazy, which is typical for a wheat beer. The initial aroma was true to the bottle description, I smelled both citrus, probably orange, and coriander. Now Lauren laughed at me when I told her I could smell the coriander, she just didn’t see how I could pick it out. But if you have ever used coriander and you crushed it, it has a very unique smell and it is easily recognizable. But anyway the taste was pretty comparable of the regular Blue Moon, I didn’t really see a huge difference between the “Grand Cru” and the regular stuff.  It had that normal “wheaty” mouthfeel and hints of citrus on the palate, it wasn’t until I got to the second that I noticed a difference. As I poured the rest into the glass I noticed that the beer went from hazy to almost downright chunky with bits of who knows what floating in it. Now this little bit of trub is nothing to be afraid of I thought. In bottle conditioned beers its normal to have some sediment that gets mixed up and makes the remnants of the bottle cloudy but this was pretty chunky, but hell beer is beer and it can’t go to waste, so I drank it. It had a different taste than the initial beer, it was more citrusy almost tangy. The acidity seemed to hit the tongue and not let go. So while I finished the beer, I figured that I would give the Grand Cru another shot and when I do I’ll try to gently invert the bottle to mix some of that sediment into suspension and drink it like that. It is my guess that the bottle sat so long on the shelf that the sediment settled out and that is why the last of the beer was so chunky.

Review #2 – Black Sheep Ale

As I was looking for the Blue Moon Grand Cru, I noticed this bottle of Black Sheep Ale from Yorkshire.

It had a simplistic label, but there is something to be said about a simple clean label. A few other shots of the label:

  It poured well, no excessively foaming, it produced a slightly off white head that was creamy, almost like the head on a Boddington’s Pub Ale. It was slighlty hazy and caramel in color. The aroma was clean, it really didn’t have any distinct aromas. Nothing really jumped out at me, it just smelled clean if you know what I mean. However, the flavor was different. It had some tastes of caramel, that were followed by more bready, biscuity type flavors. It had a nice crisp dry finish that left me reaching for another sip. Before I knew it, the glass was empty. I would definitely buy this beer again. It was well worth the $4.59 I paid for it.

So go out and grab a few pints of these or something else and let me know what you think. Prost!

Nanobrewing and pipe dreams.......

Well, I have been thinking a lot lately that eventually I would like to open up my own small craft brewery or a brewpub. I have dreams of both really. If I go the brewpub route, I see myself owning a small brick building with a nice deep oak bar. I would have 4 house beers and 2 or 3 seasonal brews, maybe serve some lite lunch and typical pub fare for dinner. Then I would tend the bar and be content. The other dream is just as good I think, it would be to gather up the start up money, get a couple of partners that I like and trust and open up on a small scale and then eventually ramp up to bigger production. I would love to start small like Ithaca Beer and gain my own cult following. I can see myself and a few other people shopping kegs to local bars and getting them to serve it on tap, then eventually 6 and 12 packs being sold in all the local stores.

So these dreams are attainable I think, but I am a long way off from getting there, which leads me to Nanobrewing. I was reading an article in a beer magazine, I am pretty sure it was the magazine All About Beer, but anyway it was all about small "Nanobreweries". Basically, nanobreweries are the next step up from homebrewing but not quite big enough to be conisdered a microbrewery or craft brewery. A lot of these guys and girls started out homebrewing like me and had the same dreams and aspirations of selling and marketing their beers. They typically brew in small amounts, anywhere from 200 to 1000 gallons a year and have gone through the process of getting licensed to brew and sell their beer. I did a little research and I found out that a single person can brew 100 gallons of beer per year before the TTB (wine and beer government body) will tax you. If you live with someone you can brew 200 gallons before being taxed. I found that law very interesting, I figure I could brew at least 100 gallons pretty easily. I figure last year I brewed between 40 - 50 gallons already, so what's a few more batches.

Which brings me to a short term plan, this year I am going to try to really brew a lot more beer. If I can brew 200 gallons without any pressure of taxation from "The Man", well hell I'll give it my best shot. So this year I really want to fine tune my craft and try to really tune up 4 styles of beer. Then in 2 - 3 years, I would like to make the leap to Nanobrewery.

Now which comes to the difficult decision of trying to come up with the perfect brewery name. I have thought of a lot of names and some of them are good and some are just not what I see when I see my beer. I kind of like a few of these but not enough to actually stick with them. Here are just a few: True North Brewing, Stubborn Bull Brewing, Fat Lip Brewing, and Hoodlum Brewing. Now for anyone that knew me years ago or knows me well knows that tough guy names tend to match my past and my personality. Now even though those names strike a chord with me, the vast majority of the general public just doesn't get what those names mean to me and would probably portray them in a negative light. So you see my dilemna.

Anyway, I just wanted to get a few thoughts and dreams out there.

Harpoon 100 Barrel Series

So on one of my frequent trips to Wegman’s I came across this bottle from Harpoon. Now I have heard the name Harpoon through the craft beer world but I have never tried one. To me it was just another big time craft brewer like Dogfish Head, not saying that their beers aren’t fantastic, I’m just saying that they are big producers. But anyway, I probably would have past this bottle by this time too if I had not saw that it was wet hopped.

Now I have been wanted to try a beer that had been brewed with “wet” hops. Normally, hops are harvested, dried, and used in a variety of forms. Wet hopping means that they harvest the hops and within hours the fresh hops are used in the beer. So they are not dried and still contain the essential oils in the hop flowers. The reason I was so interested in this method is because I have bought 5 rhizomes of cascade hops to plant this spring and I want to try and wet hop an ale this summer. But anyway on to the review:

The beer itself poured really nice and formed a well rounded head that smelled of hops. The color was a nice bright copper and was very clear, no haze was present. The first sip was more mellow than I had expected. It was quite smooth, but had a slight oily viscosity to the mouthfeel. I’m not sure if this was because I had already biased myself by knowing about the wet hops or if it was really present, because by the third sip it was no longer noticeable. It definitely had a hoppy tasty but was no where near an IPA. It went down quite well as I was bottling up my Bock. One thing I did notice was that it gave me a headache soon after I had finished it. IT may have been from something else, but that was the only beer I had that day and after drinking it my head was bumping. But even with that being said, I would buy this beer again and give it another shot. Also, it was relatively inexpensive. It was $6.19 for the 750 ml bottle. So hop lovers, grab a bottle and shoot me your opinions. Like I said this is the first “Wet Hopped” beer I have tried, so maybe their are others out there that would give me a better opinion. Thanks.

Naps

Bottling day finally arrives

So after 4 long weeks of waiting, it was finally time to bottle up the Bock that I had been fermenting. So early in the day I gathered up my bottling bucket, bottles, caps and transfer tubing and set about sanitizing them for the bottling later in the day. Then finally I decided that it was time to move the carboy of Bock out of the “lagering cellar” and into the kitchen where I usually bottle. Now this moment was a very exciting moment for me, I had kept the carboy covered for the last four weeks to prevent any light from getting in which could skunk up the beer, so I hadn’t seen this baby in 4 weeks, not once, not even to peek.

I slowly unwrapped the blanket that was covering it like a surgeon removing bandages. What was I going to find? A perfect looking beer with no trace of anything funky on the top or was I going to find a busted old pair of implants gone wrong and a beer that is misshapen like the worst pair of stripper implants you’ve ever seen. So, drum roll please………… Ta Da

It was a perfect carboy of beer. All of the sediment and spent yeast had fallen to the bottom to make a fine layer of cake, and the remaining yeast were still giving the beer just enough spritz so I know that the beers will be carbonated well in the bottle.

Now it came time to prime the beer into the bottling bucket. Because I don’t use CO2 and force carbonate my beer into kegs, I use corn sugar and bottle condition the beer. So every bottle basically ferments its own head in the bottle and you get a slight sediment in the bottle. But it seems that people are going more natural these days, so who cares if you drink a little yeast with your beer, you already eat it with your bread, right?

This is corn sugar, it looks like table sugar but is more fermentable and thus doesn’t sweeten the beer. The tube next to it contains a hyrdometer and it is used to measure potential alcohol. You fill the tube with the beer right before you start it fermenting and then you float the hydrometer in it. The hydrometer will float at a certain level and you read the level where the beer meets the hydrometer, then you ferment the beer and repeat the process before you add priming sugar. Now that you have the two readings, you subtract the final reading from the beginning reading, do a calculation and you know what your approximate alcohol is. That being said this Bock is about 5.5 – 6% alc/vol. Not bad I thought, that’s about where it should be. Now that the math is out of the way, I primed the beer with 3/4 cup of corn sugar to my 5 gallons of beer. That’s a pretty standard amount for priming. Now I could begin filling my bottles.

I use a spring loaded tip filler, as you place a bottle up onto the filler the bottom of the bottle forces the spring tip up and allows the beer to flow out and into the bottle. You release the pressure on the tip and the beer quits flowing, sounds like a few others things I know with tips and pressure, but I digress. So here we go.

I will typically bottle six bottles, then cap them, mix the bucket to make sure that the corn sugar is all dissolved and a little air at this point helps the sluggish yeast to liven up a little, then bottle another 6 bottles and so on and so forth until the beer is gone. The tedious part is capping. You have to place a cap on the bottle and then use a butterfly capper to crimp it on, if you don’t use enough pressure you don’t get a good seal and you have a flat beer, too much pressure and you crack the neck of the bottle and the beer is unusable unless you want a trip to the ER for ground glass in your stomach. But after awhile you get a good feel for it and a good rhythm working and you fly right through it.

In the starting position.

The cap is now crimped on.

Now the beer has been all bottled and capped and I greedily stare at my clutch of brown bottles. I have a case of beer, that’s all mine, all mine I tell you. Now I only have a case because I bottle in 20 ounce bottles instead of your normal 12 ounce longnecks.  I got a deal on cases of 20 oz bottles and hell if you’re going to have one beer, you know you’re going to have another, so why mess with opening two bottles when you can open one and be happy.

So, now the clock starts to tick again, it will be at least a week before I can taste any of these, but it will probably be more like two weeks. It takes a little while for the yeast to carbonate the beer, and I’m like any other man, I am more than willing to wait for fantastic head. So until then, pop a top and keep those mugs a’tippin’. Prost!!

A Night Out….and I’m Cranky

So this past weekend we decided that we would go out and celebrate Lauren’s new job and have dinner and a few drinks before our 11 o’clock curfew kicked in and our sitter a.ka. Mom had to go. The night started out like any other night that we happen to get lucky enough to get a sitter and get a chance to go out. I told Lauren, that my Mom would be at the house at 5:30  and we were meeting at 6 for dinner. So 5:30 rolls around and my Mom shows up and big surprise Lauren isn’t ready and is still in the bathroom. But with a little huffing and puffing on my part she wrapped up her make up quick and we were out the door.

We were supposed to meeting Dinker, Radtke, Karen, Kelly, and Stickbug aka Rachel at Parker’s in G-town. So with a little luck and a heavy foot on the gas pedal, we arrived.

Dinker was already there and waiting at the bar, so we quickly ordered a round and got to our table before the restaurant started to get packed. So far so good, I’m at the table and I have a cold beer in my hand.

  I’m drinking a Bass and I can’t remember what Dinker was drinking but it must have been good, he is giving the thumbs up, but wait he does that in every picture, so hell I don’t know if it was good or not. But I live by the motto, that there is no such thing as bad beer, there is only better beer. Dinner was good, everybody must have enjoyed it, because that was the only time our table was quiet. The bill came, we paid and we went on our merry way.

Our first stop for the night was Riley J’s in G-town. Now this is a great bar. Nice bar, brass handrail, nice interior, 4 or 5 pool tables in the back, good music selection and just all around good people. I apologize now, I forgot the camera when we went into Riley’s but the story is just as good. We get a few drinks and after some small talk head over the pool tables. Radtke and Dinker are shooting a good game, when in walks this old man that looks like could’ve been “Blue” from the movie Old School’s twin. This old guy had a big white shaggy beard, and a German felt hat with all of the appropriate pins and feathers. He walks down to the pool table that Radtke and Dinker are playing on, even though there are two open tables and lines up four bucks of quarters. So Dinker wins his game with Radtke and sets up to play with “Blue”, now this is when “Blue” really starts to open up. He talking to Lauren and I about how when he takes Viagara it makes everything he sees turn a shade of blue and then he made an off color joke about how a viagara got stuck in his throat and he had a stiff neck for four hours. Not bad for an old guy, right? So immediately “Blue” was the long lost kooky Grandpa of our little group. As the night goes on, he’s telling Dinker stories about how his brother served with Elvis in the military and he saw a movie in Paris and just general good “old timer” stories. It was really quite interesting for me and the other guys, but after a couple games of pool the girls had lost interest and were ready to bounce. So bid farewell to “Blue” and were on our way down to Gallagher’s Pub.

Now here is where my crankiness starts, I really dislike Gallagher’s Pub, it isn’t a bad bar it is just full of skeevy old guys and skanks, then pepper in some grade A fake tough guys and douche bags and that’s the clientele of Gag’s. But the girls all seem to love it, and because The Sideshow Bar wasn’t open yet I really had nowhere to go. So we go in and get a drink and it is full of the people I listed above.

 

As you can tell from my “smile” I am every so pleased to be there and my crankiness level is climbing. Some bearded douchebag at the bar is mean mugging me all night and I know I could fold him like a cheap suit, but I know that I have to play nice so I just get irritated and try to mind my business.

AHHHHHHH, finally its 10 and The Sideshow opens.

The Sideshow is my favorite bar and one of my oldest haunts. It is a small college town Mom and Pop run bar. It has a great atmosphere, cheap beers, a great old pool table and a jukebox straight from the 70’s. Finally, I feel at home. The night goes on with another drink and another game of pool, before I get the nod to go down into the basement to see Gary, one of the owner’s “art”. Now this is a huge deal, Gary is a very eccentric individual with a macabre sense of humor and his art shows it. So Radtke and I get the invite to check out some of his latest creations and all I can say is WOW that is some weird shit, now to protect Gary’s privacy all I’ll say is I saw a menagerie of “Voodoo Quadriped Pelvises” and intricate weldings, and other interesting things made of everything from walnut shells to mirror. But I will say that some of the funny lines I heard Gary say were as follows:

“If you are every working in umbrella, once you cut one strut it all goes to shit.”

“That was back in the phase where I was fascinated by how much snail shells look like a ram’s horns.”

and “Sinister”

Then to make matters even creepier than being in the basement, some goofball just walks down uninvited and tries to butt his way into the conversation. This is how the conversation unfolded:

Weirdo: “Have you guys every been metal detecting?”

Gary, Radtke, Me: “No”

Weirdo: “What would you say if you were out metal detecting and you found a box of bones in an indian burial ground?”

Radtke: “So there’s probably no skull right, so you don’t know what kind of bones they are right?”

Weirdo: “Right, right”

Radtke: “Well what kind of box were they found in?”

Weirdo: “A plastic box”

Gary: “ How did a metal detector find a plastic box of bones?”

Weirdo: “Ahhhh, there was a single bullet underneath the box”

Gary: “Sinister”

Weirdo: “No that’s fate”

It was at that point I was called back upstairs and I thanked my lucky stars that I could get the hell away from that goofball before the indian bones in the plastic box told him to shoot me with the bullet that was under the box.

Yes, folks that how the night ended. Lauren and I said our goodbyes and headed for home. I was no longer cranky, just thankful to be alive lol.

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