Ithaca Beer Surprises

On one of my frequent trips to Wegman’s I was perusing a beer section when something out of the ordinary caught my eye. There in the middle of all the six packs and single bottles was what looked to be a few wine bottles. I know that there is new legislation to get wine sold in grocery stores, but as far as I knew that bill hasn’t passed, so I went in for a closer look. Upon closer inspection, I came upon Ithaca Beer Company’s Excelsior White Gold:

Now this beer was attractively packaged and really caught my eye and got me interested. Then I read the label and was even more intrigued.

 

I liked that Ithaca Beer was being creative and using a range of different ingredients to produce small batches of quality beer. I also really liked that each bottle was labeled with the batch number, and they were allowed to bottled condition. When you bottled condition beer, you allow the beer to come to take on a life of its own. The yeast continue to produce flavors and the flavors that are already there change and evolve over time. It also means that every bottle is different, even though they were bottled from the same batch. That makes each beer its own little treasure, to be prized and hoarded.

I know, I know all of this and I haven’t even tasted the beer yet. Well here we go: I popped the top and I immediately knew I was in for some enjoyment. The beer started foaming over, like it was champagne. I quickly grabbed a glass and gently starting pouring it over and the results were:

  FOAMY!!!!

It finally settled down and I was able to pour the rest and this is what I got.

  It was a nice amber color, almost exactly the color of the amber jewelry you see at the summer arts festivals, and the clarity was very hazy. As the bottle said these beers are unfiltered and bottle conditioned, so I was expecting this haze.

AROMA: Very yeasty, you could smell the yeast themselves. If you have ever taken a brewery/winery tour and they take you back to the fermentation cellar, that’s exactly the smell. After the initial blast of yeast, there are some softer, fruitier notes that smell like slightly sour/tangy citrus. Probably oranges as Belgian Styles go well when paired with orange.

TASTE: Tons of CO2, which impart some bitterness but not enough to be objectionable. There is a soft mouth feel with some “slickness” that coats your tongue. It is very true to style for a Belgian White, notes of light wheat and orange and as I got closer to the bottom of the glass I actually had a few bits of orange in the beer, well at least I hope they were orange bits, but that’s what they tasted like to me. There were some other earthy notes, like fresh leaves, like fall but they were very very slight.

OVERALL: This was a very good beer. It is also a sipping beer at 8% alcohol, you can really enjoy each sip and taste all the flavors that are there. If you like Belgian White beers this is definitely worth buying and I would buy a couple of bottles. Drink one and cellar the others and try them at a later date. I think I might go out and buy a few and do that myself. I have always liked Ithaca Beer, but to me they were always like a good craft brewery on the edge of really breaking through into a great craft brewery. With this Excelsior line they have really broken through and put themselves on level with Stone Brewing and Dogfish Head in my opinion. Hands down just a great beer.

Coop’s Red Ale – Homebrew Review

I have a friend who is taking a real interest in homebrewing and recently just brewed up his first batch. So in our conversations, I had a few small gaskets that could make his life easier and  his wife happier (Leaky gaskets = sticky beer fermentation on the floor = angry wife) I learned this the hard way myself, when one of my first brews blew up all over the counter on down onto the floor, but anyway. So I stopped by to drop off the gaskets and was lucky enough to snag two bottles of his first brew. So after getting some permission, I figured I would give him some proper feedback and post this review. So here we go:

Here she is in all of her glory. From the picture alone you can tell that it poured with a generous head and it finally dissipated down to this. On with the review.

APPEARANCE: Nice full slightly off white head. Color is a nice copper, with slight red highlights when held up to the light. The clarity is pretty hazy almost like a wheat beer.

AROMA: Some fruity esters, I smell some orchard notes, maybe apple and some pear.

TASTE: It has good mouthfeel. It is very soft and light on the palate, but there is some sweetness that coats your tongue. Once the initial sweetness clears it gives way to some slight caramel and biscuit flavors from the malt and some bitterness from all of the CO2 that keeps bubbling through it.

OVERALL: This is a good beer, much better than my first attempt. It is very drinkable and light enough where I’m going to break into the second bottle after I’m done writing this. It does have some room to be improved to take it from a good intro beer to a great everyday drinking beer. These are just my opinions and suggestions, so take them for what they are worth. I think that the beer wasn’t completely done fermenting and that’s where a lot of the sweetness is coming from. That also accounts for a lot of the CO2 that it is still producing and the haziness. This would be my only suggestion, that instead of bottling it so soon, I would transfer it to a secondary fermenter for 4 – 6 days to make sure that the fermentation is completely finished, then bottle it. This extra time fermenting would give the yeast a little more time to eat up some of the sugar and make it a little less sweet and a better rounded beer. This extra time would also help with the clarity of the beer as more of the sediment would drop out and the beer would be clearer at the time of bottling. But even these things are very minor things and easy to fix, but even if they weren’t fixed this beer is still a damn good beer and I would drink it over a bunch of others that are commercially produced.

If I had to give this beer a grade I would easily give it B-. That is not bad at all for a first attempt. So you can only go up from here. Keep brewing. Awesome!

A couple of Russkies…. and some chicks

So a few things have been going on this week. First my 1 day old baby chicks showed up. Now I know, I know you think I’m crazy and what the hell do chickens have to do with beer. Well first lets take a look at a these little fuzzballs and then I’ll explain.

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So some of Lauren’s hippie tree-hugging stink must be starting to rub off on me, here is how chickens tie to my beer. I am really digging this all natural, home grown, home brewed vibe, so I bought 10 hops rhizomes and I’m going to plant them soon. So I want to use my own hops in my beer, I know where they come from and what if any pesticides will be applied. So in that same vein, chickens are not only an excellent source of delicious drug free eggs, they also produce a ton of home grown fertilizer a.k.a chicken shit. So I will compost this into a healthy fertilizer and use it to fertilize my bines. (hops are grown on bines, where grapes on grown on vines). Also another benefit from my chickens is pest control. When I grew hops before they were ripped to shreds by Japanese beetles. So these five voracious, vicious little beaks will take care of that problem for me and I should get a better cone harvest. So their you have it, chickens make good beer. Now on to the Russians…….
Also this week, I have had the opportunity to try a couple of Russian beers. My Pop is an electrician and works for a contracting company. One of the guys he works with is straight off the boat Russian, Lenny (Insert incredibly hard to pronounce Russian name here). So Lenny is a big fan of beer, and my Pop is always bragging about my beer, so he took a few into Lenny to try, and Lenny being the upstanding guy he is made it an even trade and gave my Pop four Russian beers from Beers of the World. The first is:
   Now apparently Russian beers are all graded on a number scale. That’s what Lenny said, but somewhere in the translation, I lost what the numbers actually stood for. So here is Baltika 3 and it just says its a “Classic Beer” and it is 4.8% alc. Now the price tag and the #3 should have been a warning. When the price is $0.97 per bottle you know you are in for it, but what the hell it was free beer, right? It poured very clear and had a sparkling white head.

And then everything went bad. There was a slightly skunky aroma, but still I decided to taste it. The body was very light, but then the taste hit me. It tasted like Heineken and Busch Light had twins, then the twins inbred and had a baby that reproduced with a Keystone and that glorious love child is Baltika 3. The taste just wasn’t that pleasant. The more I drank, the more my mouth began to taste like it was sucking on a skunk’s ass. But that little voice in my head kept repeating “There’s no such thing as bad beer, there is only better beer.” and with that I powered it down and called it a night. Time to check the score: Russia 1 – Naps 0.
So I gathered up my courage the next night and decided to take on Russia for Round 2.
  Baltika #9 Extra Lager. It was 8% alc by volume, so that was a little more promising. I pulled out a nice clean glass and let it pour.
So it was a nice pale, crystal clear lager, with a nice full head comprised of tiny tiny bubbles. I poked my nose down into that head and assessed the aroma, and what I found was little to none. Well even that was a promising sign after smelling the skunky smell from Baltika #3. So I decide it can’t be that bad, and take a big sip and the instant picture in my head is a warm green glass beer bottle ala Heineken, Rolling Rock, Becks, etc. So its a little skunky. But not that bad, its still very drinkable and it settles into its own quite quickly. The skunkiness dissipates and the beer becomes much better the more of it goes down. So the score is now even  Russia 1 – Naps 1.
Overall, the Russian beers are nothing I would pay for and drink, but of the two the #9 was much better and I could drink it again if it was offered, but I would not be running to get another #3. But in the end, both of them were free, so they were both good because they were free.
If you are brave enough to take on Mother Russia, give these two a try and let me know what you think. Prost!!

I got Mad Hops, Yo…..

I’m not talking about my awesome white men can’t jump basketball skills, I’m talking about my two orders of Hop Rhizomes showing up. I was originally only going to order 5 rhizomes, but I ended up ordering 10, 5 of two varieties. So here they are and this is what they look like when they arrive.

Those are my Sterling Hops, which I have never tried before but they seem pretty adaptable to the northeast’s climate, so I figured I would give them a shot.

Then there are the Cascade Hops:

Its a little hard to see, but in the second picture there are a ton of white sprouts already starting to shoot up, so I’m going to have to get them in the ground pretty quick.

So now I just have to figure out how I am going to trellis them up. I have a good idea that I think will work, but we’ll see how that pans out. I’ll keep you updated as I start the install, but until then keep ‘em tippin’.

Brewing German Alt

So I finally decided what I wanted to brew and it was something I had never brewed before. I have recently tried a few Alt beers from Germany and I have really enjoyed them, so I figured what the hell I would take a shot at brewing one. I looked through a few of my recipe books and couldn’t find one I liked so I decided to buy a kit. Normally, I prefer to put together my own recipes, but because it is a style that I have never brewed before I decided a kit was the way to go. So here we go:

I unpacked the kit and took a brief look at the brewing instructions and then got some water brewing. I put 2 1/2 gallons of water in my brew pot and got it heating. While it was heating up, I weighed out one pound of the supplied grains into a mesh bag.

Once the water was at 170 F, I put the bag into the pot to steep for twenty minutes.

After steeping the grains, I removed the bag allowed it to drain as much as possible then tossed the spent grains into the trash. A quick note about buying grains, if you are going to purchase them pay the extra 10 cents per pound to get them crushed because if you don’t own a grain mill it is a pain in the ass to get them crushed.

Then I brought the water to a boil and added both the malt syrup and the dry malt extract.

The trick to pouring the malt syrup is to put the entire container in pot of hot water for about 15 minutes before you need it. The water heats up the syrup making it much easier to pour and mix in the wort. There is no picture of the dry malt being added as I needed both hands to sprinkle it in and mix at the same time. If you just pour the whole bag in the wort and then mix it you end up with a lot of clumps of dry malt extract that doesn’t get mixed in well.

After all of the extract is added, I returned the wort to a frothy boil:

Once it begins to boil like this is when you start your 60 minute timer. I added 1 oz of Perle Hops at the start of the boil, then another 1 oz 15 minutes later.

I take this long boiling break to get my dried yeast started. In a large mixing cup, I add about 1 cup of 80 – 100 F degree water depending on what yeast strain it is and what the manufacturer recommends. A little tip I also use is to add a 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar to the water. Then I pour the dehydrated yeast into the cup and mix it in well.

Back to brewing, I keep it boiling at a medium rate for another 40 minutes then add 1 oz of Hersbrucker Hops for aroma.

I let it boil for another 5 minutes then remove it from heat and place the whole pot right into a ice batch in the sink to cool the water. I change the water in the sink around the pot quite a few times to keep it cold and keep the pot chilling. Once this beer was temping right around 80 F (oh by the way, all of my temperature measurement are coming from a simple calibrated meat thermometer) I was ready to transfer it to the fermenter.

When transferring the beer at this stage you want to leave all the sludgy, gross junk a.k.a trub in the pot. I like to get the most out of my beers so I will try to strain as much of the beer as I can without getting a lot of the trub into the beer.

Simple, but effective.

What’s left in the strainer and the pot.

All of this gets thrown out in the garbage. An important note about this trub and spent hops is to keep them away from your pets especially dogs. The spent hops are attractive to dogs, but they contain toxins that are poisonous to dogs.

Now that the beer is in the fermenter, my yeast is really starting to get active. It looks very foamy and almost creamy.

I pour it on top of beer in the fermenter and get the water running in the sink. I get the water to 80 F and then I use the sprayer on the sink to top up the fermenter to just over 5 gallons. Using the sprayer introduces a lot of air into the fermenter which also helps invigorate the yeast and get the fermentation started.

Then I put the lid on and add the airlock and voila, I had a beautiful new 5 gallon batch of German Alt. So to keep it in a cool dark place, a.k.a the entryway closet.

I’ll keep you updated as it progress, so let’s hope it keeps bubbling.

Busy, busy, busy…..

So I haven’t posted in a while because I have been working on a few other projects, none of which involve beer or brewing to my displeasure, but anyways.

One of the projects I have been working on is building a chicken coop, yes I said a chicken coop. I am getting chickens. 5 hens to be exact. I know many people think that I am crazy, my wife included but having chickens for eggs is something I have always wanted to do. I had a couple of choices to get chicks, I had a friend offer to hatch me up a few or I could go to Tractor Supply and buy what I wanted. I liked the idea of having some hatched for me, but I didn’t want to risk getting a rooster for a few reasons. First, if I did get a rooster, I couldn’t do him in and make him a roaster or stew, I just don’t think I have it in me. Second, because of the first reason I would have to find a home for him and while that was going on I’m sure my neighbors would be more than pleased. Those same two reasons kept me from buying at Tractor Supply too, because they don’t guarantee the sex of the chicks. So with that in mind I found a hatchery that would send small orders for reasonably priced, so I ordered 5 day old chicks and they should be here the first week in April. So I have been building a decent size hen house and coop on the cheap. So the only thing that has to do with beer is the few I have drank after busting my hump on building the coop.

My other project has been finishing my class for work. Two and a half years ago my boss suggested that it would be a good idea for me to take a course through UC Davis to help my career. So the course he wanted me to take was part of a 5 course certificate program so I signed for that with his blessings. So each course was 10 weeks long and was a considerable amount of reading papers, writing papers, quizzes, mid-terms, and finals. But now 2 and 1/2 years later I just finished my last class and turned in my final last week. So once I get my final grade, I can receive my certificate and maybe use it to get where I want to go with my career.

So both of those things have been taking up a large part of my time. However I still managed to order some ingredients for another beer, and half of my hops order showed up. So I will be posting soon about these two things. So until then keep those taps pouring.

Sweet, Sweet Redemption

So last night, I was moving some wood into the house for one of the last few fires of the season and I came across my cases of Bock that I had made. I had put them in an out of the way, warm place and covered them with a blanket so they wouldn’t get lightstruck (a.k.a skunky) and in doing so completely forgot about them. It was like Christmas morning, I put the wood down and pulled back the blanket and there they were in all of their glory. Shiny in their brown bottles, and most likely still flat, but I figured what the hell and pulled out a bottle and put it in the freezer to chill it down.

I finished what I was working on, got Ava all settled for bed and Lauren and I got settled on the couch to watch some TV. It was the perfect time for a beer. So I pulled out a pint glass, pulled the beer out of the fridge and popped the top. To my pleasant surprise there was a definite psssssssssssst. Huh, maybe the beer had finally carbonated itself, I thought, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up. Then I started to pour her out into the glass and it was beautiful, it almost brought a tear to my eye.

Look at all of that delicious off-white creamy head. There was actually a bit more of it, but I was so caught off guard that I had to run around and find the camera to take a picture of it and by then some of it had dissipated. But just look at it, there was so much carbonation you can see bubbles clinging to the inside of the glass. Yes, that’s a patch of bubbles not a dirty glass.

I feel so vindicated and redeemed by this beer. So it would seem that I just wasn’t patient enough and had thrown in the towel a little too early on this beer. Man, am I glad that I didn’t give all of this stuff away. Sweet, sweet redemption is mine.

Well, I just thought that I would give everyone a little update. Who knows maybe I’ll do a little youtube pour of the beer to show everyone how glorious it really is. But until then I’ll let you go, I have to pull another two bottles out of the freezer to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, and because I’m thirsty, LOL.