This is the fifth of 11 installments chronicling the BJCP classes held by the North Texas Homebrewers Association. Our tasting session for this class included two categories: Amber Hybrids (BJCP Category 7) and German Wheat/Rye (BJCP Category 15). Descriptions with asterisks (*) denote beers that I really enjoyed.
For a reminder on how the tastings are organized, click here. Continue reading
This is the fourth of 11 installments chronicling the BJCP classes held by the North Texas Homebrewers Association. Our tasting session for this class included two categories: European Amber Lager (BJCP Category 3) and Stout (BJCP Category 13).
Apologies for how far behind I’ve fallen in getting my tasting notes from my notebook to this blog (two months late is better than never, right?). To keep things moving quickly (and because it’s been too long since this tasting), I’m going to skip a lot of the fanfare from the previous posts and provide short and sweet descriptions for the beers. Descriptions with asterisks (*) denote beers that I really enjoyed.
For a reminder on how the tastings are organized, click here. Continue reading
Multiple posts per week and then no new posts in almost two weeks…traffic to the blog is dropping…dust is collecting.
Several things have been going on in my world as of late. In addition to that whole “job” thing and having a family, I’ve been busy working on beer recipes, brewing, piecing together a new homebrewery (including building a couple pieces of equipment), drinking new beers, doing a lot of reading and research, and doing a lot of planning.
One of the things I’ve been busy with is going all-grain (that is, brewing without the use of malt extract). This requires more equipment and makes for a longer brewday, but I feel more connected to the process. Besides, this is the “real” way to brew beer. My first all-grain batch was a relative success. I brewed EdWort’s Haus Pale Ale (a pretty famous homebrew recipe) with a bunch of new equipment (a keggle, a 10 gallon cooler mash/lauter tun, a 50′ immersion chiller, etc.). So I was brewing a new-to-me recipe on new equipment using a new process. What could go wrong? Actually, if it wasn’t for my digital thermometer that gave up the ghost while I was mashing in, I think everything might have turned out rather well.
What happened was this…I had heated my strike water to the proper temperature and was in the process of doughing in when I noticed my thermometer said the mash temperature was over 200 degrees. I quickly grabbed a gallon of cold water (I used bottled spring water so I didn’t have to work about pH and chloramines so much) and poured it in to cool the mash down. I then realized the thermometer was reading about 55 degrees warmer than it should. I tried a boiling water addition to get the mash back to my target of 152 degrees, but it didn’t help much. By that point, I had a very wet and cold mash. I would have had to add about 2-3 gallons of boiling water to get the temperatures where I wanted. I decided instead to dump the whole mash in my kettle and heat it while constantly stirring to prevent any burning. This worked very well, actually and I hit my temps perfectly. After a 60 minute saccharification rest, I drew about 4 quarts out of the mash, heated it to boiling, and added it back to the mash to “mash out.” I batch sparged as planned and proceeded with my boil (without measuring the gravity first).
After the boil, I chilled and transferred to the fermenter. I managed to hit my target original gravity exactly but I had somehow ended up with much more wort than I had expected (I probably collected about a gallon extra). It’s been in the fermenter for two weeks now, so I can’t fully judge how well it turned out. I also haven’t gotten around to measuring the final gravity, but since I had such a wet mash, I anticipate that the wort might not be as fermentable as I had planned. All in all, I’m quite pleased that I was able to recover from the thermometer issue and I think I learned more about the process (such as getting to employ decoctions, which I had read about but wasn’t planning on doing) than I would have otherwise.
I’m going to be completely honest and say that the task of writing the posts about the BJCP classes/tasting (which tend to be about 2500-3500 words) is very daunting and time-consuming. I want to continue doing this as I think it’s pretty good content for the blog and its a good way for me to study for the upcoming exam, but it sure is a lot of work. I take ample notes at each class (the last was ~2 weeks ago) but transferring my shorthand into meaningful words and adding the little snippets of history/background for each style is what takes so long.
Beyond that, I’m still trying to find a focus for the blog. I’m struggling to decide what subjects I 1) know enough about and 2) am interested in enough to write about that would result in posts that people would actually want to read. While I’m not trying to gain a huge group of readers by any means, it is important to me that at least a few people read what I’m writing…otherwise what’s the point? So I guess you could say that I’m still trying to find my voice. I really admire The Mad Fermentationist and ZymurGeist blogs. Each one seems very focused without becoming too specialized (if that makes any sense). I think FermNation is scatter-brained.
So as I move forward I have to remember that the reason I started this blog was as an outlet for my beer/brewing thoughts and as a way to help me build my knowledge and discover my “beer voice” (and I don’t mean slurred speech after one too many). Once the BJCP class has ended, I’ll have to find a new primary focus for the blog. Whether it will remain a discussion of beer styles or move more toward homebrewing, the craft beer industry, or exploring the multitude of beers that are awesome but don’t fare well on BeerAdvocate / RateBeer is yet to be determined.
This gallery contains 5 photos.
I’m sure I’m not the first person to have done this, but I thought I’d share my mash paddle, which I recently made. I think it offers a great bang for the buck, is pretty high quality, is very cheap, and … Continue reading
Chuck's Wall-o-Malt
For an introduction to this series, click here.
The third of 11 BJCP classes was held on Sunday June 5. The technical topic for this class was malt. We had an overview of the malting process, types and characters of base malts, types and characters of specialty malts, and a discussion of what styles of beer are typically brewed with what types of malt. We then took a field trip to Chuck’s Wall-o-Malt, which contains jars of 78 different types of barley malt, unmalted barley, malted and unmalted wheat, oats, rye, etc., etc., etc. It was very fun and interesting to smell and taste some malts that I’ve never used before (chocolate malted wheat, for example).
Our tasting session for this week included two categories: smooth and subdued Dark Lager (BJCP Category 4) and punch-you-in-the-face Belgian Strong Ale (BJCP Category 18).
For a reminder on how the tastings are organized, click here. Continue reading
All set to begin the Light Lager tasting flights.
For an introduction to this series, click here.
The second of 11 BJCP classes was held on Sunday May 22 (yes, it took me a while to write this post). The technical topic for this class was water (e.g., brewing salts, building water, pH, etc.). Our tasting session for this week included two categories: 1. Light Lager and 12. Porter. It was quite by accident that these two categories were paired together on this day (the original plan was to have European Amber Lager instead of Light Lager but some of the beers for the Euro Amber category weren’t yet available). It is ironically fitting, though, since Porter was the first industrialized style of beer (becoming prominent during the Industrial Revolution) and the first three subcategories of the Light Lager category epitomize modern American mass-produced beer (and everything that’s wrong with it, in my opinion).
For a reminder on how the tastings are organized, click here. Continue reading
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but HB602, a bill that would allow breweries to let people leave their tours with a small amount of beer is dead in the water. The bill was killed by lobbyists from….drumroll….Anheuser-Busch InBev (surprise!!!). As inconsequential to A-B’s overall profit margin as craft brewing is, they just can’t stand to let anything good happen to anyone else.
You can read a little more of the bad news here.
You might also want to consider this list of beers that are under the A-B InBev umbrella for the next time you go to pick up a six.
Last year my father in law and I attended a Beer & Food pairing put on by Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn Brewery’s brewmaster. If you’ve never heard Mr. Oliver speak, I think it is well worth seeking out an opportunity to do so. In a nutshell, his beer philosophy revolves around the pairing of beer and food and an emphatic plea for people to respect beer (apologies if that is over-simplifying things). After the session, my father in law generously purchased a copy of Mr. Oliver’s book, The Brewmaster’s Table, for me and I was able to have it signed (and spend a few minutes talking with a genuinely friendly and passionate individual).
Fast forward to last night when I finally started reading the book. I’ve read bits and pieces here and there when trying to decide what to eat with a certain type of beer, but haven’t gotten around to going toe-to-toe (cover-to-cover?) with this decidedly epic book (at least epic as far as beer books go). Within the first few pages, Oliver discusses his first experience with real beer—a cask-conditioned ale the color of maple syrup. He doesn’t recall the name, nor the brewery or even the style. His recollection of this experience brought to mind my first experience with real beer…my first “beerpiphany.” Continue reading
I don’t know what I was on last week when I wrote my mini-review of Pilsner Urquell. For some reason I used the word “Diacetyl” referring to the skunky nature of the beer.
Diacetyl is a buttery aroma and flavor that is a natural yeast by product. Though it would be inappropriate for a Boh. Pils, it is acceptable and often desirable in other types of beer.
Light-struck or “skunky” is a, well, skunky aroma that results when fermented beer is exposed to light (as often happens when packaged in clear or green bottles). Supposedly some manufacturers WANT a bit of skunk on their beer and have therefore resisted using brown bottles. Or maybe appearance is more important than quality. Who knows.
An list of all recognized beer faults is provided by (who else?) the BJCP here.
Anyway, Diacetyl ≠ Light-Struck and the offending error has been deleted from last week’s post.
The Stone Brewing Company, rated as the all-time top brewery by Beer Advocate Magazine, epitomizes the American craft brewing mantra of more, more, MORE! More IBUs, more gravity, more age….Stone makes big beers. Now, in addition to their ever-expanding line of regular, seasonal, and limited-release beers and plans to open a brewery in Europe (still in planning), Stone has announced plans to significantly expand their brewery and even open a hotel (plus several other new projects). Are they planning to take over the world? Well, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing…would it?
More information here.
FermNation 