Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to every beer drinker out there.  Go out and get yourself a holiday pack and enjoy some family time.  I'm going to leave 2010 with my favorite beers of the season.

1. Bourbon Barrel Quad - Boulevard Smokestack Series

2. Kings Cupboard Chocolate Stout - Red Lodge Ales

3. Celebration Ale - Sierra Nevada

4. Nut Cracker Ale - Boulevard Brewing

5. Eggnog and Bourbon - Your Grandpas Recipe, strong.

Have a good holiday everyone, see you in 2011.

Update on the Oatmeal Stout

The only way to safely transport tasty brew is to put a seatbelt around it.

Brewing went pretty well with no real surprises.  It was awesome using my new brew kettle, a 7 gallon, with a brew thermometer on the front and a sparge valve.  The new brewing facility was quite awesome as well.  I used the kitchen at the Travois office, which has a full professional grade gas range top that makes bringing everything to a boil so much easier than the typical stovetop.  I think I did everything right with the partial mash, but I guess I will find out in a few weeks.  I hope it comes out to be as strong as I expect – about 6% alcohol.  As a last minute change, I decided to make it a chocolate oatmeal stout by adding about 8oz of pure dark cocoa.  That is quite a bit for just five gallons, but hey, experimentation is what home brewing is all about.  It looked like hot chocolate, smelled like hot chocolate and is hopefully going to taste like one kickass chocolate beer.  I look forward to tasting it.

I am Awesome

This has absolutely nothing to do with beer...but I just wanted to show you how awesome this parallel parking job was.  I am definitely tooting my own horn on this one.  There is easily less than a foot of space between the front and back bumper.

And yes I did get out and stand in the middle of the street to take a picture.  Go me!

Kegs and Cherries

OK first off, I have been way behind on blogging.  Second, I have been way behind on brewing.  So, a little recap of my last beer is long overdue:

Cherry wheat.  It turned out all right, a little weak in flavor for what I wanted but still pretty solid.  It was more of a light Belgian(y) flavor than I anticipated, but the cherry flavor was subtle and sweet.  I was expecting a stronger flavor though because I used five pounds of raw Flathead cherries for shit sake.  I guess I didn’t get the total flavor from the cherries by only adding them to the carboy during secondary fermentation.  Next time I try a fruit beer I will know to mash the fruit and pull some more of the flavor out. 

The beer, however, was not the focus point of this batch - the new keg and kegerator was.  Yep, I got myself a keg, CO2 tank, and turned my mini-fridge into a damn nice kegerator.  I drilled a hole right through the top of the fridge and coiled the liquid tube around the top freezer part of the fridge.  I thought it was pretty clever, until the liquid tube froze solid after 10 minutes of not pouring any beer.  So, that was a total buzz kill that lead to me turning the fridge on and off constantly to keep it flowing.  I will have to find a better way to quickly drink my experimental brews without putting them in a bottle.  But in the meantime, I will be bottling my next beer, an oatmeal stout.  I just got all the ingredients and will be trying out a partial mash this time instead of 100% extract, which means basically it is a little more than just steeping some grains and using malt extract.  I will use the grains to extract all the sugars out to get the alcohol content I want and truer flavor.  It’s closer to real brewing and more entertaining.  I will be sure to post pictures of this brew process.  Anyway, I am glad to be back to brewing and will follow up with a long overdue blog on the weekend that was BEERFEST!!  

   

KC Here I Come

Many of you know that I will be moving to Kansas City, Missouri.  The main reason is for a new job, and although I am looking forward to being settled down in a new city, I will miss parts of Boulder, especially all the great beer it has to offer.  Boulder and Fort Collins, CO, are two of the greatest cities in the country for microbrews.  Being near Boulevard Brewing will be awesome, but KC doesn’t have what Boulder does for beer. 

I am also quite excited to be near a baseball team that I actually like.  The Royals are not doing so hot, but I would much rather be cheering for my poor Royals than the Rockies.  And, as I am sitting here writing this, I am sweating like crazy; I will not miss the heat of this damn house.  “But Greg, you moron,” you may be thinking, “KC is way hotter than Boulder, and it’s so humid there it’s like you are breathing through a wet rag.”  Yes, I already know this, and so does everyone in KC.  That’s why every single house or apartment there has AC, unlike the crap college rentals in Boulder. 

Family is also a big draw for me to be in KC.  My sister has a two year-old, and she is totally cute, and there will be another little babe running around here in the next couple months.  Ya know, on second thought, moving now might be a bad idea actually since these little kids are going to need lots of babysitting.  And who better then the younger brother, “because you will do it out of the goodness of your heart and not charge us right?” says my brother in-law.  Well shit, at least they will be cool, and I can’t say I really mind.  It seems like the rest of the extended Bland family will be making KC their new home as well, as many of my cousins are moving to KC.  So it will be great to be near all of them for once.

Now, I know this is supposed to be a blog about beer, so here is the advantage to moving to KC for beer.  I will have more room to expand my brewing capacity and can really start to perfect my skills as a brewer.  The market here in Colorado is saturated with microbrews, and the opportunity to become a successful brewer here in Colorado is very difficult.  The opportunity I will have in KC could lead to my own brewpub someday, and the market in KC, and really the whole of the Midwest, is begging for diversity in the beer choice.  This will be a great chance for me to start making contacts and developing my own recipes to finally put together a plan to make Bold Greg Brewing a reality. 

Beer of the Week

During a week-long visit to my girlfriend’s hometown in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to experience a taste of the many marvels the state has to offer: eating several varieties of cheese (sometimes daily), checking out farms full of cows, watching how Trek bikes are made, scaring the piss out of myself dropping into a crazy waterslide (sorry to whoever went after me) at the self-proclaimed World’s Largest Waterpark and of course, drinking great beer.  So, what better place is there to find a Beer of the Week than Wisconsin? 

Precisely.

Milwaukee is a beer lover’s Mecca.  Not only is PBR from Milwaukee, but all kinds of great microbreweries call Milwaukee and other cities throughout Wisconsin home.  Born in the city of New Glarus, a town of just 2,300 a little drive south of Madison, is the New Glarus Brewing Company.  Of the good beers this notably tasty brewery produces, Spotted Cow is probably the best known.  It’s considered a farmhouse ale, often called saison, meaning that it is an old fashioned, naturally cloudy beer.  Traditional in all aspects of the ale, this beer requires a warm fermentation and the real presence of yeast, and flaked barley and corn pack some great flavor.  Unlike Coors, which I ripped on in a previous post, the corn in a farmhouse ale is not merely a cheap replacement for barley, but rather added to create the smooth finish distinctive to Spotted Cow and other similarly brewed beers. 

New Glarus is a great brewing company with lots to offer, so the next time you find yourself passing through America’s Dairyland, be sure to save room in your suitcase full of cheese to fit a few Spotted Cows.

Brew and Cycle Shop

As many of my friends know, I love bikes. I am sitting here now watching the Tour de France, and I keep thinking about how awesome it would be to have a brewery and bike shop together as one. Once again, as was the case with my future brewery name, I can’t take credit for this idea either. My buddy from back home in Montana, Ivan, came up with the idea for a bike shop/brewery. Although I have thought about this idea before, I was not sure how to put the idea together. It’s a great idea, and I would love to take it from him and just give him free beer or something when I get going. But somehow I think, and hope, that he would want to be more involved. I handle the beer and he takes care of the bike business, although he would no doubt tell me I was doing something wrong. I should probably run this idea by him to see if he is even interested.

So big guy, are you interested?

Ah, we can figure something out eventually. Anyways the idea is still a good one, and I think it would be something a little different from the normal brewery. All of my friends and family are also giving their input into how cool a brewery could be. All of the ideas are great, but so far I think the one that will most likely evolve into the real thing will be the Bike and Brew Pub. The front will be the tap room with clear view of the fermenters and the back would be the bike shop. Like me, Ivan is a huge bike enthusiast, but more for mountain riding than my road cycling. He can manage all the bike business including developing his own bike frames. This would be a cool idea that I hope will one day come into form.

Beer ot the Week

Beer of the Week this week is… [drumroll] … my IPA. I know you might be thinking that’s a little biased, but I don’t even care. This is not as much a Beer of the Week post as it is a mighty pat on the back to myself about my IPA. As a few people who were with me when I tried my IPA can attest, I was really excited (as you can see in the picture).

My blog a few weeks ago about my first IPA explains what went into it and the technique. Dry hopping the beer turned out to be fantastic. The citrusy aroma is wonderful and the smooth finish really made this beer great. It has a good low IBU taste but hoppy aftertaste. Now, I know that only a few people will actually get to taste my IPA but I am still putting it as beer of the week because it is awesome. This is most definitely the best tasting beer I have made. It’s really encouraging because it makes me think I am getting better at what I love to do. So, my next beer may even be BOTW in a month or so. We will see.

Beers of Fort Collins

There is nothing better than spending a summer day drinking great beers, except maybe spending the whole day drinking good beer fresh from the brewery. That’s what about five of my friends and I did in Fort Collins, Colorado last week. We went on a Fort Collins brewery adventure at three different breweries. The largest was Budweiser, and let me just say that I have a new respect for Bud. Their beer is still not that great, but their commitment to tradition and historic greatness was clearly displayed at the brewery. The brewery really showed what traditional Anheuser Busch was all about. And with doing that, they really showed up Coors. The landscape was immaculate and the tap/tasting room was pretty cool, right in front of the building, not hidden in the basement like at Coors.

New Belgium Brewing Company is in a league of its own. It’s the 3rd largest microbrewery in the nation and around the 5th largest brewery in the nation by overall sales and consumption. They have a commitment to great beer that most breweries their size just can’t manage. They are able to produce a ton of different great beers without replacing some key ingredients with corn, like Bud and Coors.

New Belgium not only has a commitment to great beer, but they have incredible respect for the environment and are committed to sustainable business practices and the community of Fort Collins. The brewery itself runs on solar, wind and methane energies that they produce themselves as a natural byproduct from the brewing process. There are so many other ways that New Belgium is able to save and even dramatically cut energy use by just being smart. Their brewing process uses about a third of the energy most other breweries use just to heat the water for brewing. One major step that New Belgium has taken to lessen their environmental impact is the construction of their own onsite water treatment facility. This facility is connected directly to the Fort Collins water system, supplying clean water to Fort Collins at almost no cost to the residents. Great stuff.

The tour of New Belgium’s brew house was not really your typical brewery tour; it was more of a slap in the face to other breweries, calling them out on how they could be producing a better product with a lesser environmental impact. Plus, we got five free beers on the tour and one more after. Needless to say, it was a great tour, and I was very glad to have a DD.

The third brewery we stopped at was the Odell Brewing Company, a great local brewery that is well known and distributed around the country. We didn’t have time to take a tour but we sat in the taproom and had our fare share of tasters (Full pint tasters. Again, very glad to have a DD.) Odell did some cool things with their beers. They had an IPA served on Nitrogen, and it was probably one of the best IPA’s I have ever had, creamy and smooth with just the right kick of hops. Hopefully I will have some time to take a real tour of Odell, and you’ll hear about it when it happens.

Beer of the Week - Boulevard Pilsner

After being in Kansas City for almost the past two weeks, there is really no other beer to pick than the most recent production from Boulevard:  the Boulevard Pilsner.  It was developed in honor of the old breweries from before prohibition.  Kansas City used to be home to many different breweries, but after prohibition many of them did not return.  Boulevard used an old recipe from a small brewery owned by George Muehlebach.  It’s a traditional pilsner made with the idea that a beer is supposed to have a bold flavor – something the major brewers have forgotten.  The American pilsner traditionally was a strong, crisp lager with an emphasis on the barley, which creates the body of the beer.  The new American pilsner substitutes rice and corn for the barley, making it much lighter and weaker in flavor.  So, the new pilsner from Boulevard brings back the traditional flavor of the American lager and a little taste of history.

Back to Blogging

All right, now I know that I have been totally slacking on this blog for the past few weeks, but I have the excuse that I was finishing up college and then headed out of town for a little while.  A little pat on the back here for myself, as I am now a graduate from CU.  Awesome.  Over the past few weeks I have been doing a lot with my beer, bottling, transferring, fermenting, and with the help of my wonderful girlfriend making a wedding gift for my cousin.  My IPA is now in the secondary fermentation process with the dry hops, and it looks a little crazy with all the hops floating at the top.  My Scottish Ale is now in bottles and carbonating.  I tasted it right before bottling (very malty) but with time I am sure it will be an awesome beer.  Not too strong, but full of flavor. 

The wedding gift turned out better than I had even hoped for.  We put the Scotch Ale into a blue Grolsch style bottle – that’s the one with the cool flip top things instead of a bottle cap or cork.  Meg made a fantastic label for the bottle and we put it in a wine chiller with a sweet kitchen towel with a vintage map on it (shout out to Geography majors).  It looks great.

               

While I was away in Kansas City, I had a chance to go see Boulevard Brewing Company’s brewery.  It was a great tour; the brewery is huge, modern and making an eco-friendly effort with its green roof and loads of natural lighting.  Last year, Boulevard produced enough beer to be named the 16^th largest brewery in the nation.  In 2006 Boulevard finished their facility expansion and now has the ability to produce 600,000 barrels a year.  To put that into prospective: one keg of beer has around 165 beers in it, and one keg is half of a barrel.  So, 600,000 barrels means almost 200 million beers a year.  For being a regional distributed brewery, there are a lot of Midwesterners out there getting a little more than tipsy, but at least they are drinking good beer. 

Next on my to-do list is rocking an interview tomorrow with Oskar Blues and going on a tour at the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, one of the most sustainability-advanced breweries in the nation, but more on that later.

Beer of the Week - Boddingtons

So, Boddingtons Pub Ale is this week’s BOTW.  I love this beer.  It has an awesomely smooth flavor with a creamy light finish and after taste.  It’s a traditional English pale ale originally from Manchester UK, owned and operated by a family brewery.  Now sadly after doing a little research about this beer, I found out that it is now owned and distributed by Anheuser-Busch, which is too bad and always seems to happen.  The giant breweries take over the little family-run breweries.  

[Side note:  If you have a chance, you should check out this documentary called Beer Wars that my roommate showed me.  It totally rips on the big, no-flavor breweries in the U.S.  Okay, back to the beer:]

When you’re drinking Boddingtons from the tap, it is served on nitrogen instead of CO2.  That’s what gives it the creamy flavor and thick head.  When you get it in a can, it comes with what’s called a widget.  You know those little balls that come in the cans of Guinness that everyone tries to take out?  It’s the same thing in Boddingtons.  All this little ball does is hold onto the nitrogen in the beer until the pressure is released when you open the can.  It makes for a better smooth first taste and creamy head.  So if you’re in the mood for a good, traditional English ale, go grab one of those 4-packs of Boddingtons and pour quickly into a glass.  Then try and get that little ball out of the can and see what I am talking about.  Enjoy!

My First IPA part 2

Hops, hops, hops and more hops.  No, that’s not rabbit food in my hand, it’s hops.  These hops are what’s going to make this beer a bold IPA.  Hops is the key ingredient in making an IPA.  It is what gives the beer its bitter flavor, its floral and citrusy aroma and the strong, lasting finish.  I finished brewing my IPA on Sunday, and this thing is full of hops.  Four different kinds of hops actually, and I’m not done adding more.  In about a week the primary fermentation will be done, and I will move the beer into the secondary fermenter and add 2 more kinds of hops to give it another boost of dry hopped flavor. 

Sunday was a fun day of making my house stink like roasted malt and burnt flowers.  The process was a lot of fun too because it was my first time working with a recipe that I put together myself.  I finally feel like I know what I am really doing here, instead of just making brown liquid that will get you drunk.  These next two beers I have a feeling will be awesome.  I was able to grab a taste of the Scotch Ale about three weeks ago and it was good.  So, with a little more time in the carboy to really settle out and a few weeks to bottle condition, this is going to be a great beer.  I will get to taste the IPA on Wednesday before I add the other hops, so that will give me a good indication of flavor and finish before it gets carbonated.  Anyways, here is the recipe from the IPA and some pictures of the brewing process.

Extract

Light LME 9.75 lbs.

Steeping Grains

Munich LME .5 lbs

Crystal (15 °L) 1.0 lbs

Crystal (40 °L) .25 lbs

Hops

Warrior hops at 60 min for bitterness   1oz

Centennial hops at 10 min                  1oz

Simcoe hops at 5 min for finishing       2oz

Amarillo hops at 0 min for finishing      2oz

After primary fermentation (about one week)

Dry hop Amarillo and Simcoe, and directly add to the carboy for secondary fermentation.

Let the hops settle at the bottom of the carboy.  This will take about 2-3 weeks.

Brewing

Bring 3 gallons of water to a boil – take boil off the heat and steep the specialty grains for 20 min.

Bring back to a boil – take off the heat and add half of the Light LME.

Bring back to boil – at boil add Warrior hops and boil for 50 min.

Take off the heat and add the other half of the Light LME.

Bring back to a boil – at boil add the Centennial hops.

Boil for 5 min and add the Simcoe hops 1oz.

Boil for 5 more min and then add the Amarillo hops 1oz.

Cool the wort to 100° F as fast as possible with an ice bath.

Add the wort to the fermenter and pitch the yeast (Wyeast 1272 American Ale II)

Primary ferment for about 1 week

After primary fermentation, switch to carboy and add the Simcoe and Amarillo hops for dry hopping.

Allow hops to settle before bottling, which will be about 2-3 weeks in the carboy for secondary fermentation.

Bring 16oz of water to a boil, and then add 2/3 cup priming sugar.
Add to bottling bucket, then siphon the beer into the bottling bucket and bottle.

Let the beer condition in the bottle for about 2 weeks.

Beer of the Week

This week’s Beer of the Week is nothing better than the classic Blue Ribbon. For the price, there is nothing better than a good cold Pabst. And to make a good beer even better, make sure you get it in the 24oz can, the tallboy. Pabst didn’t win that blue ribbon in 1893 for no good reason. Before 1893 PBR was known as just Pabst Select. Then the beer drinking people of the nation realized they had been drinking some other junk with no flavor. The blue ribbon was then awarded to Pabst and the rest is history. It’s summer time now, or at least almost. Apparently Boulder didn’t get the memo about May sunshine, not snow. Summer is the perfect time to sit outside, grill something, watch baseball, stare at a bonfire, throw ping pong balls into red cups – ya know, just do something outside. While you’re outside, take that tallboy of PBR with you and taste why that blue ribbon doesn’t fit on a can of Coors Light or Bud.

My First IPA part 1

OK so I just spent like an hour and a half at the home brew store here in Boulder, and I am pretty sure the guy at the store thinks I am an idiot. I just wanted a good recipe for an IPA and he went off about some crazy advanced brewing styles for like 30 minutes. Whenever I would ask a question he just looked at me like I was a noob to this brewing business. Whatever it was good stuff to learn, but shit I just wanted a recipe not a damn lecture. So anyways I walked away with a good recipe that we both put together, I am looking forward to how this will taste. I will post the full recipe soon. I just finished putting it together in an understandable format, instead of random jargon from this dudes head. I think I got the gist of whatever he was talking about. So the recipe is a hop heavy bold IPA with four different kinds of hops to be added at three different times (triple hops brewed like the special Miller Lite hand crafted beer) that was a joke. My roommate is very hoppy with me for brewing an IPA this time around, I hope he approves. Later this week I will post pictures of the process and a write up of the initial flavor and gravity.

The Beginning

Bold Greg sounds a bit egotistical I feel, but I like it. I can't take full credit for it though, my brother in law, Phil, came up with this as a name for my next brew. I liked it so much that when I eventually start my own brewery I may use it as the name, as my blog states. Bold Greg Brewery.

Blogging has never been something I have thought of doing myself, I feel it is like keeping a journal, and that was always for my sister to do, not me. But now I feel like a blog is something that helps you stand out, and make a fool of themselves. I have a few plans for this blog, one is to promote my love of beer and brewing as I develop my skills and move closer to my dream of owning a brewery. So I will try to post every Sunday or Monday a new beer that me and my friends and family are enjoying. I will also keep you informed of my own personal beer developments. Majority of this blog will be about beer, but there will be some talk of good food and restaurants.

Beer of the week

May 10th - Ranger IPA by New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins

A strong IPA that doesn't leave your mouth feeling dry with hops. A perfect balanced bold flavor from dark caramel malts and hops. If you have an opportunity to try this beer take advantage of it. If you have never had a chance to try any of the New Belgium beers you owe it to yourself as a beer drinker to go get one. Not only is New Belgium a producer of great beer, they believe very strongly in environmental sustainability, 100% of their energy comes from wind power and methane that is produced during the brewing. For more information about this great brewery and how to get some of their beer, visit their website http://www.newbelgium.com/