Special B and a Dirt Bag

I may have been pretty behind when it comes to blogging, but I have not been behind on brewing.  In fact, I have three new Bold Greg brews to tell you about. 

They’re all a little different and all brewed with my new homemade equipment.  That’s kind of a lie - only one of my new brew toys is homemade, the mash tun - and damn, am I proud of that thing.  With a regular 10 gallon water cooler, some standard plumbing valves and Pex tubing and a little guidance from the interweb, I made myself a homebrewer’s dream of a mash tun.  My first try brewing with it was a total failure.  The grains clogged up the valve and completely defeated the purpose of my hard work.  Round two was way better, as I solved the straining issues.  The other exciting brew toy is my not-so-homemade wort chiller.  No more ice baths to chill the wort down to yeast-pitching temp.

Okay, now on to the beers that benefit from my new equipment.  Let’s talk about the Dirt Bag first.  I decided to try some darker grains on this IPA.  This beer is also Ivan’s first experience in the Bold Greg BrewHause (pictured).  He was great to have around, because you know, 15 pounds of grain and 5 gallons of water can be pretty heavy, and Ivan’s pretty strong.  Just kidding, he did more work than just lifting, glad to have you in KC big guy.  So the beer, it looks awesome and smells even better – totally malty, dry hopped stud of beer.  It has a great nose, very obviously dry hopped, and smells like something Avery got a hold of and hopped up.  It looks like a malty Scottish Ale.  And then you get to this aftertaste.   Way too earthy… aka it tastes like dirt.  And I don’t mean like a hint of open-air, mountainy-soil goodness.  It really, actually tastes like dirt.  But hell, the batch made about 40 bottles, and as most of you who know me well would agree, I’m not the type to let a little dirt get in my way.   I plan to enjoy every one of them.

There is not as much to say about the Special B pale ale that’s cookin’ right now because it is not in bottles yet.  I am calling it a “Special B” pale because I am using a grain called Special B.  Real original, I know, but whatever, I like it.  I transferred it into the secondary fermenter this week and was able to get a good understanding of what it will taste like out of the bottle.  It’s a solid, slightly bitter, raisiny-flavored pale ale.  I’m pretty excited to taste the final product. I promise I will report when it’s done.

And now, for the beer that I am most proud of lately - a blood orange wheat.  Hold on, before you go calling me copycat or plagiarist or something, I already know.  Dogfish Head made a beer a while back called the “Blood Orange Wheat” - Where do you think I got the recipe idea?  I altered the Dogfish recipe quite a bit though, adding almost as many hops as an IPA and using the blood orange peel as fermenter additions.  It is quite awesome, I really do have to say.  It doesn’t much taste like a wheat beer though.  It tastes more like a light, mildly fruity pale ale with a citrusy nose and finish.

Thanks to everyone who reads my recently infrequent posts.  I post when I can, and I hope to kick it up a little as we head into the summery months.  Feel free to send any post suggestions or burning questions (you know you want to) my way.  Thanks, and I’ll will drink one with you later.

Bout to Get Drunk on Bacon

Jack Daniels, cheese, bacon, ground beef, bacon, mushrooms, bacon, more cheese, more bacon, JACK DANIELS! MORE BACON!!!  Yes, Ivan and I made a dinner that consisted of Jack Daniels and bacon, then we put some burger into it.  Awesome!

Recent Beer'ing

In the past few months or so we (Mike and Matthew, my cousins, and I) have made three beers that turned out stellar.  Well maybe shades of stellar, and one that turned out just plain weak.  The chocolate oatmeal stout was awesome, really one of the top two beers I have ever made.  That beer I did as a partial grain, and it just goes to show that extract brewing does not have quite the same effect as all grain.  A little local recognition for my brews, we had a brewer from Boulevard on site during our annual holiday party at Travois, and he was impressed with the stout and decided to take a few home with him.  I feel like that was a real test for me, having somebody other than family and friends tell me what they think of my beer.   

Next, Matthew, Mike and I put together a honey amber ale with some leftover ingredients that Mike had laying around.  That also turned out awesome!  We added a pound of honey to the boil and that really sent the alcohol content high.  We tasted it a few times between fermentation and bottling, it tasted really sweet, almost too sweet.  We thought maybe a pound of honey was too much, but the two weeks it spent carbonating in the bottles was the perfect amount of time to mellow out the sweetness and give it a perfect sweet malty flavor.  I was really impressed with how well it turned out for just using some ingredients that were laying around.

And the third beer?  Well you already know about that fail, so no need to dwell on that fallen soldier anymore.

Up next we hope to do a repeat of the honey amber, and have a dry hopped IPA just in time for the warm KC summer.

Chocolate Love Day/ Beer of the Week

If you’re from Kansas City and you love chocolate and beer, you are likely familiar with Christopher Elbow and The Boulevard Brewing Company, respectively.  If you’re in Boulder think Chocolove and Avery, or if you’re in Red Lodge, think Kings Cupboard and Red Lodge Ales.   Fancy chocolate and good beer.  So what do you get when you put them both together in one bottle?

 

In Red Lodge you get the Chocolate Stout, which is by far one of my favorite beers ever, especially when it’s served on nitro in Sam’s Tap Room.  In Boulder you get, well, I have no idea because I haven’t heard of any good beer-chocolate combos there.  But it would be a good idea.  You get where I’m going with this.

In KC anyways, Christopher Elbow and Boulevard are the best at what they do, so when they decided to team up and make a chocolate beer, it would be an understatement to say it was one of the most talked about beers in Kansas City.  You didn’t have to be a beer snob to know about it either.  The newspapers and blogs of Kansas City were all over this beer.  The exact release date was not known until about a three days before it was released, which only made the hype that much greater.  The well-stocked KC liquor stores were only getting about four cases each, and if you were not on a list days before the stuff went on sale, you were SOL.  Well, not totally, but it would have been tough.  So now, on this St. Valentine’s Day evening, your best bet of getting some of this sweet stuff is to take your lovely date to one of the few restaurants or bars that got the Chocolate Ale on tap.  For more info on where to actually get this chocolate nectar of the beer gods, check out this blog.  It's a great blog and the guy who writes it does a great job of relaying KC beer world happenings.

OK, now for my actual review of the beer.  When most people would think of a chocolate beer, they’d probably picture a stout, porter or something malty and dark.  Not this beer.  Chocolate Ale is a wonderful light bronze color, nothing like a stout or a porter.  Think of a pale ale, add a stupid amount of chocolate and get rid of the hops.  Most chocolate beers have just a hint of chocolate, and it mainly comes from the roasted malt anyways, but once again, not this beer.

 

This beer is all chocolate.  If you heated it up, you could toss some marshmallows on top and call it hot cocoa.  Frozen it would be a chocolate milkshake.  Totally chocolate forward, chocolate nose, chocolate middle and chocolate finish.  But somehow it’s not too chocolaty.  It’s just right.  If you do have the chance to taste this beer, sit back and sip slowly.  I have three left and would love to share some.   Come by, and we’ll pop one of these gems open.

*UPDATE*

It's now being sold on ebay for $75 a bottle, wow!  It's damn good but, thats a bit high.

FAIL!!

Well, I have officially had my first failure batch.  Last week it came time to bottle the IPA that was my first try at all-grain brewing.  I thought everything was going well… not so much.  Brew day went smoothly with no problems.  I mashed in my kettle and was able to keep the temperature around 150° pretty easily, not dropping too much in an hour.  I took the starting gravity, and it came in right on the mark at 1.050, right where I needed it to be to give me about 6% ABV.  Perfect start.

Then it happened.  I cooled the wort and put it in the carboy, then topped it off to five gallons, adding maybe a gallon of tap water.  That was the problem.  Where with other brews (extract brewing), this was a normal step in the process, I should have just left it alone and not added any more water to this all-grain batch.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think anything of it at the time.  The beer sat through primary fermentation with no noticeable issues.

 Then came time to add the dry hops.  So I decided to taste it just to see how things were going.  The smell was awesome - full of hops and a perfectly citrus nose.  The color was way too light though, and I should have known something was wrong right there.  Then I tasted it, and knew something was wrong.  It was far too weak to be anything close to beer.  Being hopeful, I decided to continue with dry hopping it and letting it condition for another 10 days or so. 

Then it was time for bottling.  I tasted it again, and Meg tasted it, and my cousins tasted it, and we all agreed that it was just too weak (euphemism for terrible) to bottle.  Bottling can be quite a hassle all on its own, so I was not about to spend more time on this watery beer.  So…. down the drain it went (video to come soon, once I figure out how to post a video). 

Anyways, this fail was just a minor setback and is clearly not going to keep me from making more beer.  I promptly went out and got the proper hardware to build myself a real mash tun, or at least real enough for me.  I made it out of a 10 gallon Igloo water cooler, and it rocks.  Ever wonder what that is or how to make one?  I learned here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Converting_a_cooler_to_a_mash_tun

 More all-grain brewing to come!  Next up is an Irish lager just in time for St. Patty’s. 


OK so I figured out how to post a video, neat!