Mint Chocolate Porter

Now that I’m back from my trip out of town for Thanksgiving I’m happy to be able to start posting again!

One of the great things about Thanksgiving is all of the old friends and acquaintances that come back into town for the weekend. I caught up with all kinds of people I hadn’t seen since high school. That meant that while they described their bank jobs, positions at insurance companies, or careers in the exciting field of human resources I got to talk about driving around the country drinking beer with the brewmasters who make it.

Needless to say, I’m still happy about my decision to write a book about beer!

I don’t know about you but when I’m around old friends we tend to scheme. A couple of people tried to talk to me about the possibility of someday opening a brewery. I had to explain that more than anything else you need two things to open a brewery. Money, and talent as a brewer. I have neither. Although I still have little to no desire to open a brewery I’m still working on my talent as a brewer.

One specific friend of mine, Connor Krause, wants to start brewing and has some unique ideas to try out. We batted a few things around and finally landed on the decision to make a mint chocolate porter. Assuming it comes out well I think it will be the perfect drink for a cold winter evening, especially around the holidays. Connor lives about forty five minutes north of me but we’re trying to figure out a time that works out well for both of us to brew.

I’ll keep you updated on the process as it comes along. Also, the Bavarian hefeweizen turned out very well. It feels strange to drink a hefe in the winter but beer is beer and I’m still proud I managed to brew a decent one regardless of style.

The Homebrewing Guest Blogger Returns!

Welcome to another whenever-I-feel-like-writing post on home brewing! From here on out I'd like to move from general brewing procedure to more specific brewing information. Truly, you don't need this knowledge, but that's like saying that, in order to eat, all you need to know is how to make sandwiches. You'd stay alive, but the boring flavor of sandwiches and lack of creativity involved in making sandwiches would be numbing.

I hate working at Panera.

Anyway, knowing more about brewing and the science of brewing can help you create better tasting, more consistent beers. The result of a little learning is a more flavorful, more complex brewsky that you can feel proud of.

So, mashing!!

Mashing is a complex process, involving enzymes, carbon sugars, and complex by-products that ultimately affect the final flavor of your beer to a surprising degree.

To begin with, the grain used in brewing contains several different carbon sugars. Mashing itself is the process of breaking down the grain structure using enzymes present in the mash in order to more effectively extract the sugars for fermentation. Different enzymes are most effective at different temperatures and pHs so manipulating these factors during your mash can be extremely beneficial. I’ll spare you the boring chemistry and simply tell you that your mash can be manipulated to most effectively break down the grain.

The technique I’ll teach you here is called multi-rest mashing. It involves resting the mash at certain temperatures, activating specific enzymes in order to break down key parts of the grain. The procedure is simple:

1. Heat your mashing water to between 114 and 119 °F
2. Add the grain and stir constantly until the temperature drops to 104 °F.
3. Maintain that temperature (plus or minus 2-3 degrees) for 20 minutes.
4. At the end of 20 minutes, apply heat again, stirring constantly, until the temperature reaches 140 °F.
5. Turn the burner off and hold at temp for another 20 minutes.
6. Apply heat again and raise the temperature to 158 °F.
7. Turn off burner and hold for the final 20 mins.
8. Mash out as normal and continue brewing!

From experience, the resulting beer is world’s better. The difference is immediately noticeable (beer is more developed, mature, with a smoother flavor profile) and the procedure itself truly isn’t that difficult. The most frustrating part of multi-resting is maintaining the temperature, but with practice you can master it.

So that’s it! If you have questions about the science involved or the execution of the procedure, feel free to leave them in the comments section and I will promise to attempt to remember to read them and maybe give an honest effort to possibly answer them.

But seriously, if you have any questions or comments, hit me up.

First Stop - Des Moines

The first official stop to my beer trip came Monday night at El Bait Shop in Des Moines, Iowa. I figured that since I’m going to a ton of breweries in cities all over the United States I should start the trip off here at home. And if that’s what I’m doing, then what could possibly be more appropriate than to hit up a homebrewing event?

I obviously couldn’t show up to a brewery to find out much about homebrewing so instead I did the next best thing; I went to a meeting of the Iowa Brewer’s Union. When I showed up there were something like forty five people, 10 5-gallon kegs, 3 or 4 growlers, and a whole bunch of bottles of homebrew. All of the beer was brought in by members of the club to share with everyone.

The beer selection featured many of the standards such as a Belgian whit, an amber, and other basics. However, a couple were a little more…outlandish. One keg was full of a watermelon beer, something I’ve never heard of before. I’m still not sure if I liked it or not, but I can absolutely say that it was extremely unique! There was also an extremely potent coffee stout brought in by Lauri G, a local barista, that utilized coffee beans ground for a French press. I also enjoyed a brown ale that had a lot of vanilla in it.

The brewers I spoke with were all incredibly friendly and extremely knowledgeable. When I was tasting the vanilla brown ale I was speaking with a guy about the Saints v 46ers game. All I did was mention that it had a pretty strong vanilla flavor and he told me all about how it was probably from extract and not vanilla beans. Of course, I called bull&#!^ and asked how the hell he could tell.

Apparently this guy is for real; I checked when I got home. If a vanilla beer uses vanilla extract instead of beans the flavor and aroma will all emanate from the beer. If beans are used the aroma comes through clearly in the head of a beer. See? I learned something!

The last important thing to remember is that it is completely illegal to sell homebrew. So those 10 or so kegs, multiple growlers and the multitude of bottles were all free for the taking. Free beer every third Monday. Not just that, but unique beers that you’re never going to be able to try again. All free. And still only 40 people show up. I’m always shocked when I walk in a place with free beer and there aren’t 500 people around.

That’s all for tonight. Remember folks, this is only a taste of my evening at the Iowa Brewer’s Union. I got interviews with new members, old members, and current and past group leaders. All of that and more is going to be included in the book I’m writing about the beer trip I embark on Friday. I’m driving all over the country touring breweries and getting interviews with the people who make all the delicious beer I love. Stay tuned for more posts and a ton of pictures from all of the stops I make.

I’ll be at Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City Friday, watch for the post soon afterward!

Personalized Beer Labels

So this is a beer bottle. I’m sure you’re familiar with those. This one originally held Sam Adams, the Boston Lager I think, but I’m not positive.

It is just one of many that I use when I try homebrewing. I always save most my pry off bottles when I’m drinking at home so they can be refilled with my own beer later. Here is the problem, they’re ugly, especially when the labels have been removed. I’m typically not too concerned about aesthetics, especially when it comes to beer, but it still bothers me a little.

You can make your own labels with a few kids of label-maker things. You can get labels that you run through your printer too. Usually either one of those options turn out looking like crap. I know, I’ve tried both.

I just found a website that may well be the solution, myownlabels.com/beer. There are two major draws to the site. First, you can print very few. As few six that are all together on a single sheet. Then you can buy the matching neck labels and back labels to go along with your basic front label.

The other huge draw is the fact that they’re cheap. The most expensive labels are $1.17 each. That’s a little pricey but the lower end goes all of the way down to $0.39. Even with the most expensive label, matching neck label and matching back label it comes out to $2.14/bottle. With each 5 gallon batch of beer averaging 45-50 bottles of beer that comes out to about $122.00/batch. The six pack carriers only come in increments of six, so you would need 12 for a price of $16.00.

That’s a little expensive, but it’s also the absolute most expensive option. While no, this wouldn’t be something you did every time you made up a batch of homebrew it could be pretty neat if you’re doing something classy. Maybe a wedding or something. Either that or maybe you just want to class up a six-pack or two to give away, that would only run you twenty bucks or so for the expensive ones!

If you homebrew, it could be a great thing to check out for something special. If you end up ordering one send me a picture at allhoppedupblog@gmail.com

My Homebrewing Attempt: Bottling

Last week I put up an article about the cooking stage of my attempt at homebrewing a Bavarian Hefeweizen. Today, the bottling!

I checked on my brew a day after I put it in my fermentation bucket. True to form it was bubbling away as the yeast ate my priming sugar and pooped out alcohol. Is that not the most magical thing you’ve ever heard of? Well, the yeast kept kicking out alcohol and bubbles through the airlock for the next three or four days. Then I let it sit a few more days and it was time to bottle it up.

I brought up my beer in the fermentation bucket, sanitized the heck out of my bottling bucket, and I was ready to go. By the way, yes, it is extremely important make sure that everything is sanitized again. Even if you’ve already taken care of it, it won’t hurt to do it again.

I always have trouble getting the flow going between the fermentation bucket and the bottling bucket but once it gets started, it doesn’t stop. I use the extremely simple method of putting the first bucket higher than the second and using a hose as a siphon. I filter the beer with a wire mesh thing I found in my kitchen. Filtering the beer isn’t actually all that important for the first ¾ of the process, but gets pretty crucial in the last bit. The bottom of the fermentation bucket is always covered with a weird sluldge. Filtering is a huge help, but don’t even try to get that last part filtered, it won’t work (I tried once). So when it starts getting low, just give up.

The bottling process is simple, but a little tedious. I attach my siphon hose to the bottling bucket nozzle and the bottle filler goes on the other end of the hose. This was my first time using a bottle filler because before this, I couldn’t figure out what the heck it was. It works extremely well and solved the biggest problem I had in past bottling experiences. That problem was that I would always over or under fill the bottles. The filler puts just the right amount of beer in and when you pull it out, leaves just the right amount of air in the top of the bottle.

Once bottled and capped the beer needs to sit in a cool, dark place for a week to condition. After the week you can either leave the beer where it is or move it to a refrigerator. Either way, the official suggestion is that it needs to age for another three weeks. Personally, I always make sure to add another week or two to that for good measure. To me, it usually tastes a bit better.

By the time my homebrew is ready for drinking I’ll be on my beer trip. I think I’ll be in Fort Worth when it’s ready to drink, maybe I’ll bring a six-pack with me. I’ll let you know how it is when I try it out!

My Homebrewing Attempt

I’ve only homebrewed a couple of times. I’ve had a couple of disasters, but mostly just mediocre beer. I’ve tried a pretty decent number of homebrew that was delicious though, so I keep trying. I figure that even if my batch sucks, I can always boil some bratwurst in it!

This time I bought the Bavarian Hefeweizen ingredient kit from Beer Crazy in Urbandale. It’s a fairly simple kit (which is needed for a guy like me). Instead of having to steep the grains I got one that uses malt extract. The only ingredients were a couple cans of malt extract, liberty hopes, yeast, and priming sugar.

As with most things, the process is simple but the devil is in the details. If you’ve been following the homebrewing guest blog series written by my friend Ian then you’ve got this down, but I’ll give you the brief version.

1st – Sanitize everything you’re going to be using. Then do it again, just to be safe

2nd – Boil 1.5 gallons of water.

3rd – Stir in 1 can of malt extract and 1 oz liberty hops, return to a boil for 35
min

4th – Remove from heat, add second can of malt extract and 1 oz liberty hops

5th – Return to boil for an additional 15 minutes

6th – Put 2.5 gallons cold water into your fermenting bucket (vessel if you want to
sound fancy)

7th – Slowly pour your hot mixture into the fermenting bucket

8th – Once mixture cools to under 90 degrees, sprinkle 1 pack yeast over mixture.
Wait 10 minutes, gently use 1 or 2 spoon strokes to stir yeast in.

9th – Put airlock in the lid of your fermenting bucket and leave it alone for about a week

Coming soon I’ll put up a post about the bottling process. For now, isn't that picture of the bottom of my fermentaion bucket disgusting?

Homebrewing Guest Blogger: I got a job okay?

Welcome to the third installment of my whenever-I-feel-like-posting column about brewing your own beer! Last week (month?) I clued you into the equipment you’d need to become a brewmaster and this week I’ll be piloting my truth plane and carpet knowledge-bombing your brain with the steps it takes to successfully make your first batch (war jokes aren’t in poor taste are they?)

You may need some additional items if your kitchen does not have them already. These items include (for a 1 gallon batch) a stockpot (about 6-10 qts.), 12 empty swing-top bottles (Grolsch bottles or similar, can be ordered online), a strainer, a funnel, a thermometer, honey, and a lot of ice. Once you have these items collected, you’re ready to get started.

Alright, this first step is the most important. I honestly cannot stress enough just how important this is and believe me, when I hear people say that, my brain immediately shuts off. In this case, however, it really does make or break your beer.

Take the sanitizer included with your Brooklyn Brew Shop kit (or the sanitizer you diligently purchased yourself), mix in the proper ratio (given on the package), fill a measuring cup and a spray bottle with the stuff, and sanitize everything. Sanitize the spatulas, funnel, strainer, pots, and your dog. Soak the item, let it sit for a minute, then wipe down with a paper towel (you’re going to go through a lot of paper towels, they’re the most sanitary). Also, keep your tools in the cup of sanitizer to ensure that they’re clean for use.

Once you’ve sterilized your neighborhood, measure the amount of water indicated in your recipe and heat in a pot until it reaches 160 °F. Mix the grain in the water until the temperature drops to 150 °F. This mixture is called the “mash” and should resemble oatmeal (but will not taste like it). Cook this mash for 60 minutes, checking the temperature periodically and applying/removing heat as necessary to stay within the 144-152 °F range. At the end of this 60 minutes “mash out” by heating to 170 °F while stirring constantly.

In a separate pot, heat 1 gallon of water to 170 °F. Set up a strainer over another pot (called a “lautering tun”) in your sanitized sink and pour the mash through the strainer, collecting all the grain in the process; this is called “lautering” (not Lautnering; stop watching Twilight). Take the gallon of water and slowly pour it over the grain, rinsing the sugars from the grain. Recycle this liquid through the grain one more time and you have yourself some good ol’ fashioned “wort”!

Take the wort and apply heat until it boils. Once the wort hits a low boil, add your hops at the prescribed times given in your recipe and stir constantly throughout. The boil lasts 60 minutes and is probably the hardest step. If your boil is too hot, you’ll lose fermentable sugars. If your boil is too low, you won’t get as much out of your hops. It takes practice, but you’ll get it brewmaster. At some point your wort will foam up (called the “hot break”). Simply lower the heat and keep stirring to avoid boil over.

Alright, once the boil is done you’re almost home. Fill your sink with ice, and lots of it. Take the pot off the burner at the end of 60 minutes and place it in the ice bath until it cools to 70 ° (this will take a while). Set up your strainer and funnel over your fermentation jug and pour your cooled wort through it to introduce oxygen. Take your prepared yeast and “pitch” it (toss it in the jug). Shake the jug aggressively and I mean aggressively; I usually set mine on the floor and shake it all over the place. Put your rubber stopper and airlock filled to the second fill line with sanitizer in the top of the jug and place in a cool dark place for two and a half weeks. Note: skip the part in the BBS directions where it talks about a blow off tube since blow off tubes usually just result in the loss of valuable yeast.

And you’re fermenting! It may have made your fiancé complain about the smell (but I’m not bitter) but you’re well on your way to completing your very first batch of homemade beer.

Next time I’ll be discussing bottling and some of these steps in more detail. As always, if you have any questions for me feel free to leave them in the comments section or send me an email at barker.ianjohn@gmail.com.

Cheers!

Free Beer: The 2nd Annual Iowa Homebrew’s Fest

Free Beer!

It’s a phrase that gets everyone’s attention. In the rare instance that someone has to miss out on free beer, they’re usually pretty broken up about it. That’s why I was shocked that the Iowa Homebrew Fest had a pretty meek turnout. I guess the article
Image Source

in Cityview didn’t do quite enough to convince people to drag their lazy butts off their couch for a few hours to suffer the arduous task of imbibing in free homebrewed beer. I thought it was going to be packed shoulder to shoulder. That isn’t to say that no one was there, people came, just not as many as I would have thought.

So here’s the rundown. The Homebrew Fest was sponsored the Iowa Brewer’s Union and Beer Crazy, where it was also held. I showed up around noon and they had an area of the parking lot cordoned off with caution tape wrapped around kegs, more than appropriate!

Inside the beer zone, as I’m calling it, was something like thirty people, a van with attached trailer/grill selling burgers and brats, and a homebrewing set up. It looked like they were doing a seven gallon batch but I didn’t get a chance to talk much with anyone operating it. They were pretty busy getting bits of grain out of their wort after their bag broke when they were steeping it.

They had twelve beers on tap and two in bottles. After being carded I walked over and grabbed a cup that was sitting readily between the two banks of taps. Handwritten on a notebook was the style of beer in each tap and its corresponding tap number.

I started with the amber ale and was pretty disappointed. My first attempt at a homebrew was an amber ale. My first step out from macro-brews was Fat Tire amber ale. Many Americans favorite beer is…you guessed it, an amber ale. It seems like every brewery and home brewer out there tries their hand at an amber so it really takes a good one to impress me. If it were anything but free, I would have been a lot more unhappy. But who am I to complain about free beer?

The next was called “Sailor Spiced Ale” brewed by Dan Haggerty Jr. It was one of the most unique beers I’ve ever tasted! Apparently he added a bit of Sailor Jerry’s spiced rum when he was brewing it. The final product had a strong clove taste, but not overpowering.

From there I tried the Nut Brown, the Spruce, and the Iowa State Fair winning Porter (which was very good). The unfortunate thing about homebrew is that no, none of you will ever have a chance to try any of these beers. But c'est la vie, brew your own!

Oh, and it was also my first trip out to Beer Crazy in Urbandale, Iowa. Very good beer selection, very helpful staff, and a 10% discount on the already cheap homebrew kit I bought today. I think I’m going to become a regular customer over there!

Homebrewing Guest Blogger: You’re Going to Brew Dammit

Welcome to the second weekly installment of "Ian J Barker's Kosher Brewing Funtime Extravaganza For Adults, Mazeltov!" This week I'll give a brief rundown of the brewing types and go over the equipment you'll need to make your first batch.

Types of Brewing

Let's get right down to it. For homebrewers, there are generally only two methods of brewing beer: extract brewing and all-grain brewing. Extract brewing uses malt extract while all-grain brewing uses actual malted grain. The difference you ask? While malt extract brewing is easier and more consistent, all-grain brewing is considered by most to be the true brewing experience.

Malt extract consists of the dehydrated sugar collected from cooking malted grain and some hops. It comes in cans, jugs, or bags in different roast levels and, like I mentioned earlier, results in a more consistent brew, primarily because the extract is pre-prepared. All-grain brewing on the other hand allows the brewmaster (that's right, call yourself a brewmaster) to customize the sugars and starches that come out in the cooked wort. By cooking the grain yourself, you will have infinitely more control over what your beer tastes like.

Equipment

Now, for your first batch I recommend buying a brewing kit. The 1 gallon brewing kits at Brooklyn Brew Shop are what I began with and I swear by them. They give you all the instructions, equipment, and, most importantly, confidence to really get your feet wet. Furthermore, the size of the kit makes it easier (and less costly) to experiment.

The kit comes with a few items: a 1 gallon glass carboy (jug), a 3-piece airlock, a rubber stopper with a hole in it, a lab thermometer, some plastic tubing, a tubing clamp, a racking cane, and a packet of sanitizer, along with the grain, hops, and sugars needed for brewing whatever beer you choose. If you choose not to purchase a kit with equipment, then these are the essential pieces you need to purchase (though not many retailers sell one-gallon sized equipment and five gallon brewing is simply too much until you know what you're doing).

However, I do recommend that, no matter how excited you are, whether you purchase your equipment independently or not, that you at least purchase an ingeredient kit with pre-measured grain, hops, and sugars. Frankly, I don't even know how to make successful recipes yet!

So you're thinking, "what do I do now, oh Guru of the Grain, with all these dohickeys, thingamajigs, and WTFs?" Well, children, that story will begin to unfold...

Next week.

Cheers!


Note:
Now, at times I may be throwing a lot of information at you all at once. I promise it will all be cleared up. Some of the information in the coming weeks may get a little technical, but I promise I'll do my best to give you the know-how you need to become a real brewmaster. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section or drop me an email at barker.ianjohn@gmail.com. As an unemployed college graduate, I have nothing better to do, I assure you.


Note from Brian:
I’ve got a lot of readers in Des Moines and wanted to give a little info for those in the area. Homebrewing supplies in the area are available from Heartland Homebrew Supply or Beer Crazy. Right now the Heartland Homebrew site is under construction and the Beer Crazy site is pretty weak. Both of the stores are pretty good though, go in and check them out.

Many other readers are around Fort Worth. Around there check out the American Firehouse Brewing Supply, Brewhaus, and Brew-Monkey. I haven’t been to any of those so I can’t vouch for them, but please let me know if you’ve been there.

If you have any other suggestions for homebrew shops in your area feel free to post them in a comment!

Homebrewing Guest Blogger

Okay, good news! I've tried homebrewing three or four times and it worked out okay, but I have a friend who is much better at it! Over the course of the next few weeks a more accomplished homebrewer and close friend of mine is going to be writing a series of posts on the topic of homebrewing. Ian was regularly published in the Iowa State Daily, keeps a blog here, and of course, is an avid beer drinker. In fact, we might even be lucky enough for him to write on a few other beer topics sometime down the road as well.

So with no further adieu, Ian!

Ever since my first sip of Hoegaarden in the summer of 2008, I've had a love affair with craft beer. The taste, the texture, and the sense of place that comes from a quality brew is as much a spiritual experience as it is a physical one. Which would explain why monks are so daffy for the stuff...

But even more interesting than drinking the beer is making the beer. At a place like Anheuser-Busch or Miller-Coors, they use the same ol' process, over and over again, with little creativity outside of the advertising department and then hock it on unsuspecting college kids (read: me) while quietly raking in mountains of money. Craft brewing on the other hand takes creativity, consistency, and a certain instinct. Craft beer can be frozen or aged, chocolate or raspberry, light or dark, and everything in between and this continuum of beers comes from a continuum of methods, each more radical (read: ridiculous) than the last.

But truth be told, basic beer making isn't that difficult. You (read: you) can make a high quality brew for even cheaper than you can find it on a store shelf. The fact is that with a little know-how, some persistence, and some diligent note-taking, anyone can make good beer.

There's only four steps: mashing, lautering, boiling, and fermentation, the equipment that you need really doesn't cost that much, and the sense of accomplishment you get from tasting that first delicious (while rough around the edges) batch of your beer is indescribable. Like woodworking or dog-grooming, it's a hands-on, good-for-the-soul activity that brings far more real pride than I can possibly describe (so maybe it's not quite like dog-grooming).

So, if you find yourself inspired, curious, or even disbelieving, feel free to follow AHU for the next few weeks as I outline the equipment, steps, and resources required for brewing your first batch of beer. I'll make some more explicit recommendations for equipment brands and books but feel free to explore for yourself.

After all, it's that exploration, that inconsistency, and that utter accomplishment when it all comes together that makes craft brewing what it is: perfect.