Mainely Awesome

Meg and I just returned from a fantastic week long trip to Maine. The scenery was beautiful, the hiking was fantastic, and the beer was pretty damn good. All of the successful ingredients for a relaxing vacation.

In addition to touring and visiting many fine brew pubs and beer bars, we had the opportunity to tour the Allagash Brewery. A fantastic way to spend a few hours if you find yourself around the Portland, ME area. Additional highlights were Navare Res and Gritty McDuff's in Portland, as well as, Lumpoc Cafe in Bar Harbor.

A few pictures from the trip:


Standing next to a couple of barrels of my favorite wood-aged brew, Allagash Curieux


Meg hanging out between the bubble mountains


The Maine shoreline

The End of Summer 2011, San Fran, and an Irene Victim

Well its official, Summer 2011 is over folks. That's the bad news. The good news is summer lasted at least a week longer this year. Successfully calling the end of summer has been this blog's wheelhouse since 2008. The last three summers ended on August 15th, August 7th, and August 14th for the years 2010, 2009, and 2008, respectively. How have I been able to call the end of summer so successfully? Oktoberfest, that sometimes coppery sometime golden delicious, German larger has been hitting the shelves. Indicating the end of summer. I've gotten a chance to imbibe Oktoberfests brewed by Stoudts, Schafly, Weihenstephaner and Paulaner. And the Stoudts so far has been my favorite. But there are no losers in this group. However, there has been no way for me to sufficiently judge 'fest brews without the release of my all time favorite Okfest brewed by Left Hand. It is the barometer against all other 'fests are measured. Regardless, drink up and enjoy the cool deliciousness that is Oktoberfest. Football is on its way.

Which brings me to my second point, San Francisco is a cool town, but I thought I'd find better beer there. The whole trip wasn't a bust, I was able to run by Toronado for a pint of Russian River Pliny the Elder. Additionally I was able to find this great belgian restaurant called La Trappe in the North beach neighborhood. I had a russian river supplication, which is a wild ale brewed with cherries, some might call it a kreik. I had a hankering for a sour ale and this brew was excellent. I finished the night off with a bottle of The Lost Abbey's Angel's Share. An amazingly complex brew. Start with a belgian quad and then hit it with some bugs to give it a sour twang and then age it in oak barrels for nine months. Liquid Artwork!

For my third and final act, our home desktop computer seems to have become a victim of the hurricane. Base on some Google searching today, it looks likes it has a fried power supply unit and possibly a fried motherboard , or mobo for you computer geeks out there. Currently we are working with an old laptop that Meg used in grad school and neither one of us cared for it. If we decide to make the jump to buy a new comp, should we buy a mac? Possibly a MacBook Pro? Thoughts?

Go Hokies!

Women and Beer, both works of art ...

... despite how beautiful they are separately, nothing is more beautiful than a woman who loves beer.

Mash up to Full cups

I had the opportunity to keg the surly bender clone this weekend. Nothing quite beats the convenience of kegging. Today after work seemed the perfect time to pour up full glass and see what its all about. I enjoyed it immensely. The perfect mixture of sweet maltiness and some roasty toasty flavors too, but finished off with some nice finishing hops. In short this beer drinks well. I definitely recommend this clone kit from Northern Brewer.

Honey Basil Pale Ale

You heard about it. It'd been done already. A couple years ago I brewed a Honey Basil Pale Ale. Well it just so happens that I'd like to brew an all-grain version of that beer. I plan to keep it simple with one twist, belgian yeast. So the recipe should look a little like this:

7lbs - Pale Ale Malt
1lbs - Honey Matt
.5lbs - Malted Wheat
.5lbs - Malto Dextrin

1.5 oz of EKG at 60
1 oz of EKG at 20
2 oz of fresh basil at 5

Yeast White labs Belgian Golden

I'm also putting together a recipe for a Farmhouse Brett Saison.

Keep Brewing, don't ever let up. Use your tanks and keep them full.

Holz

Galaxy Hut coming to Falls Church

Galaxy Hut will be opening a second location planned for this fall in Falls Church at 709 W. Broad St. Right down the street from Mad Fox.

Mash ups

I finally got the opportunity to employ the new all-grain equipment that Meg got me for my birthday several weeks ago. It was officially my first 100% all grain batch of homebrew. I've done plenty of partial mashes over the last couple of years, but I hadn't made the jump to all-grain. I usually don't buy kits, but I thought I'd play it safe and choose one of the excellent kits at Northern Brewer for my first all-grain batch. It had to be something malt-centered, as AG brewing is best at showing off the beauty of glorious malt. I decided to go with the Surly Bender clone kit that NB is currently offering. Every Surly beer I've ever had has been great, so I figured I couldn't go wrong. All in all everything went pretty well. I had a little difficulty hitting a mash-out temperature of 168F on my first go at it, but that was nothing another gallon of boiling water couldn't take care of. The recipe was as follows:

Surly Bender
Style: American Brown Ale
Type: All Grain Calories: 196
Rating: 4.0 Efficiency: 70 %
IBU's: 32.78 Boil Size: 5.83 Gal
Color: 27.8 SRM Batch Size: 5.00 Gal
Boil Time: 60 minutes
Estimated Actual
Brew Date: - 07/02/2011
OG: 1.060 1.062
FG: 1.015 -
ABV: 5.90 % - %
Serve Date: 08/20/2011 / /

Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp Estimated Actual
Primary 14 days @ 69.0°F 07/02/2011 07/02/2011
Secondary 21 days @ 72.0°F 07/16/2011 -
Bottle/Keg 14 days @ 74.0°F 08/06/2011 -

Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
8.00 lbs 64.00 % Pale Malt (2 Row) US 60 mins 1.036
2.00 lbs 16.00 % Aromatic Malt 60 mins 1.036
0.75 lbs 6.00 % Simpsons Medium 60 mins 1.035
0.75 lbs 6.00 % Special B Malt 60 mins 1.030
0.75 lbs 6.00 % Simpsons Golden Naked Oats 60 mins 1.033
0.25 lbs 2.00 % Simpsons Chocolate 60 mins 1.034

Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
0.50 ozs 9.24 Williamette 60 mins 5.50
0.50 ozs 23.53 Columbus (Tomahawk) 60 mins 14.00
2.50 ozs 0.00 Williamette 0 mins 5.50

Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg British Ale II Wyeast Labs 1335

Additions
(none)

Mash Profile
Sacch' Rest 60 min @ 153.0°F
Add 18.75 qt ( 1.50 qt/lb ) water @ 167.6°F
Mashout 10 min @ 168.0°F
Heat to 168.0°F over 2 mins

I hear it bubbling away right now. Can't wait to keg it in about 5 weeks.

-Holz