As a young brewer I messed around quite a bit. Non-stop brewing around with all sorts of pretty and fanciful hops. Citra, chinook, cascade, summit, amarillo, blah, blah, blah. The list goes on and on, and I fear that I may have even forgotten some of their names. I've come to find that there is just one hop for me and Centennial is her name. For the folks that know me this probably isn't a surprise. She shares the same name as the High School I graduated from. The year she was first released to the public, 1990, was a remarkable year for the young HolzBrew. Grunge music starting to set in and all sorts of alt rock bands hitting the airwaves. It was a match made in Heaven. But seriously folks is there a better hop varietal for an american IPA? Look at some of the bests, Stone IPA, Bells two hearted, and Founders Centennial Ipa, the perfect blend of citrus and floral. Need I say more?
Centennial Millennial
Style: American IPA
OG: 1.070
Type: All Grain
FG: 1.018
Rating: 0.0
ABV: 6.81 %
Calories: 229
IBU's: 92.88
Efficiency: 70 %
11.00 lbs 83.02 % Pale Malt (2 Row) US 60 mins 1.036
10.00 ozs. 4.72 % Cara-Pils/Dextrine 60 mins 1.033
10.00 ozs 4.72 % Briess 2-Row Caramel 20L 60 mins 1.034
1.00 lbs 7.55 % Turbinado 60 mins 1.044
Hops Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
1.00 ozs 31.62 Centennial 60 mins 10.00
2.00 ozs 38.31 Centennial 20 mins 10.00
2.00 ozs 22.94 Centennial 10 mins 10.00
2.00 ozs 0.00 Centennial 0 mins 10.00
1.00 ozs Centennial 21 days 10.00
Yeasts Amount Name Laboratory / ID
2.00 pkg Safale us-05 (null) Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
1.00 oz Whirlfloc Tablet 15 mins Boil
Mash Profile
Medium Body Infusion In 60 min @ 154.0°F Add 15.31 qt ( 1.25 qt/lb ) water @ 166.0°F
Sparge Sparge 16.47 qt of 175.0°F water over 45 mins
Carbonation Amount Type Beer Temp CO2 Vols 3.7 psi Force Carbonation 35.0°F 1.90
Get hoppy centennial style,
HolzBrew
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
All Grain Brewing in Close Quarters
Everyone always asks me how I brew in a condo. The answer is that it isn't all that easy. But a little creativity goes a long way. Below is a video of my sparging setup from this past weekend. Sorry for the sideways video, I shot it on my iPod and I have no idea how to rotate it 90 degrees.
I look forward to having a place where I can spread out and brew outside. But until then, brewing in the kitchen will have to suffice.
Holz
I look forward to having a place where I can spread out and brew outside. But until then, brewing in the kitchen will have to suffice.
Holz
Things to Look Forward to in 2012
As the New Year kicks into first gear and 2011 is in the rear view, its exciting to think about the "beery" things to come in 2012. Here are four things to look forward to in the regional beer scene this year:
1. Spacebar in Falls Church
The owners of Galaxy Hut, in Arlington, plan to open a second location in Falls Church across the street from Mad Fox Brewing by the end of January 2012.
Straight from their Facebook page:
"Spacebar will have 24 rotating "craft" beers on tap, about the same amount of bottled beer, and a few wine options. We do not have plans to serve hard liquor.
The food menu will focus on the grilled cheese sandwich, endless varieties of which will be created behind the bar on a five-foot flat top grill. There will also be galaxy hut staples like tots and veggie chili dogs."
2. 3 Stars Brewing Company in DC opens their own brewery
As reported by the Washington City Paper:
"D.C.-based 3 Stars Brewing Company has been cranking out all sorts of suds this year, including a rye-based pale ale called B.W. Rye and a light, spicy farmhouse ale dubbed Syndicate Saison. None of these libations, however, were actually brewed in the District. The local company has been collaborating with breweries in Baltimore, Delaware and other places while its own 15,000-square-foot facility is under construction in D.C.'s Takoma neighborhood."
3. Hellbender Brewing Company
A new brewery planning to open in mid-2012 will focus largely on supply DC bars with kegs. Their flagship beers will include a Kolsch, a red ale, and an IPA.
4. West Coast Expansion East
Both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium Brewing are looking to expand on the east coast by building a brewery here. There has been much speculation about the location of these new brewing facilities, but most of it has centered around the Virginia/North Carolina areas. I respect everything that SN brews and I look forward to enjoying it that much fresher.
How about you? Please feel free to comment on new breweries, bars, brews, etc. you look forward to this year.
HolzBrew
1. Spacebar in Falls Church
The owners of Galaxy Hut, in Arlington, plan to open a second location in Falls Church across the street from Mad Fox Brewing by the end of January 2012.
Straight from their Facebook page:
"Spacebar will have 24 rotating "craft" beers on tap, about the same amount of bottled beer, and a few wine options. We do not have plans to serve hard liquor.
The food menu will focus on the grilled cheese sandwich, endless varieties of which will be created behind the bar on a five-foot flat top grill. There will also be galaxy hut staples like tots and veggie chili dogs."
2. 3 Stars Brewing Company in DC opens their own brewery
As reported by the Washington City Paper:
"D.C.-based 3 Stars Brewing Company has been cranking out all sorts of suds this year, including a rye-based pale ale called B.W. Rye and a light, spicy farmhouse ale dubbed Syndicate Saison. None of these libations, however, were actually brewed in the District. The local company has been collaborating with breweries in Baltimore, Delaware and other places while its own 15,000-square-foot facility is under construction in D.C.'s Takoma neighborhood."
3. Hellbender Brewing Company
A new brewery planning to open in mid-2012 will focus largely on supply DC bars with kegs. Their flagship beers will include a Kolsch, a red ale, and an IPA.
4. West Coast Expansion East
Both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium Brewing are looking to expand on the east coast by building a brewery here. There has been much speculation about the location of these new brewing facilities, but most of it has centered around the Virginia/North Carolina areas. I respect everything that SN brews and I look forward to enjoying it that much fresher.
How about you? Please feel free to comment on new breweries, bars, brews, etc. you look forward to this year.
HolzBrew
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Happy Brew Years
Happy Brew Years to you and yours!
Currently brewing up a little something special for the New Year. Something big and brown inspired by a recent recipe contributed by Drew Beechum (http://www.stoutguy.com/) in BeerAdvocate magazine. My recipe is a bit different.
I'm thinking of adding oak cubes soaked in spiced rum. Thoughts?
Recipe:
The End of History
Style: Strong Scotch Ale OG: 1.134
Type: All Grain FG: 1.039
Rating: 0.0 ABV: 12.44 %
Calories: 439 IBU's: 40.40
Efficiency: 75 % Boil Size: 4.89 Gal
Color: 14.9 SRM Batch Size: 4.00 Gal
Boil Time: 120 minutes
Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp
Primary 7 days @ 65.0°F
Secondary 45 days @ 72.0°F
Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
1.00 lbs 5.00 % Briess Caramel 60L 120 mins 1.034
9.00 lbs 45.00 % Simpsons Golden Promise 120 mins 1.034
1.00 lbs 5.00 % Fawcett Flaked Maize 120 mins 1.034
9.00 lbs 45.00 % Crisp Maris Otter 120 mins 1.038
Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
1.50 ozs 32.16 Northern Brewer 60 mins 8.50
0.50 ozs 8.24 Northern Brewer 30 mins 8.50
Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg Scottish Ale Wyeast Labs (null)
Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
1.00 oz Whirlfloc Tablet 15 mins Boil
Mash Profile
Medium Body Infusion In 90 min @ 157.0°F
Add 25.00 qt ( 1.25 qt/lb ) water @ 170.0°F
Carbonation
(none)
Notes
Add four ounces of Ghanian Cacao Nibs during secondary
Get creative in the New (Brew) Year,
HolzBrew
Currently brewing up a little something special for the New Year. Something big and brown inspired by a recent recipe contributed by Drew Beechum (http://www.stoutguy.com/) in BeerAdvocate magazine. My recipe is a bit different.
I'm thinking of adding oak cubes soaked in spiced rum. Thoughts?
Recipe:
The End of History
Style: Strong Scotch Ale OG: 1.134
Type: All Grain FG: 1.039
Rating: 0.0 ABV: 12.44 %
Calories: 439 IBU's: 40.40
Efficiency: 75 % Boil Size: 4.89 Gal
Color: 14.9 SRM Batch Size: 4.00 Gal
Boil Time: 120 minutes
Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp
Primary 7 days @ 65.0°F
Secondary 45 days @ 72.0°F
Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
1.00 lbs 5.00 % Briess Caramel 60L 120 mins 1.034
9.00 lbs 45.00 % Simpsons Golden Promise 120 mins 1.034
1.00 lbs 5.00 % Fawcett Flaked Maize 120 mins 1.034
9.00 lbs 45.00 % Crisp Maris Otter 120 mins 1.038
Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
1.50 ozs 32.16 Northern Brewer 60 mins 8.50
0.50 ozs 8.24 Northern Brewer 30 mins 8.50
Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg Scottish Ale Wyeast Labs (null)
Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
1.00 oz Whirlfloc Tablet 15 mins Boil
Mash Profile
Medium Body Infusion In 90 min @ 157.0°F
Add 25.00 qt ( 1.25 qt/lb ) water @ 170.0°F
Carbonation
(none)
Notes
Add four ounces of Ghanian Cacao Nibs during secondary
Get creative in the New (Brew) Year,
HolzBrew
Monday, October 24, 2011
We be jammin'
A few years ago, Meg and I were in Portland eating dinner at the Deschutes Brewpub and we had a fantastic sour ale. After inquiring about the name, we were told that it was called St. Ryan's, which Meg loved because that was her maiden name (That's right, I married Meg Ryan). The beer was a one-off of their regular sour brown ale the dissident. This one off creation had marion berries (insert DC mayor joke here) added during secondary fermentation and it was good. Fast forward a couple of years, I'm sitting on 5 gallons of lambic that I brewed approximately 1 year ago, so its just starting to get to the lambic drinkable stage. What do I do to this finely aged, if not soured, beer? Well that glass of St. Ryan's is still swimming around up there in my head, and so I thought I'd try to add marion berries to this lambic. Well guess what? It's really hard to find marion berries outside of Oregon.
So I was forced to settle on 4 jars of marion berry jam. I added this jam yesterday to the fermenter and we shall see how she turns out in the next couple of months.
Holz
So I was forced to settle on 4 jars of marion berry jam. I added this jam yesterday to the fermenter and we shall see how she turns out in the next couple of months.
Holz
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Old Vine Barleywine
The cold and nasty weather here in DC as of late has made me yearn for a blood warming barleywine. Fortunately, this past Christmas I brewed a big English style barley wine, Old Vine Barleywine. During secondary I added merlot juice and aged this brew on french oak for approximately 4 months. Well, I'm glad I did because it is the perfect companion for a cold rainy sunday afternoon/evening.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Bonkers for Basil Brew
A while back I mentioned that I was interested in trying my hand at another basil brew. Well, I made time today to actually make that happen.
You have a couple of options when brewing with herbs. The big three are 1) add herbs at 5 minutes left in the boil, 2) add herbs at flameout, or 3) create a vodka/herb potion and add at bottling time. The last basil pale ale I brewed several years ago was good, but I felt that the basil flavor faded in to a medicinal taste after a few weeks. This may just be the natural progression of things, but this time I did a few things to try to prevent the "medicinal" taste. First, instead of slicing and dicing up the basil, which can release a whole host of tastes, I froze the whole basil leaves the night before. I've been told that this helps to release the natural oils in the basil leaves without busting out things like chlorophyll (more like bora-phyll). Any truth to this story??? No idea, I'll keep you posted. Additionally, I figured that adding the herbs at flameout involved less boiling and hopefully would minimize any harsh flavors extracted from the basil leaves. I may create a vodka-basil potion (nothing complicated here, 1) add herbs to vodka, 2) let sit for a week, and 3) Add to beer until you've reached the desired taste) if the basil flavor and aroma is not pronounced enough.
The following is the final recipe I put together (I use iBrewmaster to keep track of my recipes and batches, nice software, but the copy and pasting into blogger is only so-so):
Belgian Basil Pale Ale
Style: Belgian Pale Ale
Type: All Grain Calories: 192
Rating: 0.0 Efficiency: 75 %
IBU's: 41.43 Boil Size: 5.83 Gal
Color: 8.2 SRM Batch Size: 5.00 Gal
Boil Time: 60 minutes
Estimated Actual
Brew Date: - 09/18/2011
OG: 1.059 1.060
FG: 1.013 -
ABV: 6.03 % - %
Serve Date: 10/22/2011 / /
Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp Estimated Actual
Primary 14 days @ 74.0°F 09/18/2011 09/18/2011
Secondary 21 days @ 72.0°F 10/01/2011 -
Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
7.00 lbs 70.00 % Dingemans Pale Ale 60 mins 1.037
1.00 lbs 10.00 % Dingemans Pale Wheat 60 mins 1.038
1.00 lbs 10.00 % Honey Malt 60 mins 1.037
1.00 lbs 10.00 % Turbinado 60 mins 1.044
Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
1.50 ozs 25.80 Goldings, East Kent 60 mins 5.00
1.50 ozs 15.63 Goldings, East Kent 20 mins 5.00
Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg Belgian Golden Ale White Labs (null)
Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
8.00 oz Malto-Dextrine 15 mins Boil
Mash Profile
Medium Body Infusion In 60 min @ 152.0°F
Add 13.50 qt ( 1.50 qt/lb ) water @ 166.4°F
Sparge
Sparge 16.50 qt of 175.0°F water over 60 mins
Carbonation
Amount Type Beer Temp CO2 Vols
8.1 psi Force Carbonation 38.0°F 2.20
Notes
Freeze 1.3 ounces of fresh basil.
Add basil to pot at flameout
Nothing is more full of promise than your next batch of beer,
HolzBrew
You have a couple of options when brewing with herbs. The big three are 1) add herbs at 5 minutes left in the boil, 2) add herbs at flameout, or 3) create a vodka/herb potion and add at bottling time. The last basil pale ale I brewed several years ago was good, but I felt that the basil flavor faded in to a medicinal taste after a few weeks. This may just be the natural progression of things, but this time I did a few things to try to prevent the "medicinal" taste. First, instead of slicing and dicing up the basil, which can release a whole host of tastes, I froze the whole basil leaves the night before. I've been told that this helps to release the natural oils in the basil leaves without busting out things like chlorophyll (more like bora-phyll). Any truth to this story??? No idea, I'll keep you posted. Additionally, I figured that adding the herbs at flameout involved less boiling and hopefully would minimize any harsh flavors extracted from the basil leaves. I may create a vodka-basil potion (nothing complicated here, 1) add herbs to vodka, 2) let sit for a week, and 3) Add to beer until you've reached the desired taste) if the basil flavor and aroma is not pronounced enough.
The following is the final recipe I put together (I use iBrewmaster to keep track of my recipes and batches, nice software, but the copy and pasting into blogger is only so-so):
Belgian Basil Pale Ale
Style: Belgian Pale Ale
Type: All Grain Calories: 192
Rating: 0.0 Efficiency: 75 %
IBU's: 41.43 Boil Size: 5.83 Gal
Color: 8.2 SRM Batch Size: 5.00 Gal
Boil Time: 60 minutes
Estimated Actual
Brew Date: - 09/18/2011
OG: 1.059 1.060
FG: 1.013 -
ABV: 6.03 % - %
Serve Date: 10/22/2011 / /
Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp Estimated Actual
Primary 14 days @ 74.0°F 09/18/2011 09/18/2011
Secondary 21 days @ 72.0°F 10/01/2011 -
Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
7.00 lbs 70.00 % Dingemans Pale Ale 60 mins 1.037
1.00 lbs 10.00 % Dingemans Pale Wheat 60 mins 1.038
1.00 lbs 10.00 % Honey Malt 60 mins 1.037
1.00 lbs 10.00 % Turbinado 60 mins 1.044
Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
1.50 ozs 25.80 Goldings, East Kent 60 mins 5.00
1.50 ozs 15.63 Goldings, East Kent 20 mins 5.00
Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.0 pkg Belgian Golden Ale White Labs (null)
Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
8.00 oz Malto-Dextrine 15 mins Boil
Mash Profile
Medium Body Infusion In 60 min @ 152.0°F
Add 13.50 qt ( 1.50 qt/lb ) water @ 166.4°F
Sparge
Sparge 16.50 qt of 175.0°F water over 60 mins
Carbonation
Amount Type Beer Temp CO2 Vols
8.1 psi Force Carbonation 38.0°F 2.20
Notes
Freeze 1.3 ounces of fresh basil.
Add basil to pot at flameout
Nothing is more full of promise than your next batch of beer,
HolzBrew
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