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

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

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.

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

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.