It didn't take long ...

So I've been in Indiana since Monday and it just felt like it was time to brew.  This afternoon in 100 degree heat, I brewed a recipe that I conceived several months ago, an Indiana Pale Ale (Hoosier Daddy IPA).  I haven't brewed a good old American IPA in years and it just felt like the right first brew here in the Hoosier state.  For my birthday I received a Blichmann Propane Burner, thanks Mom!  Needless to say I was excited to give it a spin.  This was also the first time I have ever brewed outside, which was great (minus the heat).  Cleaning mash tuns and brew pots is ten times easier with a hose versus your kitchen sink.  The burner also came with leg extensions which I completely forgot to install until after the brew was complete.

The only major problem I ran into was during chilling.  As you would imagine the ground water is pretty warm right now.  My immersion chiller was only able to get me down to around 90 degrees.  I had to implement alternative measures to drop down to 68 degrees for yeast pitching.  I decided to fill a number of freezer bags with ice and dunk them in the cooling wort.  I put the ice in the freezer bag since it had not been boiled and I also didn't want to water down my wort.  The risk is that the freezer bags weren't completely sterile and they introduced some sort of contaminant to the cooling wort.  That being said I have used this technique before without any serious repercussions, but it always makes me uneasy.  I managed to hit my target OG of 1.070 almost exactly, however, I wound up with about 4 gallons of wort when everything was said and done.  I must have had more evaporation and loss due to the significant hop schedule than I had expected.

I must say that I really like the Blichmann Burner.  I got the pot heated in half the time as before.  Having never brewed with propane before (previously stove top) I wasn't aware just how must propane is used during a brew day.  I doubt I could get two complete brew days out of a full tank of propane.  Maybe I'll become more efficient with time.

Praying for the end of the heat wave,

HolzBrew

Flanders on my mind

Back in April 2010, I decided to take the plunge and invest my time and condo-space to brewing a flanders red ale.  The result is HolzBrew Red Sonja.  For those who are not familiar with this style it is a sour ale most often brewed in Belgium (Northern Belgium).  Exceptional examples of this style include Rodenbach and Duchesse de Bourgogne (a household favorite).   Ahhh to be in Bruges, with the sun shining on your face and a cool Flemish ale in your hand.

For my first attempt at a full-on sour ale, I'll have to say it turned out pretty decent.  Not a world beater, but definitely enjoyable.  I used the Wyeast Roeselare lambic culture blend.  This is a blend of yeast and bacteria strains consisting of a belgian strain, sherry strain, two Brettanomyces strains, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Additionally, I wanted some oak flavor, but not over the top since I knew going into it that this would be sitting on wood for 18 months.  I went with .5 ozs of medium roast french oak cubes. Typically these are blended brews.  In that, a younger beer is mixed with an older beer to come to a happy median of sweet and sour.  I attempted a blend by adding in equal parts 21-month old brew and 12-month old brew, but at the end of the day I liked the 21-month brew alone best, so that's what went into the bottles.

For those interested in attempting a sour ale, the book Wild Brews by Jeff Sparrow is a nice reference.  Additionally, Michael Tonsmiere's blog, The Mad Fermentationist is a great site to learn more about brewing sour/wild ales.

Pucker up and brew something sour,

HolzBrew

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

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

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

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

The curious case of the dry hops

I found myself racking a red seal clone I brewed a few weeks back into secondary this afternoon. And it occurred to me that I need to hit up the secondary fermentation with some dry hops. Dry hopping is a pretty simple process, just add hops to the secondary ferementer after racking. People talk about dry hopping like its some sort of an art form, but it is a simple procedure used to hit the wort with one last blast of fresh hop goodness. If done right it will add hop aroma with a very fresh quality. If done wrong it can introduce harsh grassy and vegetal notes to the finished product.

Brynildson (of Firestone-Walker) says that three to four days of dry hopping is optimal. Cilurzo (of Russian River) believes the appropriate time to be 7 to 14 days. Regardless, keep your dry hopping to less than 2 weeks and you will be good to go.

How do you hop?

-Holz

always plan ahead for a brew day ... unless you don't

The day got filled with things. Trips to the mall, grocery, and the gym that made it look like another Saturday without brewing. With Sunday in sight i had already planed to fill that day with non-fun things like work and homework, maybe a jog if i was lucky. So the lady and i were planning a quiet dinner at the house, complete with netflix. Then it dawned on me. i could start brewing now and possibly pull it off. i had ingredients for two very different brews, a flanders red, and a hoppy red ale. i didn't have the spare time to do the partial mash that was required for the flanders, so i pushed ahead with the hoppy red. Extract for the base no doubt due to the time crunch. 6 oz. of 80l crystal malt for flavor and color. 6 oz. of carapils for head retention. i also added one pound of wheat to add to the light body and head retention. cluster hops for the bittering. then wave after wave, like an unstoppable rebel force, of late cascade hop additions. currently this beautiful red head is coolimg down to pitching levels where she will be greeted by two packets of us-05 california ale yeast. and then dry hopped a week from now with more glorious cascade hops, then consumed 4 weeks from now.

the inspiration for this brew was red seal ale. i think i will call it red dawn.

i wear my sunglasses at night when i'm brewing.

-holz

Hope you got your entries in

I got word today that unless you are from Canada, they aren't accepting any more registrants for the 2011 National Homebrew Comp. Wow, that filled up fast. I'm glad I got my entries in earlier this week. In the US, that's 6,750 brews entered into the competition. Apparently a new record!

-Holz

Its that time of year again

You probably think I'm talking about the NCAA tournament, but you are sadly mistaken. I'm talking about the National Homebrew Competition. I scoured the brew closet this weekend and found 5 worthy entrants. A new snag on this year's competition is that you choose which regional location to enter your brew in. In years past your were assigned a region. Despite this change, I basically just picked the closest shipping location, Nashville, TN.

I've entered a 1) Saison, 2)Golden Strong Belgian Ale, 3)Altbier (kind of), 4)American Sout, and a 5)Wood-Aged Beer. We'll see how they do. Last year I got lucky and one of the three brews I entered got 1st in the region and moved on to the national competition. We'll see if lady luck shines my way again. Regardless, its nice to get feedback on your brews from at least 2 certified beer judges.

If you've got any brews laying around, send them in! Entries are due by March 30th.

Unfortunately, I haven't had any time to brew lately. The weekends have been filled with work and studying, but I've got some new brew ideas so one of these days there will be a brew explosion coming from the HolzBrew kitchen.

Keep brewing,

Holz

PS- I also understand that Sam Adams is holding a DC local homebrew competition. Something to consider.

Apparently wanting more

So few weeks back I posted about designing a lower gravity house blonde ale. Well I should have known that I couldn't go small. Do to my less than precise methods I wound up using far less water than I should have and thus brewed a beer with greater strength. As I mentioned before I split the batch and fermented half with a Belgian golden ale strain and I brewed the other half with a German ale strain. Megan and I bottled them last week and they should be ready for initial tasting next week. They both came out in 6% abv range, I believe the Belgian was slightly higher in alcohol than the German. So the Belgian ale probably classifies as a Belgian blonde according to the BJCP guidelines, but the German is classless by any standard style guidelines (who cares?). Perhaps the German could be considered an imperial kolsch? I'll update you once I do a side by side tasting.

Holz

Saison La Tarte

Last weekend Meg and I cracked opened a fresh bottle of my La Tarte. This is the third in a series of wire caged Belgian style ales that I have brewed over the last couple of months. I brewed this with the Wyeast Belgian Saison strain which naturally has a slightly tart taste to it. In order to enhance the tartness I added 30 ml of lactic acid a few days before bottling. The result was a refreshingly tart and yeasty Saison.

Keep it tart,

Holz

Wanting Less

Imagine it, wanting less? Hard to believe, right? In a society where “more is better,” we are pretty much hard coded to want more. Studies have shown that a one of a baby’s first words frequently is “more.” More money, yes please. More muscle, awesome. More energy, I’ll have two redbulls please.

We homebrewers are guilty of this as well. More hops, more grains, multiple yeast strains, tons of alternative ingredients. Heck, a few weeks ago I brewed a barley wine (a style that is the epitome of more) with grape juice and French oak cubes. Guilty!

Is it wrong to occasionally want less? I think the answer is no as long as the answer doesn’t involve less flavor, but more of a focus on simplicity versus layers of flavor. This leads me to the point of this post. I’d like to develop an easy drinking house brew to have around during the summers and to bring to picnics and barbecues. I've decided on brewing a blonde ale. Back to the lab.

I think I'm going to do somewhat of an experiment by brewing the same recipe and fermenting 1/2 with a Kolsch/German type strain and the other 1/2 with a Belgian Golden Ale type strain and see which I prefer. Belgian Blonde vs. German Blonde show down 2011.

I pretty much already have the ingredients and I just need to set aside some time to brew. Perhaps this weekend!

Dreaming of blondes (ale),

Holz

Belgian Beer Corking Procedure

A few people have asked lately, how I go about corking my homebrew. Well today I was corking my saison and I took a couple of videos. Trying my best to make the video entertaining, I mixed up a back track using mixcraft. Enjoy.



Somewhat more involved than kegging, but the finished product looks pretty cool.

Keep on corking,

Holz

Tucker Carlson should be ...

I thought I'd go with a potentially risqué title for this blog post, but decided to exercise my better judgment. I hope Mr. Carlson is reading. Go Hokies!


I digress. Our trip down to North Carolina for the Holidays was a success. Define success, a fun trip filled with new great beer experiences. A new brewery in NC has been causing some stir on the Beeradvocate boards, Mother Earth Brewing based out of Kinston, NC. My sister-in-law knows me well enough to know that the perfect Xmas gift for me was a selection of fine craft brews. Included in the gifted beers was a four pack of the Mother Earth Bourbon Barrel Aged Tripel Overhead (as an accountant this name really rings home). Needless to say I loved this brew. It reminds me a lot of Allagash's Curieux. Mother Earth also makes a really nice IPA called Sisters of the Moon (the name is a little too crunchy, don't you think?). If you find yourself in the Triangle Area for any reason, seek out a beer from this brewery, you won't be disappointed.

Happy Holidays,

HBrew

Old Friends, New Friends

It's so hard to say goodbye. A couple of weeks ago I learned that Flying Dog would be discontinuing the 21-year old Wild Goose line of beers. Wild Goose was a creation of the original Frederick brewing company which was purchased several years ago by Flying Dog. Apparently Flying Dog needs more space in the brewery to grow the Flying Dog brand. My favorite Wild Goose brew is their winter seasonal, Snow Goose. After checking for it this year at Norm's, I was informed that the final batch of Snow Goose would only be distributed in MD. While in Mason Dixon line state for Thanksgiving I stopped by the Perfect Pour to pick up a few things you can't get in Virginia. While there I came across Snow Goose and had to pick up a sixer for old times sake.


Last weekend I didn't have time to brew, but I still felt the urge to ferment something (it's a sickness). So I thought I'd try my hand at another cider. Cider is incredibly easy to "brew." A couple of gallons of organic cider and yeast is about all that's needed. Last night I decided to throw in a third ingredient, a quart of cranberries. Why a quart? Why not. I think I will finish this off with about a pound of turbinado sugar to add some residual sweetness and rummy undertones.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

-Brew

Hokie Victory, IPA Joy, and Carbonation Woe

Mrs. HolzBrew and I had some friends over to watch VT play UNC on ESPN. The game was fantastic, despite an early Carolina lead the Hokies came roaring back in the third quarter and that's all she wrote. As Natie always reminds me, we are a second half team.

The VT game was a great chance to unleash the Hopping Mad IPA and see what everyone thought. For the most part the reviews were positive. Most people went back for seconds, or even thirds. Lot's of citrusy flavors and all around hoppiness!

At half time I broke out a bottle of my holiday ale, reindeer games. Again I think it was well received. It is a Golden Strong ale in a similar vein to Duvel. I also broke out a bottle of our Noir Favorite Ale (a belgian dark ale blended with Framboise). I corked the bottles two weeks ago and they weren't exactly carbonated yet. We'll have to see if a couple more weeks does the trick or will I need to take more extreme measures? Hopefully the yeast is just slow moving. Otherwise it will be a pain in the arse to pitch new yeast in such a small batch (only a 2.5 gallon batch) and then recork the bottles.

Let's go Hokies,

-HolzBrew

Hopping Mad

A couple of pictures from kegging the Hopping Mad IPA. The first picture is a shot of the left over dry hops in the fermenter and the fresh whole leaf dry hops added to the keg. The second picture was taken while checking the finishing gravity, which is done to calculate the ABV %. Isn't it beautiful? The Hopping Mad ABV came in around 7.7% ABV.

Keep it hoppy,

HolzBrew

Been Brewing

I haven’t been blogging much lately. There, I said it. Why? I’ve been busy brewing:

1) A few weeks ago I corked the 2010 HolzBrew Holiday Ale, dubbed “Reindeer Games.” This was my first experience using a corker, but after a test run it was pretty easy to figure out. I basically followed the steps laid out in the following excellent article in BYO magazine.
If you brew and are interested in presentation, investing in a corker is the way to go. I think for something like a Holiday Ale that you pass out to friends and family as gifts, it really makes your homebrew unique.

The beer is a Belgian strong golden ale that I brewed back in July and subsequently lagered for approximately two months. I understand that Duvel-Moorgat lagers Duvel and I hope to emulate some of the fantastic flavors you find in that beer.

2) A few months back I was inspired to focus on brewing Belgian ales after reading Brew Like a Monk by Stan Hieronymus (a great gift for the holidays), an excellent book for those interested in trying their hand at Belgian brewing. To contrast with Reindeer Games, I brewed a Belgian dark strong ale a few weeks later. My main inspirations for this ale were St Bernardus Abt 12 and Ommegang Three Philosophers. The end result is probably leaning more toward Three Philosophers as the beer definitely has a fruity-raspberry kick. Long story short, I bottled that beer this weekend and am eagerly waiting for an opportunity to crack one open.

3) About two months ago I brewed an Extra Stout. This is currently on tap at la casa HolzBrew. I dry hopped the keg with 3 ounces of cracked espresso beans, which really imparts a fresh coffee flavor. I love dry hopping kegs and I'm not sure why it me until recently to start doing this.

4) About 5 weeks ago I decided to get back to my roots and brew up a good 'ole fashion tongue scorching IPA for kegging sometime in the next couple of weeks. This is the first time I have brewed an IPA with something other than California Ale yeast. I decided to branch out and try some yeast from the other side of the pond, Ringwood Ale Yeast. I hopped with a combination of Centennial, Simcoe, and Warrior hops. The IBUs on this thing is off the charts, can't wait!

5) This past weekend I brewed up a batch of lambic. I stuck pretty closely to a partial mash recipe that I found online. This brew should be done fermenting sometime in 2012 (no kidding), so I'll have to exercise some patience. I'm already planning on splitting the batch and bottling some of it unblended and blending the other half of the batch with Marionberries (that's right, there is a berry that shares it's name with the infamous DC mayor).

That's the basic run down of brewing operations over the last month. I'll keep up the blog better in November. Go Hokies!

-HolzBrew

Golden & Strong

Just like Tango & Cash, Golden & Strong make a beautiful yet deadly combination.

For my birthday, my in-laws gave me a colonna corker. As I am excited to use this nasty red corking machine, I decided to brew a golden strong belgian ale Sunday afternoon for ultimate packaging in a wire-cage belgian bottle. I think this one is going to be the 2010 HolzBrew Holiday Ale. Current front runner for a proper name is "Reindeer Games." Thoughts?

I've got a little footage from brew day, that I may package into a montage, but only when I have time to do such things. Currently, I am employing an old homebrew trick to keep my primary temperatures around 68 degrees for the first 3 days. I placed the fermenter in the bathtub with about a 2-3 inches of cool water in the tub. Then I draped an old t-shirt over the fermenter making sure that the t-shirt touches the pooled water. The water works its way up the shirt soaking it through. Next I have a fan pointed at the wet t-shirt which causes the water in the shirt to evaporate faster. As the water evaporates it takes some of the heat from the fermenter with it. Ultimately cooling the fermenter several degrees. As seen below:



It's good for dropping a fermentation a few degrees, so it's great for summertime ale brewing. It's not quite enough for lager brewing.

Keep it cool,

Holzbrew