End of the Year Wrap Up

Welcome to another installment of My Life as a Home Brewer – 12/23/14. Make sure to like, reblog, follow, share and comment on the blog. This post will deviate slightly from the normal layout, but let’s get started.

What’s Happening Now

We wiped out the remaining stout to make Christmas presents. We have a case of IPA, brown ale, and hefeweizen left. However, the hefeweizen won’t be ready to drink for another week. I doubt we are going to do another batch this year.

The Christmas Six Packs were a success -at least I think they were. My grandpa, uncles and cousins seemed pleased about getting beer for Christmas, but only time will tell if they liked it. The six packs had two brown ales, two IPA’s and two hefeweizens. We told them that we had just bottled the hefeweizen and to give it two weeks to carbonate.

The trick we learned about putting the heating pad around the fermenting bucket from Jeff at Paradise Brewing Supplies seemed to be a success. We are yet to taste the finished beer, but when I opened the fermenter there was a pungent smell of bananas. This is characteristic of brewer’s yeast when I talked about it in my Thanksgiving Beer post and I anticipate another successful fermentation. We await the final product.

More from My Life As A Home Brewer

Thanksgiving Beer

Tour of Rivertown Brewery

How Well do You Know Your IPA?

My Unadulterated Opinion

Ryan Ross

This week’s flavor comes from Diesel Punk Brewing and is their stout. Let me deviate for a minute from the normal review and talk about the ascetics of the packaging. I love the look and marketing of this brewery. The Steampunk idea of meshing Victorian technology and futuristic sci-fi, ie: spaceships powered by steam engines, combines perfectly with the DieselPunk Stout. Remember in my Six Packs for Christmas post I talked about how the first stouts were made during the Victorian era. Here Diesel Punk combines a victorian classic with a futuristic concept to symbolize the progression of the beer industry and humanity itself. A subtle, but nice touch.

I have to be honest, I was not impressed with my first beer from the six pack. It tasted like a classic stout, but that’s all it was, a classic stout. There was nothing to set it apart. It had all the right flavors, but I didn’t have that, “wow moment” on the first drink. However, as I progressed through the six pack over the next several days I found myself liking the beer more and more.

It had an aromatic, light brown head and a dark brown color that is almost black, but not quite. Roasted malts of coffee, espresso and chocolate abound in this beer. The aroma matches these flavors and the bitterness of the hops was just right. There was a nice balance between the bitter and sweet. The drinking experience was smooth and pungent. This is not a beer for Christmas dinner, because it will over power anything on the table. Regardless of my initial thoughts, I liked it. Drink this beer.

The Year End Wrap Up

This has been an amazing experience for me to home brew with my father. I just returned home from being gone during four years of college. Home brewing with dad has been so much fun and has brought us together on a different level (not that we had relationship issues before). I want to thank him for footing most of the cost and having these experiences with me. We learned so much and had more fun.

Brewing beer is awesome. Neither one of us had ever done anything like it, but had talked about it for years. We made eight beer batches since July 4th and only had one bad batch, which I think is fantastic for two new guys. We hope to keep up the pace for next year and try something, “outside our comfort zone” to quote my dad from this evening. I don’t know what that means, yet.

This was also my first blog launch. I had dabbled with WordPress before, but never created a full site that I solely managed. I learned a ton about web writing and can’t wait to bring you better content with the new year. Let’s briefly recap the site statistics as of writing this post.

The site since my first post, What Home Brewing Is Not, that went live on 10/21/14 has had 353 site views with 325 of them coming from Facebook alone. I wrote ten posts with Kegs, Growlers, Bombers, Bottles and Cans being my most read post at 35 views. I had readers from five countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark and Austria. I didn’t make any financial income from the blog or contributions to it.

Thank you for reading My Life as a Home Brewer – 12/24/14. Please like, reblog, follow, comment and share on your favorite social media sites. Thank you to all who read and shared during these last ten weeks. It’s because of you that I will step up my game for next year with a new WordPress theme, proper web hosting and much, much more. I have so many ideas to turn loose in the new year and I can’t wait to show you.

If you have any suggestions, comments, or anything else about the new format for next year, please feel free to email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com.

I will not post next week on 12/30/14 since as it is the last Tuesday of the year and I look forward to posting on 1/6/15. See you next year!

Prost!

Read the D**n Directions

It helps if you follow the recipe

Hello Internet and welcome to another addition of My Life as a Home Brewer. Don’t forget to like, follow, reblog, and share on your favorite social media platform. Let’s get to it.

What’s Happening Now

The brown ale is done and tastes amazing. I know, I know I always say that I don’t like brown ales; yet, I like the Bofo Brown Ale in my Thanksgiving Beer Review and I like this one. Maybe my taste buds are changing. I still prefer an IPA to anything.

If you remember in my Watch for the Over Boil entry we added maple syrup to the batch during the boil. I can’t taste the syrup in the beer and I don’t know if that had anything to do with me liking the beer. I think we should have added the maple syrup to the batch during the fermenting stage instead of the boil, but hindsight is always 20/20. Still, it’s a great beer.

We have almost wrapped up the six-pack gifts (pun intended). I can’t wait to see the look on my family’s faces when they get beer for Christmas. I think the six-pack will have our stout, brown ale, and the IPA. The hefeweizen is still fermenting and our family Christmas was moved up to this weekend. We will see if we can get it bottled in time, but if we can’t we still have other beers to use.

Make sure you read the directions for your beer recipe. When people ask me how hard it is to home-brew I usually tell them something along the lines of, “If you can bake a cake, you can make beer. It’s all about following the recipe when you’re starting out.” Well, apparently I can’t follow my own advice while making a hefeweizen.

First, the water was supposed to be heated to 152 degrees, then taken off the burner to allow grains to steep for 20 minutes. Next, I brought the water back up to boil for an hour. What was supposed to happen was the steep for 20 minutes, bring the water back up to 160 degrees, take it off again, add dry malt and steep the bag of grains for 20 more minutes. I didn’t realize this until dad said something nearly 30 minutes into the boil. We then took it off the burner, added the malt and put the grains back in for the remaining 20 minutes.

The boil was back on after the steep. We added the hops and liquid malt at the proper time and finished out the batch without any more issues. We brought the temperature down from 212 degrees to the appropriate 76 in a matter of a few minutes and immediately dumped the batch into the fermenting bucket. To do this we just poured ice straight into batch to get the recommended final amount and it cooled quickly. I recommend this method for cooling the wort. Just make sure you start with less than the final amount or you will water it down.

I think the beer will turn out okay regardless of the mixed up steps during the boil. I’m not sure how important it was to follow the steps perfectly, but we will find out in a few weeks. I’ll make sure to report how the beer looks and tastes.

Hey, Did You Know?

This week’s Hey, Did You Know? will be a short one and consist of a tip we learned last week. At the tap room where we buy our brewing supplies the proprietor told us to wrap the fermenting bucket with a heating pad and a towel. This was a great idea because we heat with wood and our house temperature fluctuates throughout the day. This way the beer will stay at a consistent temperature during the most critical point of the process, fermenting.

We used an old electric heating pad, a bath towel, and some yarn. It works great and the yeast are going crazy in there. It’s fun to sit and listen to the CO₂ bleeder. Just make sure that your heating pad is set to its lowest setting.

 

More from My Life as a Home Brewer

Six Packs for Christmas

Thanksgiving Beer

Drinking and Politics

 

My Unadulterated Opinion

Craft Beer Explorer

This week’s flavor comes from Christian Moerlein and it’s their Barbarossa. According to Christian Moerlein, the beer is based off of Frederick I, Emperor of Germany, also known as Barbarossa. The legend says he never died and still lives in an enchanted cavern until the ravens cease to fly, which will mark his triumphant return. The label of the bottle has a king with an enormous red beard being served a giant goblet of beer. Nice touch.

The beer’s classification is a double-dark lager and it hits the mark. The beer is crisp, with a white head and a light body weight. The color is dark amber with a tinge of red. The dark malt used in this beer is savory and sweet. It balances well with the hops and no one flavor commands your attention. The beer changes as it moves across the palate. The complexity of this beer is great and I love it. Well done Christian Moerlein and here’s to you Emperor Barbarossa. I’ll be looking for your triumphant return.

Thanks for reading this entry of My Life as a Home Brewer. I had fun and hope you did too. Make sure to like, follow, reblog, and share on social media. I look forward to the next entry on December 23^rd, 2014. Until then, Prost!

Featured Image Credit Craft Beer Explorer 

 

Six Packs for Christmas

Six Packs Make the Best Gifts

What’s Happening Now

This week has been a slow one in terms of brewing. We have the ingredients to make a hefeweizen, but did not get to brewing it. Life got in the way and we had other last minute commitments.

We have an IPA and a Stout that are finished and are waiting to be drank. Our brown ale should be done bottle conditioning later this week and by the next post I will be able to tell you if the maple syrup we added made any difference. You can find that brew log at Watch for the Over Boil.

The Christmas season is upon us and everyone is scrambling around for the best deals, latest gadgets, hottest clothing, and shiniest jewelry. Why not give the gift of beer this Christmas? That’s what dad and I are doing this year.

We have all this beer sitting downstairs and an extended family filled with Bud Light drinkers. The plan is to create a six-bottle variety pack for my uncles and cousins who are of drinking age. It will house six beers: two IPA’s, two stouts, and two hefeweizens.

This is a great, cheap, and easy way to give gifts during the Christmas season -and we don’t have to go a mall or wait in line.

Hey, Did You Know?

Porter vs. Stout- Do you know the difference?

Porters and Stouts historically stemmed from the same family of beer. The difference is summed up well by Wayne Wambles, brewmaster at Cigar City Brewing in Craft Brewing Business blog, “’Simply put, most people approach it from the perspective of stout being roasted barley-centric, which gives coffee to espresso aroma and flavor, and porter being more chocolate and mocha oriented by the use of chocolate malt.’” Stouts have an espresso aroma and flavor, while porters have a more chocolate and mocha flavor. Stouts tend to have high levels of bitterness, while porters are sweeter.

Beers for the Christmas table

This is going to sound similar to my Thanksgiving Beer post, because there are a lot of similar flavors at Christmas. Every Christmas dinner table is going to have some variation, but I think most will have a centerpiece of meat either ham, turkey, or roast beef -unless you’re at my grandma’s house, because she makes all three (thanks Nana). These three meats and their perspective sides won’t have a lot of stand out flavors so we don’t want to pair strong beers that will overpower the rest of the meal.

Look for beers that have low bitterness (hops) and a higher sweetness (malts) flavors. Brown ales, stouts, porters, bocks, marzens, and hefeweizens are all great beers to have at the Christmas table. My recommendations are: Bofo Brown Ale (review found here), Great Lakes Christmas Ale (review below), and Rivertown Dunkel (review here). These beers are going to be high in malt flavors and sweetness, while being low in bitter coffee and hop flavors. You’ll be pleased with any of these beers at your table.

Now you know.

My Unadulterated Opinion

This week’s flavor comes from my home state of Ohio and it’s called Christmas Ale by Great Lakes Brewing Company. This is my favorite winter ale and will be for some time. I could drink this beer until it ran out and I was unfit to drive to get more.

The beer is lighter in color than I expected from a winter ale and it’s quite clear. This is one of the few beers that is exempt from our beer drinking rule –see the About page for rule. Mine wasn’t very carbonated and had almost no head, but that could be from many different factors and not a deal breaker for me. I don’t care that much about a foamy head on a beer anyway.

What sets this beer apart for me is the hint of cinnamon. Other winter ale archetypes are bursting with cinnamon, have tons of sweet malts, and roasted nut flavors everywhere. This beer has all that, but in reasonable portions. I don’t hate the little brown spice, but I don’t want it to be overwhelming. The cinnamon is subtle and allows the other flavors to meld together and compliment one another.

Drink this beer.

Conclusion

Make sure you comment below, like, subscribe, and share the blog. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com to suggest beers to be reviewed or topics discussed. I’m always open to constructive criticism. Frankly, I do this for the readers and I want to bring you want you want to read.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on the other side of the pint glass.

Discussion question

What types of beer would you put in a sampler pack as a Christmas gift?

Featured Image Credit Schulte

Kegs, Growlers, Bombers, Bottles, and Cans

What’s Happening Now

We bottled the brown ale on Thanksgiving night. It fermented for nearly a week and a half, but we aren’t worried about that. A few extra days in the fermenter won’t hurt anything. For a recap, we have half a case of stout, a case and a half of IPA, and are aging two cases of brown ale.

We have forgone buying fresh bottles for the last few bottlings. We have started to recycle old bottles from previous brews or the commercial bottles that we drink. Even my girlfriend’s family has a box of bottles they save for me when I go visit them. We haven’t bought new bottles for around six weeks or maybe longer. It’s ironic and humbling to see our beer being put into Sam Adams, Lagunitas, Rivertown, or Christian Moerlein.

Our process starts with bleaching the bottles in soapy water. Bottles usually have residue from the previous beer that has settled and dried in the bottom. We allow the bottles to soak in a mixture of bleach and soapy water for about ten minutes. This gives us more time to set up the rest of our bottling process. One of us will pick up the bottles two at a time with some water in them, shake, and pour out the gunk that was in the bottom.

The bottles are then transferred to the sanitation sink where they are rinsed of bleach and sanitized with Star San no rise acid satiation. I like this sanitizer, because the bottles don’t require rinsing and the solution won’t hurt the yeast as they carbonate the bottles during conditioning.

The bottles are set on the floor six or eight at a time and the bottling bucket is set up on the counter in the kitchen (I didn’t have a good picture for this, but next time I promise I’ll take a high quality picture). We use a pvc hose and special bottling nozzle. Our last batch was around 5.6 gallons, which made exactly 48 beers. We have a special capper that puts the final touch on the bottles and seals them tight (see above). I have high hopes for this batch. I’ll let you know how it tastes in two weeks.

Hey, Did You Know?

For the last couple of months I have been only discussing beer in bottles. There is a myriad of different ways to store, transport, condition, and consume beer. I wish to focus on the most popular families of containers. There are kegs, growlers, bombers, bottles, and cans. I will discuss the first three. I trust you know the last two.

Kegs are a great way to house and transport a large amount of beer, because they usually come in ten gallon or five gallon installments and are lined with stainless steel. The stainless insures the integrity of the container, but also the beer. Stainless steel is very smooth and does not allow for many microbes and other things to set into the metal; thus, kegs are easy to clean and maintain. They are very popular with restaurants, pubs, and breweries. These entities get to save on container cost because one keg eliminates a lot of bottles and cans.

A problem with kegs is that they are very large requiring a very large refrigerator. They are not for the typical home brewer that does 5 to 7 gallon batches.

Next is the growler. These containers are made of dark glass or steel and are usually a half-gallon or gallon. This is a better for people who want a larger volume of beer with the convenience of bottle sizes.

More breweries and bars are starting to allow for a growler exchange program. You buy a growler and pay to fill it up. Once the growler is empty you take it back and exchange for a filled one, but only at the cost of the beer. You only buy one growler and you don’t have to pay for container cost again.

A downside of the growler is that usually exchange programs will only exchange their branded growler. You can’t take growler “A” to tap room “B”. However, there are some places out there that will let you exchange any growler regardless of where it’s from. Remember and go back to these places, because they are good guys and such establishments are few and far between.

My friends are Paradise Brewing Supplies outside of Cincinnati allow outside growlers. They don’t exchange different growlers, but will fill them and only exchange their branded growlers. We also get all our brewing supplies here and consider them family at this point. Check them out if you live near Cincinnati or are visiting.

Bomber, this piece is not a growler or a bottle, but a hybrid. Bombers are between the 16oz. bottle size and the 64oz. half-gallon growler size. This week’s My Unadulterated Opinion beer is from a 24oz. bomber (keep reading). I am not aware of bomber exchange programs, but I’m sure they are out there somewhere.

All of these containers have different styles and sub categories. This is not an end-all-be-all explanation, but it should get you started.

 My Unadulterated Opinion-

This week’s flavor hails all the way from Oregon. Rogue Ales & Spirits is the best-kept secret tucked away on the West Coast. One of my favorite beers from them is their Dead Guy Ale. This beer is a take on a Mailbock, which are known to be lighter in color than other Bock beers and have a significant hop character.

Dead Guy Ale falls perfectly into that category with a burnt copper color, medium head, and hop flavors from Perle and Saaz hops. As soon as it’s opened floral notes fill the area, which is uncharacteristic of lagers, but it creates a smooth drinking experience and I’ll allow Rogue to break the conventions here –see my post Brewing Over an Open Fire about the difference between ales and lagers. The carbonation on mine was good and I enjoyed drinking this beer. Dead Guy Ale is one of my favorites from Rogue Ales & Spirits and they make a killer Mocha Porter, which you will see in a later post closer to Christmas.

This beer is a lager to be drank during the spring, but I love this installment and it came in a bomber. I think Dead Guy Ale can be enjoyed anytime of year and not just spring.

Drink this beer.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to comment on the discussion, follow, like, and share the blog. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com. If you’re looking for a freelance writer check out the Hire Me! page.

See you next week on the other side of the pint glass!

Discussion-

• What other types of beer containers can you name? What are your favorites?

Featured Image Credit: Active Beer Geek

Other Image Credit: Ryan Ross

Thanksgiving Beer

What’s Happening Now

 

This week we will be bottling the brown ale that we brewed last weekend. This beer only has a fermentation period of a week and we will bottle condition it for two weeks. When it’s done it will have a dark amber color, malty sweetness, and toasted nut notes. We are still drinking on the IPA and Stout. Well, I’m drinking the IPA.

 

Have you ever had an issue with flies congregating around your CO₂ blow off tube or valve? We did. They are there because the brewer’s yeast emits a fruity aroma during the fermentation process. These aromas attract the tiny, impossible to kill fruit flies.

 

Scientists have discovered the particular gene that causes the yeast to produce a fruity aroma, reports Wired Magazine. Experts can enhance the gene, where the yeast create more of the aroma or limit the gene, where the yeast makes very little of the aroma. They are working to produce a strain of brewer’s yeast that does not produce the aroma at all. Researchers believe that this aroma is produced to attract the flies on purpose. The yeast uses the flies as a transport to spread the organism’s population range since a yeast culture cannot move far on its own.

I know this is something that would normally be placed in the Hey, Did You Know? section, but I have a good post for that and this pertains to What’s Happening Now. We have had fruit flies everywhere and have for some time regardless of the falling temperatures outside. They congregate around the blow off valve or tube depending on the set up for different types of beer.

 

Here is how to kill those little buggers from my friends at Wiki How.

Hey, Did You Know?

 

Everyone knows that Thanksgiving is coming up and I felt it necessary to do a seasonal post about the holiday. I was curious about beer at the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims would have brought barrels of beer on their ships across the Atlantic because beer lasts longer than potable water. Researchers at the Smithsonian Magazine believe there would be very little beer, if any, at the first Thanksgiving, which makes me sad. Fear not my readers. Your Thanksgiving has potential to keep the beer flowing throughout the gorging day.

 

You want look for brown ale style beers or if you have Marzens left over from Oktoberfest. Concentrate on brews that have a high level of sweet malts and toasted nut flavors, low levels of bitterness, and lower levels of alcohol – because no one wants to be the one who ruined Thanksgiving due to drunkenness. These types of beers are going to pair well with the multitude of flavors, textures, temperatures, and weights of Thanksgiving meals. You want to make sure that you are not drinking a heavy beer that will fill you up as you enjoy the turkey. Brown ales or a Marzens will be a perfect blend to avoid flavor dominance over your meal.

 

May you have many things to be thankful for. I know I am.

 

My Unadulterated Opinion-

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I don’t like brown ales. I don’t care for the sweet malts and lack of hop flavor. I want some bitter hops, but I just upsold you on toasted malt beer to go with your turkey so I put my pallet on the line. I’m glad that I went against what I normally drink. Boffo Brown ale by Dark Horse Brewery is a fantastic beer.

 

The dark color and the smooth head make the beer look aesthetically great. It pours out as a muddy color with about 80% clarity. The flavor is robust and exquisite. The sweet, toasted malts flavors meld well with bitterness dark chocolate notes. I think I like it because it does have some bitterness in the flavor, but it’s not from hops. I was able to overlook it though.

 

I enjoyed drinking this beer. This beer will be at my Thanksgiving dinner table. I got a six pack for $11.99. Enjoy my friends.

 

PROST!

 

 

Discussion-

• What beer will you drink over Thanksgiving?

 

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to comment on the discussion, follow, like, and share the blog. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com. Make sure you go and read the backlist posts.

Featured Image Credit: Boulevard Brewing

 

Watch for the Over Boil

Learn One of the Dangers of Home Brewing

What’s Happening Now

We were finally was able to get back into brewing after a several week hiatus. I apologize for the lack of brewing updates – renamed What’s Happening Now. We heat with wood here in the valley and our weekends have been spent cutting, splitting, and stacking it. I estimate we have half of our wood supply for the winter ready to burn and 20 years worth already cut in the woods ready to split.

We brewed the brown ale for the second time over the weekend. Check out my Brewing Over an Open Fire post for the story of the first time. We followed the recipe exactly with the exception of adding about half a cup of maple syrup to the wart as it brewed. This was an in-the-moment decision and the first time that we have strayed from the original recipe. I’m excited and a little nervous to see what comes up. Now we wait a month. I’ll be sure to give a full report when that is done.

Other beers that we have are the Imperial Stout  and the IPA. I’m not sure what we will brew after the stout has run out. We have less than half a case left. It’s the house favorite. I like having two beers to drink and one in the fermenting/conditioning stages. I’m open to suggestions. Comment below.

I would like to discuss a serious danger with home brewing. Be careful of the over boil. I cannot stress this enough and we almost had a catastrophe over the weekend. We have had wart start to foam up before, but never come close to the top of the brewing pot. The other day was the closest that we have had to an over boil. The wart foamed up to nearly the rim when I was able to reach it, take it off the heat, and snap the featured picture. This type of incident is the thing that will ruin your stove and consume hours of your time in clean up. Make sure you are always controlling your heat and stir occasionally. I have to admit I was not watching the boil. I drafting the next section that was, Factoid, now called Hey, Did You Know? Brew safely my friends.

Hey, Did You Know?

“Why does my beer smell bad? It doesn’t taste well either. What happened?” I’m sure you’ve heard or uttered those words to yourself before. That would be called skunked beer. There are several ways that beer goes bad while still in the bottle, but the most common factor is ultraviolet light. A term for beer being exposed to too much ultraviolet light – sunlight or florescent light in store – is light-struck.

Have you ever noticed that your favorite beer comes in cardboard packaging with the bottleneck covered with a paper band and probably in brown bottles? These elements are not just for marketing purposes, but also to protect the beer from ultraviolet light that is emitted from the florescent lights in the store. When beer is exposed to ultraviolet light for a long time the hop molecules, isohumulons, are ripped apart. At this point there are atoms floating around in the beer looking for a home. The lost atoms bind to sulfur atoms and they create a molecule similar to the smell of a skunk. Hence, skunked beer.

If you are fermenting or aging beer in a carboy make sure that your beer is not exposed to light. If your carboy is clear then cover it with a towel or paper bag. We age our beer in food grade plastic buckets that sit in a dark room. Once the beer is bottled we put it in sealed cardboard boxes and store them in a closed cabinet under a sink in the basement. The beer doesn’t see light until we pour it into a glass to drink.

Some beers will come in a clear or green bottle and are usually import beers. Breweries are not in the business selling skunked beer to Americans. These beers usually have that bitter, sulfur taste on purpose. This is the foreign equivalent of sour beer.

Now you know.

 My Unadulterated Opinion-

This week’s flavor comes from Rivertown Brewery and their take on Winter Ale. I had very high hopes for this beer considering it hails from Rivertown and it’s a dark winter ale. It has all the characteristics of a classic winter ale. It has pumpkin, cinnamon, and burnt almond notes, which spell out for a great seasonal beer. The color is right and the little head is aromatic. It goes down smooth and lines the throat with a creamy texture.

However, I found the cinnamon to be over zealous. There should be a harmony of flavors in a

Rivertown Winter Ale and Rivertown Glass from our tour

sweet winter ale to compliment the cider drinkers and the smell of ham at the Christmas table. I didn’t get these here. This arrangement is all about the cinnamon and it’s too much.

I also found that my sample was a little flat. Maybe that was just an isolated incident to that batch, but there was not much of a head as you can see in the picture. That picture was taken a minute after I poured that glass of beer.

I had very high hopes for this beer and bought the six-pack for $8.99. It’s not a terrible beer, but I will finish my six beers and won’t buy it again. There are plenty of great winter ales out there. This is not one of them. I hoped that I would never find a beer from Rivertown that I didn’t like. I even liked their sour beer. Don’t let this review be a reflection of the brewery as a whole. I love Rivertown and the great guys I met there – check out our Tour of the Rivertown Brewery to see how much I like them, but I just don’t like this beer. Check out Hop Baron, Old Bruen, or Dunkel.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to comment on the discussion, follow, like, and share the blog. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com. Make sure you go and read the backlist posts.

PROST!

Discussion-

• What do you look for in a winter ale style beer?

Hey, Did You Know? Credit: Skunked Beer

Tour of Rivertown Brewery

Fortune Favors the Brave

Last week my girlfriend surprised me with reservations to tour the Rivertown Brewery in Lockland, Ohio just north of Cincinnati. Rivertown Brewery, started in 2009, have now have reached: Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Florida. They have two brews a day to meet up with their demand. I have been to several breweries in the Cincinnati area, but never had a formal tour. This was such a great experience and I highly recommend anyone reading take a tour of your local brewery. We drank beer through the whole tour -that’s a plus.

We got there over an hour early like the tickets said to. As soon as we walked in there was a huge a bottling machine capable of filling 72 bottles at a time (back left of picture). The whole place smelled of fresh grains and sweet malt. Their taproom stood off to the right of the door. We had a few pints while we waited for the tour and talked to the bartender.

Six o’clock hit and Josh, Rivertown Brewery’s general manager, gave us a tour of the brewery. It started with showing us the different types of ingredients they use in the beer. We sampled different malts and grains. Josh encouraged only smelling the hops – and rightly so. We moved into the room with their 31 barrel (976.5 gallons) mash tun and half a dozen fermenting vats of varying sizes.

Next was their old bottling machine. At 24 bottles at a time the machine did it’s job well, but Rivertown Brewery is expanding too rapidly for the small thing to meet up with demands. They have a huge rotating 72 bottle capacity machine, but it is not in operation as of yet.

Josh moved us on to the wooden barrels where they age some of their beers, the pallets of bottles and kegs, and finally to a cooler the size of a three car garage. After the tour we met back up at the front bar and some other employees answered questions.

The shining star of the whole visit was their sour beer. Yes, dear readers, sour beer. I’m not talking about old, skunked, or stale beer. Sour beer is the new style of beer that brewers are making. Think about how food companies take cream and add bacteria to make sour cream for your tacos. This is the same process. Rivertown takes a few of their “normal” recipes, adds bacteria, and creates sour beer.

I wasn’t excited to try it at first, but I knew that I had to take the plunge for my home brewing readers. I did it for you. It took some getting used to, but by the end of the night I got a full pint down and was satisfied. It’s not a beer that you throw back during a sports match or one to sip on.

The preferred technique from the Rivertown brew masters is to drink it in large mouthfuls to saturate the taste buds. The first few drinks were the worst, but as time went on the beer got so much better. I felt myself waiting with anticipation until the next drink. It tasted like someone took a beer and put Warhead candy into it.

I thought that sour beer is genius and Rivertown expects it to be the next big thing. There are several breweries across the country that makes sour beer. I don’t know if this will ever rival the IPA as the flagship of craft brewing, but it could give it a run for it’s money.

Check this beer out and my new friends at Rivertown Brewery. I can’t thank them enough for the amazing experience and knowledge they shared with us. I would also like to thank my lovely partner in crime for surprising me and arranging everything.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to comment on the discussion, follow, like, and share the blog. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com.

Discussion-

Had you ever heard about sour beer and would you ever drink it?

PROST!

 

How Well Do You Know Your IPA?

Carbonating the Gaivs Plinivs Secvndvs

 If you have read more than just this post to the blog you will know that I love IPAs. We have had the opportunity to brew a few of them. Gaivs Plinivs Secvndvs (Guy-us Plinius Secendus) was the first and my favorite.

We followed the directions step-by-step. The boil went by perfectly and we transferred to the fermenting bucket like we were supposed to. I was surprised how much hops were in the bottom of the bucket. There was a gallon equivalent in the bottom. This was far more than any other beer we had made up to that point. We dry hopped the fermentation for two weeks before bottling. The whole bottom was green.

After two weeks in the bottles we opened one bottle and it was flat. The flavor was great. It had the classic burnt copper color and had an incredible bitter taste of Centennial and Columbus hops. We were baffled why it was so flat. We waited another two weeks.

On the second try the beer was still flat. We asked the guys at the brewing store and they said to swirl the bottles to agitate the yeast. Ales have a top feeding warm yeast. I looked at the bottles and all the yeast had fallen to the bottom. I swirled the bottles and the yeast spun all around.

Two weeks later the carbonation was perfect. The beer had a perfect white head when poured into a glass. I loved drinking it. The sweet citrus mixed with the bitter hops was delightful. I want to make the beer again.

Bottle conditioning can fix almost any problem you are having with a batch. Making beer is an active chemical process with real organisms. Give them what they need, a little time, and you will have excellent beer.

 

The Flagship of Craft Brewing

IPAs are the fastest growing type of beer in the United States for drinking and for brewing. It ‘s inevitable that you will run into an IPA somewhere along in your journey; therefore, you might as well know a little bit about them.

There are three main types of IPAs: English-style India pale ale, American-style India pale ale, and Imperial (double) India pale ale along with countless subcategories.

English-style India pale ale– are quite balanced in overall malt and hop character. Notable floral, earthy, grassy hop character resides alongside a caramel, bready malt backbone. American craft-brewed versions of the English-style IPA, which outnumber available English-brewed examples, may show a little more hop personality than English-brewed IPAs; however, they remain more restrained in overall hop character than American-style IPAs.

American-style India pale ale- golden-to-copper appearance as English Pale Ale and delivers a medium malt profile, but it then diverges toward a hop-forward personality and often imparts a crisp mouth-feel. Pronounced fruit, citrus, pine and/or floral aromas and flavors from Amarillo, Cascade, Centennial, Columbus and other American hop varietals are often the mark of American Pale Ale. Brewers use techniques such as adding hops late in the boil phase as well as dry hopping to ensure the hop aromas and flavors are harnessed along with bitterness. The American Pale Ale style can perhaps be credited with starting America’s love affair with hoppy beers.

Imperial (double) India pale ale- are all about copious amounts of hops—typically of American variety—with plenty of malts and higher alcohol levels to offer balance to the hop bitterness. Variations exist within the style, with some examples offering a unilateral “tongue ripping” hop experience (to the joy of many hop enthusiasts as of which I am one). Others are balanced overall in hop bitterness and malt sweetness, and still others are complex, with multiple layers of fruity, hoppy, malty character that evolve as the beer passes over the palate and as it warms in the glass.

IPA’s have been the flagship of craft brewing for years now, but there is a challenger to the world of beer. Check out my post next week for more details. My latest experience was fun.

Community Brewing Competitions

For the community news section I will attach the American Homebrewers Association list for the up and coming brewing competitions. Find a competition in your area and try to make it. I look forward to the Annual Brewsters Cup Mead Competition near Cincinnati and maybe I will see some of you there.

“For Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Hoppiness”

This week I am reviewing one of my favorite beers Christian Moerlein Northern Liberties IPA. I have been an IPA man for about a year now and this is the IPA that got me into IPAs. It is a smooth beer that is not too over powering. I have had beers with more hops and more bitterness, but this one is just right.

The color is a burnt copper with a perfectly white and aromatic head. This is one of the few beers that are an exception to my father’s see through the beer rule (see previous post for the rule). In my Brewing Over an Open Fire post I talked about ales and lagers. Lagers are known for their crisp taste. IPAs are considered ales, but this beer is very crisp. There is plenty of bitterness in the taste and citrus notes abound.

I love this beer. Finish this post and go buy some. You can find it at most retailers with a beer license. I bought my six-pack at Kroger for $8.99.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to comment on the discussion, follow, like, and share the blog. Be sure to check the backlist of posts for more content. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com.

I’ve noticed that the highest day for traffic to the blog has consistently been Wednesday. I’m not sure why, but I welcome it. I will be changing my post day from Thursday to Tuesday to compliment the Wednesday high traffic day.

Discussion-

 

• Think about your favorite type of beer. For me that is an IPA. What beer introduced you to the style and what about it converted you? Remember to hit comment at the top of the page.

PROST!

Brewing Over an Open Fire

Brewing Update:

My girlfriend Jackie at her uncle’s bonfire.

As promised in my What Home Brewing Is Not post I will tell the story of when we had to brew over an open fire.

It was our first brew that we had ever attempted. The day was July 4^th 2014 and we decided to brew for America. A week earlier we went to the local brewing supply store and bought: a 6-gallon brewing pot, a 6-gallon food grade fermenting bucket, the CO₂ bleeder, no rinse sanitizer, a large spoon, thermometer, and the kit of ingredients needed to make the batch.

12, noon hit, we cracked open beers, cheered for God’s America, and got ready to brew. The water began to boil with the bag of grains and we took it off the heat to steep for thirty minutes. After the steep we brought it up to nearly a boil and then the power went out in the house. We had an electric stove. It was a perfect day outside of Cincinnati on the 4^th. The sun was shining, there was a little breeze, birds were chirping, everything was perfect outside; but sure enough the power was out inside the house.

We were scrambling around the kitchen trying to figure out what to do. We were committed. It was time for the one-hour boil or we would have to throw out the whole batch and start over. This was our first one, our first attempt, our first shot. We had talked about brewing for years and we were not going to give up now as our forefathers did not give up on that heroic day.

He looked at me and said, “Smoker.” A few weeks earlier my father built a hog smoker made of concrete blocks and metal roofing for my sister’s high school graduation party. The fire was lit in a matter of minutes and the brewing pot was on the spit outside.

The batch started to boil again and we breathed an uneasy sigh of relief. The hour went by and we cooled it to 68 degrees, placed the beer into the fermenting keg, poured the yeast, and waited.

Four weeks later it tasted great. It was a brown ale style, which I am not keen on, but for what it was I enjoyed it. I found that it had a burnt, smoky taste and it was a hit at our summer parties. Our pot still has the burn marks from the fire and every time we pull the pot for another boil I think of the first time.

Factoid- The Classic Misconception: Ale or Lager?

Diagram of Ales vs. Lagers

After about ten minutes in the craft-brewing scene I’m sure that you have heard the terms ale and lager. Unfortunately, they are all too often used interchangeably. I will put this misconception to rest with the help of Popular Science Magazine. The difference is as fundamental as both use different types of yeast: ales have top feeding, warm activated yeast; while lagers use bottom feeing, cold activated yeast.

Ale yeast usually ferments more quickly than lagers and they are often sweeter, fuller-bodied, and fruiter in taste. Classic ales are: IPA’s (my favorite), Pale Ales, Porters, Stouts, Wheats, and Browns.

Lagers are the most widely consumed and available style of beer in the world. They ferment slower than ales and are known for a “crisp” taste. Classic lagers are: Bocks, Pilsners, and Marzens.

You are now smarter. Read the article. It’s neat.

 

Community News- Pacific Flavor Coming to the Midwest

Kona Brewing

Kona Brewing Company will be releasing three beers in Cincinnati, Ohio, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier. They will be having tastings at Jungle Jims in Eastgate, Ohio on 10/31 and 11/02. They plan on serving their Kua Bay IPA, Lavaman Red, and Black Lava Lager to be sampled at the tastings. I doubt I can make it, but I am excited for the Kua Bay IPA to go on sale.

 

 

 

Review- Coors Brewery Batch 19 Pre-Prohibition Style Lager

Batch 19 and Glass

This week’s flavor comes from Coors Brewery and their Batch 19 Pre-Prohibition Style Lager. I had never heard of the beer until over the weekend while I was talking to one of my girlfriend’s uncles at a bon fire (see picture of her above in front of the flames). I should have avoided the beer pallet of a man with a Miller Lite in his hand. “Situational awareness,” says my dad. Her uncle is a nice guy, but this is not a good beer.

I grew up with one rule about beer passed down from my father and his father before him going back to the beginning of time, “If you pour a beer into a glass and can see through it don’t drink it” (I have found a few exceptions to this rule, but do not tell them). I knew that I had made a mistake as soon as I could see my fingers on the other side of the glass through the beer.

I will try not to be cruel, but I did not enjoy this beer. It tasted like anything else from the Coors brewery. There was nothing special about the beer to mention. The six pack cost $7.99 at Walmart and the remaining beers will be used as cooking beers. Do not drink this beer.

 

Wish list:

Next week I will review a beer that I know I like and can give you a good review (probably an IPA).

I will also do SEO and other maintenance to the site in order to increase traffic to the site.

 

PROST!

 

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to comment on the discussion, follow, like, and share the blog. You can email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com.

Discussion:

 

• Tell a story of when someone recommended a beer to you, you tried it, and you wondered how in the world he or she could like that beer. Remember to hit comment at the top.

Drinking and Politics

Update 10/23/14

10/23/14

Brewing Update:

We only brew preassembled kits that we get at a local brewing supply store outside of Cincinnati. I will refer to the beers by the names that the store uses for them.

We have not brewed anything new recently. Right now we are drinking on Wrath of the Tsar, which is an Imperial Stout. We did not take a specific gravity, but we are told by the storeowners that it is close to 9% ABV. I believe them. I can feel them hit after just two or three. This is not a get drunk beer, but one to sit and enjoy slowly. It will punch you from behind if you are not careful.

We just bottled the Area 51, which is an IPA. You will find that I am an IPA guy and I am very excited about this beer. We had it in the fermenting bucket for two weeks and dry hopped it one week. It has currently been in the bottles for almost a week by the time this post gets out. We will let it carbonate for one more week and then drink it. I foresee me drinking it more than him, because I am a hophead. I love the stuff, the stronger the IPA the better.

Factoid:

I am an information junkie. I think I have some weird disorder where I get entertainment from learning things. This week’s factoid comes from Ed Crews at Colonial Williamsburg on Drinking in Colonial America. Colonial candidates for political office attracted voters with alcohol. They would distribute pints of beer and hard cider as they gave their political speeches. Imagine how many more people would show up to the ballot box if there was a pint waiting for them. I, as a full-blooded American, do not require alcohol to get me to the ballot box, but I would love for alcohol to get me out.

If you are a candidate during this midterm-election period do what your ancestors did and you will have “one up” on the competition. I’ll vote for you.

You can find the link to the Crews article here. It’s a long read, but very worth it.

Community News:

This week’s news is two fold. First, the American Homebrewers Association is holding its National Homebrewers Conference June 11-13, 2015 in San Diego, California.

Secondly, they are also calling for submissions for presenters to speak at the conference. If you would like to present at the 2015 American Homebrewers Conference you can find the link to the site here.

Review:

For this week’s review I would like to call attention to Rivertown Brewing Company’s Dunkel Beer. I had another beer lined up, but when I got off of work tonight I tried this great beer and had to change the review.

It’s a Munich style dark lager with mild roasted flavor mixed with caramel. The color is that of a dark, classic dunkel you would expect from a Munich style and it has a smooth finish.

All that aside, I enjoyed drinking this beer. It was around $9 for a six pack. I recommend this beer for those you like smooth, dark lagers. Drink this beer.

Wish List:

I would like to see a brew happen here in the valley by the next post on the 30^th so I can have a more interesting Brewing Update for you.

Another item for the wish list would be to have the Instagram set up so you can see all the pictures I take of us brewing and drinking the beers around here.

Thanks for reading this week. Don’t forget to follow the blog, like, share, and comment on the discussion question below. Feel free to email me at mylifeasahomebrewer@gmail.com with questions or suggestions. I am always open to new things.

Prost!

Discussion Question- Remember to hit the “Comment” button at the top and leave your answer.

• “Would you rather pay $12 for a six-pack or $6 for a twelve-pack? Why?”