A Contest of Her Own

This is very cool:

SheBrew Homebrew Competition
This competition is AHA sanctioned and open to any amateur female homebrewer age 21 or older. It is open to all non-commercial, home brewed beers produced by persons of female identity. 

Deadline: February 17th (Shipping) or 18th (Dropoff).  Register here.

Women have steadily become more welcome in the brewing world, but as a hobby, it's hard to find a culture that was once more masculine. I remember attending a homebrew meeting in the mid-90s and feeling incredibly intimidated. It was entirely male, and there was a latent vibe of competition in every discussion, whether about recipes, equipment, or actual competitions. Fortunately that has been changing. The competition is organized by the Oregon Brew Crew, which has made great strides to welcoming women in recent years. This is another excellent way to open the hobby up to a broad audience.

The turnaround is pretty tight, so if you don't have a beer ready, you're going to have to brew it up right quick. Good luck--

The Zoigl Launches

source

When Alan Taylor conceived of Zoiglhaus brewing, it wasn't for the name. In a remote part of Germany, a medieval tradition of communal brewing still hangs on in a few villages. There, locals own a single brewhouse to which they all have access. They go to the brewery, whip up a batch of beer, and take the wort to their homes to ferment. After fermentation, they hang a six-pointed star and invite people to their homes--temporarily restyled as homey pubs--and sell the beer to the public. This was a big part of the inspiration for Zoiglhaus, and this Friday Taylor is launching the first of his Zoigly initiatives. From the announcement:

While you can’t legally sell beer out of your home, you can do the next best thing:  fill up your carboy with freshly brewed wort at Zoiglhaus, take it and a fresh can of yeast home with you to ferment your own beer.  Add dry hops, extra flavorings, or leave it as is.  It’s up to you.  When the beer is done, you can share it with family or friends in the Zoigl spirit.

On December 2nd, Zoiglhaus will brew the first trial batch of ZPA, a hop-focused Pale Ale brewed with all-German ingredients.  The cooled and aerated wort from this brew will be available for purchase between 4 pm and 7 pm.  RSVPs are required, so please call us at 971-339-2374 or drop by the brewery to sign up for this event.

If you don't have a carboy, you can buy them at Zoiglhaus on Friday. The first 30 people to reserve will even get a free dose of Imperial yeast with the carboy. (I'm posting this a bit late, as usual, so that may not be in the cards.) The price of wort if you bring in a five-gallon carboy is $35, which is a pretty typical price for a batch of homebrew. (Five gallons gets you roughly two cases of beer.) Then, a month later:

On January 7th, Zoiglhaus will host the first Zoigl-Wort to Bierfest with a party in the Zoigl-Stube.  All of the participants are welcome to bring in samples of their brew to share with the Zoiglhaus brew staff (apparently they like tasting beer…) as well as the other home brewers.  Each participant will receive a commemorative glass and a free pint of the ZPA on the 7th.  Zoiglhaus is excited to see the creative ideas our fellow brewers come up with!  The People’s Choice will get a free 5 gallon fill of wort at the next Zoigl-Wort event.

I'll give his a shot (it will be a novel experience to begin with a properly-prepared wort), and I'm toying with either something involving fruit, dry hops, a saison yeast strain, or other curious additions. We shall see. Whether I attend the Jan 7 event will depend entirely on how this decision pans out. Seems like a new and fun wrinkle in the expanding tapestry that is Beervana.

Spontaneous by Proxy

The juice beginning fermentation.

A few months back, I mentioned trying an experiment with spontaneous yeast.  I was racking a batch of spontaneously-fermented cider, and when I discovered that lovely yeast cake at the bottom of the carboy, I wished I had some wort to throw on it.  Well, I got another bite at the ... err, another chance.  Kevin Zielinski, who makes some of the best cider in America, set me up with ten gallons of juice from his orchards (a mix of mostly French and some English bittersweet varieties).  He suggested I try one in the English mode, racked once and fermented to dry, and once in the French mode, with multiple rackings to try to get the yeast to exhaust the nutrients in the juice and go dormant (which is how they end up with sweet ciders that don't turn the bottles into bombs).

In any case, this afternoon I finished up a three-gallon batch of wort and transferred it to the barm of one of those ciders.  It smells like a great ferment has begun, with a lovely, fresh juice aroma and the beginnings of that wild yeast funk (and a bit of sulfur, which Kevin says is normal).  If this works, I'm going to call it "spontaneous by proxy" and hope the title catches on.  Of course, if it doesn't work I'll call it "a debacle" and hope everyone forgets quickly and moves along.

I am slightly less sanguine than I was before, though, owing to the lab report Kevin shared with me of the yeast and bacteria found in the juice sample.  It has lots of saccharomyces, which is great, and very little brettanomyces, which is curious.  But it also has tons of acetic acid bacteria, something called Hanseniaspora uvarum, and something else called Pichia membranifaciens.  I can't predict whether these would normally be found in a spontaneously-fermented beer, so who knows what they'll do in my wort.

Whatever happens, never fear--I'll let you know.


Update.  Well that was fast.   The yeast cake went into the wort at about 3pm yesterday, and by 7 this morning it was rocking.  I'd chilled the wort down to 55 so the yeast wouldn't be shocked by warm temps (the apple juice is outside and is probably around 45-48).  I therefore expected a slow ramp-up, but no:

(And to be clear, I don't leave the carboy on the sunny deck to ferment--that was for photographic purposes only.)

The Timid Man's Spontaneous Ferment?

Funky.

Here's a little question for the internet. As you may recall, I am experimenting with the pleasures of natural fermentation.  Having secured three gallons of unpasteurized, fresh-pressed apple juice from Draper Girl's farm, I relocated it to a carboy and let it sit outside, where nature could run its course.  And run it did. (A little too quickly, I think--late October was unseasonably warm in Oregon, and I the cider was fermenting at between 55-60 degrees.  I'd been hoping for 50 or lower.)  I racked the cider on Sunday and it was already down to 1.006 and tasting great.  It's been unseasonably cold for the past week, and the cider is now slow-fermenting in the 30s, so it should finish out nicely.

Anyway, here's the question.  It was only as the last drops of cider were getting suctioned up that I recognized the potential gold I was sitting on: a rich layer of wild Oregon yeast and bacteria, smelling funky and alive.  I had not planned ahead, so I dumped it, but here's the thing: wouldn't that be a perfect slurry to pitch on a fresh batch of wort and get a cheater's version of wild ferment?  Is there any reason I should not go back down the Gorge, get another gallon of Draper Girl's juice and use it effectively as a wild-yeast starter? 

Hive mind has never led me astray, so render now your verdict: clever or boneheaded?

Get Your Holy Hops While the Gettin's Good

Source: Holy Hops

This is the best story in homebrewing since October 14, 1978: native, American neomexicanus hops grown at the the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico went on sale today to homebrewers.  They have precious little stocks, and therefore the hops are mighty expensive.  Nevertheless, this is an extremely cool prospect for nerds like me (I wisely ordered my 3.5 ounces of Latir before writing this post) for whom the idea of indigenous hops--even ones grown thousands of miles away--are irresistible.  It's a bit of a pig in a poke, flavor-wise, but here's what's on offer:

• Amalia (4.5% alpha acids).  "Citrusy, tangerine, slightly minty"
• Latir (7.2% aa).  "Spicy, herbal, flowery"
• Tierra (5.7% aa). "Minty, citrusy, very slightly grassy"
• Chama (7.3% aa). "Citrusy, herbal, fruity"
• Mintras (4.1% aa). "Herbal, minty"

If anyone does pick up some of these hops and wishes to do some bottle-trading down the line, I'd be happy to participate.  I'll be doing a relatively low-alcohol (~5%) neutral pale ale or lager with my Latir, hoping that the hops have a chance to express themselves in that format. 

The Versatility of Corn

You may recall that a year ago I went on a bit of a corn jag.  I was rounding the final turn on the Beer Bible and it led me into the fields of the new world's native grain.  I considered how the neighborhoods inhabited by corn beer went from respectable to distressed; I discovered American weissbier; I sampled authentic chicha illegally smuggled in from Peru.  Typically, my momentary enthusiams fail to spark much interest and they slip into the ghostlands of the decaying internet archives.  Corn, however, was intriguing enough to capture the attention of an Ohio homebrewer, who tucked into the subject with more sustained attention than I can usually manage.

He sent along the results of many trials and I've been working my way through them.  Along with obscure annotated bottles, he included a concordance to help decipher the bottles, but I confess I couldn't really line everything up.  (Further descriptions at his blog here, here, here, here, and here.)  And, since you will never have a chance to try the beers, it doesn't matter overmuch whether I knew exactly what I was drinking.  More interesting is what I learned from the sampling.

Most of the beers were modeled roughly on the old Wahl and Henius American weissbier description, and used 30% flaked corn, 20% wheat, and 50% old-timey six-row barley.  He used different yeasts and fiddled with some sour mash and wild inoculation (to sometimes mixed effect*).  But what comes through as you try one after the next is how versatile the grain is.  In one beer, I picked up the classic beer corniness--ala Miller--but this was the exception.  One of the beers was made with the 3711 French farmhouse strain, and it was spectacular.  Belgians use corn a lot anyway, and it thinned out the body in a Belgiany fashion.  It also added a particular kind of rusticity to the palate--almost like cornbread.  It didn't have that processed corn flavor of Miller; it was fuller, more wholesome and natural.  Another of the beers had what tasted like an abbey strain, and it exhibited classic abbey character (it might have been the Duvel strain).  It was clarion, roiling, aromatic, dry, and champagne-like.

They didn't all work.  One of the beers was cloudy and produced large, soapy bubbles.  When Wahl and Henius wrote about American weissbier, they observed that "grits will under no circumstances yield those albuminoids that give Weiss beer its character, as wheat malt does."  By albuminoids, they mean the chunky and chewy stuff that characterize a good weizen, and they could have been writing about this one.  It was watery, thin, and characterless.  In other words, like any ingredient, corn will not redound uniformly to a beer's success.

While I was on my corn theme, I sent out a plaintive call for more brewers to experiment with this lovely grain.  It still retains a whisp of the old taint of cheapness--though the Brewers Association has finally officially ended its jihad against America's grain--and I think this is why you still find it less often included in a recipe than, say, cucumber.  Nevertheless, I renew my call.  Corn is a great grain and can add not only flavor and character to certain styles (Belgians more than German weizens), but has the undeniable virtue of being a local grain.  There is nothing so authentic and traditional as local, so why don't more American craft breweries use it?

_____________________
*On Friday, I had some friends over and we started sampling.  The very first beer we pulled out had been made via sour mash, and it was easily one of the most offensive substances I have ever encountered.  It was putrid, but while the brewer described the aromatics as "garbage and sweaty feet," I got an undiluted smack of baby diaper.  So far as I can tell, that comes from wayward pediococcus, but I'm not an expert on infections.  I admire the brewer for sending this along all the way from Ohio for purely forensic purposes, but a warning label might have been in order: it took five minutes for the air to clear, even after we'd dumped it down the drain and flushed with water.  Ah, homebrew.

Amercian Weissbeer Realized

In about a month's time, we acknowledge the country's 237th birthday, and in celebration, I plan on doing a series of deep dives into the nature of American beer.  It was one of the many interesting discoveries I made in writing the Beer Bible: there is American beer after all, and it's not an insignificant or purely derivative tradition.  Consider today the inaugural post in the series. 

Three months ago, I mentioned the riches contained in an old text by Robert Wahl and Max Henius called (charmingly) the American Handy-Book of Brewing from around the turn of the 20th century.  In it they mention some of the beer styles of the day and one caught my eye--American weissbier.  They describe it thus:

The material employed and method of mashing is usually quite different [from German methods].  Wheat malt is sometimes, but not generally, used.  Instead [corn] grits are employed, usually to the amount of about 30%."

W&H hated it, but they were bent on using Berliner Weiss as the standard; in the comparison, they found American weissbier wanting. But how did it taste on its own merit?  Whenever you read these old descriptions, that's what springs to mind.  Actually reproducing beer from the 19th century is nearly impossible: we use different strains of barley and hops, and our equipment has evolved.  Nevertheless, it's interesting to brew the beer as a kind of thought experiment.  Well, that's exactly what my Ohio correspondent did (he of Comet fame), and he sent me a bottle.  Thirty percent corn, twenty wheat, and fifty six-row.  To add authenticity, he used Cluster hops.  The procedure:

I also tried something new with this batch: I mashed on Wednesday night, and then boiled the collected wort on Thursday morning. Post-mash, I brought the wort to a boil, and then shut it off and went to bed.

The one decision I question--post facto--is that he pitched using the Duvel strain.  That decision had more to do with the beer's flavor than the corn: it adds a ton of estery character that muscles itself into the flavor foreground.  But the experiment was a success in many other ways.  It doesn't track as a German wheat in any way--there's a bit of yeasty turbidity, but one doesn't think either weizen or Berliner weiss.  It's much more cleanly American.  If you know corn is in the grist, you can find it in the flavor, but it's far from obvious.  I get more the sense of corn sweetness, which is a bit different than barley malt sweetness.  I was surprised to find that neither the six-row nor the Clusters roughened things up.  It was smooth and sweet. 

Corn is a native crop and one of the key markers of American brewing.  Beer geeks went slightly awry when they decided it was an abomination and affront to brewing; it's nothing of the kind.  Americans should reclaim it as an important part of our brewing heritage, and I'm reminded in experiments like this that it can offer something unique and indigenous to a batch of beer.

The Most American Day of the Year

What do other countries think of us on Super Bowl Sunday?  What does it say about a culture that the biggest non-holiday event of the year involves sitting around "man caves" in suburban America to watch a four-hour sporting event?  Even that we call it, with no apparent self-awareness, the "Super Bowl" (or even worse "Super Bowl XLVII") says something, doesn't it?  There is a certain late-empire grandiosity to the whole affair that is slightly odd.  But every culture has oddness, and this one is fairly harmless.

Obviously.

For my part, I'm half-way through the mash of my annual pilsner--or better yet, světlý ležák.  (We'll see if it's actually a ležák--I have a horrible time hitting my efficiency.  But a světlé Výčepní is cool, too.)  My erstwhile brewing partner is now bumming it in Brazil, so I'm on my own.  Each year we mix it up a bit and this year instead of using Sterling hops (a better approximation of Saaz than US Saaz) I'm going with German.  Steinbart's had Tradition and Hersbrucker, so that's what we're going with.  I also added a half pound of wheat, on the slim justification of head grains, but mainly because I tend to put at least half a pound of wheat  in every recipe.

When I was in Prague, I told my tour guide, Max Bahnson, about this beer.  I'd been to Pilsner Urquell and Budvar already, and he was deepening my understanding of Czech lagers.  Since we were on a two-day odyssey, I'm not sure precisely when the moment came, but I remember what happened next.   I proudly mentioned that we call our pils Velvet Revolution.  His nose wrinkled and he shook his head.  "It's too obvious," he said.  "A Czech brewery would never use that."

Obvious.  Isn't that exactly what you'd expect from a couple of American homebrewers?  Go Niners!

White House Homebrew (With Video)

And at last, we have the recipe. On Wednesday, I asked whether it would be beer-geekorific or not, and I think we must conclude "not."  (They're extract brews and pretty pedestrian.)  There are actually two versions, a wheat and a porter, and both look a great deal like the first two recipes of any homebrewery.  But actually, before I reveal them, you should watch the following video, which also has the awe and excitement that mark the first time brewing a beer.  The American Homebrewers Association should immediately begin using it in promotions:




And now to the main event, the recipes.  Homebrewers may comment about where they are impressed or appalled, and what advice they might give to the White House about stepping it up to the next level.

White House Honey Porter

Ingredients

• 2 (3.3 lb) cans light unhopped malt extract
• 3/4 lb Munich Malt (cracked)
• 1 lb crystal 20 malt (cracked)
• 6 oz black malt (cracked)
• 3 oz chocolate malt (cracked)
• 1 lb White House Honey
• 10 HBUs bittering hops
• 1/2 oz Hallertaur Aroma hops
• 1 pkg Nottingham dry yeast
• 3/4 cup corn sugar for bottling

Directions

1. In a 6 qt pot, add grains to 2.25 qts of 168˚ water. Mix well to bring temp down to 155˚. Steep on stovetop at 155˚ for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, bring 2 gallons of water to 165˚ in a 12 qt pot. Place strainer over, then pour and spoon all the grains and liquid in. Rinse with 2 gallons of 165˚ water. Let liquid drain through. Discard the grains and bring the liquid to a boil. Set aside.
2. Add the 2 cans of malt extract and honey into the pot. Stir well.
3. Boil for an hour. Add half of the bittering hops at the 15 minute mark, the other half at 30 minute mark, then the aroma hops at the 60 minute mark.
4. Set aside and let stand for 15 minutes.
5. Place 2 gallons of chilled water into the primary fermenter and add the hot wort into it. Top with more water to total 5 gallons if necessary. Place into an ice bath to cool down to 70-80˚.
6. Activate dry yeast in 1 cup of sterilized water at 75-90˚ for fifteen minutes. Pitch yeast into the fermenter. Fill airlock halfway with water. Ferment at room temp (64-68˚) for 3-4 days.
7. Siphon over to a secondary glass fermenter for another 4-7 days.
8. To bottle, make a priming syrup on the stove with 1 cup sterile water and 3/4 cup priming sugar, bring to a boil for five minutes. Pour the mixture into an empty bottling bucket. Siphon the beer from the fermenter over it. Distribute priming sugar evenly. Siphon into bottles and cap. Let sit for 1-2 weeks at 75˚.

---

White House Honey Ale

Ingredients

• 2 (3.3 lb) cans light malt extract
• 1 lb light dried malt extract
• 12 oz crushed amber crystal malt
• 8 oz Bisquit Malt
• 1 lb White House Honey
• 1 1/2 oz Kent Goldings Hop Pellets
• 1 1/2 oz Fuggles Hop pellets
• 2 tsp gypsum
• 1 pkg Windsor dry ale yeast
• 3/4 cup corn sugar for priming

Directions

1. In an 12 qt pot, steep the grains in a hop bag in 1 1/2 gallons of sterile water at 155 degrees for half an hour. Remove the grains.
2. Add the 2 cans of the malt extract and the dried extract and bring to a boil.
3. For the first flavoring, add the 1 1/2 oz Kent Goldings and 2 tsp of gypsum. Boil for 45 minutes.
4. For the second flavoring, add the 1/2 oz Fuggles hop pellets at the last minute of the boil.
5. Add the honey and boil for 5 more minutes.
6. Add 2 gallons chilled sterile water into the primary fermenter and add the hot wort into it. Top with more water to total 5 gallons. There is no need to strain.
7. Pitch yeast when wort temperature is between 70-80˚. Fill airlock halfway with water.
8. Ferment at 68-72˚ for about seven days.
9. Rack to a secondary fermenter after five days and ferment for 14 more days.
10. To bottle, dissolve the corn sugar into 2 pints of boiling water for 15 minutes. Pour the mixture into an empty bottling bucket. Siphon the beer from the fermenter over it. Distribute priming sugar evenly. Siphon into bottles and cap. Let sit for 2 to 3 weeks at 75˚.

 

Pimp Your Stout (A Survey of Cool Bottles)

When American craft breweries first started putting their beer in bottles, they opted for a couple standard varieties--the longneck or the squat, ugly "legacy" bottle. Over time, breweries collected little piles of coins and decided to invest in more interesting bottles--as exemplified by Redhook's cool new examples. Even more than labels, bottles can offer a distinctive touch to a packaged product. Who among us hasn't picked up a St. Peter's just to admire the flask shape?

There's another element to this, too. Homebrewers are constantly on the prowl for a great bottle. Qualifications include attractive shape, embossing, and the absence of distinguishing marks. Deschutes' bottles are a great example: tall and patrician with clean lines and broad shoulders adorned with epaulets of hop vines. Put your stout in this bottle and you can borrow some pride from Bend.

For today's post, I thought it would be fun to have a gander at classic bottles, some good for homebrew, some good--but not for homebrew. I envision a time when many American breweries have their own bottles. They could take notes from some of these. Trappists are out in front:

Westmalle has a classic form and the iconic neck embossing that so beguiled the folks at New Belgium that they followed course. Not perfect for homebrew because of the name, but nevertheless a great bottle.


Chimay's smaller bottles are unique in form, and include the embossed name of the Abbey. Tres classy--though again, too specific for the homebrew.

Moving along, we come to the swing-top offerings, which are always fun for amateur bottlers. They're fun for everyone, actually--who doesn't like a cool swing-top? So far, the only local brewery to go for this style is Captured By Porches--and you pay through the nose for the privilege.

Far cheaper are the many German breweries that use swingtops, like this Hirschbrau. You can pick these up for three or four dollars--full of tasty lager.

Of course, the Grolsch is a classic. Not great for labels, and you have to keep it out of the sun, but it has the old-timey feel homebrewers prize.

The best of all are the stoneware swingtops of St. Sebastiaan. A few Belgian breweries use faux-stoneware, but St. Sebastiaan is the real deal. Not a cheap way to go, but you can slowly build up your collection.

Now we come to some of my fave standards, including one or two that may stump you. These sleek fellas are sans label, and I will offer a gold star to the person who can identify them all in comments. Sadly, a gold star is likely all you'll get, but it's something. I have a couple bottles of (C) floating around, but I could only locate one from my bottle collection for the photo. The rest are from my regular rotation.

A.


B.


C.


D.

A Few Words on Homebrewing

A few weeks back, I received a review copy of Beginning Homebrew, a DVD that walks people through extract homebrewing. It is designed for people with absolutely no experience in brewing, and does a fine job of walking you through the steps, offering a couple variations on standard practices. It also comes with a free instructional booklet that captures the myriad details involved in assembling ingredients, following procedures, and maintaining sanitation. It sets you back twenty bucks, but functions like an experienced friend in the kitchen to walk you through things. Not a bad deal for those who feel overwhelmed by the prospect of brewing.

It got me thinking about homebrewing. No matter which system you decide to adopt, brewing even a single batch of beer at home requires an sizable investment of time and money. Nearly every homebrew store in America has a kit to get you started, and the cheapest run fifty bucks. Add kettles and ingredients and a brewing book and you're almost certainly going to spend at least a hundred dollars on your first batch of beer--and you could spend a lot more. Many people arrive at this moment and wonder--should I take the plunge? You will be unsurprised to learn I have thoughts.


Why Should You Brew?
Before taking the plunge, do a little self-examination. Brewing is like cooking: you don't need to do it to get a good bottle of beer (or plate of food). You brew because you like the process, not the product. It isn't cheap, it's labor-intensive, and it's time-consuming. Hell, it's even a little dangerous.* All of this can be said of cooking, too, and yet millions spend hours in the kitchen making worse food than they could find if they walked down the street the the local bistro.

Are you the kind of person who spends time considering beer recipes? Do you try to figure out which hops offer flavors you enjoy? Do you wonder what a beer with X ingredient might taste like? If thinking about brewing beer stimulates your creativity, brewing beer is probably for you. If, on the other hand, you love the sensual experience of beer but have no interest in recreating those stimuli yourself, you may not be a brewer. If the idea of several hours of work to produce a potentially inferior beer fills you with dread, brewing is not for you. A lot of people who like beer invest their hundred bucks and make a single batch of beer, realizing that drinking beer is a lot more fun than making it.


How Should You Brew?**
Here's how beer is made, in the briefest of nutshells: brewers begin by making a malt tea, bringing it to a boil, and adding spices (usually hops). To this they add yeast and beer results. There are essentially two ways to make that malt tea; they differ in the same way brewing coffee and making instant coffee do. The drip-coffee method involves steeping whole malted grains in warm water and drawing off the liquid (known as "all-grain" homebrewing). This takes longer and you can mess up your proportions. The more foolproof way is to bring water to to boil and add dehydrated malt extract (a method known predictably as "extract brewing"). Nearly every homebrew shop in the country starts you out with five-gallon systems for extract brewing.

Here's my recommendation: try a mini-batch of all-grain brewing. If you are going to be a homebrewer, eventually you'll get to all-grain brewing. (Bakers may start out with Betty Crocker cake-in-a-box, but they don't end there.) If you're not cut out to be a homebrewer, it's better to see what the actual process is like and then cut your losses. The additional bonus is that with a mini-batch, you can avoid spending gobs of money.

If you have a 12-quart stock pot at home, you can jury-rig a system that will produce a two-gallon batch for less than $100, including ingredients--and you'll have very little extraneous crap left in your basement afterward. The technique I recommend is "brew in a bag," which can be very basic indeed. (I'm not going to go into it here, but I recommend using a cooler with a spigot so you can vorlauf and sparge--but only if you already own a cooler with a spigot.) In this system, you need to purchase just a cheap two-gallon fermenter (I saw a plastic one online for $7), a fermentation lock and stopper, mesh bag, plastic hose, sanitizing solution, priming sugar, bottle caps and capper. Oh, and a homebrewing book--which is critical. With these tools you can produce a crude but serviceable beer that will instruct you far more comprehensibly about what beer brewing is actually like. If it floats your boat, you can expand pretty quickly; if not, very little harm done.

____________
*Early homebrew experience: I had batch three in the bottles in my apartment bedroom. A beer made with the only fruit I could find in the early spring in Madison, WI: mangoes. On the first really warm day of the year, while I was fortunately out of the house, the already overcarbonated beers got even more lively, and about half of them exploded, coating my room in a gluey mixture of beer and glass shards.

**By far the best way to get into homebrewing is to find a friend who already brews. Join her on brewday and watch the process. If you think it looks fun, borrow her equipment or have her walk you through a batch yourself. Not only is this a zero-cost way to get into brewing, but you have a trusted resource to guide you through the process. Failing that, my two-gallon scheme is a cheap fall-back.

Home Brewer in the White House

Presidents make their mark on the White House by fixing the joint up. Nixon, for example, added a bowling alley. Carter added solar panels (and Reagan removed them). Roosevelt (FD) put in a swimming pool.

Obama? Homebrewery:

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have joined the home brewing beer trend that's swept the US, and will be serving a very special White House brew tonight when they welcome guests for the annual Super Bowl party, to watch as the Packers take on the Steelers.

In a special turn of events in the history of White House food creations, one of the White House chefs has brewed White House Honey Ale, a White House aide exclusively tipped ObFo. It uses one pound of honey from this year's 160-pound harvest of honey from the White House Bee Hive, which sits beside Mrs. Obama's South Lawn Kitchen Garden.

I've watched Obama's flirtation with beer since he was a candidate. (Although it's lost in cyberspace, someone shot a video of his visit to Beaverton. Someone recommends a local IPA and Obama responds, 'Really, is it good?") Forget the beer summit--Obama's been seen tippling at ball games and restaurants. His passion is typical for an American: he mainly drinks (and apparently quite enjoys) macros, but has the occasional crossover micro, too. He has so far failed to fall under the sway of double IPAs and bourbon-barrel aged imperial sours. Give him time, though. Homebrewing can affect you in unpredictable ways...

Update: by the way, if anyone knows how I would go about getting a bottle of WH homebrew for review, holler. I'd love to see what they're serving.

More on Grätzer

How did we survive before the internets? Before electricity I can understand--whales kept things dimly lit. But before the internet we must have wandered the desert, hoping to stumble by chance upon nuggets of wisdom, like gold. Yesterday, two great comments appeared on my grätzer post from men more educated than I.

First, from Alan Taylor, the Widmer Brothers' resident Germany expert, who has such a precise and scholarly sense of things that he corrected the quote I included (via Pattinson) from Bierbrauerei. Taylor notes:

By the way: A Zentner is actually 50 kg or 100 Pfund, so the ratio of hops to malt is higher than in the quotation you had.

Well, obviously. How silly of me to confuse my kilos and Pfunds.

Next we have Kristen England, the homebrewer I quoted (via Hieronymus), who is one of the vanishingly small Americans to have actually brewed a grätzer. It's quite useful for the homebrewer interested in brewing their own grätzer, a number who include me:

The problem with the beer isn't, surprisingly, the 100% wheat. It's getting the level of smoke you want without mucking up the malt. Meaning making sure it can still convert itself.

I've done many different types of wood and oak really does work best. Rauchmalt is too smooth and hammy. The oak tannins really dry the beer out and with the hops dries the beer out completely. The cherrywood smoke made it taste like an ashtray.

The BU's are around 40 or so. 2/3 first wort and then 1/3 the last 15min works very well. All low [alpha] % noble which adds a ton of tannin because of all the hop matter that goes into it. You'll be surprised at how clear this beer ends up.

I find that OG+10 = BU works great. I like mine about 1.028 and then 38 BU. Finishes around 1.009. Bone dry.

Thanks, Kristen. this is most useful.

And on the seventh day, he brewed

Everyone deserves a day off, and on mine, I will combine a recipe for imperial stout with the yeast strain Double Mountain uses. Since they tend to think of it as the yeast strain of the brothers at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint Remy, I shall call it, perhaps not too originally, Black Monk. It's already a little late in the game for this bad boy to be ready by the time the cold rains fall, but then again, "ready" is such a bourgeois term, isn't it?

In any case, we finally have a bit of traditional September weather--sunny and mild--and I'm going to skip a day of painting. Yay!

On a related note, Golden Dragon was a mixed success. While I have enjoyed it greatly, both my lovely and talented wife and the beeronomist say those Sorachi Ace hops (used without aid from other strains) taste distinctly of dill. And they are therefore not so hot on the Dragon. To me, it's a pretty straightforward lemon note and I can find no dill. I long ago realized that human tongues are varied and able only to pick up a fraction of the flavor compounds present in hops, so this isn't surprising. But I'll through it out to you: Sorachi Ace--dill note? Perhaps they're in the minority.

Beer and Politics

A word to the wise: politicians seeking a little quick publicity should mention beer. Yeah yeah, unemployment sucks, and there's something going on in the Gulf of Mexico. But, whoa, did you see this--Senator Wyden went to Ninkasi to discuss beer taxes! In the last legislative cycle, Jules Bailey's little Honest Pint Act got a lot of press, and the biennial scrap over state beer excise taxes got huge amounts of press.

Now it's the crazy DOJ interpretation about homebrewing that is getting news:

• Statesman Journal
• Portland Mercury
• Willamette Week
• Portland Monthly
• Medford Mail Tribune

State legislators are, of course, lining up to correct the problem. In political terms, this is a can't-lose issue: 1) no one's against it, 2) you get to beat up on stupid bureaucrats, 3) everyone's pro-beer, 4) you get lots of press.

It's worth noting, though, this is an effect, not a cause. Even twenty years ago, no one would have cared about beer laws. It's a testament to the popularity of the Beaver State's favorite beverage that any regulation immediately becomes front-page news.

Fun with Fungus

I pulled up a batch of peach lambic from the basement to see how it was going. Such an odd sight--the slick of gunk on the top, bubbles that appear to be emerging from toxic sludge. The whole thing resists a mammal's sense of what healthy and tasty should look. It looked more like something BP has done. Yet a sample reveals the sublime--lush peach aroma, deep, fruity flavor. All those little fungi and bacteria may visually repel, but the nose knows. This is going to be a keeper.

Enter the Dragon

Inspired by the lush aroma of the Sorachi Ace hops I used to brew with yesterday, I began to consider more and more fanciful names. I'm not sure if it was my brewing compatriot or me who came up with the name "Golden Dragon" as an homage to their Asian roots, but it stuck. Last night I found and reworked an old Chinese* fireworks wrapper and came up with this label, of which I'm most proud. The original image is here. I haven't been labeling my homebrews for a few years, but this will have to be an exception. Even if the beer's a dud, the label rocks. ( You have to click the image to read the smaller text.)

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*Yes, I am aware that Sorachi Ace hop was developed in Japan, not China, but you take what you can scavenge off the internets.

Deep Research

Time to take the Sorachi Ace hop around for a spin. Think I'll do a single-hop batch today and get familiar with the strain everyone's talking about.

Inner Rind of a Fir Tree

The good folks at Brewers Publications were kind enough to send me Stan Hieronymus' Brewing With Wheat, which debuted just a few weeks past. If you are at all interested in beer, books like this one are catnip. As Jeff Sparrow did in his excellent Wild Brews, Stan begins with a historical overview. It passes through, as all brewing histories do, the caprice of law and geography that conspired to create beer styles. As if walking a cemetery, Stan reads off the names of the dead, including, much to my fascination, a deceased style from England--in the days before England banned the use of wheat in brewing (!)--called mum. The source he quotes describes it thus:

"To produce 42 gallons of mum start with seven bushels of wheat malt, one bushel of oat malt, and one bushel of beans. Once fermentation begins thirteen flavorings are added, including three pounds of the inner rind of a fir tree; one pound each of fir and birch tree tips; three handfuls of 'Carduus Benedictus,' or blessed thistle; two handfuls of 'flowers of the Rosa Solis' or sundew; the insect eating bogplant, which has a bitter, caustic taste; elderflower; betony; wild thyme; cardamom; and pennyroyal."

A few things spring to mind:

1. Do brewers prefer bogplant rich with insects or free thereof?
2. Would our native firs suffice as a substitute, or possibly the cambium of the Western red cedar, said to be edible?
3. Beans?

In seriousness, I have long wondered if we could figure a way to incorporate local ingredients into beer to create something a bit more indigenous. I'm delighted to hear about this fir-rind business, and hope to inspire an experimental brewer to get cracking. Derek?

I'll have more from Brewing With Wheat as I read on. Meantime, I have already found enough of interest to recommend it, so if you are similarly fascinated by the history and art of brewing, consider picking up a copy.
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Easy Lambic

Yesterday afternoon, I transferred a batch of lambic that had been sitting on peaches for about a month. I know braver brewers go longer with their fruit, but I got skittish--peaches just sitting there at room temperature all that time. (Finding: when I dumped the spent peaches in the compost, they were perfectly preserved and not remotely close to ruining the beer. Should have kept my powder dry.) As usual, I had a sample during transfer and: wow! This should be an amazing beer.

As I have confessed many times, I'm a poor brewer. By the standards of the time when I started (1993), I was pretty good. But, when I try beer brewed by folks like Gansberg and Ganum, Harris and Swihart (just to name a few)--well, what I do shouldn't properly be mentioned in the same breath. Except--and let this be a lesson to everyone who loves sour beer--when I brew with Wyeast 3278.

A traditional lambic is a hairy beast to brew, even leaving aside the spontaneous fermentation. There's this nightmare known as a turbid mash, which I've never even considered. But a psuedo-lambic, fermented with this strain, is super easy. Just brew it like you would any beer, with a ratio of about 60-40 barley-wheat malt. If you have foresight or plan to be brewing a lot of years, buy some low-alpha hops (Saaz, Hallertauer, etc.) and throw 'em in a paper sack and let them sit. Otherwise, just use fresh ones in small quantities. (You can try to subject them to low heat to speed-age them, but it's unnecessary.) Then pitch with the Wyeast Lambic blend, and let the little beasties do the real work.

Lambics are all about the yeast, and this is an amazingly well-designed blend. Like a good sour ale, it produces beer that evolves. In the last lambic I brewed, I added some apples from my tree out front. I didn't use enough though, and the effect was exceedingly subtle to begin with. A bit in the nose. But as the brettanomyces continued to work and stripped away the last of the malt sugars, the evanescence of the apples emerged. Still very mild, but now clearly evident. Straight lambics evolve, too, and become these fantastically layered, austere beers after a couple years.

Fanatics will observe that these are neither real lambics nor as singular and intense as versions from the traditional breweries. But they're definitely in the ballpark. And since I usually can't even see the ballpark from where I man the kettle, this is enormously satisfying. If you like to brew, you like lambics, and you have some time, give it a shot. Results guaranteed ... eventually.
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