FOOLCiRCLE

Think it’s been long enough since my last post? Sorry about that. The good thing is, you haven’t missed much, the bad thing is, you haven’t missed much because I haven’t done much homebrewing.

BUT, the really cool thing is I’m ready to brew more in 2010 then ever before! Look at that beauty! That’s my brand-spankin’-new 15 gallon kettle which will allow me to double my capacity by doing 10 gallon batches instead of 5 gallon batches. This kettle has actually been on the “wish list” for quite some time, and I received a little bit of funding for it LAST Christmas and just finally pulled the trigger. This bad boy is approximately 40 pounds, all stainless steel, with welded fittings for a 1/2″ ball valve and 2″ length / 3″ face thermometer. I also opted for the optional false bottom so I can use whole flower hops in my brews if I so chose. And, the novelty of handles, go figure. Yeah, this isn’t a cheap piece of equipment, but with proper care it will realistically last a life time.

So in preparation of getting my brew on for 2010, or at least for the next little bit, and to hopefully abuse (in the best way possible) the new kettle and all of it’s features I also placed a nice sized hop order from Hops Direct.

It’s kind of a shitty picture, but that’s 5+ pounds of whole flower hops. Each bag was suppose to be 16oz, instead the bags ranged from 20 to 22oz a piece, over a pound of free hops total. Also, I was trying to hit a dead-line for my delivery and Hops Direct upgraded my shipping from 3-day to 2-day for free. This is my first time using them and I must say I was happily impressed and would easily recommend them to anyone interested. So what did I order? I ordered a bunch of C’s: Cascade, Chinook, Columbus, Centennial, and Magnum. So everybody better get ready for some hoppy American brews, but what else is new from Fool Circle.

So hopefully more news later this week, at least one more post about a very special brew from the weekend after Thanksgiving, stay tuned!

So yesterday my buddy Garrett and I brewed a beer that’s been dubbed the Harvest Ale, a Pale Ale brewed with all fresh hops!

We decided on doing a 10 gallon batch as this was TOTALLY an experiment, and 10 gallons would give us each 5 gallons at the end of the day. This was a total experiment because neither one of us had ever used fresh hops, there was no way of telling what the estimated alpha acids or IBUs from the hops would be, and hell, we didn’t even know if we were going to have enough hops for the experiment in the first place. In all honesty we could have basically made a “lawn clipping” beer by accident.

And let me just tell you, these hops were F-R-E-S-H-! Literally Garrett cut down the bines an hour before I arrived and filled a utility wagon and we began picking right away. Of course it had been raining all morning and we were a little unprepared for the excess water on the cones so Garrett came up with the idea of laying all of the hops on a screen with a fan on them to help surface dry the hops, nice. Our recipe called for a total of 20 ounces of fresh hops which we think translated to about 4 to 5 ounces of dry hops, which for a 10 gallon batch seems about right for a non-super hoppy beer.

So, why all the fuss with the fresh hops? Well, fresh hops are literally only available (in the northern hemisphere) once a year, so this could only happen when it happen, that alone makes it special. Also, the longer hops are handled and aged the less potent they and you lose the sensitive volatile oils that can’t hold up to it. So, there hops were literally like three hours old when they hit the kettle, they were picked by hand (versus machine) and were used in every aspect of the recipe. By using them throughout we know we destroyed any delicate compounds with a 90 minute boil trying to achieve our estimated bitterness level, but we mostly late hopped which will help preserve the sensitive material.

One funny thing that happened during the brew day was we WAY over shot our OG some how. We were aiming for 1.055 and hit 1.066, huge difference. Not that I’m concerned, though the hop profile may appear diminished, it just is big, it’s like 85%+ efficiency, and that’s pretty much even if I accidentally over weighed the grain by a pound or so. Anyway, this should be a pretty exciting beer to keep your eyes on to try and grab a taste when it is on the kegerator. Even compared to commercial versions, there is nothing else like this available, this is the freshy-fresh!

Yup … Kitchen Sink . So today I brewed a beer dubbed the Fool Circle Kitchen Sink Dark, I know, super descriptive and right to BJCP style guidelines.

So in the last post I talked about brewing the Kitchen Sink Amber, well today I brewed the Kitchen Sink Dark. Both of these batches were intended to use up all of my ingredients and still make drinkable beer, though not stylistically accurate. They did their job, the only ingredients I have left right now are about 90 pounds of base malt, 2 pounds of malted rye (which was ordered in “extra” for the R3 and never used), and 1 ounce of Cascade hops for dry hopping the KS Amber. So now it is time to re-up for some freshy-fresh batches, maybe say, … 6 batches worth, so again if you have suggestions let me know, I’ll be ordering soon.

Anyway, today’s brew day went pretty good. I was finished in about 5.5 hours without any major set backs but a few minor glitches. For example, I ran out of propane after collecting the wort but prior to achieving a proper boil, no problem that’s what the spare tank is for. I also couldn’t cool the wort below 80 degrees, again not too big of a deal, did the wet towel/fan trick the last two batched and it worked out marvelously. I suppose the biggest problem, which had nothing to do with making beer, is I have determined I am not a plumber. This is the second or third time I have tried to solder copper tubing for different brewing applications and I have never done a good job. It always takes me two or three attempts, it looks sloppy afterward, and typically I am unhappy with the outcome. Well today I was trying to put together some copper for inside the HLT to help siphon the water out without me having to tip it, a pick-up tube essentially. First my soldering sucked and second, I didn’t have enough pieces (realized after the fact) to make it work properly. Guess what that means? Another $5-10 bucks on stupid copper fittings and another hour of me struggling with the torch and solder. Oh well, I suppose that’s how we learn things.

Also, sorry about the lack of pictures for the KS Amber and Dark and the cleaned up brew room etc, I let Robert borrow my camera for a little bit so that we can document his hairy life here: Roby vs. the Razor. I actually had forgotten, but there was a similar bet in the movie Knocked Up where his roommates bet that he couldn’t shave or cut his hair for a year and the loser pays the other roommates rent for a year, now that’s a hefty bet!

Sorry about the delay in recent posts, I guess I’ve just gotten caught up in other things. Anyway, Roby’s Red Rye (R3) is now on tap, so if you want to give it a shot, now’s your chance.

On tap with the R3 right now is the Cluster Wheat which is about to kick and the Sum Bra Pale Ale. The Cluster Wheat I actually stopped drinking for a while because I wanted to make sure there was enough left to reserve a couple bottles. Fortunately I got around to bottling on Saturday so everything is OK there. Have I tried to briefly describe the R3 yet, … I don’t think I have … Any way, in brief, the R3 is slightly darker than anticipated, thus skewing the true desired ‘red’ nature, though I have to admit that is a hard color to nail (for me anyway), it is also more hop forward and less malt forward than we had originally planned. Originally we really wanted to showcase the rye (50% of the base malt) but as time went on more and more hops were being added to the recipe. Honestly, it is pretty balanced, it’s just not what we had originally discussed. The rye is more subtle than I had anticipated, there is a slight spice note, a slight bread note, and a slight licorice note, but other than that nothing too dramatic. Some people say rye contributes a slickness on the palate, I did not detect that. It’d be interesting to see what some others say, I may have become a little jaded with it by now. BUT, after what sounds like a bunch of criticism, the beer turned out great and is a full flavored easy drinking brew. Above in the picture is “Aye”, he is the tap handle for the R3, pretty funny.

Today I brewed one of two batches to use up the ends of a bunch of older grains. Today’s was dubbed the Kitchen Sink Amber and the other is the Kitchen Sink Dark. I know they’re both real descriptive, yeah right. Today’s brew day was a little late start, not until almost 1PM, but other than that things went pretty good. It was beautiful weather, nothing tragic happened, and I was able to clean up and organize the brew area for the first time in a while, thanks to Karen for scoring me a nice shelving unit that I was desperately in need of. I did over heat my water for the HLT to so I had to let that cool some, and I couldn’t get my wort below 80′F after an hour and fifteen minutes of cooling. So right now I’m doing the carboy in a tub with some water and a wet towel and fan method to help cool it down via evaporation. Last time it helped almost 10 degrees in like 12 hours, so by tomorrow morning I should see some changes. I honestly don’t know if that’s just the surface area of the carboy that gets cooled that well, but it least it’s doing something. I’m thinking for the KS Dark about adding some Chinese 5 Spice Powder too it, sounds interesting to me. I was eating some stir fry the other day that had some in it and I thought it be good in a beer, first thoughts were a stout, a dubbel, or a saison.

Finally, looks like there is an interesting little web site that could be fun to watch on a weekly basis. Myself and two friends have a year long bet going and we decided to document it with a web site. So if you have any interest in checking it out or following along for the next year, check out this web site and bookmark it: Roby vs. The Razor. Basically it is a dollar a day bet with my friend Robert that he can’t go an entire year with out shaving. Too funny, go check out the website.

So the other night was a night of transfers, nothing too exciting, but I figure I’d give you something different to read.

So from left to the right the following things are either happening or about to happen in this picture: Carboy number one has an actively fermenting R3 in it, carboy number two is the Cluster Wheat about to be transferred to a keg, and carboys three and four are both Sum Bra Pale Ale about to be transferred to secondaries and dry hopped. So this was … last Tuesday I think, so like a week ago.

Currently the R3 is done visual active fermentation and is ready to be transfered to secondary and dry hopped. The Cluster Wheat is currently on tap, and the Sum Bra Pale Ales are both hanging out on their dry hops and I am trying to decide if I want to transfer to keg on Wednesday or wait until over a week more, so essentially 8 days on dry hops or about 21 days – both would be fine.

Things I have noticed in the in between; the R3 has a weird clumpy yeast/protein clumps weirdness going on. I have heard whispers of such activity because of use of rye, but I have never seen such a thing, it is odd to say the least. If you squint at the first carboy you can see two big-ass chunkies toward the top by the bubbles (I know, yeah right). The Cluster Wheat has turned out well, I actually am looking forward to getting into it a few pints to get a real feel for it, which I think is going to happen tomorrow. And the Sum Bra Pale Ales are doing nice, fermented down in the range I wanted, and tasted pretty good at transfer. The funny thing is, either the Summit or Bravo hop has a distinct Simcoe hop flavor to it, which totally through me off – cats in my beer? If you know what I mean you know what I mean, you know.

Bailed on the brew day for Sunday, it was the Amber Kitchen Sink, I woke up a little crusty and then the day slipped away and I found myself at the movies watching the newest Harry Potter movie. I thought it was freakin’ good. Also, this week I have a big multi-step trip coming up: Return to Cooperstown, NY and Brewery Ommegang for the Belgium Comes to Cooperstown (BCTC) event Friday, Saturday, Sunday then off to Ft. Kent, ME (last exit on Rt. 1, WAY up there) to meet the Desjardin family for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday then rush back home to DE to go to the Bottle & Cork in Dewey Beach to see Keller Williams and hang-out for a couple days at the beach Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So if things go quiet for a bit that’s what’s up, but I will definitely post about BCTC.

On Sunday 07.19.09 Robert brewed his first beer, pretty much unassisted = Awesome!

So we brewed Roby’s Red Rye (R3) on Sunday, and for lack of anything else, it went perfectly. So Robert has sat in on at least 10 brews between brewing with me and brewing with Garrett. He has talked about getting into brewing, though he leans toward wine and mead for some reason, but has never brewed. He has assisted me, but really assisting often details trouble-shooting or work of lesser importance. So the last time he sat in I basically told him it was his turn to brew a batch of beer. So we started from square one and came up with a concept of what he thought would be good, then we developed a recipe, ordered in ingredients, and picked a date. He decided on a Red Rye, which isn’t really a style as much as a concept, but I liked it. He essentially was looking for a red beer with Jewish rye bread characteristics (read: caraway), and a nice hop profile. So I started the base for the recipe; Marris Otter and malted rye about 50/50 with some different crystals and some roasted barley to help round out the beer and to aim for the red color. The Jewish rye bread style was met through those ingredients plus a 1/2 ounce of toasted ground fine caraway seed, which actually lent a neat licorice flavor. And the hops are actually 100% whole leaf home grown Nugget hops a la Garrett.

The brew day went fine; my mill motor which wasn’t cooperating last batch worked, we hit our mash in numbers, we didn’t get a stuck mash with a 50% malted rye bill (though it was quite compacted), we didn’t run out of gas (very low and the back up was empty), and we almost hit out OG (low by .003 points), but wound up with an extra 1/2 gallon – so I assume the OG was off from lack of boil-off for some reason. Oh yeah, and the whole hops didn’t totally clog up the kettle too.

After we cooler for an hour and fifteen minutes we called it quits at 78′F. I then did the bath/towel/fan method and it was down to 66′F the next morning. By the time I got home from work it was spooging out the top of the airlock and I had a mess to clean up – lovely. So I cleaned things up and took it out of the bath. It’ll probably raise up to 70 or 72 but I’m cool with that. We’ll keep you posted on how the R3 develops.

So I asked him if he thought he could do it again on his own (he had written directions too), and he said, yeah, probably, until the very end. Not bad.

I just saw this today, and I think it is an excellent “response” the I Am A Craft Brewer video.

I Am A Home Brewer

See this post for the original video.

I am a home brewer!

Last Sunday 07.12.09 my buddy Garrett and I brewed a 20 gallon batch of a Summit/Bravo Pale Ale – thus the Sum Bra Pale Ale!

Photo housed from Garrett @ http://brewznet.wordpress.com

I think we had been talking about getting together to brew a Pale Ale since about May, and finally we both were able to commit to a date. The funny thing is we actually already have another different 20 gallon batch of homebrew already lined up (well, date dependant), I’m sure Donna is lovin’ the beer selection at her house right now!

Anyway, the brew day went well and was harmless, typically the best kind. I showed up around 10AM with almost nothing; some empty carboys, airlocks, yeast, 1lb of CaraPils, and 3 gallons of tasty Oatmeal Cookie Stout for the Severs. Garrett pretty much had everything else locked down, the whole hops and the rest of the grains. Next time it’s my turn to supply the grains (around 45-50 pounds for a normal 20 gallon batch) and he’ll still be on the hops, so I guess we’ll have to figure out the logistics of that. When we started things just seemed to go smoothly. I will give credit to Garrett because he always hauls all his equipment up from the basement and has the foundation water heating before I even arrive, what a guy!

So the day was smooth and hot, first time it felt full blown Summery to me. We tried to hang outside in the shade mostly, but when the shade disappeared and from the heat of the kettles, ugh it was time to hide inside some. When Garrett was putting in the third hop edition it totally looked like he dumped a salad into the brew kettle it was too funny. After all was said and done I think the brew day was about 6 hours, not bad for four times what I normally make!

Afterward we hung out a bit which is nice to decompress and cool down. After I got home the carboys had kicked off with in four hours, nice second generation yeast that was just harvested the day before. Other than that not too much. The Red Rye is this weekend and then two miss-match brews of old ingredients. I’m thinking of doing the “Dark Beer” kind of Stone Soup style, we’ll see!

So last Friday 07.10.09 was the 7th Annual Fool Circle Beer Tasting.

This year was the biggest yet most tame tasting yet, odd combination. For 2009 we had a total of 25 different Fool Circle beers ranging in age from 2004 to 2009, one literally weeks old. We had the most vintage beers ever (7) with the rest ranging since the 2008 tasting. A couple had variations on a theme, for example the Robust Brown Porter and the Chocolate Porter emerged from the same original batch, same as the Scottish 70/-, Hop Scottish, and Scotch Scottish. We also had our first soda make an appearance, the Gnome Root Beer, being the overwhelming easiest to pick out.

We tried to do things on a Friday after work, which for some reason I think is how we originally did the tastings, but it may also be a first. Most everyone showed up between 5:30 and 6:00 with Todd showing up last at almost 7:00. It was, of course, the Fool Circle Inner Circle once again, Dave, Todd, Richard, Robert, Karen, and myself. This is now one of the few times all of us get to get together, sweet. Anyway, we pretty much got started with the tasting right away with both Robert and I pouring beers at the same time, this made things go much faster and we were drinking much sooner. Having 25 little 2oz samples in front of you is a bit overwhelming. Everyone has there own technique on how they like to proceed; some in numerical order, some from lightest to darkest, but me I like to smell them all before I even taste them. I was pretty sure I had 15 correct just by smell. After smell I taste in numerical order. Anything I know what it is I mark it, anything I question what it is I wait for the next beer that’s similar and will taste them side by side trying to pull out there differences. It’s the differences that will distinguish some of the beers versus their similarities. Many of the beers (mostly the pale ales and lighter) did not hold up very well, but really aren’t brewed to be aged more than 3 months or so. Some of the vintage beers had developed and some had deteriorated, time to keep an eye on some of those.

The results are as follows: Todd & Richard both with 5 right, Robert with 9 right, Karen with 10 right, Dave with 11 right, and Brian with 20 right. I know people say that it’s no surprise that I got 20 right because I am the brewer and a Certified BJCP Judge, but it is difficult. I wasn’t sure if I was going to win, I left it up to the others, but they said that  if I scored double the next closest person OR scored over 18 and was at least 5 beers ahead of the next closest person I could win, so … I (Brian) am the new Grand Pooh-Bah for 2009 to 2010 – AND I am drinking out of my Grand Pooh-Bah glass now as we speak.

I’m pretty sure we determined that 25 beers was too many, though personally I would keep pushing it and just have separate flight, but hey, I’m a little twisted. Next year (maybe) it’ll be less. And, per usual, here are some off-color quotes from the evening:

- Fuck it, I’m just drinking.

- Richard, you just might win.

- Dude, I cannot wait to tear into your guacamole.

- Blah-blah-blah

- Let me guess #22 …

- T-Minus four hours until Robert’s bottle-conditioned ass kicks in.

- They’re all Porter-Red-Amber-Pale Ales

- #13 & #14 – I’m getting a little Band-Aid

- #17 could be a cup of coffee.

- Like assy-shoe-leather.

- It was a relief to know that it was NOT my girlfriends cooter!

- Cooters are AWESOME!!!

- We have too many with cooters …

Not sure who’s all interested, but I will try and post more pictures later. Also, here’s a link to last years (2008) tastings if anyone is interested, which will then link up to previous years.

So tonight I bottled the last three beers for the Fool Circle beer tasting, ya’ll ready for this!

So tonight I bottled the Simcoe Brown, the Irish Red, and the Oatmeal Cookie Stout. These were the last three beers I had to bottle prior to the Fool Circle beer tasting this Friday. With these three beers it puts the total beer for the tasting at … well, I’m not going to say, but it is the largest one yet.

Also with bottling these beers a few beers in the line up on the Rantlers have changed, we now have the Hop Scottish, Irish Red, and Oatmeal Stout on tap. Just kicked while bottling was the Simcoe Brown and the Scotch Scottish literally had less than a pint in it, so it got dumped (forgive me homebrew gods for I have sinned).

Above are the two new beers, the Irish Red on the left and the Oatmeal Stout on the right, but the Red looks awfully dark in that picture . . . oh well. The Red tastes fine, though I think I would like it better with a cleaner yeast like my fall back WLP001, but I used WLP004, again. The Stout is also good, actually very easy to drink though it is Summer time, but as I have already expressed basically all of the cookie characteristics have disappeared in my opinion, oh well.