Unsystematic

For those of you who don’t yet know, my boss and I have decided to take on home brewing. He’s done it before, but this was my first time. Being a lover of beer, it’s definitely something I’d like to make a permanent hobby. It’s really not expensive. The only hard part is waiting for it to be ready.

Our first brew, we decided to make an Arrogant Bastard Ale clone. Stone Brewing company is one of my favorite craft breweries and always produces very nicely done beers, and the recipe we found really wasn’t that difficult so we decided to start there.

The whole process takes about 4 weeks. That’s from start to pop the cap and enjoy.

Begin with boiling the malt and water for a total of 90 minutes. Throw in hops at 30 minutes in, then again at 90 minutes in.

Much of the water will evaporate leaving a semi-thick sugary molasses behind.

At 90 minutes turn off the heat and toss in the remaining hops. Let sit and cool for about 30 minutes.

Once the mixture cools down enough to handle, you want to transfer it to the fermentation tank. In doing so, you must strain out the loose grains, hops and other impurities.

Once you get it into the fermentation tank and it cools to room temperature, you add the yeast. Yeast is temperature sensitive so it needs to be room temperature. The yeast will literally eat the sugars producing alcohol. This, along with the type of hops you choose and grains are what give the beer its flavor.

Let the yeast do it’s thing for about 14 days. You’ll know when it’s done because there’ll be all the sludge at the bottom of the tank and no more bubbling.

Two weeks later, fermentation has stopped and we’re left with our beer minus carbonation. We need to transfer the beer to another tank. In our case we had to syphon it to get the pour started.

Transferring beer to new tank.

Before the new tank of beer gets too full, you need to boil another cup of malt and add it to the new tank. These sugars will eventually carbonate the beer once bottled.

As the 5 gallons of beer is transferring we decided to rinse out the bottles which were sitting in sanitizing solution for an hour. We also sanitized the caps.

Our cleaned and empty bottles. We had collected about 70 of them.

Of course we had to sample it, even without carbonation. We got the color pretty good. We’re excited to taste the final product in about a week.

This was our inspiration. We bought a bottle to compare.

The final product!

This was a great experience and something I definitely enjoy doing and wish to continue. There’s definitely an art to it and it’s nice to be able to taste the fruits of your labor, even if it does take a month. The wait, I’m sure, will be worth it.

We’d be happy to ship bottles if you want to try it. We’ll be brewing once a month with new beers. Next up is a traditional German wheat similar to Paulaner.

More to come!

Tragic day today in Athens, GA as a fire all but demolished the landmark Georgia Theater. I was downtown this morning snapping photos (really trying to get to work) which you’ll see below. Also, myself and my boss Gabe were caught snapping photos by Fox 5 news. Morgan, our co-worker was interviewed. The entire Eben Design office was on television today!

Here are some pics from this morning. See all of them here.

I went to Pauley’s after work today to enjoy a beer or two before heading home to do some work. This actually worked out pretty well because it allowed me to wind down from my busy day at work, but it also allowed me to knock two more beers off my beer list leaving me with 6 more. I’ll hit the 100 mark next Wednesday. I could finish early but I’m waiting until friends get in town to make a big thing of it. Maybe I’ll be #60…

Okay, so the two beers I tried tonight were the Duck-Rabbit’s Amber Ale and Dogfish Head’s Apirhop, a fruit-infused IPA.

Duck-Rabbit Amber Ale
This beer was served chilled in a 12oz bottle that was poured into a pint glass. The head was slightly off-white and thin with very little lacing left on the glass. Lacing is a sign of both a clean glass and fresh beer. However, when beers don’t have much lacing it doesn’t always mean the glass isn’t clean or that the beer isn’t fresh, some beers just don’t have much of it. Ales though, usually have at least some. It could have been the way it was transferred from the bottle to the glass. It had a nice, warm caramel color.

Initial smell was that of caramel and malt; very little hop notes showing through. Subtle, but not primary. The malts however, were very apparent in both smell and taste. This brew had a medium body and was very drinkable. With an average alcohol by volume (ABV) content of 5.5% it’s a beer you can enjoy more than one of. It wasn’t very bitter, probably due to the malt to hop ratio. For an ale, I’d say this one was on the lighter side. both in weight and taste.

It’s spicy, hitting the sides of the tongue first, then the back. The hops show through in the aftertaste aligning properly with other ales. It poured with above average carbonation.

If you like beers that aren’t too much but have a lot of flavor and little hops (bitterness), I recommend the Duck-Rabbit Amber Ale.

Dogfish Head Aprihop
Dogfish Head is one of my favorite American craft breweries. Never a boring beer, this apricot infused brew is definitely no exception. Being that IPAs are my favorite types of beer, I had to give it a shot despite the fruit.

Straight from the bottle to the pint glass this beer poured a caramel color with a tinge of orange (probably the fruit). It had a very thick head with tiny bubbles that lingered for a while. The head was about a finger and a half high with solid lacing on the glass.

The beer was fairly thick and heavy, and with a 7.0% ABV it’ll give you a little kick. This is fairly typical for IPAs though. The smell of fruit overpowered the smell of hops and malts, though that’s not a negative. It’s hard to say whether or not the beer was balanced as any beer with fruit (personally) is never balanced. I’m somewhat biased though. Smell was different from taste though.

The taste was hoppy with a generous hint of apricot, though it was more mellow in the taste than the smell. It bathes the tongue with a nice mix of hops and fruit, hitting the back of the tongue first.

While I’m not a fan of fruity beers I will say that Dogfish Head did a fantastic job finding a nice mix. If you’re a fan of the fruit but are looking to try new and exciting beers, this one’s for you.

A good friend of mine recently suggested I start writing about beer, especially since I thoroughly enjoy talking about them. Being that my blog hasn’t gotten much attention lately, but that I do have time to consume quality craft beers frequently, we’ve decided it’d be best to merge the two practices. Once (or more?) a week I’m going to blog about particular beers that I’ve enjoyed. I’d begin with last night’s Moylan’s Hopsickle Imperial IPA, since it was so memorable, but I’m going to refrain and blog as I’m drinking to bring the most accurate notes.

Be on the lookout for weekly postings, probably on Mondays.

And if you’re a fellow craft beer conosoir feel free to add me to your buddy list over at BeerAdvocate.