Beer Fest today!

The Utah Beer Fest is happening later today. I will be volunteering at one of the brewers tents, but I don't know which yet.

It should be fun. let's hope it is better organized than past years!

I will post an after Fest review later!

Cheers!

Brew day 8/25 - Tripel Double Belgian IPA

Fall is in the air, so what do we brew? How about a Belgian Tripel that's hopped like an IPA? A marriage of my two favorite styles? Yes please!

This is not the first fall beer that comes to mind, but this is how we operate! This is another odd style, but there are some commercial examples out there. I tried Le Freak from Green Flash last week and thought it was pretty good. We also have a version brewed here in SLC by Epic called Brainless Corruption. It is pretty close to what we plan on brewing up today. Although I hope it's more like Le Freak.

This recipe comes straight from the Houblonmonstres (Ardennes Forest Beer Gnomes). They came up with the recipe shortly after one of the gnomes returned from a trip to America and developed a taste for aggressive American hops. In order to stay true to their Belgian roots, a combination of classic Continental hops and big American hops was developed. The malt bill on this is all Belgian with only pale malt and a bunch of sugar. The IBU's might seem a little high, but based on my experience, the Belgian yeast is going to knock the perceived IBU's down quite a bit.

2012 Beehive Brew off results

Another Beehive brew off is in the books. I was hoping to help judge and or steward this year, but I ended up being out of town so I could not even attend the awards ceremony.

I was super stoked to hear that we placed with 3 of the beers entered. Again, I was not able to attend so I have not even seen the score sheets yet. Tim, my brother in law and co-brewer attended and picked them up.

1st Place - Imperial Stout (Sesquac, Russian Imperial Stout)
This beer has always been amazing even at a young age. It was brewed last September so it was about a year old at the time of judging. We called this thing a bunch of different names, but I settled on Sesquac, a version of the word Sasquatch. You can see a full post on this beer along with the recipe in a previous blog post. It uses the traditional RIS ingredients, and out of style yeast. The yeast we used was French Saison. Yes, kind of out there, but it works sooo well. Everyone that has ever tried this beer has enjoyed it. There is something about that yeast that just takes the dark and strong RIS character and tames it.

I was worried this beer might do terrible. This beer went on a crazy journey. It was kegged, then bottled into 22's with a beer gun. I really wanted to enter it, but 22's are not accepted. So Tim and I poured a couple of bottles back into a keg and rebottled it into 12oz bottles. SO it went Keg>bottle>keg>bottle>DRINK

3rd place - Belgian Specialty (Oaked Belgian Stout)
This beer received the highest score of any of our beers, but with the high number of entries in this category it wasn't enough to place higher. This is another sort of out of the box beer. I mean when was the last time you had a Belgian stout? I like coming up with names for my beers, but with this one I felt the name should just equal the beer style as to not confuse anyone on what it is supposed to be.

3rd place - Meads (Behemothic Braggot)
The last beer I had place was this project I started over two years ago. This was a brew that turned into 3 different beers. The version I entered used the Old Ale yeast blend. Into the kettle I added meadow sweet and chamomile. 6 months into secondary another pound of honey was added for the brett, and it sat on oak for quite a while as well. I bottled it up about a year ago. This stuff is very strong, my guess is about 15%. I struggle to drink this, but have found that it is pretty nice when cut with a lighter beer. I also have a blog post on this brew.

Judge comments to come...

Time to start thinking about next year!

New Opentroller Dx1 ordered - what have I done!

Well I have been thinking a lot about upgrading the brewery to run on new Opentroller (Brewtroller) platform. I am a geek at heart so it should be a cool project for me. 

This morning they had a few in stock so I pulled the trigger.

The first step will be to add my HLT and MLT. In the future I plan to add volume measurement and maybe some other automation.

Let the journey begin!

Basic set up I will be working on. I will not automate the kettle... at least not for a while.

Improvisational Double IPA brew day

We decided to brew a 15 gallon batch of a DIPA today but didn't really have a plan on hops. So we gathered what we had on hand and added additions based on how we were feeling at the time. No pre checking IBUs from the additions on any software. It was all recorded with pen and paper to help us remember what and when additions were made.

We ended up with 6 oz of Zythos, 7 oz of Sorachi ace, and 1 oz of Calypso over 6 additions, with most coming with less than 20 minutes left. Should be an interesting beer. Another 4 of the sorachi will be used to dry hop. I figure it will have a pretty heavy lemon character.

All in all the brew day went perfect. It's those kind of days that let you mess around and have fun making shit up as you go.



Heating strike water



The Mill



Mash recirc

Mash recirc close up

First runnings

Full boil

Chilling wort

Kegged up

Nothing was brewed Last weekend, but it was still a busy one in the brewery.

6 kegs were cleaned and filled. 15 gallons of an Imperial American Red Ale and 15 gallons of a Belgian Style golden strong ale.

The Belgian is young, but is already tasting amazingly Belgian. It makes me want to brew more estery beers like this. It tastes like fucking bananas!

I also bottled up the last of the Kilo double IPA and our latest wheat creation for a competition at a later date.

Bottled up!

This weekend I set up the bottling line. The main purpose was to get some of this beer into 12 oz bottles for competitions at a later date. That’s one issue with always kegging... a bunch of really fine beers never makes it to judging.



Five different brews were bottled up.

1)      Belgian Golden Ale – 10% ABV

2)      Oaked Belgian Stout – 9% ABV

3)      Dry Irish Stout (Beamish clone) – 4% ABV

4)      Breakfast Stout – 8% ABV

5)      Jaggery Barley Wine - 10% ABV

I have a bunch of the Belgian stout bottled up, but the rest were bottled for competitions only. The Belgian stout is really interesting. I have nothing to compare it to and I am really looking forward to what others have to say about it.


UPDATE (7/17/2012): The Belgian stout has really turned into a star. Tim, my brother in-law and brewing partner pretty much brewed this one on his own because I got a phone call 1 hour into our brew session from a doctor up at Snowbird telling me my daughter hit her head snowboarding and was being taken by ambulance to the hospital! It took her a few weeks to shake the concussion symptoms, but she was ok. We joking called this one the closed head injury stout.


Anyway, it was an ok beer but thought the oak would mellow it out. Tim didn’t oak his 5 gallons, and he almost dumped it out numerous times. Last week Tim hooked up this keg because he had no other beer. Low and behold he called me raving about it... what? it's the best beer we have ever made?

This weekend he brought some over and we did a side by side with the oaked and straight version. They were really different but both were steller... and strong as hell!