Bloggers Needed!

I've moved to Seattle!  

The Seattle Space Needle on a glass of beer

This is great news for me, but bad news for blog readers.  While I still intend to homebrew, entering blog posts for BrewUtah seems a little counter-productive now.
Therefore, this is your chance to keep the fire burnin' (or the beer brewin', as it may be.)  Yes, you too can be an illustrious beer brewing blogger!  Anyone interested can throw in a comment, or send me an email, and I'll appoint you as an author.  Anyone can be an author, and in fact I can add in multiple authors! This is your chance to join the highly regarded list of authors, and strut your stuff.  If you're at all interested in sharing your home brew knowledge, or just blogging about your latest brewing experience, let me know!

Hop Garden

So, the lack of enthusiasm I received about a hops growing co-op led me to creating my own hop garden.  The pictures are from planting day, and trellis construction day back in April.

Overall, the whole garden was fairly affordable.  The trellis parts cost somewhere around $70, the hops were somewhere around $80, and the rest of the equipment and drip watering system were provided by my step dad.  The trellis poles look pretty flimsy but they've held up well thus far.  They're 18' tall and the wind hasn't blown them over yet.  We'll see how it holds up when there's a lot of heavy hop bines hanging from that twine. :)

Home brewing, even when your home is the White House.

In Utah, do you ever feel like you're a home brewing army of one?  Do your neighbors look at you funny when they hear about your hobby?  Perhaps you feel like you're constantly educating the masses about the joys of making and partaking of home brewed beer?  Well, rejoice, because one more person has now joined the ranks of the home brewers.  In fact, you may now count the leader of the free world among your home brewing colleagues.  Obama may not live in Utah, but his participation in the craft will help pave the way to better recognition throughout the masses.  You're no longer that creepy neighbor with the bubbling carboy, you're the neighbor who has the same hobby as the President of the United States!

Apparently our home brewing leader decided to make a honey ale, naming it "White House Honey Ale".  Reportedly, he's using honey produced by his wife, Michelle's hobby: Bee Keeping.  I've always thought that bee keeping and beer brewing were two very good complimentary hobbies.

But now I want to know: what does Obama's home brewery look like?  Does he use all-grain or extract?  What's the recipe for White House Honey Ale?  Will they be growing hops next to the bee hives?  Someone needs to march up to the capital and ask these important questions!

Pimping your corny keg

Storing your beer in a corny keg is both easy and convenient.  Hook up a tap and some co2 and you have great draft homebrew!  After coming to that realization, I bought some kegs last year and they've worked out great.  Over time, I've run into some accessories that make the whole keg experience a little more convenient.  I'm using ball lock kegs, but some of these suggestions might also apply to pin lock kegs as well.  So here they are, suggestions for pimping your ride (err, I mean your corny keg...)



1. Bling
The first is colored post orings.  If you've ever mistakenly attached the gas line to the liquid post, you know what a pain it is to remove.  With colored keg posts, you can quickly identify which post is gas and which is liquid.  I first ran into these over at Art's Brewing Supplies in downtown SLC but have since also found them on the Midwest website and the Northern Brewer website.  I'd recommend blue for gas, red for liquid, but I don't think there's a standard.  I find red for liquid easy to remember because A: red acts as a warning to stop me from connecting that gas line to the liquid post, and B: red is the color of some beers.

2. A Gauge
An accessory idea that I got from my carboys, is the Fermometer temperature strip.  This is a little black strip of plastic with an adhesive backing that you stick directly to the keg (or carboy, or fermenter, or whatever).  I really like these because I don't have to open my keg and drop in a thermometer to check the temperature.  Google lists several vendors for these.  The liquid in the strip will change colors around a temperature reading to tell you what the temperature of your liquid is.  Frequently there is more than one colored box, so assume the green one is correct, and if there is no green, assume the temperature in the center of the colored area.  I find that placing these vertically, about 1/3 of the way up the keg, is the best bet.  Normally on a full keg you'd want it in the middle, but how long does your keg stay full, really?  Also, make sure you don't let these soak in water.  The adhesive on the back will break down and leak out the liquid inside.  They can stand to get a little wet, but don't over-do it.



3. More Bling
At the risk of going Martha Stewart on everyone, I also have suggestions for labeling your keg so you know what brew is inside.   Post-it notes don't stick to the keg for long, and taping paper doesn't work because scotch tape is a pain to remove from stainless.  Ideally, you'd want your labels to be protected from a bit of moisture, and you also want them to be easy to switch out without making a mess.  I tried placing paper inside a sheet protector that you find in photo albums and school binders, but the sheet was way too big for the keg and it was flimsy.  Taping it to the keg was bad news too.  I then tried placing clear invoice protectors on the keg (the kind you see on the front of fedex packages).  I thought I could easily switch out papers with the beer name on them.  However, invoice pouches turned out to be a brilliantly bad idea that were a nightmare to remove.  I eventually settled on clear vinyl envelopes designed to hold passports.  They're just big enough to hold an index card.  Here's an example of what they look like.  I found them over at Office Depot.  I affix them to the keg horizontally and slide index cards in and out from the side.  To stick them to the kegs, I picked up some Glue Dots Strips that are easy to remove, but do a great job of keeping the vinyl attached to the keg.  Four to six strips, stuck on the back of the vinyl protector works great.  They're made of that same stuff you see holding credit cards or CDs to the inside of magazines.  If you use the glue dots, just make sure you don't get too much of your hand oils on them, or they'll lose some stickyness.


4. Hydraulics
As I use the kegs more and more for the stages of fermentation, I've found that I need to transfer beer or sanitizer from one keg to another.  For transferring liquids between kegs, I've thrown together an easy liquid transfer line.  Two black liquid disconnects with about 3ft of tubing between.  Try to keep your tubing at least 6 inches longer than the total height of your keg so you can use the line for siphoning too.  This forum post here has a good discussion on the topic and an example picture.  I haven't yet made the gas transfer line shown in the picture, but that is indeed a better way than continually pulling the relief valve during a siphon.

My Crescent Moon Label

I have to admit that I've been slacking on making labels for my home brew.  I heard someone mention on a blog somewhere that they give names to the good brews, and leave the bad ones nameless (or just refer to them by their style).  I think that's a great policy for labeling too, since it saves a lot of work.  Why go to all the effort of designing a label, and affixing it to all of those bottles, for a brew that's mediocre?

In this case, I really like the Blue Moon clone I brewed up recently, so I've decided to whip up a label for it.  See below:

I kinda like it.  Simple and to the point.  Any opinions?  Anyone have suggestions, or ideas for a different label?

Crescent Moon (Blue Moon Clone) Extract Recipe

I'm attempting to craft my own Blue Moon clone.  Everyone has a clone of it, but Blue Moon is a notoriously difficult one to pin down.  Apparently, it's difficult to get the malty Belgian flavor without going much darker than Blue Moon.  After reading many suggestions and recipes, I've decided to give it a try.

Here's the ingredient list I used:

3.3 lbs Coopers Wheat LME
3 lbs Extra Light DME
1 lb Crystal 10L Malt
1 lb Orange Blossom Honey
2oz Hallertau Hops (4.1% AAU)
1oz Coriander Seeds
1oz Sweet Orange Peel


The first thing you'll notice is that I don't add all of the extract at the beginning.  I'll be holding the LME and honey until 30M to reduce the caramelized sugars (hopefully making it look and taste a bit lighter).  For the yeast, I used a belgian ale yeast from White Labs.  WLP400 if I'm remembering correctly.

The steps I took:

Steep Crystal Malt at 155F for 45M.
Bring to boil, start 60M timer, add DME and 1.5oz hops.
Add LME @30M
Add Honey @30M
Add 0.5oz Coriander @15M
Add 0.5oz Coriander @5M
Add 1oz Orange Peel @5M
Add 0.5oz Hops @5M


The Coriander I used was "Whole Coriander Seeds".  I crushed them thoroughly as I waited for the wort to boil.  The smell of freshly crushed Coriander is amazing.  I wish my kitchen could always smell like that.

My OG was about 1.064.  I transferred this to secondary two weeks ago and samples tasted great.  This is another brew I can't wait to get bottled.

Vanilla Bean Cream Ale recipe

Vanilla beans.

Since I had some vanilla beans left over from this brew, I decided to make use of them.  I really enjoy the Sam Adams Cream Stout and wanted to shoot for something sweet like that, but with more of a vanilla kick.  After browsing around and seeing some posts on the HBT forums, I settled on a "Caramel Cream Ale" recipe posted by a user named "Cheesefood".  The ingredients were expensive, running up a steep tab of over $60 at the Beer Nut.

I ended up modifying the recipe a bit (doesn't everyone?) to suit my tastes and to accommodate the vanilla beans instead of vanilla extract.  Here's what I brewed:

Malt
3 pounds extra light DME
3 pounds light wheat DME
1 pound caramel 60L malt (steep 50M at 155F before boil)

Hops
1oz Cascade hops @ 60M
.5oz Saaz hops @ 13M
.5oz Tettnang hops @ 3M

Yeast
Wyeast German Ale

Extras
1/2c Lactose @ 13M
5.5G spring water
2 Vanilla Beans added to secondary



Priming
1c Lactose
1.5c light DME


I listed Lactose in the priming section, only because I'm adding it to the bottling bucket.  I'm well aware that Lactose is non-fermentable and not a priming sugar.

My measured OG was 1.070 (seems a bit high), and my SG when racking to secondary was 1.014.  To be fair about the measurements, I added the 1/2c lactose before measuring OG, so that may have artificially drove the OG up a point or two.

My procedure for adding vanilla beans to the secondary:
I cut the whole beans lengthwise down the center to split them open.  I then sprayed them with a little bit of water, wrapped them in tin foil, and tossed them into the oven for 8 minutes at 400F.  I then sprayed them with starsan before dropping them directly into the secondary fermenter with the beer.

I've also created some homemade vanilla extract that I'll add to the bottling bucket (a bit at a time) if the 2 beans aren't enough.  The extract was made by soaking two sliced beans in a mixture of 2oz Everclear and 8oz spiced rum for 2 months.

One note that I'd recommend if you try this recipe (since I read this comment repeatedly on the forums):  If you use vanilla extract instead of vanilla beans, make sure it is Real vanilla extract.  If you use imitation vanilla extract you'll kick yourself for it later.  Also, the forum posts suggested somewhere between 3oz and 6oz of extract if you go that route.  Though some people recommended less, with 6oz being too heavy on the vanilla side.

Overall, I'm excited to get this stuff into bottles and try it out.  I've read that Market Street Brewery in Tennessee (now closed?) made a great Vanilla Cream Ale.  I've seen a clone recipe for it in BYO, so maybe I'll give that one a try too.  If anyone else has tried it out, let me know how it went.  Also, if anyone tries out the recipe I've posted here, let me know how that one goes too.