Time for a Vacation

Haven't posted anything lately and not a whole lot going on with the homebrewing. The Jolly Pumpkin beer is in bottles and should be ready in a week or two. The final gravity came in at 1.013 and it's tasting good. Looking forward to sharing it.

Will be heading to Florida in a few days and plan to pay a visit to Cigar City Brewery in Tampa as well as Orlando Brewing. Orlando brewing is a certified organic brewery and they offer weekday tours so I'll try to take some pictures and write about both breweries when I return. Until then, cheers!

Chocolate Coffee Stout Chili

So I made my first attempt at a chili today. I wanted to make a chili that incorporated beer into the recipe and thanks to my friend Eric I was able to find a recipe which uses beer, chocolate and coffee to make a chili. Can't beat that, probably three of my favorite foods/beverages. I used the recipe he passed on as a backbone for the recipe I have included here.

Ingredients

2 tsp of olive oil

2 chopped onions

3 gloves of garlic minced

1 lb of lean ground beef

3/4 lb of beef sirloin cubed

1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes

1 12 oz can of tomatoe paste

1 can of beef broth

2 15 oz cans of kidney beans

1 bottle of Terrapin Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout

1 cup of strong coffee (home roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe)

1/4 cup of dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons of chili powder

1 tablespoon of cumin

1 tsp of oregano

1 tsp of cayenne pepper

1 tsp of coriander

1 tsp of salt

1 jalapeno pepper finely diced (seeds removed)

1 habanero pepper finely diced (seeds removed)

1 serranos pepper finely diced (seeds removed)

1 Green & Blacks 70% dark chocolate bar

Directions

Prepare onions and garlic and brown in a pan with the oil. Once browned pour into a crock pot.

Cube sirloin, brown and pour into the crock pot.

Brown ground beef and add to crock pot.

Open all cans and pour into crock pot. Hold onto one can of the beans for later. Also add the beer and 1 cup of coffee.

Break chocolate bar into small piece, eat a few of them and throw most of them into the crock pot.

Add all spices and brown sugar to crock pot.

Stir

Set crock pot on high and let simmer for an hour and a half.

After an hour and a half add last can of beans and let simmer for another half hour.

Enjoy

Brown ground beef and pour into the crock pot.

Double IPA on Tap

The Double IPA (Pliny the Elder type clone) that I brewed a few weeks back is on tap and tasting great. If you live in the area you will have to stop by for a pint or two.

I also bottled the Belgian Cherry Chocolate Stout this weekend and had a successful brew day with the Jolly Pumpkin yeast experiment batch. I hit all my target numbers and this yeast took off fast. It literally started bubbling within two hours of pitching the yeast and fermentation temperature is currently sitting nicely at 70 degrees so while it's a strong fermentation it's not going out of control too early.

Jolly Pumpkin Experimental Batch

For my next batch I decided to venture into the world of culturing up yeast from the bottle of a non-filtered commerical beer. I figured what better yeast to culture then the house strain from Jolly Pumpkin (if they really even have one specific house strain). I have always loved the aroma and flavor their yeast provides the Noel de Calabaza so I decided to use the dregs from two bottles of that beer to get this one going. I started the processing of growing up the yeast about a month ago and I'm at the point where I have a really healthy batch of yeast. I'm sure the character of the yeast and ratio of regular "Belgian yeast" to wild yeast has change over the course of building this starter up but it's still smelling and tasting great. If you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about take a look at this article. I can't wait to get this beer brewed and in bottles. Here is the recipe.

5 Gallon Batch

Brew Day = 09 Jan 2010

Grains
6 lbs of German Pilsner Malt
4 lbs of American two row
1.5 lb of raw wheat
.5 lb Barley (Flaked)
.25 Crystal 80

Hops
60 Minute – 0.5 oz of Nelson Sauvin (11.5 AA)
30 Minute – 0.5 oz of Simcoe
KO – 1 oz of Centennial and 1 oz of Amarillo
Dry – 1 oz of Centennial and 1 oz of Amarillo

Yeast
Used the dregs from a 2007 Jolly Pumpkin Noel de Calabaza bottle. Did an initial starter on the 2007 bottle and then a second step up and added the dregs from the 2009 bottle. Grew it up 4 times and then will do a starter before using.

Targets
Pre-Boil Gravity = 1.041
OG = 1.057
FG = 1.012
ABV = 5.8%
IBU = 32

Mash
Mash at 149 degrees F with 3.8 gallons of water

Sparge
6.7 gallons

Boil
90 Minute Boil

I'm still tossing around the idea of adding some fruit to the secondary or maybe even some honey and letting it sit in the secondary fermentor for a month or two. Does anyone have any thoughts on that? I know the Jolly Pumpkin culture has some brett and other wild yeast in it and want to make sure some of that character comes through. Although I'm also dosing this with a nice aroma addition of some American hops. Basically this recipe is roughly based on Jolly Pumpkins Bam Bier. Open to suggestions. Let it take it's course of a regular 3 week fermentation. Or let it sit through a longer secondary process and introduce some fruit and/or honey into the secondary?

Chatoe Rogue Wet Hop Ale

Rogue Ales of Newport, OR has a new line of beers which will be released under the Chatoe Rogue "Grow the Revolution" series. The Chatoe Rogue products will be using hops grown and harvested by Rogues own Micro Farm in Independence, OR.

The first in the series of Chatoe Rogue beers is their First Growth Wet Hop Ale using their Indepedent and Revolution hops. The raw hops were picked, thrown into burlap bags, driven 77 miles to the brewery and tossed into the brew kettle. The brewery has a summary of the process posted here. They brewed 200 barrels of the beer and used over 3,000 lbs of wet hops. The other Chatoe releases will include Pinot Envy Ale, Dirtoir Ale, Single Malt Ale and OREgasmic Ale.

Tasting Notes: 22 oz bottle purchased at Capones in Norristown PA. Pours a deep orange/amber with a smaller bubbly off white head that left some spotty lacing. Aroma of sweet citrusy hop notes, mostly getting orange, some light caramel and Munich malt notes, light grassy notes are still present although starting to fade away (this beer has probably been in the bottle for at least 3-4 months at this point. The flavor is fresh and hoppy. Getting mostly pine, grapefruit, lemon and grass out of the hop flavors. Bitterness is exactly where I like in for an IPA (aggresive yet not over the top). The malts to help to balance this beer with some caramel, nuts and cereal characeter. The classic Rogue Pacman yeast strain is present in both aroma and flavor.

21A Monk's Blood

For any of you who know me (which is probably everyone reading this blog) you probably already know that I'm quite the fan of great craft beer in cans. I won't go on about my reasoning in this post but I will mention that I was very happy when the San Francisco based, 21st Amendment Brewery started sending their Brew Free or Die IPA and Hell or High Watermelon Wheat to Pennsylvania this summer. Just this past week cases of their brand new offering Monk's Blood have started to hit Eastern PA bottle shop and distributors shelves.

Monk's Blood is an oak-aged Belgian-style Dark Ale (along the lines of a Belgian Quad) brewed with cinnamon sticks in the mash, dark candy sugar, vanilla beans and dried black mission figs in the boil. It's packed in a nifty looking 4 pack box and is part of their new line of beers they are referring to as The Insurrection Series. The box states the following… “Legend has it that in the evenings, the monks would retire to their chambers & settle in with a few passages from the Good Book. But Brothers Nicolas and O’Sullivan had other plans. Working in the brewhouse all day, they were forced to repeat the same old recipes the elder monks had invented years before. They needed a little diversion. And found it in the cellar of the monastery with a fresh twist they put on the beer and the way they enjoyed it. Brother Nicolas (or Nico to his close friend) brought some hand-rolled cigars. O’Sullivan, the outspoken one, broke the vow of silence by spinning a remix of some Gregorian chants. Together, they’d throw down a couple nice hands of Texas Hold’Em and savor the handcrafted brew they created in secrecy. Everyday was good. Or so it seemed. But deep in his heart, Nico knew they were driving into the dark side of beer. Next thing you know they’d be skipping Lent. Then on night they’d face the Judgment for their actions with a hard knock at the door. Outside, the Abbots and elders would be holding stone in the air. A threat the brothers were sure would lead to the spilling of Monk’s Blood.”

Tasting Notes - Pours a deep ruby chestnut/amber with a medium bubbly off white head that left some lacing. Aroma of various fruits, dark fruits, vanilla, light oak, maybe a touch of the cinnamon, some fresh hop notes and chestnuts. Flavor of dark fruits, vanilla, oak, light cinnamon, figs, light roasted malt and some fresh hops poking through. This was well done. Not overly sweet or sticky, ABV well hidden and it’s in a can!

Picture stole from Shaun O'Sullivans Facebook site (forgot to take my own picture of the cool four pack)

Double IPA Brew Session

This weekend the Philadelphia area got what was the 2nd worst December snow storm ever since they started tracking that stuff (something like a 100 year record). Since I ordered the ingredients for the Double IPA online and already had the yeast starter going I had no other choice but to brew. It actually turned out to be a really great brew session overall and the snow really only impacted some of my cleaning and sanitation activities (I ended up cleaning the brew kettle inside and the mash tun probably didn't get as good of a cleaning as I usually give it, but it should be fine).

I got the brew day started around 10am. My winter brew house setup, while maybe not the "safest" certainly keeps me somewhat warm. I do take some safety precautions though, yes I make sure the garage doors are cracked and I also set up a carbon monoxide detector in the garage and ask Steph or Elliott to come check on my every so often. That system seems to work well so far. With using an outdoor burner in a garage and a propane heater as well, just want to make sure I don’t burn up all the O2.

This recipe called for a total of 9 ounces in the boil so I decided to use hop bags for the first time ever and they seemed to work out well. The boil really kept the bags bouncing around in the brew kettle so hopefully I was able to get the same amount or close to the same amount of extraction out of them. The only snag I had was when I added the final 3 ounces at flameout. That hop bag opened up so I still ended up with a little bit of a mess in the kettle. As long as the beer turns out and I get the right hop aroma and flavor out of the beer I will probably start using hop bags for any of my beers which call for a heavy dose of hops. Thanks for letting me borrow the hop bags Vince, they worked well!

My target OG (at least based on the BrewPal iPhone app software) was 1.090. I ended up around 1.079 though, which put me at about 60% efficiency. I think I may have had a little bit too much water in the mash/sparge which turned out to be a good thing and left me with about 8 gallons of wort pre-boil. The recipe in Jamil's book actually calls for an OG of 1.080 so this beer should be just about right as far as the gravity and ABV goes (ABV should come in around 8.5%). The extra liquid in the kettle helped out since this was a 90 minute boil and there was a good bit of hop batter and break material in the bottom of the kettle after I chilled the work down.




So the aroma and bitterness from this beer after the boil was complete was pretty amazing. The hop bitterness is very aggressive and will only be complimented by the alcohol and carbonation. Fermentation has begun and the blow off tube is aggressively bubbling. I currently have the fermentor set at 67 degrees and plan to slowly bring it up to 70 degrees to finish out the beer. I'm hoping to dry hop at about 7 days in and let the dry hops sit in there for about 7-10 days.