So my wife and I have now officially been married for 5 years.  The 5th anniversary was the “wood” anniversary and my wife got me these AWESOME custom tap handles.  As if its not cool enough to get tap handles for an anniversary, she did it the right way.  By that I mean she found someone out there that built them by hand and customized them.  She found the guy on Etsy who makes tap handles and worked with him to make these four custom handles.

In case you can’t see, the one on the left says “CNY Brew” and has a cool hops vine creeping up the word brew.  The second handle is an actual dog paw print by my dog (yes, it’s my dog’s real paw print, freaking awesome).  The third handle is my wife and my initials, an the one on the right is a symbol from my fraternity.  The handles are made from tiger maple and each have all kinds of awesome patterns.

The guy (who you can follow on FaceBook as well) kept in close communication with my wife during the planning process, he picked out the wood himself and made them with plenty of extra personal touches.  It feels so much better knowing that someone worked on these knowing what we wanted and who we were, not just an order to fill.

I recommend checking out his work, Jerry was great to work with and produced a beautiful product.  Here is his website as well http://www.jerryswoodworks.com

Cheers

All these years and it was like being greeted by and old friend.  Not overbearing, not offensive or questioning, just pure comfort.  I have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect, would there be a funk or something off?  Maybe it would lack backbone and leave me wanting more.  None of the above.  It’s smooth, clear crisp with the perfect amount of malt flavor to keep you wanting more.  This beer is everything I remember and more, it’s actually a hell of a beer!  11 years later and countless stages of pallet growth, this beer experience has lived up to expectation.

Now I must admit, I wanted this.  I wanted to fall in love again and perhaps I’m being a bit drastic, but I invite you to take a trip to South East Asia and have one of these.  If you come back and don’t feel the same about this beer, by all means correct me.  But to my standards, I have a personal top 5 beer, no bones about it.

Thanks again to the Melissa and Laura at the Baddish Group, I appreciate the opportunity to re-find an old friend in Tiger Beer!

“Một hai ba, yo!”

Aroma – sweet vanilla notes with a floral hops, defiantly a lot of cascade in the nose.

Color – light copper color with an off-white head, the head holds up early and leaves thin lacing.

Mouth feel – Intense carbonation burn on the tongue, it feels like a bottle conditioned brew and it’s been on the shelf for a while.

Taste – There is citurs in the flavor, not gapefruit though, more of a lemon or lime flavor.  The bitter hops punch is intense in the front, oddly complamenting the intense carbonation, and fades fast leaving a full mouth of fresh hops

Over all – There are a lot of things to like about this beer, it’s the reason I decided to do a harvest ale.  It’s great to have a harvest ale in the gray funk of winter, its a hint of things to come when the snow melts.  This beer lives up to the expectations.  It’s got a full hops experiece that washes clean and leavs you wanting another sip.  It’s refreshing for the volume of hops and, minus the overwhelming carbonation, its great on the mouth.

Mine

Aroma – There are notes of citrus and lemon, nothing too overwhelming though.

Color – Very similar to the SN, it’s a light copper, plenty of clarity.  There is an off white head with significant staying power, it’s creamier and thicker than the bottle of SN, but that might just be that it’s off tap.

Mouth feel – Thin and clean, no real carbonation burn or lingering hops paste.

Taste – It tastes thin, lacking in the substance that the SN has.  I like the hops profile throughout, but the malt profile is weak and doesn’t hold up to the refreshing experience that the fresh hops creates.

Over all – This is a good beer, thin and a light session beer, but otherwise a tasty treat.  If I had to do it again, I would be sure to get up into the 1.060 range for the OG so that there is some good backbone.  The thin feel is really unsettling when you first drink it, but over a short time, it’s really becomes appealing.

Head to head

Well as always, SN really hit the nail on the head.  With that said, I like the way that my hops came off better than SN.  Mostly because it is really light on the bitterness and allows you to appreciate the nuances of the hops.  The SN has a more balanced beer that would legitimately qualify as an IPA with a touch of love.  It’s got some genuine bitterness to give it depth and properly balanced with the more robust malt backbone.

It’s a challenge for next year, make a bigger beer, keep the hops the same and maybe throw a little early bitter hops to give the mouth the proper hopps experience.  Over all though, I am very pleased with the beer and how it turned out.  I am defiantly doing this brew again.

It’s time again!  It was a cold brew day (it’s been a cold brew winter) and I did a basic 5 gallon brew.  I had the chance to try out a few of my new Christmas toys, a new grain mill and an awesome pH meter.  So to begin, I got a recipe from the book my wife got me, it’s called Drunk Munk Doppelbock:

• 10lbs UK 2 Row Pale Malt
• 2lbs Carapils malt
• 2lbs light Munich malt
• 8oz Chocolate malt
• 4oz Black malt
• 1lb Hard Dark Candy Sugar
• 2oz German Tettnang 60min
• 1oz Czech Saas 5min
• Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager

The target gravity is 1.075, with a decoction mash.  The strike temp was 131f for 30min, I drew 1/3 of the mash off for decoction and reintroduced the decoction into the mash for 151f.

The whole mash was about 90min and was a little low on the temps because the weather pretty cold that day.  The OG was right on point with 1.075 and after 17 days in the primary at 55f, it’s been racked over to lager at 45f.

I had a taste of this brew and it will be a good one, the color is a deep mahogany color with plenty of chocolate notes.  It’s got a long ways to go, but it’s going to be a good one.

I promise to get better about posting, more to come.  Cheers

• 26lbs UK 2 row
• 3lbs Flaked oats
• 1.5 lbs roasted barley
• 1lb Chrystal 120L
• .5lb Chocolate malt
• 1oz Warrior (60 min)
• 1oz Northern Brewer (30 min)
• 1.5 oz homegrown cascade (10 min)
• Wyeast American Ale Yeast 1056

If you decided to go back and take a look at the recipe from last year, you’ll notice that I used 3lbs roasted barley for the flavor malt on this recipe.  After I received some tough love from the brew club, I took some of the advice I received and decided to diversify the flavor malts.  As a quick overview, I was previously seeking to simplify my recipes to gain a better respect for what I was adding into the beer.

In this recipe, I wanted some notes of chocolate, some toffy and the mouth-feel you get from a good oatmeal stout.  I decided that the ratio of specialty malts to base malt was good, so I decided to break up the amount over three ingredients leaving roasted barley as still the dominant flavor malt (as I was generally very happy with my beer last year, I just wanted some depth).

So, as you can see from the pictures above, I have racket the brew over.  The brew day itself was really successful, we did a two batch sparges with, the first running was 22brix, the second was 15 brix and the final running was 11 brix.  This made for a 1.070 OG and is going to make for a nice winter brew to start the cold season.

It finished off at 1.010 and had a great taste.  More to come on that, but thing biggest thing I noticed was that there was a slight burn on the way down from the high ABV, but it was slight and I think once there is some carbonation and cold, it won’t be noticeable.

More to come on this brew, but Wilford Brimley is back!

On a recent vacation, I was lucky enough to try a Caribbean secret, the dark beer!  Often times on a vacation to a warm climate, you’re stuck drinking yellow fizz or some umbrella garnished fruity concoction.  While I personally subscribe to the “when in Rome” theory of drinking, it’s always nice to learn a little about the local flair and be pleasantly surprised.

Pictured above is a Dragon Stout brewed by Desnoes & Geddes Limited and is one of two stouts I had the chance to try while in Jamaica.  I picked this one up out of a cooler on route to our resort.  Perhaps my judgement was impaired by the glorious feeling when I expected to find a Red Stripe and I was lucky enough to get something with a little bite, but I really enjoyed this beer.  Initially there was a very smooth creamy mouth feel that really hid the 7%ABV and made this taste a lot like a rich creamy yoo-hoo than a stout.  For a beer of this ilk, it had a clean finish and didn’t coat the mouth with gummy coffee feel you get from a heavier stout, a must for hot weather dark beer drinking.  As I came closer to finishing the beer, the alcohol burn began to push through the experience and made the beer a little more intolerable.  With that said, I give this a lot of praise, it’s a great example of a stout that fits the realities of being a hot weather stout.

The second stout I was lucky enough to try was the Guinness Foreign Extra Stout brewed by the same brewery as the Dragon Stout.  This one was actually available behind the bar at my resort (Couples Swept Away) and I was able to have them on demand!  Weighing in at a more modest 6.5% abv, this brew had a lot of esters that gave the rich chocolate and coffee notes the background treatment.  The fruitiness in the front end really drowned out the other flavors on the early sips, but once my pallet settled in, it was a smooth creamy brew.  I drank a few of these and was never unhappy with the experience.  Again, when you consider the warm climate, I thought that these beers fit the ambiance a Caribbean stout should have.  Smooth, clean, refreshing and potent.

The only bad experience I had was when a few jack-ass tourists (obviously not as cool as my self) ordered a “Red Bull and Guinness” because there was no vodka or Jager for them to mix it with I guess.  Normally I would just scoff at this kind of abuse and move on, but in this case, they used the last cold Guinness on their absurd concoction and left me drinking Red Stripe.  Tisk tisk tisk…   

Big Red Jeff Foote meeting fans (Ryan Whittman is cutoff on the left)

I apologize for the letting my posts go this month, March Madness has me going a little crazy because there are still TWO CNY teams in the tourney, SU and the Cinderella story of the year, the Cornell Big Red.  With all that said, I am still going to find some time to brew this weekend.

The last time I brewed an IPA it was November so I figured I am due for another one.  It’s always great to have an IPA on tap.  So Bryan and I will be brewing a 20gal batch.  Here is the plan as it stands:

• 44lbs American 2 row
• 2lbs Cyrstal 20L
• 1.5lbs Crystal 60L
• 1.3lbs Cara-Pils/Dex

Simple enough base recipe that has worked for me the past few times, it’s a target OG of 1.056 so I am trying to keep this one on the lower scale of alcohol for the style.  Here is what I have for the hops schedule:

• 4oz Magnum 60min
• 2oz Centennial 60min
• 2oz Cascade 30min
• 2oz Cascade 20min
• 2oz Cascade 1min (cool down)
• 4oz Cascade dry hopping

Keep in mind that there are two 10 gallon kettles and four 5 gallon fermentation vessels so it will only be 1oz per vessel on the dry hopps.  I am going to get a fresh pack of 1056 American Ale yeast to use and we’re on our way.

So, tonight I will be up at the Carrier Dome watching the Cornell Big Red try to upset the Kentucky Wildcats in the

Picture from a game at the dome this year

Sweet 16 after the Syracuse Orange put another team to bed.  It’s a great time to be in CNY with a basetball jones!

Cheers!

Over all, this was a pretty straight forward brew day.  Single infusion of about 8 gallons at 170.5f to get a 158f grain bed temp.  I held this for an hour, mashed out and sparged all as normal.  The pre-boil gravity was 1.049 (target was 1.045).

When everything was all said and done, I was a little low on my volume and high on my gravity so I added some water to get the volume I was looking for.

Now as I mentioned, I entered this beer into a “club only” competition to get some feed back on how things went.  These club only competitions are a lot of fun because you get some input from guys who really know their beers.  This is even better than just bringing your beers to the homebrew club because sometimes at brew club you end up trying so many different beers, your pallet can really get scorched.

Anyway, unfortuniatly with this brown ale, I had some problems with my bottling again.  In this case, I know exactly what I did wrong; I used DME for priming instead of Dex.  This is actually not a bad thing to do, you just need to adjust the volumes appropriately and I obviously made a mistake.  Otherwise the feedback was good even though I was reaching in entering this beer into an “English brown ale competition” (it’s more of an American Brown) so all things considered they responded with descriptions that fit what I was going for.

Did I win, nope, but competitions are not all about winning, they’ll all about those review sheets IMO anyway.

Cheers

The brew tower in action

It’s been a while since I did this one and the first time I did this as an experiment in “Reiterated Mashing”, but this time with a 20gal mash tun, there was no need to split the mashes.  This was a 10 gal batch that I used essentially the same recipe:

Recipe Specifications
————————–
Batch Size: 10.50 gal
Boil Size: 11.70 gal
Estimated OG: 1.080 SG
Estimated Color: 3.9 SRM
Estimated IBU: 15.7 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.0 %
Boil Time: 45 Minutes

Ingredients:
————
Amount Item Type % or IBU
30.00 lb Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 75.0 %
8.00 lb Rice   (1.0 SRM) Grain 20.0 %
2.00 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
3.00 oz Saaz [4.00%] (45 min) Hops 15.7 IBU

Munich Lager 2308

For the rice, I used off the shelf rice for this and cooked it before I was brewing this morning.  I burnt some of the rice so I didn’t use that stuff in the mash.  I cooked it like I would for a big batch of rice.  It worked well enough.  The mash lasted for 70min at 150f, it dropped about 3 or 4 degrees over the time, not bad considering it was in the teens in my garage.

The first running were 19brix (1.079) totaled about 6gal (out of 12.5gal of strike water).  I only ran one sparge because the pump ran through the water pretty fast.  The second running was 14brix (1.057) and brought the whole volume up to about 12 gal total.  The pre-boil gravity was 18brix (1.075).

I dropped all 3 oz of hops in for the 45 min and let it go.  No boil overs and a 1.074 OG made for a great brew day (I know, don’t ask me, there must have been a bad reading on my pre-boil gravity).

After airating and adding the four Beano pills per 5gal, I pitched the yeast and now it’s waiting to see the temp of my secret lager corner in my basement.  I have to get my hands on some Kaffir Lime leaves for the secondary.

One quick note is that this was my first time using my brew tower pictured above.  It worked awesome.  There are wheels on it and it has breaks.  It’s a sturdy tower and with my pump in my system, it allows me to do most of my brewing without having to hoist my mash tun up and down a bunch of times.  Plus it doubles as an organizer for my keggles and burners.

That’s about it for now, cheers.

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