Chism Brewing Voyage

Kickstarter for Council Brewing

2013-11-22T07:52:00.001-08:00

We currently have a Kickstarter campaign in progress to raise funds to dress up our tasting room to change it from bare bones to awesome! Here's the link: http://kck.st/17ZMbcl - Our brewery currently has a signed lease on a location in San Diego, state ABC and Federal TTB licensing submitted, construction documents being designed and will be submitted to the City in a couple of weeks! Lots of progress being made, but we need your assistance to help the space look amazing! If you're willing to lend a hand through our Kickstarter, we'd really appreciate. We plan on throwing a sweet party for Kickstarter backers ONLY! It'll be an awesome time!

Council Brewing Company

2013-08-24T13:31:00.002-07:00

Hey Folks, sorry for the lack of posting of late. I've been extremely busy preparing plans to open up my own Nano-Brewery! Our plan is to open a tasting room powered by a 3 BBL brewhouse in the San Diego area. We've got some great press recently and are starting to get some momentum going. I'll continue my full time employment working on the business part time, while Liz will be the full time brewer and brewery manager, making her one of a handful of female brewers/brewery owners.

We've got some great press the past week thanks to the Eater and San Diego Beer news. Check out the articles here. Follow us on twitter @councilbrewing and on Facebook for the latest updates!

San Diego Beer News - Meet Council Brewing Company
Eater - New Nano-Brewery Sets Sights on Kearney Mesa

Beer Pairing Dinner

2013-03-11T16:17:00.001-07:00

We hosted a beer pairing party last Saturday where we invited guests to bring dishes that paired well with our home brew selections. Fun times were had by all and the food pairings were delicious along side our beer. We had 12 beers available that evening!

2013 America's Finest City (AFC) Homebrew Competition 2013

2013-03-11T16:14:00.002-07:00

Liz and I participated in the America's Finest City (AFC) Homebrew Competition last weekend by both entering beers and judging (we're both BJCP Certified Judges). The results for AFC were revealed at the February QUAFF meeting and we took home two medals:
1st Place - 15C: Weizenbock - Predestination
2nd Place - 4C: Schwarzbier - Knight Rider

This provided us with an opportunity to obtain feedback on many different beers that we are entering in the National Homebrew Competition next month. The vast majority of entries scored in the low to high 30's. So although only two placed, we know that in another competition any of those other entries could easily place as well. Competitions tend to be a bit of a "numbers game" or a crap shoot. The more entries you have, (assuming high quality), then of course the better the odds of placing. I expected that our English Special Bitter and Saison would medal (which ended up scoring 38 and 37 respectively) but they didn't.

Beers fair differently in each competition. We haven't had a beer place in multiple competitions, but we're placing in many different categories. For example, the Belgian Dark Strong that took 1st in the QUAFF Strong Ale Competition with a 38, received a much lower score in the AHA Un-Session Competition (28). But then it scored fairly well again in the AFC at 34 with a lot of praise. So you just never know how well a beer will actually perform in competition. We're looking forward to the NHC competition in the coming months. The organizers of AFC did a fantastic job to try to pair judges properly so that all the beers were judged fairly and I'm very grateful to them for making the extraordinary effort to organize the AFC competition.

Pliny the Younger 2013 Release

2013-02-10T17:29:00.001-08:00

On February 1, 2013 we trekked to San Francisco to move a friend to San Diego and while we were there we went to Santa Rosa/Russian River Brewing Company for the first day of the 2013 Pliny the Younger release! We spent 4 1/2 hours in line - 3pm to 7:30pm and passed the time chatting to the many craft beer enthusiasts that braved the long line as well. We finally made it in and boy was it worth it! The experience of drinking Pliny the Younger on the first day with so many other exuberant people is not to be missed. Without further ado, the pictures!

Pliny the Younger!

Pliny the Younger Sign on the windows

The front of the incredibly long line, which at one point stretched all the
way down the block and quite aways around the corner (several hundred feet).

The Line continued.

My lovely wife and Jon's wife Lindsay - our DD who
we are eternally grateful and indebted to.

My wife and I in front of Russian River Brewing Co -
we were about 45 minutes from getting in at that point.

Pliny the Younger in hand!

Pliny the Younger being enjoyed side by side with a Pliny the Elder!

Well into the night of enjoying Pliny's - Curtis & Jon

Curtis & Jon enjoying the Pliny's

15 Minute IPA

2013-01-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

I had the hair-brained idea last night to brew an experimental 1 gallon test batch of an experimental IPA. I'm looking to get a lot of tropical fruits, specifically, Pineapple out of the aroma. I didn't want to spend a lot of time on it, so I brewed an extract batch with some Crystal 40 steeped grains, and boiled for just 15 minutes with the new hop variety - Zythos and fermented with WLP 575 Belgian yeast. Dry Malt Extract has already been boiled so a full 60 minute wort boil isn't required. Between all the set up, brewing, cooling, and clean up, the batch only took me 1 1/2 hours! I'll probably start doing more extract test batches in the near future considering how quickly it can be done.

It's currently fermenting, but I couldn't believe the amount of bitterness that was extracted in just 15 minutes. It was probably the most bitter IPA I've brewed. I've been slowly moving towards less early bittering charges and higher amounts of late addition hopping to extract more hop flavor and aroma. After performing this test, my next all-grain IPA will be conducted with a 60 minute boil and all late addition hops (15 minutes and less).

1 Gallon extract test batch boiling away on the stove top.

The 1 Gallon Wort

Brewery Tour Round Up

2013-01-03T12:43:00.004-08:00

I never finished my Beercation series. Here's are lots of photos from the rest of the breweries we visited.

Anderson Valley, 21st Amendment, Moylan's, Russian River (3 straight days at RR!), Bear Republic, Lagunitas.

Anderson Valley - Mash tun

Anderson Valley - Brewery Control Panel

Anderson Valley - giant hop back

2st Amendment

21st Amendment - Brewery

21st Amendment Mezzanine Bar

Liz tasting her beer

mmm!

21st Amendment

Moylan's

Bear Republic Brewing Co.

Bear Republic Brewing Co. - check out the foot long handle bar mustache on that guy!

Lagunitas Brewing Co

Lagunitas Brewing Co - Outdoor fermentors

Probably my favorite brewery ever - Russian River Brewing Co.

Russian River Brewing Co.

2012 Year in Review

2013-01-03T12:32:00.003-08:00

2012 was a great brewing year for Liz and I. We got 30 batches in the books, 3 ribbons (1st Place and Best of Show Honorable Mention at the SD Fair for the the Pale Ale and 1st Place in the QUAFF Strong Ale Competition for the Belgian Dark Strong), became an active member of QUAFF, became BJCP Certified Judges, took a great Beercation, visiting 13 breweries, and finished the year with getting a Brew Dog - Nelson. Here are a few photos showing some of the highlights of the year:

Another double brew day

2012 San Diego County Fair - 1st Place/Honorable Mention Best of Show - Pale Ale

2012 QUAFF Strong Ale Competition - 1st Place Belgian Dark Strong

Judging at the BJCP sanctioned 2012 Temecula Valley
Homebrew Competition at Black Market Brewing Co.

Our new brew dog - Nelson!

My Head Brewer (Liz) with Nelson

How to make Candi Sugar to add to a Belgian Dark Strong (and an ESB)

2012-09-28T15:58:00.002-07:00

Hey Readers!
This is Curtis' official Head Assistant Brewer. I had some extra time on my hands recently and decided to design and brew my own batch of beer. Well, actually I designed two and did a double brew day. I settled on a Belgian Dark Strong and and English Pale Ale (also known as an ESB, which stands for Extra Special/Strong Bitter).

ESB
I ended up making a small batch of candi sugar (1/2 lb) and adding it to the ESB. Although this is not typical for an ESB, I did it anyways. In return I got the most amazing ESB I have ever enjoyed. The candi sugar gave it some complex characteristics of caramel, toffee, and malt that is apparent in both the aroma and flavor. With some East Kent Goldings hops for balance and Crystal 120L for some subtle dark fruit character, this is a very drinkable beer that will need to be brewed again soon!

When I started researching about Belgian Dark Strong beers, I found that it is common to use Belgian candi sugar. I thought that would be complicated, but a little research assured me that it was quite simple.

Here is what you need for 1 lb. of candi sugar:
-1 lb sugar
-1/8 tsp. citric acid or 1/2 TSP. lemon juice
-1/3 C. water
-a little time

Add sugar, water, and citric acid in a pot.

Stir over medium heat.


After a few minutes, it will look like this. KEEP STIRRING!

Several minutes later, you'll get something that looks like this.
DON'T BURN YOURSELF and KEEP STIRRING!

When your candi sugar is the desired color, put the top on and count to 10.
This will bring the temperature up to around 300 F so it can become a "hard crack".
This is not necessary if you will be using it right away. However, if you want it to
break apart into pieces, it needs to be that hot.

Use a silicone mat (since I did 2 1/2 lbs of sugar for the Belgian Dark Strong,
I didn't want it to make a mess, so I used a 9x13 dish underneath) and allow to cool in the fridge.
Don't use wax paper! The candi sugar will stick to it and then you'll have paper in your beer.

Things to consider:
-If adding very hot candi sugar (250F) to boiling wort (212F), be careful as it may cause a boil over.
-If you get your candi sugar to a "hard crack" level, you can let it cool, break it a part, and freeze it until you brew again.

Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery

2012-08-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery
Magnolia is located in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. We stayed long enough for just one beer and I enjoyed an imperial pint (20oz) of a nice cask conditioned Bonnie Lee's Best Bitter (won Bronze at 2011 GABF). They specialize in easy drinking session beers, most of which are English style ales (the bitter I drank was just 4.1%). This makes for easy drinking, and if we had time, we could have hung out and several beers without getting buzzed. The atmosphere was very cool - incorporating aspects of an English pub and lifestyle of San Francisco. I didn't try the food but it is quite tasty, though a bit pricy also (probably consistent with other restaurants in SF though).

Magnolia - Beer Menu Board

Awesome leather backed booths!

The Bar

Liz and Lindsay

JON

Solvang Brewing Co & Silverado Brewing Co

2012-08-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Solvang Brewing Co:
We stayed in the Danish town of Solvang, CA for one night on our way up to Northern California and decided to check out Solvang Brewing Co. We read some reviews and found that the beer was pretty good, but the food wasn't - so we planned on just having beer, but were so hungry we decided to eat there.

The three beers we had (Liz had a Raspberry Wheat, I had their pale and and IPA) were average; nothing too remarkable. The Raspberry Wheat actually tasted pretty good at first, but as it warmed became a bit to syrupy sweet. If you're passing through and want a beer, it's a decent place to stop for a beer. The servers were friendly but a bit unorganized, which their frustration came through about that a couple times, but was never directed at the customers. Find another place for food though; the food really brought down the experience for us.

Silverado Brewing Co:

Silverado is located in St Helena in the Napa Valley area. We were getting a bit wined out from all the wine tasting so we stopped in here for a pint during happy hour. I had their fiery fries which were awesome! The IPA and IIPA were just average; again not a bad place if you're in the area and want a craft beer. The bar tender was also friendly.

Firestone Walker Brewing Co

2012-08-21T20:07:00.003-07:00

Firestone Union System

Firestone Walker, located in Paso Robles, CA was definitely one of the highlites of my trip to Northern California. We stopped in first at the Brewery Tasting Room, had a few tasters then went on a brewery tour. We were impressed how knowledgeable all the staff were in about beer. Each time they handed us a taster, they would tell us a description of the beer, such as how it was brewed and what characteristics were in the beer. Our tour guide was probably the most knowledgeable about beer and of course the brewing process. Firestone clearly has an excellent training program which includes ongoing training for their servers. The employees are given triangle tests at least weekly to see if they can pick out the one different beer, to help ensure quality of the product and improve their tasting repertoire.

Firestone uses their version of the Burton Union system for fermenting, which they call the Firestone Union. The Burton Union system is described as follows by Brew Your Own (original article located here):

Me - with the Firestone Union System
Traditionally, a union system (later referred to as a Burton Union after becoming linked to its use in the Burton area) is a network of several wooden casks and troughs interconnected via copper plumbing. All of the casks work in union during fermentation, commingling their beer and yeast. As the beer ferments, pressure pushes some liquid up into long troughs above the casks (like blowoff in a homebrew setup), where the yeast settles out of suspension and the remaining volume of beer trickles back into the casks. This allows for easy harvesting of yeast — essentially a form of top cropping — for immediate reuse. It also minimizes the loss of beer through blowoff.

The Firestone Union system is different, in that it is simply a stack of oak barrels that are not interconnected and are used only for secondary fermentation (conditioning), not primary fermentation (except for one beer - Double Barrel Ale - DBA, which goes through primary and secondary fermentation). This system still creates a unique beer to Firestone which is some of the best beer in the world.

Looking down into the brewery from the brewhouse platform.

Fermentors

Mash Tun - raking the mash.

Boil kettle - wort is being recirculated through the top and sprayed out the top under the pan.

Kegging Line

My wife with the kegging line

Kegging Line

Fermentors

The brew house

Bottling Line

Fermentor

More Fermentors!

Firestone Walker Tap Room

Enjoying a Porter at the adjoining Firestone Walker Restaurant.

Four Peaks Brewing Co

2012-08-20T08:40:00.003-07:00

Tasting flight of 8 (plus a bonus seasonal)

Four Peaks Brewing Company was the first of 13 breweries and brewpubs I visited during my Beercation and these guys are definitely worth checking out! We visited here after my wife finished her exams for a much needed refreshment - her for the test and me for the 120 degree heat! The food here was quite tasty - I had the Italian beef wrap, which was really a french dip sandwhich in thick wrap (made with beer) that was delicious, but certainly not Italian. My favorite beers were the Hop Knot IPA and Kilt Lifter (oddly - the same name as Moylan's Scottish style ale). The Arizona Peach was actually quite tasty as well. It had distinct apricot arom and flavor (which could easily be peach as well). I am not generally a fan of fruit flavored beers but this one was very interesting and brewed particularly well. The oatmeal stout was tasty - exceptionally smooth because it was served on nitro.

Italian beef wrap (minus the one I ate)

I was able to get a brewery tour by one of the very friendly brewers (actually two tours- since he gave me tour alone when I struck up a conversation with him on my way back from the restroom, then a second tour with my wife and two friends who wanted a tour as well of course - and he was gracious enough to give us another tour! The brew house is 40 bbls (Newland System) and they are in the process of expanding to a second 60 bbl system. Arizona law only allows for 40,000 bbls of production at one facility, so they will be keeping there current system online once the 60 bbl system is in place. The 240 bbl fermenter in the back was quite impressive - it takes 4 brews to fill this fermenter! Their serving tanks are the old grundy style tanks (which are very difficult to find these days). The owner had a source for them when they first opened up and reconditioned them and sold them to other breweries to help fund the start up of this brewery. Next time your in Phoenix, be sure to visit Four Peaks Brewing Co!

Mash Tun/Boil Kettle

Fermentors

Same fermentors - different angle)

Bottling line

Canning Line

Canning Line (with Kilt Lifter loaded)

More fermentors (or brite tanks)

I believe these are brite tanks

Bar cold room - lots of grundy tanks!

Your's truly and my wife - (holding the can she was given off the canning line)

And yes - it was 120 degrees outside, so who knows how hot inside the car,
so they only way to hold the steering wheel was to wear my wife's gloves.

Beercation

2012-08-19T20:00:00.001-07:00

Santa Cruz - Steamers Lane

I just returned from a 12 day, 2,000 mile road trip vacation that essentially was a beercation with quite a few great wineries thrown in there as well. I'll be posting a series of articles about each brewery, and likely a round up post of the wineries. It started with a trip to Scottsdale, AZ so my wife could take a national interpreting exam out there; then heading up to Napa/Sonoma/San Francisco by way of the beautiful central coast of California. If you've never driven Highway 1 up the central coast - make sure you put it on your bucket list. I've included some photos of the beautiful coastline for your viewing pleasure.

Here's the list of breweries we visited:
- Four Peaks Brewing Co
- Solvang Brewing Co
- Firestone Walker Brewing Co
- 21st Ammendment Brewing Co
- NapaSmith Brewery
- Silverado Brewing Co
- Moylan's Brewpub
- Russian River Brewing Co (3 Times!)
- Anderson Valley Brewing Co
- Bear Republic Brewing Co (Brewpub)
- Lagunitas Brewing Co
- Magnolia Brewpub (San Francisco)
- Speakeasy Brewing Co

Wineries we visitied:
- Domain Carneros
- Nicholson Ranch

- Gundlach Bundschu
- Grgich Hills Estate
- Rombauer
- Chateau Montelena
- Sutter Home
- Martini's
- Ledson
- Korbel

Here are the other photos:

Pacific Ocean, near Big Sur

Armstrong Redwoods near Santa Cruz (one of the redwoods cut down in the area sprouted around 550 AD!

Monterey, CA

Santa Cruz - Steamers Lane

Wet Hop Extravaganza!

2012-08-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Mike over at Hess Brewing gave me a bag of Cascade wet hops on Tuesday that were picked on Monday at a new hop farm called The Hoppery. The Alpha acid content on these are a whopping 10%, which is way up from the normal 5-7% I normally see. I received them right before I went on my 12 day road trip that I'm currently on, so unfortunately I wasn't able to brew with the 6 lbs of hops. I took Mike's advice on how to dry them out, by spreading them across a table and blowing air across it with a fan. With the warm weather we are having in San Diego, these should dry out nicely - especially if the humidity will go away. I see a hoppy Cascadian hopped IPA in my brewing future!

Assistant Brewer Completes another Double Brew Day

2012-07-29T19:53:00.001-07:00

My assistant brewer (my wife Liz) completed another brew day by herself, while I was recovering from a wicked case of food poisoning the day before. I would stumble out occasionally to ~~get in the way and cause trouble~~ help her and then head back in to the house to recover for an hour. She finished in 8 hours - which even included measuring out all the malt, milling and cleaning up by herself. Pretty impressive! We She brewed up our 40th and 41st batches of beer, with a Black IPA (5th version) and Belgian IPA (2nd version). She tossed the dark malt (Carafa II dehusked) to darken the IPA into a black IPA into the mash at the end with about 20 minutes left to try to get the dark color with less of the roast character. We'll see how it turns out!

Russian River Consecration Tasting Flight

2012-07-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

This last Saturday (July 21), Toronado San Diego held a Russian River Consecration 10 flight tasting session. For $30, we got (10) 3oz pours of 10 different batches of Consecration, starting with Batch 0 which from my understanding wasn't an official public release beer originally. Toronado held back 1 of each set of kegs of Consecration they received over the past few years and Russian River let them know that the original 2008 era batches may be reaching their peak and could start to decline soon, so they released them all to the public. This was an incredible tasting flight to experience! We nursed these for a long time and took about 2 hours to go through the different beers. It was fascinating to compare so many different batches side by side and see how well Consecration improved with age. If you have your hands on some newer batches, I'd recommend laying them down for a couple years. You'll experience a sour beer that has a full rich dark fruity character as compared to the newer that have a more biting sourness and a lighter almost strawberry characteristic.

Toronado San Diego

The Consecration tasting flight!

Consecration

Winning Big at the San Diego County Fair

2012-07-07T11:38:00.002-07:00

Last Sunday brought the annual San Diego County Fair home brew competition with an incredible 1,242 entries in all 28 of the BJCP categories. (2 of the categories were split into subcategories so there were a total of 30 categories) Liz and I judged the IPA category (our second time judging at the fair and first time judging since taking he BJCP exam). The common experience most of the judges had was a lack of hop aroma in most of the beers, which was surprising for San Diego brewers - lack of hop character in general is not a problem.

Our Pale Ale (originally brewed 4 months ago as an IPA) ended up taking 1st Place in the Pale Ale category! We were completely shocked, having never expected to win in this category which had about a 100 entries in this category alone! All the 1st Place entries (30) were then placed in a Best of Show round, which had a BOS winner and 4 Honorable Mentions. Our Pale Ale took Honorable Mention, placing it in the top 5 beers of 1,242 beers!

The Pale Ale was a simple recipe with 2 row, Crystal 40, Munich, a little sugar, and Cascade/Centennial hop additions. It was stored for 4 months at room temperature. I actually planned on entering another beer I brewed specifically for the competition and then "discovered" this beer in the closet (having forgotten about it). I did a side by side comparison and decided to enter the "aged" beer instead. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good!

This is right after getting our 1st place ribbon.

And clearly we're really happy after getting Honorable Mention for Best of Show!

Results Board

Kegerator

2012-06-15T12:22:00.001-07:00

I recently completed building a 4-tap kegerator by converting a refrigerator. I actually started out with a very old stand up freezer. Long story on how I ended up with this, but after I bought it, I found out the cooling coils were run through the shelving, not internally. I attempted to salvage the freezer by cutting the shelving and slamming them against the back wall. I was almost done when I broke the thin cooling line and all the refrigerant came out.

I found another "normal" refrigerator on craigslist and set to work on it. Ironically, the guy I bought it from was one of my temp laborers on a construction project several years ago. I purchased a 4 keg system from Adventures in Homebrewing. The guys over there were great - they actually didn't have a 4-keg system available but put the whole package together for me and matched a competitors price.

The fridge is quite easy to convert. I had to build a sturdy wood shelf to ramp over the motor housing, which I made out of 2x4's and baltic birch plywood and then painted it white. I then laid out and drilled 1" holes for the faucet shafts (requires a 1" metal hole saw), added across the holes for support, and installed the shafts and hooked up the kegs/lines.

Kegging is so much easier than bottling, except that there is more cleaning involved. I'm in the process of converting a sump pump into to keg/carboy washer to make the cleaning process a snap.

Completed kegerator: All I need now is some custom tap handles!

Small Batch Brewing & Step Mashing

2012-03-25T17:26:00.001-07:00

Small Batch Brewing:
I'm brewing up some "small" batches of beer now so that I can experiment with a wider range of styles with less cost and less beer to bottle and keep around. Yesterday was the first attempt at this; Liz and I brewed up two Belgian beers - a Witbier (white beer) and a Belgian Dark Strong. Both beers are ales and have the same fermentation profile which allows me to place them both in the fermenter and ferment at the same temps/schedule.

Witbier on the left, Dark Strong on the right.

It'd been a month or so since we last brewed since most of our free time was consumed with studying for the BJCP beer judge exam, so we made a couple minor mistakes along the way, but hopefully nothing that will drastically affect the finished beer.

When boiling smaller volumes of wort, the boil off rate increases significantly, which results in increased a higher Original Gravity and a lower volume of finished wort in the fermenter. Next time I'll need to raise my batch from 3 gallons to 3 1/2 and increase my brewhouse efficiency rate. The Witbier ended up with 90% brewhouse efficiency (I had figured 75%), but yielded just over 2 gallons.

Step Mashing:
We also step mashed yesterday for the first time. The Witbier has a high amount of wheat (35%) and oats 8% which would create a wort that is highly viscous and likely impossible to sparge. To avoid a potential stuck mash, we performed a protein rest at 130F for 15 minutes before raising the temperature to 150F. I started the mash in a kettle by heating water to 145F and doughing in to hit my target of 127F (was high though at 130F). After letting it rest at that temp, I turned the heat on low and attempted to slowly raise the temperature to about 155F. I wanted to over heat slightly so when I transferred to the mash tun cooler, I'd hit 153. I ended up losing 5 degrees when I transferred so, I'll have to plan for that next time.

The problem that occurred is I didn't realize how fast the mash temperature could rise with such a small mash. I had the heat on low and was stirring constantly to avoid scorching the grains. After a few minutes, I checked the temperature and I had hit 170F! I quickly filled a pitcher of water with 120 degree water (from my tankless heater) and poured a half gallon in. That was enough to lower the temp down to 140. I then slowly raised it to 155F and then poured into the mash tun. I was concerned I may have stopped the alpha amylase enzyme activity but it was only at that temp for about 2 minutes. My efficiency was quite high, so I think I'm ok. It also didn't help that the Dark Strong was beginning to boil (and boil over) at the same time I was trying to raise the mash temp!

Stone 2012 AHA Rally/Competition Recap

2012-03-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

The Stone AHA Rally and March Madness Homebrew Competition was held last Saturday on March 10th and as usual had a very large turnout. Over 400 people RSVP'd for the event. I'm not sure there that many people actually attended, but the gardens were still teeming with people. There were a number of delicious beers that day. There were several I knew instantly were going to be top finishers including Ken Schmitz's Pillow Mint at the Ritz mint chocolate stout, Mango Haberno IPA, and Scott's Big IPL. The top 5 vote-getters were selected to be evaluated by a panel from Stone and the top 4 were announced. My beer ultimately did not finish in the top 4, but the three mentioned above finished 1, 2, and 4th with PP Steeze Imperial Coffee Vanilla Porter coming in third.

I also had the chance to meet up with a fellow homebrewer and blogger, Scott at SNB Brewing (Scott's Big IPL). He has an extensive write up of the Rally and I appreciate shout out for my Pirate's Breakfast Imperial Oatmeal Stout. We'll see what's in store for next year. In the mean time - I've got just 3 days left of studying for the BJCP exam on Saturday March 17th!

Greg Koch (CEO Stone) giving one of several speeches/announcements.

Pirate's Breakfast eagerly waiting to be served.

There's Pirate's Breakfast on the line up.

These are all of the beers that were served in bottles;
The other side of the garden had all the draft beers.

Countdown to the BJCP Exam!

2012-03-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

Liz and I have just 8 days to go until the BJCP exam on March 17th! We finished up the 12 week review course on Wednesday and are continuing madly studying for the exam. It didn't look like we were going to be able to take it, but a couple people dropped out and we were able to jump in. I'm very grateful for all the hardwork and efforts that Travis, Mike, Brett, Kim (as well as many others) put in to coordinating this review course. I've learned a tremendous amount about beer and brewing that would've taken me years to learn.

Our last class at Peter Zien from AleSmith give us some tips on the exam. It was an encouraging and helpful talk, although he did say "I suppose this test is slightly more fun than the Bar exam"! I'm looking forward to having my free time back in about a week since almost every spare moment is spent cramming classic commercial examples, world beer styles, history, ingredients, brewing problems, and brewing processes into my brain. At least it's on St Patty's day :=)

2012 Stone March Madness Homebrew Competition/AHA Rally

2012-03-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

We're just one week away from the Stone AHA Rally on March 10th, 2012 and I hope to see you there! I'll have my Pirate's Breakfast Imperial Oatmeal Stout entered. Apparently there are over 400 people registered to attend so far, ~~so if you're planning on going, make sure to RSVP so you don't get turned away at the door. Here is the link: Stone AHA Rally.~~ UPDATE 3/5/12: The registration window is already closed - hopefully you're already on the list! There are so many people in attendance now, that instead of the 24 bottles required for entry, we're now being asked to bring as many bottles as we can. I'm dropping another 12 pack off today which almost clears me out of this batch of Pirate's Breakfast.

Since it's an AHA Rally, you do need to be an AHA member in order to get in. You can become an AHA member at the door (which is what we did last year) or you can join online at the AHA website. Once you're in you get to taste 40 amazing homebrews and vote on the best beer. The top four or five beers with the most votes will then go to a Stone tasting panel and a winner will be selected. The homebrewer then gets to brew that beer with Stone on their system and the beer gets distributed out everywhere Stone is available!

Brewery Upgrades in Action

2012-02-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

I finally had the opportunity on Saturday to try out all the new brewery paraphernalia I've been procuring over the last month. The new equipment worked great - the Monster grain mill, the yeast stir plate, and the oxygenation equipment. Both my pumps went out on me though. I'll post about these pumps once I get it all sorted out.

The yeast starter was quite an experience trying to use the erlenmeyer flasks. I had two boil overs while trying to boil the dry malt extract and I had issues getting the temperature to stay below 90 because of the heat generated by the stir plate, but I've got the heat issue figured out and I know to remove the flask from the heat before I add the extract and then watch it very carefully the whole time it's boiling. I also got a thermowell to help me more accurately measure the true temperature of the fermenting wort.

I brewed completely by myself which made for a very busy brew day. I realized half way through the boil that I didn't have any ice, so I raced off to 7-11 to get some ice, and was back in about 5 minutes, and fortunately no brewing disaster occurred! Liz and I went to our favorite bar Hamiltons in our former community of South Park for their "second saturday" event with Karl Strauss and had free cajun food and their cask beers - oatmeal stout and Tower 20 IIPA.

Yeast starter just getting going

Starter well under way

Milling the grain

Milled grain

Starter ready for pitching

Finished off the day with cask beers from Karl Strauss (oatmeal stout and IIPA) at Hamiltons.

Brewery Upgrades

2012-01-29T14:30:00.000-08:00

Assembled Monster Mill

I've been spending the last couple of weeks upgrading the brewery instead of brewing.

1. Grain Mill - I got a Monster Mill MM-3 which has (3) 6" rollers. This provides a larger rolling area (6" instead of the usual 4") and 3 rollers instead of 2, which has the advantage of flattening/softening the grain kernel in the first roller and then the second pair of rollers crushes the grain. This method allows for a better crush and causes less damage to the grain.. I bought the hopper and base that the company sells so I didn't have to spend build it myself. I'll be getting a drill motor to power the mill.

Oxygen tank with aeration stone

2. Oxygen Tank - For the sake of safety and better yeast health and fermentation, I purchased an oxygen tank, regulator and was given an oxygenation stone. This will allow me to inject mostly pure oxygen into the wort, rather than shaking the daylights out of the wort (and myself) in an attempt to infuse the air in the headspace of the carboy into the wort. The shake method only can get about 2-4ppm of oxygen into the wort, when 8-10ppm is actually needed for proper yeast health, which injecting compressed oxygen into wort allows the the brewer to achieve. The oxygen is also significantly cleaner than the air in the headspace. A primary concern was the safety factor involved in shaking a carboy with 6 gallons of liquid weighing about 50lbs. If the carboy is dropped, it becomes a giant grenade with the annealed glass shards exploding, propelled by the pressure of the liquid inside. This also allows my wife to brew entirely by herself since the heavy lifting is eliminated.

Stir plate in action with 2000 ml Erlenmeyer flask

3. Stir Plate for Yeast Starters - I was given a stir plate recently and I just purchased a couple 2000 ml Erlenmeyer flasks (see picture right). The stir plate keeps the yeast in constant suspension in the wort, allowing for fast growth of the yeast cells. I just need to hit it with some O2 then turn the stir plate on and let the yeast grow. This will allow me to grow a large enough yeast population to pitch the correct amount of yeast into the wort. I've essentially been underpitching yeast from a vile or dry packet. Yes, the beer will ferment and turn out fine, it just may create some off-flavors due to poor yeast health since the yeast will get stressed trying to ferment so much wort with a small cell population of yeast. Between oxygenating at proper levels and creating yeast starters to grow sufficient yeast to pitch, I should see significant improvements in my beer.

Inside view of Monster Mill

The three roller mill - yes there really are three
rollers there, I just didn't take a photo from the side.