Brewing – Fat Boy Deluxe

Category archives: Brewing

Spring Bliss

06Mar09

butch_growlers

To all youse folks who homebrew, ride dirt, and don’t mind traveling to the Boston MetroWest area:

The Bootlegger’s Bliss will be held on Satyrday, April 25th, at an as yet undisclosed venue in MA. That’s right, the not yet famous “greatest-mountain-biking-homebrew-tasting-event-of-the-last-weekend-in-April-in-the-New-England-region-hosted-by-me-and-sponsored-by-no-one” is coming to MA for more homegrown hijinx.

For the uninitiated, the Bliss is an event that combines a mountain bike ride with a homebrew tasting and homecooking picnic. A few more details:

* the “price of admission” is one six-pack or equivalent (say, three bombers or a growler) of homebrew that you brewed, either at home or at a brewing facility.

* while the event is limited to homebrewers, each brewer may bring one guest who does not brew, but who rides and likes beer. Guests are encouraged to witness and help with the brewing process before attending.

* everyone participating in the beer tasting—including guests—must bring and ride a bike suitable for off-road use. This is a mountain biking event. Oh, and tasters should be of legal age.

* everyone who attends is asked to bring a HOMECOOKED dish to share with other attendees. This is a ride, followed by a picnic of sorts, where the finest homebrew in the region will be on display.

* non-participating (i.e., those who neither ride nor drink much) family members are always welcome. Bring your wife, husband, paramour, concubine, ex, kids, whatever, as long as you don’t get too sloppy.

More details (i.e., exact time, venue, etc.) will not be posted anywhere, but you can email me or leave a comment on the blog.

For info on past events, check out these posts: http://wrenchinthegears.blogspot.com/search?q=bootlegger%27s+bliss and thanks to Steve for letting me rip off 99% of his words – he write good, ha.

Hope to see you there.

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Not So Winter Bliss

04Mar09

Well it won’t really be Winter, but pencil in the date:

April 25th, 2009 – Bootleggers Bliss comes to New England!

Gives you plenty of time to brew something up if you haven’t already and gives those of us stuck in perpetual Winter a chance to stretch our legs and lungs before the big show.

More details to follow, but you can check out Steve’s previous ponderings here!

Bootlegger's Bliss art by Spearman

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Big Barrel Brew, Part Dos

12Dec08

Saturday morning found Kristin and I waking up early to get the house ready. We needed to clean the house from top to bottom, rake a 1/2 acre of leaves, get started on the cooking, and finally mill the grain. Kristin started on the leaves, while I started in on the vacuuming. After the house was clean, I headed out to help with the raking to find Kristin had already finished putting the front yard into piles and was already starting on the backyard. We switched it up and she went on to getting the mac & cheese and caramel cupcakes together…diabetics beware! Later in the afternoon, Mike, Chris, and Jeff popped by the house to help out. We put Chris and Jeff on grain milling duty while Mike and I finished off the leaves just a little after o’dark 30. Then we finished up the grain milling, before grabbing some pizza and a Wii Kart break, which Ron conveniently showed up for just in time. After everybody left, it was just a quick basement check and barrel prep, which needed a splash more rum – you know, to sanitize it a little more. Physical exhaustion had me in bed by midnight.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Woke up early to grab some coffee and do a few last minute things. Sloan and Albert show up around 8:15 AM, just as I’m finishing up some small details like putting fresh house numbers on the mailbox to make it easier for people to find. And it begins…

Brewers Brewing

From then until around 11:00 AM brewers arrived, setup, and started up their rigs. Everybody brewed all grain (some for their first time), but the equipment ranged from 5 gallon buckets/aluminum foil/tongs to computerized 15 gallon keggles on rolling brew carts. We had a dozen or so brewers and all completed their batches and pushed through any issues there might have been. I was scheduled to brew, but keeping things organized became a full time job. Thankfully Jeff took over measuring out three additions of hops for every batch.

First addition of hops measured out

Throughout the day people showed up at the house. Some brought homebrew, some brought commercial brew, and still others brought much needed food to supply the troops. Kristin whipped up a big batch of mac & cheese and some caramel cupcakes. Kevin put together a spicy batch of jambalaya. There was homebrewed port and tons of cookies. A smoker was put to good use to churn out some ribs and we even had homemade bbq sauce that was super tasty!

As we wrapped things up, Allan setup his peristaltic pumps and counterflow chiller to directly chill the beer as it ran from the brew kettles into the barrel.

This chiller pretty much rocked and made the end of the brew day go really smooth. We filled the barrel with about 40 gallons of wort and put an extra 20 gallons in carboys. This way when the barrel reaches peak fermentation it doesn’t explode onto the walls of my basement (Kristin should be happy about that). The carboys were set to the side to ferment on their own and we should be racking those back into the barrel to bulk age with the rest of the batch.

Chilling beer into barrel

It was a phenomal day! The weather cooperated bringing sunny skies and warm temperatures. Everybody did their part and more to make the day a smashing success. We were shooting for a 1089 gravity and hit 1085 – not bad for how many batches we had to combine. I’d try to name everybody who took part, but I’m sure I’d screw it up. The Wort Processors homebrew club really out did themselves. When it was all said and done, Kristin and I were able to clean the house one more time and sit down for good right around 6:30 PM…can’t ask for more than that. Oh, and the beer…I’ll let you know how it turns out…in a year.

For additional stuff, check out Kristin’s photos here, David Bond’s photos here, Ron’s video here, and Ann Cortissoz’s article in the globe here.

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Big Barrel Brew, Part 1

10Nov08

Last week was mostly spent getting ready for the weekend. The Worts recently purchased a rum barrel from Newport Storm, a brewery in RI, who also happens to distill and makes Thomas Tew rum. The rum barrel was originally used to age Tennessee whiskey. The plan was for the Worts to get together for a day and brew 60 gallons of Strong Scotch Ale, aka Wee Heavy. I volunteered my basement to keep the barrel for the year it will be aging the beer, which means everybody would be coming over to our house for the brewing – Kristin was thrilled with this, ha!

In addition to hosting, I took on getting the ingredients for the massive grain bill since I’ve recently started doing bulk grain buys for the club. The clubs order came to 21 sacks of grain. The grain arrived on a pallet to my work (amazing what a little beer bribe can get your shipping department to allow). Next was loading all that grain into the Subaru to get it back to the house. This was the challenge:

Grain to be loaded

Surprisingly, it didn’t take too long to get it all in the wagon, only about 30ish minutes. The shipping department had the truck delivery guy drop right in the parking lot, so I wouldn’t have to carry it off the loading dock and could load it directly into the wagon. The tough part would come later…

Lowriding

So now I know, 21 sacks is pretty much the limit of a Subaru Outback…in case anybody was wondering. Once home, the rain really picked up, so I put off the inevitable until 10:00 PM that night. At that point I grabbed the rain jacket and headed out into the dark wet driveway. Opening up the back, I was greeted with this:

Ready to unload

An hour later, all 21 bags were safely down in the basement. Check done! Just a quick shower and then it was time for bed.

The hops proved to be a little daunting. If you brew beer at all, then you know there is/was a hop shortage. This can make something like buying 2 pounds of hops a little difficult. Luckily there is Fresh Hops, who just so happens to have a 2 pound limit per type of hop. Ordered on Monday, shipped on Tuesday, hope like hell it actually shows up on Friday. Friday evening, about 5:00 PM, I get the message from Kristin…the hops have landed! Buster was psyched!

Mmm...Buster approved!

2 pounds of Goldings delivered, not to mention a bunch of others!

Box o' hops!

Now the only thing left was to make sure the house was in order, but it would have to wait until Saturday.

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Pumpkin Ale

30Sep08

Mike and I brewed up our annual batches of Pumpkin ale on Sunday. Mike picked up some small sugar pumpkins on Saturday (about 6 pounds worth), quartered them, and roasted them in the oven at around 400°. After letting them get nice and soft and letting a bunch of the sugars begin to caramelize, he scooped out the pulp, which we blended up in the food processor just before brewing. We added the pumpkin directly to the mash and it was super tasty going in. Pulled off the mash, which gave off a beautiful deep amber color. Brought to a boil and added our single hop addition. Pretty easy going brew day, as the only thing left was to add a mixture of spices a few minutes before the end of the boil. Chilled and poured into the fermentation buckets and pitched some rehydrated Safale S-04 dry yeast. Headed down to the basement Monday, only to see this -

Pumpkin Ale fermenting

Damn! Guess I forgot the one thing I always remember to do…put the buckets on a towel. Oh well, it’s all cleaned up now and fermenting vigorously. With such an easy brewing session, we took time during the boil to refurbish a few corny kegs (new poppets and o-rings all around). After the refurbish job, we ended up racking Mike’s IPA, my Oktoberfest and my Blonde ale into the fresh kegs. Good times.

Remember, beer and candy are supposedly recession proof…at least I got the first half covered.

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Hi, I’m David…and you are?

31Mar08

Wow, almost 2 months have gone by since the last post, insane. Time to add some air in the tires of this dusty thing. As I’ve said before, most of the time I post is due to getting a moment at work where I can jump online. That becomes much harder to do when you’re stuck in a windowless secure lab for 8 hours a day. Once I’m out of work I end up doing other things than looking at a computer, so I’m behind on posting, behind on reading my newsreader, but not behind on mountain biking through sunsets, brewing kick ass beer, and most certainly not behind in snowboarding into the wee hours of the morning. We’re still living life up here in beautiful New England and while it’s still cold, you can smell Spring all around.

Did my first group mountain bike ride, um, probably more than a month ago now. 5 of us took to the PR to do our part in breaking in the trail after a fresh snow. Good group of guys and girls and I had a lot of fun. Hope to do some more rides with them, especially as we warm up here. I also got in a TNS, while it was on a Monday and it was a solo effort, I’ll still call it a TNS for now. Basically rode out to the bike path and over to the dirt BCT extension and out to Concord. Made it out to Main Streets Cafe, where I had a Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale before hopping back on the bike and riding home. The ride was good and the classic American Brown ale was the topping on the cake.

One of my recent night rides with Hog turned out to be an eye opening experience. My lights for biking are old. How old? Old enough that the batteries no longer hold a charge longer than an hour and if the moon is bright I wonder if my lights are actually on or not. So on this night, I just didn’t bring my lights figuring we would ride until dark and then I would get myself out to the road and slum it home. Hog had other ideas and whipped out a NiteRider Minewt X2. This thing is small and bright! An LED light that also comes in around $160 street price and lasts for up to 7 hours…yea, thats a long time, ha. So when it comes time to replace my aging (dying) lights, the Minewt is definitely on the short list.

As most of you know, it’s been a pretty cold and snowy winter. One night Mike and I were taking advantage of a current snowstorm and using our season passes at the mountain and go figure, the mountain has one night a year where they are open for a full 24 hours and that was the night. We stayed out on the snow until about 2:30 AM, riding some uber soft smooth closed trails. Best snowboarding night…ever.

Oh and the beer! I’ve been having some issues with my mash tun lately, so Mike and built a new one out of a 52qt cooler. Figured if we were going to go all out, we should go big time. Just for anyone wondering, a 52qt cooler can hold 33 pounds of grain and around 12 gallons of water…and it’s f’n heavy! We brewed up two IPAs from the one giant mash and seperate smaller mash was used to do up a Belgian Dubbel. 3 batches in a day, not too shabby.

But the biggest announcement on the blog, has to be this:

That’s right damnit, it’s official…

Filed under Bikes, Brewing, Dirt, Life, Snowboarding| | 6 Comments

More Snow!

14Jan08

So we’ve had a couple of big storms here in the last month or two. After today though, I can certainly say I’ve been through a Nor’Easter and survived. The weather forecast for today said 10-15″ of the white stuff. Out to shovel this morning and we had about 7 inches or so already and it’s supposed to keep on snowing clear through the next rush hour. A nice powdery 4 inches on top of a wet and heavy bottom layer. Sure makes shoveling a good workout.

Last Friday I ended up getting a bum foot somehow. The muscle on top of the foot just below the ankle area is really swollen and red and the tendons or ligaments or whatever the cables are that run down through the middle of your ankle and into your foot are tender to the touch. Tender meaning it hurts like F when you simply touch it. So I got a bit of a limp and I look a little gimpy, but other than that I’m hoping it will fade away fast. Hoping it was just from doing a lot of walking in my trainers (British enough for you Fletcher!) that are pretty old and used up.

Mounted up Aretha this morning and made a beeline for work. Only a few cars out there, which was nice. With some heavy snow still coming down I got to work with that nice covered in white look, but luckily I remembered the sun glasses to keep it out of my eyes and the scarf was a nice touch. Too bad that after I got to work I found out that both of the labs I needed to do some work in were off-line and closed until further notice. Right….nobody could send an email about that before this morning?

Hm, if I can figure out how to duct tape the camera to my head, maybe I’ll get some commuting video, ha.

Kristin’s parents made it into town this weekend. We had planned on heading over to Walden Pond and checking it out, since neither of us has been there yet. Instead we ended up playing Wii most of the day. It would have been nice to get outside, but it’s really hard to pull people away from the Wii the first time they end up playing. Bet they were sore yesterday!

I did manage to get two starters going. A smackpack of Wyeast 3787 Trappist ale yeast I had smacked a few days ago was now nice and swollen, figured I should step it up a little more, so it’s in the flask and showing signs of fermentation this morning. Hopefully I can quadruple the yeast by the end of the week. Also made a starter of Brettanomyces Bruxellensis. This is supposed to be a more mellow strain of Brett and it’s supposedly what is used in Orval. Hoping to do some experimenting as I also have a tube of Brettanomyces Lambicus, which is supposed to be much more funky. As the name says, this is the strain most often found in Lambic beers and is much more intense. I think it will be interesting to try and make two of the same beers and only change up the Brett strain that I use. Guess I’ll see if Brett can be stepped up in a starter like a regular packet of yeast…hope so!

Filed under Bikes, Brewing, Commuting, Life| | 3 Comments

Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter

04Jan08

Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter

Recipe	Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter	Style	Robust Porter
Brewer	DT and Mike	Batch	6.00 gal
All Grain

Recipe Characteristics

Recipe Gravity	1.090 OG	Estimated FG	1.022 FG
Recipe Bitterness	35 IBU	Alcohol by Volume	8.7%
Recipe Color	49° SRM	Alcohol by Weight	6.8%

Ingredients

Quantity	Grain	Type	Use
2.00 lb	American chocolate malt	Grain	Mashed
1.00 lb	Belgian Special "B"	Grain	Mashed
1.50 lb	Crystal 120L	Grain	Mashed
0.50 lb	Crystal 40L	Grain	Mashed
0.50 lb	Crystal 60L	Grain	Mashed
2.50 lb	German Munich	Grain	Mashed
12.00 lb	Maris Otter Malt	Grain	Mashed
Quantity	Hop	Type	Time
1.00 oz	Galena	Pellet	60 minutes
1.00 oz	Kent Golding	Pellet	10 minutes
Quantity	Misc	Notes
2.00 unit	American Ale US-05	Yeast	Dry
1.00 unit	Makers Mark Bourbon	Other	1 cup of Makers Mark Bourbon at kegging time
2.00 unit	Vanilla Bean	Other	Scrape and cut beans and add to secondary for one week

Recipe Notes

Based off Denny Conn's BVIP recipe. Mike enjoyed this one so much that he wanted to brew up another batch. The homebrew shop out near Mike doesn't carry everything and they also aren't very good at making substitution recommendations, so we had to improvise on the day of brewing. No Brown malt was available, so we cobbled together a mixture of Special B malt, Pale Chocolate malt, Crystal 60 L, and Crystal 120 L. Who knows if it's anything like Brown malt, but it sure smelled good going into the bucket! They also didn't have any Magnum hops and the shop suggested using Northern Brewer instead. Problem was they gave him 1 oz. of 6% AA Northern Brewer to use in place of 1 oz. of 12% AA Magnum…um yea. So we did 1 oz. of Galena instead, since I've found Galena to be a good clean bittering hop.

Batch Notes

12/29/2007 :: This was Mike's first time brewing on the picnic cooler mash tun I made him. I'm grasping at temperatures here, because I didn't write them down, but I think we hit 155º for the mash and 167º for the sparge. We collected a total of 7 gallons of wort. Boil went as planned with no surprises. Cooled wort down 75º before putting in a carboy adding two packets of US-05 dry yeast and aerating with the wine degasser drill bit.

12/31/2007 :: Fermentation was strong enough to blow the airlock out of the carboy. Luckily towel on floor and towel wrapped around carboy contained most of the mess – nothing on the walls or ceiling.

01/02/2008 :: Waitied for fermentation to calm down a little before cleaning up the carboy and replacing the airlock. Still bubbling good.

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Belgian Dark Strong

03Jan08

Belgian Dark Strong

Recipe	Belgian Dark Strong	Style	Belgian Dark Strong Ale
Brewer	DT	Batch	6.00 gal
All Grain

Recipe Characteristics

Recipe Gravity	1.094 OG	Estimated FG	1.024 FG
Recipe Bitterness	30 IBU	Alcohol by Volume	9.1%
Recipe Color	23° SRM	Alcohol by Weight	7.2%

Ingredients

Quantity	Grain	Type	Use
1.00 lb	Belgian Special "B"	Grain	Mashed
1.00 lb	Belgian aromatic malt	Grain	Mashed
1.50 lb	Belgian candi syrup, dark	Grain	Other
12.00 lb	Belgian pilsener	Grain	Mashed
0.50 lb	Belgian wheat	Grain	Mashed
1.00 lb	CaraMunich II	Grain	Mashed
3.00 lb	German Munich	Grain	Mashed
0.50 lb	Melanoidin	Grain	Mashed
Quantity	Hop	Type	Time
2.25 oz	Hallertauer	Pellet	60 minutes
Quantity	Misc	Notes
1.00 unit	Belgian Strong Ale yeast	Yeast	No starter, 6 month old smackpack

Recipe Notes

Lost my original dark strong recipe, so I pulled up Jamil's recipe since I used it as the base for mine last time. This time I dropped the pilsner base malt to 12 pounds for a little less alcohol. Also used a full bottle of Belgian Dark Candi Syrup, instead of corn sugar. Used a little less hops (didn't actually weigh them out), since the Hallertaur I had came in at 4.7% AA.

Batch Notes

12/29/2007 :: Mike came over for the brew session and brewed the BVIP. He also brought his power drill, so we didn't have to mill the grain by hand, which saved a lot of time. I managed to clean and sanitize everything the night before. Milled up the grains, dropped them in the mash tun, heated the strike water to 163 and hit a mash temp of 152. Let it sit for an hour while we ate lunch, then pulled off about 4 gallons of wort. Sparged with 180 degree water to pull off the remaining 3 gallons. Wasn't paying attention while draining the mash into the boil pot and ended up collecting too much wort. Boil pot (7.5 gallons) started to overflow. Stopped the flow and used a measuring cup to lower the collected wort level down to 7 gallons. This probably is the reason I ended up with an OG of 1080 instead of 1090.

Brought to a boil, added bittering hops. Boiled for 45 minutes and then added the Belgian Dark Candi syrup, then boiled another 15 minutes. After hour long boil was over, cooled wort over a 10 minute period. Poured into bucket, strained excess hops, aerated, and pitched one smackpack of yeast (no starter). Yeast was bought at least 6 months ago and is having a slow start, might have to repitch some fresh yeast.

12/31/2007 :: Pulled my 6 month old smackpack of Trappist ale yeast out of the fridge, let it warm up and smacked it to see how bad it was. No sign of fermentation yet.

01/02/2008 :: Smackpack has finally showed signs of being alive. It's not super puffy, but enough to know there are still some live cells in there kicking out CO2. Doesn't really matter though, as the bucket finally started bubbling yesterday, 01/01/2008. Not a super fast bubbling, but it's steady and getting stronger.

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Fermentation Station

31Dec07

Holidays are almost over. We had a nice whirlwind trip, Boston to Killadelphia, where my brother and his wife took us to Monk’s Cafe. Our first time there and it was definitely impressive. The moules and frites were just as they should be and the Belgian beer selection was spectacular. It was a good night for sour beers! Next day we stopped off to visit with Kristin’s family, since they were all holed up in Philly this year. Then it was off to Ocean City, MD for the next few days. We got back late Wednesday night and took the next couple of days to get the house in order. We needed to caulk the bathroom and fix the fan so it actually pulled air, not to mention we needed to get out on the roof and break up the ice dams that had formed on the edges. All in vain though, as it’s snowing again right now and we’ve got another storm on the horizon.

Anyway, we took a break on Saturday from all the house stuff and set in for a full day of brewing action. Friday night I finished up making a second mash tun out of an old rectangular Igloo cooler, a ball valve kit, and an 18″ stainless steel washer hose with the vinyl tubing removed. A little caulk on the outside and it was water tight. So Mike came over on Saturday and we did two different batches. He wanted to do another Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter and I was feeling the Belgian Dark Strong. We made a couple of changes to his recipe since the shop was out of certain grains and hops. I also dropped the amount of base malt in mine to make a beer at the lower end of the Belgian Dark Strong category, instead of the very top of the category like I did last year. Last year’s recipe went on to the second round of the National Homebrew Competition and received a few comments of having a lot of alcohol, um yea, it’s supposed to! Brewing session went well, no major hitches. We ended up with some extra wort from both batches, so we put about 3 gallons of blended imperial porter and Belgian dark strong into a bucket and dropped a packet of T-58 yeast in it. Started bubbling about 2 minutes later and hasn’t stopped yet. Mike filled his carboy up to the tip top and as expected got enough blow off to put the air lock on the floor, check it:

At least everything stayed on the towels. Next we put our two batches of single hopped IPAs down in the basement to hopefully cool down and drop some crap out of suspension. We’ll probably keg/bottle them tomorrow. Finally, we took a sour starter I had been working on, a mixture of Roeselare and the dregs from a bottle of Orval, decanted and pitched into a carboy of double IPA.
Funny story about the double IPA. It’s a recipe I came up with more than a year ago for Mike. He brewed it, but ended up having too much unfermentable sugars (I think it finished at over 1030) and the bottled beers just never carbonated. So flash to a year later (he bottled this on 10/1/2006) and he still has an entire case of Hop Dog that is cloyingly sweet and fairly undrinkable. So we proceed to open all the bottles and pour them into a carboy. Out of the entire case, one bottle had carbonated and was at the perfect level. We split that one with dinner and damn was it a fine IPA! Glad at least one bottle turned out great, but it’s sad to know what the entire case could have tasted like. Instead we poured the sour starter into the carboy and we wait to see if the brettanomyces will take hold and chomp through the remaining sugars, yielding us a sour IPA…fingers crossed. Now we also wait to see if everything I brew from this point on ends up infected, ha.

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