First State Brewers Blog

It is done. I sit here at 12:45am staring at the final pint of my Dubbelweizen Disaster.

It is a time of reflectance and remorse - thoughts of what this batch might have been had I pitched the correct yeast, and a twisted sense of loss for what was brought into this world and never should have been - yet now is gone.

One of my cats is now circling the pint and licking the exterior. Not sure if that is a good omen or bad. Its definitely amusing, considering that they have never taken ANY interest in my beer prior to this moment.

In its wake the Dubbelweizen leaves a dark legacy - the Olde Porter v2 has been put on tap. I have tasted the warm tap samplings of what this keg brings - and it is a welcome celebration of roastiness and revelry. Not quite opaque, but the darkest shade of brown, and very full bodied - this beer is what it was intended.

RIP banana and cloves in my Abbey Dubbel recipe. May you only haunt my memory and my recipe book. We shall not meet again lest I err twice.

Website has been updated with the last Wort’s Hoppening.

Today I also got confirmation that my grain mill has shipped and did a WLP002 English Ale Yeast starter for a batch I’m brewing tomorrow - My sister got me the Beer, Beer, and More Beer kit for Jim Rossi’s Honey Pale Ale. Once this Amarillo Pale Ale keg kicks I’ll be out of light stuff - Well, that’s not completely true. I’ve got a keg of Abbey Tripel sitting down there, but I don’t know that I want everything on tap to be >6% ABV. Well… there’s also that berry beer sitting in the secondary, but I’m bottling that for my sister. I won’t be kegging it.

The more time I spend thinking about this past meeting, the more I realize how eye opening it was. Found out how much everyone else sweats spending money on their homebrewing equipment and supplies. I guess I never even give it a second thought… I mean… aren’t hobbies often expensive? Also, it seems that alot of people buy cheap where as I usually buy quality… Yeah, I bought a $180 grain mill, but I’ll never ever need to replace it. I’ve got a $200 10 gallon brew pot - but it’ll last me forever. If I move up to 10 gallon batches… its the ideal size for a mash tun. C’est la vie… Some folks just prioritize differently. Not that its bad, its just not how I do.

I got into homebrewing because it is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been a beer snob since my freshman year in college (I mean since I was 21!!!) and have always dreamed of brewing great beer. Its never been about cheap for me - its about quality, creativity, and above all enjoyment. I LOVE BEER, and I make sure mine knows it as I bring it into this world and nurture it to its fullest (alcohol?) potential.
Perhaps some other blog entry I’ll muse over why no one could ever pay me to brew… not tonight for sure. I’m cached.

Well, I kegged my Abbey Tripel tonight (3rd I’ve done, 1st of my own recipe). I’m so stoked. It was crystal clear even in the secondary… so of course the finish product will be crystal clear provided I don’t have a nasty lurking in the keg. I cleaned for 1 hr with PBW and sanitized for about 30 minutes with Iodophor, so I gotta believe it’ll be fine. I also have some 3 gallon cornies ready for the BEAST. That’s right - my EVIL EVIL oak-aged vanilla imperial porter will be kegged within the next week. Weep and despair world! WEEP AND DESPAIR!! MWAA AHAA HAA HAA! Ahem.

HDYB is checking on the availability of Servomyces for me. I’m dying to use this white labs yeast superfood in my next big belgian - Alucard Strong Ale. I’m hoping it’ll be black as midnight, smooth, and somewhere close to 9%ABV. That ought to be a good swift kick to the liver.

FSB.com Recipe submittal page works just fine. Oliver did submit his BeerSmith recipe in BeerXML format for his upcoming “On The Dole” Robust Porter. The gravities and %ABV are definitely wrong, but that was the output from BeerSmith, not our site.

My 3-roll grain mill from CrankAndStein.com ships on Thursday. I can’t wait to try that bad boy out. The Alucard Strong Ale will probably be its first victim.

Yeah, another month’s meeting has come & gone. I always feel kind of bummed the next day since it takes another whole month before I get to taste more homebrew creations.

Oliver makes a mean beer. I like his stuff. Scott brought his tasty Dogbolter kit beer and the Amarillo English Amber from the last meeting as well as the Pilsner - which somehow managed to escape the meeting without my tasting it… Oh well. There’s always next meeting. I brought growlers of my Dubbelweizen and Amarillo Pale Ale again (both were debuted last month).

Website recipe submittal form works. Oliver submitted a recipe for the Porter he’s got on deck, and I grabbed it from the upload directory yesterday. I’ll put it on the site soon.

I think both the Abbey Tripel and Oak-aged vanilla imperial porter are going to be kegged soon - maybe not consumed soon, but put into nice, safe, stainless steel canisters with CO2 padding so they are safe as they age. I think the imperial porter has about the right level of oakiness for this time around… and the tripel has been aging in glass for a month now - 6 weeks since I brewed it. I need the carboy space for my upcoming batches… I think they will be:

• Belgian-style strong dark ale (OG around 1.090)
• Chinook IPA (using some hops I gained from the December meeting hop swap) (OG ~1.060)
• English brown session (OG around 1.050 or so).

I’m not 100% on the english brown - I might have to do something else with it. I’ve also got a Hefeweizen kit to use up and a honey pale kit to brew…. All grain equipment is coming in May, so that should hopefully keep me busy until then.

Cheers… -VP

My new Herbal Tarot Deck arrived from Amazon.com today (it only took about six weeks ). Among the herbs it mentions are hops, juniper and marijuana. You can really mess up your mind and body if you don’t know what you’re doing with some of that stuff.

Jane Hautanen (Jane Doe)

So here I sit, end of day 3 of training folks on SAP, and we’ve completed 95% of what we needed to. We had 5 days of training scheduled… and I only have a little more to talk about tomorrow with a much smaller group of people. I’ll be trying to catch an earlier flight back on Friday - and maybe make the Friday night meeting - If my wife lets me walk out the door
I just ordered my 3-roll CrankandStein mill. I can’t wait. Fresh-milled grainy goodness in my future batches of beer is a very very VERY good thing. Since I’m moving more and more towards mashing, this will definitely help me keep my freshness up and my costs down.

I was thinking - It might be cool to put together a page on the site that lists all of the brewing texts owned by club members for sharing purposes - for example, I’m looking for a recipe that I know is in “Beer Captured”, but since I don’t know anyone that has it I am buying it. With 3 recipe books, 4 books on brewing ranging from easy (Papazian) to advanced (Noonan), and now almost 15 Brew Your Own magazines - there might be other folks in the club that would want to borrow them. Just a thought - maybe it will take off, maybe not.

This past Saturday before I left I did brew that berry beer kit. Berry flavoring doesn’t get added until bottling, so I haven’t polluted the wort yet - I’m wondering what the kit will taste like without it. It had your standard 4 lbs of pale LME, 2 lbs of wheat DME, and some maltodextrin as well as 8 oz of Crystal 15L for steeping. I have to believe it tastes like your standard light ale at this point. I haven’t checked on it since I walked out the door at 3:45pm on Sunday - hopefully it didn’t blow out the airlock.

Oh well. Back to the hotel I go for another evening of sipping Abita Amber and Newcastle Brown Ale in the sports bar downstairs.

Woooooooooooot!! Got my variable compensation for 2004 this week… and New Jersey finally tracked down my 2003 refund check and mailed me a replacement… so as soon as I get some money transferred into paypal, I’ll be ordering the Crankandstein CGM-3D malt mill… I can’t wait. I’m still wrestling with the decision around whether to get stainless steel rollers or not - I’m told they are mostly just for aesthetics or climates where moisture/humidity is an issue… but aesthetics sometimes appeal to me. I’ll probably just go with the regular rollers.

Brewing a berry beer kit this weekend that my sister brought in. Made up the yeast starter last night and it is rocking at the moment - so I’ll definitely be ready for this afternoon. I’ll bottle the kit, probably save a 6 pack for myself, and give her the rest - berry beer isn’t my thing, but I’ll brew it :-D.

Finished up the last of the “I can’t believe its not Irish” Scottish ale last night. Just put the first 3 gallon corny of Scotch ale on. Its got lots of malty sweetness (FG of 1.024), but my wife loves it. I’ve also got the second 5-gallon keg of Amarillo Pale Ale on tap and probably about 2.5 gallons of the Dubbelweizen… I wanted to put the Olde Porter on tap, but there just isn’t room :-p… I’ll have to wait until the Dubbelweizen disappears.

My latest Abbey-style Tripel is still in the basement conditioning, as is the Oak-Aged Vanilla Imperial Porter/Stout. Both are crystal clear - I can’t wait to keg and try them. Waiting is the hardest part.

If you weren’t already convinced that high taxation is evil, maybe this article will convince you!

Kirin set to dive into quasi-beer fray

That’s right. In order to pay less taxes, the Kirin Brewery Co. in Japan is making low-malt and malt-free beverages. That is D I scusting!

Hat tip to JA Pundit.

Well, the recipes section is done for now. Scott requested the ability for folks to upload their recipes directly to our site, and I have done that. You need to click on the “submit a recipe” link to go to the submission page.

Submissions are captured in a temporary directory (not immediately displayed) so we can get them converted into the right format and reviewed before becoming available content. Unfortunately I don’t have automatic notification set up since our server doesn’t have any mail transfer applications running on it - and our host (Dan Brzoska) isn’t sure when he’s going to have time to look into it. But hey… I can periodically go in there and look to see if anyone has submitted anything.

I built in some safeguards that will hopefully protect us from malicious attacks… I guess time will tell.

The index itself is pretty much bare bones at this point - if there is any interest in the section I may end up adding a place for folks to enter comments for the various recipes, maybe rate them, etc… but that can get rather ugly so perhaps its best not explored.

Once we actually get some folks adding recipes for All-Grain (I’m not that far off myself), I’ll make sure that all the pertinent info for mashing is properly displayed as well. I know Oliver may be submitting his latest Porter if it turns out well.

That’s all for now kids. I’m off to sit on the couch and love on the wifey.

Here’s something interesting sent to me by Jerry Carney.

Here is a link to the Homefocus web site. The carboy rack is a little expensive but it might give some of our more creative friends a starting place for their own designs.

Water Bottle Caddy