First State Brewers Blog

This weekend is the Kennett Square Microbrew Festival, and I can hardly contain my excitement. My wife and I will be going and meeting up with several other folks from the area. We’ll probably chill out at one of Kennett’s many good restaurants for dinner after, then head over to Route 202 for an evening away from our children, more beer at John Harvard’s / McKenzie’s, and probably the movie “Serenity”. I’ve been waiting over a year for that film to come out.

This morning I found that one of my Wit carboys had a blowout. The airlock was sealed shut with yeast, and when I removed the top cap, the internal carboy pressure shot the inner lock into the air… Foam and yeast everywhere - it was spectacular. Needless to say, I had to scramble to get my BBBOT sanitized and in the carboy as well as clean up the mess before heading off to work. Hopefully my meticulous cleaning will prevent any adverse effect from that minor crisis. The second carboy is still sitting there chugging along without any danger of blowing out… but I also used 3-4 drops of anti-foaming agent, so that is to be expected. My little experiment definitely proved the value of using the anti-foam drops.

Anyone else out there getting excited about this upcoming meeting / homebrew competition? I am. Still haven’t decided how many entries I’ll make, but I have plenty of candidates. I think I will even enter 2 beers for Brian Moore, who hasn’t managed to make it by for a meeting yet. I think I will definately enter my oatmeal stout, amarillo pale ale, black honey ale, and oak-aged vanilla porter… And I am still debating about the Native Rage India Red Ale, Abbey Tripel, and Oak-aged Scottish. At 3 bottles a piece, bringing 4 of them is already 1/2 case of beer - Which is why I am thinking that maybe I enter 4 max. At what point does it become “too much”?

Sadly, I won’t be entering any of the following since they are still sitting warm in kegs, and there is no way I’ll finish one of my current “cold” kegs by then:

• Alucard Strong Dark Belgian
• Limey Vale Nut Brown Ale
• Phoenix ESB

10 gallons sitting in carboys below, aerated, pitched, and awaiting fermentation.

This batch has definitely underscored the need for me to start using pure oxygen instead of my aquarium pump and aeration stone. Sorry, but waiting around for 1.5 hours to pitch into two carboys (45 min each) SUCKS BIG MONKEY BUTT.

So I’ll be going the el-cheepo route initially and getting the little knob that will let me use disposable O2 bottles. $24 for the regulator, I’ve already got the stone/tubing, and then $7/bottle.

And it will save me 94 minutes on brew days like today.

I think it is nearly a necessity for 10 gallon batches.

This CNN article I found to be somewhat amusing and cool. I would love to get these things into Stewart’s and Iron Hill so refills came a little faster…

Well, my pumpkin went on tap this weekend as previously predicted… and I’m going to take another crack at it. Its not that my current pumpkin ale is bad or anything - but I can do alot better. I’m going to double the pumpkin,
use some flaked oats and flaked barley for extra body and creaminess, mash at a higher temp, take out the honey and use molassas instead, totally drop the carmelized brown sugar, and put a cinnamon stick in the secondary… And see how radically different the second one comes out.

The pumpkin ale I have right now is a little lacking in the body department, but has some pumpkin flavor and plenty of spices. The honey very obviously just added fermentables and little else… as did the brown sugar. I was really hoping for more of a flavor contribution from the brown sugar. I either used too little… or should have added it late in the boil. Not sure.

The “Native Rage” appears to have toked on the peace pipe a few too many times in the past 4 months since I brewed it… the initial “rip your face off” hoppiness has mellowed significantly and turned into something really nice to drink. Not complaining at all… Just suprised. I obviously can brew MUCH more hoppy things than Native Rage and not scalp my taste buds…. or perhaps I’m turning into a hophead… *shudder*.

The Oak Aged Vanilla Porter is wonderful again… but not quite as good as the first time. Different oak chips and going all-grain, I’m going to have to tweak it some next time. I think all the dark grains reacted different from mashing than steeping… its a little more edgy and less smooth than last time. Some flaked barley should smooth it out some, as would backing off on the black roasted barley.

The vanilla character is also sorely lacking in this batch… I am not sure if the beans I got were less fresh than last time around or something (both batches used ones from the Newark Coop off Main Street), but I just don’t sense it. Next time I’ll order some bourbon vanilla beans from MoreBeer.com.

Got 3 good beers on tap though… very happy. So now I’ve got a new batch or two I need to work on in the coming weeks in addition to the those I already had planned. My 10 gallons of Belgian Wit got delayed until Tuesday evening due to a shift in my weekend plans (and a yeast starter that wasn’t ready yet), but hey - it’ll happen.