American Strong Ale

During a stay in Boise a few months ago, some good friends invited me over to harvest Chinooks from their backyard bine. It was pretty late in the season for it, and the hops were a bit past their prime; unfortunately, they were also pretty well infested by aphids. Nevertheless, we had a good time picking sticky hops on a crisp autumn afternoon, and I took home and dried what ended up being about 3.5 ounces.

Well, what to do with Chinooks, a variety with which I have little experience? Take on something in the neighborhood of Tasty McDole's Arrogant Bastard clone attempt! I've been coming back around to Stone's bigger, less hop-focused (than Ruination, IPA, Delicious, etc.) beers, such as Old Guardian and Arrogant Bastard, as the thermometer's been dropping. Uncertain of the potency of the fresh hops, given their age at picking--they only lost half their weight at drying--I supplemented with Cascade and Centennial pellets.

I'm pretty pleased with this small batch, though the bitterness seems very low compared to the IBU estimate. Great classic American maltiness, though. I'm planning to use this recipe as a base for this year's barleywine, just amped up a bit; going to really push the bittering.

Bastardized - riff on CYBI Arrogant Bastard clone

Batch size: 3.5 gallons

Projected OG: 1.072
Projected SRM: 15.3
Projected IBU: 83.6
Boil time: 90 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 68%   

Grains
93.6% - 11 lb 2-row
6.4% - 12 oz C150

Hops
.3 oz Millennium (15.6%) (60 min)
1 oz Chinook leaf (6.5% est.) (15 min)
.5 oz Cascade (6.9%) (15 min)
.5 oz Centennial (7.6%) (15 min)
1 oz Chinook leaf (10 min)
.5 oz Cascade (10 min)
.5 oz Centennial (10 min)
1.5 oz Chinook leaf (5 min)
1 oz Cascade (5 min)
1 oz Centennial (5 min)

Yeast
WLP007 Dry English Ale - 1.2-L starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)
1/2 tablet Whirlfloc (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno
9 g Gypsum, 3 g CaCl, 2 ml Lactic Acid (88%)

Brewday: 6 November 2016
Mash: 150 F for 3 hours
Pre-boil volume: 6.2 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 13.0P (1.051)

Transferred 4 gallons to fermenter. Fermented in swamp cooler at 66F.

Bottled: 26 November 2016
FG: 1.014
ABV: 7.7%
Bottled 3 gallons with rehydrated US-05 and 2.4 oz brown sugar.
Remaining gallon transferred to secondary with 1 oz home-toasted oak cubes (360F for 3.5 hours, sanitized with boiling water in microwave before adding). Planning to let it age long term and use for future blending.

Peach Melomel II

It took some time to get my brewing kit set up here, but this past weekend I finally snuck some wort into a couple fermentors. In the meantime, though, we came across the perfect excuses to engage in some gluten-free fermentation: ripe California peaches at the farmers market and a closeout on a brand of honey at the local Whole Foods.

Reno is host to a different farmers market just about every day of the week during the summer. Much of the selection comes from across the state border, and these markets are overflowing with tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, seafood, and more. DeAunn discovered freestone peaches from one of these vendors that were nearly as good as the ones we had in Alabama a couple summers ago. Recalling how well our first melomel turned out using those southern peaches--we enjoyed the final bottle to celebrate our move here, and it was excellent--it took little time to plan this followup. Finding a frankly fantastic deal on honey only made it come together more easily.

The recipe remained the same from the previous batch, though the ratio of fruit to honey was switched in favour of the honey, due to the weight of the peaches once we got them home and prepped. Our new place provided a more stable fermentation environment than the last batch had; that one toiled away on the rear floorboard of our car as we drove cross country in the middle of summer. Michael Tonsmiere raised an excellent point this spring on considering honey varietals (his first line puts it best: "If a beer recipe calls for 'honey' without specifying a varietal, it might as well call for 'malt' and 'hops' with similar imprecision."). I'd very much like to explore more fully the fermented outcomes of different types of honey available. For now, though, the general "wildflower" honey I've found works just fine, fermenting clean and leaving a fragrant white wine-like note.

As I prepared to transfer this melomel over the weekend, I was dismayed to open the fermentor and find two fruit flies floating on the surface. I've played it pretty fast and loose with mead; since we usually aim to make about 1.5 gallons per batch, I've done all of my primary fermentations in the two-gallon bucket we bought for that first batch of melomel. I left the lid, now quite warped, loose and covered the bucket with a clean t-shirt, relying on this setup to be enough to keep away any nasties. Obviously it wasn't enough this time, and the batch may suffer for it. The bucket has now gone for recycling; next time, we'll go with primary in glass.

The mead has now been racked to secondary on bentonite to clear, and a half gallon received newly-toasted oak cubes as well. It had fermented quite dry, and showed no signs of infection at that point. It's dropped pretty bright already, so we'll plan to bottle soon, keep it cold, and drink it quickly. Hopefully we'll be able to avoid the majority of possible bacterial off-flavours and fully enjoy this reminder of our first taste of our new home.

Peach Melomel II - Reno edition
Batch size: 1.75 gallons
Projected OG: 1.121

Fermentables
5 lb 12 oz Honey
3 lb Peaches - peeled, sliced, frozen

Yeast
Lalvin 71B-1122

Extras - SNA
1 tsp Yeast nutrient
.5 tsp Yeast energizer
   3/8 tsp after pitching
   3/8 tsp after 24 hours
   3/8 tsp after 48 hours
   3/8 tsp after 72 hours

Brewday: 1 September 2014
Fermented at 75F ambient.

Secondary: 28 September 2014
Added 1 tsp bentonite dissolved in 1 cup water, .5 oz newly-toasted oak to .5 gallon.
Found two fruit flies in the bucket. Apparently I didn’t keep the bucket covered well enough...

Local Cider '13

In the fall of 2012, DeAunn and I managed quite a haul from harvesting fruit, mostly apples along with some pears, and produced a few mini-batches of cider and perry.  The straight cider turned out decently; the other batches picked up infections and were dumped.  While we exerted a lot of energy grinding and pressing the fruit on our own for a very small yield, it was an experience that brought a connection to the ingredients that's hard to get otherwise.

This fall, a friend pointed me toward a different source from which to gather fruit straight from the trees.  They were all culinary apples, but in several varieties; the diversity was definitely welcome.  In addition, I was also able to gather some crabapples from the same plot.  After last year I did a little bit of cider homework, looking to enhance the flavour of what had turned out to be, after fermentation removed the simple sugars, a dry, somewhat bland beverage.  Adding crabapples to the mix seemed like a good way to introduce the acidic and tannic characters culinary apples lack.  Before getting down to juicing, the apples were also allowed to sit for the better part of three weeks to "sweat"; the natural yeast begins to ferment the fruit sugars, breaking down the cell structure and making the apples easier to process.

And so, one November weekend when DeAunn was out of town, I pulled a solo all-nighter preparing and juicing the apples...with our small consumer-grade juicer.  Yes, it took all night and into the early morning, but the juicer actually did a pretty good job.  My hands were a wreck by the end from being constantly wet for hours on end; gloves would've been a good move.  In the end, I had almost three gallons of cider ready for fermentation.  Since it had sat out in the open air all night, I gently heat pasteurized the batch before pitching.  After about three weeks in the fermenter, it was ready for bottling.

I cannot say enough nice things about how this cider turned out.  The crabapples were definitely a good idea; their acidity and tannins gave the cider real heft and character, and balanced well with the touch of residual sweetness left after fermentation.  While it was much more work than ciders I've made from store- (or orchard-) bought juice, the final quality was much greater, and my enmeshment in the process was much deeper.

As homebrewers, we have to really work to connect with our ingredients; while we can grow our own hops, isolating suitable yeast cultures on our own requires a substantial amount of work (which a number of folks admirably put in), and growing and malting enough of our own grain to sustain this as a year-round habit is pretty much out of the question for anyone living in an urban or suburban setting.  Working on the fruit for this cider allowed me to really get in on the ground level of the ingredients in a way that I probably will never be able to do with barley malt and saccharomyces.  It made the final product that much more enjoyable.  My next cider will undoubtedly come from store-bought juice, and I'd still encourage anyone looking to try cider making to go this route.  If one day the opportunity to pick your own apples and choose the balance of fruit going into the cider presents itself, though, go for it; it takes the "easy" out of making cider, but we're not really doing this because it's easy, are we?

NB: After making this cider, I came across a couple very recent resources that may interest those looking to take their own steps into fermenting pomme fruit.  The first is an article in the Nov/Dec issue of Zymurgy that covered a side-by-side comparison of different brewing yeasts for making cider.  The results suggested using British strains for suitable ester character and favourable residual sweetness; WLP002 or 004 may be what I try next.  The second resource is Drew Beechum's recent book, The Everything Hard Cider Book, about which I learned from an interview with the author on the Brewing Network's The Session podcast.  Drew's book focuses on how to make good cider with readily available juices and other materials, as well as how to use this type of cider as a basis for experimentation.  It's one I'm planning to pick up before too long.  Hope these help.

Local Cider ‘13 - From apples & crabapples picked in residential SLC

Batch size: 2.8 gallons
OG: 13.2P (1.052)

3 ½ buckets various varieties of apples & crabapples
WLP775 English Cider yeast

Brewday: 2 November 2013
Let apples sit for 2 ½ weeks after picking.
Processed apples with home juicer; VERY labour-intensive process.
Strained, pasteurized at 160F for ~10 minutes, chilled, pitched.
Fermented at ~65F ambient.

Bottled: 22 November 2013
FG: 1.005
ABV: 6.4%
Bottled with 2.7 oz table sugar and rehydrated champagne yeast.

Wet-Hopped Ordinary Bitter

I feel lucky to have next-door neighbours who are avid beer drinkers, particularly living where we do.  The husband prefers his tipple light and balanced, while the wife likes hers all over the map, strength and style wise.  They've reacted very enthusiastically to everything I've shared with them, and have returned in kind with some of their local commercial favourites.  This summer they generously volunteered to water my hop bines in our long absence.  I was able to give the hops one pruning before we left; I wasn't going to further burden friends who were already doing me such a big favour.

Upon returning to town, we found the hops in prime shape, ready to be picked.  The thing was, I couldn't tell what was what; the three separate plants had spent the summer growing up and out, tangling together inextricably.  That's what happens, obviously, when you're not on hand to continually prune and sort out the bines as they grow; I just wasn't expecting this level of entanglement, as last year they weren't too tough to separate.  I'd planned on doing an ordinary bitter with the wet Goldings and Willamettes, but since it was impossible to separate them from the Centennials, DeAunn and I picked them all together and into the brewpot they went.

With the success of the ultra-simple recipe for this summer's best bitter, I went much the same route with this English-style beer.  All Maris Otter base, with under a pound of British crystal for residual sweetness.  A little bit of UK bittering hops at the start of the boil, then all those fresh, wet hops at the end.  It's always enjoyable to see all of those green cones swimming in the kettle.  Last year's dry Willamettes went in for dry hop.

Starting so small, this bitter didn't take long to ferment, and I was pouring it under a month from brewday.  This turned out to be another reminder of why I should brew more session beers: the first glass begs for the next, and at 3.3% that doesn't become a problem.  It turned out maybe a little drier that I would've liked, so I'll increase the crystal or raise the mash temp a couple degrees next time.  I can't complain about the drinkability, though, with a bit of crackery malt meshing well with the slight mineral flavour from the yeast.  The one letdown was the lack of hop presence; the bittering is nicely balanced, but for all of that vegetable matter that went in late, there's not a lot going on in the nose.  That being said, it's an exceptionally fine, restrained beer that I've pretty much decimated by this point.  And I got the reaction I'd hoped to receive from my neighbours; while they're always appreciative, this beer went over VERY well, especially with the husband.  I won't lie: it's nice to hit the bullseye.

Wet Hop ‘13 - Ordinary bitter with all the hops straight off the bines

Batch size: 6 gallons
Projected OG: 1.036
Projected SRM: 7.5
Projected IBU: 30.8
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 85%

Grains
90.3% - 6 lb Maris Otter
9.7% - 12 oz British medium crystal

Hops
.5 oz Phoenix (10.2%) (60 min)
11.1 oz Wet homegrown 2013 hops (Willamette/Centennial/Goldings) (10 min)
4.7 oz Homegown 2012 Willamette (dry hop - 10 days)

Yeast
WY1469 West Yorkshire Ale - 1 qt starter on stirplate

Extras

Irish moss (10 min)

Water additions (mash)
10 qts RO water
1 g Gypsum
1 g Baking soda
1 g CaCl

Brewday: 25 August 2013
Mash: 154F for 60 minutes
Pre-boil volume: 7.3 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 7.2P (1.029)

Fermented in swamp cooler; started at 65F, rose to 67F.

28 August 2013: Visible (via airlock) fermentation complete; removed from swamp cooler & left at ambient temp (~70F) to finish.  Krausen still present the next day; agitated fermenter to encourage flocculation.

Dry hop: 2 September 2013
Took some work to get the whole-cone hops wetted and working on submerged.  Sample I snuck tasted excellent.

Bottled: 12 September 2013
FG: 1.010
ABV: 3.3%

Bottled with 3.2 oz table sugar.

Winter IPAs

Blogging my brewing has been a great experience these past nearly two years, for a multitude of reasons.  For one, it's revealed some of my own preferences on the seasonality of imbibing.  As much as I like to experiment, I fall into a cyclical pattern with such stunning regularity that you could set your pagan solstice virgin sacrifices by it.  Namely, it's light, bright, hoppy beers during the warm months and dark, roasty beers (of varying heft) in the cold months.  Saisons and sours cut in from time to time, and meads have been mixing it up in the last half year, but there it is: the hardcore basics of my brewing calendar.  I'm not alone in this, I know, but it does make it all feel a little...simplistic.

Fortunately, one other feature of my normal winter brewing helps to break up the monotony.  After a few months of stygian, contemplative pints, I experience a hop deficiency freakout and brew something way out of the porter/stout category (such as last year's IIPA attempt, which has evolved into a pretty decent, fruity "American old ale," if you will).  This season I got more of a jump on this curve-wrecking endeavour, making my last brewday of 2012 an IPA partigyle.  The first (strong) portion became an all-Summit-hopped American

IPA; the latter runnings of this mash formed a "micro" IPA of low gravity and heavy "new school" late hopping.

This NB blog post on Summit inspired the big beer.  Having never used much of the variety, and only to bitter, I was intrigued by their aromatic and flavour descriptors.  This beer went without a traditional 60-minute charge, as I hoped to avoid the onion/garlic character this hop can reputedly bring in larger quantities when bittering.  Fortunately, having such a ridiculously high level of alpha acids, the first wort- and late hopping added plenty of IBUs.  I still had a cache of Vienna in my stores, which seemed like it would make for a very characterful base; just a sprinkling of Caramunich came along for added complexity (originally there was some simple sugar in the plan, but the first runnings were so rich it wasn't required to hit the OG).  Had I actually considered it and realized how close I was to doing a SMaSH beer beforehand, I would've gone all Vienna for the grist and had done with it.  My oatmeal stout's WLP007 yeast cake had been hanging out in the fridge for a few weeks since bottling, just waiting for an opportunity to get back to work.  It actually took a few days to get going (including sending up kind of scary large, floating chunks of yeast/trub in the carboy) but eventually got properly fired up, requiring a blowoff tube.

This wasn't my first time trying to create a low-gravity beer that delivered a wallop of hoppiness (not even since starting this blog) and there are now even a couple commercial examples that have captured the hearts and minds of beer drinkers across the country.  I'd already had in my long-term docket to give this concept another shot; putting it together with the Summit IPA in partigyle form seemed kismet.  For hops, I cruised my LHBS for the hottest and sexiest varieties of today; I was kind of shooting for the homebrewer's Top 40 chart toppers.  And I found them: Citra, Simcoe, and Galaxy.  With a little old leftover Galena for nominal traditional bittering, the rest of the kettle hops went in together as an hour-long hopstand (starting with 5 minutes of active whirlpooling) to further accentuate their late-use qualities.  I also added my 2012 homegrown Centennial cones for extra fun.  Unfortunately the final mash runnings came in too low to use on their own, so I threw in some spare DME and table sugar at the start of the boil to compensate.  The amount of simple sugar ended up constituting more of the fermentables than I'd prefer, so time will tell if I'll experience some of those fabulous "cidery" off-flavours older homebrewing tomes mention in their cautions against using sugar.

In an attempt to have a brewday experience to rival my last one in terms of ease and simplicity, I went full bore in prepping the night before: filtered (nearly) all the water needed, parsed out all hop mineral additions, pulled out (nearly) all the equipment, organized and labeled everything, etc.  With little left to chance, things went damn near like clockwork, despite the snow and running out of propane early on.  Two batches into the fermenters with all the heavy cleaning complete within eight hours.  That's the efficiency I like to see.

Dry hops are in the fermenters currently, and I'm very much looking forward to having some fresh, hoppy bottles in the fridge to share before too long.  Here's to sticking to my trend of bucking my trend.

Also..."Blogging my brewing."  I should just rename the blog with that one.

Partigyle: Summit IPA - Micro IPA
Summit
Batch size: 5.5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.067
Projected SRM: 11.6
Projected IBU: 60.9
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 58%

Micro
Batch size: 5 gallons
Projected OG: 1.042
Projected SRM: 11.5
Projected IBU: ~40 (shot in the dark here)
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 26%

Grains
95.5% - 16 lb Weyermann Organic Vienna
4.5% - 12 oz Weyermann Caramunich II

Hops
 Summit
1 oz Summit (18.0%) (FWH)
1 oz Summit (18.0%) (10 min)
2 oz Summit (17.6%) (Dry hop - 5 days)

Micro
.3 oz Galena (13.2%) (60 min)
1 oz Citra (13.9%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.5 oz Galaxy (14.0%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.5 oz Simcoe (13.0%) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
.6 oz Centennial (homegrown) (Whirlpool/hopstand - 60 min)
1 oz Citra (Dry hop - 5 days)
.5 oz Galaxy (Dry hop - 5 days)
.5 oz Simcoe (Dry hop - 5 days)

Yeast
Summit - WLP007 Dry English Ale - cake from Toasted Oatmeal Stout
Micro - 1 pkg US-05

Extras (each batch)
1 tsp Irish moss (10 min)
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (10 min)

Water additions
SLC profile

Summit
10 qts Distilled water (mash)
2 g Epsom salts (mash)
2 g Gypsum (boil)

Micro
10 qts Distilled water (mash)

Brewday: 29 December 2012
Summit
Mash: 151F for 90 minutes
SG @ 6 gallons collected: 16.1P (1.066) - cut with 1 gallon water
Pre-boil volume: 7 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 14.1P (1.058)

Micro
Pre-boil volume: 6.8 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 5.8P (1.023)
    Added 1 lb table sugar and 12 oz light DME to bring up SG

63F ambient to start fermentation.
Micro started within 24 hours, Summit within 36 hours; moved to 56F ambient to continue.

3 January 2013: fermentation very active; Summit required a blowoff tube.  Bumped up ambient temps to 60F once ferments settled down.

Micro Dry Hop: 8 January 2013

A few small clumps of yeast left floating, but should be plenty done with fermentation.

Summit Dry Hop: 12 January 2013

Bottled: 17 January 2013
Summit
FG: 1.013
ABV: 7.1%
Bottled with 4.4 oz table sugar.
Initial tasting suggests that a neutral American yeast might pair better than an English yeast, but time in the bottle will be more revealing. 

Micro
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.42%
Bottled with 3.5 oz table sugar.
Left on dry hops longer than intended as I missed my bottling window earlier in the week.
Huge fruity nose; DeAunn particularly noted peach.

Home-pressed ciders

Following our travels this summer, DeAunn has really embraced both mead and cider (particularly perry), so when we discovered quite a bit of available fruit open for the picking on the mean streets of SLC's 9th & 9th neighbourhood, we got right down to it.  Collecting a five-gallon bucket of apples on our first tentative venture, we juiced the apples in our home juicer, yielding a little under a gallon of juice by the time it made it to secondary.  It was a fun, if time-consuming, experience, and goaded us on to further renegade picking adventures.

My LHBS rents apple grinders and presses by the day, so I reserved them for the following weekend and we headed out to harvest more fruit.  We ended up bringing in two buckets each of pears and apples; the pears we ground and pressed on their own for a bit under two gallons of perry, and the apples yielded right around two gallons of cider when combined with four pounds of frozen blueberries.  While fun, the grinding and pressing were a lot of work and took literally all night, leaving us exhausted by the end.  I've done some online research and am already ruminating on constructing a grinder and press for our future cider adventures.

For yeast, I used White Labs' English Cider for the first batch, then repitched it into the blueberry cider.  As DeAunn wanted to ensure a predictable fermentation for the perry, I went with the Lalvin Narbonne yeast, which I've used for both the meads we've made so far and should purportedly leave a fruitiness in the end product.  While I added no extras to the first small batch of cider, I did go ahead and add a bit of yeast nutrient and energizer to the perry and blueberry cider at the start to help along fermentation.

I've been pretty cavalier about taking gravity readings for these ciders; especially when it comes to adding fruit to the primary, it seems difficult to really get a handle on the OG when I'm going ahead and pitching yeast before the sugars are really evenly distributed.  If/when I move to more full-sized batches I'll take more care wth the measurements.  Unfortunately, I fear that I may have waited too long to move the latter two batches; while the first cider seems to be sitting pretty in a glass secondary, the perry and blueberry cider have been sitting in thin plastic fermenters for better than a month now.  Finally checking them just a little while ago, their odor indicates likely acetobacter infections in both.  All that work may have been for naught, just because I haven't had time to mess with these little batches.  I'll plan to give them closer consideration over the weekend, but I'm not hopeful.  At least we should have that first batch left for quaffing.

Local Cider

Batch size: 3 qts
OG: 1.038

Fermentables
~45 lb Found, hand-picked apples

Yeast
WLP775 English Cider

Brewday: 4 September 2012
Quartered & cored each apple, then put in water bath to keep from oxidizing immediately.  Juiced in home juicer.  Whole process took several hours; looking forward to using an actual cider press on larger batches of apples (and pears?) soon.

Secondary: 9 September 2012

Bottled: 27 October 2012
FG: 1.004
ABV: 4.4%

Bottled with .9 oz light brown sugar.
=====

9th & 9th Perry and Blueberry Cider - from fruit hand-harvested from neighbourhood trees

Perry
OG: 1.048
Volume: 1.7 gallons
Lalvin 71B-1122

Blueberry Cider
OG: unmeasured
Volume: 2 gallons
4 lb Blueberries, frozen
WLP775 English Cider - yeast cake from Local Cider

Extras (each batch)
1 tsp Pectic enzyme
1 tsp Yeast nutrient
1 tsp Yeast energizer

Brewday: 9 September 2012
Ground and crushed all fruit on equipment rented from LHBS; very labour- and time intensive

Fermentation started at ambient 70F, then after 9 hours moved to water bath at 65F ambient

Perry picked up an acetobacter infection; dumped.

Tasting: Local Cider finished very dry, but retained a very perfumey apple blossom nose (thanks, WLP 775!).  Flavour was of a dry white wine with the suggestion of apples.  As of today (3 March 2013) the blueberry cider is still sitting in primary.  The berries have formed a barrier that keeps any acetobacter growth in the fermenter (which is undoubtedly there, given the thin plastic and the number of times I've moved it) from directly contacting the liquid.  The only reason it hasn't been bottled is my incredible laziness.

Summer hop picking

Coming off 6 weeks on the road this summer and pretty much jumping right into the busiest semester of doctoral study we've had so far has left me very short on time for keeping up to date here.  I've finally carved out a little time and plan to do a bit of catching up, starting with covering this season's hop harvest.

A dutiful friend kept the hops watered in my absence, and we returned to see them in fine form.  Following the trauma it endured last winter, the Goldings plant produced no cones this year; it was hard to tell at first, though, as the Centennial bines had grown over to the adjacent plot and set up shop there, producing .6 ounces dry all told.  The Willamettes took top honors as they have in the past, producing a bounty of sizable cones that came in at 1.6 ounces dry.

Ideally, I'd like to use these homegrown hops for a wet-hopped beer, but the timing simply didn't work out this time; it was getting late in the season when I finally picked them as it was.  Maybe next year I'll be able to plan out a brewday for when the hops are at their peak.

Speaking of wet hopping, I took part in a little communal hop picking for local brewpub Desert Edge in the latter part of August.  The brewers went out the day before to an undisclosed area of Parley's Canyon outside Salt Lake and cut garbage bags full of wild hop bines to use in an annual golden ale named Radius, for which all the ingredients are sourced within one hundred miles of the city.  Over the course of the day, the assembled civilian hop pickers harvested nineteen buckets of wet hops that went into this year's brew; I stayed on for about five hours, enjoying complimentary pours of house beers as we went.  It's not my favourite local brewpub, but as one finds in many situations, the beer's quality improved greatly when it became free.  In addition, the brewers held a pickers appreciation party about a month later, pouring complimentary Radius (and other house beers) for the assembled helpers and sending each one home with a hand-labeled bottle.  Apparently this year's batch wasn't as hop forward as it's been in the past, but it's certainly not an offensive brew; I still have my bottle, and have plans to crack it before it's sat for too long.  For anyone in the SLC area, I highly recommend taking part in this event next year; it's good fun with good people.

Two Meads

After an unexplained illness and a bit of research back in June, DeAunn thought she might have a gluten allergy.  She decided to go off gluten for a while and see how it went.  Good news: her health improved almost immediately and she still remarks how much better she feels the longer she goes without it.  Bad news: now she can't partake in the beer I make.  I've looked into some options for gluten-free brewing and may explore that more down the road, provided I can come up with something better than New Grist (not my speed).  Neither of us care for wine, and DeAunn is allergic to sulfites (though the sulfited drinks we've had this summer don't seem to have bothered her, interestingly), so I'm not planning to get into making it right now.

Over the last few months we've sampled a variety of ciders and meads for further GF possibilities, with some great finds.  French perry was a particular hit, as was pretty much the full line of meads, melomels (honey & fruit), and metheglins (honey & herbs/spices) from Brothers Drake Meadery in Columbus, Ohio; their semi-dry varieties in particular really redefined mead for us as a beverage that didn't have to be sticky sweet.  If you find yourself in Columbus, do yourself a favour and stop in at the tasting room.

My eyes will be peeled over the next couple months for local cider to ferment, but honey is something that seems to be available more readily.  There are a few apiaries in the area, so fortunately using local honey is a viable option for us.  Without really planning on it, however, we got our mead making start on the road in July.  While visiting DeAunn's family in Alabama, we had the pleasure of eating peaches from a local farm that were the juiciest and best tasting that either of us had ever had.  With mead on my mind and some of champion mead maker (and BTV guest) Curt Stock's recipes and processes bookmarked, I devised a plan.  We bought a couple baskets of peaches before we left to take with us on our visit to Pennsylvania; there we procured some local honey and, after more searching than I'd anticipated, wine yeast.  Remove the pits and freeze the peaches, add in some yeast energizer, yeast nutrient, and water, and voilà, we were fermenting about a gallon of peach melomel in a bucket in the back

seat of the car as we traveled.  I transferred it to secondary once we got back home and added bentonite to flocc out the proteins and yeast; the sample at transfer was very promising.

It would've been enough to see how this batch turned out and then to move on to further experimenting, but last week a notice came over my Facebook feed about Mead Day on the 4th.  Since it's so easy to make, it took hardly any time at all to pick up all the ingredients for a couple gallons of blackberry melomel.  I'm interested to see how long these take to be drinkable; while conventional wisdom points to months (or years) of aging, Curt's staggered nutrient addition method purportedly turns out ready-to-drink batches in as little as six weeks.  The peach melomel definitely pointed in that direction, but Brothers Drake are turning out really excellent mead following a more traditional aging program.  Extended aging would also play well to experimenting with wood, dry hops, and other possibilities.  If you haven't tried making mead, I'd highly recommend just trying it out by getting together a pound or two of honey, a gallon jug, and a packet of Lalvin Narbonne 71B-1122; it can be a very rewarding addition to your brewing portfolio.

Pennsylbama Peach Melomel

Batch size: 1.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.123 (estimated)

Fermentables
 4 lb Local PA honey
3.75 lb Local AL peaches - pitted, mashed, frozen

Yeast
Lalvin 71B-1122

Extras
Yeast nutrient
Yeast energizer

Staggered nutrient additions (SNA): added yeast, nutrient, and energizer at pitching time, 24 hours, and 48 hours into fermentation

Brewday: 14 July 2012

Secondary: 7 August 2012
Added .5 tsp Bentonite, dissolved
SG: 1.032

Bottled: 29 September 2012
FG: 1.029
ABV: 12.4%

Bottled still.
Great peach aroma, decent peach flavour, finish is sweet but satisfying.

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Mead Day 2012 Blackberry Melomel

Batch size: 2 gallons
Measured OG: 25.0P (1.107)

Fermentables
 5 lb Local UT honey
1.25 lb Organic blackberries, frozen

Yeast
 Lalvin 71B-1122

Extras
Yeast nutrient
Yeast energizer

Brewday: 4 August 2012
Fermented in swamp cooler at 71F
Nutrient and energizer added at pitching and 48 hours later

Secondary
Bentonite added, oak added to 1 gallon

Bottled: 27 October 2012
FG: 1.002
ABV: 13.8%
Bottled still.

Tasting: The peach melomel, finishing sweet, reinforced the delicate peach flavour.  Alcohol was present and maybe a little pushy, but just let you know this was a substantial libation.  The blackberry melomel, on the other hand, finished very dry.  The blackberries lent a fruity tartness, with the oaked portion also having an enjoyable tannic drying sensation on the back of the tongue.  Very different, but also very tasty.