Thanks, Ray! Or: Dude, you saved my homebrew!

Ray Daniels, wherever you are right now, thank you! I should've read your terrific book, Designing Great Beers, sooner. It's an amazing book, and while other beloved books got me off to a great start with homebrewing, I think Designing Great Beers is the book that can take my homebrewing to the next level. With detailed information on every aspect of brewing, from water treatment to grain bills and hop additions, it's a treasure. What I found the other day is that it can even help with the little things, the things that in hindsight look simple. In brewing, simple things matter.

With my students on winter break, and their winter break not coinciding with my kids' winter break (not sure how that mismatch developed, since my employer is the dominant force in Ann Arbor), I had some time on my hands. The homebrewing bug bit me... hard... again, and I decided to brew two batches. The first was an absolutely huge imperial stout from an extract and specialty grain recipe developed by my dear friend Sean "Beer for the Daddy" Nordquist. After a little time with Beer Alchemy on my computer and going back and forth with Sean, I was good to go with the recipe, and the brew day went beautifully (nice job, Sean!). Dark as night, rich, and roasty with aromas of chocolate and coffee, the stout is now percolating away in the fermenter.

Looked and smelled like a chocolate milkshake in the kettle

I had also been busily formulating an IPA to brew the very next day. I built the recipe on my way back from Utah and wrote a recent post about that experience, and since it was my first recipe formulated totally from scratch, I was particularly excited about it.

Although the brew day went well in many ways, my efficiency was poor. For whatever reason, my last couple of all-grain batches have suffered from low efficiency, with the grains reluctant to yield their sugars in the mash. Intent on hitting the right original gravity, I focused more on that than on volume. I ended up hitting my target gravity, but I was nearly a gallon short. A gallon less beer is a lot, particularly when you put in a whole day of effort to make the stuff. I was not entirely happy.

They looked so promising!

The solution, post-mashing, is obvious: either go with what you've got, or add some malt extract to bring the beer up to the right gravity and volume. I wanted to do the latter, but how to do so with reasonable precision? That's where Ray's book came in. I am reading it currently, soaking in gobs of information, and I remembered that he covered how to correct gravity in a really accessible, straightforward way. I grabbed the book, and before long I was sitting with a calculator and a scrap of paper figuring out exactly how much dried malt extract to boil up in a gallon of water so that I could hit the full five gallons without sacrificing the original gravity of the beer. Now, I'm not saying that you can't feel your way through this and just measure as you go, but nothing beats having hard numbers laid out in a readily applied manner. It was quick, it was easy, and it worked. I brought the beer up to volume, still hitting the gravity target, and now the IPA, too, is fermenting away. Ray's advice on this is not complicated; in fact, after reading it, I had a "now why didn't I think of that?" moment. But the point is that I didn't think of it, and he did, and he kindly put it into a very well-written book.

The IPA will be ready to rack to the secondary fermenter in about a week, where I'll dry-hop it and let it sit for awhile. As for the imperial stout, I'll bottle that in a little over a week, maybe two, and put those bottles away for a good long time to mature. It was great to brew up a couple of batches after going a long time without - it's the closest thing I've got to meditation nowadays. But the bug hasn't let go yet. Next up is a repeat of the special bitter I brewed nearly a year ago. That's still the fastest-consumed batch I've ever made, a real favorite around here. Time for more.

Suspense. Surprise. Satisfaction.

I love the moment when I get to crack open the first bottle of a new batch of homebrew. From listening for the sharp "hsssst" that indicates good carbonation to seeing the head, color, clarity (or lack thereof), taking in the aroma, and having that first taste, it's a total sensory experience.

It's a moment full of suspense. Sure, I could see how things were going while I boiled the stuff, and I sampled some flat brew during bottling, but the moment of truth is that first bottle. The beer is young at that point and will certainly continue to change, sometimes in surprising or even drastic ways, but I find I get a strong indication of how it'll turn out down the road from that first bottle.

The other day, I got to have this experience again. My IPA had been in the bottle for around nine days, and it was finally time to have one. The hsssst sound wasn't quite as sharp as I had hoped, but there was some there. I felt tense and excited, really eager to see how this thing that I had put a fair amount of work into had turned out.

The brew poured a glorious amber-orange. I could see it wasn't super carbonated, but it did form a nice head. I do hope that it carbonates a bit more to carry the wonderful aroma, which was full of blackberry and floral qualities - with more subtle citrus notes - as I had intended with the particular combination of hops I had used.

I had the first taste and literally let out a whoop of joy. Firm and malty, slightly sweet, medium-full bodied, and with excellent grapefruit, blackberry, and floral flavors and a sharp, clean, but not overwhelming bitterness. It's rich, delicious, and bursting with flavor. I was surprised, then delighted, and a wave of satisfaction washed over me. A minute later my wife came home, and I handed her the glass and just said, "Try this."

Now, I should mention that we've been drinking a lot of IPA's and double IPA's lately. She had no idea this was the first bottle of homebrew. She smelled the beer, nodded approvingly, and then tasted it and said, "Wow! This is great! What beer is this?" When I said it was the new batch of homebrew, she let out her own little whoop and hugged me to celebrate.

Satisfaction indeed.

IPA tasting at Arbor Brewing Co.

Spice, lemon, pine, flowers, grapefruit, caramel, orange, herbs, apricot, hops forward, malty, balanced, bitter, huge, subtle, dry.

Just a few flavors and descriptions for the brews poured at Arbor Brewing Co.'s fabulous, sold-out IPA tasting last night. Call this blog entry a thank you note.

The folks at ABC know how to put on an event. There were enough tickets to provide for a great crowd, but it wasn't so crowded that we had to wait for a pour or couldn't move around or pause to chat. The beer selection was wonderful, and there was plenty of brew for all. Fortified by a nice buffet, everyone appeared to have a great time. I met fellow homebrewers, chatted with ABC brewing staff, and communed with my hophead brethren.

Some highlights for me included the frighteningly drinkable Bell's Hopslam and Lagunitas Hop Stoopid. The Bell's featured huge grapefruit aroma and flavor softened by apricots and buoyed by a honey-malt sweetness. The Lagunitas also had apricots in the aroma and was somewhat earthier and very well-balanced. Those were two of the high ABV, 100+ IBU giants tucked down in the cellar, where I could also take a gander at a small beer cellar where ABC barrel ages some brews. A couple of barrels were in active use, with tiny airlocks perched incongruously on top. I'd love to try what's inside.

Here are a few more of the brews that I especially enjoyed:

• Michigan Brewing Co. High Seas IPA: Well-balanced, with a mild sweetness, pine, and lemon. A nice dry finish.
• Bill's IPA Lot from ABC: Tiny batch. Quite golden in color, with an amazing hop flavor sequence of grapefruit, then lemon, then pine, then back to grapefruit. Delicious.
• ABC Arborealis: One of my absolute favorites of the night. Beautiful balance, piney with grapefruit and spice as well. Simply a gorgeous beer. Actually went back for a second sample of this lovely elixir. Apparently, this is on tap at ABC's Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti. ABC, please bring it to the mother ship.
• Founders Double Trouble DIPA: Somewhat vinous aroma joined by citrus and apricot. Citrus and apricot feature in the flavor, but also very floral and somewhat piney. Malty as well, yet didn't feel too heavy. Outstanding.
• Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree: Hefty, malty brew, a bit syrupy, orange and earthy flavors, caramel as well. An amazing beer. Can't wait to have more of this one.
• New Holland Mad Hatter Imperial IPA: Huge, hops forward brew, grapefruit aroma, flavors include pronounced orange and pine.
• Great Divide Titan IPA: Floral but also surprisingly biscuity aroma. Balanced, then bitterness predominates in the finish, offset by a touch of remaining sweetness. Lemony and resiny in the finish.
• Lagunitas Maximus IPA: Huge malt profile with some biscuit, all there to support the citrus and floral hop profile.
• Meantime IPA: The only English IPA in the tasting. Very different than any other beer I tried there. Caramel, toffee aroma. A touch fruity, but not citrusy. Sweetish, with a spicy hop profile. Bitter in the finish.

There were a lot of other terrific brews there, many of which I tried, some of which I sadly didn't get to. Only one brew that I sampled missed the boat, in my opinion, and since it may have been that it was just late in the tasting and my palate was probably toast, I won't say more about it now.

I'm a big fan of ABC. The place has supported the Ann Arbor community and been a huge part of the beer scene here for 15 years. They've hosted too many charity events to keep track of, been instrumental in efforts to keep downtown vibrant, and have supported local farms by sourcing more and more of their menu items from them. Oh, and did I mention that they make fantastic beer, too, in a remarkable range of styles?

ABC has a beer tasting on the second Thursday of every month, and I'm looking forward to several more this year, including bock and Trappist beers next month, fest beers in September, Michigan beers in October, and Belgian ales in November. I'm grateful for the opportunity. In the meantime, the IPA tasting has me looking forward with glorious, delicious anticipation to when my homebrewed IPA is ready. That batch is going into the secondary fermenter for some dry-hopping tomorrow. 

Maybe the third time really is the charm

It was brewing day here in the House of Fermentation this past Saturday. I put together an amply hopped IPA that, I hope, will have just as ample a malt foundation to balance and support the hops. Time will tell, as it always does in brewing.

Two days after brew day, my five year old woke up super early because he had to go to the bathroom, which just happens to be the room with the easiest to control temperature in the house at this time of year.  So, it's where the fermenter is perking along almost like a tiny steam engine. It smells like a brewery in there, or maybe like a hop farm, and he remarked in a sleepy voice, "What is that crazy smell?" Of course, he wasn't surprised at all when I told him it was the beer.

This was my third batch of homebrew, but my first one with organic ingredients, and I want to mention briefly how this came about. I think quite a bit about not just craft beer itself, but the beer business, the place of these breweries in local and regional economies, the environmental impact of brewing and stewardship of the environment by brewers, and community and political involvement by breweries. Along those lines, I recently read Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World by Christopher Mark O'Brien. In the course of touching on many aspects of the industry, the environment, and politics, he made a pretty compelling case for brewing with organic ingredients as much as possible.

Brewing with organic ingredients is totally consistent with how we cook at home, and O'Brien discussed his involvement with Seven Bridges, an organic brewing supply coop in Santa Cruz, California. So, I visited their website, and before long, I had ordered up an organic IPA recipe kit. I also ordered some additional hops to spice it up further. Now, I've finally gotten to brew it up.

I'm an extract brewer, and a novice at that. As I said, this batch is just my third. The first was a brown ale that went fairly smoothly except for a brief fiasco with a too-small brew kettle, and the second was a steam beer that turned out as a malty amber after I discovered too late that the original gravity was too low when I first brought the wort up to volume; I had to add more malt, and it made it taste like a rich and fruity amber ale. You learn from every batch. Maybe it was that this was my third brew and three's the charm, or maybe it was that the kit was really well put-together, but this batch went great. I was able to totally relax and enjoy as the elixir came together, filling the house with its pungent aroma. The windows were open, music was playing, and making this batch was the meditative experience that I was hoping for. The other two batches were fun to make, but this one was even more than that.

While I've found both of my previous kits (not from Seven Bridges) to be a bit under-malted, this one was perfect. I could have gotten a touch over 5 gallons out of it and still hit the mark on the original gravity, but I wanted the OG a tad high in an attempt to balance the additional hops. The kit was easy to use, and Seven Bridges was straightforward to deal with. The website is pretty well-organized, and my kit arrived promptly and in pristine condition.

I'm eager to get my next kit from Seven Bridges; I've got my eye on a Belgian-style golden ale, which just sounds awfully good right now. And I have to admit, it feels rather good to brew organic. I'm curious about whether the availability of organic barley and hops will increase and whether we'll be seeing more commercial breweries brew up organic offerings. Just like with every batch, time will tell, though if it's something people want to see, they needn't wait to make their voices heard at their favorite breweries.

You could ship me to India, and I wouldn't go bad

Let me start with this: I have a thing for beers from Dogfish Head.  It's a new thing, but it's strong, a head-over-heels kind of thing.  I admit that I was late to this bandwagon.  Sure, Sam Calagione is Mr. Extreme Beer, a darling and demigod of the craft brew movement, but somehow, I just didn't get around to drinking his beers much.  I was - and still am - focused on the amazing array of Michigan craft brew offerings, as well as other Great Lakes regional beers, and when I was out shopping for beer, I often passed on Dogfish Head beers in favor of those born closer to home.

But then something happened.  I got a hop jones that just wouldn't quit.  As readers know, as soon as fall was plunging into winter, I craved stouts, and I have reviewed them here and, to a much greater degree, in articles for Examiner.com.  And I still adore stouts; don't get me wrong.  In fact, I'll be writing a blog entry soon that summarizes my "findings" thus far in my Michigan stout foray.  A few weeks ago, though, I started to want big, hoppy beers.  I wanted IPA's that could curl my toes.  I wanted deliciously floral American pale ales that would waltz across my tongue.  Perhaps it was when I brewed my second batch of homebrew, which was supposed to be a steam style beer.  During the hops additions, the aroma was so heavenly, so fantastic, that I just started to want - to need - to have some uber-hopped beer.  Now, before I go on, I want to mention two things: first, I know that while steam style beer has a significant hop presence, it's not super hoppy, but if you had smelled those puppies going in during the boil, you'd understand; second, you might have noticed that I said "supposed" to be a steam style beer.  The rest of that is a whole other story, but not necessarily one with a sad ending - I'll know soon.

Back to my hops insanity.  Maybe it actually wasn't the steam beer, but the fact that at this point in the Michigan winter, I start thinking ahead to spring, to green, and a bit of desperation starts to creep in.  And that slightly desperate need for green turns my mind, where it comes to beer, to hops, in all of their herbal, floral, piney, citric glory.  In other words, in all of their fecund green-ness.

So, in the midst of this, I went to the store, and they had singles of Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA.  I saw it, and I simply needed it.  I had that baby in my cart before I even knew what I was doing, and just a little while later, I was a-drinkin' it.

What struck me first when tasting it was not the hops, but the malt.  Dogfish lays down such a tremendous foundation of malt; the beer looked, felt, and tasted rich.  It was actually sweet!  And then the hops came on, and O, I had reached glory.  The malt and hops didn't compete; they waltzed.  It was beautiful.

Since then I've continued to stock up on IPA's and consume them joyfully.  Arbor Brewing's Sacred Cow IPA was, and might still be, on sale at Arbor Farms, and is delightful, also with a firm malt base (though not crazy like Dogfish) and wondrous floral and citrus aroma and taste.  It's impressive as heck and was brewed just up the road.  Dogfish Head's Burton Baton barrel aged imperial IPA was simply astounding, like the 90 minute but with an almost wine-like quality that had to be a product of the aging; it's actually a blend of young and aged IPA's.  Victory Brewing's Hop Devil lives up to its name; I'd make a deal with that one any time.  And Stone IPA is a wonderfully balanced masterpiece.

Still to come (as in, I have them in my cellar): Founders Devil Dancer Triple IPA (112 IBU's!!!!) and Double Trouble IPA, Arcadia Hopmouth Double IPA, and an intriguing crop of Shorts beers: Liberator Double IPA, Kind Ale (a wet hopped ale), and Good Humans (a dry hopped double brown ale).  And I've got ingredients coming in the mail to brew up an organic, dry hopped IPA, my first foray into secondary fermentation and dry hopping.

I don't know when this phase will end, but I'm sure enjoying it while it lasts.

Damn the Torpedoes!

Sierra Nevada isn't a regional brewery by any means, and many are already familiar with their beers, but I did want to toss in a mention of their Torpedo IPA. I have a certain fondness for that brewery, since my mom lived in Chico, CA, for a number of years.  I've had the good fortune of tossing back a few at their pub, and it's well worth a visit.  Just getting the beers on tap at the peak of freshness while sitting up at the bar, admiring the dark wood and beautiful stained glass of the company logo, makes for a fine afternoon or evening.

Their Torpedo IPA earns its moniker by exploding on impact with your tongue.  You remember learning as a kid how different regions of the tongue are specialized for different flavors?  This is a back of the tongue beer from the start.  Huge flavor, pronounced bitterness.  As it warmed, a balancing sweetness peeked out.  Medium thick head.  Medium-fine carbonation; nothing distracting there.  Flowery aroma.  Smooths in the finish.  Like with most beers, I'd recommend letting it warm a bit before drinking, though I'll admit it's plain hard to wait once it's poured.

This is a 7.2% abv beer and widely available.  I picked it up at Arbor Farms Market as a single.  A big but eminently drinkable beer.  It would stand up well to strong food flavors and complement them nicely.

Drink my Short's!

The weather has turned here, going from low 70's and sunny one day to low 50's, blustery, and raw the next.  The storm windows have come down, and I always think of that as initiating a quiet time of the year, since the outside noises are shut out.  I can't believe it was just a couple of weeks ago that we were at the home of friends, celebrating a birthday with a massive gardening party.  Not a garden party.  A gardening party.  Sod removal, building berms and swales for rain gardens and erosion control, planting native plants, and all on a gorgeous day.  Taking a break with my friend and a growler of porter from Grizzly Peak Brewing in Ann Arbor, we started talking about music, art, politics... and beer!  Another guy joined us, and as we were saying that the porter was hitting the spot -- dark and flavorful, but easy to pour down -- he asked if we had tried anything from Short's brewing in Bellaire, MI, up north.  Neither of us had.  He said we should make a point of it.

I did, and now I'm trying to think about how to get up to Bellaire and visit their pub.

Just before the fall chill, soon after the party, a friend came into town for a couple of days, and we went out to a mutual favorite, Old Town Tavern.  They had Short's Huma Lupa Licious IPA on their rotating tap.  Really terrific beer.  It's a big IPA, flowery, bitter, citrusy.  I was impressed.  And I'll admit: the name is fantastic.  A few days later, I was in one of our very good local markets perusing their beer section, where I've been particularly taken by the selection of singles, and there was Short's Pandemonium Pale Ale.  This was an astoundingly good beer, with a rich, creamy head that gradually dissipated into craggy peaks and amber color so intense that I wouldn't have been surprised to find a mosquito encased in it.  Assertively floral, hoppy nose.  Slightly heavy mouth feel -- this was a maltier pale than I expected, though once poured, the head certainly was a clue.  This beer was laced with floral and bitter notes, but also a hint of sweetness that just made it come together perfectly.  It was like a tango on my tongue.  As it warmed a bit in the glass, the citrus notes became more pronounced, a kind of orangey hint that was a nice addition to what was already a complex beer.

While the brewery's website shows distribution within Michigan, I'm not so sure that it's gotten out of state yet.  It should.  Go drink your Short's!