Affordable luxury

At least in Michigan, and probably nationwide, "affordable luxury" is a frequently-used phrase to describe what craft brewers offer and to explain why the craft beer industry is so successful, even during the "Great Recession."  (As a quick aside, we're hardly seeing the recovery here in Michigan, though we hear about it from the news media - we appear to be the "first in, last out" state when it comes to our entire economy falling apart.  That said, our wonderful craft brewers are doing well.)

"Affordable luxury" isn't a new phrase.  In fact, when I took Enterprise Organization in law school, we studied Starbucks Coffee Co., and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz had used the phrase some time ago to describe what the company was selling.  It's an apt, useful phrase.  Applied to the beer industry, one might then wonder what the macros are selling: ultra-cheap banality?  But I digress.

Terrific craft beer is generally cheaper - often far cheaper - on a per-ounce basis than comparably fine wines, and it often pairs better with a wider variety of cuisines.  The other night, I indulged in a dinner of bar-b-que ribs, coleslaw, and potato salad, and the bottle of Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale went really well with it.  There may be wines that would go well with this meal, but the fresh-hopped, copper-colored ale with a firm malt foundation and frothy, iceberg-like head was simply delicious, interplaying beautifully with the sweet-tangy-meaty flavor of the ribs, creamy-tart slaw, and the mustardy bite of the potato salad.  

Buying single beers is a nice way to build up a collection gradually.  Although you'll pay a small per-ounce premium for buying singles, it's a great way to try a lot of different brews and have on-hand a beer appropriate to any occasion or meal.  We're fortunate to have a number of stores that have a terrific selection of single brews, including Arbor Farms, Plum Market, and the Beer Depot on William between Fourth Ave. and Main Street.  The first two have the added bonus of being full-service grocery stores, so you can get all your shopping done.  From 22-oz. bombers to single 12-oz. bottles, I've had a lot of luck finding terrific beers and buying a couple at a time to build a collection.  

If you do start collecting beers, keep them somewhere cool and dark until you're ready to drink them, and keep them upright.  Higher ABV and barrel-aged beers will age best.  If you're living in a house, the basement may well be perfect for beer storage.  I just spent several hours clearing out a basement closet under our front porch that stays nice and cool and happens to have shelf space.  If you have somewhere to cellar your beer, you generally can serve it without further refrigeration and end up with a brew that's at ideal serving temperature.  The flavors and aromas will be at their fullest.  Bad beer needs to be ice cold to tamp down the nasty taste and smell and to numb your taste buds.  Of course, ice cold or not, who wants to serve bad beer?

A luxury is still just that, and sometimes we're in no position to indulge, even in something that's modestly priced.  But while collecting might slow considerably during hard times, building a collection just a bit at a time may still be possible, and a lot of beers stand up well to careful storage. 

Adventures in homebrewing, indeed

My favorite homebrew supply shop is Adventures in Homebrewing in Taylor, just beyond the Detroit airport.  It's not that I can't get supplies in Ann Arbor, but there's no dedicated homebrew shop here, and the selection is limited.  Besides, Adventures is a terrific shop staffed by great people who really know their stuff.

But this isn't about the store.  It's about the fact that it's aptly named.

I wrote in my previous post that the low-down on my second batch of homebrew, my attempt to make a steam style beer, was a whole other story.  This is that story, though at the time I wrote the previous post, I didn't know whether it would end well.  Now I know.

We learn in woodshop class, or from a parent or mentor, or via hard lessons of one sort or another to "measure twice, cut once."  How about measuring at all?  That'd be a good start; after all, sometimes after you measure just once, you still end up cutting just once, and it turns out OK.

I had bought a recipe kit for steam beer in homage to one of my all-time favorites and intro's to craft beer, Anchor Steam.  The long and the short of it was that it was under-malted.  There wasn't enough malt extract in the kit to make the promised five gallon batch and have the original gravity fall within the desired range.  That's a bummer, but it's no big deal, because any beer-loving, would-be-homebrewer doofus with a batch under his or her expanding belt-line probably ought to know to take gravity readings while adding water to bring the wort up to volume.  This particular doofus did so while making the tasty brown ale - still so enjoyable as I get down to the last bottles - and just made about 4.5 gallons instead of 5, because that's when I hit the right gravity range.  Yet for whatever reason, or no reason, I just didn't do it this time until I had brought the volume up to 4.5 gallons.  Then, some little synapse went "bing," and I thought to measure the gravity.  Way low.  Already.  At 4.5 gallons.  I cursed a bit, staved off panic, and turned to The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by demigod Charlie Papazian, the man who wrote about how to brew beer at home long before it was re-legalized.  Sure enough, in the "troubleshooting" section, there was some advice about this very situation.  He suggested that one could just ferment what one's got and chalk it up to experience - the option he preferred - or one could add some malt extract.  Of course, he indicated how much malt extract - based on liquid malt extract.  And oh yeah, he also advised as always that I relax, not worry, and have a homebrew.  Generally, that's terrific advice, but I needed to grab some more malt extract first.

So, on an icy night, off I went to the local homebrew shop, and I bought some malt extract.  Dried malt extract.  See, they were out of the right liquid extract, and I hadn't quite gotten to the part in the book where Charlie indicates that there's a difference as far as what it'll do to your gravity.  Or I hadn't noticed.    Either way, I went home and poured in the extract.  In fact, rather a lot.  And again, I didn't measure as I went.

My gravity was sky-high.  Have I already mentioned that I am a doofus?

Now friends, there are worse things than having a high-gravity beer.  In fact, I drink a lot of those - though not a lot at once - and love them.  Besides, I still had some room to bring the beer up to volume, so I brought it up to the full 5 gallons, and the gravity was still high, but no longer ridiculous.  I capped the fermenter and, like Charlie suggests, relaxed, tried not to worry, and had a homebrew.  Of course, now I was worried not only about the gravity but about the possibility that I introduced an infection into the cooled wort when I added the malt.  But the tasty homebrew helped, just like Charlie says.

In case you haven't noticed from these posts, there's a seat-of-the-pants, experimental quality to homebrewing, even when using a well-regarded recipe kit.  It's not a hard thing to do, let me tell you.  It ain't rocket science.  But there are several variables, and attention to detail is very helpful.  Measure twice, cut once.

The beer was three weeks in the fermenter.  Even so, the final gravity was higher than the desired range, meaning that there were sugars in there that the yeast hadn't metabolized.  I had already stirred it up gingerly and reluctantly after the two week mark in an effort to restart fermentation, risking oxidation, but the yeast wasn't having any of it.  It was time to bottle it and move on.  When I sampled a touch of the flat beer during bottling, at first I thought that it was an overly malty, unbalanced mess.  But on my second sip, there was some nice bitterness and hop aroma there.  That's how hope smells and tastes, in this case.

Two weeks in the bottle, and the Queen and I cracked one open, and I feel very fortunate as I write that it was very good.  Amber with bright ruby highlights, a thick, creamy, off-white head that dissipated pretty slowly.  The carbonation wasn't too intense, but just right to carry some fresh, spicy, floral aroma.  It had a rich mouthfeel but avoided being too heavy, and while somewhat sweet, it was balanced by a pretty assertive (but not overwhelming) bitterness and notes of spice, pine, and flowers.  It's like a steam-amber ale hybrid, and it's pretty darn delicious and a definite session beer.  I look forward to more as it matures further in the bottle.  The Queen even opened a second bottle on its inaugural night, and if that isn't a favorable review, I don't know what is.

My buddy Sean had mentioned before and after my bottling-day sampling that I shouldn't be concerned yet, since the beer could still end up being terrific.  Another lesson learned.

Homebrewing yields lessons in every batch.  I can't wait to start the next one, and at this point, I know enough to avoid some mistakes, and also to expect to learn some more lessons.

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.

Wolverine Brewing Co. opening a brewery right in Ann Arbor

Thank you to my friend and fellow craft beer lover Shannan for sending me this link from Ann Arbor.com.  Wolverine Brewing Co., a microbrewer of lager beer that until now contracted out its brewing to Michigan Brewing Co. in Webberville, is opening up its own brewery on West Stadium Blvd., right in Ann Arbor.  They'll have a taproom but no restaurant, and they will encourage folks to bring in their own food or have it delivered.  For more details, see the Ann Arbor.com story.

Wolverine's flagship beer is an American pale lager (American Standard) - which is the primary style that the macros brew - that happens to be produced by a micro, and they aren't shy about it in the statements they made to Ann Arbor.com.  They'll now have a brewmaster on-site, Oliver Roberts, whose present gig is assistant brewer at Grizzly Peak in downtown Ann Arbor, which may mean that they'll be branching out into other brews.

They do promise new product lines, and they're sticking to lagers.  A good lager brewery in town could make things very interesting.  Micros generally focus on lagers, so if Wolverine can fill a lager niche with tasty offerings, more power to them as a nice addition to the Ann Arbor beer scene.

Brewing day!

It's brewing day in the House of Fermentation.  I've been dying to brew up my second batch o' homebrew, this time a steam style (aka California common) beer as a nod to one of my first true beer loves, Anchor Steam.  And, since the style involves using lager yeast fermented at ale temps, it should work well in our house, which we keep cool in the winter.

I've had a lot of time off lately, using up leave from what will shortly be my old job and getting ready for a new gig, but I've managed to be really busy anyway.  Just when I was starting to wonder when I'd get some time off during my time off, I got today.  The Queen of Fermentation planned a bunch of activities for her and the kids, and I woke up knowing that TODAY WAS THE DAY!  Brewing day!

So, I am writing this quick post surrounded by hop-scented steam swirling around the kitchen, the sound of boiling wort emanating from the brew kettle.  I love this.  I love the aroma and the sound, the attention to detail and the anticipation.  The fermentation bucket is sanitized, I'm almost ready to add the finishing hops, and then it'll be on to cooling the wort, transferring it to the bucket, and pitching the yeast.

The brown ale I brewed up has been really well-received by various friends, which of course just encourages me to brew more.  I'm thinking about getting a carboy for secondary fermentation - hey, if you have thoughts on this, add them to comments - and I might even get another fermentation bucket so that I can do more than one batch.  Beer is intoxicating.  Brewing might even be more so.  There's the timer... time to add the finishing hops.

Homebrewed English Brown Ale: a postscript

A few extra days of cellaring and conditioning has really rounded out the homebrew's flavor profile.  Served in a red wine glass at cellar temperature, it has a malty aroma: a bit of bread, lots of brown sugar, some chocolate.  Hops are present too, just a bit of flowers coming through.  The taste is a touch sweet, the brown sugar is there, as is the chocolate.  It has a nice, medium mouthfeel, and the carbonation is feeling just right.  The hops provide that key bit of balance, with the floral notes and bitterness coming through softly.  The finish is rather long, with that brown sugar and chocolate combo remaining balanced off by the hops.

Now, it's not like I made this recipe up.  Far from it!  My hat's off to Brewer's Best for putting the kit together.  So, don't take this post as me saying that I've come up with something great.  Rather, I'm quite impressed with the kit, and this beer has turned out very nicely, particularly for a first batch of homebrew.  If you're reading this and thinking about homebrewing, go for it!  You can make some good beer right from a kit and learn a ton in the process.

My boy, Sir E, is proud of his English Brown Ale.

Homebrewing: Batch brewed, lessons learned, part two

Welcome back to the House of Fermentation!  When we left off, I had managed to spill some water into the wort from the unsanitized airlock.  Not the most auspicious moment, but everything is a lesson.  The question was whether this lesson would be a harsh one.

I put the fermenter in the laundry room and set our space heater, which has a thermostat, to what had been described by the Adventures in Homebrewing folks as an ideal temperature for the particular strain of yeast I was using.  I wanted those sweet babies to be comfortable.

The next morning, I went in there first thing, hoping for bubbles in the [potentially germ-ridden and thus catastrophic to my brew because of my idiotic spill] airlock water.  And there were!  Signs of life!  The right kind of life!  At least so far!  Fermentation confirmed!

In the meantime, in the spirit of sibling harmony, I had already promised my 7-year-old that the next batch would be named after her.  In fact, I already know the style: steam beer, aka California common.  The reasons were straightforward enough.  As a reader of this blog, you may recall from an older post that I have a particular love of Anchor Brewing, including its flagship Anchor Steam Beer.  I want to brew something like that.  Obviously, on just my second batch, and using extracts instead of having the control of all-grain (where you mash the malt yourself), it might not match up, but I want to try.  But it's not just about love and reverence.  There's also a practical reason: steam beer is made with lager yeast but fermented at closer to an ale temperature.  Lager yeasts ferment at much lower temperatures than most ale yeasts, and I don't want to be using that space heater quite so much next time around.  So, by using a lager yeast at the temperature at which the House of Fermentation hovers in the winter, I can brew up a batch of steam beer without resorting to the heater.

Down in the basement, the yeasts continued to work their magic.  Day after day I went down, and day after day I saw triumphant, burbling bubbles rising to the surface of the airlock at regular intervals.  If I sniffed at the right time, I could catch a whiff of the developing beer.  The aroma was still on target.  Hope was building.

Instead of the 4-6 days that had been described, I had active bubbles for 7-8 days, and then let it rest as instructed for 2 more days.  There are stories out there of exploding bottles caused by bottling beer that is still fermenting too actively.  Glass shrapnel, huge mess... hmm, best avoided, no?

Waiting to bottle the beer, I finally did something that I'd suggest a novice homebrewer do much sooner. I watched the incredibly helpful, straightforward videos at homebrewingvideo.com.  I started off watching the ones about the bottling process and ended up watching them all.  Lots of useful tips in there!  In fact, Video-man mentioned the importance of sanitizing the airlock.  Ouch!  Anyway, I was ready to bottle my elixir.

I sanitized my clean bottles, bottling bucket, and all other equipment.  Then I opened the fermenter, and the aroma of freshly brewed beer filled the kitchen!  Malty, a bit bready, some lovely floral overlay of hops... I had made beer!  Flat beer.  Now it needed to condition in the bottles.  I boiled up a solution of priming sugar as instructed and put it in the bottling bucket.  My dear yeast would be well-fed one last time and carbonate my beer in the bottles.  Perhaps I should mention here that by now, I had fallen in love with the yeast.  It feels a bit odd to fall in love with a microbe.  Sure, I have always had a healthy respect for yeast, given my admiration of beer and bread, not to mention hard cider and wine, but working with them on this first batch, I think I fell in love.  I'm not proud to admit it.  In fact, I should probably get some help for this, but I want to be honest here.

Now, on to the transfer from fermenter to bottling bucket.  Siphoning looked very easy on the video. Obviously, since I went through all the trouble of sanitizing everything, sucking the tube to get it started wasn't an option.  I primed the racking (siphon) tube using sanitizing solution, as instructed, and got it started by running some water "backward" into the tube and then lowering and opening the tube to start the flow, as instructed.  It took me three tries to get the flow.  Video-man did it in one.  Video-man was an expert, but really, we're just talking about siphoning.  I have no excuse.

I got it flowing just in time to stave off panicky thoughts of failure, stopped the flow, transferred the racking cane and tube to the fermenter, and let the flow start again, first into a cup to let the sanitizer out.  Once beer was flowing, I lowered the tube into the bottling bucket, and within minutes I had a lovely bucket of beer there, ready to bottle.

Bottling was straightforward enough.  There's a handy (when it works) valve on the end of the bottling tube that only allows beer to flow (when it works) when it touches the bottom of a bottle.  Did I mention that it didn't work all that reliably?  I mean, it definitely allowed beer to flow, but let's just say it didn't always stop on cue.  Video-man had said to put towels under the bottling area, and never, never, never bottle over carpet.  I listened to Video-man.  Whew.  I quickly learned to re-tap the valve against the bottom of the bottle every now and then to keep it from sticking.

By the way, it is a painful thing to spill beer that you went through the trouble of making.  When that valve stuck and beer overflowed the bottle and soaked the towels, I wondered if it would be undignified to suck on the towels later.

Capping (remember, sanitize those caps!) was a breeze. I put the bottles back in their warm, cozy, pro-fermentation environment and prepared to wait two weeks.  After bottling, there was a tiny bit of beer -- and a lot of sediment -- left in the bucket, and my wife and I isolated a bit of the liquid and tried it.  Sure it was flat and needed to mature, but it actually tasted pretty darn good!  It was definitely beer.  I appeared to be on the right track.

I looked ahead to the two week wait, and it sounded painfully long.  Lucky for me, my friend Sean -- an experienced homebrewer -- said on the 8th day to go ahead and try it!  It's probably ready!  My wife and I put two in the fridge, and close to dinner time we took them out and let them come up to cellar-ish temperature.  I held my breath opening the first one.  Remember that unsanitized airlock spill-over?  Well, I was sure thinking about it, but the bottle opened with a healthy, sharp hiss and didn't crazily froth over -- which can be a sign of infection -- and it poured beautifully.  Nut-brown color, a nice head, aroma of malty sweetness with just a bit of background hops.  And it tasted... GOOD!  Not fantastic.  But good!  A touch sweet, a bit roasted, a hint of chocolate, nice bittering from the hops along with just a breath of floral quality.  It was an English brown ale, as planned.  My wife and I both enjoyed it.  Sean had said to shoot for drinkability with the first batch.  This one exceeded that expectation.  This homebrewing thing is a whole lot of fun.  Sure, there were anxious moments.  There were even moments of utter folly.  But I'm hooked.

Before the first taste, my 5-year-old was watching intently, and as I sipped it, he asked eagerly, "Is it good?  Is it good?"  And when I told him it was, he crowed gleefully.

After all, it's his namesake beer.