Patience is everything

Rushed Rye Pale Ale...

The most important step in homebrewing is being patient and not rushing things.  Beer-making is a process of harnessing mother nature in a very controlled and mechanical way.  As homebrewers we come to understand how to clean things, mix things, heat things up, make sanitary transfers, and foster an ideal environment for fermentation.  Eventually we develop an intuition about these things and have a great deal of control over each step of the process.  For me, fermentation is one area in which I have to give up control and give mother nature the time she needs to get the job done.

Sparkling IPA (un-carbonated sample)

I brewed a batch of Pale Ale a few weeks ago and, due to time constraints, had just 10 days to get the beer fermented, dry-hopped, and bottled.  The result was 'just ok'.  It was pretty yeasty, a bit over-carbed, and had a tinge of diacetyl.  As hard as I tried to set up a recipe, yeast pitching rate, and fermentation temperature profile that would work within the ten-day window, it just wasn't enough time to get below 1.014.

My next batch, a Maris Otter IPA, had no such time constraint.  I let it sit at 65ºF for 4 weeks before racking to secondary and dry-hopping.  The sample was sparkling clear and had a perfectly clean and refined flavor, on par with some of my favorite commercial beers.  Its now sitting in secondary on some amarillo hops.

Double Brew Day

To celebrate the arrival of four pounds of American hops (Centennial, Chinook, Citra, Amarillo), I wanted to brew a West-Coast IPA.  My buddy Charles had the same idea to showcase his home-grown Columbus hops.  So I tossed all my brewing gear in the car and headed up to his place for a little dueling brews.  The thought of packing, loading & unloading everything twice in a day was a bit intimidating, but it turned out to be pretty easy and the benefit of brewing with a (much more experienced) buddy far outweighs the inconvenience.  A checklist is mandatory if you ever want to take your brewery on the road.  It turned out that all the small items I needed fit into a single bucket and the big stuff was all in one spot anyway.  Chalk up another benefit of being a 'compact' brewer.

As for the recipe, Charles came up with the base recipe, and my version used a different base malt & hop bill:


Brew #14: CentenniAmarilloBomb

Brewed 11/19/11

7 gal pre-boil, 5.5 gallon post, 60 min

Mash: Single infusion @ 149, batch sparge

O.G. 1.065.  Pre-boil gravity: 1.054. F.G. 1.0??

77 IBU

Fermentation Temp: ~64ºF

Grain Bill 10 lb Maris Otter 1.75 2-Row 0.5 lb Carapils 0.5 lb C20 0.1 lb Honey Malt Yeast WLP 001 California Ale Others 1 Tsp. Gypsum 1 Whrifloc tablet

Hops .75 oz Columbus @ 60 .5 oz Centennial @ 10 .5 oz Amarillo @ 10 .75 oz Centennial @ 5 .75 oz Amarillo @ 5 .75 oz Centennial @ 1 .75 oz Amarillo @ 1 1 oz Centennial (dry hop) 1 oz Amarillo (dry hop)

His version used all 2-row malt and Columbus hops.  When the two beers are ready we'll do a side-by-side tasting.

Craft Beer in the South Bay

I live in Los Gatos now, and when I moved here the question presented itself: where's my local pub?  It didn't take long to find Los Gatos Brewing Company.  It's a good restaurant with some great fresh beers, but I was still left searching for a bar with a constantly rotating selection of craft brews from around the world.  This was so easy to find in the other places I've spent time:  L.A., South New Jersey, Philadelphia, New York, Ann Arbor MI, and even Palo Alto has a decent spot.  So what gives?  Where are the good bars and brewpubs in the south bay?

Harry's Hofbrau

I'd been hearing a bit of buzz about Harry's Hofbrau San Jose location, which is about 10 minutes from my house, so I gave it a try.  I was totally impressed, but in a way I wasn't expecting at all.  The place is a huge dining hall with a cafeteria-style counter off to one side.  You pick up a tray and tell the carvers behind the counter what you want.  The food selection is awesome, actually, featuring all kinds of hand-carved roasted meats, sausages, cabbage, and of course gravy.  What the place lacks in fine dining it makes up for in huge portions and cheap prices.  Across the gigantic dining room is an enormous bar area, where a dozen or so tap handles are a most welcome sight.  According to Peter at betterbeerblog.com, Harry's just recently transitioned into being a craft beer haven.  Apparently, they have been running a series of "pint nights" featuring selected breweries and awesome deals.  Here's the full report of the series.  I hope they continue to do this!

What else is out there?

My list of beer-centric establishments in the South Bay is as follows:

• Firehouse Brewpub in Sunnyvale
• Campbell Brewing Co. / Sonoma Chicken Coop in Campbell
• Harry's Hofbrau in San Jose
• Los Gatos Brewing Co. in Los Gatos and San Jose
• Faultline Brewpub in Sunnyvale
• Yard House in San Jose (Santana Row, ack!)

Surely, there has got to be more out there...

Pumpkin Ale Brew Day

I recently brewed my second batch since moving to my little apartment.  It's a 3 gallon all-grain amber ale with pumpkin and spices added.  The brew day went off without a hitch, and it should be ready to drink once Autumn gets into full-swing (late October here in CA).  The recipe is based on Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale by Yuri_Rage on Homebrewtalk.com and is as follows:

Brew #11: Mostly Organic Pumpkin Ale
Brewed 9/25/11
4.25 gal pre-boil, 3 gallon post, 60 min
Mash: Single infusion @ 153, batch sparge
O.G. 1.063. Pre-boil gravity: 1.052.
Fermentation temp: ~68ºF

Grain Bill 5.6 lbs orgainc 2-row 1 lb orgranic Crystal 60 1 lb organic Victory .35 lbs organic Flaked wheat 1/4 lb Rice hulls Yeast WLP 002 English Ale

Hops .25 oz Warrior 15% AA (60 min) Others 45 oz canned organic pumpkin (in mash) 1 tsp cinnamon (10 min) .5 tsp ground ginger (10 min) .5 tsp nutmeg (10 min) .5 tsp allspice (10 min)

It should be noted that my gravity numbers were higher than expected because I undershot the mash volume by failing to factor in absorption loss to the rice hulls and pumpkin, and boiled down more volume than expected over the hour..  Also, the mash temperature should have been 158ºF but I chose to let it ride at the under-shot temperature of 153.

Pumpkin was baked for 45 minutes at 350ºF

Beutiful amber wort with an orange hue.  Amazing aroma.

Added pumpkin to strike water to dissolve and simplify strike temp 

Boiled outside on propane burner in 5 gallon kettle

Warm CA ground water required an ice bath to go along with immersion chiller.  This worked well and is one of the benefits of small-batch brewing!

You can brew in your apartment

Former brew basement:

Hi there, my name is Adam, and I brew at home.  About a year ago (August 2010) I stepped into this hobby with a kit from Northern Brewer.  Within a few months, I graduated from brewing with extract on the stovetop to all-grain brewing, and I started to collect a lot of stuff related to the hobby.  Every home brewer wants an entire basement and/or garage dedicated to his or her brewery, and I am no exception.  But for some of us, the bug bites before we have the amount of space we think we need.  In my case, I had an entire basement and garage to myself, so amassing a huge cache of gear and beer wasn't a problem.  But the growth of my collection was cut short by a cross-country move from the north east of the San Francisco Bay Area, where rents are astronomical and space is at a premium.  The space allocated to me has shrunk down to nothing more than a closet, but I will NOT let that inhibit my ongoing passion for brewing.  So, for the next year at least, this blog will be all about brewing interesting and delicious all-grain beers in a tight space.

New, neatly organized brew closet:

Not depicted here are my propane burner, tank, mash tun, kettles, and immersion chiller, all of which are out in a little storage hutch in my carport.  Those items have lids and can stand to get a little dusty between brew days.  The stuff in the closet are the essential items that must be kept clean.  On the bottom you see my carboys and 3 gallon corny kegs.  I can potentially ferment two beers at a time and condition two more down there.  I should also mention that those corny kegs can fit in my fridge.  So I can naturally carbonate the beer in them and put them on tap using a keg charger for dispense (more on that to come).  Next up are some bottles which will soon be full of conditioning beer.  I suspect this collection will start to spill up to higher shelves, at which time I'll have to rearrange the upper shelves. Specialty grains, sugars, etc. are also in this closet, along with equipment for sanitation, yeast propagation, measuring, and bottling.

The general strategy here is to brew 3 gallon batches of each new recipe.  The beer will get consumed  rapidly, of course, but that will only encourage me to keep a an efficient pipeline going.  Truth be told, I was producing 5 gallon batches at a faster rate than I could consume, so I used to have cases of homebrew just sitting around getting old.  That's fine for some styles, but just downright wasteful for beers that should be consumed fresh.  The first challenge to get past will be developing a willingness to drink that last bottle of delicious homebrew X.  The goal here is to get really good at brewing and be able to whip up a batch of something I like, not to hang on to things for years for fear that I'll never be able to taste it again.