Bourbon Barrel Porter

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Sunday, we started up our first all-grain recipe THE BOURBON BARREL PORTER with a fresh new grain mill, mash-tun, wort chiller, and a whole lotta grains & hot water. Now the process for all-grain recipes is a little different than our previous recipes. With the malt extract kits, we basically took the malt extract (almost like syrup) and pour it into the boil… maybe steep a few specialty grains in for some distinct flavors… and then do our hour-long boil adding hops, etc. With the all-grain recipes, we basically have to make our own malt extract. We do that by taking about 8-15 pounds of various grains (depending on the recipe) and we have to pull the malt out of them. There are a few extra steps involved…

 

First up, we would run the grains through the mill… not to pulverize like a coffee mill or something… but hopefully to just crack the outer shell so that the grain’s innards are exposed… the thing we found out is that the particular kit that we got was all-grain recipe... they already cracked & crushed the grains for us... so our mill will get used another time...

 

While doing that, we heat up some water to fairly hot, but not quite boiling. Typically we want it to be in the 180-190 degree range…

 

Once everything is ready, we mix the hot water with the cracked grains so that the overall temperature will keep around 160-170 (again depending on the recipe).

 

This causes the grain’s innards to release the malt sugars that we need to make the beer. Too cold & it doesn’t really work… too hot & it doesn’t really work. We also want to keep the grains evenly saturated with water so that we can maximize the amount of malt sugars that we pull… so the colander helps a little with that. Also, the insulated cooler helps keep the temperature in the best possible range without losing heat. We keep this for about an hour… checking periodically to make sure that everything is good…

 

Next, we extract the wort (the malt sugars mixed with the hot water). How do we do this? In the bottom of the cooler, there is a false bottom that helps separate the liquid wort from the grains… you know, all the husks & stuff that you don’t really want to drink. There’s some technical “recycling” of the water involved to make sure that you get the most out of the wort, but you can read the specifics on that in a book if it interests you. Basically when we’re done, we have the wort ready for the hour-long hop boil in the pot…

 

We had a few hiccups along the way this first time...

and this is what happens... HULK SQUEEZE!!!

Little tip... Check the gasket on the spigot at the bottom of your mash tun... or rather, double check it. We tested ours with a little bit of water & no problem... but once we started adding a lot of hot water, there was an obvious leak & we weren't able to get any pictures due to the frantic nature of trying to save as much of the good stuff as possible... but trust us, it wasn't awesome. To sure up the spigot, we used some electrical tape (contact tape will work to) to make sure that the gaps between the metal spigot & the plastic cooler tub are minimized to keep it water-tight so that you don't lose the sweet, sweet juices & sugars of the wort.

After taking out the wort, we have the leftover husks from the grains in the cooler that we can then… I don’t know… throw away… give to cows, chickens & pigs… use for compost… make doggy biscuits… apparently there are also recipes online for these now “spent grains” so Dizzy made some bread... this particular recipe was about 75% Maris Otter and then the rest was a combination of grains that give off some great biscuity & chocolately tastes... so it was a shame to let them all go to waste, right?

Just a little egg, flour & water... and you've got

some of your own fine multi-grain bread with enough

fiber to clean out the dankiest of colons...

We'll keep you posted on the taste in the next entry.

 

And we also decided to share some with the neighborhood birds too... so we'll see how that turns out... and if there's a miracle, maybe I'll grow some of my own grains in the backyard... but they would've had to survive several hours in extremely hot temperatures to do so... but hey, you never know.

 

As mentioned, we have the wort ready now, so we do the hour-long boil adding the hops… and put it in the primary fermenter the same way as our previous batches. The only twist is this time, after the boil, we have a snazzy new stainless steel wort chiller to help cool the wort as quick as possible for the fermenter. With this being the first time, I didn't really have the correct setup ready to go... but it still helped a little bit, especially with the initial boil to about 120 degrees in just a few minutes combined with the ice bath.

 

Alright! Now we’ve got our Porter wort sitting in the fermenter… we’ve added the yeast… and now we wait a few weeks…

 

Mmm... sweet, dark, delicious porter wort...

“BUT WAIT!!! I thought this was supposed to be a BOURBON BARREL PORTER!!! I see NO BARREL and certainly NO BOURBON!!! What the French, toast? BLASPHEMY!!!” AH, you are quiet right… we have not reached that part of the recipe yet… but for that, you’ll just have to wait until next time… all the way in 2014.

 

Anyway, we had a LOT of fun doing this… so hopefully you had a LOT of fun reading about it. Also, if you like what you see, let us know… I’m still not 100% that anybody at all is reading this besides me & maybe Dizzy. Have a happy holiday season everybody!!! See you in 2014!!!

SFHG Annual Brewery Tour

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
 

Saturday, we set out with some members of the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild on a whirlwind bus tour of three local breweries for tours, tastings, and of course getting to know fellow homebrewers over the course of the eight hour trip. Our first stop was FreeWheel Brewing in Redwood City, basically located in a strip mall. This brewer though has partnered with English craft brewers Iron Bridge & Green Jack to make some distinct English style ales here in California… and are also famous for their cask-conditioned ales. Here are some pictures...

 

I particularly liked their Hybrid Bitter & Pale Ale...

Next was Drake’s Brewing in San Leandro who pride themselves on making great barrel-aged brews (Jolly Rodger series) and are EXTREMELY well regarded in the beer community with a Beer Advocate score of 95 and you can find them in pretty much every bar in Northern California... but with their great brews, they've continued to expand and they mentioned that they'll be opening a new brewing & bottling facility in Chicago soon. Here are some pictures of their digs...

 

This food truck "Five Ten Burger" had some pretty legit burgers...

and garlic fries... and tater tots.

Last was Linden Street Brewing located in an 1890’s brick warehouse in Oakland… who pride themselves on keeping “Old California” Gold Rush style traditions in their brewing, being proud of their city & heritage as a pretty prominent player in the beer industry at the time, yet still keep it real. With brew names like Urban Peoples’ Common Lager, Deep Roots Red Lager and others… they’re holdin’ it down for The ‘Town. Despite being located near the West Oakland BART stop, they definitely have a nice cool down-to-Earth feeling. Here are the pics...

 

Again, D.O.G. food truck was legit...

Frito pie... basically fritos with chili, handmade hot

dogs, sour cream, cilantro, onions, etc.

On the drive home, we saw the robot dinosaurs off the Bay Bridge...

So yeah, all in all, a pretty fantastic little voyage... and we also met some great fellow homebrewers along the way. I highly recommend that if you get interested in homebrewing, find some peers in your local area... they can be full of great advice... or just a nice new person to chat with about common interested. Please patronize the fine establishments discussed in the this post... and let them know that I sent ya... and maybe drop the blog name too. It'd be great to hear from these cats.

Logo & Mead Transferring

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

This is just a quick entry... but Saturday, we transferred our Quick Mead from the primary to secondary fermenter...

And I've been working on a few different logo ideas, just doodling...

And then this Saturday, we'll have brewery tours with the SF Homebrewers Guild to three different locations across the Bay... but I'll elaborate on the come this weekend... and then on Sunday, we should be starting our first all-grain batch... a Bourbon Barrel Aged Porter. Yum yum...

Have a great day everybody!!! Keep drinkin' responsibly!!!

Thanksgiving Dinner Tasting

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Thanksgiving Dinner marked our first official Public Tasting of our homebrews… and it went pretty well. Of course we were surrounded by loved ones, great friends, family & just good ol’ peeps… but there was also great food… and even BETTER beer. Dinner this year was hosted by Dizzy’s Aunts and they typically have plenty of Sierra Nevada and New Belgium brews at their events… so they’re a bit of beer snobs like us. Of course, I use the term “beer snob” endearingly. They’re both some of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, they just have great taste when it comes to the beer they drink.

 

Other guests at the dinner were primarily in their 60’s or older… with the exceptions of myself (32), Dizzy (28) & her cousin Amy (17) who obviously didn’t drink. Some were experienced beer drinkers, others were fairly novice, some haven’t had it for a few years due to various health concerns & intolerances, so it was a pretty intriguing group of guinea pigs for us to try out on. Anyway, that was the test group… but here are the real key players… THE BEER!!!

 

I made some signage out of construction paper leading up to dinner… and I’m obviously not an art student or anything… but yeah, I like them. Hope that you enjoy too.

 

Brew: Irish Red Ale

Age: About 12 weeks (first batch ever)

Code Name: Raptor Red Ale

  

Brew: Pumpkin Ale

Age: About 11 weeks (also came with first kit)

Code Name: Proto Pumpkin Ale

 

Brew: Bavarian Hefeweizen

Age: About 8 weeks

Code Name: El Hefe (T-Rex, but several names being played with play on King or Tyrant)

 

 

Brew: Nut Brown Ale

Age: About 6 weeks

Code: Brown-tosaurus Ale

 

You can read through the past posts for our test tasting results… but apparently they were an overwhelming success. Some said that it was some of the best beer that they could remember tasting (insert Alzheimer’s jokes here) but even the particular critics said that they were great… especially the Red Ale & Pumpkin Ale (probably due to the aging involved settling the flavors a bit). Later in the week, my buddy The Wingman helped us with further tastings… and yeah, they’re pretty good. We could probably slap a label on them & sell now but… yeah, we’re not incorporated, paid all the fees to Big Gov’ment and jumped through all of the hoops… even after we pull a few hundred grand out of our backsides for large scale brewing supplies, bottling, etc. We’ve got a long ways… but we’re having fun as is right now… so we just need time to hone our craft… and of course convince others that we’re worth taking a risk on… or just rob a few banks or something. That might be good startup capital.

 

We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well!!! Have a great day everybody!!!

Introducing... Terrible Lizard Brewing

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Perhaps a little explanation concerning this blog… through some FAQ’s…

 

“What the heck is this thing about?”

 

This is a bit of a journal about our journey into the world of Homebrewing… and beer in general. The previous posts are from the past few months & chronicle our brew days, bottling days, tasting days… but also include book reviews, movie & TV reviews, product reviews, special events, festivals, personal social events, experiments, designs, art, road trips, and other miscellaneous adventures… all involving the wonderful product that is BEER!!!

 

“Terrible Lizard Brewing? That’s an odd name…” – Blog Title

 

Yes and no… you see, we are self-proclaimed dinosaur nerds… and Dinosaur means “Terrible Lizard” in Latin. We both love dinosaurs… and have since we were kids. Personally, when I was a kid, I was going to be a professional basketball player during the season… and then a paleontologist/archeologist during the off-season… basically Larry Bird meets Indiana Jones… hmm, Indiana Bird… that might be an interesting comic… sorry, anyway… it didn’t quite work out that way. I know, shocking! But I gave up on that dream with my 24^th birthday after a VERY brief stint as a pro baller and needing to make money. The love for dinosaurs & mysteries from the past still burns within me though… as it does for the other author (she’ll do her own backstory at some point I’m sure) so after considering many different names for our brewing company… we thought this might be the most fitting (patent pending).

 

“Why are you doing this?” - Purpose

 

When we started this brewing company (term “company” used loosely since we’re not officially selling anything yet per law & only making five-gallon batches) a few months ago, there were a few things that we wanted to do.

 

1)    Have Fun trying out this new adventure - Because if it doesn’t make you happy or it doesn’t make you money, what’s the point?

2)    Make Fantastic Beer – There are already plenty of companies out there that have been making great beer for centuries. Whether it’s the BIG BEER guys that control over 90% of the market… or the mid-majors like Samuel Adams & Dogfish Head… or the little guys that are popping up all over metropolitan areas in their microbrew pubs, there’s a lot of different kinds of great beer out there… so we wanted to join that group & make great beer that we would buy when matched up against the others out there in the market as well.

3)    Dinosaurs had to be involved – See above explanation of the name

4)    Document our Adventures – We found that many people get homebrew kits as gifts… but never really use them… or use them a few times, become frustrated, and either get rid of them or put them in a closet to house spiders for the next 20 years or something. We thought that by documenting our process, achievements, failures, ideas, designs, recipes, research, and just all the fun that we were having while doing this stuff that it might actually help others to become interested… as well as get us a little exposure if we start selling our signature brews down the line. Obviously right now it’s primarily for educational purposes & let’s face it… maybe a little narcissism.

 

“Who the hell do you think you are?” – Meet the Authors

 

$teve aka Dr Mookie Love – 32 years old, born & raised in Utah, world traveler, degrees in marketing management & general studies, lived all along I-80 in the western U.S. from Denver to currently residing in San Francisco. As mentioned in the Epilogue, my experience with beer was fairly limited until recently… but if I had known in high school what I know now… I’d probably have a good 15 year head-start on this enterprise already. I blame public schools. I’ve been blogging for about seven years now and over the years it has ran the gamut of being basically a daily journal… to over the past few years kind of a weekly update based upon the amount of free time that I’ve had to readily update it. Please feel free to check it out to fully understand the eclectic eccentric that will be posting here. It’s pretty random… with postings about random thoughts, movie ideas, news stories, dreams, adventures around the world, family gatherings, LOTS of movie reviews & movie lists, stories about bacon, pandas, Batman, updates on the Serpent Apocalypse and many other things… but this blog will be obviously focused on the Beer.

  

Dizzy aka Untidy Venus – 28 years old, born & raised in Sacramento, currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area, talented artist studying illustration, absolutely gorgeous person inside & out… and we’ve been dating for just under two years now. I’ll basically let her go into detail about herself in a later self-authored post if she wants but… yeah, she’s basically amazing… and loves dinosaurs, goats, horses, rats, cats and basically anything she considers cute.

 

 “Why should I subscribe?” – Please subscribe & follow us

 

1)    It’s Easy!!! – Seriously, you just click on the thing on the right hand side & it’s done…

2)    It’s Convenient!!! – New posts are sent directly to your profile so that you’re notified of all the excitement without even having to check with us directly

3)    It’s Interactive!!! – We’d like to keep you updated on our adventures & read and/or reply to your feedback and comments to attempt to make this an interactive blog where we both can learn. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to share.

4)    It’s about Beer and Dinosaurs!!! – If you like Beer… we’ll be talking about the craft of making it at home… and reviewing brews & breweries from around the world to hopefully help you make some decisions on your own. If you like Dinosaurs… they will be mentioned as well & we’ll be including some designs that you may find interesting, artwork that you can purchase through Dizzy’s Etsy account either for yourself or others, and occasionally just interesting facts that you may not have known.

5)    It’s Educational!!! – Do you know how Beer is made? Do you like interesting facts about Beer and/or Dinosaurs? Are you a visual learner? We are here to spread the good word & help others to share our desire for Homebrewing & finely crafted beer.

6)    It’s Fun!!! – We’re both pretty hilarious, light-hearted & a little out there… so we like to keep things pretty fun & entertaining.

7)    It’s FREE!!! – Saving the best for last… it’s absolutely FREE!!! That being said… if down the line there are advertisements and/or sponsors, please feel free to click on their links if you’re interested in their products so that it can continue to be FREE… but yeah, it doesn’t cost you anything and it can hopefully inspire you to start your own chronicle of adventures… or at least just have fun, smile & learn something new. Also, because it’s FREE, that means we’re not getting paid or anything. It’s out of the goodness of our ever-hardening hearts (well, mine anyway… but I blame bacon fat & bad drivers for that hardening). We’re not selling beer (yet) and obviously nobody else is giving us research materials for FREE… so if you like what you see, definitely let us know. Your satisfaction goes a long way toward keeping us motivated to post & sharing with you.

 

Besides, look over the list of reasons again… I think that you’re getting a pretty sweet deal if this even remotely interests you as a passing thing.

 

“So… Why are you doing this again?” - Outro

 

Again, if I had known what I know now back in the late 90’s… I would have been a 17-year old bootlegging brewer in my basement bedroom in the city of Ogden. Heck, maybe Terrible Lizard would already be a household name by now… but then again, I was really into my education (for some reason) & basketball… and I was a typical teenager making horrible decisions all in the effort to get some sweet poon from cheerleaders (unsuccessfully by the way)… and it’s also apparently illegal to homebrew if you’re under the age of 21 so that’s… not a deal breaker by any means but, you get the idea. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m learning about this stuff at this age. Had I known back then…

 

1)    I wouldn’t have been focused on my education… so I might not have gone to college& earned not one but TWO degrees… except maybe I would’ve learned about UC-Davis’ Institute of Brewing & Distilling program and been part of that… but I think that’s a fairly recent occurrence… and I’m kinda considering it.

2)    I wouldn’t have been focused on basketball… so there wouldn’t have been all the great experiences with regards to that… and I would probably be grossly overweight living off a strict diet of bacon & beer… and cheese.

3)    I wouldn’t have found my current profession & traveled the world… not going to elaborate of my current profession but it’s led to many a wonderful trip across the globe, and short of hand-picking hops from Bavaria or something like I’m Jim Koch or Sam Calagione then I probably wouldn’t have traveled nearly as much… or been the places that I’ve been… or met the lovely Dizzy/Untidy Venus and started this thing.

4)    I would’ve had gallons of alcohol at my disposal at a very idiotic stage in my life… so either I would’ve drank myself to death, drove drunk (had plenty of friends go that way), used my booze powers for evil in hooking up with intoxicated ladies leading to anything from rape convictions to bastard babies to a surly reputation at least… and of course, as mentioned before, I was underage so… there would probably have been plenty of charges involving underage drinking, intoxication, providing for the intoxication of minors… and because I would’ve gone Scarface with that sh*t, it would’ve only led to an international conglomerate of importing illegal hops & barley, as well as cocaine for flavoring & preservative qualities, muscling out competition, racketeering charges, and eventually going to war with BIG BEER after August Busch IV called me a “f**king little monkey” after botching an assassination attempt against the President of MADD and that can only end in a bloody shootout at my palatial mansion on Star Island… all by my 21^st birthday. You know… hypothetically speaking.

 

So maybe it’s a good thing that the timing for this has all worked out the way that it has… and I’m glad to share these experiences with you. So please… subscribe so that we know you care, let us know how we’re doing or if you have any questions, and enjoy the benefits of our labours. Most importantly… have a great day everybody!!!