Dark Wheat Duck

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Wednesday morning (4 AM) was the start of an early, exciting brewday at Elevation 66 Brewing and despite Izzy being under the weather still, we had a full house with owner Super Dave, lead brewer Big Ben, and four volunteer brewers (me, Li’l Jon, Black Jack & new returner Easy E). With six brewers, the work was fairly easy when spread out… so during the slower times (waiting for water to boil) Big Ben’s wife was also there studying for her BJCP/Cicerone certification… and she conducted an Off-Flavor Tasting. What’s that? Well… it’s basically a taste test where you take a basic beer (in this case, Trumer Pilsner) and you basically add some off-flavors to it… and see if you can identify the off-flavor. Oh… there are some tricks in there too… as there are some placebos… and you’re just drinking the base beer… so it puts your senses to the test… especially if you don’t really have an amazing sense of smell like me. It’s a great way to test your senses… learn what might cause these kinds of off-flavors… and basically I was drinking some beer with my friends at something like 6 AM. Here’s some pictures…

 

 

After the brew day, Super Dave offered to take us out to T-Rex for some barbecue and brews… great restaurant to check out if you’re in the neighborhood.

 

A few hours later, Izzy headed back home and we headed out to the city of Concord to visit the MoreBeer homebrewing shop (warehouse level selection) and then we headed to downtown for some beers & snacks at the Hop Grenade, their neighbor E.J. Phair Brewing, and just down the street is Ale Industries’ Pig & Whistle location. All three have some pretty fantastic offerings. Hop Grenade has a more “connoisseur” level selection of brews… and of course, the elaborate podcasting area for the Brewing Network (which I WAS finally a guest on). E.J. Phair has some great brews including my personal favorite Shorty’s Revenge which is an English style Amber… and they had some great prices for their beers and decent snacks. Pig & Whistle seems like a nice place to check out after watching a movie late night across the street. Just a nice little area… congrats to Concord!

 

Here's a picture of a sunset & our hops growing up now...

Also, Izzy is graduating in less than a week! Yes, the amazing woman who has been joining me on these many, many adventures over the years… is finally graduating with her Illustration degree in mere days… and I couldn’t be more proud of her. She’s truly an amazing woman & I’m lucky to have her in my life. Feel free to leave your congratulations below… she checks everything (though I think the last REAL comment that wasn’t her… was probably over two years ago). Congratulations beautiful!

 

Sunday morning, we also started a Dunkelweizen recipe… that we’re affectionately calling Darkwheat Duck (Dunkelweizen means “Dark Wheat”) and it was a pretty standard recipe… but here are some great pictures…

 

We also kegged our Taddy Porter from Learn to Homebrew Day… it’s a little lighter than I expected, more like our English Pale Ale but more of an amber color… but still pretty delicious. More pictures…

 

So yeah… a good week of beer enthusiasm… and there are plenty of movies as well… until then, have a great day everybody!!!

Zoo, Magnolia Smokestack, Rats & CHP Kegging

Good Afternoon ladies & Gentlemen,

 

So after my Christmas & New Year’s trip to Utah, Izzy & I returned to the Bay Area… and as luck would have it, we had a few days off from work and/or school. What did we do? Well, first off we slept like 12 hours once we got home… but that should go without saying. Then what?

 

Well, Friday January 2^nd we started off the day… by going to the San Francisco Zoo and renewing Izzy’s annual membership… and of course check out the Lego exhibit & some of our favorites…

 

Then we headed over to Magnolia Brewing’s new Smokestack location in the Dogpatch to get a real try of the facilities. See, when we went for the SFGH Annual Brewery Tour last month, we felt like this one was incredibly rushed & we didn’t get time to sample more than one beer or even a niblet of food, so we checked it out. The beer is great, as most people know. The food however… not the best. It’s essentially barbecue that you can order by the pound, which sounds like it would be the perfect setup for a carnivore like myself. Honestly though, some of the barbecue was borderline horrible… and when they’re charging something like $15-20 per pound, it’d better be some f**king delicious barbecue. The sides were okay… but it’s hard to f**k up mac & cheese or beans and rice. So my suggestion, stop on by for beer… but don’t expect to fill up on food there as unless you’re dropping a C-note, it won’t fill you up & it probably won’t be worth it. It’s a nice looking location though… and maybe it was just a bad day for meat… but that’s what my experience was.

 

Afterwards, we headed over to Petco because… my ladyfriend missed having pet rats. She grew up with them most of her life… and she hadn’t had them for a few years… and because she tortures herself by signing up a bunch of cute pet Instagram feeds, she sees their hideously cute faces throughout the day… so we went & got her two rats to take care of… meet Fajita & Tamale… I’m not sure which one is which… they’re adorable rats named after Mexican food…

 

Saturday was a day of rest… and then on Sunday, January 4^th we kegged our Chocolate Hazelnut Porter… so now we have full kegs of CHP as well as our Beet Pale Ale… here are a few pictures…

 

Anyway, that’s just a quick sum-up of two weekends ago as I’m doing a bit of catch-up thus far in 2015… but don’t worry, last weekend’s awesome activities should be up shortly as well… and it involves some old friends, beer, and a beautiful & historic walk. Have a great day everybody!!!

Woods Brewing Weekend

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Friday night, in preparation for our brewday with Woods Brewing, I found out there was an extension/taproom called Woods Polk Station right on my bus line, so I decided to check it out after a long week at work... and it's a nice little place. Very small, but kind enough staff, wasn't jam packed, and the beer was pretty good. Apparently Woods Brewing has found a niche of primarily light ales & lagers, and focusing on unique ingredients and angles to brewing beer. For example, a number of their offerings have yerba mate & various herbs for bittering... and caffeine. That's right... Drew Carey Shows's Buzz Beer is alive and well... but with yerba mate tea providing caffeine instead of coffee or something... but yeah, they have that. They also like to play with coloring beer with various additives... which is odd, because that's exactly what we wanted to do soon with adding Ox Blood Beets into a pale ale for coloring... but more on that later. The beer itself is different... but pretty good, very interesting bittering with the herbs & hops. I highly recommend it. They also have guest taps for porters & other darker beers if that's you thing. Check 'em out!

 

Saturday morning, the SF Homebrewers Guild (including Izzy & myself) went to Cerveceria de Mateveza / Woods Brewing’s new location in Oakland for a special collaborative brewday with the head brewers to see how homebrew concepts are done on a larger scale professionally. Now, over the past year, Izzy & I have been to a number of these things and helped work on a few with Elevation 66, so we were happy to help, but they seemed to have a system down… but it’s always interesting to see the various setups and styles that each brewery has to offer. They have a three-barrel system (about 93 gallons) located upstairs from their taproom below. Check it out!

 

 

Their head brewer Jim Woods was there to walk us through the process. He started a pale ale about two hours before we arrived... and as a parting gift, he made this whole extra three-barrel batch of pale ale so that a number of us could take home a 5-gallon carboy home and experiment with… using different yeast, dry hopping, fermentation temperatures, additions during fermenting, whatever we’d like… and then in a few weeks we’ll share the results at our official “collaboration beer” release party. After discussion with the other guild members, Izzy & I decided that this would be probably the best time for us to use the pale ale to add the Ox Blood Beets she just harvested... and we'd see how it goes with a basic California Ale yeast. So we'll see how it goes in a few weeks at the release party.

 

Izzy is such a great brewmistress helping out...

Empanadas provided as well for lunch,

thanks Woods Brewing!!!

 Our President thought ahead enough to bring a stroller...

 The Pale Ale is a little darker than expected...

but should still work, it tends to lighten up with fermentation

Jim then started a batch of the pale ale for all of us to see from the beginning... but his twist that he was adding purple yams to give it a distinct color and flavor. Great minds think alike I guess... but it was great to pick his brain on strategies for adding them, though because our systems are drastically different, we had to go with a less recommended method... but more on that later.

 The Pale Ale with purple yams added after the mash...

 

Another pleasant surprise was a few journalists  & photographers with Liquid Bread Magazine interviewing the guild members and seeing what the appeal was about homebrewing and the culture surrounding it among other things, so we were MORE than happy to help answer all of their questions. It's obviously a booming market & the culture is VERY open & willing to share their "trade secrets" and whatnot... because it's all about establishing relationships & making good beer wherever you go. As the Outreach Chair for the SF Homebrewers Guild, I was more than happy to offer my information & hopefully they'll utilize it, because it sounds like it'll be a great article or series of them. So a great event & a HUGE THANK YOU TO WOODS BREWING for hosting us!!!

 

Once we got home, we prepared our beets for the addition... by chopping up the beets to increase surface area, boiling them a little in some water, adding a whirfloc tablet to help with clarity, and basically tried to extract the color and some sugars to the wort... and then adding the yeast to get fermentation started.

 You can see the beet addition at the top...

we may not have used enough, but we'll see

as it will hopefully lighten up with fermenation

 

Later that evening, Izzy & I finished off the last of our Pumpkin Amber Ale and it was time to reuse the keg… so we cleaned the keg as well as cleaned out the lines that we’d been using for the various parties over the last couple of weeks. The keg tap hoses can be a little hard to clean out as you can’t just run water or liquid through it… they’re specifically designed to have liquids forced through them with pressure… or seal up so that there’s no retreating infection. So basically to do that, you have to run a cleaning solution through it as if it were beer on tap… which is cool… and obviously works pretty good…

 

Then it was time to keg the Pale Ale that we had started on National Learn to Homebrew Day two weeks ago… so that it would be ready for a party with Izzy’s classmates in about a week. It was pretty standard once the keg, hoses & all the fixings were cleaned and the rubber gaskets were replaced…

 PBW is the best for cleaning carboys... period.

 

So that was basically a busy Saturday... but it wasn't that bad, excited for next weekend with the big Homebrew Share at Pi Bar with the SF Homebrewers Guild. I'll keep you posted. Have a great week everybody!!!