Archives for April 2014

Plant a Beer Garden (II: Barley)

April 7, 2014 by 3 Comments
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Me, with my “scythe” (a big butcher knife), harvesting barley in April 2009. (Where I live, it gets planted in November, and harvested the next Spring.)

If you live in the northern half of the United States or the southern part of Canada — or in the corresponding latitudes elsewhere in either hemisphere — it’s time to think about planting barley. In these cooler regions, barley is planted in the spring. It is typically harvested between 100 and 130 days later. In warmer regions, it is planted in the fall as a winter barley.

Brewers can plant barley for decoration, or they can harvest it and use the resulting grain in their beer. You can use unmalted barley as an adjunct, especially for farmhouse-style ales, or you can try your hand at malting the barley.

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Beer News (March 31–April 6)

April 7, 2014 by Leave a Comment

 

BWJlogoAlright, let’s start with a listicle. Here’s somebody’s idea for beers to recommend to wine snobs. And, here’s a set of maps showing the geography of the most popular beers in the US.

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India Pale Lager

April 4, 2014 by 5 Comments

This is another post in our series on IPA variants. (See the related article links at the bottom of the page for more IPA variants.)

 

DSCN0144In the beginning, there was IPA. And craft beer drinkers decided that it was good. British IPA inspired American IPA, and from there the idea of making a big, hoppy version of almost every type of ale followed. Having nearly exhausted the pool of ale styles that could be hybridized with IPAs, brewers next decided to give lagers the “uphopped” treatment.

India pale lagers (or IPLs) differ from IPAs in one key respect — fermentation. IPAs are fermented with a clean ale strain, at ale fermentation temperatures (often 68–72 °F/20–22 °C). In contrast, IPLs are fermented with a lager yeast strain at lager fermentation temperatures (usually 50–55 °F/10–13 °C). To brew an IPL, a brewer could make adjustments to his grain bill and hop additions, or he could simply ferment his usual IPA wort with lager yeast.

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All-Grain Brew Day Walkthrough (VII: The Boil)

April 3, 2014 by 4 Comments

This is the seventh installment in the All-Grain Brew Day Walkthrough, which started with a post on strike water preparation. 

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Wort boiling in a Sanke keg converted to a homebrew kettle.

In one way, the boil is a lot like the mash. Quite a lot is going on, but the brewer isn’t actively doing much.

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Judging at the Austin NHC Regional

April 2, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Judging

A flight of Spice/Herb/Vegetable beers at the Austin first-round judging.

This past weekend, the Austin ZEALOTS homebrew club hosted one of the regional first-round judgings for the National Homebrew Contest. The local contest coordinator was Neil Spake and the judging was held at Rogness Brewing Company. Judging sessions were scheduled for Friday, Saturday and Sunday — and one additional judging session was added on Monday night to determine the winners in 4 categories. By Monday night around 9 PM, all the judging was done.

I went to the Monday session and judged Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer (BJCP Category 21) and Smoke-Flavored and Wood-Aged Beer (BJCP Category 22). Spice/Herb/Vegetable, sometimes called the SHiVs, is frequently a very uneven category. Occasionally, you find a beer with a spark of brilliance. More often, you encounter a series of beers that are absolute train wrecks. I actually like this category, because you never know what you’ll encounter. [For what it’s worth, as someone who has judged this category a lot, I have three recommendations brewers entering beer in category 21. 1.) Stick to one spice or flavoring unless you know the different flavors work well together and be detected individually. 2.) Don’t overdo the level of the spicing or flavoring. 3.) Taste your beer before you enter it. If one of the spices or flavorings is not easy to detect, leave that information out of your description (or give a vague description, like “wee heavy with spice blend”).]

This year, there were some very good beers in the mix. Beers for which the base beer was well done, and the spicing worked well with it. Of course, I was judging the mini-BOS, so the worst beers had already been weeded out. The smoked and wood-aged beers were good, but less impressive.

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Twisted Spire Alt (Surefire Extract Recipe)

April 2, 2014 by 4 Comments
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A copper-colored, moderate-bodied, bitter, malty ale.

This is the second beer in the second series of Surefire Extract Beers. The first series presented five homebrew recipes that played to the strengths of malt extract and stovetop brewing methods. The second series continues this idea, and started with an English best bitter.

Altbiers are brown ales (and sometimes lagers), often with a fair amount of bitterness. Outside of Düsseldorf, Germany, most have a hint of sweetness and a moderate level of bitterness. Düsseldorf altbiers tend to be a bit drier and more bitter. Twisted Spire Alt is an altbier made in the Düsseldorf style — plenty of hop bitterness, backed up by Munich malt. (This recipe uses both light and dark Munich malt, and a tiny amount of aromatic or melanoidin malt.)

The key to brewing this beer well is to ferment on the cool side of the ale fermentation range (65 °F/18 °C), and cold-condition the beer for a few weeks before serving. If you want your alt to be as traditional as possible, use Spalt hops instead of the Tettnanger hops specified in the recipe. (However, if you’ve never tasted Spalt hops before, be aware that they have a unique flavor that’s not to everyone’s liking.) Likewise, if you want to stick closer to tradition, cut the amounts of late hops and dry hops in half and lower the carbonation a bit.

The name Twisted Spire refers to the spire on the St. Lambertus church in Düsseldorf, which is twisted. Legend has it that, around the time the spire was finished, a virgin was married in the church. As she was leaving the wedding ceremony, the spire turned around to get a better view of her, since that sort of thing didn’t happen often. When another virgin gets married there, the spire will untwist itself. Locals have been waiting for this to happen since 1384. (Interestingly, many of the twisted spires in Europe have similar legends attached to them.) In the case of St. Lambertus, the truth is a bit more prosaic — architects think the carpenters used untreated wood to build the spire and it twisted when the wood absorbed moisture.)

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All-Grain Brew Day Walkthrough (VI: Lautering)

April 1, 2014 by 2 Comments
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Wort being drained from the lauter tun to the kettle.

This is the sixth installment in the All-Grain Brew Day Walkthrough, which started with a post on strike water preparation. 

 

Once you have mashed out and recirculated your wort, it’s time to start lautering. There are several questions you should answer before you reach the stage. For starters, how much wort are you going to collect? If you are continuously sparging, how quickly are you going to collect wort? What temperature should your sparge water be? And finally, are there any other steps you should be performing while collecting the wort?

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