Tuesday 22 January 2013

24 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

An advent calendar is used to count down the days from December 1st to 24th. I recall as a child waking up early each of those days looking forward to punching open that day's spot on the calendar and enjoying the chocolate surprise. 24 pieces of chocolate in 24 days. 2-4 days. Something else also comes in a quantities of 24...

A group of homebrewers at the Southern Ontario Brewers club realized that a case of assorted beer is a natural advent calendar. So they put the call out to get 24 people to each brew a batch of beer, exchange it and everyone gets their own advent calendar. This past winter I had a tasty treat waiting for me at home after work each day from December 1st to 24th. This was an amazing event and we are already looking forward to participating next year.


In honour of this event I present: 24 Bottles of Beer (you know the tune, so please feel free to sing along).

Twenty-four bottles of beer on the wall, twenty-four bottles of beer.

Take one down, pass it around, twenty-three bottles of beer on the wall.

Twenty-three bottles of beer on the wall, twenty-three bottles of beer.

Take one down, pass it around, twenty-two bottles of beer on the wall.

Twenty-two bottles of beer on the wall, twenty-two bottles of beer.

Take one down, pass it around, twenty-one bottles of beer on the wall.



Twenty-one bottles of beer on the wall, twenty-one bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, twenty bottles of beer on the wall.

Nineteen bottles of beer on the wall, twenty bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, nineteen bottles of beer on the wall.

Nineteen bottles of beer on the wall, nineteen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, eighteen bottles of beer on the wall.

Eighteen bottles of beer on the wall, eighteen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, seventeen bottles of beer on the wall.

Seventeen bottles of beer on the wall, seventeen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, sixteen bottles of beer on the wall.

Sixteen bottles of beer on the wall, sixteen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, fifteen bottles of beer on the wall.

Fifteen bottles of beer on the wall, fifteen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, fourteen bottles of beer on the wall.

Fourteen bottles of beer on the wall, fourteen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, thirteen bottles of beer on the wall.

Thirteen bottles of beer on the wall, thirteen bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, twelve bottles of beer on the wall.

Twelve bottles of beer on the wall, twelve bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, eleven bottles of beer on the wall.

Eleven bottles of beer on the wall, eleven bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, ten bottles of beer on the wall.

Ten bottles of beer on the wall, ten bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, nine bottles of beer on the wall.

Nine bottles of beer on the wall, nine bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, eight bottles of beer on the wall.

Eight bottles of beer on the wall, eight bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, seven bottles of beer on the wall.

Seven bottles of beer on the wall, seven bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, six bottles of beer on the wall.

Six bottles of beer on the wall, six bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, five bottles of beer on the wall.

Five bottles of beer on the wall, five bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, four bottles of beer on the wall.

Four bottles of beer on the wall, four bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, three bottles of beer on the wall.

Three bottles of beer on the wall, three bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, two bottles of beer on the wall.

Two bottles of beer on the wall, two bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, one bottles of beer on the wall.

One bottles of beer on the wall, one bottles of beer.
Take one down, pass it around, no more bottles of beer on the wall.


Sunday 2 September 2012

Victory for the Great Lakes Brewery

This summer the Great Lakes Brewery released a few speciality beers to the LCBO in celebration of their 25th anniversary. One of them was a Belgian Saison, a beer that we tried at the Hart House Craft Beer Festival, enjoyed and consequently picked up from the LCBO when it was making it out to the stores.

Late in August Great Lakes tweeted this. Next trip to the LCBO we came across one of the prized bottles and picked it up. When it came time to tweet a picture of it, we decided to have a little bit of fun and here are the results:


"In this corner wearing the red shorts and the golden cap, a north american belgian and the reigning champion... the GLB 25th Anniversary SAAAAIIIIISSSSOOOONNNNN!!!"


"Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee"

"Ohh took him by surprise!! Look at that upper-cut!!"

"GLB follows it up with a right hook. That generic beer doesn't stand a chance"

"He is down for the count... 3... 2... 1..."

"And still undefeated, the champion is ... "

"GREAT LAKES BREWERY'S 25th ANNIVERSARY SAISION!!!!!"

Friday 31 August 2012

Peachy Keen Jellybean

Earlier this year at the start of spring something amazing was brewing at Cameron's Brewery. A recipe that had first started as an experimental beer for Bar Volo's 2011 IPA challenge was now being prepared for the mass consumer market. This particular fruity, citrusy, peppery delight was a unique twist on the mass of IPAs that are seem to be available just about everywhere you look. The secret to their success? A common yet underestimated grain: Rye. The RPA, as it was officially named, was a great awakening to a grain that previously seemed fit only in delicious sandwiches.

IPAs were becoming quite common and after bludgeoning our taste buds with hops, hops and more hops it was a time for change. Coincidentally this was around the time that Bellwoods Brewery was opening up in Toronto, a new brewery that didn't disclose much at first except for their amazing brand and markering campaign and left us dreaming about the giant red bell. The intrigue was too much to bear and soon after it opened we went down to the brew-pub to find out whats been in the tanks. Belgian style beers are their particular specialty and with Stella Artois being the only Belgian beer of prominence that we knew of, this brewery literally blew our minds. Saison, Farmhouse Ales, and other Belgian styles against the IPAs being all the rage these days a brewery like Bellwoods was destined for success.

Raspberry, a summer fruit, was our first attempt at fermentation last year. As you might already know this did not work out as expected. This year feeling wiser, and admittedly older, we attempted a raspberry wheat beer which turned out to be surprisingly successful. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" we said to ourselves. Yet .. repetition is boring. And the essence of summer  being something scared and special for us Canadians that will experience anywhere from seven to nine months of winter was something we wanted to encapsulate in a bottle to enjoy for a prolonged period of time. For variation and to be seasonally appropriate we turned to Ontario peaches that were readily available at the time. The sweet, smooth, silky taste of peaches were already being included in meals and snacks. Why not extend this experience?

When you combine three good things together one can only assume that the results will be three times as good! Thats just plain math working for us. So with that logic in mind we came up with our next recipe: our peach rye saison.

Cue the peaches.


We have decided that the recipes for our brew will now live on github. Please feel free to log issues, suggestions and comments against our Peach Rye Saison.






Wednesday 29 August 2012

The long road to TBW 2012: Homebrew Competition

We pull the plain dark brown bottle from the fridge, its only distinguishing mark is a decorated bottle cap. The anticipation rises as we cradle the bottle fondly for a moment to recall its short lifetime. It has been five weeks in the making -- three in the primary, one of which was spent dry-hopping, and two conditioning within the bottle. Now is the moment of truth. The silence is broken by the satisfying hiss as the cap is pried off and we let out our breath.

The homebrew competition as part of Toronto Beer Week (TBW) first came to our attention last year. At the time we had just started our adventures in brewing with our first mead. Realizing that mead takes about a year to complete, and according to one person we'll need to wait five years before it becomes really great, we switched our focus to beer. The faster turn around time meant more experimentation and more confidence with the process. Although we didn't have any brews for TBW 2011, we made a resolution to work on a recipe to enter the following year.

We carefully pour out the freshly opened beer into the official tasting glass. As we raise it to our nose to take the initial whiff we recall our last two brews. We wanted to experiment and deviate from our methodological process of crafting our recipe. Neither of those brews satisfied on first sampling. One showed improvement after a month of conditioning, the other initially described as tasting like "battery acid" degraded a bit with age. Our current beer was the redeemer, a competition worthy brew. These thoughts dance in our mind as we bring our nose to the glass. We flare our nostrils and inhale deeply to give ourselves a bold first impression.

A couple of other homebrew competitions deadlines passed us by during the summer. We were either unprepared with a brew or too embarrassed with our current beers. Luckily, our decision to return back to our original recipe coincided with the announcement of the TBW homebrew competition. Without debate we organized our next brew day to craft the redeemer. A week later we found ourselves brewing again to mark the first anniversary of our fermenting adventures. We were cutting things close, so although we had high hopes for our anniversary brew, it would not be ready by the competition cut off.

A familiar explosion of stale yeast enters our nose and our heart sinks. The redeemer fell far short of its anticipation and the competition deadline was a day away. Defeated we take a timid sip from the glass, with our hope rising with the glass to our lips. Maybe the taste will come through and the aroma will fade over time. The beer splashes onto our tongue where we let it linger for a brief moment, aware of the slight prickling of carbonation, before gulping it down. We smack our lips and click our tongues as we concentrate on the flavours and evaluate the beer. A bitter slurry of stale yeast. Our last thread of hope has been cut.

We got over our disappointment and resolved to enter the beer into the competition and hopefully the comment cards will help improve our brews. We already had one improvement in mind: change up the yeast. We have been unhappy with the yeast we were using from its lack-luster performance in the airlock to the yeasty taste of the resulting beer. We had a good experience using a different yeast for our anniversary brew and we resolve to upgrade from the bargain basement brands of yeast. Our prospects looked good.

Defeated we log into the homebrew competition to enter our entry's details. Something catches our eye on the website and it seems a bit off. We read it again, and then once more. Each time our heart beats a bit faster and our spirits are lifted. The submission deadline is extended and not by only a few days but by more than a full month. That is enough time to brew again. Our minds start racing to crunch the numbers -- a week to ferment, dry hopping for a week and a half, condition for ten days. We can make it! Time to order better yeast and schedule the next brew day. The Phoenix will rise and our anticipation begins to swell again.

We are going to have two entries in this year's TBW homebrew competition: our anniversary raspberry wheat and our current graffiti alley that has a couple more days of dry hopping before we bottle it later this week. We are happy with our raspberry and our hopes are high for the graffiti alley. Both of them could use improvement and we look forward to the judges' comment cards. Things are looking up and its almost time to start thinking about TBW 2013.

Sunday 8 July 2012

First Anniversary Raspberry Wheat

On a hot, sunny day a year ago we made our annual trip out of the city to the country side for some berry picking. This was late July, a bit late in the season for the delicious raspberries we sought. In the course of many hours of walking up and down rows of barren plants, under the intense stare of a radiant sun, we managed to pick a modest basketful of berries. Heading home exhausted we debated what our hard-earned berries should become: jam, eaten fresh or frozen for a rainy day. Or maybe become wine.

Another annual trip of ours is to head down to Niagra-on-the-lake for a weekend and tour the wineries. There is a wonderful, small winery there that we never miss because they specialize in an unusual type of wine. They have peach wines, blueberry wines, black and red currant wines, cherry wines, or any wine made out of a typical Ontario fruit. They have a raspberry wine that we love.

We had been talking about creating our own wine for a couple of months and had done a bit of research. We placed an order at a a brew-on-premise store and quizzed them to get a feel for what the operation involved. At the time this was still just idle dreaming. But now we had a basketful of raspberries and the dream seemed tangible. We just needed to take the plunge.

A week later, on another beautiful summer afternoon, we were on the streetcar heading to the east end of the city. We had tracked down a store that sold the necessary equipment for brewing at home, instead of the typical brew-on-premise places that dot the city. Eager with excitement we headed to an unfamiliar part of the city to pickup unfamiliar equipment from an unfamiliar type of store. We were giddy.

We arrived home with our supplies and started to get to work. We washed the raspberries, sterilized them and placed them in our fermenter with yeast. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened and we added more yeast. And waited. Nothing. We declared it a flop, but instead of giving up on our dreams we turned our focus towards mead-making, which we had researched while we waited for the wine to take off. Mead was our next batch, and along with our dreams, it took off with amazing success.

This past weekend we trekked out again to the country side to pick raspberries. We went earlier in the season and our crop was plentiful. To celebrate the first anniversary of our homebrewing experiment we present this raspberry wheat recipe using the freshly picked berries.

Ingredients
  • 15 Liters Toronto tap water
  • 1/2 pounds Caramel 40L malt 
  • 1.5 ounces Czech saaz hop
  • 4 pounds Briess Bavarian Wheat Dry Malt Extract (DME)
  •  4.5 pounds fresh Ontario raspberries
  • 1.5 teaspoons pectin enzyme
  • 1 Wyeast Belgian wheat Activator yeast package
Directions
  1. In a large stock pot bring 15 liters of Toronto tap water to 70 degrees Celsius.
  2. Activate the yeast package and set aside.
  3. While the water is coming up to temperature, measure out 1/2 pounds of Caramel 40L malt and crush it using a rolling pin. Place the crushed malt into a hop bag and set aside.
  4. Measure out two quantities of Czech saaz hops: 1oz and 0.5oz. Place the hops into a hop bag and set aside.
  5. Once the water has reached 70 degrees Celsius add the crush malt and steep for 30 minutes. Carefully monitor the temperature to keep it as close to 70 degrees as possible.
  6. While the malt is steeping, measure 1.5 pounds of raspberries. Wash them, place them into a hop bag and set them aside.
  7. After 30 minutes of steeping the malt, remove it from the pot and bring the wort to a boil.
  8. Once the wort has reach a boil add the hop bag with 1oz of the Czech saaz hops.
  9. After 30 minutes add the 4 pounds of DME and mix thoroughly to remove any clumps that form.
  10. After 15 minutes add  the hop bag with 0.5 oz of the Czech saaz hops.
  11. After 5 minutes add the hop bag with 1.5 pounds of raspberries. Also add 1.5 teaspoons of pectin enzyme.
  12. After 10 minutes remove the wort from the heat and place into a cold water bath. Cool the wort down to 30 degrees Celsius while vigorously mixing it to re-oxygenate.
  13. Once the wort has reach 30 degrres Celsius, take a hydrometer test and add it to the fermenter. Add the activated yeast package and let it ferment for 2 weeks.
  14. After 2 weeks, rack the beer onto 3 pounds of crushed raspberries and let it sit for a week.
Notes
  • Original Gravity: 1.050 
  • We encountered many warnings about not adding the raspberries to the boil. Aside from pectin haze we were unable to get a reason why this should be avoided. To avoid the pectin problem we added the enzymes along with the berries.
  • The 3 pounds of raspberries we will be racking onto have been temporarily placed in the freezer until the appropriate time.

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Back to first principles

Our last two batches have been fun experiments with mixing up a hop cocktail and adding some fruit rinds to our beers. They have largely been recipes created to fullfill the need to experiment and break out of the methodic progression of our Graffiti Pale Ale. Although they are still drinkable beers, we believe they have been a step backwards in the direction that we were headed. Now it is time to get back on course to perfecting the perfect Pale Ale.

However, all of this experimentation was not wasted because there were two things discovered that we would like to continue: dry hopping and increased carbonation. In the last few batches we dry hopped by adding the hops into the fermenter just before we added the yeast. This created a hoppy aroma to the final beer, however it might be better to add the hops a few weeks after the yeast because some of the aroma is lost during the initial vigorous fermentation. We also increased the amount of priming sugar before bottling and this has resulted in a much better head to the beer and a crisper taste.

Our next batch will evolve from the last Graffiti Pale Ale, but with the addition of dry hopping and increasing the carbonation. It is time to return to first principles, and change only a few variables, in our effort to create an amazing beer.

Ingredients
  • 1/2 oz Irish moss
  • 1/2 pounds of Caramel 40L malt
  • 4 pounds Briess golden light dry malt extract (DME)
  • 15 liters Toronto tap water
  • 4oz Cascade hop pellets
  • 6g Morgan's ale yeast
Directions
  1. Hydrate 1/2 oz of Irish moss in some water.
  2. In a large stock pot bring 15 liters of water to 70 degrees Celsius
  3. While the water is coming up to temperature measure out 1/2 pound of caramel malt. Place the malt into a ziplock bag and crush it using a rolling pin. Place the crushed grain into a hop bag and set aside.
  4. Measure out 3 quantities of Cascade hops: 1oz, 1oz and 1oz. Place the hops into a hop bag and set aside. Note that we will be re-using the hop bag used by the caramel malt for the final hop addition.
  5. Once the water has reach 70 degrees Celsius add the hop bag containing the caramel malt. Steep the grain for 30 minutes and watch the temperature to keep it as close to 70 degrees as possible.
  6. After steeping for 30 minutes remove the crushed caramel malt and place into a bowl. The malt will have absorbed some of the water that will drain into the bowl. This water can be added to the pot while it is boiling.
  7. Bring the water to a boil.
  8. Once the water has reached a boil add a hop bag with 1oz of Cascade hops to it.
  9. After 30 minutes add the 4 pounds of DME.
  10. After 15 minutes add a hop bag with 1 oz of Cascade hops.
  11. After 10 minutes add a hop bag with 1 oz of Cascade hops. Also add the 1/2oz of hydrated Irish moss.
  12. After 5 minutes remove the stock pot from the heat and place into a cold water bath. Cool the wort down to 25 degrees Celsius as fast as possible. While cooling mix the wort to add oxygen to the wort.
  13. Once the wort has reach 25 degrees Celsius pour it into the fermenter and add the yeast.
  14. Let the wort ferment for 2 weeks.
  15. After 2 weeks place a hop bag with 1 oz of hops. Let the beer dry hop for 1 week before bottling.
Notes:
  • Original Gravity: 1.046