We've Moved!

This blog has been a lot of fun, but for the time being, we are moving on to our new project: http://www.foodandbrews.com/.

Food and Brews contains much of the same content, and will be regularly updated with new recipes, food thoughts, beer reviews, and homebrew experiences. Please visit, and let us know what you think!

Cheers,

Elizabeth & Alan

Beer Beginnings, Issue 3 - Blackberry Wheat Ale

by Alan

I'm trying to take my small amount of home brewing to something I can put more of a personal touch on, however, I still had a few more Mr. Beer Hopped malt extracts. It may not be the degree of difficulty of other brews, but my Mr. Beer experiences have ended up with some pretty good beer. The Blackberry Wheat experiment was fairly odd, and from the start I wasn’t sure what I was going to end up with. Here's how it went down:

• 1 Can 19.4 oz Mr. Beer Golden Wheat Malt Extract - 5-minute boil with 1 liter water
• 1 Can 19.4 oz Mr. Beer "Whispering Wheat Weizenbier" added after boil
• 1 Can 15 oz Oregon Fruit Blackberries - Pureed with a hand mixer added after boil
• 1 packet SafBrew WB-06 Dry Wheat Yeast

It was a very simple recipe to work with, and the fermentation was fun to watch. It was bubbling and foaming like crazy - it even bubbled out the top of the keg. It clogged-up the airlock a bit, which was slightly difficult for bottling, but it all worked out in the end.

I've tried a couple bottles now, and it’s certainly different. I'm surprised how much blackberry nose and flavor came out. I know there are a lot of purists out there that wouldn’t dare use fruit, but I'm just a beginner and I enjoy the odd experiment or two. This was my fourth batch of homebrew and I’m having a ton of fun!


Wife's Notes:
It turned out fruity, but held a good beer flavor. I will definitely drink this again - it will be great on a warm afternoon!

Beer Beginnings, Issue 2 - IPA

by Alan

I have been drinking more than my fair share of IPAs in the recent months, and I thought I'd try out brewing one on my own. This was my first outside of any Mr. Beer type brews, but I am still using the fun little keg fermenter for housing the brew. I did make one addition, getting a better spigot and a bottling wand so I could bottom fill my bottles. The new spigot locks, which really cut down on thumb fatigue for the bottling process.

So here we go...

Fermentables:

• 1 lb. Milled Crystal 60L grain
• 1 Lb. 11 oz Gold Malt Extract
• 1 Lb. 5  oz Amber Malt Extract

Hop Schedule
21 g Chinook      60 Min
 7 g Simcoe         30 Min
 4 g Cascade       30 Min
 7 g Simcoe         15 Min
 7 g Cascade       15 Min
 5 g Chinook         0 Min
 5 g Simcoe          0 Min
 5 g Cascade        0 Min
 7 g Simcoe          Dry Hop 7 days before bottling
 7 g Cascade        Dry Hop 7 days before bottling
 
Yeast:

• 1 Packet Safale US-05 Ale yeast
  

Having no clue what I was doing with steeping grains, I read as much as I could on beer blogs, forums, and in my Joy of home brewing book I got for Christmas from my Mother-in Law. The more I read the more options I seemed to run across for the proper way to steep grains. The best I could figure, I needed to keep the grain below about 170 degrees and keep that consistent for about 20 minutes. I put my crystal grains in a grain sack, and heated up about a liter and a half of water with the sack of grains in it. The water quickly turned a nice red color. After about twenty minutes I removed the grains and removed the pot from heat.

Meanwhile in another pot I boiled up about 1 liter of water for the Hop tea. I tossed in the 21g of Chinook hops and the whole thing quickly started to foam up. Luckily I didn’t boil anything over, but it got pretty close. I got that down to a rolling boil and popped open a beer. With the grains and hop tea going, I felt it was well deserved. What better beer for a IPA brewing day, Russian River Pliny the Elder. Easily one of my favorite brews. Right, back to work. I kept adding the hops to the boil at the schedule I had written out. While that was going I added the Amber Malt extract to the water with the steeped grain when I had about 20 minutes left of the hop tea boil. With about 10 minutes left on the hop tea, I added the Amber Extract to the extract boil. At the end of the hop boil, I removed it from heat and strained the hop tea into the extract boil to remove all the spent hops. I also added the 5g Chinook, 5g Simcoe, and 5g Cascade (this time in a hop sack so I didn’t gunk up my beer too much). Everything was way too hot so I put the lid on my wort in the pot and plunked the put into my sink that I had filled with cold water and ice to try and chill it down.

While that was cooling I filled the Mr. Beer keg to about 4 Liters with cold water, then poured in my slightly cooled wort (with hop sack). I poured more cold water to bring it up to its 8.5 liters and checked the temp. I was right around 75 degrees at the point and ready to pitch the yeast. I sprinkled in my Safale US-05 yeast, let it sit for about 5 minutes then stirred the hell out of it to aerate. Closed up the keg, put it in warm place, then I turned around the see the aftermath of the mess I had created. I was doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen for about an hour after.

7 days later, 7 days before bottling. I cracked open the keg to just drop in another hop sack of 7g Simcoe and 7g Cascade for some aroma. It already smelled like a bucket of grapefruits.

At the time of writing this, it has already been bottled, and I am about a week away from giving it a try. Who knows what it will actually be like, but I can’t wait to try it anyway. So far, aside from all the dishes, this is getting to be a fun hobby.

Beer Beginnings, Issue 1

by Alan

In the late 80's my Parents opened a small microbrewery and pub. I was around 10 years old at the time, and a brewery meant little to me. At around 13 I began working at the restaurant; cleaning it up before school and helping out with the brewing process in the summers. I was there for every part of the brewing process from grinding the grain to bottling the end product; but I wouldn’t say I actually learned how to brew beer. My parents retired and shut down the operation about 5 years ago; I was plenty old enough to drink beer by that time, but I had just barely started to enjoy it.

It was for my 29th Birthday that my wife got us tickets for the first Santa Barbara Beerfest. That event was my big push into really liking beer, although I don’t think I could look at beer for a day or two after that one. Since that point I’ve been trying out almost any big brewery beer, weird beer,  craft beer, or anything I can get my hands on.  The beer budget is probably a little out of control, but I drink much less beer than I used to with the 24 packs of cheap stuff each weekend (not that I don’t enjoy the cheap stuff beer on occasion). 

For my 31st birthday, my Mom and Dad gave me a Mr. Beer Homebrew kit - basically it's a little two-gallon rig to have some fun with. My Dad wasn’t too stoked with the mention of something that looked kinda hokey coming from the 100 barrel system he had just a few years back, but my mom bought it anyway. I made my first brew a couple days after I got it. After two weeks of hanging out in the plastic keg, it gets bottled with some sugar for bottle carbonating, a day or two in the fridge and viola. I wasn’t wild about the flavor of that first bottle, it was kinda fruity not much backbone, and a cider-ish carbonation. Each bottle after in the next couple weeks just got better and better, and all I could think about was brewing more. Then, what to do after those first couple cans of Mr. Beer pre-mixed extracts were done...?

For Christmas, my awesome wife gave me three more cans of the basic Mr. Beer cans of malted hop, but I wanted to step it up a notch. The wife seemed kinda disappointed at the prospect of not just using what she gave me alone, but after much badgering either she just gave up, or I got through with my argument of doing all malt beer with the gift. I bought some quality yeast, hop pellets, and base malt extracts to do some homebrew. Yesterday was finally the day - I had got my box of goodies from northern brewer the day before and planned my kit for the first brew. 

• 1 Can Mr. Beer Canadian Draft
• 19oz Northern Brewer Gold Extract
• good water (don’t be shitty)
• 12gm Sterling Hop pellets
• ~6 Gm Safbrew T-58 yeast

Since I'm not doing any grain boiling or hop schedules, the actual brewing took about 5 minutes. I spent the majority of the time sterilizing the equipment before and cleaning after. Although I expect to spend much more time enjoying the end result, its about a month wait.

I have plans for another three brews, two with Mr. Beer extracts as the base. It's a far cry from brewing with my Dad's system, but the smells of the process really take me back. I'm remembering a lot more about the process I used to follow as a kid, and I'm having a ton of fun actually learning what each step means and reaping the benefits.

Have you ever home brewed? If so, do you have any tips or advice for a new-brewer?