Tinctures and Extracts

Every so often I'll have a beer that blows me away with some flavor I didn't think was possible in a beer.  I'm talking about beers like Pumking, No Crusts, Cucumber Saison that are focused on a flavor and absolutely nail it on the head.  I'm drinking a liquid PB&J when I'm having No Crusts and sipping pureed cucumber when having CCB's Cuc Saison.  I've wondered how they put these flavors in their beers because I've tried a PB&J beer that didn't work and I've tried fruits in beers which have only had minimal impacts.

After wondering about it for a little while, I wondered if these guys are using extracts to get these flavors.  I recently found out that CCB uses an all natural cucumber extract type of addition to get their cucumber flavor that's obtained by distilling fresh fruit in a proprietary process.  I can't do that, nor can I buy the same product because it is only available at a commercial level so I need to find another alternative.  I stumbled on a few thread online that talked about tinctures and extracts that were successful by combining the ingredients with some cheap vodka for extended periods.  The ethanol in the vodka was able to extract these good flavors out and you have a concentrated extract.  I'm going to try a few different tinctures and see what happens.

I'm thinking that if I add a little bit of some different ingredients in a sanitized beer bottle and then add some vodka and cap it, I should have a nice container that I can throw in a cabined and forget about.

Extracts:

Coconut
Vanilla beans
Fruit zest (lime, lemon or orange)
Coffee (different roasts?)
Berries (would raspberries concentrate in the vodka solution?)
Hops (I have a ton of citra available, why not throw it in a bottle)

I'll get these set up when I begin brewing again and maybe try some stout variations out or add to an IPA to get fresh hop flavor or citrus zests to a berliner!

Future Brews - Berliner Weisse and Treatments

I haven't been brewing and updating lately because I recently graduated and tried to tone down the brewing and drink all of my homebrew in anticipation of a job/move.  As I continue to look for jobs, I still don't want to brew in case something pops up and as a result, I have tons of ideas, but nothing to do with them!  I figured I'd outline plans that I want to do when I can start brewing again to get them out of my head and get a gameplan going for when I can brew again.

Firstly, I want to make more berliner weisse.  My past batches have been really delicious (Pineapple scored a 43) so I want to try new blends and drink more berliners!

Before I get into some blends I think I can do, I also want to try a new method.  I have previously soured my wort in a bucket at room temp or by keeping it as hot as possible.  Although I seem to have a great method, I want to be a little more scientific about because I have a heating pad but mainly because I want a consistent reproducible product.  I found this page and was then reading Wild Brews by Jeff Sparrow where I found the info confirmed.  Basically what this process does is keep enterobacteria (baby diaper, nasty smells/tastes, the bad parts about souring) at bay by souring at a pH that doesn't allow for enterobacteria growth (<4.3) but is still an enviroment for lactobacillus to thrive (>3.8).  I'll update with the process when I actually brew, but that's what's in the back of my head right now.

Now, on to the treatments:

Passionfruit (last time I used a little too much, trying to make more subtle)
Pineapple (one pineapple per gallon)
Berry (not sure on what type)
Key lime pie (coconut, vanilla, lime zest?)
Watermelon (need to determine a process for this, last time was a big failure)

I plan on using Goya frozen fruits for most of these, as last time I used them for passionfruit, they worked perfectly!  The pineapple will be fresh, because I did that last time.  I'm going to mess around with some tinctures and might use them, but that's a blog for another time.

Sour Brown Label

I bottled my sour brown today.  It has only been 6 months and the gravity is a little high for a sour, but I took that into account and bottled in thick walled belgian bottles and under carbed a little to take into account the brett working a little bit more on the complex sugars left.  It tastes pretty spectacular and I'm really happy with it.  Here's the bottling day pictures and a label that I designed which is based off the Goose Island sister beers.

Northern California Beer Trip

After beer camp, I took a few extra days to visit some breweries around Chico, CA.  It just happens that those breweries are some of the best in the country.  My trip started by going up, down and through some mountains for upwards of 3 hours.  Being a Florida guy, seeing snow capped peaks, going up hills, then winding down at 15 mph was insane.  My tiny Chevy Sonic could barely make it.  

I finally reached my first destination: Anderson Valley Brewing Company.  I started my trip early from Chico because I needed a full day to pace myself and be safe driving, so I was there right when they opened.  This being an off day, I was the only one there.  I got a sampler to maximize my tastes and ended up with El Steinber Dark Lager, Mowkeef Saison, Poleeko Gold Pale Ale, HIghway 128 Hoppy Pale, Mendo Mello, The Kimmie, The Yink and The Holy Gose and Featherleggy Bulrusher Sour Stout.  I've had some of their widely distributed beers before and thought they were good, solid beers.  At the tap room, I thought the same thing, they had solid beers, nothing I'd actively seek out.  Their taproom and brewery areas were big spaces, nothing unique.

Following Anderson Valley, I started the nearly hour long drive to Bear Republic Brewing.  This brewery is in an awesome area of California called Healdsburg which had cool shops, restaurants and then in the middle, the brewpub.  I barely got a seat at the bar and didn't want to get a flight due to the business so I chose a Tartare, a very sour Berliner Weisse aged in barrels, which has been a longtime want of mine.  I added a blue cheese burger with garlic fried (delicious) to my order, and a Greg's Amber Ale (hoppy amber) before I had to cut myself off.  I wish I could have stayed longer, I am a big fan of Bear Republic.

The cumulative effect of 4 straight days of drinking was getting to me, but I kept on going, grabbing a hotel room about an hour south of Bear Republic in Petulama, CA.  Guess what was a 10 minute walk from my hotel?  Lagunitas Brewing Company.  I was very excited for this brewery  not only because they make phenomenal and consistently delicious beers but because of their company ethos (oh and following Tony Magee on Twitter has given me hours of entertainment).  I walked into an awesome gift shop to snag some beers and goodies, then to their tap room/brewery space.  They had a massive outdoor area lit by Christmas lights and it was home to a ton of picnic tables.  It was loud, people were laughing and I was in heaven.  I snagged a chair at the bar and ordered what I had been waiting for, a Lagunitas Sucks.  It was delicious, insanely hoppy, and I was happy.  After that I got a sampler of Sumpin Weisse (Lil Sumpin Sumpin with wheat), Double Pale ale, Fusion 18 (triple IPA, wowow!) and what I thought was Cappuccino Stout.  It took me one sip to realize I hadn't gotten the regular Cappuccino Stout but a rye whiskey barrel aged version!  It was awesome.  I capped the night with another Sucks and stumbled home.

The next morning was the highlight of my trip and my visit to beer Mecca, Russian River Brewing Company.  A pilgrimage to this place should be on every beer lovers bucket list.  I got to the brewpub around 4 to have my heart sink, no Pliny the Elder!  They had a batch go wrong and had to dump it so they were out.  It was a bummer, but it really didn't matter because I have had it many times in San Diego.  I had to satisfy my urge for hops by having a Happy Hops, Aud Blonde, Row 2, Hill 56, Blind Pig, then a sampler of their entire belgian lineup including: Noble Experiment, Perdition, Damnation, Defenestration, Temptation, Consecration and Supplication.  I had a pizza and some Pliny bites (cheese bread with jalapenos) and I was in heaven.

It was an awesome trip which I would recommend to anyone else who's in the area.  Next trip, Grand Rapids or Colorado?  We'll see.

Sierra Nevada Beer Camp #118

I started by flying into Sacramento, renting a car and making the 1.5 hour journey up to Chico, CA for +Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.  Beer Camp #118.  I met up with a fellow camper and we didn't lose any time making our way to the brewery for our very first pints.  The brewery isn't exceptional on the outside and even the inside of the pub looks a little dated, but that's to be expected since they're one of the first craft breweries in the country.  I got a Best Bitter to start and followed that quickly with Draught Style Pale Ale and Knightro.  The other campers started trickling in and before we knew it, the whole group was there.  We ranged in age from 25ish to 40ish and had a lot of different backgrounds from science related to stay at home dads.

The original artwork for their flagship Pale Ale

Sierra Nevada has something they call the Big Room which is essentially a music hall and luckily they had a show that very night.  We streamed to the venue, got plates of a delicious buffet, pitchers of anything we could drink and listened to an interesting gypsy rock group.   Since the other group of video submission campers started a day early, this was our main day that we would overlap so they took us out to downtown Chico that night.  More pitchers and some in-bar tricycle racing later, the night was over.

The following morning was a little rough, but we were up early and at the brewery.  We met Steve Grossman who gave us a little slideshow about the history of the brewery and we watched everyone's video entries.  

Original brew kettle

Following that, we met with the pilot brewer and formulated our recipe (with some Celebration pints of course).  

Recipe formulation

After learning we couldn't use a saison yeast, we settled on an IPA aged on cedar.  The final recipe was 8%, light! dry and had simcoe, el dorado, Amarillo, citra and summit hops and would be dry hopped with a new wild hop called Neo Mexicanus.

With the recipe settled, we were off for a brewery tour.  It's hard to put into perspective how big the brewery is, but when you're standing looking up at the massive cylindrical bottom of a 800 barrel fermenter, it hits you.  

The bottom of an 800 BBL fermenter.  One of 49 at the brewery!

Then they tell you they have 49 of those and your mind kind of explodes.  We saw their small bottling line, hop freezer (a couple thousand square foot room filled floor to ceiling with bales of hops. Sierra Nevada prides itself on using only whole leaf hops and they have a MASSIVE amount of them in this freezer).  

Bales filled with whole leaf hops.  This is the best smelling room I've ever been in

Torpedoes.  Sierra Nevada's version of a hop back.

We got to try Torpedo straight out of the tanks and it was as hoppy as you can imagine.

Following the tour we had lunch in the pub and then were off to the Abbey of New Clairvaux.  This is the abbey that SN has paired up with to make their Ovila series.  In doing so they are raising money for the abbey to build a new chapel for the monks there.  

We got a history of the abbey, a tour and then a wine tasting from the small winery that is there.  

Wine tasting at the Abbey

Oh, we of course had cases of SN Pale Ale and Old Chico on the way to and from the abbey.  Once we got back we had some more beers in the pub, had dinner with the other beer camp and then got to bed way too late.

The restaurant and bar

The second full day of beer camp started with breakfast burritos and coffee in the pilot brewery while we learned about their system.  They then put us to work milling the grain for our batch, hunting down and weighing the hops, then we were up to the pilot brewery to actually brew.  

Pilot system.  "Only" 10 BBL

More hops!

Adding hops to our brew

Their system is so automated that we really didn't have much to do other  than dumping grains and dumping a few hops in, but I can still day I've brewed on a 10bbl system before.  After that we were down to the pub for lunch and beers.

Checking the clarity after brewing

The second half of our day started out with a bang.  The head pilot brewer led us on a tour of his fermenters which involved samples of everything they had.  This included some other beer camps (weizen bock, brown ale, ESB), beers from their upcoming mixed IPA pack and some beers from their Beer Camp Across America mixed 12 pack.  Those were very exciting because they happened to have Cigar City's beer (massively fruity pale ale, think fruit cocktail) and 3 Floyd's in the fermenters.

Following this we hopped on their one of a kind beer bike where we sipped SNPA while we biked around the rest of their brewery.  

This involved stops at their wastewater treatment facility and composter.  SN is extremely Eco friendly and almost every building they own is covered in solar panels.  We got to go on the ground of their bottling line.  It was absolutely amazing to see thousands of 2014 Bigfoots whiz zing by.  They do something like 200,000 bottles a day out of that facility.  The scope of it is hard to describe until you see it up close.  

Only a portion of their bottling facility

Spent hops from a torpedo.

We finished our tour with a stop by their R&D and QA labs.  We got to do a blind triangle text of their beers with some off flavors.  I of course failed miserably, my palate needs serious work, but most of the guys picked out a light struck beer out of the lineup.  Their R&D lab is essentially a flavor matching and off flavor deciphering lab.  They have put a ton of money into making sure their beers all taste the same and have probably the most extensive lab in craft beer.   Other breweries send samples to them to get texted.  They are extremely busy now making sure their Asheville is going to put out the exact product as this one.

That was the end of our tour and we topped off our Beer Camp experience by opening a 2011 9L Bigfoot.  A massive bottle and delicious beer was  the perfect way to end the trip. 

 I can't say enough about SN after this trip and I'm now a lifelong fan and will spread the love to everyone I meet.  They are a big brewery but haven't forgotten their roots and do the right things to their fans which I will be forever after this experience.

Be on the lookout for Beer Camp #118's IPA coming (hopefully) to a bar near you!

Dr. Homebrew

I was on The Brewing Network's new homebrew review show Dr. Homebrew a few weeks ago and the episode has posted!  I sent them the last bottles of my Pucker Up - Pineapple, a Pineapple Berliner Weisse.

Check it out here  via iTunes.  Click on the link posted 11/6/13 and have a listen!

I'm going to Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp!!!

It only took 3 years but I'm finally going to Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp!  I made a stop motion video this year and finally got the email to go to camp in early December.

I don't have much information right now, but I've read some account of people who have gone in the past and it seems like this is a hands-on, insider tour of their brewery.  Hop room, brewing system, bottling line, grounds, barrels, you name it, you get to see and taste it.  I'm going to take a ton of pictures (if they allow) and will post them all.

Oh yeah, you also get to brew a beer!!!  I'm not sure how that process works but it seems like you kind of flesh out a recipe over email before going and then you get to brew a small batch of it and have it distributed around the country.  I'll post any details about that process as it comes.  I'm so excited!