Patiently Awaiting My Beer

Our third and fourth batches of brew are now in bottles (an Imperial Stout & a Nut Brown Ale) and I'm anxiously awaiting the day they will be ready for drinkin'. I'm super excited for the Nut Brown Ale, my selection, which I hope turns out tasty because I really want to do some experimenting with it -- think Hazelnut Nut Brown Ale, Vanilla Nut Brown Ale, Cinnamon Twist Nut Brown Ale, Raspberry Nut Brown Ale, Chocolate Nut Brown Ale... oh the possibilities are endless!


Here's a little preview of our work from our taste test pre-bottling:

Meanwhile, I just read a great article in The Atlantic about shattering beer's glass ceiling. Yay, girlpower! << Read it!

I'm really excited to start planning brew batches 5 & 6. I'm thinking something spring-like and summery. Perhaps a honey blonde. Mmmmmm.

In Which We Brew

I waited years for this day. I dreamed about it while I lived in my little studio apartment. I thought and I planned and I imagined what it would be like. And now that I have a big kitchen, the day finally arrived -- HOMEBREW DAY!

Instead of going into elaborate detail about the brewing process (*snore*) I’ll give you a little pictoral showcase of our handiwork.

Our first brew was called Liquid Desert. We got the recipe from the Homebrew Emporium in Cambridge, where we also picked up all the ingredients and supplies. (You can find the recipe through the Homebrew Emporium’s website here: https://www.beerbrew.com/downloads/recipes/LiquidDessert.pdf) No brewing kit for us on our first time! We picked out the grains, malts, hops, and followed the directions (mostly). We erred a bit in our first batch, but errors are to be expected! We learned from it and have moved on. But even with errors, Batch 1 turned out delicious.

Since that fateful day, we’ve brewed 3 more batches of beer. First we did a second attempt at Liquid Desert (which we recently bottled), then an Imperial Stout (currently in the first fermenter), and then a Nut Brown Ale (in its first fermenter). I’m very excited about the Nut Brown Ale... I want to play around with the recipe in the future, adding some things like Hazelnut, Vanilla, Cocoa, Raspberry, and the like. Mmmmmm Hazelnut Vanilla Nut Brown.

The one thing I've learned so far about brewing is that you have to be patient, there is a LOT of waiting! But, hey, I've been waiting years to start brewing so what's a few more weeks? :)

Without further ado, I bring you BEER:

Mashing up the Cocoa Beans

All crushed up.

We didn't have a big enough pot to handle all the ingredients (we've
since purchased one) so we had to brew two pots at once, thus had to
divide all ingredients in half. 

Steeping the grains.

Grains steeping.

Boiling hops in with the grains.

Of course, kitty wants to sit on the kitchen mat and watch what we're doing.

After the hour boil of the hops cooling the pot down in the sink.

More lessons learned: buy a strainer so you don't have to reuse
the grain sack to try to strain as you pour into the fermenter.

Straining/pouring into the first fermenter.

After two weeks of sitting in the closet it's time to transfer over to the
secondary fermenter!

Utoh, here's where things went wrong. We SHOULD HAVE added this
malt to the original boil. We wonder if we can just toss it now. Hmmm...

It worked. (Sort of.) It was very clumpy. But it didn't ruin our beer
like we thought it might.

Taste test!

Wow, sludge.

Lots more sludge.

Secondary fermenter. A few more weeks
in the closet.

Siphoning so we can bottle.

Getting ready to bottle.

Putting on the caps.

FINAL STEP: Wait (again) then drink & enjoy! Cheers!

Beer Me

There’s nothing better than a warm Friday morning to complement your re-cap of last week’s American Craft Beer Fest. I attended the first session of the fest last Friday at Boston’s World Trade Center. I’m a beer festival veteran so I came bright eyed and bushy tailed with a big prosciutto sandwich in my tummy -- So I was ready for action.

I love beer festivals. I love trying new things and I love variety. While I tend to buy good beers/craft beers at the store and out at bars and restaurants, beer fests give me the extra opportunity to try out different beers that might be out of my normal ordering or purchasing range. Not to mention, the fest is a great opportunity for breweries to showcase beers that you can’t even get anywhere else! If you’ve never been to a beer fest the run a bit like this:

• You pay $40
• You get a little plastic or glass sample cup 
• There are 100+ breweries with booths stationed in the venue handing out samples of their beers 
• A brewery could offer their best sellers, a few new products, and then some stuff that isn’t available anywhere else 
• Many of these beers are strong and high in alcohol 
• You go round and round to booths for 3 hours and the breweries pour you 2-3 ounce samples of their offerings 
• You leave feeling good

Sidenote: I’m very excited to announce that I just signed the lease for a new 2-bedroom apartment starting in September and it has a wonderfully fabulous kitchen where I am going to try my hand at…. wait for it… brewing my very own beer!

Enough with the introduction and digressions… what I’m really here to do is give you a the list of what I tried out last week. Amazingly enough I was actually able to completely document my beer journey and appropriately check off the beers I tasted at the festival guide. (Trust me, it’s a feat worthy of applause.) I don’t deserve all of the credit though, the wonderful American Craft Beer Fest program guide listed each brewery in attendance, their beers available, and the alcohol percent so that I could share them with you here.

What I tried. Those in bold I found particularly delicious:

21st Amendment Brewery (CA) : Hell or High Watermelon (Wheat Beer/4.9%)

Alagash Brewing Company (ME) : Allagash Victor (Belgian Strong Ale w/grapes and yeast wine/9%)

Atwater Block Brewery (MI) : Vanilla Java Porter (6%)

Berkshire Brewing Co. (MA) : Nitro Coffee Porter (6.2%)

Boston Beer Co. (MA) : Kosmic Mother Funk (Belgian Sour/7%)

Brooklyn Brewery (NY) : Dark Matter (Whiskey Barrel-aged Strong Brown Ale/7.5%)

Brooklyn Brewery (NY) : Local 1 (Belgian Strong Golden Ale/9%)

Cape Cod Beer (MA) : Cape Code Beach Blonder Ale (American Golden Ale/4.8%)

Cody Brewing Co. (MA) : Wheeler Oatmeal Brown (American Brown Ale/5.7%)

Defiant Brewing Co. (NJ) : Defiant Little Thumper (Ale/5.2%)

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery (DE) : World Wide Stout (Imperial Stout/18%)

Earth Bread + Brewery (PA) : ABA (American Brown Ale/6.2%)

Earth Bread + Brewery (PA) : Donut Hole (Belgian Dark)

Flying Goose Brewpub & Grille (NH) : Pilsner

Flying Goose Brewpub & Grille (NH) : Red

Franklin’s Restaurant, Brewery & General Store (MD) : Hop Zen (American Strong Ale/7.2%)

Franklin’s Restaurant, Brewery & General Store (MD) : Smoked Porter (6.5%)

Goose Island (IL) : Coffee Stout (Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Coffee Stout/13%) -- This was my personal favorite of what I tried at the festival

Harpoon Brewery (MA) : Leviathan Big Bohemian Pilsner (Imperial Pilsner/9%)

Harpoon Brewery (MA) : Belgian Cask

Harpoon Brewery (MA) : 100 Barrel Series Pott’s Landbier (Landbier Lager/4.8%)

Kennebec River Brewing (ME) : Summer Ale (American Pale Ale/5.8%)

Kennebec River Brewing (ME ) : Penobscot Porter (English Stout/5.8%)

Mayflower Brewing Co. (MA) : Mayflower Pale Ale (English Pale Ale/5%)

McNeill’s Brewery (VT) : Warlord DIPA (Double IPA/8.5%)

McNeill’s Brewery (VT) : McNeill’s ESB (5.8%)

Narragansett Brewing Co. (RI) : Naragansett Bock (7%)

New England Brewing Co. (CT) : Alpha Weisen

Old Burnside Brewing Co. (CT) : Ten Penny Reserve Ale (Wee Heavy/9.2%)

OPA-OPA Steakhouse & Brewery (MA) : Opa Opa Watermelon Ale

OPA-OPA Steakhouse & Brewery (MA) : Blueberry

Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery (MA) : Cinco de Mayo (Jalepeno Lager/5%)

Sebago Brewing Co. (ME) : Frye’s Leap IPA (American IPA/6.2%)

Sebago Brewing Co. (ME) : Hefeweizen (4.2%)

Schmaltz Brewing Co. (CA) : He’Brew Rejewvenator ’10 (Dubbel/Dopplebock with Concord Grapes/8.2%)

Stone Brewing Co. (CA) : Stone 14th Anniversary Imperial IPA

Stoudts Brewing Co. (PA) : Karnival Kolsch (4.8%)

Stoudts Brewing Co. (PA) : Heffer-in-Wheat (Hefeweizen/5%)

The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery (NC) : Duck-Rabbit Barrel-aged Milk Stout (5.7%)

Trinity Beer Co. (RI) : Belgian Strawberry (11%)

Trinity Beer Co. (RI) : Russian Imperial Stout (Oak-aged Imperial Stout/9%)

Weyerbacher Brewing Co. (PA) : Fifteen (Smoked Imperial Stout/10.8%)

It seems like I tried so much but really what I tasted was just the tip of the iceberg as far as what was being offered. I was able to taste stuff from only about half of the breweries in attendance and try 1 out of 5 things they had to offer.

But, there’s always next year! Cheers!