National Homebrewers Conference 2015: Day 3
After a long trek for coffee the final day of the National Homebrewers Conference began. I managed to avoid a hangover from club night and made it to a 9 am seminar. Mission accomplished!
My 9 am seminar was Mastering the Art of Hop-Fu by Kelsey McNair. Hop-Fu is a an IPA that has won McNair multiple medals in the National Homebrew Competition, including a habanero version that won this year. He detailed the evolution of this beer and his process in heavy detail of what he does to make a batch of Hop-Fu and considerations for making it for competition. I enjoyed the talk and will be trying out some of his processes to see if they work with my brew system.
My next seminar was Introduction to Experimentation by Denny Conn and Drew Beechum. The talk was an extension from their recently published book Experimental Homebrewing. They focused on the importance to understand that most of the research that is done from homebrewing is not real science and should be treated as such. It is difficult to design true experiments that would stand up to scientific rigor and even more difficult to follow through and truly isolate the variable that you are testing. It is important to experiment to find what works best for you and the way you want to brew. They presented some experiments and methods that you could try for that purpose.
After the break for lunch I skipped the next seminar session and walked around the expo floor. It was nice being able to talk to vendors during a seminar because it was not as crowded and you could actually maneuver in the expo hall. I spent that time comparing some conicals that I really should not buy but will research anyway because stainless.
The final seminar I attended was Blurring the Style Guidelines: Brewing Great, Mixed-Style Beers by Peter Zien of Alesmith. Zien was quick to point out that this talk is not meant to condemn beer styles but rather to encourage brewers to take the guide portion of guidelines to heart and try to make your own path. One method he recommended was to look at the beer styles and find where they are in common and try to play around in the differences to create a new hybrid beer. I enjoyed his talk and it didn’t hurt that they were liberally pouring Alesmith Nut Brown and Speedway Stout.
The conference was capped off with the banquet and awards ceremony for the National Homebrew Competition. People started lining up for the banquet an hour and a half before the doors opened in hopes of getting their preferred table. About 40 minutes before the doors opened word started spreading that they would not be allowing homebrew to be poured in the banquet hall. This was due to California law that requires separation of homebrew and commercial serving areas, but really was not handled well by the AHA. What they didn’t say was that you could have homebrew, but you had to pour it outside and bring it in. However they did not make this announcement until after everyone either opened their beer in line or sent their beer back to their room.
The dinner was excellent and was served with Lagunitas beer. Beef short ribs highlighted the main course and were very tender and delicious. The Lagunitas beer provided with the dinner was good, but a bare minimum of beer was placed on the table for dinner. At tables of sixteen, eight twelve-ounce bottles were provided for each of the first three courses and the dessert course brought three bombers to be split by all sixteen people. Because of this there was no beer left in the room after the first hour and a half of what was supposed to be a four hour event. This is usually the time when people start sharing their homebrew and commercial beers they’ve brought but people were told they couldn’t have anything so the event was essentially dry. This is a beer conference and I consider this a failing on the AHA’s part to adapt to the California law. I don’t think they needed to provide enough beer for everyone to get plastered, but at least think ahead to make sure we can have something in our hands throughout the event.
Overall, the conference was a big success. The seminars were excellent and the nightly events were done well despite outdoor lighting issues and the banquet beer situation. This was my favorite conference since Seattle in 2012. I look forward to Baltimore next year.
National Homebrewers Conference 2015: Day 2
The weather seems to be getting worse in San Diego, but that’s not stopping anyone from enjoying the conference. Everyone seemed to recover from the welcome reception for another day of beer and brewing fun.
My first seminar of the day was Blending and Post-Fermentation Adjustments for the Homebrewer by Kyle Kohlmorgen. He comprehensively covered his methods for blending beers and altering the flavor profile of a beer. Kohlmorgen gave tips on getting started with blending and was quick to point out that these are methods to enhance your good beer not fix your bad beer. I really enjoyed this talk and recommend checking it out when released by the AHA.
The next seminar was my favorite for the day and possibly the conference so far. Jamil Zainasheff’s Managing Yeast: Better Fermentation at a Lower Cost talk was full of actionable information and he is a wealth of info regarding yeast. His presentation demystified the process of harvesting and repitching yeast. It is something I will likely start trying out this year.
I almost skipped the next session of seminars, but on a whim decided to go to Tasting Beyond the Scoresheet by Master Cicerone Rich Higgins. The description of the talk seemed a little out there and abstract, but I’m glad I went. It was a very interesting talk about deconstructing the way to experience a beer as a drinker and can build a beer as a brewer. He broke down the way we experience the aroma and the taste to create flavor and how we can use that to create the desired drinking experience as a brewer. I recommend this recording but you can get away with only listening to about the first two-thirds of the talk. Once they start pouring the beers to taste it will probably lose value without tasting along.
My final talk of the day was Send in the Clones: Sensory Analysis and Recipe Formulation Techniques for Homebrewers by beer writer Amahl Turczyn and guests Mitch Steele and Jamil Zainasheff. This seminar was a bit of a disappointment. The information was very general and quite a few times we were just told to read or listen to another source. At the start of the talk Turczyn pointed out that he was going to have an article in the next printing of Zymurgy magazine. I don’t know if he just stripped too much information out of the article for the presentation or maybe just didn’t organize the presentation well. If you are interested in the topic you may just want to read the article. To his credit, Turczyn did get really close on his best guess clone recipes (Stone IPA and Heretic Evil Twin) as confirmed by Steele and Zainasheff. So I think the knowledge is there and hopefully it comes out in the article. If you are interested in some of the techniques and processes used at Stone and Heretic there is some info from the two brewers sprinkled throughout and may be worth a listen.
As usual, club night did not disappoint. Southern California is host to some of the oldest and largest clubs like the Maltose Falcons and QUAFF. I truly believe I had more good beer at this years club night than previous conferences. The Arizona Society of Homebrewers had printed up their own beer-centric version of Cards Against Humanities cards and had a game running at their booth the whole time. My favorite beer of the night was a mild with coffee from the DOZE club. I wish I could remember the brewer, but, hey, its club night… There was beer involved.
National Homebrewers Conference 2015: Day 1
The National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego is underway. Although the weather has not been up to par for San Diego (where is the sun?), the conference is pretty much hitting on all cylinders. The Town and Country is a nice resort, however it is starting to show its age a bit. Getting around the grounds seems a little daunting at first, but we quickly learned our way around.
I attended two seminars on the first day. The first was on brewing with coffee. The seminar was put on by the folks over at Modern Times brewery and Michael Tonsmeire. They not only covered brewing with coffee, but also some information on home roasting. It was nice for me since I’ve started to dabble in home roasting as well and I picked up a couple tips there that I can put to use when I get back home. As for brewing with coffee, their recommendation was to dry-bean the finished beer with whole beans for 12-48 hours. The amount of coffee is what surprised me the most. They only recommended using 2-3 ounces per 5 gallons. I definitely recommend anyone who is interested to check out the recording of this seminar when the AHA posts it for members.
The second seminar was titled Brewing with Experimental Hops and was paneled by Jason Perrault of Perrault Farms, Karl Vanevenhoven of Yakima Chief-Hop Union and some guy named Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River. The talk centered around new hop HBC-438, code named Ron Mexico. Using this hop they gave information on hop breeding and what it takes for a new hop to come to market. The seminar ended with Vinnie Cilurzo talking about brewing single hop beers and how they do it at Russian River. If you are just looking for practical tips on brewing single hop beers then you can skip the first half of the recording when it is posted. At the end of the seminar they passed out packets of HBC-438. I’ve picked up a couple other hops so far and I think I will brew an IPA featuring NHC hops this summer.
The keynote address was delivered by Tomme Arthur of Port Brewing/Lost Abbey fame. Arthur focused on the passion of homebrewing and how it has shaped his life. He gives credit to homebrewing for everything good that has come to fruition for him over the past 20 years (including meeting his wife). Arthur also confessed that he had never brewed an all-grain batch of beer when he got his first professional brewing job. He urged us all to follow our homebrewing passion and take advantage of the opportunities it presents us.
The first day was capped off with the welcome reception. About 50 breweries came to pour their beer for the homebrewer masses. Many of the breweries were from the San Diego area. The event was held in the courtyard areas of the resort which was great for the first couple hours. At the end of the event it became hard to read what was available at the different breweries. Apparently the availability of lights was not thought through. It will be interesting to see what club night brings. A couple beer highlights from the night were a Prost, a Kolsch from Old Hangtown Beerworks, and Jackie Tar, a brown stout from MacLeod Ale Brewing Company.
Review: So You Want To Start a Brewery
So You Want To Start a Brewery? is a title that could very easily dissuade people from picking up this book. This is not a guide on how to open a brewery. The important piece on the front cover is the subtitle: The Lagunitas Story. That phrase should trigger any beer lover to pick up this book. The stories that filter through the beer scene show that Lagunitas’ journey is anything but orthodox.
Tony Magee tells the story not only of the brewery growing from a brewhouse built inside a storage container to two state of the art German brewhouses, but also that of his journey back home to Chicago to open a second brewplant. Lagunitas opened at a time when craft beer was still teaching consumers about good beer. Magee guided the brewery through the industry bubble in the 90s, the market collapse in 2007 and an attempted drug sting at the brewery.
For those looking for information on opening a brewery, Magee does offer insight into what it takes to survive. He discusses financing and cultivating relationships that can help you survive. Perhaps his biggest rule is the old adage “honesty is the best policy.” Although Magee would likely amend that to “timely honesty is the best policy.” Overall his outside the box thinking shows that there is more than one way to open and run a brewery.
While the focus of this book is not on brewing, Magee does give practical advice like not letting your dog lick the spoon you are about to use to stir in the yeast. Not surprisingly, he dismisses style guidelines. He states, “styles are for homebrewers and academics.” Magee taps his background in music to describe how he approaches the beer. Styles are a baseline for improvisation and it is more about having a beer that is complete and pulled together.
Bottom line: If you have even the smallest interest in beer you will enjoy So You Want To Start a Brewery: The Lagunitas Story. Magee’s writing style makes for an easy read. If you’ve ever read the label of a Lagunitas’ beer then you will enjoy reading his style. It is an engaging and entertaining read that gives a look into the tumultuous world of craft brewing.
When the Brewing Stars Align
It was three weeks in the making. A 10-gallon batch of vanilla stout, my wife’s favorite, had been pushed back and pushed back due to life getting in the way. Kids getting sick, unexpected out-of-town guests and otherwise shifting priorities conspired to push this brew day further on the calendar. Then it happened. My work schedule lined up to allow me to work a half day on Opening Day. My Cincinnati Reds were hosting the Pirates and I was able to get the broadcast at home. My wife agreed to take charge of the kids so I could squeeze in the brew (it didn’t hurt that I was brewing her beer). A glorious day of baseball and beer was ahead of me.
Everything finally lining up probably should have been a warning. Nothing ever works out that nicely. Problems started innocently enough. I had a small spot of yeast stuck on the side of my plastic fermenter. No big deal. I can’t use a brush since that would scratch the plastic, but I can spin a wet washcloth inside to wipe it off. This particular gunk was stubborn. It took more than 4 innings to get the speck completely off of the fermenter. But the Reds were up 2-0 at that point and my water was heated and ready for the mash.
I moved the water I needed for the mash into the mash tun at the next commercial break. A rain delay gave me the window I needed to crush my grain and get the mash started. After ensuring the HERMs system was working properly, I returned to the game to watch the Reds blow the lead then retake the lead in the 8th. A quick 9th inning secured the win for the Reds and I went to the garage for the remainder of the brew day. Or so I thought.
Near the end of the mash I heard my wife calling for me. I head back into the house and look out the window to see that our street has been barricaded by police and have their rifles trained on a neighbor’s house. I send the family back to the rear of the house in case something goes down and return to the garage. Because beer.
The rest of the mash and during the mash out I am keeping one eye on the situation out front and one eye on the brew system. I start the long sparge and continue to check on the street. Nothing seems to be happening. I get my hops together for the boil and settle in watching my pre-boil volume slowly rise.
The situation outside seems to have diffused. Police just milling around in the street and the barricade gradually disappears. We appear to be in the clear and my wife throws together a late dinner. The boil proceeds smoothly except for a minor boil-over. After quickly eating my dinner I start prepping my fermenters and setting up the hoses for the chiller. With 5 minutes left in the boil I see it. My hop screen and stainless elbow to reach the bottom of the boil kettle are sitting on a chair by the brew stand. F@*#!
With all of the distractions of the day I had forgotten to reassemble to interior of the boil kettle after doing a clean. Now I had 11 gallons of boiling wort and my normal routine of getting the wort chilled and in the fermenter can’t happen. I grab my immersion chiller and throw it into my sanitizer bucket. It is really only built for 5 gallon batches, but it will have to do. I rearranged my hoses to accommodate the immersion chiller and toss it into the boil kettle.
One problem down. Now I need to figure out how to get the wort out. The kettle plus wort is easily over 100 pounds so I won’t be lifting it to just pour it into the fermenters. That is usually my go-to method when something goes wrong. I ran into the house to get my auto-siphon and put that into the sanitizer bucket.
Now it was a waiting game for the immersion chiller to slowly cool the wort. It is only a 25 foot coil, so it is built for 5 gallons at most. Add to that that the out hose for the water is not very long so I had to direct it into a 5 gallon bucket. This kept me busy shuffling a couple 5 gallon buckets in and out of the garage. When the wort hit about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, I called it. I would take advantage of the cold night air and my fermentation fridge to cool it down the rest of the way.
I got the siphon started into the first fermenter and started cleaning the mash tun. It was a little nerve racking constantly looking up to the fermenter to make sure I stopped it in time and put the hose into the 2nd fermenter. I made the swap with no issues and went back to cleaning the mash tun. Of course I nearly miss the 2nd fermenter filling up but managed to stop it in time.
I cleaned out the boil kettle and got the hoses and pumps run clean with hot water. I did a quick check on the fermenters just by putting my hand on the side of it and was pleased with how it was cooling down. Now is when it hit me that I had not prepped the yeast. My Wyeast smack packs were still sitting in the fridge. Sigh. At this point what more could I expect. I smacked the yeast and called it a day with my brew. I’ll pitch in the morning to make sure everything was at the right temperature.
This brew day went sideways worse than when I’ve drank one too many during the day. I had only had one beer, but I was so distracted I was missing critical (and simple!) details throughout the day. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. Who really considers needing yeast to brew beer?
Oh and did I mention I woke up with a bad cold the next day?
How To: Adjust the Mill Gap of a Barley Crusher
Part of being an engineer is wanting as much data as possible to enter into spreadsheets that spawn into other spreadsheets. Another part is wanting to control as many variables as possible. The more you can control, the more repeatable your process is and the more you can understand what will happen when you change a variable. So after I made the jump to brewing all-grain it wasn’t long before I wanted my own mill.
After doing some research I bought a Barley Crusher. I’ve been very happy with the mill (especially once I stopped hand cranking), but now that I own this part of the process I also have to take ownership of the maintenance. The gap between the mill rollers can change over time. Maintaining the proper gap is crucial to consistent and efficient brewing.
The gap controls the crush of the grain. A small gap produces more grain flour which increases both the efficiency and the risk of a stuck sparge. A large gap leaves larger pieces of grain husk which helps with mash runoff but leaves more of the endosperm in tact which lowers efficiency. Therefore, brewers must find a balance to break the endosperm down enough while leaving the grain husk intact enough to efficiently lauter. A common mill gap setting for homebrewers is 0.038 inches. My system recirculates the mash and in order to make sure my mash doesn’t stick or channel I use a gap of 0.045 inches.
In order to measure and set a gap that small you will want to use a feeler gauge. A feeler gauge is made up of a number of metal blades of varying thickness. By isolating multiple blades you can create different thicknesses. To test my mill gap I put the 0.022 and 0.023 inch blades together. If you are unwilling to spend the $5 for a feeler gauge I’ve read you could use a credit card to get close to a 0.038 inch gap. However, keep in mind the mill rollers will scratch whatever you use to set the gap so use a the credit card that your significant other uses way too often.
When you are ready to set the gap it is very easy to adjust the position of the rollers for the Barley Crusher. First, loosen the two screws on the back of the mill with a phillips head screwdriver. It will only take about a quarter turn on these screws to free the rollers. After loosening the screws, just turn the knobs on either side of the mill to adjust each side of the roller gap.
Put the feeler gauge into the gap as you adjust the knobs. You want the feeler gauge to not be stuck in the mill, but also not be completely loose. The gauge should fit in the gap with some slight resistance, but you should not have to force it. Be sure to set the gap on each end of the rollers and the center. If you only set the gap on one side or in the middle, you could have an uneven gap with one side larger than the other. This would result in some grain passing through the mill relatively unscathed and some being pulverized to powder. The whole idea of setting the mill is to get a nice consistent crush.
Now your Barley Crusher is adjusted and set for your desired crush! My starting gravity issue disappeared on the brew day following my mill adjustment. It could have been complete coincidence, but it is one less thing I need to worry about. Setting the mill is another step in taking complete ownership of the brew day.
2015 AHA National Homebrewers Conference Registration Is Open
The 2015 National Homebrewers Conference registration has opened! This year’s conference is June 11-13 in beautiful San Diego, CA. Registration is available through February 24, 2015. If there are more applicants than spots there will be a random lottery system to pick attendees, so be sure to apply before the deadline! I imagine this year will be a popular destination and could sell out despite having more spots available than last year.
There are a couple requirements for every attendee of the conference:
- Must be a member of the American Homebrewers Association
- Must be 21 years of age
Since the conference came to Seattle in 2012, it has been a can’t miss event for me. The people, the seminars, the beer, and the people are wonderful. Did I mention you will meet great people who share the same passion for brewing beer as you? San Diego offers amazing breweries and is also home to White Labs tasting room where you can sample beers fermented with different yeast strains side-by-side.
You can register for the conference here. See you in San Diego!
The Value of a Dump
Yesterday I dumped 2 batches of finished beer. Over 7 gallons poured down the drain. I didn’t dump the beer because I felt a need to punish myself, but rather because the beer didn’t turn out how I wanted. Both batches had been neglected when I got busy at the end of the year and ended up oxidized with plenty of off flavors. Just because I brewed it doesn’t mean I need to force myself to drink it.
When a commercial brewery has to dump a batch of beer it usually means thousands of dollars in lost revenue. That is a much bigger penalty than a homebrewer. As a homebrewer we likely only have about $30-40 tied up in a batch. While I don’t want to suggest that $40 is a meaningless amount of money, there are benefits to dumping out beer.
The benefit I am most grateful for is I don’t have to drink bad beer. If I had not dumped the beer yesterday I would have been stuck drinking 3 cases worth of bad beer. That’s not why I started brewing my own beer! Of course I didn’t start brewing my own beer to make bad beer either.
The other big benefit is it allows us to quickly learn from our mistakes. Tasting the two beers gave me notes on what was wrong and now I can try to correct it next time around. More importantly, dumping these beers freed up resources for me to keep brewing. In my case I got a fermenter and keg back. Now I have a fermenter I can brew a beer into and a keg I can fill with another beer that is waiting.
Having to dump a beer is never fun, but if we take advantage of the opportunity to get better than it won’t be a complete waste. Have you ever needed to dump a beer?
Power of Buying in Bulk
With a growing family, taking advantage of bulk savings is important. We have a couple trips to Costco each month to load up on the things that we use most. The result is saving a lot of money each year. The same concept can be applied to homebrewing. This year I started buying malt and hops in bulk with the hopes that I can save money by buying the things I use most.
The first step doing a bulk buy is figuring out what you need. There are no savings in things that go bad before you use them. To figure out what I would need I looked through my recipes of what I brew most often and thought about what new things I wanted to try this year. Being realistic about what you need and will use is probably the hardest part. You don’t want to leave money on the table, but at the same time you don’t want to buy so much that it spoils before you can use it.
Once you have the hops and malt in hand you need to store and manage your new ingredients. Bulk hops at the homebrew level are sold in one pound packages. Hops should be kept in the freezer and sealed from air. I use a simple vacuum sealer to vacuum pack the hops and break them down into more manageable four ounce packages. Hops that are properly cared for can be kept for a year or more.
Malt is generally sold in fifty pound sacks. Malt should be stored in a low humidity environment around room temperature, preferably in an air-tight container. Currently I just seal a bag of malt, but if I have success with buying in bulk I will be looking for a better solution. Malt does not last as long as hops and should be used within six months. Because the malt does not last as long, buying anything other than base malt is unrealistic unless you brew A LOT. Most people won’t be able to go through fifty pounds of crystal 20 in 6 months. One option would be to buy bags of specialty malts with a group of other brewers. Then you can split the sack and everyone can save.
So is all this work worth the savings? Absolutely. My savings are upwards of 50% depending on the variety. This year I bought 15 pounds of hops and averaged $1 per ounce including shipping. Buying by the ounce I generally pay at least $2 per ounce. For my malt I am currently looking at prices of $0.70-$1 per pound for base malt. I generally pay about $1.50 per pound. With savings ranging from 30-50%, that is time well spent.
Buying in bulk won’t be for everyone. Especially for the malt you need to be brewing with relative consistency and at a certain volume. However, if you do brew at a higher rate, buying in bulk can be a big savings for this fun hobby.
Hop Profile: Calypso
Calypso hops are a very pleasant dual-use hop. Calypso is an American hop with an alpha acid range of 12-14%. The flavors for Calypso are pretty unique which could make substitution difficult.
Flavors/Aromas: apple, pear, citrus, lemon, tropical fruits, earthy tea
Possible Substitutions: Equinox, Belma, Galena