Regular Beer

(This is a post intended for participation in Session #49 "Regular Beer" in which people all over the internet share a beer or three and post about their thoughts on it.)

These days, when I want a regular beer, I think of my own homebrew "Ordinary Bitter". Mine is an attempt to make a beer I want to drink everyday and all night. The ordinary English bitter is a beer that has been somewhat left out of the hop-obsessed craft beer world. There are a few out there, but not many, and especially not many that are drinkable in the way the classic English bitters are.

More specifically, the bitters I write of are typically the basic bitters that is on tap at every pub in the motherland. I mean the beer that is pumped out of the cellar and often has a nice haze in the imperial pint you hold. It is a beer inoffensive enough to down in fit of thirst, but you tend to enjoy casually. It is the beer that you appreciate because it settles into the background of your pub visit. It is also the beer that most inspired me to start homebrewing.

I'm a big fan of beers from Fullers, Greene King, etc., but they aren't always readily available here in Tennessee, nor are they particularly affordable to consume on a daily basis. Besides that, with so far to travel to get to my glass, English bitters aren't the freshest beers available. So I decided to brew my own.

I actually first started with Special Bitters (and I try to keep a keg of that around, too). The problem I found was that after a glass or two of my Special Bitter, at around 7% ABV, the rest of my evening was pretty much shot. The solution was to go the route of an ordinary bitter and attempt to keep my edge. After a few years of brewing and experimentation, I have narrowed my recipe down pretty well, but I still tweak it here and there.

So back to the session and my regular beer. It is the beer I drink when I have 30 minutes to relax before I have somewhere to be. It is the beer I start with when I know I have a long night of drinking. It is the beer I drink when my drinking isn't about the beer. My ordinary bitter is a malty beer with some tasty but subdued hop flavor. It tends to pour with a big head but separates nicely and leaves the history of my imbibing with a healthy layered lacing down the glass, which is typically an imperial pint. My bitter tastes much like the smell of the wort boiling, and I like it that way. My regular beer is cheaper than Schlitz, smoother than Sam Adams, as clear as a Sierra Nevada, and tastier than all of them. Regular beer is better than craft beer when it's homebrew.

Acquisitions

Wow. It has been a while. Again.

The highlight of my brewing for the past few months has been acquisitions that allow me to brew more and serve more. So I can now brew 10 gallon batches and I have capacity for 6 kegs to be on tap at any given time.


Back in October, I guess it was, I acquired an additional full-size refrigerator for the basement. There was a fellow down in the Smyrna area that posted an ad on craigslist for a free kegerator fridge for whoever came to get it. So I went and came home with a huge fridge that had already been drilled for a faucet out the front. He had also built a wooden platform at the base of the fridge for kegs to sit level inside. After some cleaning out of the compressor and such, the fridge started working great and I haven't had any issues since. The shank he had installed on the front door was very long such that it actually interfered when i tried to fill the fridge with my corny kegs. (I have since acquired 4 more kegs, too) Last week, I sawed off the shank, though, so now I'm good to go. So now I can fit a 10 lb. co2 tank and 4 5-gal kegs in that fridge. It is currently at capacity, but I have two kegs of the Polo beer; so only one of those is tapped at a time.

In late October, I was the recipient of a pretty awesome gift from my lady friend. She gave me a new 15 gallon Bichmann brewpot. That thing is beautiful and functional, and it came with a thermometer, graduated sight glass, and a 3pc. stainless ball valve. Really nice stuff. So this new pot allows me the boil capacity to brew a 10 gallon batch. The other problem with such a big batch, though, was that it becomes dangerous and mostly impossible for me to move pots full of hot liquid around to use gravity for the sparge and such. So around the holiday I finally ponied up and purchased a pump to move hot liquids around. I have done one ten gallon batch (the hoppy pilsner "polo beer") and that worked out pretty well. But I am still needing to improve my process. So there is still some thinking going on.

All that being said, ten gallon batches do pose another problem. I like to drink my own beer and I do tend to save money over buying beer, but one of the main reasons I brew is because I enjoy it and I enjoy experimenting with styles and variations and such. Brewing ten gallons means more beer from a brew session, which means less brew sessions since I have limited beer storage capacity (and who wants to constantly clean and fill bottles?). So I do plan to brew 10 gallon batches still, but mostly when brewing with others where at the end of the brew session, I only keep 5 gallons for myself.

So anyway, that's what's been going on lately in my brewing world. I have a lot of beer at the house (including some Westvleteren 12 from our November trip to Belgium) that I am trying to wade through. But don't pity me, I'll get through it.

Brewing Update

I have been brewing, just not reporting. Currently I have three beers in the fermenters. Two are IPAs and one is an ordinary bitter. The first IPA is my standard recipe which I am exceptionally happy with. The second IPA was an experiment. The malt bill is my normal one (a combination of American 2-row, some Munich, and some special-B) but my hop profile is different. For that beer, I am using warrior and columbus hops, and dry-hopping with columbus. The inspiration for this hop profile came from the Flying Dog IPA, which in my opinion is a great IPA. My third batch, brewed last night, is my tried and true ordinary bitter recipe. I miss having that one on tap.

New to my brewing process is an aeration stone. When hooked up to a canister of oxygen, this should aerate the beer and hopefully aid in the attenuation of my fermentation. I haven't used it enough to see how it is working, but the current beers in the fermenters should provide me with good feedback because I have records from brewing these beers a few times before.

The brewing of my standard IPA brings me to another, more commercially oriented comment. My IPA was inspired by a clone recipe for the Avery IPA. I am not sure if my recipe is much like Avery's, but I think it tastes pretty close and I am a big fan of both. Or I was, anyway. It came to my attention recently that Avery has changed their IPA recipe. I noticed something was different when I saw the IPA with a new label and in the liquor store, where only high-alcohol beers are sold (here in TN). I finally decided to buy a sixer of the new formula to try, and I was disappointed. The new IPA is really good, don't get me wrong, but now it tastes much like many of the other American IPAs on the market. The hop profile is a little brighter and, I would say, a little stronger. The alcohol difference is pretty negligible in my opinion (this isn't an imperial IPA), but it is now missing the signature maltiness that was evident in the old Avery IPA. I am an Avery believer, but I don't see myself buying this IPA. I don't agree with their decision to change the recipe. (To me it is like the experiment Coke did back in the 80s, after which they came out with Coke classic. I would buy an Avery IPA Classic.)

In other news, I have decided to retire one of my own recipes because, frankly, I just don't enjoy it as much as other beers I brew. I have limited brew capacity and limited consumption capacity (if i want to keep my girlish figure), so the Oatmeal Mild is going away.

Last week I was in Chattanooga to run in a race, and the night before the event, my special lady and I had some time to spend in the city, so we tracked down the Terminal Brewery. First off, I should mention that the Terminal is at the end of the free electric shuttle line (at the terminal) so if you are staying anywhere in town, you have free transportation to the brewery and can drink to your heart's content without worrying about driving. Now, as far as the beer they serve, it was nothing short of phenomenal. Their IPA was so good that I opted for a second in lieu of trying another beer. (It was primarily hopped with Magnum hops - possibly my favorite hop variety.) They also had a great German Alt which the lady has now requested that I attempt to brew at home. Looks like the Terminal Brewery has inspired 2 beers for me to brew in the future. Great stuff.

That's all for now, and that's enough. Cheers.

Beer in Tennessee

Rumor has it that Boulevard Brewing Company is pulling all of its beers out of TN because of lack of sales. This is interesting, but not really surprising, and a little disappointing.

Ever since the local distributors decided to end exclusive distribution of the big boys and started snatching up craft beer accounts, there has been a glut of craft beers in Tennessee (specifically Nashville). What started with some new beers showing up, increasing variety and giving us access to many of the great west coast breweries, started to overwhelm the local beer buyers. It is nice to always see new beers on the shelf to choose from, but at some point some of the favorites started to go away. With the competition for shelf space and consumer's fridge space, most breweries started sending only one or two varieties. An example is the Avery ESB. A very good beer that I was buying for a while until it disappeared from the shelves. (I saw it again about a month ago at a local beer store, and I did buy a sixer of it.) That is when I first noticed the problem. Beers were coming in at such a high speed that beers were being pushed out just as fast. For many beers, that was just fine because a lot of craft beers really aren't that great, but there were also some casualties that shouldn't have gone away. And there are beers that never made it because of the crowded market (Schlafly No. 15, I am thinking of you).

So while the Boulevard announcement is not too surprising, it is a little disappointing that a brewery, and a quality long-standing one at that, is giving up on us. Admittedly, I haven't drank much Boulevard since it first came to town at the beginning of the big craft beer Tennessee movement, but I did enjoy what I drank.

I guess the moral of the story is to consistently buy the beer you like so it doesn't go away. Or just start homebrewing and don't worry about it.

Brewing has resumed

This past weekend I managed to pull my stuff together and jump back on the horse. I live in a new home, so my homebrew process needed figuring out. At the old brewery on West Linden, I brewed on the front porch, using the change in elevation to help with the process. At my new place, the setup is different. The optimal place to brew doesn't have stairs. What it does have, however, is better lighting, a roof from the elements, and much more space. None of the brewing process will need to take place in the kitchen (except the drinking part), and I am no longer limited to daytime, fair-weather brewing. (Truth be told, I have brewed in the dark and in the rain, but it was enough of a pain that I did try to avoid it.)

So when it came to designing my new brewery, the main question was whether to stick with the gravity method of fluid transfer or step up to using wort pumps and such. When it came down to it, the decision came to what I was willing to spend, and a wort pump was just not yet worth the price of admission. So gravity it is. So then it came to figuring out a structure which would allow versatility and ease of process. There are a few commercially available homebrew targeted brewing structures, but, again, they can be expensive. So I decided to build one.

What I came up with is a table that uses sawhorses as legs, and then another smaller table to provide a third level. So this is my new brewery:


With one batch brewed, I am feeling pretty good about it. The only part that is slightly tough is lifting the hot sparge water to the top level. But for 5-gallon batches, it is never too terribly much water. If I ever moved to larger batches, then I will more likely move to a different system anyway.

Cheers.

A Lull

I am having a bit of a pause in my brewing, but only for a month or so. I am moving in the next few days, which means a few different things as far as my brewing is concerned. 1. My brewing has paused, as I have mentioned, in order to move more easily (brewing will probably resume in a week or so). 2. West L.A.B. will be no more (I won't be living on West Linden Ave. anymore) . 3. I hope to increase my production some. I will have much more space for both brewing and storage. I am working on upping my refrigeration capacity, so if anyone has a source for good, cheap refrigeration appliances, let me know.

Earlier this month, I did a friend a favor and brewed two batches of beer for his grand opening party. I brewed a Chocolate Milk Stout (using chocolate nubs from Scott at the Olive and Sinclair Chocolate Company ) and my typical Special Bitter. The bitter tasted about like usual, but maybe a little lighter. I think that was due to using a different source for my Maris Otter base malt. The Chocolate Milk Stout was pretty phenomenal, if I do say so myself. I look forward to brewing that one again, hopefully sooner than later.

With that event taking up my kegs, I am pretty light on beer right now. I did brew a standard bitter before the party, though, so I wouldn't be completely dry. It is based off of my Special Bitter, but is attempt at a more session-able beer. I like the results, but I am not satisfied with them. That recipe will require some tweaking. So that's what I currently have.

On another note, one of the beer blogs I read regularly is by a fellow named Ron Pattinson, who is a beer historian and tends to write alot about beer history and old beer recipes and beer numbers and many things that are often dry, but he tends to give an entertaining slant. Ron also posts (usually-) weekly recipes from the early days of European (and mainly British) brewing. There also happens to be a brewery up in Massachusetts called Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. These two came together to re-produce (as in produce again) a beer based back in 1832.

The beer is called a Mild Ale. It is not a dark-colored mild that most people know a mild to be today. This is a caramel/amber colored beer that really tastes more like an imperial ESB (if that makes any sense ). Well, I managed to get a hold of a couple of bottles of the beer through a friend coming to Nashville from Mass. a few weeks ago. Tonight I finally opened the first of the two, and it was very interesting and quite enjoyable. I plan to hold onto the other bottle for a while to see what aging does to it. I also intend to track down a homebrew-quantity version of the recipe and attempt brewing it myself. Well worth learning some brewing tips from the early 19th century.

Cheers!

Teaser and Short Update

This is a teaser for one of my next beers. I'm brewing for a friend's bike shop grand opening. Should be a good beer.

In the last month or so, I have brewed a dry-hopped pale ale and I have kegged my backyard bock. The pale ale is very good and the bock is decent. It is a little sweet, but I can definitely taste the difference made by lager yeast instead of ale yeast. I am glad that I don't require cold weather to make my ales.

Cheers.