This beer was purchased around New Years Eve.
I did manage to drink it in the past month. I have to point out that, while it wasn't a bad tripel, I was shocked that it had a gasoline taste to it. It wasn't a big put off but gasoline in general isn't something I desire in my mouth. I guess I have to say otherwise it was fine, although I probably wouldn't buy it again.
Let me add now that my two favorite tripels are: La Fin Du Monde and St. Bernardus. The two are different and both are excellent. The La Fin Du Monde is crisp while the St. B is what I call the "Orange Julius" of Tripels.....it is creamy and smooth.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Rainy Day Project....CO2 QDs
It has been raining a lot the past month or so and I haven't brewed since right before the Holidays. I don't stop thinking about beer or brewing so I thought I would make my life a little easier during this "downtime" by adding quick disconnects to my co2 systems.
I now have two co2 tanks and regulators (I have been wanting to get a second tank so that I always have a backup or something I can take offsite and hook up to a keg....and still have something available at home) but since the second tank has added even more gas line management, I decided it was time for QDs (anything I can do to make my things easier).
All the QDs were purchased at morebeer.com. Part #H550.
Close up of the female end. These QDs will shutoff and hold pressure when disconnected.
Now here are the "ends" I have to choose from. From left to right, general purpose....usually for pushing beer to secondary or bottling bucket, sanke tap, and corny keg....or in my case I use for pressurizing plastic bottles with carb caps:
I now have two co2 tanks and regulators (I have been wanting to get a second tank so that I always have a backup or something I can take offsite and hook up to a keg....and still have something available at home) but since the second tank has added even more gas line management, I decided it was time for QDs (anything I can do to make my things easier).
All the QDs were purchased at morebeer.com. Part #H550.
Close up of the female end. These QDs will shutoff and hold pressure when disconnected.Now here are the "ends" I have to choose from. From left to right, general purpose....usually for pushing beer to secondary or bottling bucket, sanke tap, and corny keg....or in my case I use for pressurizing plastic bottles with carb caps:
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Jolly Pumpkin Galore!
A month ago I never imagined that I would have such a great representation of Jolly Pumpkin beers in my “cellar”. There are many mid-west and east coast beers I would love to try but they don’t have distribution to California. Jolly Pumpkin has always been high on my list.
Between http://www.liquidsolutions.biz/ and Healthy Spirits in SF, I have been able to get their Farmhouse, Amber, Noel, and Golden Ales.
I will be trying these soon and reporting back.
Between http://www.liquidsolutions.biz/ and Healthy Spirits in SF, I have been able to get their Farmhouse, Amber, Noel, and Golden Ales.
I will be trying these soon and reporting back.
Brew Notes: Irish Red Ale
I brewed the http://www.more.beer.com/ Irish Red Ale kit a little over a week ago. Here are a few notes about that session.
I did hit my OG of 1.054. In order to accomplish this, I had to add about 1/2 gallon water back to the boil, near the end of boil. This brought me up to about 6 1/2 gallons. I had started my one hour boil with about 6 1/4 gallons, added 7 lbs. of LME and by the end with the 6 gallons left, the OG that was a little higher than I wanted. Bringing it back up to 6 1/2 seemed to do the trick. Note that with this amount it looks like I will only yield about 4 1/2 plus gallons in the bottling bucket.
I need to remember to put no more than one ounce of hop pellets in the small sized fine mesh bag. I had 2 oz. in one and the bag was pretty maxed after taking on liquid. Hopefully I didn't lose too much utilization there.
Air temp outide was about 55 degrees that day. One thing to note is that I siphoned when wort temp was 65 degrees. By the time I had the carboy settled in and temp control plugged in, wort temp was 58. Need to remember about this drop when brewing in the winter. Temp slowly came up and I ended up pitching at 64 degress. Good news is that is got to proper temp of 68 within a couple hours (starter temp was about 70 degrees). By morning, a nice krausen had formed.
My basement gets as low as 51 degrees this time of year but with a couple of towels around the carboy, it seemd to have no problem holding 68 degrees for fermentation. I will probably go straight from primary to bottle after about 2 1/2 weeks. Other responsibilities in life depending.
Not too much protein settling on the bottom so it should be a clean transfer to bottle bucket.
A couple of shots:
I did hit my OG of 1.054. In order to accomplish this, I had to add about 1/2 gallon water back to the boil, near the end of boil. This brought me up to about 6 1/2 gallons. I had started my one hour boil with about 6 1/4 gallons, added 7 lbs. of LME and by the end with the 6 gallons left, the OG that was a little higher than I wanted. Bringing it back up to 6 1/2 seemed to do the trick. Note that with this amount it looks like I will only yield about 4 1/2 plus gallons in the bottling bucket.
I need to remember to put no more than one ounce of hop pellets in the small sized fine mesh bag. I had 2 oz. in one and the bag was pretty maxed after taking on liquid. Hopefully I didn't lose too much utilization there.
Air temp outide was about 55 degrees that day. One thing to note is that I siphoned when wort temp was 65 degrees. By the time I had the carboy settled in and temp control plugged in, wort temp was 58. Need to remember about this drop when brewing in the winter. Temp slowly came up and I ended up pitching at 64 degress. Good news is that is got to proper temp of 68 within a couple hours (starter temp was about 70 degrees). By morning, a nice krausen had formed.
My basement gets as low as 51 degrees this time of year but with a couple of towels around the carboy, it seemd to have no problem holding 68 degrees for fermentation. I will probably go straight from primary to bottle after about 2 1/2 weeks. Other responsibilities in life depending.
Not too much protein settling on the bottom so it should be a clean transfer to bottle bucket.
A couple of shots:
Steeping grains - about 2 lbs. total. I always try to make these bags no more than half full for better utilization:
I pitched at about 6pm. This is the krausen about 12 hours later at 6am:
Notice the basement temperature on the left and the temp controller on the right sitting nicely at 68 degrees. The basement gets as cold as 50 degrees but I have no trouble holding 68.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Great beer store find
On my way to a New Year's eve party, I managed to stop at a great shop named Healthy Spirits, located at 15th and Castro in San Francisco. This place rated well on beeradvocate and I am glad I made the stop.
It is a typical SF corner store, small in size. When you go in and have a look at the beer coolers going down the left side, your jaw will hit the floor. This was the first place in the bay area where I have seen Jolly Pumpkin. There were many, many others but my time there was short. I did also notice some magnums (and larger) of beer as well. I purchased a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin La Roja and a La Trappe Tripel (the seventh out of only seven Trappist Monestaries to produce beer).
I talked to the owner, Ron, who was very cool. Him and his staff of two (at the time) all seemed to have good knowlege of beer.
I rated this place on beeradvocate a 4.5 out of 5 stars....ony because I was in there for such a short time. I can't wait to get back there!
Yeast notes
In the short time since I returned to brewing I have used three different White lab yeast strains
- WLP001 California Ale
- WLP028 Edinburgh
- WLP004 Irish Ale
While I can't yet comment on the affect Edinburgh and Irish have on the taste on the end product, it is important to note how they act during fermentation. Cal Ale and Irish were similar for me in that that have a quick frementation. After the first two to four days, they start slowing down quite a bit. After about a week you may have a bubble in your airlock about every 20 seconds.
Edinburgh was quite different. While it started off with a vigorous ferment, it didn't slow down like Cal or Irish ale. When I went to an airlock after about 4 days, I was getting a bubble or two every two seconds......it stayed this way for two weeks! After two weeks, it started to slow some over the course of the next week. I racked after three weeks and bottled after four weeks. This was for a scotch ale BTW.
Yeast starters and stir plates
One question that concerned me about stir plates is understanding if your yeast is alive and working on your DME based starter. Without a stir plate, you will see a krausen develop and movement within the wort. Since the starter is in constant motion on a stir plate, the krausen never develops. I guess you could check the gravity but that seems like a lot of extra work, plus you may have a small starter (1000ml or less). One easy indicator to determine good activity is a fairly dramatic lightening of color after 12 hours (I make my starter the night before and then check it in the morning), this is a good sign that your yeast is working:
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