Tasting: Panda Watch Pale Ale

We brewed this beer in anticipation of Cody's arrival. Our friend Ryan attributed the waiting around to the Panda Watch scene in Anchorman, and we thought that would be a great name for this beer. 

Appearance: deep straw in color, almost amber. Now that's its been legged for a few weeks, it's actually cleared up nicely; maybe a touch of chill haze. There is some lacing from the head thanks to the hops. 

Aroma: early samples were very very citrusy, which had died down some now. Still a good citrus note, but there are some more herbal and grassy aromas in there. 

Taste: a nice amount of bitterness, about what I would want in a pale ale. Not tongue-splitting bitter like an IPA, but nice and slightly more bitter in a bitter:malt ratio. Good hop flavors that last throughout; similar to the aroma. The carbonation is nice and crisp (maybe a touch on the high side if I'm being picky) and makes for a medium-low bodied ale. 

Overall: I wish the color was a little bit lighter, but I think most of that is coming from carmelization in the kettle during our boil. Since we have an aluminum pot, it is a little thinner than stainless steel, so the flame is causing some darkening. Most of our lighter beers always seem to have a darker quality to them than they should. Hopefully some day we'll move on up to a stainless steel kettle.

But overall, we are really enjoying this beer. I think to date, this is the best hoppy beer we've made, and I think a lot of that has to do with our brewing salts. We added a lot more sulfates to this one than we ever have before. The high sulfate content is supposed to accentuate hops, and it seems like that is definitely true. It's nice and crisp, and pairs well with just about anything we want. 

#TeamDietrich

Manifold Upgrade

Now that we have a pipeline going with enough beer and kegs, it was time to upgrade our manifold a bit. When we got the kegerator, we planned on 3 taps, so we bought a manifold with 3 valves to carbonate/dispense each tap (the 3 red gas lines in the picture above). Now that we want to have beer “on deck” and carbonating while not on tap, we need to expand our gas line options.

Ideal world: buy in-line regulators. In-line regulators are regulators in series, that that as you go down the line, you can decrease the PSI and have each tap at a unique carbonation. This would be ideal as we brew a wide variety of beers and English, American, and Belgian beers all have subtle differences in recommended carbonation levels. Unfortunately, these are not cheap, so we’ll wait on that for a while.

Manifold options:

1.       Buy a new, larger manifold: We could upgrade to a 5-port manifold to have everything we would need, but again, this would require another $70, and then what do we do with the old one?

2.       Add a Y-site: This will turn 1 port into 2, and will only cost about $20 with the fitting and the new check valve that we’ll need. They’ll both be at the same pressure, but so is everything else right now, so it wouldn’t be different than what we are doing now.  

If anyone’s read this blog before, you know that here at Rowdy Reptile, we do things on the cheap; so we went with the Y-site. It was a lot harder to assemble than I imagined only because the old valves were next to impossible to unscrew. I tried different things over of the course of a few days without any success. Eventually, I bought a small $4 vise from Lowes and was able to clamp the manifold down to a counter in the garage. Only then was I able to unscrew one of the valves to add the y-site. Once assembled, the only issues is the tight spaces between the valves. As you can see, the y-site is perpendicular to the other valves to allow enough space for the actual tubing. 

Thankfully, it's up and running now, but as you would guess, we aren't using all the lines just yet. Since the Black IPA was ready I swapped that out for the Dubbel. Hoppy beers are best fresh, so I wanted to get that up and running as soon as possible. As I think the Dubbel could use a little more time to age, I took that out of the fridge for now and will let it age until we need it again in the garage.

Next posts will be some more tasting notes, then hopefully we'll squeeze in another brew in a couple-few weeks. 

#TeamDietrich

Tasting: Schwarzbier

Appearance: at first glance, it looks black, but when held up to the the light the beer is a deep brown and is actually quite clear. There is an off-white colored head that dissipates into a thin layer but lasts through the rest of the beer 

Aroma: sweet, dark malts; a hint of roast, no hops. The majority is likely coming from the high amount of dark Munich malt is this one

Taste:  very smooth from start to finish. The sweetness from the dark malts is very enjoyable and is well balanced by just a hint of roast. Its not "sugar" sweet, but instead, more of a deep dark-bready flavor. For such a dark beer, the roast is very minimal and if I weren't looking for it, I probably wouldn't notice it. The carbonation is right on and there are enough bubbles to cleanse the palate between bites of food 

Overall: the smoothness if this brew combined with the moderately-low alcohol makes this a great session beer. I think the 3 months of lagering have helped the smoothness, and I wouldn't change anything about this beer. It has been pairing well with everything from cookies to BBQ and is turning out to be a lot more versatile than I originally thought it would be. Elise and I are both really enjoying it (even in the summer) and I should probably make another pretty soon for the late-fall/winter. Maybe next time we'll use a proper lager yeast and compare the difference with the Cali-"lager" (aka steam beer) yeast.

Next post I'll review the Panda Watch Pale Ale

Until then, 

#TeamDietrich

Black IPA on Deck

Just finished kegging the Black IPA and added the 3 ounces of dry hop: 2 oz Simcoe, 1 oz Centennial.  The re-used yeast did a good job and this one clocks in at 6.9% alcohol. The uncarbonated sample tasted pretty good. Very smooth, a good level of roastiness, but not as bitter as I imagined. We'll see how bitter it is when it is carbonated and cold, but I am looking forward to tasting this one in a couple of weeks.

The make sure we get the most out of the dry hop (and because we finally have a full kegerator) I am not going to start fully carbonating this batch yet. This time I will give the dry hops about 4 days at room temp to infuse into the beer. Hopefully this will allow for more character into the beer early on as compared to the Panda Watch Pale Ale in which the dry hops were added right before it was put into the fridge at 38. The colder it is, the longer the hop oils will take to diffuse throughout the beer. By giving a few days at room temp, hopefully we'll jump start that process and have more aroma when we start drinking it.

No future brews planned yet, but it will have to be something light in color as we have 3 beers of the darker persuasion on right now (Schwarz, Black IPA, and Dubbel). Maybe another pale ale, or we'll try our hand at a Witbier. We'll see.

Black IPA and Free-range Eggs

Today we were able to squeeze in a brew before Elise's parents head back to Tampa. We've got mostly malty on tap with the black lager and the Dubbel, so we decided to make an IPA. We haven't made our black IPA in a while, so we thought we would stay with the "dark" persuasion and make it a black IPA. 

This is a clone of Stone's Sublimely Self Righteous which is made with Chinook, Simcoe, and Amarillo hops. We are able to get Chinook and Simcoe, but Amarillo hops are unavailable so we subbed Centennial. I ordered more hops online than I thought, so we used an extra ounce of Centennial at the end of the boil and will add an another ounce of Simcoe to the dry hop. 

I have been having some issues with efficiency and final volume since moving to NC. Our efficiency has been a little lower and I have been ending up with a little less than 5 gallons in the fermenter. I decided to try to start with a little higher boil volume an just accept that the efficiency will be a little lower for now. During the boil I was worried I would have too much volume so I turned up the burner towards the end. I did boil more off, but over did it a bit, and finished with a tad under 5 gallons. 

We will reuse the yeast from the pale ale and expect to drink this one in about 3 weeks. It's a higher gravity beer and will be a little over 7%, so hopefully Elise will be a little more tolerant of higher alcohol beers by then (after a 9 month drinking hiatus). 

Every time we brew, I never know what to do with the spent grain. I hate being wasteful and throwing stuff away, but I never have a good use for the grain. We could make dog treats, but that only uses a cup (out of 10-12 pounds). I had read somewhere that the grain is good chicken feed, and so I decided to put an add on Craigslist seeing if any chicken farmers in the area could use the grain. I had someone respond in less than 10 minutes and made plans to hand the grains off. In return, the chicken farmer left us a half-dozen free-range eggs! I have never had a fresh egg before, so tomorrow will be an interesting breakfast when Elise makes me a biscuit egg sandwich.  

More Kegs!

Now that we’ve got 2 beers on tap (soon to be 3) and more brews planned out in the future, we are running out of kegs. To keep our pipeline steady, we need to have extra kegs carbonating in the kegerator. There is room for 5 in there, so if we have 3 on tap, we could potentially fit another 2 kegs. Those 2 beers could be carbonating (and lagering if they’re lagers) while we wait to empty the current beers. That way, when one keg is empty, we’ll have the “on-deck” beers to change out and  they’ll be ready to drink right away instead of having to wait a week like we normally do.

I recently found some cash in an old drawer and thought it would be put to good use buying some equipment off Craig’s List. I have been using Google Reader to search Craigslist for homebrew equipment over the past few years, and it was how I was able to find our kegerator. Luckily for me, the service is still operational until the end of this month (http://www.denverpost.com/technology/ci_23435727/googles-reader-is-going-away-but-you-have). I did a quick search after the brew session and found a post for some used kegs at $45/each that were posted earlier in the day. Normally, to buy online, new kegs are around $130 and used about $60 + shipping. Needless to say, $45 is a pretty good price, and most other people agree as used kegs don’t typically last long on Craig’s List.

We got another 2 kegs, which now brings our total to a modest 6. I would still like to grow that number so we could do our high-gravity seasonal beers (like our Snow and Russian Imperial Stout) in kegs. Those beers really have to be aged to get the best beer, so if we could avoid bottling and have enough kegs to age in the keg, that would be ideal. Also, in a year or 2, we are going to upgrade the kegerator to a chest freezer which will be able to support upwards of 8 kegs, but we’ll probably keep it to 4 on tap. With the extra room, we’ll have plenty of beer on deck and we can make more lagers and lager them properly for a few months before we serve. In all, we’ll slowly grow the supply when good deals pop up on Craig’s List, probably to about 10-12 kegs.

Next beer planned is going to be the Black IPA (Sublimely Self-Righteous Clone). We are thinking probably Next Saturday or Sunday. The Pale Ale is done fermenting now, and we'll give the yeast a couple more days to clean up before we cold crash and then keg. Hopefully we'll be drinking that beer in about 10 more days. 

Belgian Dubbel & Hop Update

Now that Elise’s parents are in town to help with the impending arrival of Cody, I was able to get a brew session in. The dubbel is now on tap and as soon as Cody arrives we’ll open the Schwarzbier for business. As both are of the darker persuasion, and neither is hoppy, I thought a pale ale would be a good Summer beer. We’ll make an IPA soon, but I wanted something a little tamer on tap for Elise as she’ll need some time to get back into the swing of things.

This grist is essentially the same we’ve done for our Double Pale Ale in the past which is a combination of  Crystal 40L and Carapils and a small amount of Crystal 60L for some more color. The hop bill will be different this time around though. The online site I buy hops from is all out of Amarillo for the season (which we normally use), so this time we’ll sub some Ahtanum hops. They are florally/citrusy like Amarillo, but a little more herby and definitely less grape-fruity than Amarillo. We’ll bitter with Chinook, then a combination of Ahtanum + Centennial + Chinook as our aroma hops/dry hop.

The brew day itself was uneventual; so much in fact, it was one of the fastest days I can remember. Normally, with a 60 minute boil, from start to finish (everything cleaned) I usually take 4-4.5 hours. On Saturday, I started at 7 and was completely done by 1040. The original gravity came out to about 1056, which should yield a respectable 5.4-5.6% alcohol in the final product. I’ll let this one ferment for about 10 days, then cold crash for 3 days, and then it’ll be kegged. Hopefully, this one will be ready to drink on tap in about 3 weeks.

In other news, the hops are growing up the house nicely. They have definitely used the extra climbing height we gave them this year as a few bines have already reached the roof. I’ve been having some issues with fertilizers (I think?) as the leaves are a little yellow, especially near the bottom. Hopefully it’s nothing to worry about and the hot weather that is coming will make for some good growing conditions. I haven’t seen any bines yet this year, but we still have a few months before harvest season starts. Looking back at old pictures from last year, we didnt have any cones until around the end of July, so we're still on track as of now. Hopefully we'll get enough hops to make a beer this year. 

Centennial

Newport