Obituary: Biere de Marrs

Sad day. We drank the last of the Biere de Marrs, our Biere de Garde that was secondaried on Brett B. There beer did not seem to change that much over the course of it's life, but it was very good to start out with. It was a fairly light beer, but it had a nice sweetness and a nice crisp citrusy, funky, twang thanks to the Brett. It was nicely carbonated and it went very well with a lot of different foods ranging from burritos to pasta to roasted dishes. Overall, I enjoyed this beer very much and will definitely make it again in the future.




Elise received a book on Exposure settings for our camera and as such, has already been taking some cool pictures. The photo below is the Raspberry Imperial Stout (delicious combination with brownies) and I thought I would add the picture becuase I thought it was a neat photo.


More posts to come, I need to take pictures of the super cool oxygenation system as well as the stir plate I am building. Several beers are also planned during my time off: Anniversary Barleywine '12, Belgian Dubbel, and with our neighbor we are going to make a Black IPA and another Double Pale Ale.

Aaaaaaand, we're back

Cooper's settling into a routine and so are we. Thankfully, we stockpiled some brews before he was born because now that 2 people are drinking, things are moving off the shelves a little faster. I'm officially on break from rotations, and should be able to update the blog more now.



We've brewed 2 beers since Cooper's arrival. After the success of the Hoptober pale ale being out best hoppy beer we've ever made, we thought we'd follow that up with an attempt at an IPA. We did a 10 gallon batch with or neighbor a few weeks ago. Hopefully this beer will be a hop monster because after we drop hop, there will be a total of 1 lb of hops in the whole batch. Similar to the Hoptober pale ale, we used amarillo again, but intead of cascade, we paired it with Elise's favorite, centennial. Since both Dave and myself have little ones at home, we got up early on a Saturday and started brewing at 530am to make sure we didnt eat up a chunk of the day and were able to help. It was a cold morning with a light snow, but the snow helped cool the beer down very quickly after the boil was complete. We dry hopped the beer earlier this week and plan on bottling it on January 2nd; we'll wait the customary 1 week for the first tasting, but we are very excited. We've drank all but 6 of the Hoptober pale ales and Elise is having to ration them out to make them last as that is the only hoppy beer we have on hand right now. I'll post some reviews of the IPA when I get a chance.




Today, another cold day (18 when I started) is my first day off for Christmas break, and what better way to spend it than brewing? We're making a beer that I've wanted to make for about 6 months now, but due to scheduling and other factors, we havent been able to make it until now. It is a Rye Saison made with 2 lbs of rye malt to impart a spicy/sharp malt character as well as a small amount of super dark Carafa III and turbinado sugar to make the beer a nice brown color. The yeast we are using is WY3711, French Saison yeast. Saison yeasts are much different than normal ales yeasts as they like temperatures well above 70 (some people push them into the high 80s) and they are also very attenuative. The beer should start around 1047 and finish around 1003. Hopefully the yeast will also impart its nice spicy, floral flavors and make for a very drinkable, dark, spicy brew.

First Snow!

We've gotten our first snow here in Denver. Monday it was 81 degrees here in Denver, and now on Tuesday night, it starts snowing: welcome to Denver. Luckily the roads were still warm from the weekend and despite the ~6-7 inches of snow, the roads are clear. Also, now that it has snowed, Elky can finally come out of the garage and join the rest of the fall decorations and hopefully bring the gator football team some luck against Georgia this weekend.

The beer is very tasty this year (not surpisingly). Not as roasty as last year, but already very very smooth. We used a different yeast strain this year that is more neutral and you can tell compared to last year's brew. We are both very happy with it and after we've finished this pint we'll sample the one that received some oak aging. Hopefully that one will be just as good. I am slightly worried about it as I have learned that less oak for longer periods of time works better to impart a deeper, more rounded oak flavor; we only had the beer on the oak for 10 days or so, and when we bottled it was very oaky. Time will have helped mellow the flavors, but hopefully they are still there.

Cooper had his 6 week checkup today and now weighs 10 lb 9 oz! He went from the 18th percentile in weight at 2 weeks to the 52nd at 6 weeks; mama's got some good milk apparently.

We dont have any brews really planned in the near future, but the next one will be a dark rye saison. We didnt brew a Christmas beer this year, but we will drink last year's Spiced Winter Ale that will have hopefully mellowed out much more over the last 12 months. Until next time,



P.S. Below is a pic of Scrappy so you can get an idea of how much snow we've received over the last 24 hours.

Brown Ale + Oaked Brett Brown Ale

Last weekend we brewed 8 gallons of our brown ale; 5 gallons were treated normally, and the other ~3 gallons are going to be treated quite differently. First, the normal batch should be different than previous brown ales we have made simply because we have stopped using the hop screen and it should therefor seem hoppier than previous versions. Elise is looking forward to this as she says she "likes a true American-style brown ale" which is more hop-forward than British-style ale.

The special 3-gal portion was pitched on top of 100% Brett B yeast as well as an oak spiral. Oak and brett is a very classic combination, especially in Belgian lambic beers. Normally, we have been oaking for about 10 days after fermentation has been complete, but this time we added the oak with the yeast. We added a smaller amount of oak compared to the volume as the oak will sit in the beer for upwards of 8 weeks. Hopefully this one will taste as good as the previous one.


Cooper is finally here, and Elise has been enjoying small samples of beers over the past couple of days. Coop's beer (Raspberry Imperial Stout) is also tasting very very good right now, and I'll hopefully post a formal tasting of that brew later. Right now it's time to hang with Mr Cooper!

Anniversary BW

We finally got around to wax-dipping the barley wine bottles today. Originally, I had hoped to do this much earlier in the year so the wax could do its job of protecting against oxygen seeping into the bottles. But, it is what it is.

Interestingly, or being a cheapskate, I have been saving the wax from previous opened bottles and melting that wax instead of buying new wax. Maybe some day, we'll use a different color, but right now we'll have to figure out a way to differentiate the vintages from each other.



Like last year's batch, we are going to set aside 5 bottles for yearly vertical tastings. This year, Elise will finally be able to try last year's and this year's barley wines and I'm very excited about that. Hopefully this year's batch will have carbonated as we tried a slightly different method of bottle conditioning, but if it doesnt, it will still likely be very very good. Cant wait, only 4 months to go....

10 gallons-o-business

Over our time of brewing, our neighbor has seen us a lot and tasted most of our beers and liked what he has tasted. He and his wife are also pregnant and a couple of months ago we brewed a Barley Wine for him to crack open when his son is born in late-November. Now, after getting the itch, seeing how simple brewing can be, and seeing how much money can be saved homebrewign, he's built his own mash tun, and thus another homebrewer is born. We decided to brew a batch together and split it; "same" amount of work to get twice the results. The picture is of the boil kettly pre-boil with 12 gallons of wort; very, very full. We had some issues with the boil since there was so much liquid in the kettle, my "normal" setting on the burner wouldnt have the same boil off rate. We did some experimenting and tweaking and ended up with about 1/2-1/3 less volume in the end than anticipated. We also ditched the hop screen as well. The first time we brewed the Black 'N Mild it was a stove top batch and thus, we didnt use the hop screen. The beer was very very hoppy, and when we made it again, same recipe just 5 gallons and with a hop screen, it was nowhere near as hoppy. So we decided to ditch it for this batch and just deal with all of the hop trub that would be generated and see what happens.

We decided to brew a hoppy pale ale that received a lot of late hopping with Cascade and Amarillo hops. After fermentation is complete, we'll each dry hop our portion, mine with Amarillo, his with Cascade, and we'll be able to compare the differences in aroma that each hop provides. We named it Hop-tober Pale ale as that is when it will be ready to drink, and it will be the the newest, most recent beer that Elise will get to sample after Coop arrives. Hopefully it turns out good!

Belgian Pale Ale

We just finished bottling the newest Belgian Pale Ale and it was so nice to have Elise's (and I guess Coop's) help. It not only cuts the time in half, but there is also someone to keep me company during this somewhat boring task. This was the last planned batch of brew before Cooper's arrival, so right now the brewery is empty. The good news is, we have a serious stock pile of beer downstairs that should definitely get us through the hiatus. With nothing else going on, I'll try to post some tasting reviews in the future. Now we're just playing the waiting game for Cooper's arrival