The Beer League

While out in eastern ma we ran into dicap picking up some beer at Julios, no doubt doing some homework. Expect 21st Ammendment IPA at dove this week.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

And so today is big brew day…we are all in Agawam…about 7 brewers…the sun is out, the food is here and the beer will be flowing for everyone to try. More throughout the day.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

It’s here. Big Brew Day. As one of it’s many events, the AHA has many events each year- and tomorrow is the day where brewers get together around the country to brew together, enjoy some good food… And of course food homebrew! This will be the first time I take my brewery on the road … I hope I don’t forget anything critical!

That’s it for now… Pics and more tomorrow!

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

thanks to o’brian at the sierra grille, gerry and i were able to try to the stone, mikkeller, and alesmith collaboration ale, which is a belgian style tripel. it was absolutely delicious, and of course the bottle was damn cool looking…

last month o’brian had generously shared with us a bottle of the stone collaboration with nøgne Ø and jolly pumpkin, which was a special holiday ale. very spicy from all the different ingredients used, but also delicious. stone’s got a great blog post about this beer.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

so today is mine and gerry’s first double brew day of this year. in preparation for st paddy’s day we’re brewing the light and hoppy recipe. we’re also brewing a dry irish stout, which i will be pouring next month at hampshire’s deathfest. we started at 7am and will be going straight until about 5pm when we head to the moan and dove to meet with our fellow beer geeks. we will even have a guest brewer, pam, arriving soon.

our first mishap occurred about an hour ago while gerry and i were milling the grain for the light and hoppy. thankfully it was toward the very end of the grain when it happened. we didn’t notice at the time, but a small, steel ball bearing went flying out of the mill across the basement, making the mill useless to us. we triggered the drill to start moving, but no grain was being crushed. so i ended up finishing off the small bit of grain in the blender on chop mode while gerry fooled around with the inner workings of the mill. that’s when he found the ball bearing and realized what had happened. we’ve now got the grain soaking and some water boiling and gerry is in the process of taking apart the mill. fun fun. meanwhile i’ve been doing some dishes and laundry to try to keep this place at least somewhat clean during this whole process. oh and blogging, yeah. more posting, pics and video coming later.

UPDATE:

measuring the grain

our new mill

perl wants to help

gerry and pam milling the grain for the stout after fixing the mill

racking the light n hoppy to a carboy

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

a few shots from the moan and dove last week…

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

Here in beautiful Western Mass, it’s supposed to hit the high 40’s, so it is a beautiful day to brew. On tap for today’s brewday is a Chocolate Stout. The recipe is aas follows:

5 gallon batch

9# American 2-row

1# Munich

1# Crystal 60

1# Roasted barley

1# Flaked Oats

1# Flaked barley

1# Chocolate Malt

1# Lactose sugar

.5 oz Magnum hops@60 minutes

.5 oz Magnum hops@10 minutes

1 packet SafAle S-04 English Ale yeast or WhiteLabs WLP002 English Ale Yeast

2 oz cocoa powder in secondary

1 vanilla bean in secondary

OG: 1.075

FG: 1.028

I have all the ingredients together and getting ready to grind the grains. Additionally, I created a starter for the yeast yesterday. I should have started it a couple of days ago, but I figure by the time I pitch today, it will be about 18-20 hours since making the starter. We’ll see how the fermenting plays out…

No disasters during the brewday, although it was quite busy- brewing and cleaning kegs at the same time is pretty tiring. It is now the day after, and fermentation is going a bit crazy- spewing a bit up into the airlock. I have changed the airlock 2 times already.

I have one question from my brewday, however- I checked my OG after adding in the lactose, not prior. Hpw can I calculate the contribution of the lactose? Since lactose is not fermentable, I would think that for an accurate OG I want the number BEFORE the lactose addition. Am I correct?

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

We are now hosting The Beer League at another provider. Previously, we were hosted on Go Daddy’s servers, but- since my day job requires me to administer systems that host website and web applications, I figured I might well host the site on my own servers. Right now, I am seeing some real slowness in the site, so I will need to track that down. In the meantime, please have patience as we clear out the cobwebs and fix all the small issues.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

us beerleague folk have been seriously lacking lately, on both brewing and posting, but most of all posting.  well, our slacking period has come to an end, at least for now.  it’s hit the time for us to prepare for the annual st paddy’s day event!  between 6 different brewers we’ve got quite a selection of beers planned out, 3 of which gerry and i will be brewing.  today we started on the blonde ale, which will eventually be dry-hopped with cascade and centennial to become another version of the “hop on your blonde” that we made last summer.  tasty stuff!

we planned to get started at 9am, that is until we went downstairs this morning to find that we were out of propane.  we had totally forgotten.  so we made a trek down the st to rocky’s to fill up both our tanks, as well as pick up an extra adapter for the water filter since the one we previously used was attached to chris’ equipment that he took home weeks ago. ;)  so while gerry went inside to find the adapter and pay the nicy lady for the propane, i was left to deal w/ the propane filler guy.  now that was a fun experience.. kinda odd actually, but entertaining at least.  it was an older dude who was quick to tell me that it’s far too cold to be cooking outside.  to which i responded, “but we’re making beer, and it’s never too cold to brew beer outside!”  and from that point he delightfully walked me over to the filling station while regaling me with tales of his wine making experiences and how he has led a happy and fulfilled life to the point where he could die tomorrow and be happy.  good for him.  but on to our fun and happy experiences of brewing beer…

so we were only set off by a half hour, not too bad.  in fact, we’re making great time.  we popped open an aventinus eisbock to share for breakfast after we slugged down some coffee and started the boil when we returned home.

here’s gerry dumping the initial hot water to preheat the cooler.

this is me vorlaufing

and then gerry forgot to close the valve when he poured the boiling water in, so he’s trying to skim the grain out of the kettle

measuring our efficiency w/ the refractometer, pre-boil

and we’re at 12 bricks, which is 75% efficiency

oh and then there’s me vorlaufing for the second time around

our ghetto brew setup in the snow

tasting the barley juice.. fucking delicious!!

and now we’re just waiting the hour or so for it to boil.  we added the willamette hops a little while ago.   then we need to chill it to 67 degrees, rack it to a carboy, then pitch the yeast from a 2000ml starter.  yay beer!  when it’s done fermenting we’ll rack it to a keg and then dry hop for about a week.  then we’ll rack it to another keg and lager it until st. paddy’s.  this should be a good beer for folks at the party who don’t enjoy the traditional irish stout. 

and now i’m to shower while the the boiling is finishing up.  we’ve got a few beer geek friends/guests stopping by for a peek at the brew and to sample some beverages while on their way up to the noho/amherst area to some of favorite beer haunts.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post 

omfg. consume mass quantities!

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post