Designing Great Beers

I just finished reading the first section of Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. The first section talks about what goes into a recipe, from the malt bill, color characteristics to hops, calculating bitterness and yeast. I'm a few chapters deep into the second part of the book which goes into details of the various classic styles of beer that are out there. I highly recomend this book for anyone who is trying to learn how to create your own recipes.

After I got through part one, and highlighting all the formulas and good things Ray had to say, i decided to try and put together my own recipe spreadsheet that has the calculations for IBU's, water needs based on evaporation and other factors, beer color ( I use HCU's and convert to a range of SRM's) and hop bitterness. Overall I think it's a good spreadsheet. I designed a recipe using the sheet and compared it to one of the online recipe calculators and I was damn close to exact. That made me smile. I have yet to brew the beer because it's an all grain recipe and I am in need or 4 stainless steele fender washers to complete my mash tun and for the life of me can't find a damn place that sells them. I'm hoping to have them soon, and FINALLY make the move to all grain!

On to the point of this post......I wanted to ask some people out there if they would take a look at my sheet, test it out and let me know their thoughts. Just post your email and I'll send it off to you. I'm a firm believer in feedback, and I think a lot of readers of my blog are brewers and coudl help me out with this. It should actually work for extract w/specialty grain recipes as well as long as you know the gravity of the extract and efficiency. So, post or send me an email and I'll send it off to you. Thanks for you help in advance.

Cheers,
Jason

Hop buds arrive

I guess I am proof that you can grow hops in a planter. The buds on my centenial hop plant are blossoming in large quantities and looking great. They are all over and there is more than i though there would be.

I haven't decided what type of beer I'm going to make with these, but I'm hoping to get enough to strictly use these hops and make a fresh hop ale. I'd like to make it close to what Sierra Nevada does with their hop harvest. That's probably one my favorite highly hopped ales. I had the Southern Hemesphere Hop Harvest at the ACBF in Boston last month and it was amazing.

Cheers,

Jason

BBC - Framingham

It was much to my delight, that last night while driving down rt. 9 in Framingham I saw the beginings of the newest British Beer Company location. If you've ever been to a BBC, then you know how great a beer bar it is. It has a large selection of beers from around the world. Mark Anderson wrote about it on his blog, Beer Paradise. I have only been to the location in Hyannis, and I was very pleased. It definitely doesn't compare to Bukowski's in Boston, but it made me smile.

Two great things for the area, 1) prior to this, there is only one brewpub in the area to go to. 2) it provides a little competition for the only other brewpub in that area, which I hope will improve the beer made at John Harvards and the selection from the BBC as they battle it our for ownership of the Natick Mall stretch of Rt. 9. If any of you are familiar with this stretch, there are too many restaurants to count, but up until now John Harvards was the only brewpub.

I'm looking forward to having a little more selection now when I want a good beer and some good food. Can't wait to see it finished and the doors open!!

Cheers,

Jason

Back in the Saddle

Well, it's been some time now since I've last posted. I had a pretty busy month of June. Unfortunately, there was only one brewing and it was the last recipe post I had. I ended up kegging it and priming with sugar since I don't have the funds right now to purchase the Co2 tank and regulator. I did, however find a great website that sells tanks and regulators for pretty cheap.

The kegging went pretty good. I read somewhere that when you keg with the same amount of sugar as you would use when bottling, the beer can be over carbonated. So, I let a little pressure bleed out twice in the two weeks it conditioned in the keg. The beer ended up being a little under carbonated, so I'll make sure I don't release the pressure the next time. I'm going to be brewing a traditional Bavarian Hefeweizen and kegging it for a party in August, so I'll post the recipe as soon as I brew it and get the stats.

Anyway, I hope you all had a great Month, and a great 4th of July (for those in the US).
Cheers,
Jason

Hops growing on the Trellis

The trellis is FINALLY built and in the ground. It's kind of funny how simple it was, I guess I'm just lazy! Anyway, I decided I didn't want to transplant them from the pot into the ground and risk killing them, so for the first year they will remain in the pot.

The hops are starting to show signs of small buds on some of the shoots. I'm hoping they are actually cones and not more leaves.

Cheers,

Jason