White Water Rafting on the Kennebec River

I spent this past weekend with some friends up in The Forks, Maine doing some white water rafting with the Northern Outdoors company. I've never been rafting and I was very excited. My wife, not so much. She was petrified! But, she faced her fears, and got on the river and loved it. We rafted on the Kennebec river leaving from a Hydro electric dam about 20 miles north of where we stayed. Luckily for us, Saturday was a scheduled dam release, so the normal 3,400 CFS (cubic feet per second) was more than doubled to 8,700 CFS. That made for some pretty big rapids, two sections were class IV. It was a long day, but we all managed to stay in the boat without getting tossed by the rapids, thanks to our guide Nick Atwood. I recommend him if anyone goes up there. He knows the river well and will make the trip a lot of fun for you.

The best part of the weekend happened when we got to the lodge and I realized that not only was this an outdoor adventure company, but they were a brewpub too. They had 5 beers on tap this weekend, Kennebec Logger (a pilsner lager), Kennebec Summer Ale, Big Mamma Blueberry Ale (named after the big mamma rapids), Ripogenus Red (amber ale), Magic Hole IPA, and were out of their Class V Stout which according to all the guides is there best beer.

My personal favorite was the Ripogenus Red, but I really liked the blueberry. It was a lot darker than most commercial blueberry's I've seen, but it tasted every bit as good. Although we didn't eat dinner there, we had breakfast and lunch and both were fantastic. I am definitely going to plan another trip. They also raft on two other rivers up in Maine, The Dead River and the Penobscot river. The Dead river is supposed to have equally big rapids, but they last almost the entire 15 miles. It has the most continuous white water than any other Eastern river and some are even class V. The Pennobscot is a much bigger class river with bigger rapids, mostly class V, but they are short technical sections. Our guide is pushing us to come up and do the Pennobscot next as he said it's so much better.

Cheers,

Jason

Robust Vanilla Porter

I had high hopes for this beer. After making a test batch and missing the mark, I decided to move forward with a full 5.5 g batch. I used tastybrew for the recipe formulation and couldn't wait to get brewing. The brew day started off very well, and I noticed as I was steeping the grains there was a frothy foam in the kettle. I figured that was from the flaked barely, which helps with the head of the beer.

I went into the boil, and hopped as scheduled. After I cooled the wort and topped off to 5.5 g, I took a gravity reading and to my surprise, I overshot it by a mile! I couldn't (and still can't) figure out why I overshot it that much. After the session, I re-did the recipe in tastybrew and in my spreadsheet thinking I miscalculated, but it was exactly what it should be. My only thought is that the guy at my LHBS didn't hear me right and gave me more than asked for. I guess I'm going to have to start re-checking everything I buy, which sucks.

I bought two Madagascar vanilla beans which I'll boil to sanitize and add them to the secondary and most likely will add an additional packet of yeast. I'm still confident this beer will finish well, just not exactly like I planned. Sometimes, that's not a bad thing I guess. Recipe and stats are below.

Batch Size - 5.5 g
Boil volume - 4 g
Mash ph - 5.0
Target Gravity - 1.057
Actual OG - 1.082

Fermentables:
8.5 lbs Dark Malt Liquid extract
.5 lbs British Crystal 135-165
.5 lbs Black Patent
.5 lbs Chocolate
.5 British Brown
.5 Flaked Barley

Adjuncts:
2 Madagascar Vanilla Beans (secondary)


Hops:
.5 oz. Challenger (7.5% AA - 60 min)
.5 oz. Challenger (7.5% AA - 30 min)
.5 oz. Fuggle (5.1% AA - 15 min)
.5 oz. Fuggle (5.1% AA - 1 min)

Yeast: - Wyeast 1275 -Thames Valley

New Notes:
(9/2) - Fermentation started with a bang. I woke up this morning to see that overnight, it had blown through the blow off tube into the collecting bowl and already dissapated back down into the carboy. It's still bubbling very frequently (every 2-3 seconds) and hopefully will ferment all those extra sugars I apparently put in.

(9/9) - It's still bubbling away. The bubbles have slowed to about once every 20-30 seconds, but it still going. Once it slows considerably, I'll rack it to the secondary and add the vanilla beans.

(9/15) - I racked it to the secondary yesterday and took a gravity reading (1.020). It still has a little ways to go. I halved the vanilla beans and they are soaking in 1/2 cup of Basil Hayden's small batch bourbon. I'll add that to the secondary tonight.

Cheers,
Jason

Fresh Hop Harvest Ale

I had a great bewing day today. I was able to harvest a small amount of my cascade hops (I took 1 oz) and brewed my Fresh Hop Harvest Ale using the Cascade hops right from the vine as well as some Centennial pellets. I used Tastybrew to pull the recipe together since my recently created spreadsheet is not reliable at this moment. I was able to hit my target gravity right on the money. Below is the recipe and brewday stats.



Stats:
Water PH - 5.4
Mash PH - 5.0
Target Gravity - 1.056
OG - 1.056



Fermentables
7.5 lbs Amber Malt Liquid Extract
2 lbs. Pale two-row
.25 lbs Belgian Biscuit
.25 lbs CaraPils
.25 lbs Crystal 20L
.25 lbs Crystal 40L



Hops
.5 oz Centennial (pellet, 10.5% - 60 min)
.5 oz Cascade (fresh wet hops, 6.6% estimated - 30 min)
5 oz Cascade (fresh wet hops, 6.6% estimated - 15 min)
.5 oz Centennial (pellet, 10.5% - 5 min)
.5 oz Cascade (fresh wet hops, 6.6% estimated - Dry hop in secondary)

Yeast
Wyeast #1056 - American Ale


New Notes:
(9/2) - Primary fermentation went great. When I woke up the next morning, the bubbles were vigourusly popping. I racked to the secondary 8 days later (8/29) and added another .5 oz of fresh picked hops. Thankfully, I have another ounce or so on the vine which I'll dry and store for later use. The hop smell was amazing. Fresh cascade aroma filled the air as I racked the brew. I gave the .5 oz that I was dry hopping with a big squeze and rub to release some more aroma and dropped them in. I'm getting very excited about this beer.

(9/15) - I bottled this yesterday. When I uncovered the carboy to bottle, it had an interesting white film on the top of the beer. It tasted fine as I sipped the hydrometer sample (1.012) so I'm not too concerned. Hopefully the hops didn't have a bacteria on them when I dry hopped. Anyone have any experience with this or have seen this film on their beer before?

(10/6) - Bad news.....I tried the first bottle and it is completly ruined! It tastes like vinager so I'm going to jhave to dump them all. I'm am not happy. I guess thats the risk you run with fresh hops....lots of bacteria on them. Next year I will make sure that I boil them all and not dry hop with them. I had real high hopes for this one....oh well!!!



Cheers,
Jason

Me vs. A Big Bear

It's a slow day here at work, but a friend of mine sent this to me today and I had a good laugh and thought I needed to share. We were at a post wedding reception "after party" and I got in a slight tussle with a bear. I totally kicked that bear's ass. I mean, if it were alive....I would have killed it! Anyways....back to work.

Test Porter and Starter Session

Last night was a busy night for me. I brewed two 1 gallon batches. One was just a gallon of un-hopped wort for starters, and the other was a 1 gallon test batch of a Porter. And the most exciting part about last night was it was the first time I got to use my new wort chiller that I bought from Beer-Wine.com.

For the 1 gallon starter batch, I was able to squeeze 9, 500 ml bags of starter wort to save for later use. I separated them out in Ziploc bags and put them in the freezer. My goal here is to start to save and re-use my yeast for future batches. Not only will it help with the cost aspect (I hope to be brewing a lot more now) but a friend of mine tuned me into the tidbit that if I plan on making a lager, that the best results come from 3rd or 4Th generation yeast. That being said, I'm starting. I'm going to order some test tubes so I can store them in the fridge and label them easily.

The 1 gallon test batch was a little different. I completely missed my target gravity (reached 1.046, target was 1.057). After the boil, I had to add some chilled water to try and top off to a full gallon but was unable to reach a gallon before the gravity was already at 1.046 (I originally measured it at 1.096 after I chilled it). I have no clue how that happened. I followed my recipe from tasty brew to the T, but was still not able to make it happen. Unfortunately because I was trying to multi-task my two brews while watching the Red Sox/Rangers slug fest, I took horrible notes and now can't go back and review. It's currently in the jug fermenter (Carlo Rossi jug....thanks for the idea Ted) so we'll see how it comes out in the end. It looks and smells fantastic, but I was a little dissappointed when I took the gravity reading. I guess this will be a good learning experience....if I can ever figure out what the lesson is?!?!?!?

1g Starter:

1 lb extra light DME

Boiled in 1 gallon of water for 10 min, chilled and bagged.

1g Test Porter:

Fermentables
1 lb Muntons Dark DME
4.2 oz Chocolate Malt
2.1 oz Crystal 120
4.4 oz British brown

Hops
.5 oz UK Challanger (7.5%AA - 30 min)
.5 oz Cascade(6.6%AA - 15 min)

Wyeast #1275 - Thames Valley Propagator

Cheers,
Jason

Almost Harvest Time

The hops are growing at record pace and I'm psyched. I'm working on the fresh hop APA that I'm going to make with them, along with some centential pellets. I can't wait. I couldn't believe how quickly they grew from just 2 weeks ago. I gave them a squeeze last night and they are still a little ways away from being harvested and some of them are weeks away. I'll post the recipe and pictures of the harvest as it happens.

Cheers,
Jason

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