Grandpa Joe had a small farm in southeast Montana where he and my grandmother June raised a small amount of cattle, suger beets, and 2-row barley for Coors beer. There may have been other things, but that's what I remember.As time moved on they sold the farm and moved into the city. Grandpa Joe didn't drink beer that often (once again, from my memory) and when he did it was typically something like Bud Lite, which I often gave him crap for. With those things in mind I started on my quest to create a beer in his honor.
First thing on my list was sugar beets. I remember hunting near the family land and seeing sugar beets all over the road. For those of you who don't know what a suger beet is, it's a very large beet which they make typical white sugar out of. If you go to the store and buy sugar that doesn't say cane sugar on it, there's a good chance it's beet sugar. Of course if you want even more info on sugar beets, follow this link to Wikipedia. Ok, continuing on. So sugar beets aren't something people really grow. It's not a crop that people really use without being refined. My idea was I would find a sugar beet, shred it up and use it in the mash. After going to a few local farmers markets and google searching, I accepted the fact that I was not going to get my hands on a sugar beet without driving to somewhere like Montana and stealing it from some farmer's field... Or picking one up on the side of the road during harvest. Well, crap, my main idea just went out the window.
Let's talk barley. Barley is a very common base malt for almost all beers. I use 2-row barley in most of my beers. I was recently out east in Massachusetts for a friend's wedding when I had an all pilsner malt beer. Pilsner malt is just another form of barley that's malted a little differently. This was a really good beer which changed my mind on my approach for this Grandpa Joe beer. Knowing that Grandpa Joe liked lighter beers, I thought I'd make this beer only out of 2-row barley (like he grew) instead of having all different kinds of grain in the beer. Grandpa Joe was also a 1st generation Czech, so I wanted to incorporate some of that also into my beer.
In the end I used 2-row barley, a mixture of Czech hops & American hops, a little beet sugar (table sugar because I couldn't find anything better), and European style Ale yeast. The beer will have a very light color and should be a very smooth drinking beer. Something I feel Grandpa Joe would have enjoyed.
Now, like my other Grandfather beer, this one too had it's only little issues which I feel was grandpa givin me a hard time :) Unlike last time, this one has not and will not blow over, but the yeast was going so strong that I had a hard time keeping liquid in my one-way air lock. The air lock is used to keep unwanted items that float in the air, such as wild yeast, out of the beer. It was so fast and crazy I actually took a video clip of it:
Normally there would be more liquid in there, but it kept bubbling out. The liquid I used is sanitizing solution which does bubble up. Due to the bubbling action being so quick, I had to switch to something that would kill any yeast that could fall in, but wouldn't be harmful to the beer if for some reason it fell in. I picked vodka. So, after re-filling the airlock with vodka which doesn't bubble like my other solution, the beer was set. As of 6pm today (Sunday) the beer was looking great. Hopefully I'll have it ready in about a month or so.
Grandpa Joe, I miss you a lot and with I could share this one with you.
Prost with love.
-Ryan
