Wet Ted 69 Creation

Greetings!

So I've been so excited about creating this post that I just couldn't wait any longer. I went home and quickly filmed this. Like I've said before in the past I try not to post non-stop for you guys, but I think you'll really enjoy this. Video is a little over 9 minutes long. Sorry for the crappy editing but I'm not a film major. I filmed everything myself using a oint-and-shoot camera. Enjoy!

Here's a first draft of what I plan on brewing, upholding to all of the requirements set forth by myself. I did want to give myself some control so I picked my own hops along with the grain weights. I should explain the name: Wet for undried fresh hops, Ted for the person this beer is in honor of, and 69 for the amount of minutes I'll boil for.

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 9 lbs Pale Malt (Weyermann) (3.3 SRM) Grain 1 81.8 % 1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel Malt - 60L (Briess) (60.0 SRM) Grain 2 13.6 % 8.0 oz Caramunich III (Weyermann) (71.0 SRM) Grain 3 4.5 %

Amt Name Type # %/IBU 1.00 oz Nugget [13.00 %] - Boil 69.0 min Hop 4 45.6 IBUs 1.00 oz Nugget [13.00 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 5 34.1 IBUs 1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 6 6.2 IBUs 2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 8.0 min Hop 7 10.3 IBUs 1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 7.0 min Hop 8 4.6 IBUs 1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 3.0 min Hop 9 2.1 IBUs 0.50 oz Nugget [13.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days Hop 10 0.0 IBUs

I hope you all have enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed making it. Plan is to brew on Saturday. If you want to join just let me know and I'll keep you up to date.

Prost!

-Ryan

Harvest

Last night Ted invited me out to his place to help harvest his hops. He told me I could take home anything I picked as he was swamped in hops. He wasn't kidding! Below are some pictures from last night. By the way, I forgot my camera at home so all I had to use was the crappy cellphone.

That's a lot of hops. Stuff on the ground is what we had to pick.

My Friend, the hops bundle

Ted the Hops Zombie is here to bitter your beer!

As a thank you to Ted for giving me close to 3lbs of cascade hops and an unknown amount of Chinook I plan on brewing a beer in a Ted fashion. Don't know what I'm talking about? Well enjoy this episode of brewing TV that he and my other friend Paul we're on. Brewing TV - Episode 44: Dice-Hopped IPAs  Check back soon as I'm going to have a lot of fun making this Ted-Style brew!

Prost!

-Ryan

The Grandfather Series - Session 2 - Grandpa Joe

On Saturday I finally got around to brewing my next brew of the grandfather series. This one is dedicated to my Grandpa Joe.

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

It's that time of year again....

I love octoberfest. No, seriously.. I love it. I'm writing this from Logan international airport in Boston, Ma. I'm enjoying the first run of Sam Adams octoberfest. The bartender who's a very large clearly Boston native informed me it came out 3 days ago. I'm stoked. Other then that not much new on the brew front. The honey wheat has some odd issues with taste that I'm hoping 10 days of sitting will clean out. I think it has to do with the blow-over. I've been out east for 10 days now on my way home. Delta oversold our original flight home. Being in no rush Erin and I gave up our seats for a nice $300 voucher each plus first class on the next flight (6 hours later). We grabbed our gear and headed into Boston. Wonderful pizza and a cannoli. I'll have a hops update here soon. Also I'll be looking to brew very soon here if anyone's looking to join.

Prost!

RyanRyan

Dear Animals: Leave my damn hop plants alone!

Little update on my hops growing.

Yesterday I received a text message in the morning from my mom explaining that my plants were growing out of their buckets and would need their trellis built here soon. I went over there that night to start building it, with no real plan in mind. When I got there my mom informed me that the night before a pair of deer decided to have a little snack on my damn hop plants. Clearly it was a little more bitter for their taste as they only had 2 bites off of them, but managed to eat all of my mom's flowers. (Sorry mom, can't remember the type of flower you told me). To add insult to injury, last weekend while I was up camping something, either the hailstorm we had or an animal, uprooted my hops plant letting it dry out in the sun over the whole weekend. I put it back in the ground but I have a bad feeling it's not going to pop back this time. I plan on putting a chicken wire fence around it. I'm tempted to add some voltage to that fence.

Back to building the trellis.

So I didn't have much in mind on how exactly I was going to build this. I knew how my friends Ted and Paul built theirs, so I had some ideas. After moving the plants a few times I finally figured out a plan of attack. With string, stakes, a ladder, scissors, and a staple gun in hand I was ready to attack. Here's my final product:

The green stuff on top of the stakes is irish spring to keep the damn deer away. Hopefully these little guys will start growing here soon. As for pictures of my plant, while, not much to show.. some dirt is about it. The little guy that was poking out before died in the heat.

Beer I drank while writing this: Tyranena Brewing Bitter Woman IPA. It seemed only correct giving my bitter state right now at animals.

Prost!

-Ryan

Growing Hops... Or lack there of

Often times people ask me "What's the most expensive ingredient in brewing?"

When I was extract brewing, I couldn't totally tell you because everything was somewhat expensive. The malt extract itself was probably one of the more expensive things. Now that I'm all-grain brewing, grain typically costs me around $1.15 to $1.60. A normal 5gal batch runs around 12lbs of grain. Hops runs around $3.50/oz or more with the typical beer using 2 oz and the IPA's running up to 9+oz. Going back to my families farming roots, I figured this year I'd grow my own hops. Not only as a cost saver, but once again having even more pride in what I made. Remember, I always tell people not to brew to save money, but brew to have pride in what you created.

This spring I pre-ordered 6 hop plants, called rhizomes, and knew that I was going to be getting some extras from my buddy Paul. There was a bit of mis-communication between myself and the mrs about where exactly I was planning on planting these hops. It was pre-agreed that my in-laws wanted some plants to grow on an old dog kennel, but that wasn't going to be all of the plants. My mom sparked some interest in growing some hops at her place. Perfect, now I've got my homes.

I planted 3 of them at the In-laws: Golding, Hallertau, and Centennial. Apparently I planted them too deep as all 3 of them rotted out and died. I fail. I'm too embarrassed to show the pictures.

I gave 3 of them to my mom: Tettnang, Fuggle, and Nugget. She did **not** fail. Here's some pictures from a little over a week ago:

I love the planter box

And here's one from a few days ago:

That's awesome. I know first year hops don't produce much and these were planted only about 3 weeks ago, but I'm stoked for anything I can get off them. Now, some of my friends and fellow brewers have crazy plants already. Some examples:

Paul's hops from 2 weeks ago. These are 2nd and 3rd year hops if I remember correctly:

Also an old highschool classmate of mine is growing his own hops. Check out Aaron's blog here. Here's a stolen picture from his blog:

Now, with all these people growing awesome hops, I still had a cascade rhizomes sitting in my fridge from Paul. I went to home depot two weeks ago and picked up a planter so that I could start growing it. Here it is today:

Now I know it doesn't look like much, but I'm pretty excited because this little guy has had a ruff life. It's been attacked by animals, twice, which left it uprooted. It also sat in my fridge for well over 2 months. With that little vine sticking up I know it should take off. I don't expect anything out of it this year, but hopefully next year I'll get a nice amount of hops off it.

Grandpa Giles Honey Wheat Update:
So, as hopefully you all read my last post about my crazy honey wheat which has my hands full, figured I'd give you a little update. My house smells like a brewery. I LOVE IT! Now, from time to time I've had it where I've got a little smell of the brewery when I walk right by the fermentor, but this time the second I walked into the house I could smell it. The smell has gone down a little, but it's still there in the basement. The airlock bubbling has gone down a lot as I'm now on day 3 of fermenting. The first few days are the strongest, then it starts to go down near the end of day 2. Hopefully I didn't contaminate the beer at all.

I'm going to do a new segment on my blogs. I plan on writing what beer I'm drinking while writing, if any, and my notes on it. So, for this blog I've been drinking Southern Tier Hopsun Seasonal. They advertise it as a summer wheat beer with 1 variety of hops (doesn't say which hop, but my guess is cascade) and 3 types of malts (my guess, your typical 2-row base malt, a wheat, and a low number crystal malt, maybe 20). For a wheat beer it has a pretty aggressive IBU, which is somewhat expected given the name. I personally don't know if I'd classify it as a summer beer as my idea of summer beers are very easy drinkers. This is more of an IPA, which can pack more of a punch in your mouth then wanted on a hot summer day. Now IPA fans don't get all butthurt, I love the IPA just like everyone else. I'm just saying on real hot days I enjoy something a little easier on the mouth then a 60+ IBU beer.

Prost!

-Ryan

The Grandfather Series - Session 1 - Grandpa Giles

A little over a year ago I had a pretty ruff time. I lost both of my grandfathers in about a 5 month period. I thought about how I can honor them and their life. While I'm still thinking about another way which I want to keep quiet until I actually do it (if I do), I plan on honoring them in a bit of a different way. I present the Grandfather Series. While neither of my grandfathers were big on beer (or at least not that I remember), they were both farmers in Montana. In creating these recipes, I thought about the items which they grew. In no particular order, here's my first shot at it with back story....

My Grandpa Giles (Mom's Dad) was a farmer in north central Montana, often known as the "Golden Triangle" due to the large amount of wheat which is produced there. My grandfather also had a love of honey. So much so that he would allow local beekeepers to put bee hives on his land. It was only natural for me to create a Honey Wheat to honor him. Now I do still have family in that area which do grown wheat. I didn't use family wheat due to the process which is required to make it into a brew-able product (Sorry Karen!). So with that, I did the next best thing I could which is buy wheat from the Golden Triangle which is processed for brewing. Who knows, maybe it did come from the family farm. As for honey, I hit up the Minneapolis farmers market where I bought 1.5 lbs of honey from a local bee keeper. I wanted to use unprocessed crystal honey, but for first run cost reasons I used the liquid melted stuff. This was my 2nd time using honey, but it has been many years. My very first kit brew was a honey wheat which if I remember correctly tasted horrible. Here's a breakdown of the recipe:




Ingredients

Amt	Name
6 lbs	Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
4 lbs	Wheat Malt, Pale (Weyermann) (2.0 SRM)
4.0 oz	Carawheat (Weyermann) (50.0 SRM)
1 lbs	Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
1.00 oz	Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
1.00 oz	Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 2.0 min
1.0 pkg	American Wheat Ale (Wyeast Labs #1010) [125.00 ml] w/ 1200ml Starter
1 lbs 8.0 oz	Honey (1.0 SRM)

Mash @ 152f for 60min (Just a bit higher then I wanted, 150 would have been better)
Batch Sparge at 170f
OG: 1.054 (Lower then I wanted)

My grandfather was a bit of a wild man in his younger days, per my mom's stories. I think he was watching me while I was brewing this beer. I keg my beer which limits the final amount of beer I can brew at 5 gallons. Yes I could bottle some and keg some, but I really hate bottling. No, seriously, I hate it. Now I'm using a new brew pot which I was pre-warned from my buddy who I bought it from that it tends to evaporate a bit faster then others. It's a 10 gal pot which I went from a 7.5 gal (now used as my hot water tun, sorry it's not for sale!). So with that known, I ran a little higher on the liquid side assuming greater evaporation. When I put the beer in my 6.5 gal fermentor, it measured a little over my 5.5 gal marking. I'm guessing around 5.7 gals. Now that doesn't give me much head space for the yeast, then add the 1200ml yeast starter I had running for 3 days it makes even less. I was really worried this beer was going to be a handful for me, but I had no clue exactly what I was getting into. Remember, honey is a sugar, which is food for yeast.

I put the beer in the fermentor on Sunday 2pm, by 8:30pm I had heavy action in the airlock. Uh oh. This morning (Monday) at 6:30am I woke up to this:

Shit. This is what's called a blow-off. I've never had this problem before. So much so that my dumbass gave away my blowoff tube which is given in most starter brew kits. It's a large tube that goes where that airlock would be. Being that it was early and I needed to get ready for work, I put tin foil over the top of the air lock to keep crap from falling into the airlock and possibly into the beer, added additional towels around the fermentor and went to work. I never thought about adding smaller tubing which I have into the airlock to contain some of this. 

5pm Monday:

Tin foiled helped a whooole lot :p You can see it on the right side. Black thing in the back is my stir plate. Seems like my grandfathers wild ways continues with this beer. The action in the airlock has gone down enough that I was able to add more liquid (Actually used Jack Daniels in the airlock). It's still bubbling away.

Ryan and Grandpa Giles:

My next brew will be honoring my Grandpa Joe (Dad's Dad). Grandpa Joe used to grow 2-row barley for Coors. I'll also be including another interesting item (assuming I can find it). It most likely won't be until after the 4th of July, but stay tuned. I'll also have an entry here soon about my hop growing (or lack there of).

Prost!

-Ryan