Winter Warmer & Honey Root Beer

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday was a Brew Day!!! Dizzy & I woke up, none of the roommates were around… so we decided to start up our next batch of delicious brew…

 

The Winter Warmer

 

Basically it appears to be a bit of a brown ale with darker grains so that it’s primarily for sipping by the fireplace & warming the cockles of your heart while you enjoy family time. Of course, because none of the roommates were around mid-day on a Saturday and it was a perfect time to do it… they immediately showed up as soon as all of the stuff was getting sanitized in the kitchen. Oh well… it happens… and luckily they didn’t really need the kitchen other than to warm a few things up for lunch, etc. Yes… it’d be nice to have a garage or something to do the homebrewing in… but you work with what you have… and frankly, it’s not a bad situation at all. Maybe it’s just that I worry too much about being in my roommates’ ways… but I’ll get over it. They know how it goes. Anyway… we started with sanitizing the equipment… and then sparging out those delicious sugars for our wort…

 

 

Sparge the first bit... then put it back in so you get the good stuff...

Spent grains make good fertilizer...

even though we really don't care...

I'm guessing the birds don't mind

Add the hops...

Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize...

Now, we’re beginners with the mash-tun… and apparently we have a little learning to do. See… apparently what happens if that you have to make sure that you have enough water to sparge out all the goodies. If you’re making 5 gallons, then you’d think 5 gallons would be enough… and you’d be WRONG!!! The grains that you’re pulling the sugars from are all dried out, cracked to expose their innards, so you really have to calculate the amount of water that you use to get a desired amount of liquid through there. The dried grains will obviously rehydrate with the addition of the hot waters, some of the gelatinous qualities act up and basically, depending on the amount of grains used (in this case, about 12 pounds) we should’ve used somewhere in the range of 8-9 gallons of hot water for the total sparge to get the desired 5 gallons.

 

However, we didn’t really do a lot of calculations beforehand… so I think we only used about 7-8 gallons of sparge water… so we only ended up with about 3.5 gallons of wort when it was all said and done. Take into account the evaporation from the hour-long boil for the hops… and we basically ended up with three gallons of Winter Warmer for the primary fermenter. Not a complete loss obviously… but definitely could’ve used an extra two gallons. Rookie mistake that we’ll certainly learn from… and that’s why you live… so that you can learn.

 

 

From this point, the process will still basically be the same despite the lower amount of wort. We still add yeast, primary fermenting, secondary fermenting, bottling, and it should be ready in about six weeks. The best part about learning of this now… is that we’ll definitely have enough water ready for our next batch… which is our Oktoberfest batch… which I’m personally really excited about because I LOVE German biers. Also, we got a little bored trying to cool the hot wort as fast as possible... so we decided to take some pictures of melting ice like we're filming a glacier documentary like "Chasing Ice" and here are the results...

 

Another added bonus of the mashing & sparging… is that we then have a few pounds of extra “spent” well-hydrated grains that we can use for things like making bread. With just a few eggs, some flour, olive oil, etc. We took some of those grains that we would’ve just given away or thrown on the lawn as compost… and turned them into delicious high-fiber bread for… well, anything bread is used for. Sandwiches, snacks, soaking up beer, whatever. It’s really good stuff… and you can even dress it up more if you like by adding raisins and other things that people unnecessarily add to good old fashioned bread.

 

Honey Root Beer

 

Since we had the stuff out, we also decided to make a batch of Honey Root Beer. What makes it Honey Root Beer? Well, we used some delicious honey as the sugar instead of standard cane or corn sugar in the recipe. Here are some pictures before the process… honey on the bottom, extract & water on top...

 

This batch should be ready in a week which is perfect for our Bacon & Beer Day Celebration this Saturday!!! You know, a magnificent alternative for those who don’t want to have a bunch of homebrews, may not be of age (though I don’t know why they’d be hanging out with us), or just to try a twist on a classic. We’ll keep you posted.

 

Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day by going to downtown Santa Rosa to try out a delicious sampler of beer at Russian River Brewing Company. During last weekend’s adventure, we didn’t really have suitable time to experience it… but we did this time. They were still pretty busy despite being just after noon when we arrived… but we got some Drew Bites (like a little pepperoni & peppercini pizza cut into little bites) and THIS SAMPLER!!!

 

 

There was also this car parked nearby...

Bay Area... it's what we do...

The beer was magnificent! We highly recommend it! The service was a little slow… but they were really busy, still pretty nice though. I just kinda had to make things happen to get the order in, get a check, and to help out… I even went & got my own drinks at the bar. I’m cool with it… but you just may not be expecting it.

 

Have a great day everybody!!! We’ll see you next weekend with a report on our Bacon & Beer Day Celebration!!!

Saturday Brewery Adventure - NorCal

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday was a pretty fantastic little adventure day… and it started off with a trip to Hendy Woods State Park just north of Philo, California. This is a relatively small state park & is primarily a nice little camping ground… but what it lacks in size it definitely made up for in beauty and was just a wonderful little, quiet area full of redwood trees and great little paths to wander through. On this trip, there was also no rangers, the visitor center was closed, and the only humans we saw were two joggers off in the distance briefly… so yeah, just serene & awesome. Here are some pictures…

 

Of course, what brought us to the area wasn’t just a great hike, but also a great brewing company about 15 minutes away in Boonville called Anderson Valley Brewing Company. It’s a bit of a destination as you’d have to go a bit out of your way to see it (nearest big town is Santa Rosa about an hour away) but the drive is absolutely gorgeous & there’s a great small town feel (only about a thousand people in Boonville). The grounds have goats in the fields (Dizzy loved that obviously) and there was a Great Hall area that was surprisingly empty for a Saturday (then again, it was just after noon when we got there) and we were greeted by Luke… the black lab who, from what we could tell, basically runs the joint. There were also two nice bartenders that we chit-chatted with but Luke definitely kept getting our attention by little barks or nudges when he wanted us to throw his ball… or a random leaf.

 

The brewery started in 1987 out of a ten-barrel brewhouse as a dream of brewmaster Kenneth Allen. Over the next decade, he made some great recipes & by 1998 he was up to 15,000 barrels, double the previous year. Demand was still growing though, so they kept expanding and expanding into a separate larger brewhouse by 2000 using some great copper kettles that he was able to acquire from a defunct German brewery. By 2010, Ken retired… and the new brewmaster Fal Allen (no relation oddly enough) took over… and they’ve been continuing the past brews as well as expanding into their Bahl Hornin’ Series, their barrel aging program & are still growing at a pretty rapid rate. Not bad for a guy in a small town, right? The tour took us through the brewery… and yeah, it’s pretty large. Here are some pictures…

 

Ah... the coveted Golden Bear...

We shall have one soon methinks...

This copper-laden board is just for show now...

but it's still pretty, shiny & cool...

Interesting twist: This is how they hop their beer...

They run the wort through this hot tub filled

with hops to maximize utility of the flavors

They got hops like Michael Jordan...

As for the most important part, their beer is also pretty fantastic. We tried a variety of samplers including their Winter Solstice (very malty session beer), a barrel aged stout & a few others in between… and they were all pretty good. Their staple drink that I’ve found mostly in Bay Area bars is Boont Amber Ale, and it’s a fantastic staple ale… but you can also find their IPA and others around town as well, mostly in tap rooms as it’s not quite one of the big local boys like Anchor Steam. I highly recommend taking a little road trip by Anderson Valley if you get the chance & sampling their selection. I’m sure they can also be found in Bevmo and other retailers.

 

After grabbing some great barbecue at Hamburger Ranch in Cloverdale…

 

We headed to Russian River Brewing in downtown Santa Rosa. However, because it was playoff time, RR is EXTREMELY popular locally & we were running a little behind, we basically just stopped in… grabbed a few bottles for the road… and were off to our next destination. That being said… we fully plan on checking out this brewer’s delights on a separate trip because downtown Santa Rosa seemed like a nice little place… and they had a WIDE array of interesting selections and samples seemed to be a dollar, which is pretty fair so that we can give them a fair assessment. That being said, the three kinds in bottles that we tried were Damnation (golden ale), Supplication (Belgian dark sour aged in pinot noir barrels with sour cherries) and their flagship brew Pliny the Elder, which is basically the quintessential Double IPA. It’s basically the ONLY beer that I’ve seen with a full 100 rating on ratebeer.com and was even mentioned in a Christmas present beer guidebook of mine as a “Must seek out & drink” where I only found about five in the whole book with that rating. They were all pretty fantastic… but we will have to elaborate on them more in a future post to give them due credit. So until then… here are a few pictures…

 

 

 

 

  

We headed to Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma in time for their final brewery tour of the day at 5 PM. We got there about a half-hour early, so attempted to get a sampler (took a while due to packed house, packs of arrogant douchebags trying to casually push in front & the bartenders apparently focusing on growler filling) but eventually got a nice sampler of eight of their brews and finished them up just before the tour started. Fantastic stuff & a great variety. First off, the brewery started in 1993 with a gentleman named Tony Magee who… after only ten batches of homebrew… decided that he wanted to open a brewery. After refining his recipes over the first years, they QUICKLY took off and they’ve been rushing to expand ever since. They’re even opening up another brewery in Chicago just as large as their current one (I think about 160,000 barrels in 2011) to both meet their current demand as well as expand into the Midwest & East markets. I’m thinking that Mr. Magee is pretty well-to-do right now… but here are some pictures from the tour…

 

Live entertainment most weekends...

Barrel aging beauty...

Not a bad biergarten area...

As for their beer selection, they have some amazing staples like their IPA, Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale & Pils that you can find at most bars here in the area. However, they also pride themselves on producing some unique batches. For example, some of their new biggest hits… were basically from brews that fell on adversity. For example, once while making their barleywine… there was some ingredients missed originally… so they made a few changes… and out came their Brown Shugga (which is fantastic). Then during another situation where they couldn’t meet demand on Brown Shugga due to construction issues, they received some adverse feedback from a pretty big distributor… and so their response was a seasonal brew called “Lagunitas Sux” which is a little different but still pretty good. In 2005, they received a 20-day suspension due to an undercover sting operation revealing that they were running a “disorderly house” under some Prohibition days law (California had to get their cut) but out of that time off, they came up with a highly-regarded Spring seasonal bitter ale called “Undercover Investigation Shut Down”. Through adversity, there’s always great beer to be made. I like that attitude… and it has obviously served them well. Check them out if you’re in the area… or you can certainly find them around.

 

So there you have it… a little Saturday road trip adventure in January in Northern California. Hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did… and if not, it’s probably because you’re just reading about it instead of experiencing it… so get out there & have fun. Have a great day everybody!!!