Batch 54 and Beyond

Under gray skies and light rain in the back yard yesterday, I squeezed in my first brew of 2010. On a purely trivial note, this is the 54th all-grain batch of my brewing life. Somewhat less trivial (at least to me) it was really now or never if I want to make a run at besting last year's personal best of 16 batches, considering the relentless train of winter storms now aimed at Southern California along with an increasingly busy work and family schedule. Moreover, having carboys and/or kegs sitting empty in the brew corner of our garage just never feels right.

The pressure to brew also stems from recently having to call a corny of my Helles on Wheels up to the front a few weeks early, to duty on the ole kegerator's Sunset Wheat tap. With the rest of my year-end series of German lagers sleeping in their kegs, I decided to start another series of English ales. I so enjoyed my first attempt last fall at a dark mild, as well as the subsequent English IPA, that I just couldn't wait to repeat the series. Plus this present batch of Brooks Leather Saddle Mild should just about be ready to go when the current keg on tap blows. Here is yesterday's recipe, only slightly modified from the first batch:

OG: 1038 (9.5°P)
84% Pale Maris Otter malt
8% Medium Crystal (60L)
5% Chocolate malt (450L)
3% Wheat malt
single-infusion mash at 155°F

approx. 20 BUs (calculated using Tinseth)
boil 75 minutes
Northern Brewer hops, 60 min.
American Goldings hops, 5 min.

White Labs English Ale yeast (WLP002)

Despite the light rain, my brew day went pretty smoothly. My brewhouse efficiency was a little higher than expected, but this was largely offset by less kettle evaporation on the wet day, so my starting gravity still came in on style. I use a rather primitive, but cheap and effective, water-bath system for managing fermentation temperatures. The temperature of one of the two carboys was spot-on this morning, at 67°F, and it was already showing some activity through the airlock. The other carboy, however, was sitting in the low 60s, so I quickly brought up the temperature several degrees with a boiling-water addition to the water bath. I've used this technique before to good effect, and I expect both carboys will be going strong by the end of the day.

Rather than repeat my fall series of English ales exactly, I'm going to experiment a bit in the weeks ahead. First, I'm going to add a couple ounces of cocoa nibs to one of the two carboys of the current mild as primary ferment dies down. I'm hoping that a week or so of "dry nibbing" will yield a nice chocolate aroma, but this is my first time using nibs, I don't really know what to expect. My second change from the fall series will be swapping out the ESB that I brewed last time for a completely revised version of my Roubaix Red, an American Amber ale. ESB is one of my favorite styles, but I wasn't thrilled with my own Penny Farthing ESB in the fall, and I've got a good supply of American hops I want to play with instead. Plus, I recently was inspired by a clone recipe of Stone's Levitation ale, and I'd like to try something comparable myself.

After these two session-strength beers in January, I plan to stretch the capacity of my mash tun in February, first with an encore batch of Century IPA-UK, then with a pair of half-batches of Barista Porter and an experimental oak-aged Man With the Hammer strong ale, the latter based on a clone recipe for my favorite beer of the 2009 winter holiday season: Lagunitas Brown Shugga'.

Then, in March, before the weather turns too warm, I plan to brew another series of lagers before moving on as summer approaches to a long-overdue series of something Belgian. As always, though, these plans are subject to change. Such are the joys of freedom that homebrewing allows. Cheers!

Brew Year Halftime Update

It's about halftime in the cool-temperature brewing season, as well as the end of another calendar year. I've managed to complete two full cycles of three beers each since the beginning of September, bringing my total for 2009 to 16 batches. That's still a few batches shy of our household's legally allowed maximum (200 gallons, if anyone is keeping track), but is nonetheless a new personal best.

Besides the quantity of beer brewed this year, I've been generally pleased with the quality. The first four beers I brewed in 2009 all won ribbons at various competitions, and a couple of my more recent brews (I think) would be worthy contenders, too, if I were to bottle and enter them as well. So far, my personal favorite is the Brooks Leather Saddle Mild I brewed back in September. It's a near-perfect clone of Moorhouse's Black Cat dark mild, and if judging in a competition, I'd give it an "excellent" BJCP score of around 40 out of 50. I used the same yeast in subsequent batches of Penny Farthing ESB and an English-style version of my Century IPA. The former was just OK--very clean and drinkable but rather lifeless--while the latter was probably my best IPA brewed to date. We've nearly finished off one of the two kegs of IPA, which proved extremely drinkable despite being full of interesting stone- and tropical-fruit flavors derived, presumably, from a combination of the malts, hops, and yeast-derived esters. A second keg of the same beer remains untapped as my first-ever experiment in wood aging. It spent a month on a small handful of Hungarian oak cubes, along with a pitch of Brett C. wild yeast and a couple of weeks dry-hopping. While not really historically accurate, it's nonetheless an experiment inspired by the IPA style's history as a colonial-era ale made for long ocean passages between Britain and British India. If nothing else, I'm anxious to see in 2010 what sort of complex (and hopefully still drinkable) ale is the result.

With summer temperatures now a relatively distant memory, I'm finishing up my last brewing cycle of 2009 with three lagers: a Munich Helles, a Bohemian Pilsener, and a Maibock. Primary fermentation is now finishing up with the last of these, while the first two are lagering. Because I had such success earlier in the fall with my English ales, I'm going to repeat a similar cycle early in the new year: another mild, another English IPA, and then one half-batch (5 gallons) each of my robust porter and a new idea for an oak-aged strong ale based on a clone recipe of Lagunitas's phenomenal Brown Shugga. I'll likely follow these ales with yet another round of lagers, and then as the weather gets warmer later in the spring, an overdue series of Belgian-style ales.

That's what's brewin' around here. May everyone have a Beery Christmas and Hoppy New Year!

Brewing Season has Arrived

Since the middle sixteenth century, the official Bavarian brewing season has begun on St. Michael's Day (September 29), which is effectively Germanic Catholicism's celebration of the autumnal equinox. With the emergence of Munich's Oktoberfest celebrations three centuries later, and the Great American Beer Festival three decades ago, the arrival of Fall has taken on even greater significance in brewing traditions world-wide. 'Tis the season for beer!

Like modern brewers of today, even those in Bavaria, I have no problem brewing during the summer, even if it requires a little more effort to manage my fermentation temperatures. Nonetheless, every year around this time I find an extra dose of energy around my brewhouse. And it arrived not a moment too soon. We emptied two kegs yesterday, which I was able to replace with two full ones waiting on deck in my lagering freezer. But that leaves just a single full keg in reserve, and four empties sitting around ready to be filled.

The good news is that those kegs won't be empty long. Fermentation is nearing completion on two carboys of a not-quite-mild Brooks Leather Saddle ale. This was supposed to be my maiden English Dark Mild, but a surprisingly high mash efficiency (due to the new grain mill at the homebrew shop?) led to a somewhat stronger ale that will end up being more of a Northern English Brown (OG=1045, expected ABV=4%). Over the next month, I plan to complete my series of English ales with an ESB and an IPA. All of these English ales will be welcome additions to the Bike Brew kegerator, which has been decidedly Germanic and Belgian for much of the year. Here, for example, is the current line-up:

• Beach Cruiser Blonde (a Bavarian-American hybrid ale perfect for our warm SoCal Indian summers)
• Dunkelrad (a traditional Bavarian dunkelweizen)
• Gran Bel Giro Maibock (the first keg we enjoyed in May; the second keg is serving as our Oktoberfest beer)
• Black Lion (a non-traditional ale of Flemish inspiration: a black witbier? a Belgian schwarzbier?)

Finally, the annual autumn energy surge at the Bicycle Brewery got an extra boost from the recent Pacific Brewers Cup. After getting off to an inauspicious beginning--I lost two intended entries in a glass-shardy mess on the floor of the homebrew shop--the PBC ended fantastically for me. The two entries that I did successfully deliver to the competition both took first place (!) in their respective categories; blue ribbons for my CrossXtoberfest Vienna lager and my robust Barista Porter. Alas, the remaining few bottles of each are set aside for the upcoming California State Homebrew Competition, so I'll just have to brew them again in the months ahead.

A Teachable Moment Missed

Yesterday was the ballyhooed "Beer Summit" between President Obama, Professor Gates, and Officer Crowley. Vice President Joe Biden also joined the party to presumably balance the Biertisch, 2v2, between elite Black men on one side and "working class" white men on the other, but also to add a lifelong teetotaler who reportedly drank a non-alcoholic brew. Whatever the event did or did not mean to the United States' national discussion of race relations, I'll leave to others to discuss. Instead, I'm more concerned about the gentlemen's rather uninspired choices of beer, beginning with the President's own selection of Bud Light.

I was pleased to see the question of their beer selection make the front page of the Wall Street Journal on the morning of the big event. Unfortunately, the article had two significant flaws. First, it concluded with an entirely unnecessary nod to neo-Prohibitionists, quoting the head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union--which few knew still existed--as well as Maureen Ogle. Ogle is the author of a popular recent history of brewing in the United States, and the book has made her a frequent source of sound-bites on American brewing. She's a talented writer and a competent researcher, but she frankly still doesn't know a heck of a whole lot about beer. Her book is little more than a hagiography of the Busch family and other "beer barons" from the German-American Midwest, completely ignoring the centuries of Anglo-Dutch brewing history that preceded the lager revolution of the 1800s. That said, Ogle has at least been a consistent and vocal public friend of U.S. brewers and beer culture--including the recent generations of independent craft brewers--and it probably wasn't her intention when interviewed to raise the Prohibitionist angle. Nonetheless, that's exactly what she did.

A beer writer who really does know his stuff, Jay Brooks, has already provided an excellent response to the WCTU and other Prohibitionists. My biggest gripe with the WSJ piece, then, is its out-of-date angle of economic nationalism. I am a globalist, and most expressions of nationalism make me uncomfortable, if not disturbed. I was thus disappointed (but not surprised) to see the article's coverage of beer selection focus on the brands' national provenance. Rochester, New York's Genesee Brewery, for example, is quoted as saying, "We just hope the next time the President has a beer, he chooses an American beer, made by American workers, and an American-owned brewery like Genesee." I don't begrudge the company for seizing on a potential marketing opportunity, but this question of "American or not?" was the sole angle of the story (other than the Prohibition thing). Yet it is such an out-of-date way of thinking about the world.

The missed teachable moment yesterday was that we live in a globalizing era which challenges our preconceived modern notions, sometimes for the worse, more often for the better. Perhaps falling into the former category--perhaps--is the trans-nationalization of global industry. This is how an historic U.S. brand like "Budweiser" ceases to be "American", or so it might be argued, since as of last year, it belongs to the Belgium-headquartered, multi-national giant awkwardly known as AB-InBev. But it could also be reasonably argued that the President's Bud Light yesterday remains a genuine, red-white-and-blue American beer, since it was made in a U.S. brewery and it's a brand that remains overwhelmingly consumed in this country. By the same token, though, there are many popular "foreign" beers that are actually brewed in the United States, such as Japan's Kirin and the Czech Republic's Pilsner Urquell, which for the Southern California markets at least, are more economically produced at the local Budweiser and Miller breweries. The bottom line is that one simply cannot honestly slap a national flag on 21st-century corporate enterprises; to do so is to engage in a 20th-century rhetoric that ignores the realities of 21st-century economic geography.

Globalism at its best provides spaces in which the authentic and meaningfully local can thrive, after a long period of being shrouded and effaced by stifling modern nationalism. As Randy Mosher recently wrote in Tasting Beer, the vibrant world of craft beer, and Slow Food in general, offers hope for a more interesting and humane future:

"For more than a century, this immigrant nation tried to find ways to become one people. Finding common language in mass-market, ‘modern’ products was one way to do this: Campbell’s Soup, Wonder Bread, American cheese. They’re still on the shelves, but the bright, soulless rationality of these industrial icons no longer holds so much appeal. Many of us would rather have our bread unsliced, our cheese moldy, our coffee freshly roasted, and our beer dark and maybe just a little bit hazy. Irrationality can be a beautiful thing. (p. 142)

"Craft brewing adapts itself to the culture, market, and tastes of wherever it finds itself, but the basics are always the same: people passionate about the flavor of great beer, brewing up fresh character-filled beers of all strengths, shades, and sensibilities. Quality beer is a part of a lifestyle that values the experience of living, of making every moment an adventure, every taste worth tasting." (p. 211)

Just as human beings cannot be crudely boiled down into stereotyped racial identities such as "Black" and "White", the products of human activity can not, or at least should not, be bland, simplified commodities. Despite popular misconception springing from decades of corporate megabrewing, all beers are not made alike, differentiated only by their packaging and brand images contrived on Madison Avenue. No, beer comes in a profound variety of colors, aromas, flavors, textures, and strengths--dramatically more so than other enthusiastically consumed beverages such as wine, whiskey, coffee, and tea (all of which I also drink and enjoy in their tremendous variety.)

This is what made the beer selection at the White House yesterday so uninspiring. It wasn't so much the crude national geography of the brand's identities or present corporate ownership, but the simple fact that two of the three chosen beers--Bud Light and Red Stripe--are generic, insipid, twentieth-century light lagers, engineered to be as inoffensively flavorless ("drinkable") as possible. (Officer Crowley's choice of Blue Moon, while part of the MillerCoors portfolio, at least is styled after something more disntinctive and interesting, the Belgian witbier.) Beer, just like human identity, is so much more than a simplified commodity.

What a missed opportunity, then, for yesterday's "beer summit" to celebrate authentic, flavorful, hand-crafted products made by local entrepreneurs. Rather than an endangered species, these "small business" icons of economic populists are presently thriving in our global age of consumer choice and world-wide information flow, at least in the brewing industry. There is no shortage of potential selections from either the greater Washington, DC, or Boston areas that the President's party could have chosen, and in the end, it was nice to see the Harvard professor trade in his faux-Jamaican Red Stripe for a much more flavorful and authentic Sam Adams Light from the Boston Beer Company. Imagine, though, if the President had invited, say, Garrett Oliver, to guide the foursome in a sampling of craft beers from across the United States. It would have provided a wonderful moment for these four men, from different walks of life, to see both their similarities and their differences in an entirely new way. ("I really like this hoppy IPA, Mr. President." "I don't know, I'm more partial to the malty doppelbock.") Exploring the surprising and interesting worlds of beer, both new and old, global and local, could have been an ideal metaphor for seeing "race" in America in a fresh way, one that seeks out our fundamental unity while also celebrating our very real differences--differences which, like our similarities, may not conform to our preconceived ideas of what race, or beer, is supposed to be.

Randy Mosher and My Favorite Beer Books

I hesitated before buying Randy Mosher's new book, Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink. After all, I'm a relatively veteran homebrewer, as well as an officially recognized BJCP beer judge. Plus, just about every other book or article I read these days has something to do with beer. So really, what else is there for me to learn? Since my thirst for beer information apparently knows no bounds, I picked up a copy of Tasting Beer nonetheless. And how glad I am that I did. As author of two previous books and countless articles in beer-related publications, and as a member of the Board of Directors of both the Brewers Association and the Chicago Beer Society, Mosher is something of a celebrity among the homebrewing community today. Moreover, his professional background is in graphic design, and one feature of his books--I now own all three--is that they are visually very attractive publications. Mosher's first book, The Homebrewer's Companion, is now somewhat out-dated, as many of the attractive worksheets it contains have been effectively replaced by excellent homebrewing software that is now widely available. (On my Mac, I like both BeerTools Pro and BeerAlchemy.) Mosher's second book, Radical Brewing, remains a classic, and it should be on the bookshelf of any homebrewer looking to experiment with new ingredients and otherwise move beyond the beginner's level. But it's his new, third book that will likely establish Mosher as one of the English-speaking world's foremost experts on beer. Rather than addressing homebrewers, this book targets a much larger audience. It's for beer drinkers, rather than beer makers, and it would be ideal for anyone interested in getting more "gusto" (a wonderful Italian word that Schlitz marketers unfortunately hijacked) out of their daily pint. Mosher provides a true celebration of beer. He guides the reader through the world's greatest drink's history, science, and many stylistic personalities, while also providing practical advice on how best to serve and enjoy your beer (glassware selection, serving temperature, food pairing, etc.). Mosher displays a deep and detailed understanding of beer that only an experienced brewer and afficionado such as himself can provide, yet he does so in a very readable, concise, and straightforward manner, so that a complete beer novice would enjoy this book, too. This one is for beginners and experts alike. If you like beer, you'll love this book. Here, then, is my new list of Favorite Beer Books:

Best Book on Enjoying Beer

Randy Mosher, Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Drink (2009) Honorable mention: Garrett Oliver, The Brewmaster's Table (2003); Michael Jackson's Beer Companion (1993, 1997)

Best All-Around How-To Guide for Home Brewing

John Palmer, How to Brew: Everything You Need to Know to Brew Beer Right the First Time (2006)

Honorable mention: Charlie Papazian, The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing (1983)

Best Guide to Homebrew Recipe Design

Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Styles (1996, 2000)

Honorable mention: Jamil Zainasheff and John J. Palmer, Brewing Classic Styles (2007); Randy Mosher, Radical Brewing (2004)

Other Categories

Best world history of beer: Ian S. Hornsey, A History of Beer and Brewing (2003) Best U.S. history of beer: Stanley Baron, Brewed in America (1962) Best brewing science textbook: Michael J. Lewis and Tom W. Young, Brewing (2001)

The Kegerator

The kegerator has been up and running for about six months now. Here are a couple pictures. There's nothing particularly innovative here, but perhaps I'll add a more complete description later. One quick note on the tap handles: rather than my favorite beers--although Black Butte Porter from Deschutes is certainly on my short list--these simply are attractive handles I found on eBay that fit under the short(ish) clearance beneath the freezer door. I now need to build a jockey box in order to use the too-tall Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Anchor Steam handles I also have.

Beach Cruiser Blonde

I brewed ten gallons of Beach Cruiser Blonde ale, yesterday. This is my first go-round with this beer, one I'd named long before I had fully conceived what it would be like. The blonde ale style never has been a personal favorite, and I usually turn to a crisp pale lager or spicy wheat beer when looking for a summer thirst quencher. But a recent family trip to North County San Diego led us, inevitably, to Pizza Port Carlsbad, and I found a blonde ale that really hit the spot. I was too busy enjoying the beer to recall its name, and I didn't bother trying to track down a brewer, either. But what made this particular blonde so alluring was a subdued clove spice reminiscent of a Bavarian hefeweizen. With a round of Bavarian weissbiers already planned at the home brewery, I knew then and there exactly what I would be brewing soon. After all, I'm German-American (more or less), I'm blonde (more or less), so why brew a German-American blonde ale? The two carboys are fermenting happily right now, protected from the summer heat in their insulated water baths around 66°F. If all goes to plan, the Hefeweizen yeast from White Labs (WLP300) will add its characteristic stamp of clove phenolics and maybe a little banana ester, but dialed down somewhat by the relatively cool ferment (less banana) and the limited quantities of wheat malt (less clove, because wheat malt contains more ferrulic acid--the precursor of 4-vinyl guaiacol--than barley malt.) Hopefully, all of this will meld nicely with modest additions of candied ginger, bitter orange marmalade, and Willamette finishing hops, to produce a refreshing, easy-drinking, but still interesting pale summer ale. And my early reviews of the unfermented wort are promising. The base beer under these spice additions is very straightforward: 75% American two-row, 10% German wheat malt, 10% Vienna malt, 5% Crystal 20L. The starting gravity was 1.050 (or about 12 Plato), with a mix of Crystal and Fuggle hops providing 20-25 BUs. I expect the finished beer to come in around 5% ABV.

Elsewhere around the Bicycle Home Brewery

Looking over my list of Brew Year's resolutions, my completion record is about 50:50, which isn't too bad, I guess, considering that the year is about half over.

1. Build a kegerator: check.
2. Plan a brew sculpture: fail.
3. Make a mead: check (although it's still conditioning in carboy).
4. Make a cider: fail (but planned for the Fall).
5. Make a wet-hopped beer: fail (also planned for the Fall).
6. Become a "Certified" beer judge: fail (but now just one experience point away).
7. Make significant progress on my beer book: check (but still lots to do).
8. Go to the NHC: fail (maybe next year in Minnesota?).
9. Blog more: fail.
10. Brew more: check! (Beach Cruiser Blonde is my tenth batch of 2009, not including the mead, so I'm well on schedule for breaking my 2007 personal record of 14).

The Balanced Life

Work and play. Action and rest. Winter and Summer. Night and day. Yin and yang. Red and blue. Bitter and sweet. Hops and malt. Bicycles and beer.

Quick Update - Jan 25, 2009

My robust porter is nearing the end of its ferment. All appears to have gone well, but I don't have a good way of checking gravity so I won't know for sure until kegging in a few days. But this weekend was still an eventful one for the Bicycle home Brewery. I successfully converted by beer fridge into a 4-tap kegerator. Sometime soon, I'll post some pictures and my story (rather uneventful, I'm happy to say) of the project.

Barista Porter

With my recent resolutions in mind, I not only knocked out a new batch of beer yesterday, but I am writing about it here. I'm also compiling tonight a parts list for my kegerator. My last brew of 2008 was a batch of my Century IPA, and it left me with a nice supply of "California Ale" yeast, the clean-fermenting workhorse of today's craft- and home-brewers alike. I also have a fair amount of 2007 hops in my freezer, which aren't getting any fresher, including an unopened bag of Fuggles. So it just seemed to be the right time to have another go at my Barista Porter. Even more so than beer, coffee is the universal beverage of bicyclists around the world, and the espresso-pulling barista is our soigneur of the café. The robust porter--a style with a very modern yet still mysterious history--comes as close as any beer style to capturing dark-roasted coffee essence in a glass. My grain bill yesterday was very conventional, with significant contributions from crystal, chocolate, and black specialty malts on top of a base of American 2-row and German Munich malts. Also sticking close to the current standard practice, I generously hopped with both Fuggles and Willamette. Based on my sampling of the chilled wort, this beer will have prominent chocolate notes alongside the coffee--not exactly surprising given all the "chocolate" malt. Depending on how much I like the finished product, I might add some fresh-brewed espresso to the keg to bump up the coffee flavor and aroma. The nice thing about brewing 10-gallon batches is that they yield two homebrewer's "corny" kegs, so I can try one with the extra coffee shot, and one without. The brew day yesterday was not my smoothest. I forgot to install the "bazooka" screen in my picnic-cooler mash tun before loading in the grain, which I didn't realize until half-way into the mash-in. But I managed to get the screen installed, and the only real loss was of a few degrees in mash temperature, which might make the beer a little thinner and drier than I would hope. Regardless, it was a beautiful sunny January day in southern California--a perfect day for cooking up some wort and roasting a pound of coffee, too, during the boil. Twenty-four hours later, the beer appears to be happily fermenting in the garage. And we already sampled some of the coffee this morning. All is good.

Brew Year's Resolutions

New Year's Day has come and gone, as has the ridiculously strung out college football bowl season, but it's still the first half of January, so I figure it's not too late to for my annual resolutions. Perhaps the only New Year's resolution I've ever kept was the one I made a handful of years ago to brew--and to drink--more beer! Hoping for similar success this year, here are my Brew Year's Resolutions for 2009: 1. Build a kegerator. I celebrated my 40th birthday a few years back with a new refrigerator in the garage for my beer. This included acquisition of a few "Cornelius" kegs, a pressure regulator, and all the other basics that one needs to set up a basic home draft system. Well, like so many other homebrewers before me, I've found the shift from bottles to kegs to be truly revolutionary. But the fascination of drawing pint after pint of my own homebrew from a cheap little picnic tap has finally worn off. I've grown frustrated by having to fumble through a tangle of beer lines and to swap over a gas line from keg to keg every time my wife and I want a pint. Plus I've got a couple of tap handles I purchased on eBay a few years back just sitting around gathering dust. It's time I finally correct this situation. 2. Plan a brew sculpture. My brewing setup is still rather primitive, featuring a hodge-podge of converted coolers, half-barrel kegs, pots, plastic buckets, and carboys, but it's mine, and it works. Still, it would be nice if I could build something just a little bit more elegant to, if nothing else, reduce the heavy lifting of hot water currently required on my brew days. I know myself well enough to know that it would be overambitious to expect to finish this project this year, especially when I've got a kegerator to build. But it would be nice to have some specific plans to carry into 2010. 3. Make a mead. I don't drink mead, and I don't particularly like honey. I'm always looking, though, to expand my fermentation experience, and I listened to an absolutely brilliant podcast on the drive home from our Christmas trip to the Bay Area. The podcast featured a long conversation with Ken Schramm, author of the book on the subject, The Compleat Meadmaker, and, well, he inspired me to give it a shot. I think I'll even start with the Vanilla Orange-Blossom recipe he presented on the show. If nothing else, it should help prevent my wife from drinking all my beer. 4. Make a cider. Speaking of my wife, on that same Christmas trip north, we went to see our sturdy Golden Bears play in (and win!) the Emerald Bowl. Since the game was at the San Francisco Giants ballpark, we were obligated to enjoy some pre-game festivities at the 21st Amendment, one of California's premier brewpubs. I had an absolutely fantastic series of beers, while my wife thoroughly enjoyed the pomegranate cider (made in Sacramento) they were serving. I enjoyed it, too, so I think I'll try making some of my own. 5. Make a wet-hopped beer. I've been growing some hops at home for a couple years, and I've now got several Cascade plants well established. I yielded enough this past summer to help hop a recent IPA, but I still haven't got the drying process dialed in. So this year, I'll make a fresh "harvest" ale instead. 6. Become a "Certified" BJCP beer judge. One of my biggest brewing milestones in 2008 was to finally take the Beer Judge Certification Program exam. I passed, and I came agonizingly close to scoring high enough to rate as a National-level judge. With just a pair of experience points, though, I'm still a ways off from being eligible to achieve a National ranking, and I'll just re-take the exam when that time comes. My immediate goal, then, is to acquire the small amount of experience I need to officially become "Certified". There are enough local competitions that I should be able to accomplish that by summer. 7. Make significant progress on my beer book. The first paper I wrote in grad school was about brewing--an historical geography of the industry in the United States. I've long regretted letting that project lie dormant for so long, and for the last year or two, I've been compiling notes and sketching some crude outlines that would extend my original essay into a book. My summer travels to Munich last year only confirmed my desire to take the project global, and I'm already scheduled to give a talk on the subject at my college in March. 8. Go to the NHC. During my first stint as a homebrewer, again back in my grad-school days, when brewing was more a curiosity for me than a full-fledged hobby, my wife and I attended the annual National Homebrewers Conference. It was just down the road in Milwaukee, and we made a weekend day trip out of it. The NHC has since grown into a far bigger event, and ever since I re-started by homebrewing in earnest, I've been eager to return. Since this year's conference, in Oakland, is once again in-state for me, it would seem an ideal year for me to attend. Now if I can only get approval from my wife; perhaps the promise of mead and cider will do the trick? 9. Blog more. I started this blog almost two years ago, and while I haven't truly ignored it, I haven't contributed to it nearly as much as I had originally planned. I'd like to pledge a new entry every week. But let's keep this realistic: how about a new entry every month? If nothing else, I need to actually begin that series of beer-style posts I promised here several months ago. 10. Brew more. Last but not least, I need to make more beer. I was on a nice run for a while, with several consecutive years of growth in the number and volume of batches brewed. Like our economy, though, 2008 proved to be a year of recession, as my brewing output fell off a bit. My goal in 2009 is nothing less than a new personal record: more brews, more beers, more fun. Happy Brew Year to you all!

World Beer Styles: An Introduction

I recently completed the Beer Judge Certification Program's exam for the first time. I've judged a handful of local competitions in the past, but studying for and taking the three-hour essay exam has provided a lot more formality to by brewing studies. I won't learn my results for several more weeks, but I'm hopeful (and reasonably confident) that I'll earn at least a passing score high enough to rank as a BJCP "Certified" judge.

While part of the exam covers brewing basic brewing and beer-judging principles, most of the exam requires a detailed knowledge of the official BJCP Style Guidelines, which provide the foundation for almost all homebrew competitions in North America. If I had had my act together, I would have used the spring months leading up to my June exam to prepare detailed write-ups of all the different styles. But such was not the case, and necessary detail was thus lacking from some of my exam responses. Now that I have some free time with the arrival of summer, however, I'm going to use this blog to continue my beer studies further, embarking on a multi-part series on this blog that profiles the multitude of recognized beer styles. Perhaps someone else studying for a BJCP exam down the road will find this series of use. Perhaps it will be me when I re-take the exam some day to shoot for a Master-level score.

There already exist many different sources that profile each of the 23 major styles of beer, which are subdivided further into 80 distinct substyles, not including the meads and ciders that also fall under the BJCP's purview. Besides the official Style Guidelines themselves, excellent introductions have already been provided by, among others, the authors Michael Jackson, Ray Daniels, and Jamil Zainasheff. (Homebrewer extraordinare Jamil also hosts a weekly program on the on-line Brewing Network, and the archived podcasts of that show provide a fantastic resource for brewing award-winning examples of these styles at home.) But there is one thing about these sources that leave me a little unsatisfied: all are exceedingly detailed, in order to provide as precise a target as possible for both the style-minded home brewer and for the evaluating judges. As anyone who has prepared for the BJCP exam can attest, trying to master the styles and commit their details to memory is a daunting task indeed; it's virtually impossible to see the general "forest" behind all the specific "trees", such as the common adjectives used to describe classic aroma and flavor characteristics, and quantified vital statistics (OG, IBU, SRM, etc.).

My intent is different. I will attempt to provide a brief "story" of each group of related styles, particularly as it relates to their place in the global historical geography of our greatest beverage. To develop this grand story of beer and all its diverse traditions, I'm going to summarize where and when these styles come from. My organization will thus deviate from the usual categorization, which is designed to serve brewers and judges by emphasizing characteristics (appearance, maltiness, hoppiness, etc.). Instead, my historically minded organization will trace beer's stylistic evolution as follows.

• Part One: The Pre-Modern Traditions of Northwestern Europe
• Part Two: The Modern Lager Revolution of the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s
• Part Three: The Post-Modern Craft Brewing Renaissance

I do intend to summarize the different styles' qualities, as both judges and brewers would understand them, but always in the context of understanding their place in the larger story of beer and brewing. It's a story that, from a geographer's perspective, is a fascinating one that has taken a diversity of local traditions, simplified them into a small handful of global standards, before exploding into to the chaotic diversity of the "glocal" present. Check back soon for the first installment of Part One: the rustic "farmhouse" and "old style" beers of the northwestern European plain.

Meanwhile, back in the brewery.It's been several months since my last post, and I managed to fit a few brew days into an already busy schedule. In April, I brewed my second-ever CrossXtoberfest, which should be nice and lagered by the time September rolls around. In May, I brewed my first-ever batch of Embrocator, a doppelbock made with yeast harvested from the CXfest. It, too, is now lagering, and I expect to begin sampling it during the winter holidays. With supplies of beer that I can drink now running low, I made a batch of Velo Wit about a week ago, and it is now finishing its ferment and should be ready to drink next month. After that I'm going to have another go at my Belgo-American hybrid ale called Single Speed--a hopped-up version of a Belgian Pale Ale.

All the Beer, None of the Belly

Bikes and Beer. Besides starting with the same letter (at least in English), what is it that connects these two most fantastic of human inventions? When I've got nothing else to write about, I'll periodically reflect on that question here. One quick answer, though, is calories. As the name and theme of my home brewery suggests, I'm a bicycle nut as well as a beer nut. One of the benefits of being both is that the side effects of one hobby offset the side effects of the other. I know I'm not the only home brewer to make "brewing (and drinking) more beer" a New Year's resolution--probably the only such resolution I've ever actually kept--but I might be one of the few that actually lost weight after doing so! Most of my riding these days comes in the form of bike commuting to my day job teaching Geography at Santa Monica College. Depending on the specific route I take, and on other factors such as the wind in my face or at my back, I burn roughly 800-1000 calories a day on my two-way commute. That's the equivalent of at least three pints of the beers that I brew--proper British-sized pints. This means that (most nights at least) I'm ahead of the curve and can add an extra slice of cheese, pizza, or other vice without regretting it the next morning when I hop on the bathroom scale. Drink lots, Ride lots--rules the live by.

Back in the Brewhouse

With a packed schedule of classes, committee meetings, and soccer coaching, my brewing schedule the last couple of months has been sadly sparse. But I did manage to get another batch of my award-winning American Wheat brewed last weekend, and it has been fermenting nicely ever since. With a mix of American Mt. Hood and Crystal hops, and some home-grown coriander, gently spicing a clean mix of wheat, pilsner, and Vienna malts, I expect this to be a very enjoyable thirst quencher before the end of the year. This batch is also intended to serve as a yeast starter for my first attempt at a kölsch-style German ale later this month. These are summer beers, I know, but the fermenting temps back in the garage are nice and cool, and in Southern California, there never really is a time of year when "summer" feels far way. Prosit!

Wins and Losses

Clearly, my preceding post celebrating the dream-like September enjoyed by the Cal football team created some pretty bad karma, as the Bears followed up their 5-0 start with a 1-4 second act to the season. The only good news, I suppose, is that there's now a decent chance that I'll be able to see the Bears play in San Francisco's Emerald Bowl over the winter break, with pre- and post-game partying at the 21st Amendment brewpub. For a beer/Bear lover like me, that's not a bad consolation prize. While it's been a lousy five weeks on the football front, I did pick up another victory on the beer front. My 2007 edition of Tripel Chainring Belgian abbey ale won its second ribbon of the year, this time taking a second place at the Pacific Brewers Cup--another staple in the Southern California homebrew competition circuit. (And my club, Pacific Gravity, absolutely dominated, with nine different brewers placing 14 different beers and meads!)

October: A Good Month for Bears and Beers

We here at Bicycle Brewing look forward to the month of October as an opportunity to celebrate two of our favorite things:
(1) Bears ...
Thanks to our savior Jeff Tedford, we Cal folk revel in the still-hard-for-us-to-fully-believe feats of our Golden football team each fall. And October is usually the month--this year being no exception--when early season success revives perennial dreams of making a long-awaited return to Pasadena's Rose Bowl on New Year's Day. Indeed, this year has been so special that the Rose Bowl might actually not be good enough, as the #2-ranked Bears (something not heard of since the legendary days of Pappy Waldorf) now have visions of a date in the national championship game to be held in New Orleans.
... and (2) Beers
Thanks to Bavaria's Ludwig I, who as Crown Prince in 1810 celebrated his marriage to Princess Therese with a horse race which subsequently morphed into an annual half-month-long festival that begins around the time of the September equinox, October has become the world's unofficial beer month: or at least the month we devote to malty Germanic lagers accompanied by healthy quantities of polka and sausage. Prosit!
In honor of both Bears and Beers, BikeBrew has been enjoying a number of our late-summer and early-fall creations. This summer's Wit and ESB are long gone, but there is still plenty of porter available both on draft and in the bottle. And along with our CrossXtoberfest, which lagered up very nicely and makes the short list as one of my favorite beers brewed to date, we've added in September a dry, refreshing batch of Bicycle Wheat, as well as an IPA that has just finished dry-hopping. The Wheat (OG=1051, ABV=5.5%) is my standard recipe of half malted barley (pilsner and munich) and half malted wheat, with a moderate touch of Cascade hops and coriander. My Century IPA is likewise a tried-and-true recipe, presenting healthy amounts of Cascade and Amarillo hops against a strong background of British and American malts (OG=1062, ABV=6.5%). Thus, win or lose, we're well stocked for the rest of the Cal football season. Go Bears! (And Go Beers!!)
UPDATE 14-October-2007: OK, so October isn't going to be such a great month for the Bears after all. At least the beer still tastes good--and is now needed more than ever!

Mid-Summer Update

When you've got a pair of active young sons at home, the livin' is never truly "easy", not even in the Summertime. But having a cushy teaching job which affords a couple of months away from the office, if never truly off work, certainly helps. Historically, the warm temps of summer meant a brewer's holiday--hence styles such as Franco-Belgian Saison or Austro-German Märzen/Oktoberfest that were originally brewed at higher strengths during the cooler months so that they could be stored to and through the warm months for later enjoyment. You brew when you can, however, and for me, that means loading up the brewing calendar during summer and relying heavily on my converted Igloo IceCube cooler to help me keep fermentation temperatures within reason. It also helps that I'm only a few miles from the cool waters of the Pacific, which (usually) keep my narrow coastal stretch of Sunny Southern California reasonably cool. There hasn't been much down time for my family this summer, with the front half loaded up with small family trips and excursions and me desperately preparing for a new class I'll be teaching this fall. Still, I've managed to brew a few times since my last posting a couple of months ago. The last four batches, in order, have been:

• Velo Wit (brewed May 11) - a pretty standard Belgian-style Wit made with a 2:1 mix of continental wheat and pilsener malt, and flavored with modest amounts of Northern Brewer and Tettnanger hops, as well as some coriander and orange marmalade. (OG=1.056, ABV=5.8%)
• Beckham's Best Bitter (brewed June 23) - a classic ESB made with pale English Maris Otter, Vienna, and Crystal malts, and hopped with a stereotypical blend of Fuggles and Goldings. (OG=1.052, ABV=4.8%) This was my first use of my home-converted "keggle", and it allowed me to brew a few extra gallons. It's still coming into its own as it conditions in keg and bottle, but I think #23 himself would be proud.
• Barista Porter (brewed July 11) - My first attempt at a porter, and early reviews are quite promising. It's a historically influenced robust porter which leans significantly on Brown Malt, along with a little Aromatic and de-bittered Black, to round out the pale malt base. The hopping was again pretty unadventurous, consisting mostly of Fuggles (which I had a bunch of in my freezer) and a little Northern Brewer and Willamette. The only significant twist was the addition of a pair of big double-shots of Espresso to the 5 gallons I have in keg. After some conditioning, it will be interesting to compare this draft version with the unadulterated stuff I put in bottle. (OG=1.059, ABV=5.5%)
• CrossXtoberfest (brewed July 23) - It's a little late on the calendar to be making an Oktoberfest, but it still should be ready by October. As I make my way through the classic styles, this recipe is again pretty conventional. The malt bill included more-or-less-equal parts of pilsener, vienna, and munich malts, with a little melanoidin thrown in, too. I bittered with a small amount of Magnum hops, with a classic mix of Saaz and Hallertau dropped in the kettle later on. It's only been five days, but so far this first-ever lager for me appears to be going well. The ferment is proceeding at a steady but not-too-fast pace, and daily additions of ice to the water bath are keeping the temps inside the IceCube in the low 50s. When cyclocross season heats up this fall, this promises to be a true refresher if all continues to go well. (OG=1.058)

That's what's brewing for now. My initial hop-growing attempt has had mixed success. The Cascade plant is going quite well for a first-year plant. It's got several happy bines in the neighborhood of 8 feet tall, it's showing signs of producing some cones, and I've even managed to start a vigorous bine in a separate pot after first starting it as a cutting in a glass of water! The other varieties, though, have been a bust. The Hallertauer and Sterling made a brief appearance above ground, then withered away and disappeared for good. I've still got hope for my tiny Wye Challenger; for weeks on end it has been nothing more than a two-inch "seedling", but in just the last couple of weeks it resumed growing. It's too late for it to amount to much this year, but maybe it's laid the foundation for something bigger next.

Happy Mayfaire!

This news is rather late, as the competition was held more than a month ago. But it is still the month of May, and there's never a bad time to report happy results. The Maltose Falcons of Los Angeles are widely recognized as the USA's oldest homebrew club, and their annual Mayfaire is one of the country's most prestigious regional competitions, attracting more than 350 entries this year. I'm very pleased to announce that two of my beers placed: my Tripel Chainring ale took 3rd place in the Belgian-style Abbey Ale category, and my Bicycle Wheat took 1st place (!) in the American Wheat/Cream Ale category--my first-ever blue ribbon. I also entered both beers in the AHA Nationals. While neither advanced out of the first round, both received complimentary remarks and relatively high scores from the judges: the Wheat earning a "Silver" certificate, and the Tripel Chainring earning a "Gold".

You Know You're a Brewer When ...

... things start smelling to you like Pacific Northwest hops, rather than citrus. I have an orange-scented reed diffuser in my office, to help cut down on the locker-room odor that would otherwise build up given my habit of laying sweating cycling clothes out to dry--one of the hazards of being a bike commuter. The diffuser works great, so well that there are days when I walk into my office and am pleasantly surprised by the pleasant aroma of freshly peeled oranges upon opening the door. At least I used to be surprised by the aroma of oranges, because now it's the aroma of Cascade or Amarillo hops that my brain thinks it's sensing--almost like opening a bottle of a fine West Coast IPA--which isn't a bad surprise at all in the middle of a work day, even if it is just a fleeting tease of the real thing.

Happy Brew Year!

Cascade buds Originally uploaded by petemorris.

Spring has been very much in the air for the last week at the Bicycle Brewery, and Southern California's famous sun has even made a welcome appearance today after several days of "May Gray" and "June Gloom". As if on cue, breaking through for the first time yesterday were a trio of buds from my newly planted cutting of Cascade hops. It was the largest of the four rhizomes I put in the ground a week ago, so it is no surprise to see it show up first. I've got fingers crossed that its smaller cousins--one rhizome each of Challenger, Hallertauer, and Sterling--will be making an appearance soon as well. I've continued to enjoy my IPA on tap, while also brewing, fermenting, and kegging, my latest: the "ordinary" Bicycle Bitter. True to style, it promises to be an easy-drinking pub-style ale, with a balanced mix of all-English flavors contributed by the Maris Otter barley malt (plus a little Crystal and CaraAmber), the Goldings hops, and a classic ale yeast from London. Here are the vital statistics: starting gravity = 1040 finishing gravity = 1011 ABV = 3.7% IBUs = 30-35 (approx.) calories = 219 per a proper 20oz. British pint It's an especially appropriate beer to make over the Brew Year's holiday, because it checks in just a few ticks below the old 3.2%-by-weight alcohol limit, which is about 4% in the new money (i.e., by volume). What is the Brew Year's holiday? On April 7, 1933, the end of national Prohibition was initiated when FDR signed a modification of the Volstead Act that redefined 3.2% beer as not an "intoxicating liquor" and thus not subject to federal enforcement of the 18th Amendment. By the end of the year, national Prohibition came to a full end with the repealing 21st Amendment, although still to this day there are many parts of the United States --this means you Alabama--where Prohibition of some sort remains in place.