Major Score!!!

I have mentioned that I have decided to get into kegging my homebrew.  I have dutifully started doing research and comparing prices.  On a whim, I checked Craigslist for keggerators (the ones that serve commercial kegs).  There were three types or price points represented.  The first and most expensive were the commercial units.  While they were super cool, the cost was anywhere from $600 to thousands of dollars.  The second group were the specialty appliance category.  A specially made kegerator sold commercially for home use.  These are the units that are the size of a 1/2 barrel keg and fancy enough to park in your kitchen or recreation room.  The used prices on these ran $300 to about $600.  The last category were the home made and converted refrigerators.  These were solidly in the $200-$300 range, some slightly less without a co2 tank or some other critical component.  The problem with the converted fridges is that they also usually look like shit and come with a full freezer (who needs that?).

So imagine my surprise when late one night up pops a full kegerator system with an old school 1930's fridge for $100...not only that, the co2 tank is a 20 pounder (most  of the $200 systems come with 5 pounders).  The problem is that it is in Gilcrest, Colorado.  Gilcrest, in case you don't know, is about 50 miles north of Denver, about 3/4 the way to Greeley up US Highway 85.  I tossed and turned all night, and in the morning on a whim, decided to call on it.....and it was available, but I couldn't get out there until later in the evening.  I expected it to be long gone, and from the sound from the guy who was selling it, it had a lot of interest (no wonder, it is cheap).  I was surprised that it was available that evening, so I went to see it.


It was a beast.  It was owned by an old guy, who hadn't used it in 2 or 3 years, but it was set up by his son (who was a refrigeration mechanic) so it had good parts.  The fridge itself was a Westinghouse and yes it was from the 1930's or 40's, maybe 50's, it was beat to hell and dented on the top but it still ran.  I got the fridge, the 20# tank with some CO2 left, a CO2 regulator, a Sanke tap, a chrome plated brass faucet, a Miller Lite tap handle, a stainless steel drip tray, an empty keg, and all the hoses and fittings....for $100.  A similar system purchased new from Northern Brewer with a 5# tank and no fridge costs $263.  The 20# tank new would be $125, the regulator $75, the Sankey Tap$30, and even the drip tray new would be $30 and the empty keg will save me $50 when I go to get a new keg of beer....probably a $250-$300 value for $100.  I was feeling pretty good.


But, it gets better.  After hauling the fridge down to my home and muscling it into the garage for the night, I discovered that the fridge weighs well over 200 pounds!  I used to work for an appliance retailer and I used to move appliances by hand all the time, but I could barely move this 4 1/2' tall fridge.  I decided that there was no way this was going to fit in my basement.  I have my chest freezer that I converted for use as a lagering/fermentation chamber.  I can use that with very little modification.


So, I put the fridge on Craigslist....and sold it in an hour for $40.  I guess I should have asked for more, because it was gone fast and I had multiple people calling for it.  So, I got a fridgeless kegerator system for $60.  After cleaning all the hardware, I purchased new hoses, and new connectors, as well as the stuff to put homebrew in (the 5 gallon Corny Keg and connectors), but also bought a gas manifold to use both kegs (and future unbought kegs) simultaneously.  All told, I spent another $100.  All I need are a couple of two by sixes, a keg of beer, and another faucet or two, some time and I am in business.


I hope to rig it for use with one commercial keg by my birthday.

End of Summer/Happy Dark Day

I cracked open my last Summer Beer.  I had been saving it to send to friends back East.....sorry Brent, but we are now closer to next summer than last....I will brew more.  Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice.  It is the holiday that I believe in and the day that I celebrate....well, that and Festivus.  It is my Christmas and New Year's rolled into one.


It is the day that I like to crack open a high gravity beer and think about stuff.  I have one of our Holiday beers from 2009....but I am saving it for my brother in law....he helped craft it last year in the bitter cold, I figured he should at least get the spoils of a well aged beer.  I will go buy myself something appropriate from the liquor store....perhaps Delirium Nocturnum or Noel, perhaps a St. Bernardus, or an appropriate Christmas Ale.


I didn't get the chance to brew as much as I would have liked, but as with each new year comes a renewed hope for brewing the perfect pint.  I am looking forward to a few things.  I have a couple of projects sitting waiting for me including remounting my pump in an enclosure, and installing a false bottom in my boil kettle.  I have already purchased everything.  In February, I should take delivery of a new Hot Liquor Tank from Stout Tanks giving us a three vessel system.  I may be interested in attending the AHA National Conference in San Diego.  I am highly considering jumping into kegging....and will have to make modifications to my fermenting chamber to accept both that and kegerator duties.  If I can brew slightly more than in 2010, it will be a victory.  I may even start some thought into a brewery name and branding....I have some leads and connections....


Oh, and I really need to make repairs to the man cave-garage-brewhouse (aka the decrepit building where we brew when at my house).


If you were wanting to make donations to my fictitious and non-profit brewery as yet to be named.....for this Solstice, I am wishing for a 100' potable water hose, a stir plate,  an eremyer flask or three, jacketed 1bbl or larger conical fermentors, any large capacity tanks or kettles, a 3bbl brewing system (from Stout or other) or an automated system (or anything from Sabco), an in line whole house water filter, a lifetime membership to the AHA, or better yet, a 1 year membership to the BA, any length of silicon hose, any equipment or funds towards my kegging system, tri-clamp fittings, brewers gloves or brewers boots, a floor drain or about 100 square foot of warehouse space (with a floor drain and a roll up door).


Happy Darkest of Days.

Mission Accomplished?

I got a text message from a friend back in Detroit.  It read: "Drinking a toasted, hemp seed, and potato double "Twice Baked" IPA at Lib St.  This means he was drinking a Double IPA made with Potato and Toasted Hemp Seed at the Liberty Street Brewery in Old Town Plymouth.


Two thoughts immediately came to my mind:


1. Who are you and what did you do with my Friend?
2. You are Welcome.


On Number One:  My friend has been known to drink Michelob Ultra by choice and a Double IPA is too much beer for even me (actually just too much hops for me).  Knowing both of these items leads me to believe that my friend has been abducted by some hop head craft beer drinking criminal, or Double IPA doesn't mean the same thing in all parts of the country.


A Double IPA is a high starting gravity beer with hop bitterness, flavor, and aroma to match.  Some would call it balance, I call that bullshit.  It is a conveyance of hops and alcohol.  But, local variances do exist in the beer world.  For example, the American Amber Ale is a starter craft beer (medium gravity, medium hops) in many parts of the country, but on the West Coast, it is a red or amber IPA.  I call them West Coast Reds, but even my homebrewed version of a Westie (West Coast Red) is no where near as bitter or high gravity as the ones found commercially in California, Oregon, and Washington State.  Racer 5 is an excellent example of a West Coast Red from Bear Republic Brewing in Healdsburg, California, while Pliny the Elder from the Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, California is an excellent example of the Double IPA style.


Even if Liberty Street's Double IPA is a highly drinkable beer (not exactly to west coast standards), I am lead to thought number two:  You are very welcome.  I have been plying my friend with decent homebrews and dragging him to breweries at every turn for at least 15 years.  I have finally rubbed off on him.  And you are certainly welcome Liberty Street, as while he had been there without me, he has started going there on a regular basis.  I am glad he has abandoned the Rusty Nail (the trailer park version of a bar) as his regular hang out.  If my friend can convert to naturally choosing better beer, anyone can.  This says good things for the local craft beer movement.


My mission continues, but this is a nice milestone.

Equipment Addict

Hello.  My name is g, and I am an equipment addict.


Hello g.......


Ok.  I admit it.  I am addicted to equipment.  I can't help it, it is in my nature.  I love beer.  I always have, and I liked brewing ever since I started, but it used to be about making BEER.  Now, with all of my "toys", it is now about MAKING beer.


My mom tells a story about me when I was too young to remember.  I was at my Aunt and Uncle's new house either while it was being built or just as they were moving in.  I must have been around three years old.  I was found "operating" a radial arm saw.  I have a hard time believing this story, as I have all of my hands and fingers, and am still alive.  The story is my mother's way of explaining who I am.  She calls me a "button pusher and knob puller".  In this description, she probably couldn't be more accurate.  As a child, my favorite toys were tools, equipment, and appliances around the house....any complex machine with knobs and buttons would keep me busy for hours as I systematically figured out how to work them or incorporated them into my fantasy play.


My dad, an electrical engineer and all around handy man had lots of ancient electrical testing equipment (with scopes, and meters and vacuum tubes), an old adding machine, one of the first generation scientific calculators, old hand drafting equipment, power tools, stereo equipment....you name it.  I played with everything, and knew how to operate everything that worked, and took apart just about anything with moving parts.  Some things I got back together....and others, well, I am pretty certain that it "just broke"...the official story is one of denial.  I am sure that this comes as no surprise to either of my parents.


This brings me back to brewing.  I liked brewing beer when it was extract brewing in a couple of buckets and a 5 gallon pot, but now that my brewery involves the use of pumps, valves, and fittings of all sorts, I am kind of in a state of nirvana.  This holiday season I have on order a 20 gallon stainless steel hot liquor tank (HLT) with professional tri clamp fittings, sight tube, valves, thermowell, and an internal stainless steel heat exchanger.  The HLT will allow me better control of temperatures and volumes while speeding my brew day. I am expecting to take delivery of this beast by February....and man I couldn't be more excited!  I know this means nothing to most readers.


Taking delivery of the HLT will require a lot of work tuning our systems to work with the new stuff.  It will take many brewing sessions to dial in, and yet it will only serve to point out other deficiencies in our system to correct, and require modifications of others.  This should keep me busy, this should keep me happy....But, I am not satisfied, either.  My brain has moved on.


I woke up in the middle of the night convinced on moving away from bottling and into a keg system....which will require that I either buy another freezer or fridge or juggle my fermentation and keg storage in my converted chest freezer.....more equipment.  My 40 year obsession with making things work.  Call it applied technology.


I am a child of industry.  I like smokestacks, and assembly lines.  I like valves, pumps, and control systems.  I like shiny stainless steel and fire and steam.  I like beer.    Ich bin ein Detroiter! Ich bin ein handwerk brauer!  


I probably require professional help or an intervention of some sort.

What a Rush!!!

I am a pleaser.  That is, I like to please people.  Nothing feels better than making people happy.  I have a limited experience with this in my professional life; my professional life consists of research and problem solving....the problem solving usually does not involve making people "happy", but rather, coming to a conclusion that most parties don't like, but "can live with".


So, it is nice to be able to please people once in a while.  


I have found in my hobby that revolves around beer, I have done a bunch of cool stuff.  I recently made a list of breweries and brewpubs that I have visited, and I keep recalling more everytime I remember somewhere else I have been....the list keeps growing.  I have served beer at festivals, and have had the pleasure of serving beer to some rather famous brewers, and having casual conversations with others.  But, for the first time ever, I have served my beer to strangers.....


I had the idea a while ago, and had the chance today.  I packed up my homebrew and headed off to Strange Brewing, where I have had an enjoyable experience with the barstaff and the homebrewers turned pro.  I mentioned as I was ordering that I had homebrew in my car trunk and wondered if they would like some.  Of course they said yes (who wouldn't really).  I pulled my beer out and served them, but also served the few other patrons in the bar.  Complete strangers.  I got really favorable reviews of my brown ale and oktobserfest/marzen, but really, really, rocked with last year's Christmas ale.  The West Coast Irish Ale's reception was somewhat tepid to favorable.  I get it, and understand.  The beers I love were well received.  It wasn't scientific, it wasn't judged by beer judges against everyone's best efforts and it wasn't an honest or blind focus group....it was just me, serving beer, and getting a thumbs up from people across the bar.


Who cares about anything else?  Really?

West Coast Red

I have been reading Jamil Zainasheff and Chris White's (from White Labs) new book called Yeast: A Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation.  The book is supposed to be more of a brewer's handbook on yeast than a text book.  It is informative but not really captivating, that is, not for the non-brewing geek.


The book advocates shifting focus of brewing away from the processes of mashing and boiling and hop or other additions and to the science of yeast culturing (or whispering or wrangling if you prefer) as the Zen path to good beer.  The book makes the case that focusing your efforts on techniques that cultivate a healthy yeast environment produces better beer.  The techniques involved are precisely all of the things I have been ignoring in my brew day, or haphazardly/halfheartedly doing as a byproduct of my current techniques.


I have never experimented with improving yeast health, nor really experienced the wrath of ignoring the yeast.  Of course I keep my brewery clean (which is the number one thing), but I kind of ignored issues of proper pitch rates (unless I was hot bunking yeast), aerating the wort before pitching, properly cooling the wort (we usually pitch a little high), and have not until recently had any control over my fermentation temperatures (and still don't when the brewery is at my brother's house, although our basements work at a decent 68F by luck). I have never had a stuck fermentation, and in 15 years only one noticeably contaminated beer....Well, until now.


Over the weekend before Thanksgiving we bottled our fresh hopped West Coast Red and repitched our wort for our Porter.  I inadvertently got a healthy dose of the yeast and trub in the bottling tank while siphoning (carelessness by my part) and ended up with a super cloudy sample of wort to take our final gravity readings. Despite giving the sample ample time to cool and settle, it never did.  The yeast is a low flocculator (the amount the yeast settles out of the beer), but the gravity reading on a beer was 8 points higher than the computer program I use predicted (my ferments often come in within a point or two either way).  The yeast we used is a lower attenuator (the amount of sugar it ferments), but by my calculations my ferment was 8-12% lower than the low range the yeast producer states.  The calculation of apparent attenuation is easy.  The formula is (OG-FG)/OG.  In my case, (48-18)/48 equals 62% where I expected around at least 70-72%.


So, I have a low attenuation problem and guess what would help that?  So, luckily I am reading the Yeast Book.  I skipped to the Troubleshooting Chapter at the end (I haven't read that far yet), and on page 272 it states "wort composition trumps all when it comes to getting yeast to attenuate a desired amount" and goes on to say if your fermentation test shows that the beer will only attenuate down to 1.020 with the yeast you are using, it is unrealistic to expect the beer to drop to 1.012.  Ironically, these are the numbers I was dealing with.  I don't yet know what a forced fermentation test is (I haven't read that far) and thus haven't done said test to see if this is normal.  Considering that higher gravity worts tend to miss the full expected attenuation (my 1.048 wort isn't really considered high gravity) of a fermentation test, this could be in my margin of error right there.  But if everything else was normal, the other usual suspects are:
Too low fermentation temps:  Our basement breweries are pretty constant in the high 60's and the weather outside was warmer than normal for the year.
Lack of Oxygen: Considering we never aerate, but do pass our wort through our pump on its way to the basement these days (acting as a sort of will o wisp).  While this may be our problem because we can be considered chronic under aerators, we are probably aerating more than we ever have.
Underpitching: We are chronic underpitchers.  We never make starters and we use the 100 billion cell Wyeast smack packs (which are wonderfully fresh at my two local homebrew shops, and horribly old at the one near my brother's...we use fresh) which is enough for 1-5 gallon batch of moderately low gravity wort (according to the book and prevailing experts and current research).  We make 12 gallons, so we are usually underpitching by at least 50% but according to the author's online yeast calculator  we should have used 4 smack packs.
Underpitching is the most likely culprit.  We often repitch our yeast slurry on successive batches, so not every batch is chronically underpitched, but it is interesting to note.  My record keeping just got good enough to start comparing the beers that we chronically underpitched to ones where we repitched.


Going backwards:
1.050 WCR, underpitched, 6-8 points high.Brother's basement.
1.052 Brown, underpitched, finished 6 points higher than predicted. Brother's basement
1.054 Watermelon, repitched, came within 1 point (high) of predicted. My fermentation chamber
1.0xx Blonde (broke hydrometer but predicted og was 52), underpitched, finished 2 points lower. My Ferm
1.054 Wit, underpitched, finished 5 points lower than predicted. My Ferm
1.060 Scottish, underpitched, finished 2 points high. My basement? not sure where or what fermenter.
1.060 Oktoberfest (way underpitched lager), finished 1 points low. Brother's window well
1.044 APA (4th gen repitch), finished 4 points low My basement
1.038 WCR (3rd gen repitch), finished 1 point low. My basement
1.050 Porter (2nd gen repitch), nailed predicted My basement
1.067 Winter Ale (1st gen), 4 points low. My basement


So, in comparing the last 12 months of brewing, I was mostly lower than my computer program predicted, even when underpitching.  The most recent outliers are the brown where we underpitched british ale yeast and our recent west coast where I mistakenly used and underpitched American Ale (I usually use American Ale II).  If the Porter comes in on target or lower, I can infer that underpitching is a major contributer.  If it comes in higher, while underpitching can also be a factor, it is more due to other environmental conditions or practices at my brother's brewery.  It is important to note that we also switched to a single open keg fermentation from two carboys at my brother's house.  We adopted the single open fermenter when I switched to the controlled temp fermentation cabinet.  We also have been having more control of our mash temperatures (higher).  We used to mash in at a temp and let it cool from there.  It just could be the American Ale and British Ale yeast (with all the conditions we provide).


I have been told by a grand master level beer judge that underpitching and under aerating makes a difference in the taste of beer.  I have no idea if I could personally taste the differences or if it is only perceptible to higher tasters (like the big time judges).  There is also a lot of science to back it up.  I have the problem of not wanting to spend more on my brewing sessions, and the issue of not really having a clean room lab to propogate yeast in, and buying more equipment (Oxygen bottle, aeration stone, stir plate, lab flasks, etc.) that doesn't meet my current goals of shortening my brew day or make it safer/easier to brew.  


Perhaps a future phase of the brewery will include these steps and focus on the effort of making the yeast perform better.  I do hope to someday find a space that we can brew in that is clean (our garages are filthy).  I have crazy dreams of renting space to brew in, or building a shed for the sole purpose of brewing (so I can control the cleanliness, temperature, and process/procedure) while easing the clean up and keeping everything close.  I don't think I would mind adding more procedure and equipment at that point.  It is just such a pain to unpack, set up, and clean spread out all over a house and garage.  It is almost as if I am moving towards pro-level brewing without the license.  I already make more than I can drink.

Mergers & Aquisitions

Frank Day, founder of Rock Bottom Restaurants, will chair the new company's board. (Post file photo )Louisville-based Rock Bottom Restaurants, which operates Rock Bottom Breweries and Old Chicago and The ChopHouse restaurants, and Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group, with one Colorado operation at FlatIron Crossing, have been acquired by Centerbridge Capital Partners LP, a private equity firm.

The new company will be called CraftWorks Restaurants and Breweries as a result of Monday's acquisition. The combined business becomes the nation's leading operator and franchiser of brewery and craft-beer-focused casual dining restaurants, with nearly 200 owned and franchised locations across the U.S.

Rock Bottom founder Frank Day will take over as chairman of the board, and Allen Corey, an original investor and 13-year chief executive of Tennessee-based Gordon Biersch, will be president and chief executive of CraftWorks.



With the new infusion of equity into both brands, plans call for expansion of company- owned and franchise stores throughout the U.S.



Read more: Parker: Rock Bottom gets scooped up - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/pennyparker/ci_16623006#ixzz15T3dmSNW
 
When mergers hit the craft beer market, I am skeptical as to the outcome.  My basis is the M&A of the National, International, and Regional brands often leaving brands but closing breweries.  Still, the cache of a brewpub is that beer is made on-site, and the new Gordon-Bottom indicates expansion capabilities and infustion of captial as reasons for the merger.  This could translate into more brewing jobs, more breweries, in more locations.  I wonder, though, when they will start squashing the small independent brewers in select markets.  So far, the craft beer movement has been about collaboration...how soon does competition start?  How soon is now?