Update: Mash Tun Done

I pulled apart the valve assembly on my mash and switched out a couple seals and put it all back together on Tuesday.  After doing a half-hour leak test, it looks like it is holding a much better seal and I am good to go.  As promised, here are a couple pictures of the finished product.  If all go as planned this weekend, I should be breaking this baby in on Saturday and/or Sunday!

The plastic spigot that was originally on this cooler was replaced with a 3/8" ball valve.

An inside view: I built a little screen filter out of the stainless steel mesh from a washer connector hose.  This should keep the grains out of boil kettle.

Song of the Day: "Good People" by Jack Johnson
Beer of the Day:  Sam Adams Summer Ale

DIY Homebrew Gear Update

Homemade wort chiller and mash tun.  Done and done.  Sort of. 

I spent a decent chunk of my free time this weekend building a couple new additions to my homebrew kit, as I discussed in my last post.  With a shopping list of parts and hardware in hand, I set off to Home Depot to get all the materials I needed.  A couple hours later (it took me forever to find all the stuff I needed and some of the staff their seemed like they were covering areas they don’t normally cover, making it take way longer to find what I needed), I was back in my apartment ready to go. 

The wort (unfermented beer) chiller went pretty smooth.  I ended up getting a 20ft. coil of 3/8” copper to mold into my chiller.  Since the copper came in a nice coil, a lot of the work was done – I only needed to shape it into the size chiller that would fit in my brew kettle.  My 8 qt. stock pot worked like a charm as a nice mold.  After that, all I had to do was bend up the intake and the outtake (so they will be sticking out of the kettle to be able to hook hoses to) to the top of the chiller.  This was where I had to be a little delicate to not kink the piping (which would disrupt water flow through the piping and make the chiller much less efficient) while bending the two ends up.  Since Home Depot did not have the proper size bending tool for me to use (which allow you to bend pipes without kinking), I had to do this by hand.  No worries though, I was able to bend it up fine without kinking the pipe.  After clamping on the hoses and the sink fitting, I was all set to give it a test run.  After a quick leak test and tightening the clamps a bit, I was ready to give it test to see how fast this puppy would cool down a kettle. 

Ready to chill :-)

Fast forward to Sunday.  For the chilling test, I put about three gallons (my normal boil volume) of water into my brew kettle, brought it up to a full boil, then took it off the burner, hooked up the chiller, and started the timer.  This chiller took the boiling water down under 100F in about 10 minutes, which I was very happy about (this will carve a whole lot of time off the ice bath method).  The one tough part was that it only got it down to the mid 70s after 20 or so minutes.  However, after a little investigating, I realized my tap water would only go down to around 74 or 75 this time of the year.  A little problematic if I want to pitch my yeast in the 60s.  Looks like I may have to use an ice bath at the end of the chilling to get it down the last 10 or so degrees.  The other option would be to build a pre-chiller (basically a smaller version of the chiller that you can put in an ice bath that would be upstream from the wort chiller to chill the water further before going into the chiller).  Either way though, this chiller will definitely help me out a lot and cut down the time of my brew day.  The only part I don’t like much is the sink fitting that I used to hook the intake hose up to the sink.  It’s clamped straight to the tubing which makes hooking it up to the sink kind of a pain.  I may end up looking into getting a couple extra pieces that would make this easier but for now I just went with a little bit of a cheaper method.  No biggie though – I can definitely make do with it as is.  Here is the link to the site that I used as my rough design.

One piece of equipment done.  Now, on to the mash tun.  For those unaware, a mash tun is basically a heated or insulated container that you “mash” your malted grains with hot water to extract the fermentable sugars from the grains.  The solution that a lot of homebrewers employ is to convert a water cooler into a mash tun since it is very well insulated.  The basic idea is to swap out the plastic spigot for a ball valve, put a mesh screen or false bottom on the inside opening to keep the grains out of the runnings, and you’re good to go.  Add grain and hot water, let it rest, rinse the grains with more hot water, and you have wort. 

Get home from Home Depot on Saturday.  Take off plastic spigot.  Done.  Start assembling ball valve.  Correctly sized hardware?  No?  Bunk.  Pause until Sunday. 

After going back to Home Depot on Sunday to get the right size washers and o-rings, I was able to finish up the build on the mash tun and do a couple tests.  First test was without the screen on the inside with room temperature water.  Not even a hint of a leak.  Next, I put on the mesh screen I put together from the stainless mesh off of a washing machine connector hose.  Time for a hot water test with the final assembly.  After adding in a couple gallons of hot water into the tun, I noticed a little leaking around the outside of the washer and o-ring on the outside.  Nothing big though – should be easily remedied by either tightening the assembly a bit better (I didn’t have the right size wrench for the ball valve so it is only hand-tightened) or by playing with the o-rings and washers a little bit to get a combo that seals up a little tighter.  Either way, I should be able to fix this up and get a pretty sturdy mash tun for use in all-grain and partial mash batches.  Here is the link to the design that I roughly based my mash tun off of.  They also have a design over there for converting a rectangular cooler into a mash tun.  I'll post a picture of my finished mash tun soon.

I ended up going with a 5 gallon water cooler (which is actually only big enough for enough grain to produce a beer around 6% ABV if you’re doing an all-grain 5 gallon batch of homebrew) for my mash tun due to space, price, and use issues.  No big deal though – since I am still restricted to brewing in my apartment’s kitchen, I will mostly be doing partial mashes and all-grain half batches in this mash tun, giving me plenty of space in this tun.  Occassionally, I will do a full-sized all-grain brew, but this will be pretty rare since I would have to split the wort into two boils since I am brewing on my stove.  In light of this, I am fine with the restrictions of a 5 gallon mash tun for now.  I’ll probably upgrade to a bigger size when I have more space to have a proper all-grain set up.

Song of the Day: “Lay Me Down” by The Dirty Heads (ft. Rome from Sublime with Rome)

Beer of the Day: Sam Adams’ Blackened Hops (Sam Adams Longshot Homebrew Contest Winner) 

Brewing To-Do List

I’m taking a slight break from brewing to regroup, get organized, and plan out some new stuff.  Here’s a peak at what I’ll be working on for the next couple weeks on the brewing front:

New Hops: Sonnet and Calypso

In a stroke of inspiration from Stone Brewery’s blog, I decided to order some new hop varieties a week or so ago to try them out.  Sonnet hops are very new, and don’t even have an official pedigree yet over at Hops Direct.  It sounds like they are similar to a UK Golding and weigh in at around 4% Alpha.  Calypso’s aren’t quite as new but are a new-ish dual-purpose (bittering and aroma) variety of hops that weigh in around 12% Alpha.  Since I ordered from Hops Direct, I had to order in one-pound quantities so I decided to get a pound of each.  I’m pretty excited to try these two varieties out and see what I can do with them.  To start, I am going to do two small batches of standard pale ale with each hop for all additions (i.e. a pale ale with all Calypso and a pale ale with all Sonnet) to get an idea of the flavor and aroma that each impart.  From there, I should be able to tell what styles of beer I want to use the hops in. 

New residents in my freezer: a pound each of Calypso and Sonnet Hops

DIY Homebrew Equipment: Wort Chiller

One of the pieces of equipment that has been towards the top of my wish list for quite some time now is a wort chiller.  A wort chiller will help cool my wort much more efficiently than the ice bath method I have been using and will help clear up my beer also.  From what I hear, once I have a wort chiller, I should be able to substantially reduce the amount of time it takes to reduce the temperature from boiling to around the mid-60s (depending on the yeast strain) in order to pitch the yeast at the most optimum temperature.  Instead of shelling out the money to buy a pre-made chiller, I am looking into embracing the DIY nature of homebrewing and making my own chiller out of copper tubing.  This may be a project for this coming weekend. :-)

DIY Homebrew Equipment: 5 Gallon Cooler Mash Tun

Since I have been doing primarily extract batches (due to space constraints) until now, I have never really had a need for a separate mash tun.  However, I am seriously considering getting one because I have been doing more partial-mash batches (which still uses malt extract but does a mash on up to 5lb. of grain in the boil kettle) and I would like to start doing all-grain half-batches (or even full batches split into two boils).  The way I figure it, since I can pretty comfortably do a 3-gallon boil in my kettle, there is nothing to stop me from doing an all-grain batch that will yield 2.5 gallons or so (about a case of beer) of finished beer.  This will allow me to practice full mashing techniques and allow me to have more control over my beer.  However, in order for me to do this, I will need a mash tun that is better insulated and has a larger capacity than my kettle.  This will allow me to do all-grain half batches, as well as, more accurate mashes when doing partial-mash batches.  Once again embracing the homebrewing DIY spirit, I am looking into building my own mash tun, using a 5 gallon water cooler and some hardware to assemble a screen filter and valve. 

Next Full Batch: Fork ‘N Knife Oatmeal Stout

I’m also pretty excited for my next 5-gallon batch that I will probably be doing in the next couple months.  Looking back through my brew log, I realized the other day that I had not brewed a stout yet.  I was taken aback by this quite a bit since this is one of my favorite styles of beer.  Taking on the challenge to add an oatmeal stout into my annual rotation, I wrote up a partial-mash recipe to have a delicious, low-alcohol stout to enjoy on its own, or in black and tans.  Can’t wait to try this one out!

Online Recipes

As some of you may or may not have noticed, there’s a couple new tabs at the top of this page which I have added some homebrewing info to.  To start, I have added a tab for my own homebrewery (Black Walnut) and the collaboration homebrewery (Two Guys and a Barrel) that I do with my buddy Keith.  The main purpose of these tabs is to act as a mechanism for me to post my homebrew recipes online so that you fine people can use them to your hearts’ content.  The idea will be to post some notes about what worked well for each recipe, as well as what didn’t, so that others can benefit from my experiences.  I’m not exactly what you would call an expert brewer (in fact, I’m still a bit of a newbie), but I am hoping that my experiences will benefit other like-minded brewers.  As you can tell by looking at these pages, they’re a bit sparse at this point but I will be posting recipes up there very shortly.  These pages are static but I will be updating them periodically with new recipes, notes, tips, tricks, and other goodies, so check back once in awhile.  There will probably be a few more tabs to come also. 

Label Art

Like most other homebrewers, I don’t add colorful, ornate labels to my bottles that get tossed into my fridge at home; a simple numbered sticker slapped on the cap does the trick just fine for my purposes.  The reason for this is simple – I’m the one who has to de-label the empties prior to sanitizing and filling the bottles for the next batch of beer.  This is typically more hassle than it’s worth for beer that I drink at home.  However, I would like to start developing label designs for some of my beers that will be seeing their way into my regular rotation, as well as special beers that I give away as gifts around the holidays, etc.  I also think it would be fun to get some solid logos for my beers to add some depth to the story and meaning of these beers to me.  I have already been working with Theresa’s brother Harry to design a brewery logo (which is already looking pretty sweet after only a couple passes) and will be looking to do label designs for specific beers in the next few months.  Let’s be honest, I’m not exactly the best graphic designer.  In light of this, I will be looking to work with other, more artistic folks on these label designs.  More to come on this, but if you are fairly artistic and are interested in collaborating on labels for my beers, let me know (primarily looking for those of you interested in accepting homebrew as currency :-P)!

Homebrewery Organization

Each time I add a new piece of kit to my homebrewery, images of hoarders with stuff piled floor to ceiling flash through my head.  Ok, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the back corner of my second bedroom where I stash all of my gear, fermenters, and bottles is starting to get a bit cramped.  As a homebrewer living in an apartment, my biggest constraint to space.  This break from brewing will give me an opportunity to re-organize my gear a bit and figure out some ways to store everything a little more efficiently.  It will also give me a chance to do some other odds and ends while I have everything out, such as de-label some empties so that they are ready the next time I bottle.  This is by no means a fun task, but it is a necessary evil for any homebrewer that bottles using empties that once contained commercial brews.  All this organizing should make the next few brews go a bit smoother. 

Alright, less typing, more doing.  Until next time, cheers!

Song of the Day: “Rascal King” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones

Beer of the Day: Stone Brewery’s Imperial Russian Stout

Happiness is a Beautiful Fiancee, a Warm Puppy, and a Cold Beer

Been way behind on posting here, so here’s a big post to entertain your eyeballs:

Life in General

Life has been pretty solid the last month or so.  My new job is going pretty awesome and I am settling into it nicely.  I am becoming more confident and am working more independently each day as I get more familiar with my new environment.  It is definitely a nice change of pace from the consulting gig that I was doing prior to this new job.  The best part of this job is the fact that I get to come home at night rather than getting on a plane every Monday and Thursday.  This is allowing me to spend a whole lot more time with my incredible fiancée Theresa!! :-)

Now that the weather is getting nicer, I have also been able to spend a little more time hiking with Theresa and Abby at the local parks.  The park we have been going to the most is Smedley Park (just the other side of 476 from us off of Baltimore Pike).  This park has a lot of good trails including several solid hills and a creek that makes for some very scenic spots.  It is not a massive park but seems to be pretty jam-packed with a lot of fun trails that are a good work out and a lot of fun.

A small waterfall on the creek at Smedley.

As mentioned earlier, I have been able to spend a lot more quality time with Theresa now that I am home a lot more - which I very happy about!  Just this past weekend, we went to see Super 8 and were both very impressed with it.  The kids that acted in this movie did an awesome job of convincingly portraying a tight-knit group of friends growing up together.  The movie basically is about this group of kids that are filming a film in the late ‘70s for a film festival.  In the middle of this, increasingly bizarre events start happening, starting with an extremely destructive train crash in the beginning of the movie.  Not going to say much more about the plot because I don’t want to give anything else away, but it is definitely worth seeing.  The special effects in the movie are awesome; but by no means is this movie about the special effects – it has a much heavier emphasis on the characterization of the kids and plot of a military cover-up.  It is very nice to see a movie use special effects and CG for right purpose – a tool to fool the viewer into thinking that something is real and believable.  Too many movies, especially big blockbusters, get lost in the special effects and forget that they still have to tell a great story.  Go see Super 8!

Wedding Plans

Wedding plans/activities have also been coming along very nicely the last few weeks.  Earlier this month, Theresa and I attended Pre Cana (a requirement for getting married in the Catholic Church).  I was pleasantly surprised at the fact that it was actually fun to go to.  It really was not as much of a lecture, as it was an informal discussion around practical aspects of marriage.  All of the couples came from different backgrounds and were all very nice.  It was nice to hear different couples’ perspectives that have been married for various lengths and situations.  All in all, it was a fun night.

Each month we seem to be knocking off more and more things off of our list for wedding planning.  In the last few weeks, we picked out the tuxedo style for the guys, Theresa picked out her flowers, most of the bridesmaids got fitted for their dresses, and most of the groomsman got fitted for their tuxes.  Things are moving along nicely!  The big day is coming up quick and I can’t wait to be married to my incredible Theresa! :-)

Brewing Competitions

BUZZ Off Homebrew Competition – A few weeks ago, I entered in my first homebrew competition.  The BUZZ Off Homebrew Competition is an annual BJCP-sanctioned event hosted at Iron Hill West Chester by BUZZ Homebrew Club.  As posted earlier, I entered three beers into this competition – English Pale Ale (which started out as a Bass Clone and got tweaked and turned into an EPA of its own), Batch X (a barley wine with Special B malt), and Banana Bread Ale (basically an old ale with bananas in the steep and spiced with cinnamon and vanilla).  I had a great time hanging out at the competition with Theresa’s cousin Stacy and her husband Jeremy (who also is another homebrewer that entered this competition).  Stacy’s brothers and parents also came out for the competition.  I always have a great time hanging out with Theresa’s family!  When the dust settled on the competition, I ended up taking home the blue ribbon on the English Pale Ales category!  I was really excited to take first in the category for the EPA that I brewed with my buddy Keith, and got to take home a Party Pig (a small keg alternative that uses a pressure pouch to maintain pressure in a 2.25 gallon bottle with a nozzle for dispensing) for the win.  My other two beers did not place but I was able to get my score sheets from the judges after the competition, which provided me with some great feedback on all of the beers that I entered.  All in all, my first brewing competition was a big success.  Here are the full competition results of the BUZZ Off Competition.

Preston and Steve Homebrew Competition - About a week and a half ago, I entered my Angry Rhino Ale (Black IPA) into the first annual Preston and Steve Homebrew Competition with Triumph Brewery.  This competition was a much different format than the BUZZ Off competition – instead of having certified judges score each beer against its respective category, this competition was open to pretty much all ale styles (excluding wood-aged, lambics, and sours) and would only crown one winner for the whole field.  Basically, it just skipped the whole placements-by-category concept and went straight for the best-in-show.  The other very different part about this competition was the first round of judging was done by a peer-review of other homebrewers.  Basically, about eight homebrewers were assigned to each table and moved to another table to judge another groups.  The first and second place from each table moved on to the final panel of judges, which consisted of Preston Elliot from the Preston and Steve Show, one of the Eagles, a beer journalist, and a few guys from the crew at Triumph Brewery.  Of the twenty or so beers that made it to the final panel, they crowned one winner and one runner-up.  My brew did not place but it was voted as the best beer at my table, and went to the final panel (along with beers from around 20 or so other brewers), and was met was some very positive remarks.  On top of the good performance from my beer, I was also able to do a little networking (we had about 2 – 3 hours of downtime between the first round and the final panel) with a few other homebrewers and came away with some new ideas and a few brewers that I hope to run into and/or brew with in the future.  Second competition = great success! 

New Brews

As always, I have been keeping my free time pretty well occupied with brewing up some new beers.  My supply of everyday session ales was actually getting a little low so I churned out a quick hefeweizen.  I also have been enjoying the occasional bottle of my black IPA now that is ready, and even tried my hand at a small batch of mead.

•  Theresa’s Ale (Hefeweizen) – This Spring, Theresa and I have been drinking a lot of Sierra Nevada’s Kellerweis (a traditionally brewed hefeweizen).  This beer really pulled me back into hefeweizens and is probably my favorite of the style.  Inspired by this beer, I decided to take my own crack at something similar.  I started with some pale and wheat malts and malt extracts, added one bittering hop addition of Tettanger, and fermented it with a traditional hefe yeast strain (Wyeast 3068).  To try to keep with tradition, I partially open-fermented (fermenting the beer without a lid/airlock for part of the time) this brew during the primary and racked it to the secondary just before the krausen fell, and closed it with an airlock for the remaining week and a half.  I also put the zest of four oranges in the secondary fermenter.  I popped open one of these this past weekend (a week after bottle day).  It was already carbonated and tasted delicious.  The final product came out a bit lower in alcohol than I was shooting for (probably a result of either my first attempt at partial-mashing, or me topping it off with too much water, or a combination of the two), but it definitely came out full-flavored and very close to the flavor profile I was going for.  The yeast definitely adds a nice velvetiness and flavor to the beer, so don’t be bashful – pour it all in!  I have a feeling this one will go quick in the summer months.  For those that are interested in the techniques or ingredients that I used in creating this, or any of the rest of my beers, I will be posting recipes up to this site soon – stay tuned!

My hefeweizen in the secondary fermenter before getting transferred to the bottling bucket.

• Angry Rhino Ale (Black IPA) – I have been meaning to do a black IPA for awhile now, and when the Preston and Steve competition came along, I decided to pull it ahead a couple months from when I was originally going to brew this.  Angry Rhino started off using a rough clone recipe of Stone’s Sublimely Self-Righteous (and still has roughly the same ratios in the grain bill).  However, I did not want it to be exactly the same hop profile.  Instead of doing a citrus-hop bomb, I opted to switch it up with using Centennial and Magnum as late kettle additions and dry-hop additions.  The ending beer came out very good, and I am looking forward to sharing and drinking my remaining bottles of this hop batch (I gave up a six pack to competition and ended up with only 13 other 12oz bottles after the whole leaf centennials sucked up some beer in the secondary).  The hop profile is still not quite where I want it, but it is close.  I may tweak the hops a little the next time (and there will be a next time) I brew this. 

Angry Rhino Ale in one of my new glasses from a glass set that Theresa got me for my birthday :-)

• Mead – As I mentioned in my last post, I took my first crack at mead this past weekend!  The process was very easy and really didn’t take that much time.  Since this is my first time (and I really don’t know much at all about mead), I kept the recipe pretty simple – no fruit, no spice, no honey-barley hybrids – just straight-up clover honey, water, yeast nutrient, and Red Star champagne yeast.  Started my mead experience with a small, one gallon batch for a few reasons – 1. It could very easily turn out like crap since I don’t know what I’m doing, 2. I want to try doing a few small batches with different types of honey to get a feel for the different flavors I can get, 3. I really don’t have the space to have a full-sized carboy dedicated to fermenting mead for a couple months at a time (a one gallon jug is a lot easier to stash away as a secondary fermenter than a 5 gallon is).  Aside from adding some more nutrient to the fermenter a couple days after brew day, I will just be transferring it to a one gallon jug in about a week or so to sit and clear out for a couple months before bottle conditioning.  More to come on this batch in a few months. 

Foreground: Barley wine fermenting in one of my glass carboys (more on this beer in the months to come).  Background: Mead fermenting away in my bucket fermenter.

Looking Forward (A.K.A. Other Miscellaneous Stuff)

So it has been a very long time since I’ve talked about video games on this blog, and to be honest, it has been a very long time since I’ve even played video games.  But with the E3 2011 Convention that just wrapped up a week or two ago, came some new trailers announcing some very cool games that are going to be coming up soon.  The ones that I am most excited to get my hands are Gears of War 3 (September 2011 release), Modern Warfare 3 (November 2011 release), Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition (a remake of the original Halo for the tenth anniversary of the game due out November 2011), and last, but certainly not least, Halo 4 (due out late 2012 – damn, I don’t want to wait that long!).  I’m also excited about the upcoming Mass Effect 3 but I’m holding off my excitement on that until I get through the first and second games in the series (I’m about halfway through the first).  I am trying to make more of an effort to get back to playing video games on a casual basis to spend some time hanging out with my friends who I don’t get to see often, and to enjoy another big passion in my life.  With the summer months coming, I will most likely be less tied up with brewing, so I am hoping to get some more gaming time.

Well now that you’ve read a bit over 2,000 words on this post, I suppose I should wrap it up.  I’m really looking forward to the nice weather coming up now that summer is finally here!  I can’t wait to spend some time outside barbequing and having some beers outside!  I’m also looking forward to a few more moments like this one:

Abby resting in the grass after a hard day of playing with her soccer ball - what a hard life she lives!

Until next time (hopefully these updates will be coming a little more frequently), cheers!

Song of the Day: “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash

Beer of the Day: Rogue Ales’ Chipotle Ale

... By the Seat of My Pants

Well, I was going to spend some time today and work on some stuff with this blog (post an update on the last month or so, tweak the design a bit, add in a section for homebrew recipes, etc.), but I had a little change of plans.  Since it was such a beautiful day today, I decided to do a little hiking with Abby.  Afterwards, while on a field trip to check out a local homebrew supply shop that I hadn't been to before, I decided I was going to take my first crack at making mead today.  End result - didn't have much time to update the blog.  Oh well, hopefully tomorrow.  In the mean time, here's a couple pictures from today.

Abby cooling off in the creek at Smedley Park :-)

Hydrometer reading (measures the specific gravity of a liquid to determine how much sugar is in solution to measure the potential alcohol content) of my first mead.  I decided to start small with a one gallon batch made with clover honey.

Song of the Day: "Pardon Me" (Acoustic) by Incubus
Beer of the Day: Sam Adams' Latitude 48 IPA

New Post! (Kind of a Tease Though)

So it has been entirely too long since I've posted something new here - let's just chalk it up to laziness.  But in seriousness, there has been some cool stuff that has happened in the last few weeks that I want to do a bit of an update on in the next week or so.  This one isn't really much of an update - mostly just a reminder to everyone that I haven't forgotten about this site and that I do intend on doing a lot more with this site in the coming weeks.  A few things to look forward to: an update on life in general and wedding plans, an update on a couple brewing competitions I've been in in the last few weeks, some potential new design changes to this blog (mostly just a few added features hopefully, including a homebrew recipe section :) ), and some info. on some homebrew labels that I want to work (potentially with some of you).  Anyway, that's about all I have time for at the current moment, but I will post some more stuff up in the next week - I promise!!

Song of the Day: "Bang Bang" by Dispatch
Beer of the Day: Sierra Nevada's Kellerweis

Homebrew Update

So I've been putting off updating on my homebrewing activities for awhile now due being busy with a bunch of other stuff, traveling, and other priorities.  But, here it is!  The long procrastinated homebrew update!!

I have actually had a very productive past few months in regards to brewing.  So far, I have brewed five batches on the year, putting my well on pace to meet, if not exceed, my goal of ten batches by the end of the year.  Here's a little recap on these beers, as well as a few from the end of last year that I have tasted again recently.

Banana Bread Ale: This was the first beer I brewed on the year, as well as the first recipe I wrote myself.  This was also the first brew that I used spices and fruit (bananas) in the brewing process.  All in all, I am very satisfied with this beer.  The banana flavor didn't come through much at all, but the spices definately came through in the flavor and aroma.  I was especially pleased with the body of the base beer - very happy I added some oats and chocolate malt in this one.  When this beer was a bit younger, I actually thought the spicing was a bit too strong, but I popped open a bottle about a week ago and was very happy with how it tasted.  The spicing mellowed a bit and balanced out nicely.

Blueberry Wheat: This one will probably be going back to the drawing board a bit.  Don't get me wrong, it is still a very drinkable beer and is light and refreshing - very nice for the warm weather.  However, this was the first attempt at standard american wheat beer with fruit flavoring in the secondary.  I ended up deciding to use a can of blueberry puree in the secondary.  The blueberry flavor definitely came through but was not too overpowering (which was one concern I had when I brewed this).  The body of the beer was very light and had very little head retention and a lot of blue haze from the puree.  Still a solid beer, but I would definitely like to improve on it.  It's not a style that I am overly concerned with (I see myself only doing one, two at the most, american wheat fruit beers per year), but I would still like to make it better.  My next step with this recipe will probably to take out the fruit and nail down a solid wheat beer recipe that I am happy with, then go back to trying the fuit in it again.

Bass Ale Clone (sort of):  I say "sort of" because Keith and I did base this recipe off a clone recipe of Bass Ale, but ended up substituting a couple of hop varieties due to lack of availability of the hops at the homebrew shop I went to.  All in all, this one came out as a very solid English pale ale.  Not quite like bass - was a bit more bitter than Bass due to the difference in hops - but certainly a solid beer.  The one thing that I wish we had done, was to put it into a secondary.  Unfortunately, Keith and I were a little crunched on time with our busy schedules, and the beer ended up sitting in the primary for a couple weeks.  Given our hectic schedules for the few weeks after that, we ended up just putting it into bottles.  I know that putting that kind of beer (with no flavor or hop additions in the secondary) into a secondary fermenter is really just to clear up the beer for aesthetic purposes, but I do take a lot of pride in the taste, smell, AND appearance of my beer, so I would have liked to see it a bit clearer.  However, overall, I was very pleased with how it came out and have been flying through my supply of it at home. :-)

Batch X (oak aged barley wine with Special B malt): I decided to do something a bit different for my tenth batch and try out a few things.  This recipe has been one that I have been working on for awhile now and has evolved quite a bit (I was originally intending this beer to be a big imperial red, but ended up with a barley wine).  I was designing this batch to be a pilot half-batch for a full batch that I am going to brew up for later this year (more on that in a few months).  I wanted it to be something that can hold up well to age, but not not be too high in alcohol content.  As a result, I ended up with a barely wine that is on the lower side of alcohol for this style (a little over 8.5%abv).  The grain bill and hop additions are pretty much in line with a typical English barley wine, with a few twists - I added in some Belgian Special B malt to give it some raison flavor, I added 2oz of medium toast American oak cubes in the secondary for two weeks, and I lightly dry-hopped it for about a week.  I was very pleased with the samples I got from this beer when I transfered it to the secondary and when I bottled it.  I was particularly please with how the oak and Special B flavors were coming through.  This brew just hit the two-week mark in its bottle conditioning (meaning it should be fully carbonated) this past weekend.  I popped a bottle open on Saturday and was very happy with how this came out - the flavor was just what I was going for (maybe a little light on the oak) and it was very well carbonated with great head retention.  It was a little cloudy, but I think that was largely due to the fact that the bottle I grabbed was the last bottle I filled and had a bit more sediment because It was from the bottom of the bottling bucket.  We will see how it tastes in the weeks to come, but I am very happy with how this came out.  I will probably be doing a full 5gal batch of this in June to condition for a few months.  I don't think I will change much with the recipe, aside from leaving it on the oak for a week or two longer to get more oak flavor. 

Sample from Batch X on the left and some hops before they went into the kettle for my Black IPA on the right.  This turned out to be a long day - I bottled the Batch X and brewed the Black IPA in the same day!

Angry Rhino Ale (Black IPA): One of my favorite beers is Stone's Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale/11th Anniversary Ale, which is a Black IPA (or American Style India Dark Ale or Cascadian Dark Ale - whatever you want to call the style).  So I figured it was about damn time that I brew a beer of my own in this style.  Should be a pretty hefty, hoppy beer, coming in around 10%abv (probably, I forgot to take a gravity reading when I transferred it to the secondary) and about 99 IBUs.  I was originally going to do this one a little later in the year, but pulled it ahead for a homebrewing competition with Triumph Brewery and the Preston and Steve Show (a local radio morning show on 93.3 WMMR).  I just dry hopped it this past weekend and will bottle it this coming weekend.  It should be ready in plenty of time for the competition in about a month.  Much more to come on this one!

Tripel Extract Kit: Keith and I brewed a batch of a Tripel extract kit that we got at our local homebrew shop back in the fall that came out very tasty.  Keith and I split my last bottle from this batch last Wednesday, and it was a nice treat.  This beer definitely stood up to the aging pretty well and was even better (in my opinion) than the earlier bottles. 

Ubu Ale Clone: Keith and I also popped open one of my last bottles of the Ubu clone last Wednesday.  Similar to the Tripel, this one was awesome!  I liked this bottle better than any of the previous bottles that I had drank.  The flavors mellowed and blended together very nicely and the malt character came through beautifully. 

Ruination Clone: Drank my second to last bottle of this one last night.  Although the hop aroma had dimished quite a bit (which is to be expected with a American-style hop-bomb IPA), I was still very impressed with this beer.  I still would like to see it more clear, however, considering, I didn't use a primary with this one, it came out awesome!  This still remains one of my favorite beers that I have brewed so far.  This one will probably find its way into my annual brewing rotation.

In other brewing news, I am entering, not one, but TWO homebrew competitions in the next month. :-)  One is a BJCP-sanctioned competition called BUZZ Off, hosted by BUZZ Homebrew Club out in West Chester, PA.  I entered three beers into this one - the Banana Bread Ale, the Bass Ale Clone, and Batch X.  The other competition was the homebrew competition at Triumph Brewery in Philly that I mentioned earlier.  This one is a bit more interesting, because the winner will get $500 cash, Triumph will brew the winner's beer and serve it at the brew pub, and they will enter the recipe in the Great American Beer Festival competition.  I entered Angry Rhino Ale in this competition.  I'm not sure how I will do in either competition but I see it as a great opportunity to get feedback on my beers from trained professionals with calabrated palates.  More on these competitions in the weeks to come!

Finally, I also had a blast at the Brandywine Valley Brewers' Festival in Media, PA on Saturday!  This festival is put on every year by Iron Hill in Media.  The festival featured about 25 local and regional breweries, as well as a couple local bands.  The cloudy weather that we had on Saturday actually made it a perfect day for tasting beers from the local breweries and brew pubs.  The stand-out beer for me was Iron Hill's Tripel Sec (their already-awesome Tripel infused with oranges if I am recalling correctly). 

Taster glass with some delicious local beer from the Brandywine Valley Craft Brewers' Festival. :-)

That's all for now - hopefully, more to come soon!!

Song of the Day: "Sunshine" by Matt Costa
Beer of the Day: Iron Hill's Tripel Sec