Make a Beer I've Never Had? Rye Not?!

Brew Day #4 ("Oktobrewfest") was another great success. The weather was quintessentially fall-like and perfect for brewing. Though a breeze can sometimes cause problems with homebrewing (I don't think there's such a thing as an oak leaf addition during the boil), it didn't bring us any trouble this time around.

KC Hop Head tried his hand at brewing a 10-gallon batch for the first time, choosing the ease and simplicity of extract over all-grain. With the bigger size of the batch and the chosen style of an Imperial IPA, though, I think any time saved by using extract was minimized by the time it took to open all the cans. Hop Frog also made a 10-gallon batch, choosing an American IPA he named "Tangerine IPA" for the Summit hops, which impart a tangerine-like flavor and aroma.

Since the theme of brew day was German food & beer, I wanted to make a German style and thought it might be fun to try making a beer I've never had. Roggenbier is an old German ale made with a large percentage of rye. The rye beers we know and love today are made with just a fraction of the rye used in Roggenbier. For example, rye is about 15% of the grain bill used to make Hop Rod Rye and 10% for Founders' Red's Rye. Traditional Roggenbier has rye composing about 50% of the grain used to make the beer - sometimes more.

Unfortunately, as a result of the Reinheitsgebot, which limited Bavarian brewers only to barley for beer production, Roggenbier became all but extinct. Wheat beers (weizens) only survived because rich Bavarian royalty intentionally wrote a loophole into the "beer purity law." They loved their weizenbier so much that they made it legal for one specific brewery to continue making the beer (for a price, of course).

This beer is typically a bit hazy ("turbid") with a prominent malt character and low hop bitterness (around 15 IBUs). Roggenbier is also brewed with a hefeweizen yeast, lending a little clove flavor to partner up with the spiciness from the rye. The beer should have a dry finish and moderate to high carbonation, making it great for the remaining warm days of autumn.

Roggenbier was pretty straightforward to brew. I pulled the recipe from Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles book and listened to his show on Brewing Network about the style. Like wheat, and unlike barley, malted rye is huskless meaning that, without that husk to maintain any rigid structure, it turns into a gummy mess during the mash. We added a pound of rice husks to the grain bill to prevent a stuck mash, and it apparently did the job. Draining the wort was slow-going, but it never got stuck. Mr Wort Hog suggested replacing some of the hops in the recipe; it suggested 1/3 ounce of Saaz hops but he made a good point that Bavarian brewers wouldn't have used Saaz (and besides, the rye should provide enough spiciness without needing to borrow it from the hops). We used an ounce of Hallertau Mittelfruh instead, with a few grams of Magnum to get the bittering units up to where they should be. I made a 1L yeast starter from Wyeast 3068 (Weihenstephan weizen yeast) to get fermentation going strong, and that seemed to work, as fermentation was visibly underway within a few hours.

I'm looking forward to how this turns out; it should be ready to keg in about 8-10 days so I'll get to check it out here in a few weeks. Because it is not hoppy or high in alcohol, this beer should be consumed fresh.

For more information on Roggenbier, check out the German Beer Institute's site or the BJCP style guidelines. And for those of you who couldn't join us on Saturday, I'll leave you with a poem that one of our friends wrote to describe her experience.

Looks like a felony
Smells like breakfast
Sounds like pitch and brix and mash paddles
Feels like sticky ribbons in the wind
Tastes like hard made easy

Now that is homebrewing.

Brautag 4.0: Oktobrewfest

Mark your calendars: Brew Day 4 is now scheduled for Saturday, October 3rd. Again, we'll start around 12pm and look to have 2-4 batches of various beers going.

Plans will firm up as the date nears. We'll do an Oktoberfest theme, without the rides or dancing on tables (well, that's still up for discussion). You are, however, welcome to wear a dirndl or lederhosen if you wish.



I'll look to have some good German food at this one - I'm already thinking something along the lines of big Bavarian pretzels, German potato salad, spätzle (German noodles), and brats. And, of course, plenty of home brew and commercial beer (German styles encouraged, of course).

More details to come on location, but the date's set!

Yet Another Successful Brew Day

I don't know that this past Saturday could have gone a whole lot better. Dozens of different beers to taste, both homebrew and commercial. Meeting new homebrewers & beer enthusiasts & new fellow beer bloggers. Making something I've never made and having it not blow up. Delicious BBQ, fun people, and perfect weather. Do Saturdays get much better than that?

KC Hop Head invited Boulevard's Director of Marketing (Jeremy), who stopped by for a while to chat. I was focusing on getting the wort for my braggot going, so I didn't get to chat with him as much as I'd liked, but we did have a chance to talk for a bit. I am pretty excited about the direction the Smokestack series is taking; Boulevard's developing a quality beer reputation for Kansas City through that line, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

In the short term, it's going the route of the malty Bavarian lager known as Doppelbock. Jeremy brought over a bottle of the Seeyoulator for everyone to taste. And oh my was it delicious. It had the malty flavor and warm alcohol feel of a doppelbock, but with a twist - it was aged on cedar, lending a subtle hint of that bright, citrusy moth-repelling wood in both taste and aroma. We joked about expectations of closet linings and dresser drawers, but there was nothing in the Seeyoulator smacking you with a cedar board. Instead, you get a little citrus from both the hops and cedar, along with just a hint of cedar-y spice. Fabulous. It's a little lighter in color than your typical doppelbock, but in no way is it detrimental to the beer itself. Once these hit the stores, pick up some to drink now and some to age.

Anyway, back to brew day. For the braggot, I made 4 gallons of wort (with 5 ounces of hops!) and added 9 pounds of honey (about 2/3 of a gallon). That's a lot of sugar. (my recipe was a combination of Ken Schramm's recipe in The Compleat Meadmaker and some directional guidance from his session on Brewing Network). It also has 3 ounces of Cascade and 2 ounces of Centennial hops. It smelled delicious during the boil. This stuff should be high in alcohol and pretty hefty, hoppy, and sweet - akin to a strong barleywine or a very hoppy dessert wine. I'm curious to try it, but I'll have to wait quite a while. Braggot takes about 3 weeks to complete fermentation and is ready to drink in about 6 months, but changes and smooths with age.

The mead was so easy, I'm inclined to make a bunch more. You really do just mix honey and spring water with some yeast nutrient & energizer, then add your yeast. That's it. There's a lot of stirring involved, but that takes about 5 minutes. How is homemade mead not more popular?


In less than 5 hours, I had 10 gallons of fermentable honey-based goodness. We shared some more beer, chatted a bit more, then headed home. In all the excitement and commotion of the day, I forgot to take the Original Gravity on BOTH items, so I have no idea where they started out. I'd even bought a fancy-pants pH meter to make sure they were at a suitable acidity for fermentation and forgot about that too. That's the thing with brew day - it's easy to forget steps, ingredients, or other aspects of brewing. I didn't drink much during brewing (just little samples) to keep my head on straight, but in trying to remember all the details in the process I forgot a big one. Ah well.

Mead can commonly get stuck in fermentation for a variety of reasons - poor yeast, low acidity, not enough nitrogen, or a variety of others. You can do a lot to avoid a stuck fermentation by doing a Stepped Nutrient Addition the first three days of fermentation - basically removing a bunch of CO2 through stirring and adding Diammonium Phosphate and a yeast energizer (basically yeast food). Today was my first addition after fermentation. I think "yeast energizer" is an understatement. As soon as I put it in (1/2 tsp DAP and 1/4 tsp Fermaid-K), I got this:


Looks like we're off to a good start...

An Afternoon with Women Enjoying Beer

It's been a while since I last posted, hasn't it? Life's been good. And busy.

Since my last post, Beer Sort of Girl opened up her home for Brew Day 2.0 and two more batches of brew were brought into existence. I went to Minneapolis for a week and loaded up my suitcase with beer from Surly. I've had both Cynic and Bitter Brewer by them and have been impressed by both. I also picked up cans of Furious and Coffee Bender and can't wait to try them. Surly's one of those breweries that has a huge local, almost cult-like, following. But, unlike so many craft breweries that receive so much loyalty, Surly actually deserves it. Their beer, so far, has been pretty damn good. And they put it in cans to boot. I'm doing what I can to bring it to Kansas City, sixteen cans at a time. (A few months ago, Bull E Vard was in Minneapolis drinking Surly and appeared to have similar sentiments.)

And now here we are, another week under my belt. As I sit at Flying Saucer drinking my goblet of Boulevard's Tank 7, I'll post about today's goings-on: I had the great fortune to participate in a focus group geared toward - what else - beer. Specifically, women and beer. There were six of us in the group, plus our two hosts Deidre and Ginger. Al, the General Manager at Gordon Biersch in the P&L, was gracious enough to host the event and provide us with tasters and snacks. (The current seasonal is a delicious Kölsch, by the way. And I was pretty proud of myself for identifying it as such without a single hint.)

I was surrounded by a great variety of women, including beer enthusiasts, the corporate trainer for KC Hopps, a writer for the Examiner, the Executive Director of the Kansas Women's Business Center. And, in my typical form, I had left my notepad at home and my business cards in the car. As we sat together drinking our samples, we talked about how beer is perceived by the genders, how the genders are perceived by those in the industry, how beer plays a part in our lives, and other relevant topics. Our afternoon was finished off by a fantastic tour led by James, the brewer at KC's only Gordon Biersch. He went into quite a bit of detail about the ingredients and brewing process, which was quite impressive. He even brought up the REAL history of the Reinheitsgebot, which was actually a law enacted to control the availability of various grain to brewers, versus that made available to bakers (the bakers won).

I have to admit, I've been skeptical of this whole "women and beer" thing. I don't want to be treated differently about my beer preferences just because of my gender. I don't want companies to condescend to me or talk to me like I don't know anything about beer because I'm female. Fact is, the market *does* treat me differently, whether I want it to or not. Ginger and Deidre have a pretty good grasp on this fact and are seeking to better understand it - then share their findings with companies in the industry.

I wish them both the best of luck in their adventure and may be just a teensy bit jealous as well. After all, who *wouldn't* want to travel around the country talking to women while drinking beer?

Brew Day 2.0

Riding on the success of Brew Day 1.0, we've decided to do another! The purpose of Brew Day is multi-faceted: learn tips & techniques from other homebrewers, brew up a batch of beer, taste others' homebrews and some good commercial beer, hang out with other beer enthusiasts... Yes, it's short notice - we've planned on this Saturday, July 11th, starting at noon.

If you're interested in learning how to homebrew or just want to hang out with homebrewers and beer enthusiasts, let us know. It should be a beautiful day, one perfect for hanging out in the yard drinking & brewing beer. More information can be gained through Beer Girl's blog post and by contacting her for address information.

Post a note or let beer girl know if you're planning on coming. Hope to see you there!

A Day with the Devil and the Dark Lord

KC Hop Head and I put together a brew day bringing together homebrewers, people interested in learning about homebrewing, beer nerds (including fellow blogger Bull E. Vard), and friends. I've been wanting to make a Duvel clone for a while now, so I chose it for our brew day. It's a Belgian Golden Strong ale whose name means Devil - presumably because it appears so innocent and harmless, until it reminds you that it's 8.5% ABV. I got the clone recipe from Jamil Zainasheff's book; KC Hop Head brewed up a milk stout from Northern Brewer that came with a novel for instructions, and his buddy Ryan made an American Brown. We were all having a great time, but the hardest part about a brew day party is paying attention to your brew while you're busy chatting, drinking, joking, and generally focusing on other things. Most of your time home brewing is spent waiting, making it too easy to be distracted. Thankfully, a coworker/friend of mine had a timer set on his phone to keep us on track.

The Duvel clone goes something like this:

1. Fill the brew kettle with water, light the burner, and wait about an hour for the water to heat
   
2. Turn off the burner, add the grain, and wait about 90 minutes to mash the grain
   
3. Remove the grain, light the burner, and wait for the wort to boil
   
4. Boil, add the hops, and wait another 90 minutes to finish the boil
   
5. Turn off the burner, start up the chiller, and wait about 45 minutes for the wort to chill
   
6. Add the wort to the carboy, pitch the yeast, then wait a few weeks
7. Transfer to a keg and wait a few days for the beer to carbonate
   

So during all that waiting, we were all having quite a bit of fun and had a few (relatively expected) mishaps - KC Hop Head had a boil-over, I let my mash temp get a couple degrees too low and I forgot to take my yeast starter out of the fridge to let it warm to room temp (someone saw it and reminded me, thank goodness). At the very least, we were still all pretty good about sanitation - one of the most important aspects of home brewing.

Amid all the brewing, we managed to get in a few games of washers (thanks to KC Hop Head's homemade washer 'kit'), as well as some games of horseshoes in our newly-installed backyard horseshoe pits. And, with about half a dozen homebrewers there, we shared plenty of homebrew and rare commercial beer. I got to try KC Hop Head's Hop Explosion, which was a very well balanced double IPA - nicely done! Another home brewer brought over a very delicious Abbey ale, and we shared our IPA, Maibock, Mild, and what's left of my haul from Philly (I was so happy to share one of the Dogfish Head 90 minute IPAs - that was my first foray into imperial IPAs and has a special place in my heart).

Toward the end of the night, KC Hop Head dug out the prized posession of the night - a bottle of Three Floyds Dark Lord. For a few bottles from Boulevard's Smokestack series, he got the bottle of Dark Lord as well as some Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout and ... other stuff - I was too anxious to try Dark Lord to remember what else he got.

This "Gargantuan" Russian Imperial Stout is sold at the brewery on one day per year - the last Saturday in April. This year, the brewery sold "Golden Tickets" ahead of time, which granted you the ability to buy up to four bottles of the stout. This results in pretty steep demand for the brew, as well as beer-geek jealousy over those who possess a bottle.

And it's no wonder why. This is one big beer that's heavy on the mouthfeel and amazing in flavor. Its consistency is described as motor oil, its flavor like molasses, and its aroma as charred fruit. All of those are true, and we all also agreed that the carbonation and roasted maltiness hits you on the roof of the mouth. (yes, I know that's not the best glass for the beer, but it was either those or the martini glasses...)

Overall, Brew Day 2009 version 1.0 was a success and I'm already looking forward to the next. Send me a note if you're interested in attending. Learn about homebrewing, try some new and different beer, and meet some laid back and fun people who share a love of craft beer.