Swagger adds Sunday hours & a breakfast menu

Bull E Vard just announced Swagger’s food pairing & beer tasting event tonight with Royal Liquor. Sounds like a great way to do a beer/food pairing without forking over a lot of cash or guaranteeing a food coma.

But what I really came here to post are two other things going on at Swagger. They’re now open on Sundays, AND they’re serving breakfast on weekends! I’ve been waiting for a while for the Sunday hours, as it seems every time I get the urge to go to Swagger, it’s on Sunday. We even walked a mile with some friends one Sunday to go to Swagger for lunch, only to find they were closed (and as we walked away, someone else drove up and tried to go inside.) You'll be able to get your Swagger fix on Sundays from 7am - 9pm.

As for breakfast, it’ll be served both Saturday & Sunday from 7am to noon. No booze served prior to 9am, but I’m not sure anyone will be crying into the biscuits & gravy over that. 

BYOB TV

In case you're feeling nostalgic for beer-related television after the questionably-permanent end of Brewmasters, or if you're dying to add just one more reality-tv show to your addiction, check out BYOB TV over on kofytv.com. The content is homebrewing-related, but entirely relevant to non-homebrewing beer fans as well. And, it's simply entertaining. It's in a reality TV format, meaning there are teams that face a variety of challenges and, toward the end of each episode, potential elimination from the show. At the end of the season, the team left standing will receive a trip to the Pilsner Urquell brewery in Plzen. Not too shabby!

If you've ever listened to Brewing Network's Sunday Session, you'll likely recognize host Justin Crossley and "Director of Difficulty" JP. The first episode starts out with a quiz show style game, where competing teams answer questions about beer, perform taste tests, and guess hop varieties based on aroma. The teams then move on to timed challenges hooking up brewing equipment and finish up with a relay race involving mugs of beer and spent grain. Two of the eight teams were eliminated, with the remaining six going on to episode #2.

Episode #2 kicks off with the six remaining teams making different batches of beer, including a squash-sage beer, one with meyer lemons, and an oatmeal-raisin-cookie beer. But there's a twist that gets introduced, making the challenge even more challenge-y (and you have to watch the episode to see what it is). A judging panel chose to move five of the six teams on to episode #3, sending one team home.

And, finally, the most recent episode's challenge was to build an all-grain homebrew setup from junk. As with most reality shows, a bit of drama occurs within the first ten minutes but all was made right with a bit of compromise. This ended up being my favorite episode; I loved the sprinkler attached to the inside of the cooler-MLT lid for sparging, as well as the terra cotta pot as a false bottom.

Only four teams remain after this episode, and the next one available (aired May 14th but not yet online) involves the teams having to clone a Lagunitas brew. The show's well-made and engaging, and I laughed more than a few times. Happy viewing!

Big Brew Day

National Homebrew Day is this coming Saturday (May 7th), which means that homebrew clubs nationwide will be hosting Big Brew events. Big Brew is an event where homebrewers gather to make homebrew, share knowledge, answer questions, share love for the hobby, and... drink beer. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) publishes recipes each year, and this year's are an 1800s style East India Pale Ale, a Wit, and a Robust Porter.

Basically, you show up and talk beer & homebrew while brewing, helping brew, or watching someone else brew. If you're interested in the hobby but have no idea where to start, this is a perfect opportunity to get answers. We've got a few Big Brew days in our neck of the woods put on by a few clubs. Be sure you're there by noon (if not sooner), when a nationwide toast to homebrewing will take place.

• The KC Bier Meisters will, as in years past, host Big Brew in the area behind Bacchus & Barleycorn. Festivities start at 10. More info is on the KCBM website.
• ZZ Hops' Big Brew day will be in Lee's Summit, also starting at 10am. See their Facebook page for when, where, and contact info.
• Jayhops has contact information on their Facebook page as well, if you'd like to attend.

Cheers! And happy homebrewing.

Making Mead - Part Five

So here we are, the final post in my little series on meadmaking. I'm not a pro, I haven't won meadmaker of the year, and I won't claim to make the best meads I've ever had. But, despite that, I've learned a lot of information over the past 1.5 years that has vastly improved our meads - and one is going to compete this June in the AHA National Homebrew Competition. I've compiled a bunch of resources here to help get you on your way, including where you can find good examples of commercial meads.


Honey

55 pounds of sweet goodness

You can buy honey at any of our local farmers’ markets, but you’re going to find that wildflower & clover are the two types of honey available locally. For varietals such as tupelo, basswood, mesquite, or orange blossom, you’re going to need to find a non-local source. (That said, when Trader Joe’s finally opens up here, you’ll be able to get Mesquite honey there.) Some of the honey providers I’ve used, and that others recommend, are:

• Millers Honey
• Draper Bee
• Bee Folks
• Northern Brewer
• To find other honey retailers, you can use the National Honey Board's Honey Locator

Tools
I’ve mentioned a few key tools in these posts, but here are the links to them again. Obviously, the standard fermenter, blowoff assembly, hydrometer/refractometer, and other standard brewing tools apply here too.

• Lees Stirrer: In addition to your fermenter, you will definitely want to pick up a lees stirrer to mix & degas your must.
• Postal Scale: Measuring out your honey is made easy with a postal scale; I bought ours on Amazon and am completely happy with it. I also use this when shipping off beers to homebrew competitions. Sign up for a free account on UPS or FedEx’s website, and you can print out shipping labels after entering destination & weight information online. All you have to do is drop off the package with your label in an affixed pouch; no waiting in line.
• Gram scale: I also recommend getting one of these to measure out your nutrients and yeast. It’s also really handy for measuring hops.  
• pH Strips or Meter: pH is so important to meadmaking, you really need to measure it so that it can be adjusted as necessary. The most economical approach is with pH strips, but I recommend investing in a pH meter. You’ll need to calibrate the meter on each mead day (assuming you’re making it less frequently than every few days), so pick up some solution at the same time. Don’t forget the storage solution as well, which will keep the little probe from drying out.
• Mead Calculator: This is such a handy tool for helping you figure out how much honey, water, and other fermentable ingredients you'll need for your batch.

Mead Resources
As I mentioned a few days ago, everyone finds their own approach. What I’ve laid out here is the method we’ve figured out by gathering information from the interwebs, attending NHC, talking to other meadmakers, reading books, and experience. I recommend checking out some other mead resources to see what others are doing and get a different perspective – as well as inspiration. Here are just a few -

• homebrewtalk.com
• gotmead.com
• meadmaking subreddit
• mead made complicated
• Ken Schramm’s book, The Compleat Meadmaker

Advanced Information on Mead

I'm not even going to try to describe the plethora of information on the BJCP mead page, but please check it out. There is so much good information there, it's a necessary resource for any meadmaker. From information on varietal honey to punching down fruit caps in melomels, to styles, to troubleshooting, you'd be hard-pressed not to find what you're looking for here. This is an incredible source of information on making mead.

Commercial Meads

Winner of a well-deserved gold medal

We can get a handful of meads here in Kansas & Missouri, and I've found the widest selection, all on the Missouri side, at Gomer's Midtown, Royal on 103rd, and Lukas in Martin City. They're typically located with the port & sake, but you might have to ask if you don’t see it. Some brands you're bound to see:

• Redstone (CO) - makers of some of the best commercial mead I've had. They make a hopped mead.
• Chaucer's (CA)
• Pirtle (MO) - I highly recommend their blueberry & effervescent meads. The effervescent just won a gold medal for traditional sweet mead at Mazer Cup! Typically stocked in the Missouri Wine section.
• Honeywood (OR)
• Lurgashall (England)
• Bunratty (Ireland)
• Makana (S Africa) - they make a great bird's eye chili mead

There are some fantastic meaderies cropping up all over the country, though. Some of the greats include

• B Nektar (incredible meads out of IN)
• Rabbits Foot (CA; they make several braggots)
• Heidrun (CA; fantastic sparkling meads using méthode champenoise)
• New Day (IL)
• White Winter (WI; one of my favorites)
• Mountain Meadows (CA)

I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but that should get you started.

I haven’t really talked about it, but Polish mead is a somewhat different beast and one I have yet to see here in the KC metro. I know you can find some in St Louis at the Wine & Cheese Place; the traditional bottles are pretty easy to spot. Polish mead typically comes in four strengths: 2:1, 1:1, 1:2, and a 1:3 honey:water ratio. Most are aged on wood for 1-4 years (some are aged up to 25 years), and contain fruit or herbs. The resulting product is a sweet but smooth and rich beverage that is notably high in alcohol. It’s definitely worth trying once (or more).

You can order from many of the meaderies directly, which is probably going to be your best bet since online wine retailers really only tend to carry Chaucer's. Since KS state law doesn't allow direct shipment of alcohol to households, you’ll need to have it sent to a location in Missouri (my house, for example).

I hope you found this information helpful and inspiring. If you’re interested in meeting and talking to other meadmakers, there are a few homebrewing clubs in the KC metro area with members who make mead: KC Bier Meisters, Lawrence Brewers Guild, ZZ Hops, and Jayhops.

Thanks for reading!

Reference - 
part one
part two
part three
part four

Making Mead - Part Four

In the past three posts, we've gone through getting ingredients, mixing them, and going through fermentation & staggered nutrient additions + degassing. Mead fermentation should take about 3 weeks, give or take. We usually give it a month or so to get to our final gravity and let as much yeast fall out as possible. Once fermentation is done, there are a few things you can do:

- Make it sweeter

- Make it more acidic

- Make it more tannic

- Modify the flavor with additional ingredients

- Clarify the mead

Backsweetening

Unlike beer wort, honey is pretty much completely fermentable and your mead may end up a bit dry. Unless you arrest fermentation before it finishes by racking off the yeast and adding stabilizers (an approach I don't trust at all), you'll probably want to add back a little honey to bring out some of the original honey character as well as increase the mouthfeel. If you add more honey to your brand new mead, the yeast are just going to consume it. So, you need to add stabilizers before doing anything else. 

Adding campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite.. yeah, yeah, sulfites, blah blah) will hinder any wild yeast in your new mead, as well as help prevent oxidation during transfer. At the same time, adding potassium sorbate will prevent further fermentation by hindering yeast reproduction. I recommend transferring to a new container in this step, so that you get your mead off the sediment to aid clarity. For each gallon of mead you're about to transfer, add 1 crushed campden tablet and 1/2 tsp of potassium sorbate per gallon to your new container. Then, transfer the mead, give it 1-2 days to stabilize, then add any sugary additions without concern of triggering further fermentation. 

Adding 1/2 - 1 cup of honey (half a cup at a time) to a 5-gallon batch will usually give you the sweetness you're looking for and will greatly enhance the natural honey aroma that's highly desirable in a mead. If you added fruit in primary, you could choose to add juice at this point as well. More than a cup of honey for a 5gal batch is often quite cloying, but really it's up to you. You're best off boiling 1-2 cups of water, pouring it into a sanitized bowl or pitcher, and adding the honey to the hot water. This will make the honey pourable, thin, and easily mixable. 

Once transfer is complete, top off with a blanket of CO2 if possible to prevent further oxidation. If that's not possible, you can sanitize a bunch of marbles and put them into the fermenter to decrease headspace. Or, add water. Or, transfer to a smaller container.

Creating Balance

BJCP Banquet at Summit Brewing Co

Last year at the National Homebrewers Conference, we attended the pre-conference BJCP banquet where there were tables set up with tinctures & mixtures of various mead additions. These included extracts of mint, juniper, ginger, cinnamon, rose petals, and other flavoring additions. There was also a table set up with tannin in liquid and a variety of acids (including an acid blend). We were given cups, mead on tap, and free reign to blend at will. This was one of the many eye-opening experiences I had at NHC last year. It's quite an experience to taste a good mead, add a touch of acid and tannin, and realize how much the already-good mead can improve with a bit of blending. The flavor "pops", the finish becomes cleaner, and it becomes dangerously more drinkable.

Creating Multiple Meads from One

This practice of using extracts convinced me that making metheglin (herbed mead) does not involve adding herbs or spices to the fermenter, but is better off done by creating extracts of ingredients that are then added in small amounts to the base mead. Doing this is simple - soak the desired ingredient in cheap neutral alcohol to create an extract. Then, after a couple of weeks, pour a small amount of traditional mead (2oz or so) into several containers and add varying amounts of the extract to each container with an eyedropper. Figure out which one is most appealing, scale up, and voila - you now have a different mead. Try it with clove, orange peel, chili peppers, cinnamon, vanilla, or anything else you can think of. Another idea? Make a hop tea and add that to your mead. 

Better yet, dry-hop! If you dry-hop in a keg, pick up a Sure Screen. It goes right onto the end of the dip tube and makes racking off the hops so much simpler (unless you get hop cones somehow wedged under the tube, causing the beer not to siphon through the transfer tubing, requiring you to have to scoop out and stir a bunch of hops to try to dislodge the cones and generating a huge mess and a lot of swearing - and potential oxidation - in the process. Good times.).

Clarifying Mead

There are two main processes for clarifying mead: wait several months or use a clarifying agent. We're impatient, so we clarify. Alberta from Bacchus & Barleycorn recommended Super Kleer KC one day, so I gave it a shot - and I haven't turned back since. The packet is composed of two pouches; after pouring the contents of the first pouch into your mead, you wait an hour and pour the contents of the second pouch. Give the mead a gentle swirl and wait a few days. After a week or so, your mead will be very clear. After three weeks, it'll be brilliant. I can't recommend this stuff enough and consider it a standard part of every mead batch we do.

After clarifying, package. We keg all our meads, but a lot of people will bottle them & age for as long as it lasts. Mead, like wine, will change as it ages, and almost always for the better. If you take care of fermentation and practice good sanitation, you should be able to enjoy your mead when it's less than 6 months old. The old philosophy of having to age meads for at least 2 years can get tossed out the window. 

In my next (and last) post on meads, I'll list out some of the best resources I've found for meadmaking (ingredients, tools, and information) as well as some of the better meads I've discovered - and where to find them. Unfortunately, our selection of commercial mead is relatively poor here in KC, but we're lucky to have a meadery in Weston as well as the option to have mead mail-ordered (in Missouri).

Reference - 
part one
part two
part three

Making Mead - Part Three

Picking up where we left off in part two, we’ve now got two meads that are starting to ferment. Up to this point, all we’ve done is mix ingredients together. Of course, every meadmaker’s process is going to differ in some way. Some meadmakers heat their mead must on the stove, some even to the point of boiling (not to be confused with burnt mead, which is mead that is slowly boiled for several hours to develop complex caramelization). These posts are just one way to approach making mead; certainly, if you make your own, you’ll find your own approach. One thing is certain, however – a healthy fermentation is key, and there are some things you can do to promote one.

Managing your Fermentation

The first few days of fermentation are crucial to making quality mead. During this time, the yeast need a nutrient-rich and yeast-friendly environment to properly and fully ferment the sugars without creating problematic off-flavors and fusel alcohols. A lot of people will say that you have to age mead a few years before it’s even drinkable, but that’s likely because the fermentation didn’t go as well as it could have. Of course, mead does typically age extremely well, and tends to improve over time, but a fresh young mead is certainly drinkable if you make it right.

Specifically, you need to manage the following:

- Fermentation temperature (keep it in the 68-72 range)

- The pH of your must (keep it above 3.2, ideally around 3.4 - 3.6)

- Adequate FAN, vitamins, and minerals

You can check your pH levels with pH strips or a pH meter. If you have pH strips for beer, you’ll need to buy ones that are specifically intended for wine, as the pH range will go lower than the beer strips register. They should go under 3.0. We have a pH meter that we use for both mead and beer, and I love the thing. It’s kind of a pain in the ass to calibrate every time (mostly because I'm impatient), but it’s a lot more accurate and reassuring than pH strips.

If you need to increase your pH, which is often the case because honey is moderately acidic, you can add Calcium Carbonate (CaCo3) or Potassium Hydroxide (KOH). We use KOH because it does not leave behind carbonate, which can leave behind a chalky, salty taste. We create a 2M KOH solution at home (I bought our KOH at Essential Depot) and add the solution in 10ml increments to our 5 gallon batches. Pick up an infant syringe at a pharmacy to easily measure out 10ml (it’s also a great tool for measuring out Star San or Iodophor – 6ml per gallon of water for a properly-diluted sanitizing solution). Wear gloves when you mix & measure this, as it will actually break down the lipids in your skin. Ew.

Degassing Mead

You’ll also need more DAP and Fermaid-K during fermentation, and will add these to the fermenting mead along with your pH adjustments. I learned the hard way, though, that adding these dry powders provides thousands of nucleation sites when added to the mead, causing the well-known mead volcano. You could do a 5-gallon batch in a 20-gallon bucket so that the foam doesn’t spill over the top. Or, you could degas your mead.

You, too, can have your own homemade volcano

Degassing basically removes CO2 from solution through rapid agitation of the must. Guess what we use – yep, the handy dandy lees stirrer. Some people use a whisk, others use brewing spoons, but I’m not that interested in getting a workout when I do my nutrient additions, so I use the lazy method. Sanitize the lees stirrer and the neck of your carboy and whirr away. I usually whisk for about 5-8 minutes and sometimes have to stop to avoid a mead volcano. A lot of CO2 is removed in this process and will allow you to safely add your nutrients without making a mess. Amateur video ahead... 

There’s another upside to degassing, though, and that is to lessen strain on the yeast. I’ve read that you need to degas your must because CO2 levels can become toxic to your yeast, but I’ve also read that it’s nearly impossible to get enough CO2 to a level of actual yeast toxicity. What it will do is help keep your fermentation chugging along, and remove CO2 early on so that you get a still mead more quickly than just letting it sit/age for months. 

We use the Curt Stock fermentation schedule, which requires 8 days of fermentation care as follows:

Day 0: make the mead, adding 4.5g Fermaid-K and 2g DAP.

Days 1, 3, 5, 7, and 8: Degas only

Days 2, 4, and 6: Degas, then add 4.5g Fermaid K, 2g DAP, and 10ml KOH

That's it. More involved than most beer, but still extremely easy.

Next up, post-fermentation!

Reference - 
part one
part two

Making Mead - Part Two

In my prior post, I talked about the two primary facets of meadmaking that I think contribute the most to making a good-tasting mead: yeast health and suitable honey. Of course, sanitation and proper care go without saying. This post gets into the pre-fermentation details. Most of this information is a result of attending NHC sessions last year, reading Ken Schramm's book, and going through Kris England & Curt Stock's presentation from the 2008 NHC.

A couple of weekends ago, John and I threw together three batches of mead in one afternoon – two fruit meads (melomels) and one traditional. It's so easy to put together, it's almost silly to do just one batch at a time. The most frustrating and time-consuming part of that day’s session was that our honey was fully crystalized and it took about 2 hours – and a lot of boiling-hot water – to get it to a pourable consistency (and even then, “pourable” is an overstatement; it was more like “soft enough to squeeze through the narrow neck of a gallon jug”). It’s worth noting that Tupelo & White Sage won’t likely crystalize at room temperature; in my experience (and I’m not alone), tupelo makes better-tasting mead than white sage, but sage can be a great base for fruit & spice meads as it’s quite neutral.

Weighing the honey on a postal scale
I had added a gallon of water to the carboy prior to adding honey
(the rest of the water got added once I finished with all the honey)

First, Devise a Recipe

I like using the mead calculator on GotMead.com. You can determine how much honey, juice, fruit, water, and other ingredients you need to achieve your desired mead. By playing around with quantity of honey & other fermentables while keeping the target volume the same, I can come up with amounts of ingredients to achieve my desired starting gravity. 

To know where your starting gravities should land, you can look at the BJCP’s guidelines for hydromel (light), standard, and sack (strong) meads. For instance, for the pyment I knew I wanted a mead that would be at the upper end of the standard-strength range (around 14% ABV). To know how much honey to use with 4 pounds of grape concentrate (which I know is 68 Brix), I added this in the calculator as a 2nd ingredient with 68% sugar content. With 12 pounds of honey, this brought me to just under the top of the standard category. Perfect! 

I'll pick two of the three recipes we did - one melomel (the pyment) and one traditional. Both are 5-gallon batches.

Step 1: Prepare the Ingredients

For the Traditional Mead (OG 1.115):

16 pounds of Orange Blossom honey

4 gallons of drinking water from Hy-Vee

1 tsp of Calcium Chloride to provide calcium to the must & aid fermentation

4.5g of Fermaid-K for yeast nutrition

2g of DAP as a source of nitrogen

For the pyment (melomel made with grapes) (OG 1.111):

12 pounds of Orange Blossom honey

4 pounds of Beaujolais grape concentrate (Alexander's brand, 68 Brix)

4 gallons of drinking water from Hy-Vee

1 tsp of Calcium Chloride to provide calcium to the must & aid fermentation

4.5g of Fermaid-K for yeast nutrition

2g of DAP as a source of nitrogen

Step 2:  Assemble the must

Put the water and any juices & herbs into the fermenter, then add your honey. The easiest way to measure your honey is by weight – we put our carboy on a postal scale then pour the honey into the carboy until the desired weight is achieved. Once all ingredients are in there (except for maybe a gallon or two of water), you get to the fun part:  mixing.

Before mixing

I don’t recommend doing this without a lees stirrer. I’ve done it a few times without one, and can’t believe it took me 3 batches to finally pick one up. Stirring honey into water by hand is not fun. So, do yourself a favor and get one (and a drill if you don’t have one already).

The business end of a lees stirrer
The little "wings" fan out when the stirrer is in rotation.

The wand end of the lees stirrer just goes right into your drill – sanitize it, hook it up to your drill, put it into your fermenter, and whirr away. Be careful not to scratch the bottom or sides of your plastic container. In a few minutes, your honey should be completely blended into the honey. Add the Calcium Chloride, DAP, and Fermaid-K, mix lightly, then cover your fermenter (with foil, a cap, or a lid) and go prepare your yeast.

After mixing

Step 3:  Prepare your yeast

If you’re using dry yeast, you need to rehydrate it. Sprinkling it directly onto the must can cause slow fermentation because you can end up with clumped-up yeast cells, preventing all of the cells from rehydrating and contributing to fermentation. Rehydrating with Go-Ferm will kick-start your fermentation by providing your yeasties with nutrients while they go back to their full & proper shape. Obviously, if you’re using liquid yeast, skip this step.

Fermaid-K, DAP, and Go-Ferm for happy yeast
You'll need a lot of this.

Boil some water and pour it into small containers (we use small coffee mugs, but any small container will do). You don’t need a lot of water – maybe 2/3 of a cup at most. Cover the small containers with foil and let them cool to 115 degrees (be sure to sanitize your thermometer every time you check the water temp). Once you get to 115F, add the Go-Ferm. Cover your containers again and let the Go-Ferm sit in the water while it continutes to cool to about 105F. Once you hit 105, add the yeast and let it rehydrate for about 15-30 minutes. After that time has passed (or if you’re using liquid yeast), pitch your yeast, hook up a sanitized blow-off assembly, place your fermenter in a dark place that’s about 68-72F, and you’re done!

Until tomorrow…

reference - Part One