The Home Brewer and the Beer Reviewer

It seems like everyone and his or her brother has an opinion on craft beer. With the number of new voices popping up online, spending silly amounts of time pontificating on the nuances of the craft, I am really surprised by the still relatively few of us bloggers and critics who take the extra time (and enjoyable time, I might add) brewing beer ourselves.

It is my own opinion that taking the time to brew a few batches of ale really opens one’s eyes to a nuanced skill and art that this community purports to be obsessed with. From working with one hop variety or grain versus another, to playing with ratios of these ingredients, and switching up yeast strains, what was once a superficial understanding of brewing emerges into a true knowledge of the art.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that I am a brewing authority, or the end all to the distilling of flavors and the craft of beer from the few batches I have under my belt, but I do believe it has provided me an insight I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

As well, nor do I want to suggest one know how to “do” to review. It’s true that an individual can dissect everything from automobiles to art without the skills to repair or create either, and still describe with insight and accuracy. Personally though, I will give more weight to the experienced over the educated in many arenas, including fermentable intoxicants.

Interest in home brewing? Want to know how different aspects of brewing effect flavor? Check out these books from Amazon, hand selected by Pope Crisco: 

Homebrew #5 Chocolate Goat Coffee Stout

A little more than a month ago I began brewing this chocolate stout with a recipe put together by the staff of Hop City, an Atlanta beer and wine purveyor that offers some of the best brewing equipment and ingredients in the I285 perimeter. Coffee from a local coffee shop called Dancing Goats was added prior to bottling, giving the beer its name, Chocolate Goat.

Overall I am pleased with the beer that is coffee forward with slight chocolate backend. Heavy on malts, almost no hop bitterness is present, however on all of my home brewed beer there is a slight aftertaste that I wish wasn’t there, despite it being very light. Perhaps this is a side effect of the use of malt extracts as opposed to all grain brewing? I don’t know.

Hopefully the beer will develop more, being only about 10 days old since bottling. Time will tell. For those who I have given samples, feel free to pop a top for a tasting. I am hopeful you’ll like my result.

Prost!

Brewday: Chocolate Coffee Oatmeal Stout

It’s the last brewday here at the 1840 Brewing Company, the next time I put malt to water I will be a Texan again. Today we are brewing a Choco-Java-Oatmeal Stout with a project ABV of about 8-9%. Hopefully this will blow a few socks off with both flavor and high gravity. 

Today’s grain bill is a healthy 1 lb of chocolate malts, and half pound of both black and caramel malts.

For those not familiar with the brewing process I will start by boiling about 3 gallons of water to the point of about 160 degrees. Once the target temp is met, I will place the grains in a nylon bag, place the bag just above the bottom of the pot and let the grains seep flavor and color for about 30-40 minutes. 

Sitting in the freezer is another 3 gallons of water, chilling obviously.

After sufficient steeping has occurred, I will get the temp back up to 160 and then add my sugars and malt extract. For this recipe, put together by the wonderful staff at Hop City in Atlanta, I have 9lbs of dark malt extract and another pound of local honey.  

 As well, at the 0 minute mark of the boiling I will add a half ounce of the Fuggle hops. 

Now I will sit back with a beer, and listen to some Western Swing, and kill the next 30 minutes, barring an occasional stirring to avoid malt from sticking to the bottom of the pot, till it’s time to add another half ounce of hops to the mix.

45 minutes in we add the oat flakes, and at 50 minutes the last addition of another half ounce of hops goes into the pot.

With the 60 minute mark coming up on us, we need to start an ice bath that we will transfer the pot into once the hour is finally up. Once sitting in the ice bath I’ll need to let it cool to about 90 degrees. 

When at the right temp we will dump the contents of the pot into our sterilized fermentor, over our sterilized colander to sift out oatmeal. Once we have emptied our pot, we then need to top off the tub to the 5 gallon mark with our chilled water.  Once the wort gets to about 70-75 degrees we will pitch the yeast, and let things sit for about 14 days before putting it in a secondary fermentor where we will then add an 8 ounces of cold, French pressed coffee and let it sit for another a week or so before bottling. 

Once bottled it will take another 10 or so days of bottle conditioning before ready to consume.

Pope Crisco

Putting the Label Before the Beer III

Yeah, im bored, and honoring the president that made homebrewing a legal hobby in the United States.

 Pope Crisco 

Putting the Label Before the Beer II

New layout and final w/color chosen by my wife. Pope Crisco

Putting the Label Before the Beer

Just a preliminary mock up of a beer label for the first batch of beer my wife and I will brew, hopefully tomorrow afternoon.
The dog, IE Zadie, IE Littles, was a dog my wife had when I moved to Atlanta.

Just farting around on a Saturday night.
Pope Crisco