Instant Starter

I think I may have reached my pinnacle for home brewing innovation. Well, not really, but I had a great idea so simple and obvious, I thought I’d share it. It has to do with yeast starters. Instant yeast starters. We all know having a good yeast starter is the first step to making a great beer. And sometimes, you just want to quickly pitch a starter and get back to your Friday night. My standard yeast pitching method involves pitching 1 cup of DME with a pinch of yeast nutrient into a 1 liter beaker. I break out the nappy bag of DME that’s sticky from steam and humidity, pour a cup, and try to then get the DME in to the flask through a funnel without spilling or stopping the funnel. One of the two always happens.

My new method, as of tonight, is to buy a bag of DME, pre-measure in to ziploc bags with a pinch of yeast nutrient, then pack away in a safe container. Then, when it’s time to make a starter, just cut the bottom corner off a baggie and pour it into the flask. Add water, bring to a boil, cool, and pitch.

Instant Starter Easy Pour

I feel a little bad about all the additional baggies, but it’s really freakin’ slick. And its still less material than a pitchable yeast pack and like 4 bucks cheaper.

2008's hop inventory

Thanks to my “connections”, I’m now stocked up on hops for the year and beyond. I’m about to vacuum seal, but the varieties are somewhat astounding and most of which I’ve never used before save for Nugget, Amarillo, Palisades and Santiam. Naturally, I’m quite excited to be stocked in a year of otherwise limited selection and high prices, but there are two specific varieties that I’m itching to get into a beer.

1 pound hop cube

Amarillo is one of my favorites, and I’m going to have to brew another Amarillo Red. The meaty citrus flavor is just wonderful and filling in all the right ways for a hop-lover’s palate. Summit, a new variety, was highlighted in one of my favorite beers of 2007: Widmer’s W’ 07 pale ale. Right now I’m trying to get some tips for recreating the robust pale.

Some of the varieties I need to do my homework on because I’m not sure what they “do” yet. I’ll probalby have to enlist some help and do some fancy batch-splitting to try out the hops in identical smaller batches.

Anyway, here’s the rundown:

Domestic

  • Amarillo (~ 10% alpha)
  • Apollo (~ 20% alpha)
  • Bravo (~ 15% alpha)
  • Glacier (~ 5% alpha)
  • Nugget (~ 13% alpha)
  • Palisades (~ 8% alpha)
  • Santiam (4.8 % alpha)
  • Summit (~18% alpha)

New Zealand

Vacuum-sealing is fun, but takes some time. I usually end up cutting the bricks with one of my wife’s nicest knives, but towards the end, it was having some serious problems cutting. One look at the blade and it was clear why: The blade was thick with hop resin.

Hop Resin Blade

Beer on your cereal

PETA is re-running their Got Beer campaign again now that Harvard has released findings similar to their original campaign that beer is a healthier drink thank milk. The intent is to highlight reasons not to drink milk rather than to drink beer, but its a very targeted campaign. Says the campaign:

“The scientific evidence is conclusive: Beer in moderation is good for you, while even one glass of milk supports animal abuse and harms your health,” says PETA’s Director of Vegan Outreach Bruce Friedrich. “You can drink beer responsibly, but the same can’t be said of milk.”

Evidently PETA is not yet concerned with the bajillions of yeast cells that died for your beer. Yet.

Toasty

Yesterday I racked the amber to secondary, where it was greeted by a pile of toasted oak chips that had been soaking in bourbon for a week. The smell of the chips alone, while delightful in its own right, was a bit strong. Hopefully 5 gallons of beer sitting on top of them for two weeks will impart a nice toasted bourbon barrel flavor without the knockout volatility of the chips alone.

Toasted Oak Chips

Red Oak mash-in

This morning I mashed in at 10 am to an overcast sky at roughly 40F. Things are going smoothly so far as recycling trucks go by picking up the waste of the past few days. I’m praying that the rain will hold off for another 2 hours, and that I don’t slip on the wet birch leaves on the deck as I carry hot pots of water out to top off the hot liquor tank.

Today I’m brewing a fairly simple amber ale. It’s just 2-row and Crystal 60 and 80, with 1.5 oz of hops. I’m hoping to keep the flavor simple since I’m going to try and oak chip the beer in secondary with bourbon soaked toasted red oak chips. The bourbon is supposedly to “sanitize” the chips (blocks weren’t available) but I’m actually hoping to recreate a bourbon barrel flavor. I probably should have tried this with a bigger beer, but the amber will allow me to taste how the oak affects flavor.

Red Oak

Grains

  • 9 lbs. domestic 2-row
  • 1.5 lbs Crystal 60L
  • 0.5 lbs Crystal 80L

Hops

  • 0.75 oz Chinook (12.2 % alpha) @ 60 min
  • 0.5 oz Chinook (12.2 % alpha) @ 5 min

Other

  • Yeast starter with Fermentis Safale S-05
  • 2.4 oz dark toasted oak chips (added in secondary, soaked in bourbon for 1 week)
  • pinch of Irish Moss near end of boil

Now I should get back to the mash. It’s probably just about time to sparge.

Happy 5th Anniversary Rooftop Brew

Today is the 5th anniversary of my first post to rooftopbrew. Some of the site (ingredients, process, etc.) is slightly old and leftovers from a class project I was doing while learning Dreamweaver, but I’d recently started using blogging software for a different site and saw the supreme usefulness for brewing. As tends to happen, the site started to include other brewerina; gear talk, exploration of techniques, comments about beer and events, and complaints about domain registrars and squatters. I lost the .com name a few years back and have been trying to get it back since. I added google ads a few months back (and have made $1.70!) from ad clicks. Not really enough to buy the domain back from the squatters. Oh well.

The name Rooftop Brew dates back to 2000 when I started brewing on my own with a kit Michelle got me for my birthday. Thanks. As mentioned in the State of the Brewnion, quality and quafability has been steadily improving since.

An apology to the site and it’s 3 readers – I’ve been a bit overwhelmed lately with work, thesis writing, home repairs and child, so I’ve not brewed since October, and doubt I’ll have time to for a few weeks. I didn’t get to brew a spiced Christmas ale, so I’m now trying to figure out what to brew for a 5th anniversary special. Maybe a Belgian Pentuple?

Holiday Ale Festival 2007

I was only able to visit this year’s Holiday Ale Fest for about 2 hours, but it was enough time to try some seriously big beers and enjoy brews with some friends. I was able to eek out of work early on Thursday to meet up with a displaced Portlander who has been living in New York for some time. When his girlfriend saw him among the crowd at the festival and heard him chatting about beer with me, she realized he wasn’t a nut, he was just a Portlander.

The Holiday Ale festival is great fun if you can escape work early. Seeing the lit christmas tree and towering building facades around you while sipping custom seasonal releases of the regions best breweries is really hard to beat. However, if you overindulge or stay too long, you can wind up in a tight spot. Shortly after 3:30pm, folks started trickling in from their offices in very nice suits. All I can figure is they’re on Market time and with trading over and work wrapped up, they were ready to have a beer. It gets a little crowded, but there are still no lines and you’re only slowed down in your travel. By 4:30pm however, its starting to get a little cramped and car-heater warm. This time I left, but in years past I stayed until it was claustrophobic, sweaty, and dehydrated. Sadly, I’m left with about 8 tickets that I was unable to spend on a second visit.

There were no beers that startled me this year. I think my favorite is still Celebration, but I did enjoy the Belgian-style offering from Laurelwood, the Caldera brew, and the Bye-Bye Frost. Nothing was bad, at least that I had, so it was a good year.

Psssshhhhh

Both kegs blew while company were over, but luckily, not until after everyone both had been sampled and and satisfied. The spice sludge that came out of the pumpkin keg was a little horrifying. The body looked like a cider that had been mixed with dirt. I tried two sips, but couldn’t manage the intense flavors and had to offer the last pint to the sink.

One of our guests is gearing up to start brewing cooperatively with her neighbor. She was asking about my setup and already seems to have a strong grasp on the basics, but wants to jump ahead to all-grain. Cool. Teaching friends to brew is fun.

State of the Brewnion

During this last week I’ve tapped a pumpkin beer and opened the last of the IPAs Joe and I brewed back in April. The quality of the last 4 beers I’ve brewed is consistently better than my previous beers, and I’m very satisfied with the prospects. The pumpkin ale is a little spicier than I prefer, and the color is almost a sickly green, but it’s quite good. Michelle, who I typically make the beer for, seems content with it.

I expected that the IPA would be a throw-away simply because of it’s age. To my surprise, it was excellent. The aroma was still fresh and citrusy, and the flavor had not dulled any over time. I think it was probably the best carbonated of the bunch, and really made quite a nice finish for the day. I’ll have to go back to the recipe again.

I still have to keg the Imperial IPA, but I don’t have a spare at the moment. Probably time to pick another corny up.