TLDR Beer Club
05-20-2008
, 06:22 PM
05-21-2008
, 01:30 PM
05-22-2008
, 07:19 PM
I was back in Beers of the World today to pick up a bottle of Brooklyn's Hopfen Weisse to give to some friends as a present. I hadn't taken 5 steps in the door when I saw something new: Schneider's Hopfen Weisse. Schneider is the brewery with which Brooklyn collaborated on their Hopfen Weisse. I wasn't sure, actually, if Schneider's Hopfen Weisse was a different beer or not. On further inspection, though, it is a different beer. It's 0.3% ABV weaker, and it uses Hallertauer Saphir hops instead of Cascade hops. It's also cheaper. A half liter bottle ran me $5.29, which works out to be about 40% cheaper per ounce than the Brooklyn version. It's still not cheap, but I had to try it.
It pours the usual cloudy gold with a good head. It's not quite as thick as the head on the Brooklyn, but it's certainly respectable.
The first thing I smell in this beer is apricot. It also smells of grassy hops, different from the Cascade ones. Unlike the Brooklyn, where it smelled so hoppy but tasted a little more balanced, this one didn't smell as hoppy, but it tastes comparably hoppy to the Brooklyn. It's nice, but different. The balance is similar, and the malt behind the hops is also very nearly the same. Like Brooklyn's version, this beer lingers long after you've swallowed it. This is also an excellent beer, but I have to give a slight nod to the Americans here. I prefer the Cascade hops to the Bavarian hops. I award this beer
. Would I buy this again even though I prefer the Brooklyn? Man, that's a tough call. On the one hand, I can get two of these for less than the price of Brooklyn's version (an extra 8 oz of beer for less money). On the other, this beer is still pricey enough that I'd consider it a splurge rather than regular drinking, and if I'm splurging, I might spring for the beer I like better. Either way, I end up happy, drunk, and poorer. I would definitely encourage people to try both of these brews out, since they make excellent spring and summer drinking.
It pours the usual cloudy gold with a good head. It's not quite as thick as the head on the Brooklyn, but it's certainly respectable.
The first thing I smell in this beer is apricot. It also smells of grassy hops, different from the Cascade ones. Unlike the Brooklyn, where it smelled so hoppy but tasted a little more balanced, this one didn't smell as hoppy, but it tastes comparably hoppy to the Brooklyn. It's nice, but different. The balance is similar, and the malt behind the hops is also very nearly the same. Like Brooklyn's version, this beer lingers long after you've swallowed it. This is also an excellent beer, but I have to give a slight nod to the Americans here. I prefer the Cascade hops to the Bavarian hops. I award this beer
. Would I buy this again even though I prefer the Brooklyn? Man, that's a tough call. On the one hand, I can get two of these for less than the price of Brooklyn's version (an extra 8 oz of beer for less money). On the other, this beer is still pricey enough that I'd consider it a splurge rather than regular drinking, and if I'm splurging, I might spring for the beer I like better. Either way, I end up happy, drunk, and poorer. I would definitely encourage people to try both of these brews out, since they make excellent spring and summer drinking.
05-24-2008
, 11:25 PM
quick review. Still in the middle of drinking it. Unibroue #17. $10, 10% ABV. I enjoyed it with delicious lamb samosas they make at my local grocer. so sick bro.
Pours a dark purple/brown you know what I mean. Nice head, good retention. Nose consists of dark fruit and the alcohol is slightly present.
Flavor is rich with malty goodness with hints of cherry and plum. Based just on memory seems pretty similar to Ommegang's Quadrupple, but I'd have to try it side by side. A little more light and carbonated in the finish than I like, but overall a very nice beer. and one half . Flavor-wise it's pretty close to a 4, but I think you can get better values out there. Would definitely recommend, though.
Pours a dark purple/brown you know what I mean. Nice head, good retention. Nose consists of dark fruit and the alcohol is slightly present.
Flavor is rich with malty goodness with hints of cherry and plum. Based just on memory seems pretty similar to Ommegang's Quadrupple, but I'd have to try it side by side. A little more light and carbonated in the finish than I like, but overall a very nice beer.
and one half . Flavor-wise it's pretty close to a 4, but I think you can get better values out there. Would definitely recommend, though.
05-28-2008
, 07:39 PM
05-29-2008
, 06:03 PM
05-29-2008
, 08:17 PM
I saw Abita's (spring seasonal?) Strawberry Lager and, even though I'm not a big fruit beer or lager guy, I picked it up. Can't hurt, right?
It took me maybe a minute to snap the picture, so the head was originally to the top of the glass, maybe an inch or so. No real lacing to speak of, and not very persistent. It was a pretty standard lager color.
The smell was sort of interesting, with the strawberry being there but not overpowering. The taste was not very malty, not very hoppy, but fairly fruity. The strawberry came through more as the swallow went on. And the more I drank it, the more the strawberry came on. Overall, the beer was really sweet, but not in a malty way. Towards the last 1/3, it was almost cloying. It had a way of sticking to the palate that really wasn't enjoyable. I think if they dried the beer out some or made some late hop additions to give it a bit of a snap, it would really help. As it is, the strawberry takes over the beer and then just sits there in your mouth.
Not a great offering.
It took me maybe a minute to snap the picture, so the head was originally to the top of the glass, maybe an inch or so. No real lacing to speak of, and not very persistent. It was a pretty standard lager color.
The smell was sort of interesting, with the strawberry being there but not overpowering. The taste was not very malty, not very hoppy, but fairly fruity. The strawberry came through more as the swallow went on. And the more I drank it, the more the strawberry came on. Overall, the beer was really sweet, but not in a malty way. Towards the last 1/3, it was almost cloying. It had a way of sticking to the palate that really wasn't enjoyable. I think if they dried the beer out some or made some late hop additions to give it a bit of a snap, it would really help. As it is, the strawberry takes over the beer and then just sits there in your mouth.
Not a great offering.
05-29-2008
, 09:16 PM
The other weekend I brewed up my first ten gallon all-grain batch. For the uninitiated, homebrewers typically start by using malt extract, where the sugars for the yeast are extracted, condensed into either liquid or powder form, and then sold. Most that stick with the hobby eventually move to all-grain, where you use the actual grains of malted barley and extract the sugars yourself. It's a bit more labor intensive, and definitely more equipment intensive, but it gives you more control over your flavors and gives you an excuse to play with more toys.
I called over a buddy who also brews, and we got started at about 10AM. We were doing an American Pale. Since we were doing ten gallons, we decided to split the batch between us and use a different strain of yeast on each half. This way the process, the grain bill, the hops, the fermentation... everything about the beers would be identical except the yeast, so any differences between them we could attribute 100% to that. Fun little experiment.
To get the sugars out of the malted barley, you have to soak it in water of a specific temperature. This process is called mashing, and takes place in the mash tun. Mashing activates enzymes that convert the starches in the grain into starches that the yeast can eat. Different temperatures activate different enzymes, but the range is pretty narrow. Below 146 or so you won't convert enough of the sugars and get a beer with really low alcohol and really high sweetness; above 156 or so you'll get really high astringency and a bad, puckery beer.
Coolers make great mash tuns because they generally hold a temperature well. Here is a picture of my empty mash tun cooler, a 100 qt. monster.
For the batch, we had 26 pounds of grain and needed to mash with 8 gallons of water. We wanted to mash at 152F, so we needed to heat our water to about 168F. Once the 168F water hit the grains and cooler and was all mixed, it should come out to 152. Here is my 15 gallon brew pot.
It's on a propane burner. The stove just doesn't cut it for bringing 15 gallons of liquid to a boil. Once we had 8 gallons up to 168, we dumped it in the cooler, and then dumped in the grain. This is mashing in, and my friend handled the grain while I stirred. It's important to get all of the grain wet, since if it stays dry, the sugars won't convert.
If you've ever done a brewery tour or been upqind of a brewery, that smell that hits your nose is the mash, more or less. I think it smells delicious, but my gf doesn't, which is one more reason I brew outside. Since this was my first time both brewing ten gallons and using my mash tun, I wasn't sure how things would go. Specifically, I wasn't sure how much temperature the cooler would absorb, how well it would hold heat, etc, and like I said, that stuff is pretty important. After mash in, our mash was 148. Since we wanted 152, that was on the very low end of acceptable. We added a few quarts of boiling water and got it up to 150 and stopped there and called it good.
The enzymes take a while to do their work, so we let the mash sit for an hour. Time for a beer!
That's Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere fresh hop beer, the counterpart to their fall fresh hop offering. It was good, but from memory I liked the other one better.
After the hour-long mash, it was time to drain the liquid from the mash tun. The water we combined with the grain has become infused with all those delicious sugars and is really sweet at this point. The first time you drain that liquid out is called the first runnings. For this batch, we would drain the mash tun once, fill it back up with more water, and drain it again to collect as much of the sugar as we could.
When the mash tun is drained, the grain compacts and looks like this:
Spent grain is good for all sorts of stuff. Farmers use it for feed. I use it to make dog biscuits for my dogs.
We were aiming for about 14 gallons of sweet liquor in the brewpot. After evaporation during the boil, the hops absorbing some, and various coagulated proteins and junk floating around, we hoped that would give us 11 gallons to ferment. Getting all that up to a boil took about 20 minutes, and then it was time to add the hops. Here's 1.5oz of Simcoe hops, in a hop bag, just after addition.
The next hop addition wasn't for another 50 minutes, and things look more or less the same:
One final hop addition ten minutes later, and it was time to turn off the burner and cool things off. The liquid - aka wort - should be cooled as quickly as possible. When it's boiling, nothing can live in there, and when it's sealed up, nothing can get in, but in between, all that warm, sweet, sugar-laden wort is a haven for bacteria. We cooled it with an immersion chiller. That's a coil that you immerse in your wort and run cold water through.
To cool things down even more quickly, once the wort got down to 90F or so, we hooked up a second immersion chiller and put it in an ice bath, so the water went through the ice, then into the boil kettle. The setup looks gangly, and it was, but it's sort of arranged left to right, with that bucket in the left foreground being the ice bath.
Once the wort is nice and cool, it's time to transfer it into the fermenter and add the yeast. I've got the fermenters in my kegerator/fermentation chamber, holding at a nice 67F. Fermentation temps are just as important as mash temps, so having a way to regulate how hot it ferments is really nice.
I called over a buddy who also brews, and we got started at about 10AM. We were doing an American Pale. Since we were doing ten gallons, we decided to split the batch between us and use a different strain of yeast on each half. This way the process, the grain bill, the hops, the fermentation... everything about the beers would be identical except the yeast, so any differences between them we could attribute 100% to that. Fun little experiment.
To get the sugars out of the malted barley, you have to soak it in water of a specific temperature. This process is called mashing, and takes place in the mash tun. Mashing activates enzymes that convert the starches in the grain into starches that the yeast can eat. Different temperatures activate different enzymes, but the range is pretty narrow. Below 146 or so you won't convert enough of the sugars and get a beer with really low alcohol and really high sweetness; above 156 or so you'll get really high astringency and a bad, puckery beer.
Coolers make great mash tuns because they generally hold a temperature well. Here is a picture of my empty mash tun cooler, a 100 qt. monster.
For the batch, we had 26 pounds of grain and needed to mash with 8 gallons of water. We wanted to mash at 152F, so we needed to heat our water to about 168F. Once the 168F water hit the grains and cooler and was all mixed, it should come out to 152. Here is my 15 gallon brew pot.
It's on a propane burner. The stove just doesn't cut it for bringing 15 gallons of liquid to a boil. Once we had 8 gallons up to 168, we dumped it in the cooler, and then dumped in the grain. This is mashing in, and my friend handled the grain while I stirred. It's important to get all of the grain wet, since if it stays dry, the sugars won't convert.
If you've ever done a brewery tour or been upqind of a brewery, that smell that hits your nose is the mash, more or less. I think it smells delicious, but my gf doesn't, which is one more reason I brew outside. Since this was my first time both brewing ten gallons and using my mash tun, I wasn't sure how things would go. Specifically, I wasn't sure how much temperature the cooler would absorb, how well it would hold heat, etc, and like I said, that stuff is pretty important. After mash in, our mash was 148. Since we wanted 152, that was on the very low end of acceptable. We added a few quarts of boiling water and got it up to 150 and stopped there and called it good.
The enzymes take a while to do their work, so we let the mash sit for an hour. Time for a beer!
That's Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere fresh hop beer, the counterpart to their fall fresh hop offering. It was good, but from memory I liked the other one better.
After the hour-long mash, it was time to drain the liquid from the mash tun. The water we combined with the grain has become infused with all those delicious sugars and is really sweet at this point. The first time you drain that liquid out is called the first runnings. For this batch, we would drain the mash tun once, fill it back up with more water, and drain it again to collect as much of the sugar as we could.
When the mash tun is drained, the grain compacts and looks like this:
Spent grain is good for all sorts of stuff. Farmers use it for feed. I use it to make dog biscuits for my dogs.
We were aiming for about 14 gallons of sweet liquor in the brewpot. After evaporation during the boil, the hops absorbing some, and various coagulated proteins and junk floating around, we hoped that would give us 11 gallons to ferment. Getting all that up to a boil took about 20 minutes, and then it was time to add the hops. Here's 1.5oz of Simcoe hops, in a hop bag, just after addition.
The next hop addition wasn't for another 50 minutes, and things look more or less the same:
One final hop addition ten minutes later, and it was time to turn off the burner and cool things off. The liquid - aka wort - should be cooled as quickly as possible. When it's boiling, nothing can live in there, and when it's sealed up, nothing can get in, but in between, all that warm, sweet, sugar-laden wort is a haven for bacteria. We cooled it with an immersion chiller. That's a coil that you immerse in your wort and run cold water through.
To cool things down even more quickly, once the wort got down to 90F or so, we hooked up a second immersion chiller and put it in an ice bath, so the water went through the ice, then into the boil kettle. The setup looks gangly, and it was, but it's sort of arranged left to right, with that bucket in the left foreground being the ice bath.
Once the wort is nice and cool, it's time to transfer it into the fermenter and add the yeast. I've got the fermenters in my kegerator/fermentation chamber, holding at a nice 67F. Fermentation temps are just as important as mash temps, so having a way to regulate how hot it ferments is really nice.
05-29-2008
, 10:27 PM
Guys I was thinking of starting a thread just like this for liquor but I didnt know of there was one already. If there isnt then I think we should get one going since I enjoy liquor more then beer and IM sure that there are many others in the same boat. What do you guys think? If anyone wants to start it before I do go ahead and do it up, all I got so far for an op is "LIQUOR WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" Obv needs some work for an op. 
edit: Now that Im googling for some ideas for liquor I remember there was a thread talking about irish whiskey which Im guessing was a thread about liquor, anyone know where it is?
edit: Now that Im googling for some ideas for liquor I remember there was a thread talking about irish whiskey which Im guessing was a thread about liquor, anyone know where it is?
Last edited by demon102; 05-29-2008 at 10:34 PM.
05-29-2008
, 11:26 PM
Time to treat myself. The other thing I picked up when I bought the Schneiter Hopfen Weisse was a bottle of Stone's Imperial Russian Stout. I don't usually associate imperial stouts with spring drinking (winter, imo), but this was noted as a limited spring 2008 release. I might have even passed it over for colder times, but I couldn't pass it up if it might be gone later. For a 10.8% ABV beer from Stone, it isn't as pricey as I might have expected. It ran me $8.89 for a 22 ouncer. I suppose that's about the same as the Double Bastard and is still expensive, but when you go in shopping for the Brooklyn Hopfen Weisse, $9 for a bottle seems cheap by comparison.
The beer pours a thick jet black with a minimal brown head. It doesn't hang out long. No beer this strong can have much of a head, though.
The beer smells roasty and nutty with some alcohol. The flavor is nice, but not too extreme. It has a nice toasted and nutty character. There's a little coffee, caramel, and alcohol in there, too. It's not as hoppy as I might have expected from a Stone brew. There's some light hop character in the beer, but if you want a hoppy imperial stout, Victory's Storm King is still the one to reach for. This is a fairly sweet beer, but it's not as sweet or syrupy as Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout. I give this beer. This is a good beer, but I confess I'm a little let down. Stone puts out so many superior beers that one from them that is merely "good" for this style is something of a disappointment. Additionally, I still think I prefer North Coast's Old Rasputin, and I can get a four pack of that beer (more than twice as much) for about the same price as this bottle. With the Brooklyn BCS and the Old Rasputin being such great values in beer, it's hard to justify paying for anything else unless it's truly mind-blowing.
The beer pours a thick jet black with a minimal brown head. It doesn't hang out long. No beer this strong can have much of a head, though.
The beer smells roasty and nutty with some alcohol. The flavor is nice, but not too extreme. It has a nice toasted and nutty character. There's a little coffee, caramel, and alcohol in there, too. It's not as hoppy as I might have expected from a Stone brew. There's some light hop character in the beer, but if you want a hoppy imperial stout, Victory's Storm King is still the one to reach for. This is a fairly sweet beer, but it's not as sweet or syrupy as Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout. I give this beer
. This is a good beer, but I confess I'm a little let down. Stone puts out so many superior beers that one from them that is merely "good" for this style is something of a disappointment. Additionally, I still think I prefer North Coast's Old Rasputin, and I can get a four pack of that beer (more than twice as much) for about the same price as this bottle. With the Brooklyn BCS and the Old Rasputin being such great values in beer, it's hard to justify paying for anything else unless it's truly mind-blowing.