CC Brew

My first kid, Cecilia Charlotte (CC) arrived Sunday 2/19. Labor lasted was incredibly rough, or so I gathered through observation. My wife got an infection at the hospital after her water broke which was transferred to the baby in utero. She’s been fighting through the infection for the last two days as I write this and they’re thinking she has about 5 more days to go before she can be discharged. She’ll be just fine in time, so we’re very happy for that.

In the mean time, I made sure we took some time to celebrate at the hospital by enjoying the first bottle of the batch of Belgian red honey ale I made back in November specifically to celebrate Cecilia’s birth. Serving conditions were less than desirable. The bottle had probably warmed to about 60*, maybe higher. Also, I had just brushed my teeth before tasting, as this was unplanned, so it tasted all kinds of awful to me at the time (I did happen to sneak a bottle back on New Years Eve – shhhhhh – so I actually know it tastes very good when served properly). We couldn’t really see the clarity through the styrofoam cups, but when I got near the bottom I saw it was very transparent. Oh, the benefits of time in the bottle.

Bottling the smoked lager

Back in mid-December I decided to try my hand at my second lager, having done primarily ales for the past two years. I chose a rauchbier or smoked lager to brew, as the tradition behind the style intrigues me. The Rauch! Rauch! batch sat in primary for the two remaining weeks of December, then moved into a cold closet near my garage to lager for the month of January and first week of February, eventually moving out into the garage due to an unseasonably warm Minnesota winter this year.

I bottled this beer during the Super Bowl on 2/5/12. I described in detail the extra steps I took to prep the batch to bottle condition in a recent post found here. FG was 1.014 on bottling day before adding the yeast and yeast nutrient solution and 4.4 oz. of priming sugar, bringing this beer to 6.4% ABV. The yeast and nutrient solution made the beer quite hazy for about three or four days after it was bottled, something that was quite disappointing at first as I’d been so patient to let it lager for over a month. After that though, the beer cleared and is looking great a week after bottling.

The Lowbrow, Minneapolis

Have you been to the Lowbrow in Minneapolis yet? Check it out. This place deserves to be more crowded than it is. Good beer list, good service, no wait at 7pm on a recent Saturday night and decent pub fare (stay away from the bland veggie burger though). The wife and I checked this place out with friends on a recent weekend after nearby Pat’s Tap – which didn’t seem super crowded – told us it would be a 60 to 90 min. wait. No thanks. Just seven blocks south on Nicollet, we had a table at the Lowbrow right away, no reservations. That’s more my style.

Great job on your tap list Sun Street Breads!

My wife and I checked out the new Sun Street Breads for breakfast on a recent Sunday morning. The sourdough pancakes I had were quite tasty. The place was bustling with activity, quite popular as well-rated new Minneapolis breakfast joints are wont to be. Turns out they do lunch and dinner as well and boast a small but selectively tasty bottle and tap beer list. Check it out:

How to bottle homebrew

No, I’m not kegging yet. After two solid years of brewing, I still haven’t yet carved out the space in the basement nor the acceptance of my wife to head down that road. I’ve got my process down for bottling and sanitization though. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate these basic rubber vinyl gloves. The way I’ve got my water heater set, my tap water gets to about 122* in the middle of winter. This can make it difficult to wash out bottles with full-on hot water without sorta burning my hands. I finally remembered this fact while on a grocery run and picked up a pair of  tough vinyl brewing gloves like these. Amazing! I don’t have to burn my hands while washing bottles or get bleach all over them when cleaning out a fermenter.

My process for bottling is as follows:

Avery Mephistopheles’ Stout at Town Hall Tap

Counting down the days until the baby arrives, my wife and I hit up Town Hall Tap last weekend for one of our final nights out pre-baby. I finally branched out from ordering the Heidelburger (I’ve had it probably five or six times, quite good!) and tried a wild rice and mushroom burger which also blew me away. Great food at this place.

The first beer I ordered was a weizenbock, a Town Hall seasonal. Never had this style before but it was great for winter. The combo of over-the-top maltiness and creamy wheat gave the beer an excellent body, an appetizer onto itself. The next beer I tried was Avery’s Mephistopheles’ imperial stout. At 15% ABV, I didn’t require another beer after this one. Black as hell, super smooth and very easy to drink for a beer of that strength. Dangerous! Avery must have to go to great lengths to exercise proper fermentation control and properly oxidize the wort to come up with such a smooth, non-astringent beer of this caliber. It would have probably paired much better with chocolate cake than it did with my wild rice burger, but I enjoyed it thoroughly all the same.

Maibark update

Recently, I transferred the maibock batch to a warmer room after fermentation slowed 11 days in. Within those first 11 days, it fermented for 3 to 5 days at 56* then worked it’s way down to 51* for the rest as activity slowed. I then moved the batch to a warmer room on 1/26 where it stayed for about 9 days (until 2/4/12), working it’s way from 57* to 60* for the diacetyl rest step so that the lager yeast could clean up the undesirable by-products of fermentation.

Today (2/4), I transferred the batch to secondary and will work it down to lagering temperatures over the next few days. The gravity was between 8.75 and 8.5 brix (1.016-1.015). Based on the OG of 1.067, this batch is sitting right around 7.1% ABV right now. I plan to lager it for 5 weeks, bottling it 3/10 or 3/11 so it’ll be completely bottle conditioned by May.

Pizzeria Lola still going strong a year after opening

Glad to see Pizzeria Lola is still going strong a year after opening! Here’s a review of Lola I wrote last January just after it opened. It was very busy in there last Friday. We got there around 5:30pm and still had to wait 10-15 min. for a seat. Their owner was present on the pizza assembly line that night, keeping an eye on the shop.

My wife and I managed to get the best seats in the house Friday night: at the bar right next to the taps. Those seats are a beautiful marriage of being able to see right into the huge copper wood-fired pizza oven and attentive drink service. Another plus during the cold winter months is that these seats are the warmest in the house. It was fun watching this dude manage all the pizzas cooking inside, constantly adjusting their positions for even heat distribution:

NBA brew club update

Lots of cool stuff going on with the Nordeast Brewers Alliance over the past few months. We voted in an executive committee to keep the club organized and moving ahead (I’m VP of communications haha!), got membership cards so we can start taking advantage of brew shop discounts, drafted some by-laws, had a few fruitful and informative meetings, gained some new members and are planning events for the remainder of 2012. Check out all the updates on our blog: http://nordeastbrewersalliance.wordpress.com/ or “like” the club on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NordeastBrewersAlliance

Maibark

I tried my hand at a maibock back on 1/15, again taking advantage of the long MLK Jr. weekend to brew this year. This is becoming a tradition. Instead of doing a double or triple decoction, I tried to select mostly well-modified malts (the vienna was recommended to be step-mashed but whatever) instead of doing a double or triple decoction as per German tradition. I did throw half a pound of melanoidin malt in the bill to emulate a little bit of the extra body I might get through decoction mashing. We’ll see how it turns out.