Fitger’s brew pub
During the week between Christmas and New Years, my wife and I were up at Lutsen with some friends. On the way back, we stopped for lunch at… where else but Fitger’s Brew Pub in Duluth. I’ve been to Fitger’s a few times before, but that was years ago before my beer obsession firmly took hold. (more…)
Old Chub Clone Recipe
This post has moved here:
http://www.barkingdogbrewery.com/2012/02/25/old-chub-clone-recipe/
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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: (more…)
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.
My process for bottling is as follows: (more…)
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. (more…)
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 (more…)
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.
Cleanin’ up the brewery
With a baby on the way, we’ve had a lot of changes happening lately at Barking Dog Brewery. Kicked the band out of the “practice room” downstairs, turned the office upstairs into a nursery and turned the practice room into an office. With all the shifting of space usage, I figured it was time to claim 100% of the “beer room” for my own. Granted, it’s now the “beer and guitar” room so as to consolidate my hobbies into one area, but I’m pretty happy with the result especially because I requisitioned plastic shelves that weren’t serving much purpose in another part of the basement.
Upper Mississippi Mashout 2012
I entered three beers into the Upper Mississippi Mashout this year:
- In the name of doG (brewed Feb. ’11), BJCP category 16E, Belgian Specialty Ale
- Frosty Dog kölsch (brewed April ’11), BJCP category 6C, kölsch ale
- CUJO SPICE v. 2.1 pumpkin rye ale (brewed July ’11), BJCP category 21A, spice/herb/vegetable beer (more…)
Northern Brewer opens a Minneapolis location
Northern brewer opened a Minneapolis location last month (they have two other locations in St. Paul, MN and Milwaukee, WI) under 5 miles from my house! Pretty excited. I went to check it out and buy supplies for my rauchbier brew day a few weeks back. The grain room is open and spacious. I was the only one buying grain at the time but the room could handle three or four people measuring grain at the same time compared to only one at the St. Paul location (Midwest can handle two effectively). The biggest plus is that NB Minneapolis has two – count ’em – two mills in a separated mill room.
The entire space seemed very planned and thought out, unlike NB St. Paul which comes across as a crammed afterthought. It was so spacious and clean I told the guy it felt like Crate and Barrel in there! He seemed troubled by that, which was my intention. And PARKING! They have dedicated parking around back, something NB St. Paul severely lacks. (more…)
Ho ho holidays
Excuses, excuses, excuses. I’ve been busy over the past few weeks. Here’s a brief re-cap:
12/14 — I got to tour the inner workings of Target Field. In a beer-related twist, we learned they have these keg rooms located throughout the bowels of the building and big thick conglomerates of tap lines that lead floors above to thirsty baseball fans above that will never relive 1987 or 1991 again. Hahaha that was mean… but true.
Rauch! Rauch! Rauchbier
I brewed a rauchbier back on 12/16/11. I based my recipe off of one I found here within a rauchbier style profile BYO article. I stepped up the malt bill on mine by 50% to account for the poor efficiency of my operation (calculated recently at somewhere between 51-57%). I also increased the percentage of smoked/rauch malt. I had never had a traditional full-on rauchbier before, so I was weary of using mostly smoked malts as those recipes do, though I kinda wish I had.
I tasted the wort prior to pitch on brew day and even with 1/4 of the grain bill being smoked malts, it didn’t taste very smokey at all. At the time I thought maybe that’ll be a good thing in the long run, but since brew day I had the chance to try a traditional exemplar of the style, Aecht Schlenkerla’s Urbock Rauchbier. This Bamberg, Germany-based brewery is one of the few that smoke their own malt via traditional methods and produce their beers mainly with these rauch malts. The smokey flavor was definitely intense, slapping you across the face in a way very similar to heavily smoked gouda. Though you’ll never find me drinking more than one or two of these intense (and expensive at $12 a bottle at Buster’s on 28th!) beers in a sitting, I liked it a lot. I hope the one I brewed turns out smokey enough, but I’m doubtful based on the taste of the wort. Next time I’ll use 100% smoked base malts. (more…)
Scottie Karate vs. Old Chub vs. Alba Dog
Recently I did a taste test between a few different types of scotch ale:
- A version I hadn’t tried yet – Scottie Karate from Dark Horse Brewery, MI
- My favorite version – Old Chub from Oscar Blues Brewery, CO
- My version – Alba Dog from Barking Dog Brewery, MN
This isn’t the first time I’ve reviewed scotch and scottish ales. Check out this post from last spring where I determine Old Chub as my favorite amongst a handful of contenders. (more…)
Braised chicken in dubbel with leeks
Last weekend I decided to try out a recipe of Sean Paxton’s, the guy who bills himself online and via the Brewing Network as “the homebrew chef.” I’ve been hearing good things about his recipes for a while so I thought it was time to take the plunge and try one out.
I picked one of the simpler ones to start off with (chicken braised in dubbel with leeks), as I don’t enjoy following recipes as much as you’d figure a homebrewer would. Of course, even with a simpler recipe, I ended up making a few variations. First, I used the dubbel I brewed last spring, Chasseur de Bruin, instead of Westmalle’s dubbel. I went with olive oil instead of duck fat (can you even buy duck fat??) and used roughly twice the recommended heavy cream (whipping cream is exactly what I used) and chicken broth.
I’d never cooked with leeks before. They are essentially onions. Here is a video demonstrating how to clean and cut them:
Wet Dog vs. Summit EPA
I recently did a comparison of my Wet Dog pale ale with Summit’s Extra Pale Ale. Though I wasn’t aiming to do a clone brew, I think I did a pretty good job with the malt bill as those aspects of the flavor were pretty close.
Summit’s brew was a weeee bit more attenuated (I’d use an English ale yeast if I were to try and get it spot on) and my brew notably lacked the strength of Summit’s bittering hop addition. (more…)
Sweet Child of Vine at Wise Acre
Recently I made a repeat visit to Wise Acre, a great new organic restaurant in my hood. Very good, flavorful food (skip the pumpkin custard… way too frozen, if that makes sense). Pretty decent small beer list, too. Both times there, I’ve had a Founder’s Red RyePA. Love that beer. The spiciness of the rye does some cool stuff in an IPA. Additionally, I decided to give Fulton’s Sweet Child of Vine another try. This beer has never quite hit me right, though upon hearing from another member of my homebrew club that he’d had good and bad Fulton pints, I decided to test my luck again. (more…)
Alba Dog
I took last Friday 11/18 off work to burn through another vacation day and brew a beer. This was the first time in a while that I’ve brewed without… purpose. In July, I did two batches of pumpkin ale for Halloween/Thanksgiving, in early October I did a hop harvest beer to try out the hops I grew this past summer, and in early November I did a Belgian honey ale for release after the birth of my daughter in February. The only purpose I had in brewing this Scotch ale was that I FREAKING LOVE SCOTCH ALE. It’s probably my favorite style if I were forced to choose.
I’ve decided to call this batch Alba Dog, not in homage to Jessica Alba so much as that Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. Combine that with “alpha dog” and you get “Alba Dog.”
Using my nifty new iPhone and Brew Pal app., I was able to export the recipe and paste it in here: (more…)
Homebrew Apps: Brew Pal
I recently dove head first into 2007 by finally acquiring a smartphone. Yes, the days of whipping out my flip phone at parties and pretending it had a touch screen are finally over. Sigh. Being one for extremes, I decided to get the best god damn smartphone currently on the market, the iPhone 4s. Though I am a bit embarrassed for having migrated to the dark side, there are still brew-centric positives to this move. Notably, I can start trying out some homebrew apps to see if I can better monitor and refine my process.
After listening to this http://www.BasicBrewing.com podcast on homebrew software, I decided to go with Brew Pal as my first app. I was looking for something free or cheap (it was $1.07 with tax) that also had good reviews.
I’ll walk you through some of the screens here:
Wet Dog Pale Ale is ready!
My wet (and dry) hopped pale ale made exclusively with my own hops is now bottle-conditioned and ready just in time for Thanksgiving! It turned out a lot like a softer, less-hoppy version of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I am very pleased with the results and excited to use my own hops in future brew sessions.
Barking Dog Beer 