Iron Brewer II Follow Up

Here's a few photos from the 2nd annual Iron Brewer challenge:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26448971@N07/sets/72157605519073906/

The basic premise for IBC is just like Iron Chef - everyone is given the exact same base ingredients, and a secret ingredient is revealed before you start. Once the ingredient was revealed, you had 30 minutes to declare a style and begin brewing.

We were given the following common ingredients:

Grain
5.5# Maris Otter
5.5# Pilsner
5.5# Wheat
2# Munich
2# Amber (Biscuit)
2# Crystal 60
1# Carafa II Special
.5# Roasted Barley
.5# Aromatic
.25# Scottish Peat
.5# Rice Hulls

Hops
1.5oz Glacier (whole)
1.5oz Magnum (pellet)
1.75oz Amarillo (pellet)

Yeast
WLP001 California Ale Yeast

The special ingredients were:
Oak Spirals
Wine (Pinot Noir or Unoaked Chardonnay)

After making a few trades, I ended up with a few extra ingredients and decided to declare American Stout as my style. My recipe was:

Batch Size: 4 gallons
10# Maris Otter
4# Pilsner
1# Munich
.5# Biscuit
.5# Crystal 60
1# Carafa II
.5# Roasted Barley
.25# Aromatic
.5# Rice Hulls
1.5oz Magnum
1.5oz Glacier
WLP001 California Ale Yeast

Mashed @ 153 deg for 60 minutes, Boiled for 90 minutes, 1.5oz Magnum @ 90 minutes, .75oz Glacier @ 30 minutes, .5oz Glacier @ 15 minutes, .25oz Glacier @ 0 minutes.

Now, I should have declared Imperial, as I ended up with a starting gravity of 22.8 Brix on the Refractometer, which calculates to 1.091 SG. Or I should have just made 5 gallons. AH well, it'll be tasty!

For the special ingredients, I plan to saw off about 1/3rd of each oak spiral (medium toast American and medium plus French oak) and use those in the secondary for about 1 week before bottling. For the wine, I'm going to boil the priming sugar in it, which will hopefully cook off the alcohol but leave the flavor intact.

Well, that's it for now. It was a great time and I look forward to hopefully winning the comp when beers are judged in August ;)

Spring Barrel Tasting Follow-up

So, after the first part of the PDX Brewers pub crawl on Saturday, we came home, grabbed our stuff, and ran off to visit my mom in E. Wa. for picking up some of my tools and the 2008 Spring Barrel Tasting.

Didn't hit that many wineries this year, but mostly because we hit a ton of them during Red Wine and Chocolates in February. This year we hit:

Steppe Cellars
Pontin del Roza
Tucker Cellars

Ended up coming home with about 10 bottles, which isn't too bad considering 3 of them were gifts. Hooray for a full wine cabinet :)

PDX Brewers Pub Crawl Follow-up

While we didn't go for the entire pub crawl, we did hit the first 2 places (Hopworks and Hair of the Dog)

Hopworks Urban Brewery, you ask? FANTASTIC. If you live in Portland, treat yourself and go down to Hopworks as soon as you can. Their beers are amazing! (sadly, we didn't eat.. there wasn't time, and we weren't hungry anyway)

We had samples of their Pale Ale & Doppelbock while on the brewery tour, and the Bo Pils & Stout afterward.

Pale Ale - Just right, a great example of a PA.
Doppelbock - Good, a bit lighter than expected but very tasty.
Bohemian Pilsner - Gives Pilsner Urquell a run for its money, particularly since the HUB version isn't skunked from sitting in a green bottle.
7 Grain Stout - Dude. Bring a knife and fork, this Stout is a meal. I may run pick up a growler of this in the not too distant future, certainly before Ren comes for a visit.

HotD was a pretty standard visit. Had samples of Greg, Adam, Doggie Claws, and Blue Dot. Ended up picking up 2 bottles of Blue Dot, more to support Alan than anything else. I find that his Blue Dot Double IPA is always a little less hoppy than I expect it to be, particularly since it's billed as a Double IPA. In any case, it's still tasty :P

We went home after HotD, but the crawl went on to Lucky Lab, Roots, Horse Brass, and Belmont Station, with the West-Siders adjourning to the Little White Shed at McMenamins Cornelius Pass

2008 Spring Beer & Wine Fest

Well, the Spring Beer & Wine Fest is coming up, March 21st and 22nd:

http://www.springbeerfest.com/

I think if you haven't been introduced to these beers, you might find this to be a pleasant experience and should attend.

I will not be attending, however. I've had enough of all the beers listed there, and can find them all (mostly) locally. But another reason I'm not going is the fact that they brought in Pabst Blue Ribbon as one of their beers to taste. 0.o

*rolls eyes*

yea, craft brew fest...

whatever.

Beer Haiku

Beer listens just fine
But conversations with it
Are so one sided

A list of brewing equipment I want to get eventually, no timeline. Got other things to pay off first! But, if I find something or can make it, I will!


Mash Paddle design in Oct. 2007 BYO mag, about 20$ to make it
Stir Plate August 2007 PDX Brewers meeting, stir plate instructions, about 20$
500ml Erlenmeyer Flask
1000ml Erlenmeyer Flask
2000ml Erlenmeyer Flask
70+ Quart cooler for doing larger high gravity batches Coleman Xtreme
2 Kegs for Conversion check with a brewery about buying defective kegs
Hydrometer
New Hoses
Immersion chiller with Whirlpool Check the design on MrMalty.com
March Pump Only after I get the Immersion chiller built
Sanyo 4912 mini fridge Best Buy sells these for 209$, great mini 2-keg kegerator, want for a 2 tap nitro system


2-Burner setup -
This one is a bit tricky. I need someone who can weld to actually make what I am looking for. I also need to design it, but the OBC brew system is a pretty good template - I just need more powerful burners, that thing is slow to come to a boil. If we go according to plan and end up in a house next year, I'll likely change to either a 3-tier system, or talk with Mark E. about building a RIMS system. But I would like something that is relatively portable to brew on, to go to festivals and the like. Brewing in a forest locale is on my list of to do next year. Maybe even right on the beach, too!

Moderately Impoverished Dick, my Old Ale...

Just took 3rd in the Regional Homebrew competition for the AHA.

It's headed to Nationals!!!

**Happy Dance**