Category Archive

Tasting

Solera Project: Black Cap Raspberry (2015) (American Wild Ale 28) - Tasting

  • 1 min read

The base beer was originally brewed in 2013 as a Belgian Blonde Ale. We then aged the beer in a freshly emptied 65 Gallon Chardonnay barrel. We inoculated the barrel with some bugs from Wyeast and some dregs from some of our favorite Russian River sour beers. In 2015 (3 years after entering the barrel) we took out 5 gallons into a secondary fermenter on top of 8 lbs of frozen black cap raspberries. After 3 months we bottled the beer. 9 years later I decided to see how this is developing in the bottle.

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Solera Project: Base (2016) (American Wild Ale 28) - Tasting

  • 1 min read

The base beer was originally brewed in 2013 as a Belgian Blonde Ale. We then aged the beer in a freshly emptied 65 Gallon Chardonnay barrel for 1 year. We inoculated the barrel with some bugs from Wyeast and some dregs from some of our favorite Russian River sour beers. In 2016 (3 years after entering the barrel) we bottled up just the base beer without any fruit. 7 years later I decided to see how this is developing in the bottle.

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Coffee Paw (Coffee Vanilla Oatmeal Stout) - Tasting

  • 1 min read

I wanted to make a session-strength stout for the winter. Being a coffee fan I decided to introduce coffee in 2 ways. First I added 3 ounces of whole beans directly to the fermenter after fermentation for 4 days. Then I cold-brewed coffee for 24 hours and added it to the keg before racking the beer on top.

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BRU-1 West Coast IPA - Tasting

  • 1 min read

For this beer I wanted to experiment with the BRU-1 hop variety. I ordered a pound of pellets from Yakima Valley Hops. The main descriptor for this hop is pineapple. Some more generic descriptors are “green fruit”, “sweet fruit” and “green-grassy”.

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Feature

Dry Hopping Sour and Wild Beer Experiment #1

  • 3 min read
Taste testing the different hop varieties.
Taste testing the different hop varieties.

Having experimented with dry hopping sour and wild beer this past summer (as well as actually dry hopping a batch), I thought it would be a great idea to document some findings based on our experiments. The results were surprising to me as some of my favorite hops didn’t work as well as I expected.

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Son of Fermentation Chamber Build and Photos

  • 7 min read
All put together.
All put together.

For some time I have contemplated using some sort of cooling mechanism to give me prefect fermentation temperatures while I ferment my beer. Last summer I painstakingly used my chest freezer kegerator. It was a horrible process. It involved removing one (or two) kegs, cranking up the temperature and lifting and setting the heavy bucket with 5 gallons of wort into the chest freezer.

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Adding Coffee to Beer

  • 2 min read

There are several different methods in which coffee can be added to a beer. I’ve had great success with two different methods: adding cold pressed coffee at bottling/kegging and dry-hopping with whole coffee beans. It’s important to remember that not just any coffee bean will work with your beer. Trying the base beer to get an idea of what flavors and aromas it has, greatly helps in trying to find a coffee that will either complement it or add enough contrast without being lopsided. I am only going to touch on the methods I have tried. You could also try adding coffee during the boil or during the mash, among many other methods.

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