One Fine Day at the Saint Arnold Brewery

So here's the quaint little blog about the four Wicked Hops and their wives enjoying a nice Saturday at the Saint Arnold Brewery...

Here, Christie anxiously awaits the freshly kegged goodness of Saint Arnold Brown Ale, her favorite.


Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be as they were all out of Brown Ale in the hospitality room. D'oh! Not to be deterred, we all had very nice pints of the rest of their available beers, including Elissa IPA, Lawnmower, Amber, and Summer Pils.


The wives were on-hand too (I guess that makes them the Wicked Ho(p)s?) Man I hope Sarah doesn't read this! :)


All in all in was a pretty kick arse time. We all went down into the war room to gaze and the giant kettles and fermenters that were furiously working hard to make more great SA biers.

Bye-Bye to Bad Beer

Alliterative titles aside.. I recently had to dump 24 x 660ml bottles of some ooold homebrews (#8 and #9, a terrible Irish Red and an even worse stout) out to make way to bottle some much better beer (remember the One Thumb Blackberry Wheat?).

Anyhoo - check out the action in the sink. Good riddance!


Upshot is that was a whopping 22 brews ago - thankfully things have gotten considerably more quaffable. :)

Prost,
Jeff

Sweet Sixteen - Continued

Sorry folks.. I'm posting a little out of order here. I'll follow up to what Moss said:

Saturday, March 27th was an absolutely beautiful and perfect day for brewing. I mean really, upper 60s/lower 70s in Houston with a nice breeze? Why wouldn't you be brewing? :)


If you remember what happened during our last triple brew, we decided to take it upon ourselves to not drink until the boil. Now we didn't say which boil, but the idea was no beers until boil...

Ok so we didn't last that long, we cracked open some cold Lagunitas IPA during mash and enjoyed the wonder day and brewing. :)

Here's a pic of Moss and checking temps in his mash and Fred surfing midget pr0n or something like that.


As Moss mentioned earlier he was making a German-style hefeweizen, while Fred was also making a hefeweizen and I was making a pale ale from a kit I bought from Austin Homebrew. Here's the recipe:

• 9# 2-Row
• 1# Medium Crystal (40L)
• 1 oz Sorachi Ace (14% AA) @ 60
• 0.5 Cluster (8% AA) @15
• 0.5 Sterling (8% AA) @ 15
• 0.5 Cluster (8% AA) @ 5
• 0.5 Sterling (8% AA) @ 5
• Target OG: 1.051
• Target FG: 1.012
• Est. ABV: 5.1%
  

Definitely been a while since I've done something even remotely hoppy, and I was curious to try out the Sorachi Ace hops (granted, they were pelletized). Have to admit, when I opened up that pouch and took a whiff, those hops weren't playing around! Here's a pic of the 3 kettles almost boiling in unison. Funny how 3 propane burners can warm up a garage :)


The mash was uneventful if not slow. Total mashout time including sparge was something ridiculous, like on the order of 1.5 hours. Boil was pretty straight-forward as the hop schedule was pretty standard. Finally at this point we cracked open a few ice-cold Pine Belt Pale Ales from Southern Star Brewing.


Racked the ale to the carboy, aerated (shook the shit out of it) and done. Might have been a hair under 5 gallons, but I hit my gravity at 1.052. I'm also digging the amber color, say thanks to the Crystal 40L and ask her how her momma durn!


Flocculation started pretty quickly, I happened to take a peek at her early Sunday afternoon where the pleasant smell of hops were being pushed out of the airlock. Looking forward to this one for sure.

Next up? Who knows... I still have beach bier (witbier) ingredients sitting here looking at me, and Moss and I are dying to crank out another 10 gallon. Stay tuned!

Prost,
Jeff

The Quad That Wasn't (And other assorted regrets of overindulgence)

Folks.. there comes a time when you keep telling yourselves that rules are made to be broken. Well, break rules we did.

March 6th was supposed to be the Quad Kettle event, but only turned out to be a Triple Kettle (thanks Bryce.. ASS). Not to be deterred, we plodded forward. T'was a late start due to some other events, but we got things going. Fred was doing a partial hefeweizen, Moss was doing an all-grain Irish Red, and I was making an all-grain blackberry wheat again.


Although Bryce wasn't able to brew, he was able to join us in the festivities by bringing copious amounts of homebrew (his DFH90 clone was fantastic) as well as other high-gravity biers. So, the good part was we tried a lot of beers, with many of them being very good. The bad part was, we tried a lot of beers, with many of them being pretty bad!


Did I mention high-gravity? Yes I thought I did, and you can see the effects on me as my eyes are half open.. at 5pm. I won't go into too much of the effects of drinking too much during the brew session, but here are some highlights:

1. Moss forgot to add his aroma hops
2. Jeff was reading Celsius and not Fahrenheit during this mash (ok so this was BEFORE drinking.. )
3. Jeff had no idea how much volume he mashed out with
4. Jeff had no idea how much volume he ended up with
5. Jeff had no idea what his OG was

And to add to all that, I sliced off the top of my thumb while preparing dinner. Upshot is we now have a name for the beer: "One Thumb Blackberry Wheat"


But all is not a loss. Afterwards we all vowed that subsequent brews would follow (or at least try) a more strict enforcement of rules surrounding drinking while brewing. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn't count on that lasting too long. ;)

Prost,
Jeff

Sweet Sixteen Brew Session

Another beautiful Spring day resulted in another great brew session. Jeff and I met over at Fred's house to not only make some tasty beverages but to also sample some micro brews. I decided to brew a German style hefeweizen that will eventually include apricot extract at kegging. This was, of course, requested by the wife. Spring is upon us bringing warmer temperatures so who's complain. This beer, brewed with a German style yeast, has a med-high attenuation and should easily satisfy anyone's thirst. Take a look at the recipe:

German Pilsner Malt 5.25#
German Wheat Malt 4.25#
Carapils .50#

German Hallertau Hops (Alpha=3.8 @ 60 mins) 12.1 IBUs

Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen Yeast
Apricot Extract @ kegging (2 oz)

The wort hit my target gravity so things were looking good. Remember we brewed at Fred's place... well that following morning, me and the fam are getting ready for church. I go out to the truck to get the kids loaded and spot my primary in the front passenger seat. I open the door and get hit by fumes from a combination of hops, yeast, CO2 and whatever else is discharged. It was a very interesting trip into church to say the least. After church, I crack open the pantry to see if fermentation has started. I open the door to a shelf full of krausen spewed all over the place. The airlock blew off the primary! Wyeast is clearly more active in early stages than White Labs yeast. Here's a pic: I was able to capture some video footage of the airlock after putting it back on.



I have never seen a batch produce this much krausen. I decided to leave off the airlock and will worry about it after fermentation ceases.

BB Wheat - Kegged!

Just a quick note on the bb wheat - kegged this guy tonight after about 3 weeks in the secondary. That might have been a bit long but wort tasted great and FG was 1.010. Oddly enough it was 1.006 when I went to secondary, maybe my hydro is toast.


According to last records, OG was 1.053 so we're looking at about a 5.6% ABV wheat beer. That sounds about right.

This weekend the Four Horseman of the Hopocalypse will be getting together for the first-ever Wicked Hops Quad Kettle event. I'm pretty sure neither one of us knows what that means, but I'm also pretty sure its going to involve a lot of beer! I'll be sure to post pictures of the event, and let you guys know how the bb wheat turned out.

Prost!

-- Jeffro

The Dixie Cup!

No, I don't want you to pee in it.

But what I do want you to do is take a look here at one of the largest homebrew competitions in Houston, the aptly named Dixie Cup.

Methinks that the Wicked Hops cronies ought to enter!

Also, if you don't like shirts like this, then you obviously don't have a pulse!


Prost!

-- Jeffro