So, another brew day is in the books and five gallons of Oktoberfest is in the fermenter. Lots of folks asked why I was brewing an Oktoberfest in March, which is a good question.  Wikipedia's HISTORY entry here will explain.  Oktoberfest, as a beer style is really a Märzen.  Maybe that will explain a little better...

Brew day went fine with no hitches to speak of.  I didn't forget any ingredients or components today.  The right hops went in at the right times.  I'm still sorting out some issues with the new 10-gallon brew kettle.  I'm not having a lot of luck dialing in the boil-off volume for consistency purposes.  My volume into the brew kettle was supposed to be 7.05 gallons, and I was just a tad shy of that at 6.9 gallons.  My gravity into the kettle was supposed to be 1.049 and I was just a bit under at 1.045.  Those variances are, in my opinion, insignificant.  I was a little off base after the boil though, and I'm not sure why.  My target post boil volume was 5.5 gallons with a gravity of 1.063.  I ended up with 4.9 gallons (significant difference) at 1.065.  The gravity was on target so I'm not so worried about the volume difference, but I'd still like to know where it went.  I have the evaporation rate on the kettle set to 15% per hour.  I changed that from 17% on my last boil because I didn't boil off enough on my last two batches.  With a 75 minute boil, I should have boiled off about 1.3 gallons from the 6.9, leaving me at approximately 5.6 gallons.  I'm not sure how I ended up with only 4.9 gallons.  Anyway....

The beer smelled fantastic and I can't wait to taste it.  I'll be fermenting for 14 days (approximately) in primary and then 21 to 28 days in secondary before bottling this beer.  I have a lot of weekend work coming up at the hospital (3 out of the next 4 weekends) so my brewing schedule is going to be a little strange... My next brew will probably be on a weekday in the middle of the week sometime in the next two weeks...

I decided I wanted to make some more chili this afternoon, so I started thumbing through "The Ultimate Chili Cookbook" by W.C. Jameson to find a recipe that I thought sounded interesting. I came across a recipe called Bob's Drunken Chili that looked interesting to me mainly because the ingredients list didn't have a few items that I consider to be staples of a chili recipe. This recipe contains no tomatoes or tomato sauce, and chili powder is also not on the list. Here's the recipe which include a few modifications I made on my own:

Drunken Chili

2 tbsp olive oil
3 fresh poblano chiles, chopped and seeded
3 fresh anaheim chiles, chopped and seeded
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped and seeded
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 lbs lean beef, cubed 1/4"
1 bottle of beer (I used Samuel Adams Boston Lager)
1 can beef broth
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a stock pot. Add peppers, onions, and garlic and saute over high heat until the onions start to clear. Add the beef and saute until brown. Add the beer and beef broth, bring to a boil, and then simmer for 30 minutes. Add cumin, paprika, oregano, salt and pepper and stir. Simmer for an additional 60 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste test and adjust salt and pepper to your requirements. I added a pinch of salt when I added the beer, and then added about a teaspoon with the rest of the dry ingredients...

The taste of this chili was excellent. I am a fan of the anaheim/poblano/jalapeno combination. This chili is not overly spicy and I can't call it HOT at all. It has the consistency of a stew and would probably serve very nicely over a bed of spanish rice.

I think this recipe has a lot of room for some modifications, so I might experiment with it more later... 

Brewery: Olde Hickory Brewery
Where: Hickory, North Carolina
Beer: Piedmont Pilsner
Style: German Pilsner
IBU: 18.2
ABV: N/A (Estimated 4.5%)

Piedmont Pilsner one of my favorite beers from the Olde Hickory Brewery.  This beer pours with a nice foamy head and a beautiful light golden color, much like a blonde, if not even lighter than most.  It has a very clean and extremely crisp flavor from the German and Czech pilsner malts followed by a very minimal hop presence of Saaz and Hallertauer hops.  This beer also has a fair amount of carbonation that adds to its refreshing and light character.  This is definitely a good choice when you want a lighter fare on a nice summer day.  Unfortunately, it's 45°F outside here today, but I can enjoy this beer anyway :)

If I haven't mentioned it in the past, I'm extremely happy that Jason and Steve at OHB are offering up their brews in 22oz bombers these days.  I have quite a few more samples from the OHB on the shelf here that we'll be getting around to over time.  I still have over 35 beers in the tasting queue, so I have a lot of work to do. 

Until next time....

Brewery: Pennsylvania Brewing Company
Where: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Beer: Penn Weizen
Style: Hefeweizen
IBU:
ABV: 4.0%

I can't give this beer a really fair shake in a review today.  It poured with a nice golden wheat color and the traditional wheat cloudiness of a good hefeweizen, but as you can see, the head is practically non-existant.  I had to work to get that little layer of foam on the top of this beer, and it died within 30 seconds of the time this photo was made.  The beer was flat.  I'm not sure why.  Its not old beer.  It was, however, a gift, and it made the trek here from Pennsylvania in a car, so I'm not sure what might have happened to it on its journey.  The beer had the traditional banana/clove aroma of a hefeweizen and the taste was about average on the scale of this style, but the beer being flat simply ruined it for me.  Hefeweizens are traditionally carbonated at a little higher level than most other beers, and when that element isn't present at all, the beer just has a strange feel to it in your mouth.  I have another bottle of this, so I will try it out and update this post if the second attempt is any better than the first...

I have been looking forward to this brew day for a while now. I have been wanting to make an imperial stout for a while, so I got up this morning and milled about 21 pounds of grain and set off to brew this beast.  Today was not the optimal day to brew.  It was cold and windy.  Wind is not a good thing when you are trying to boil 7 or 8 gallons of liquid on a propane burner outside.  My new Hurricane Burner could not get the job done.  I might have eventually boiled my wort, but I had to switch back to my old burner which is more powerful to get the job done today. 

I learned something new today.  It's actually something I wondered about, but now I know.  When you are brewing a specific quantity of beer, your brewhouse efficiency decreases as the weight of the grain bill increases.  I'm not sure if there is a formula to estimate this, but my MLT that normally produces efficiencies of 80% only kicked out 70% today with a 21-pound grain bill.  There is nothing wrong with that, but I had formulated the recipe for 80% efficiency which means my original gravity was off the mark.  I was hoping to get 1.110 and ended up with 1.097 instead.  This is still a big beer... it's just not where I had hoped it would be...

A 24-ounce mug of my Vienna Blonde made me not worry so much about my original gravity... 

Next up in my homebrewing arena is probably gonna be an American Brown Ale.  It's either gonna be that or a full batch attempt at a Helles Bock... We'll see what happens...

Brewery: Rogue Ales
Where: Newport, Oregon
Beer: St. Rogue Red Ale
Style: American Amber / Red Ale
IBU: 44 IBU
ABV: 5.1%

When I first started this blog and my beer tasting experiments, Amber Ales were one of my favorites.  I love the malty flavor of this style and I hadn't really experienced very many varieties of the style.  If I have learned anything about styles in the last year, it is simply that a style is nothing more than a general guideline for what a beer might be like.  It's also a set of rules to follow if you plan to make competition beer, but that's beside the point.  The taste and characteristics of American Amber / Red Ales has been quite diverse. 

Today's sample is St. Rogue Red Ale from Rogue.  As usual, I'm quite impressed with this beer.  St. Rogue is dry hopped, and this may be the first sampling I have had of a dry hopped red ale.  This beer is made up of a nice mix of 2-row and crystal malts followed by a nice helping of Chinook and Centennial hops to create great balance between the malt character and the citrus/floral characteristics of these hops. 

We're gonna chalk up another score for Rogue Ales with this beer.  I might just do a run on Rogues for the next few reviews as well.  I have at least five more sitting here that are dying to be opened...

Brewery: Bear Republic
Where: Healdsburg, California
Beer: Big Bear Black Stout
Style: Russian Imperial Stout
IBU: 68
ABV: 8.1%

It's been a while since I have had a good stout, so I decided to pick up a couple samples for my trials.  Yesterday, I was by Gail's Hops and Grapes and snagged this bomber of Bear Republic's Big Bear Black Stout.  This beer poured with the expected rich black color and was followed by a creamy tan-colored head that left beautiful lacing on the glass as I worked my way through this monster.  The initial aroma consisted of roasted coffee and some caramel notes with some very mild but subdued hop character.  This beer has a fantastically sweet malty character with very little presence of the 68 IBU provided by the hops in this recipe.  The hops only seem to be present in the mildly roasted and bitter after taste of this huge beer. 

My next homebrew is gonna be a beer of this style, but I'm shooting for the upper end of the alcohol scale.  I'm hoping to dial mine in around 11% and also push the IBU up to around 90.  It's gonna be the biggest beer I have brewed to date with a 21.5 lb grain bill and a pound of molasses to finish it off.  I hope to brew this upcoming beast before the weekend is over.  I'm not sure exactly which day I will get to brew yet.... we'll see...

I got invited to participate in a local chili cook-off, so I wanted to whip up something that would hopefully be an outstanding chili recipe. Today (Tuesday 2/2/10) was rainy and ugly outside and I had nothing else on schedule, so I started cooking. Here's what went in...

Chili Con Cerveza

2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp canola oil
2 diced red bell peppers
1 minced jalapeno pepper
3 roasted, peeled, and chopped anaheim chiles
3 roasted, peeled, and chopped poblano chiles
2 diced yellow onions
1/4 cup of minced garlic
1 pound boneless chuck cut into 1/4" cubes
2 pounds of coarse grind ground beef (chili grind)
1 pound of bulk Italian sausage
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons garlic powder
3 tbsp chili powder
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 cups tomato sauce
1 cup tomato paste
1 bottle (12oz) of your favorite beer
1 cup of chicken broth
2 15.5 oz cans of pinto beans (not drained)
2 15.5 oz cans of kidney beans (not drained)
1/4 cup of brown sugar

Add butter and canola oil to large stock pot on high heat. Add bell pepper, halapeno, roasted chiles, and onion and cook until caramelized - about 5 minutes or so. Add garlic and saute for an additional minute or so. Add chuck and stir until browned completely. Add ground beef and sausage and stir gently until browned - 7-9 more minutes. Add onion powder, garlic powder, chili powder, cumin, coriander, cayenne, salt, and pepper and cook for one more minute while stirring. Add tomato sauce and tomato paste and stir for about 2 more minutes. Stir in the beer and chicken broth. Add beans and stir for 2 more minutes. Stir in brown sugar and let simmer with a cover on the pot for 2 to 2.5 hours, stirring occasionally.

If you haven't roasted and peeled peppers before, it's not too difficult. I sliced my peppers in half lengthwise and cleaned out the core and seeds. I put them face down on a cookie sheet and brushed the skin side with olive oil and put them under the broiler for 7-8 minutes until the skins turned nice and brown. After they have browned up nicely, take them out of the oven and let them cool a bit. Now the skins are easy to peel off and then you can chop the chiles.

After this chili had simmered for about two hours, I decided to just have a bowl for dinner, and it was delicious.  You can garnish this chili with any of the regulars... Shredded cheddar (or jack) and chopped green onions would be my favorite, but you could use whatever you like!  This chili is NOT a hot chili.  It's quite spicy, but not overpowering in the HEAT range.  If you want to heat it up, you should increase the amount of minced jalapeno peppers or replace the jalapenos with serrano or some other hotter peppers.  If you like the flavor of cayenne peppers, you can also increase the amount of cayenne pepper in the recipe to suit your taste. 

Brewery: Olde Hickory Brewery
Where: Hickory, North Carolina
Beer: Ruby Lager
Style: American Amber / Red Lager
IBU: 20
ABV: N/A (Est. 4.0%?)

I'm glad that the Olde Hickory Brewery is offering a lot of their beers in bottles these days.  It gives me the opportunity to include them in this blog.  Since the OHB is the only brewery in my town, I want to make sure to share their goods with everyone here!  I have quite a few more on hand, but today's sample is the Ruby Lager.

The Ruby Lager poured with a nice rich amber color and a foamy head that has a wonderful malty aroma with no pronounced hop aroma.  This beer has a fantastic crisp flavor and a rather light body as well.  It's definitely an easy drinker and I would also put this beer into the category of craft brews that I would recommend to a newcomer in the world of micro and craft beers.  It's not too heavy or too high in alcohol and it is a great beer for that transition between the BMC world and the universe of real beer. 

I'm going to try to work my way through several more OHB beers in the next few weeks.  The Doppelbock is staring at me and calling my name! 

Brewery: Thirsty Dog Brewing Company
Where: Akron, Ohio
Beer: Old Leghumper Robust Porter
Style: American Porter
IBU: 24
ABV: 6.7%

Today's sample is another beer from Thirsty Dog Brewing Company in Akron, Ohio.  The Old Leghumper Robust Porter caught my eye on the shelf of the World Market in Mooresville on my last visit, so I grabbed a bottle.  From the bottle:

This robust porter is dark brown in color and full bodied with a malty sweet taste.  Deep roasted, yet silky smooth!  Two types of roasted malts, including roasted chocolate malt give this beer its award winning flavor.

This porter does have an excellent roasted flavor that headlines the malty sweetness.  Compared to other beers of this style, I think this one is average with no particular qualities that make it stand out.  It's a good beer for sure...