I think there are still a few tickets available at Barley’s or at the gates at the time of this writing, but I imagine it’ll sell out. The Brewgrass Festival, of course, sold out quicker than the Tom Waits show a few years back. Unfortunately I didn’t buy tickets in time for that Brewgrass, but I’m hoping to find some locally before September. I did make it to that Tom Waits show, though, and yes it was awesome!

We should have a pretty good selection of brews at Beer City, most likely lots of the local breweries. I’d imagine we’ll see a few other breweries representing from South Carolina, Georgia, and maybe a few other nearby states. Good music and good beer, gonna be a great Saturday.

And before I show up, I’ll be bottling a batch of my first attempt at a Black Wheat Ale. It’s looking pretty good. Should drink like a light wheat but have some the toasty flavor of dark malt and some dark grains. MMM!

I’m getting to the point where I’d like to be a bit more experimental. I’ve brewed a good handful of the recipes in my local home brew store’s little recipe book, but I’m ready to start adding my own touches. Those brews taste generally the same, and I’m realizing that I can pick-out the flavor of the Northwestern malt syrup used in each batch.

So what’s next for me? I’m not so sure yet, but I’d like to brew something for the winter, let it condition for a good while. Maybe I’ll take on an oatmeal porter or stout, maybe an octoberfest or marzen.

I’m definitely not quite ready to start making my own malts, so I’ll just have to stick with the syrups for now.

This time, when making grain tea, we followed Alex’s advice:

• Place the pot with the tea bag in the oven on low (around 150-160º)
• Leave it in there for about 45 minutes

This worked absolutely wonderfully! I definitely recommend you give it a try on your next batch of home brew!

2nd Home Brew: Smoked Porter

So I finally got a chance to taste my second batch of homebrew! It’s a Smoked Porter, a recipe from Alex Buerckholtz, owner of Hops and Vines, a brew supply shop in West Asheville, North Carolina.

This recipe is based on Alex’s recipe that he brought to the Highland Pro Am. He won (first was his Smoked Porter, second was an American Pilsner), so Highland Brewing will be brewing and releasing something close to this beer this fall (2009).

The color of this beer is a nice, deep blackish brown, with a rich dark aroma of smokey flavor, chocolate, and malt. It goes down very, very smoothly, with a flavorful and kind aftertaste. The aftertaste lingers for a moment while more smoky flavor is released.

This is a winning beer, the best home brew I’ve tasted yet (well yeah, it’s only the second one I’ve brewed!).

• Dark Ale
• Smoked Porter
• Belgian Witbier (witbier)
• Scotch Ale

The smoked porter was probably the most complicated (simply because it had the most ingredients), but it all makes pretty good sense. However, I’m using several different resources for instructions and guidelines for brewing, but there are some inconsistencies. Some say to steep the grains around 160º F, then remove the grain tea bag, then start adding extracts and other ingredients. Others say to keep the grains in for the entire boiling process. I’m not sure which way is the better, or if it just depends on the recipe.

I’ve noticed that the yeast in darker beers eat a bit more slowly and evenly, and the fermentor doesn’t pyramid up with funky yeast matter. But this wasn’t the case in the witbier. The Belgian Witbier really foamed up inside the fermentor, almost to the point of having to use a blow-off tube.

I also noticed that the witbier changed color drastically. At first it was pretty dark for a witbier, with deep amber and copper coloring. But after a few days, it lightened up dramatically, and it’s about the perfect color: a light-caramel to orange-yellow. It looks and smells fantastic, and I can’t wait until it’s time to pop one open!

My first homebrew!

So I wanted to taste my first home brew a few days ago, but Randy gave me shit about it. He said I gotta have patience! But we popped one open anyway.

Only after a few days, the beer was pretty carbonated! It foamed out all over the damn carpet. So I think we did well with the bottling!

Come to find out that Randy and Rollin popped open one each last night, so I figured it’s only fair that I have one, too. Patience my ass!

It’s a good beer! It’s pretty basic, tastes pretty much like what I thought it would taste like, but it is good! It’s dark, not black, and has a nice hoppiness to it. It’s warming, got a good head, and smells like a simple dark ale. We named it “May Be Ale” because we made it in May and we weren’t quite sure if the end result could actually be classified as ale. Hence the pun.

First pour of my first homebrew!

I think I love homebrewing!

We cleaned the absolute shit out of our saved up bottles, and we decided not to worry about removing the labels; they’ll come off just fine in time. We soaked our bottles in sanitizer for about an hour, rinsed them off, dried them, then repeated the process, but the second time, we used a carboy/bottle washer. Man, the bottle washer sure does a good job, even in our low-pressure kitchen sink.

Instead of priming sugar, we used dry malt. I wasn’t sure where I’d read it, but I remember reading something that said to use dried malt instead of priming sugar. We mixed it with about a pint of boiled water, poured it into our sanitized bottling bucket, and siphoned our beer into the bottling bucket. The siphoning went smoothly and didn’t introduce hardly any extra air into the beer.

Randy bottled, I capped. It only took about ten minutes or so to get them all bottled. Of course, we poured one out for testing purposes, just to be sure what we did make was actually beer.

The first couple sips of our first brew were actually already slightly carbonated. I was expecting some really flat beer, but it actually made me burp a little. Surprised, was I. We also popped one open the second day, and I think I should have refrigerated it because the head came screaming out. Day two after bottling and already good head and carbonation… fine by me! And the beer was good. It was very good!

Grolsch bottles let you test the carbonation and you can still reseal it.

Bunch of clean empty bottles ready for my first home brew!

My first brew bottled!

Me with our first home brew, May Be Ale, we called it.

Dry hopping refers to putting hops into beer after fermentation. This means that the hops aren’t cooked during the boiling stage, when making wort. Some brewers worry about contamination, but apparently it’s not too much of a risk.

Beers like IPAs or pale ales are typically dry hopped, which lends to a more distinct, fresher taste of hops in the beer. The hops are placed directly into the fermentor after fermentation is pretty much complete, and they should rest for a couple weeks. I can see how this would really give the beer a very fresh hop flavor.

View some directions on dry hopping.

We went to the local home brew store, Asheville Brewers Supply, and picked up some final pieces of equipment we were lacking. The only things we didn’t purchase were

• Hydrometer (they were out)
• Thermometer
• Capper/Caps
• Bottling Bucket

The brew guy told us we would be alright without the hydrometer and the thermometer for now, and he also said that if we were unsuccessful in at least making wort, we probably didn’t have any business brewing anything in the first place. I took this to mean that brewing really isn’t that difficult.

Dark Ale

We decided to go with a dark ale, using the malt extract Northwestern Dark. Randy wanted to use malted barley, but I felt I should stick to an extract for now.

We also picked up the yeast, two kinds of hops (Brew Gold and Fuggle), and some miscellaneous other stuff. And a Highland Mix Pack to keep us company while we brewed.

Northwestern Dark Malt Extract

Sanitize

We sanitized everything! Any equipment that physically touches the beer needs to be sanitized, to minimize any risk of contamination. The sanitizer I made is a weak mixture of bleach and water, a ratio of about an ounce or two of bleach to about five gallons of water.

Wort

It was time to boil some wort. Following a combination of instructions from the home brew store and The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, we put two gallons of fresh cold water into our clean, 6½ gallon carboy. We would add the hot wort directly to the carboy, then add more cold water to cool it all down for the yeast.

Malt Extract and Water for the wort

Our wort was rich and dark, and if Rollin hadn’t been the designated stirrer (and doing a great job!), I guarantee that it would’ve boiled out all over the place!

Boiling Dark Wort

Rollin was the designated stirrer

Hopping

When it came time to add hops, we followed the instructions of the home brew store. We dropped in our first round of hops, known as bittering hops, after the wort had boiled for 10 minutes. Fresh hops smell so good!

After boiling for 30 more minutes, we dropped in the other hops, known as finishing hops or aroma hops. Let it cook for about another 10 minutes, then turned it off and drank another beer.

Add hops to boiling wort

Adding wort to the fermentor

After a few minutes of cooling, and opening yet another beer, we added our hot wort into the fermentor. We poured it into a large funnel with a pretty tight filter on it, and most of the now-powdered hops were caught in the filter and out of our beer. Finally after the wort was added, we added in our last two gallons of fresh, cold water.

This actually got the temperature of the beer at nearly room temperature right away. Some brewers recommend using a wort chiller, which is a coil filled with running cold water that is inserted into the wort pot to cool the wort quickly. I’m not sure if it would work any better than our method of adding cold water to the wort.

Add yeast

When the beer was at room temperature, we added our yeast. We were a bit worried that our yeast was bunk since it wasn’t refrigerated. We added our yeast and attached a fermentation lock, which is a valve-seal that allows gas to escape but doesn’t allow anything to enter the beer.

After about fifteen minutes, we noticed a bit of action in the fermentation lock, but nothing very impressive. Worries grew.

We then placed a black trash bag over and around the carboy and put it in a cool corner of the house. In the morning, I woke up and checked on the beer, and the yeast was rocking and rolling! Plenty of CO₂ was escaping, meaning that our yeast was eating! It wasn’t bunk yeast!

I now command the yeast to EAT!

Wait a week or so

This coming Saturday, we’ll bottle our dark ale. Then we’ll have to wait about two weeks until we can pop one open!

Final thoughts and questions

After brewing my first batch, I do have some lingering questions that I’ll address with future batches.

• Is a wort chiller really necessary, and what benefits does it have over simply adding cold water?
• How much more control will I have over flavor if I go with malted barley, rather than malt extract?
• Should the fermentor be kept in the dark? For all yeasts?
• Should I always use liquid yeast? And shouldn’t yeast always be refrigerated?

I may have a few more that come up, but these float around my head when I begin thinking about my next batch, which will be a smoked porter, a recipe from Hops and Vines, another local home brew shop. I’m putting the recipe here, just in case they update their site and remove it.

Our next batch, Hops and Vines’ Smoked Porter 7% ABV

A partial mash recipe based on the beer I brewed for the 2009 Highland Pro-Am Competition that won Best in Show. $42.95 this month only!

Malt Extracts

• 6 lbs. Northwestern Amber Liquid
• 2lb. Northwestern Gold Dry Malt

Steeping grains

• 2 lbs. Smoked malt
• .5 lb. Black malt
• .75lb. Chocolate malt

Hops

• 1oz Fuggle (60)
• 1oz Fuggle (20)
• 1oz Fuggle (10)

Yeast

• White Labs British Ale
• Ferment at 62-70 degrees F