A Tournament of Epic Proportions

Heyyyyy kids. You’ll never guess who entered the Seattle Weekly Annual Homebrew Competition.

C’mon…

Yep, it’s us. Matty and I are battling for craft beer supremacy with the rest of Seattle. It’s us against the world in a brew to the finish. Who will be left standing? How much beer will actually be tasted? We’ll tell you all about the results when we find out who the best home brewer in our region is.

Throughout the month of August selections will be made and the winner will be awarded the ultimate prize of tap space at local drinking establishments as well as having their recipe brewed by none other than Big Al’s Brewing(temporarily). Judges will also award prizes in more specific categories but we’re looking at nailing “Best in Show” with our Smoked Baltic Porter. There’s no voting or anything, so unless you can pull some strings with the mysterious judges, we’re totally at the mercy of unknown forces. Send us some good vibes anyway.

Tune back in somewhere around October and we’ll fill you in on results. Will we snatch victory from the hungry mouths of the home brew community-at-large or will we suffer a heroic defeat that leaves us with impressive battle scars? Only time will tell.

For more info on the Seattle Weekly Home Brew Competition go here.

Until then, congratulate Matty on his newborn son Lucas and someone please buy me a beer.

Adios!

-Keith, El Hijo del Cerveza

One Year Beer-niversary…. ?

Unfortunately, due to the unpredictable nature of weather and weather predicting, we were forced to cancel our most ambitious beer tasting concept and event thus far. Our one year anniversary Beer Tasting has been rained out, and may or may not come back again.

If our most glorious of days does not return, please at least enjoy this Hello, My Name is Beer anniversary tribute artwork featuring Matthew Steiner as a massive beer deity floating in the sky.

Here’s to daily beer miracles and a life less ordinary! Cheers!

-Keith (Agent of B.E.E.R.)

A Kneejerk Reaction: PROST! Bier Hall

This particular story unfolds during a visit to a very unique drinking establishment in the midst of a beer renaissance in the lives of two young men who have been through quite a bit of awkward beer puberty in recent years.

Subject A goes by the name Matthew Steiner. Following a stint in college drinking rectal drippings in the vein of Kokanee and Rolling Rock, Matt discovered a sinister and alluring world filled with the darkest of dark beers, specifically Porters and STOUTS. The evolutionary trajectory of his flavor palette has rocketed Matt into a snaking path of rich textures and dense flavors. European beers are the latest stop on his journey, in the tiny country known as Germany.

Subject B is most definitely Keith Vance. Bred with an absolute reckless beer acumen, Keith has an insatiable lust for new flavors and new sensations. A solid base of Mexican lagers is his Escape Plan in most drinking situations but that definitely does not limit him in the least. Moreover, he’ll give the raunchiest, ballsiest, deadliest, and most formidable beers a shot at strolling through his Endocrine System. Is he all about cheap thrills? You bet. Most beers are only around to give him a beer to blow off and make fun of once he gets bored. Unfortunately, the German populace has been ready with a secret plan to combat his confrontation and fickle drinking habits.

Prost! is the wall that our Subjects ran into at 88 miles per hour, tongues hanging out, and senses shattered into a thousand pieces.

Now, the origin of Prost! is shrouded in mystery and carries a long and storied tradition that goes back to the old country with an anecdote about a first-generation American being clobbered in the face by a refreshing barrage of ale.

Read all about it here: http://www.prosttavern.net/the-prost-story/

Our subjects may have differing opinions on anecdotal origins and tradition, but rest assured that the adherence to the strict German Bier Hall vibe and atmosphere was not lost on these two rubes. Subjects A and B were most certainly taken aback by the wood tables, wood floors, wood walls, wood everything. Decorative Deer Heads, ludicrous sized beer steins, and even the odd smells that emanate from a remote Bavarian village were featured. It also didn’t hurt that there was sausage, toast, and stone-ground mustard being thrown around like our plane was going down. The menu is as bold as the beer selection and relies on strength rather than excessive depth.

What? You want more of a review? This scientific breakdown wasn’t detailed enough? Let’s officially end with a biased conclusion. Prost! brings the ruckus pretty hard with burly German beers, top shelf grub, a devastatingly friendly mood, and even a couple cute bartenders. Go. Now. We said so.

-Keith, Qualified Pub Critic.

Brewing the Rose-Hipped Pale Ale! (An Educational Experience for all)

After every Beer Brewing session I am destined to walk away with something new learned, some new-found idea of better brewification, some ‘dammit! I should have thought of that!’ moment. And after brewing Janey 2: the Rose-Hipped Pale Ale (my second try in making this beer), I found that my big educational smack to the head was: I need to PAY ATTENTION and take notes! No matter how good my beers are turning out, I am NOT the cock of the walk, I do not have a fool-proof process and I cannot just hang out, have fun and let the ingredients turn themselves into a great beer on their own. I feel like a bad Beer Parent who says “Here, little guy, here’s a pile of toys, blankets and food… hope you grow up nice and strong!” Here’s the rundown on how I reached this conclusion…

First off – I my mind was divided between three duties – Brewing Beer, Sanitizing EVERYTHING and Entertaining my guest brewers, Josh Hayes and Cameron Post. Usuually these are tasks distributed between Keith and myself (Keith usually sanitizes, I brew and we both play monkey), however, for this Beer Brewing, Keith couldn’t be there, so I had to do all three. This wasn’t really that bad, but I’m just not used to it, so I got a little sloppy.

We started out the day bottling Bruce 2: The Smoked Porter. We had to finish up scraping labels off the used bottles ( yeah, we’re cheap). Then we racked the beer into the bottling bucket, added the proper amount of priming sugar and put ’em all in bottles. The guys were great and the bottling process went very smoothly. Though, I’m not really sure if the proper amount of priming sugar went into the bucket. Cameron in the proper amount (I think), but because I didn’t write down exactly what was added, I have a way of double-checking. Currently (as  I write this blog) the beer still hasn’t carbonated, but there could be multiple factors at stake, so… we’ll see!

As for the Brewing, it was all pretty standard. We seeped the grain instead of mashing it (didn’t have any grains that needed to be converted) and did a full boil. However, a problem start to show its face when I was too busy sanitizing, etc. and didn’t check/write down exactly how much water went into the pot for seeping, how much was boiled off AND ultimately how much went into the boil kettle. We did some basic calculations throughout, but once again, I didn’t write it down so that I could double-check. The BK line said about 6 gallons, but I can’t be sure… so, I could have accidentally added/less more than I needed. After the boil, we were left with under 5 gallons of wort. So, here either a LOT was boiled off or we didn’t add as much as I thought. When transferring the wort to the fermentor, I decided to leave behind all the extra hop and break material so that I would have a cleaner end product. We transferred everything but the last 4 cups or so of wort into the fermentor… including 4 cups of sugars that I needed for fermentation :(. We then added enough water to the wort to make up for the amount that boiled off and brought the whole amount up to 5.25 gallons. So, in effect, I left behind 1/4 gallon of wort and added 1/4- 1/2 gallon of water, sufficiently watering-down my beer without even realizing it.

Now, I am left with a beer that is a lot thinner than expected (though still very tasty), and I’m not exactly sure what went wrong. And to think, this could have all been prevented if I just Paid Attention to every step and Took Notes an EVERYTHING! Double-checking and thinking the process through as it happens is key to processes this delicate (I know, I just called BEER delicate :)) In the past, I didn’t have to take notes, because I focused more on the beer than the people helping, but now that a year of brewing has gone by and I am Brew Master extraordinaire, somehow I think I am ‘better’ than ‘Paying Attention’! Ha! Knock me down a few pegs, why don’t ya Beer!

The Good!
But, enough about the ‘lessons’ and things that went wrong. The day was actually more of a triumph than a let-down! For One: We welcomed in a new brewer, Josh, who fit into the Beer Brewing scene like a glove – he played the part of Wort Mugwump with ease and took some amazing photographs (these are all his!). Cameron made his triumphant return since his help on the Steiner Bloodline Red and embodied the role of Master of the Elements like a pro. Also, we had an crazy amount of small hop additions (which I think will give the beer a nice round hop taste), and I am currently Dry Hopping the beer with 2 oz of whole leaf Cascade Hops and 1.5 oz of Rose Hips! I love any chance to Dry-Something a beer! Though the beer will be a bit thin, I think it will have a nice character in both taste and aroma… actually, due to it’s lighter body, it will probably be similar to the first Janey! I tried to steer away from the thinness and make a slightly bigger beer without the bitterness, but oh well. Hell, maybe I accidentally created a great beer without knowing it!

Overall, good day, good lessons, good people, good fun, good beer and good… good… goooood. ahh!

-Matt Steiner, Head Brewer.

For a full smattering of Josh’s amazing brewing photos… click HERE

Yeasty Beasties!

Yeast!

As I continue down the never-ending road toward brew-mastery, I am CONSTANTLY hit with road blocks or at least very bumpy trails. The most recent has been yeast and the fermentation process.

The Porter we brewed a few days ago looked great on the outside, but on the inside, sat billions of yeast sleeping cells.

Upon the advice of the brewing Podcast’ Brew Strong’, I built up a large amount of yeast (300 billion cells!) using a ‘starter’ – which is just a very small beer (2 liters) with the majority of it being DME. This gives the yeast enough food to eat to begin reproducing… so that’s the secret to conception! Food!

Come brew-day morning, everything was looking great so I stuck it in the fridge to help separate the wort from the yeast. That afternoon, when the beer was done brewing, I took the starter out of the fridge and threw it all into the beer (mistake #1), sans the ‘sediment’ at the bottom (mistake #2) .  I aerated the wort by splashing it from carboy to bucket and then shook the bucket around for about 15 seconds (mistake #3).  That night, I let it sit peacefully in my basement without testing the temp… it dropped below 50 F (mistake #4). That morning, I found the low temperature of the wort, saw that it wasn’t fermenting, and quickly brought it up to a healthy 65F (mistake #5). I then let it sit all that day and into the next – just when I thought all hope was lost, it started to ferment! Yahoo!

So, did I do wrong? Well, upon some review and close inspection of the process, these are the mistakes that I noticed…

Mistake #1 – The yeast starter in the fridge was probably near 35F and the beer wort was near 65F. That’s a 30 degree difference – and way too much of a shock for those poor little yeasties.

Mistake #2 – that sediment, was NOT sediment, and instead built up yeast!

Mistake #3 – The yeast needed a LOT more oxygen in order to reproduce effectively. 1 – 1.5 mins is the standard for the shaking method of aeration.

Mistake #4 – That temperature COULD have been too cold for the yeast and they might have just fallen asleep. But maybe not – it is a lager yeast after all.

Mistake #5 –  Raising the temperature of yeast that quickly can be hard of my little, fragile yeast buddies.

So, I made a lot of mistakes this time around. But whatever – shut up! it’s all a learning process, right? I was also able to detect my mistakes and hopefully not do them again…. However, rest assured, I am sure I will find new ways of screwing up the yeast next time. They are specific and fragile little organisms and a lot can go wrong… and unfortunately they are VERY important to the taste development of your beer!

Until next time,

-Matt, Head Brewer