Brews you can Use

I had been planning to brew today, ever since I checked the weather report and saw it forecast to be 40 and sunny, not a bad day to sit outside warmed by a propane flame. I picked up the ingredients for a Scottish ale on Friday, made a starter, etc. Then Grace got sick last night, and suddenly the idea of sitting on the couch watching football with a warm cuddly toddler on my lap sounded much more inviting.

So, for most of the day, my lap had either a toddler, and infant, a cat, or a computer occupying it. Not a bad day, in other words.

In lieu of brewing, I managed to get some racking done, about 20 gallons worth. The two batches of cider from the cider pressing are now put up to age for a while. The cider from the buy wasn't so lucky -- I appear to have some preservative-laden stuff in those batches. The maple cider, which I was most excited about, hasn't started fermenting even after 3 doses of yeast. The other one, which I was planning to spike with brown sugar and raisins, managed to ferment somehow, so I'll be keeping that a straight cider rather than pushing it by adding more sugar. Just for giggles, though, I racked it to a keg with a few toasted oak cubes.

While planning this racking session, I noticed that my Raspberry pseudo-Lambic had developed a few spots of mold on its pellicle. Time to rack that (and consign some tubing etc. to the "funky squad" -- Lambics have some nasty, tenacious bugs). That racking was the highlight of the night.

First, I had to deal with the clogging. Between the raspberries and the pellicle, there was enough solid matter to clog the siphon. Since I was siphoning directly to a keg through the liquid disconnect, I tried taking the shutoff valve and "poppet" assemblies out, to see if that freed things up. It worked -- it seems that the disconnect's shutoff assembly is most prone to blocking, rather than the actual keg post. Handy for getting the stuff in, if not out...

Then came the clean-up, probably the most disgusting one I've ever done (and not just brewing related -- I'm hard pressed to find a nastier clean-up I've ever done, and yes this includes diaper blowouts, vomits, fuzzy leftovers, etc.). Between the very thick, rugged pellicle, the slimy sediment, and the spent raspberry fragments, the texture was reminiscent of fish guts and/or roughly chopped animal lungs (Mmmm... Haggis). Of course it still smelled of vinegar and pickle juice which made it all the more disturbing (although, of course, preferable to the smell of fish guts). I was glad to finally get that all worked down the drain. Whew.

And to think, not two months ago, I had stuck a turkey baster into this, drawn out a sample, and actually ingested this stuff (it tasted ... good?). Perfect Steve, don't eat it moment, if you ask me....

After almost 30 years of life, it's surprising to me that this is the first time I've stepped out of the English-speaking world. Yes, most Montrealers I've talked to have enough English to, say, have a mutually-confusing conversation about mustard, but a little conversational French is in order for next time I come here...

I arrived a little earlier than expected, and wasted a bit of time looking for wireless at the airport. The taxi ride was the first time I finally felt like I was in a foreign country (the customs agents were quite polite). The driver greeted me at the curb with what I understood as "<Francais><Francais>." I responded with a blank look, he got the hint, and said "bags in back, sir." The actual ride was rather awkward, with the driver speaking/mumbling to himself in French the whole time. I didn't catch any of it, except for a few "<Francais><Francais> fooking idiot <Francais><Francais>" outbursts while negotiating a traffic snarl. That part I could follow. Road rage has no native language.

I'm at the Delta Montreal, the conference is at the Delta Centre-Ville (downtown). Oops. I don't know if the two are affiliated, but at least they're within a mile of each other, a very manageable walk. Since I'll be walking around anyway, I took the opportunity to explore and get my bearings (ok, ok, I got lost...) and found a late-night coffee shop/bistro that might have wireless, and a bagel shop just a block out of my way to the conference hotel.

Since the hotel restaurant looks quite pricey, I decided to check out Bieres et Compangie (via pubcrawler) for dinner. The Rue St. Laurent location is actually pretty close to the hotel. It was a touch pricey also, but worth the trip. I had a very yummy sausage sampler (3 sausages, sauerkraut, fries and mayo) with a Liefmann's Goudenband, and finished with a decent semi-sweet cider and a Hoegaarden. This place has a large enough glassware collection to serve each beer -- no matter how obscure -- in the proper glass, complete with brewery logo.

After dinner, I went exploring a bit more, turned down a little boulevard heading toward the Rue St. Denis, which I hear is the most happening street in Montreal. Apparently the happening part is a bit Northeast of here, and it was getting late so I walked the other way down St. Denis to get to Rue Sherbrooke and back to the Hotel. On the way, I passed a little hole-in-the-wall grocery store, the kind you usually see in urban areas with "WIC and EBT", or in a particularly amusing Minneapolis instance, "Goat Lamb Kidneys Phone Cards" painted on the windows.

In Montreal, these stores say "Biere et Vin" instead, which I find much more appealing so I ducked in. Not an earth-shattering beer selection of course: mostly the same old swill and malt likkers, with the Quebecois brewers Boreal (decent) and Unibroue (quite good) thrown in. The Unibroue here is just a touch over $5 Canadian compared to $8US in the states, with a wider variety available to boot. I could get used to this. I grabbed one I hadn't heard of (seigneuriale) as a nightcap and headed back to the hotel. On the way back, a little "rice rocket" style sportscar drove by blasting "Don't worry, be happy" on the stereo. That, I think, was the highlight of the night.

... to Montreal for an anti-spam/anti-phishing conference. Not sure what to expect of the conference, but a couple of co-workers are big fans of Montreal. Hopefully, I have some free time to explore a bit, and don't wind up just enjoying the hotel :-/

Doing some final preparation for the trip, including kegging the Cranberry Relish Wheat brewed for this Saturday's early-thanksgiving gathering. I really should have bottled it last week, it would have made good gifts for others to take home. Now the options are do a dicey bottling from the keg (no counter-pressure filler here), just bring a few growlers, or bring the keg. I don't think our host would like the keg, but at least 4-5 of the guests would...

I now have 20 gallons of cider going. So far, I have only done one fancy batch, 5 gallons spiked with a pint of grade B maple syrup. All the others are on their way to being straight dry cider, one with my old favorite White Labs English Cider yeast, another with Lalvin D-47, and some with whatever yeast was hanging out on the apples.

The latter is looking quite promising. The juice came from the October 29 club pressing. I added some campden tablets (2 per gallon, so 60-100 ppm SO2), and a teaspoon each of pectic enzyme and chalk. The chalk was a lame attempt at keeving, which didn't happen, so I will probably leave it out in the future. The pectic enzyme caused the cider to drop clear overnight, and turn readable-through-the-carboy in another couple days. About Wednesdy (4 days after pressing), I took a gravity sample and noted no drop, but no infections either... Thursday, I finally saw some positive airlock pressure and a slight ring of bubbles. Saturday night, it started fermenting visibly, and was raging on Sunday.

One week's a pretty long lag time, but hopefully the sulfites killed most of the organisms that can make a truly wild cider go bad. The best part: while the White Labs English Cider yeast gives of a smell best described as "apple farts", the natural yeast fermentation is still giving off a soft, smooth, apple smell. If that keeps up, I might have to do a natural ferment with most of next years juice, and save the pitched yeast for a backup batch or any pasteurized juice I use.

Good thing I went back downstairs for another brew before calling it a night. I heard an odd "pfft.... pfft... pfft..." sound, went to investigate, and saw that the airlock on a batch of cider was filled with cider foam. I pulled out the bung, and heard a rather loud pop. Yikes! That means the glass carboy was holding significant pressure, certainly much more than it's rated for (which is, approximately, 0 psig). If I had let it go overnight, there's a very real possibility that it would have exploded. Whew....

....

One of the most popular bits of brewing advice is "never give up on a batch of beer". New brewers often ask "is my beer ruined?", to which almost any experienced brewer will answer "no!", almost automatically. It seems that it takes a picture of beer covered in white fur and crawling out of the fermenter devouring small woodland creatures until the Internet peanut gallery will finally write it off.

I'm not quite that dedicated. I needed another keg for the beers I currently have on deck, and grabbed the keg of Munich Dunkel I had written off early this year, due to a stuck fermentation that I couldn't get going again. I prepared to dump it, pulled the pressure release valve on the keg, and got a surprisingly loud hiss, followed by foam spraying everywhere. I hooked up a tap to empty it more neatly, and got pure foam out. On a lark, I de-pressurised it some more and got what liquid I could into a glass. It was clean, smooth, and rich. It tasted great. Part of me, no, most of me wanted to put it on tap, but....

I had already written it off about 9 months ago. It was a very light beer, and wouldn't normally keep that long. I needed the keg free, and had it about half-empty when I decided this was good beer I was dumping down the drain. Grr... I know how maddening it would be to have a great beer on tap, knowing I had dumped half of it.

So I told myself "it tastes oxidized... yep, definitely 'wet cardboard'" and kept emptying the keg. Maybe I'll take another stab at the style this year.

I still have a Dopplebock attempt from the same brew session, that's probably in the same state (lower gravity, tasty, massively overcarbonated). I've also written it off, but if anyone's interested I could be persuaded to rescue it, or at least a few "samples" for the curious. Otherwise, it's most likely going down the drain like the Dunkel, whenever I need the keg (which, with 20 gallons of cider and my normal brewing could be quite soon).

Man, what a crappy last few days at work. Nasty shit going down between me and my former co-workers, all of whom I still consider friends aside from the aforementioned <insert term for excrement here>, which makes the <poop> much harder to deal with. It's beyond the "barleywine night" stage, so I'm on my second martini (gin, of course) and am plotting a chaser of a big Belgian which I stupidly put on tap even though the bugger's potent and goes down like a girly drink... I'll sleep as well as the kids do tonight!

....

Since the last update, I've brewed a couple more batches, 5 gallons of Mild and 10 gallons of Alt. I'm really excited for the Alt, since it's pretty much a clone recipe for Uerige Classic, based on what information I can find about its production. If it turns out half as good, I'll be ecstatic. As for the mild... it's kind of hard to get too excited about one of those, since it's supposed to be a boring everyday easy-drinking beer. Still, it may be able to kick one of the bigger beers off tap, which might get me off my arse to bottle.

I also have 10 of 20 gallons of this year's ciders going. Saturday was the club cider pressing, and quite a blast. I'm definitely going next year, even if it's 35 and rainy. There's nothing like the taste of juice fresh out of the apples. It's almost a shame to ferment it (never thought I'd say that :-). Until I get my own orchard, this is definitely the coolest way to do cider.

In previous years, my ciders have all been the "add yeast and walk away" type. That's always been nice and simple, and gives good results, but I wanted to get fancier this year. Five gallons of the pressing juice is getting the usual treatment, but I'm also trying a natural fermentation on another 5 gallons. The next 10 gallons of cider will be split between a cider with maple syrup added, and a a cider with sugar (brown, turbinado, or maybe maple, I haven't decided) and raisins added. I hope this gives me enough cider to have on tap for most of next year, as well as some in bottles for the years to come.