Experimental Adventures

So, Brandon and I had a long, but productive brew day yesterday and got to experiment a little bit.  Before I get to that, however, a quick update on the status of our business.  Still no location, ugh.  This part has been, by far, the most difficult part of the process to date.  We have a very narrow set of requirements and there are only a certain number of spaces out there (available or not!); making it a needle-in-a-haystack sort of search.  There are obviously a lot of federal, state, county and city regulations to juggle which makes the search just that much more difficult.  We continue to scour all of the commercial listings on our own as well as with the help of our agent.

Now, on to the brew day.  We were brewing a beer that was the idea of my girlfriend, essentially we were trying to recreate the flavor of a salted caramel in a beer.  For those who haven't done much (or any) brewing, there are some grains available that create some of that caramel flavor.  We have all used these in varying amounts in other brews, but this is the first where I really wanted to highlight the caramel flavor instead of using the caramel to support other flavors.

Time for a little Brewing 101!  A quick run-down of the initial steps we go through to make beer.  Beer is basically fermented sugar water with alcohol and carbon dioxide being the by-products of the yeast eating the sugar in said sugar water (yep, we're drinking yeast poop!).  The first step is to get the sugar out of the grain so the yeast will have something to eat.  We do this by soaking the grain in water at a specific temperature, allowing enzymes to convert starches to sugars.  Normally we just throw water in at a specific temperature, let it sit for an hour or hour and a half, then get the water out.  For this, though, I wanted to try something new.

I had been wondering about a mash method called decoction mashing for awhile and, while this is really more of an antiquated mash technique for use with grains that have not been modified with modern malting techniques (as well as other reasons), I thought that the process might help me extract more caramel flavor from the grain.  Essentially, for this method, the beginning is the same except we let it rest at a lower temperature than the "single infusion" method I described above.  After a period of time, a specific amount of grain is pulled out of the main mash and brought to a boil for a little while.  This is then added back to the main mash in order to bring the temp up to the temp we normally aim for with the single infusion.  From there, the rest of the brew day is the same.  This should, in theory, add more of a caramel flavor to the beer, and our first taste of the unfermented, cool wort seemed to bear that out.  I'm really excited about this beer.  If nothing else, it was (and is) a great experiment!  If you are interested in learning more about decoction mashing and seeing a video about it, try this link to Northern Brewer, Brewing TV.  Brandon also took a couple of photos during:

Stirring the Decoction

Decoction Close Up

While brewing we also bottled 3 batches of beer that had been carbonating: Mexican Spring (an Agave Lime Wheat), Sour Power (our version of a Berlinner Weisse) and Rooster Red (Irish Red brewed for the Des Moines Roosters Aussie Rules Football team).  I'm sampling Mexican Spring right now and I really like it.  Brandon's friend and wife tried it the other day as well and could really envision themselves drinking it while floating down the river in a canoe or kayak.  We also tasted 3 others that should be ready relatively soon: A Belgian Quad currently aged about 6 months, Big Nuts (Imperial version of Numb Nut Ale) and Sweet Grits Ale.  All 3 have a lot of potential, but are still a little young and the flavors need to blend a little more.

Mexican Spring

Anyway, I think I have rambled on long enough.  If you made it this far, thanks again!  I need to find a way to make some of these shorter...apparently I'm a little long-winded!  Either way, have a great night and we'll have more news later!

Cheers!

Reflections and Revelations

I've been doing quite a bit of reading recently.  Reading about the brewing process as a whole, differing mash schedules, yeast pitch rates, hop utilization, overall efficiency, recipe formulation, brewery operations, and on and on and on.  It occurred to me that one of the most rewarding (so far) parts of this process of opening a commercial nano-brewery is the learning.  There are so many parts of this process that relate back to me sitting in a classroom, bored out of my mind, because I had no idea how any of the information I was being taught would ever relate to the real world...but now I know exactly how they can relate!  I recently posted a photo of a stir plate in action that I had just completed building on Facebook and had several comments about it.  The one that stuck the most, however, was from my sister who said, "You guys should speak to a hs science class. Seriously. What could possibly get U.S. kids excited about science more quickly than the idea that they could use their new skillz to make BEER?! I just solved the science brain drain problem right there, people."  While I don't think there is a high school in the world that would let us come in to talk about our process, I do think there is a serious grain of truth there.  I have heard several stories of current professional brewers who happened to be in the right place at the right time and had the right professor steer them in the direction of brewing.

I always enjoyed science class and was generally pretty adept at many of the concepts, but still had no idea how in the world it was going to translate to my everyday life after high school and college.  My aspirations at the time really had nothing to do with applied science.  I had also always enjoyed building things and, sometimes more so, tearing things apart.  Now I am entering into a world that I should have known about years ago because it meshes virtually all of the skills and subjects that I have enjoyed!

I'm not sure I can speak for the other guys in this little self-reflective discovery, but what I do know is that I am unbelievably excited about moving forward.  All of these random interests are now concentrated into one specific endeavor.  Much to my girlfriend's chagrin, I am excited enough about this on a daily basis to come home after a full day of work only to cook dinner and go right to work on some project for the brewery.  Whether it is reading about craft beer trends, sourcing suppliers for our ingredients or building small electronics projects I have a hard time sitting around and not working!  Last night I forgot to eat dinner for the first time (I had a snack, but that really doesn't count!) because I was researching appropriate rpm rates for yeast starters on a stir plate!  Really?  I eschewed pork loin for research on stir plate usage?  I think I might have a sickness of some sort.  While I don't think my experience is identical to those of the other guys, I think all of us are really, truly enjoying this process.  Even though it has, at times, been extremely frustrating, it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience to this point, and many would say that we haven't even gotten to the fun part yet!

Stir Plate Assembly (yes, it's even on the kitchen counter!)

Completed Stir Plate in action

Progress and Saisons

Well, it has been a little while since my last post so I figured I'd post an update and some photos from recent brew days.  We have really been working hard on finding a location and have discovered that it is a truly difficult task!  There are so many city, state and federal regulations to weed through (some of them contradictory) that it makes it quite a daunting task to figure out what is required.  We have visited several places, put a bid in on one location, are planning a bid on another location and all while keeping our eyes on the city for other potential locations.  Throughout this process we have known that much of our equipment has been ordered and has no place to go!  So, we are also making contingency plans in order to store our equipment until we have secured a lease.

T-shirts have been printed, business cards have been received, Polo's are ready for embroidery, website design is in full swing and, of course, beer has been brewed!  We continue to feel very confident about our preparation and just need to nail down a location to get all of the licensing requirements underway.  While this location search has been difficult, the confidence I have in my partners and those who have been kind enough to help us along this journey continues to grow every day.  Our meetings are relaxed and fun, but we still get stuff done (occasionally Ryan's or Brandon's wife has to prod us to get back on topic, but that's another story)!  We are all ready to start brewing beer and formally introduce our beer to the Des Moines area...just need to find a spot to settle down!

Speaking of brewing, we have been pretty busy on that front as well.  We continue to experiment with different hop varieties, malt bills, yeast, spices, fruit, etc to develop a wide variety of high quality beer.

One example is a Sour Cherry Lavender Saison.  For those unfamiliar with the style, a Saison is also called a Farmhouse Ale.  It was traditionally brewed as an alternative drink for farm laborers during the harvest.  It is moderately hoppy, lots of floral aroma and traditionally is on the low end of the alcohol spectrum (laborers don't get much done when they're wasted!).  This version is an attempt to stay (sort of) within the spectrum of a traditional Saison regarding the hops, floral aroma and alcohol; all while adding a little extra bit of something (i.e. Lavender and sour cherries!).  Below are some pictures from transfer day (moving from secondary fermentation over cherries into the keg for carbonation):

Cherries turn a really strange color after sitting in fermenting beer for a week and a half!

Another shot of the cherries and beer being transferred to the keg.

Me trying to get the last bit of beer out of the fermenter.  There were 4 pounds of cherries in that bucket so it was a little difficult getting to the beer!  (As a side note, Brandon would have been in this photo as he was helping me, but he was doing something inappropriate for the web and had to be cut out of this!)

More to come later, as usual.

Here's to a quick appearance of spring!

Cheers!