International American Pale Ale

Fuggled, a blog which I read from time to time has organized what the author calls an International Homebrew Project. Its a coordinated brewing event in which home brewers around the world (hopefully) all brew, bottle, and then review a beer using similar recipes. The recipe and time period are predetermined and the brewers will share the results of their beers via web-based reviews. This weekend is the official time period during which brewing is to commence. I have decided to participate in the Fuggled International Homebrew Project. However, having other plans for the weekend, I will brew on the 11th.

The selected style for the beer is American Pale Ale and the recipe has been set as follows:

• 9.8lbs 2 Row Pale Malt
• 1.7lbs Caramel 10
• 0.6oz Centennial boiled 60 minutes
• 0.5oz Amarillo boiled 15 minutes
• 0.5oz Cascade boiled 1 minute
• Whatever yeast you want

For yeast I will be using White Labs WLP001 California Ale just because I already have some on hand.

The style and recipe were arrived at via a series of surveys hosted on the Fuggled blog. Over the past year I have brewed several batches of pale ale with varying recipes. It is among my favorite styles. In fact, the Meatapalooza Pale Ale I made back in October should not be too different from this beer. Regardless, its a style that I enjoy and I look forward to further exploring the style and recipe variations as well as stocking my home brew supply and sharing/comparing my resulting brew with the others that will brew it.

Beer Comes the Sun - Belgian Pale Ale

Beer Comes the Sun - Belgian Pale Ale

5 gallons e

xtract with steeped grains

5.7% ABV

25 IBUs

Fermentables

8 oz Cara Vienna (steeped)

8 oz Belgian Pale Malt (steeped)

4 lbs extra light DME

2 lbs amber DME

Hops

60 min - Fuggles - 1 oz @ 5% aa

15 min - Haleratau Hersbucker - 1 oz @ 2.5% aa

5 min - Styrian Goldings - 1 oz @ 3.5% aa

Yeast

White Labs WLP550 Belgian Ale Yeast -- 2 quart starter

Fermentation

Primary: 14 days at 70°F

Keg

Made a starter yesterday and brewed this one up today. I shoveled snow while steeping the grains as well as during the boil. After two days of a blank white snow filling sky, the sun was out shining brightly and melting the ample (15 inches) snow accumulation.

I got a chance to make use of my new 5000ml Erlenmeyer Flask when preparing the starter for this beer. Its real handy. I wear goggles while holding it and feel like a real scientist.

This should be a pleasant golden ale with spicy/fruity Belgian yeast characteristics and very subtle noble hop presence.

Brew Pal for iPhone

This app really makes me want an iPhone.

http://www.brewpal.info/

South Pennsylvania Beer - Part II

(Beer sampler at Lancaster Brewing Company)

On our way back home from Philadelphia we stopped at three Pennsylvania breweries. We had sampler flights at each and dinner at one.

Victory Brewing Company

Our first stop was Victory Brewing Company, located about 30 miles west of Philadelphia in Downingtown. Victory beers are available where I live in Virginia, but I have never paid them too much attention. Their brewpub has a huge line-up of really good beer, I think they had about 20 of their beers on tap and another two on cask. Most of their beers like the Hop Wallop which packs an insane amount of hop character, are heavy on the hops. We shared small samplers of about a dozen of their beers and there wasn't a single one I wouldn't call a good beer.

Its clear that a good deal of thought, work, and money went into the construction of the brewpub. Its a large bustling space and everything looks new and clean. Two converted copper boilers tower over the bar and restaurant area. The growler fills seemed to be very popular. Many people would sit down and have a beer and watch the game while their growlers were cleaned and filled by AN AUTOMATIC GROWLER FILLING MACHINE .

Stoudt's Brewing Company

This was easily my least favorite stop of the trip. I don't like to give bad reviews, but Stoudt's brewpub has some problems. First off it looks like it is starting to show signs of neglect physically and operationally. The building is musty, my water glass was dirty, and the staff that was working the day we were there did not seem to care about the beer at all. Of the four beers we had samples of, the Triple was the only one I found to be enjoyable. Attached to the brewpub is a poorly appointed antique store that is also run by the same owners. I wouldn't go here again.

Lancaster Brewing Company

Our last stop was Lancaster Brewing Company. On our way we passed right through the rolling, farm spotted hills of Amish country. We made out a few horse drawn carriages making their way over overpasses in the rain that dreary Sunday. The Lancaster Brewery Brewpub is located on a street corner in Lancaster, PA in an old brick building. The great beer and food make it definitely worth a stop. Pictured above are the taps from which they serve up their brew. 13 three ounce samples is plenty to split with someone else. All of the beers were awesome.

Prior to our visit the only Lancaster beer I had had was the Milk Stout which is distributed in Virginia. A special brew you can only get at the Lancaster brewpub is the Chocolate Covered Strawberry which is a mixture of their Milk Stout and Strawberry Wheat beers. While many times I do not care for fruited beers, the small sample was interesting and excellent; not overbearing at all. At Lancaster we had a dinner of clams and humus. Both were delicious and went down great with the myriad of beer on the sampler tray.

From Lancaster it was back home to Virginia. I was all beered out.

South Pennsylvania Beer - Part I - Philadelphia Beer Bars

My wife and I spent last weekend in Philadelphia. Good Belgian beer bars and brew pubs in general were an integral part of the trip. We stayed with a good beer loving Friend who lives in Philly and was kind enough to be our guide as we beered and musseled our way through a few of the best beer spots the city of brotherly love has to offer. This is part one of a two part post, it documents our Philadelphia beer experience. The next post will cover three South Pennsylvania breweries we visited.


Local 44 - West Philadelphia

Beers Consumed : Victory - Uncle Teddies Bitter - Cask Ale

Bear Republic Rebellion

Franziskaner Dunkle-Weisse

Bear Republic XP - Cask

Local 44 is a warm, cozy bar/restaurant located on a street corner in West Philadelphia. A tall chalkboard located behind the bar maintains a formidable and rotating listing of good brew on tap. Two cask offerings were available the night we were there, which is a rarity back in my area of Virginia so I had one of each. The pork belly tacos and fries were great too.

Monk's Cafe - City Center

Beers Consumed : Russian River Blind Pig

Russian River Damnation

Chouffe Houblon

The highlight of Saturday's beer crawl was Monk's Cafe, a bar that is consistently ranked in lists of top beer bars of the US. Monk's offers some beers found nowhere else on the East Coast let alone in the USA. This includes tap offerings from Russian River (Pliney the Elder on Tap, but they were out :-( ) and Brasserie Dupont as well as bottles of Lost Abbey and Port brewery. Monk's Cafe serves up some mind blowing mussels accompanied with olive bread. Monks gets both the best beer and best mussels of the trip awards. We did not try them, but they also offer mussels steamed in their very own Monk's Flemish Sour beer.

This was my first encounter with the famed Russian River beers. They are notoriously difficult to obtain here on the East Coast and I must say that for me, although they were most excellent, I did not think that they quite lived up to the all the hype. Upon drinking them I was not transformed into some other creature or transfigured. The Blind Pig IPA was hoppy and delicious but I would put it up against the easier to obtain Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Extra any day. I would have liked to try the Pliny the Elder but the keg had just kicked.

Eulogy - Old City

Beers Consumed: Jenlain Blonde

Brouerij Smisje Vuuve Sour Wheat

Bosteels Kwak

The second of two Belgian themed bars we visited was Eulogy. A stellar spot for good brew and mussels. The dimly lit, historically feeling, rustic bar has a beer menu with over 300 beers, US and imports with an emphasis on Belgians. The Hoegaarden steamed mussels are slap-your-mama good.

Triumph - Old City

Beers Sampled: Jewish Rye

Brunch Stout

Glass Hammer Barleywine

Located almost directly across the street from Eulogy is Triumph Brewing Company, a brewpub brewing what I would call American style beers. The atmosphere is more upper class and posh than any of out other destinations. They had roughly a dozen of their brews on tap. Perhaps it was all the world class beer we had consumed before arriving at Triumph, but I was not too impressed with their beer. I had a pint of the Jewish Rye and about half way through it started reminding me of Dr. Pepper. The Brunch Stout and Barleywine were decent but a little too sweet for my tastes.

Standard Tap

Beers Consumed: Philidelphia Brewing Company - Kenzinger

Troegs Hopback - Cask

Victory Uncle Teddy's Bitter - Cask

Located in what appears to be an old historic reclaimed corner building, Standard Tap is a no frills American restaurant/bar that gets busy with youngsters late night. The standout features of the place for me were the two cask offerings. Once again, since travelling on foot, I had one of each.

Philidelphia is loaded with great beer spots and like any good city, it is walkable with plenty of public transportation and taxis. There are several other spots we didn't even make it too such as Bennelux and Nodding Head.

Cask ales were easy to find the Philadelphia bars. I enjoyed the thicker body, low gentle levels carbonation, and more natural green hop flavor of the cask ales. They are starting to find their way to my neck of Virginia, but only on pubs' special occasions. Both Local 44 and Standard tap had two cask offerings.

Surprisingly the morning after a day and a half of the debauchery outlined above, I arose from my dark starry eyed eraserhead slumber with no hideous painful side effects. Only memories of good brew and great company. In fact we felt so good, we opted for an Ethiopian brunch.

Homebrew Kegerator

Pictured above is a project I have been working on little by little over the past month. Its a Kegerator to store and dispense my home brews. Draft beer has a certain draw for me, especially when friends and family are over or for carbonating and serving quick turnaround beers. I still plan to continue bottle conditioning beers that will age for extended periods of time, as well as any beers in excess of what my kegs can hold.

For Christmas, my wife got me a 2 keg kit from Keg Connection. Along with two reconditioned 5 gallon cornelius kegs, the kit included everything I needed to keg and serve beer. I shopped around and Keg Connection has the best prices I could find. All I needed, was a device to keep everything cold and to mount the dispensing faucets on. Enter the Kegerator.

For starters, I picked up an old used chest freezer off of craigslist. The model I found is a vintage ~9 cubic foot Montgomery Wards model with a stylish faux wood grain outer shell. Here is a picture of the freezer before modification: BOOORING...

Constructing a wooden collar was required. In addition to impressing friends, this is necessary because drilling directly through the freezer walls to mount faucets carries a risk of drilling through the freon lines that run around throughout the walls. Additionally, if I ever wanted to convert the kegerator back to a freezer (don't know why), I'd be left with many unsightly and inefficient cooling holes. It also raises the tap handles up to make use more convenient.

1. 
   The collar consists of two nested layers of boards. The inner layer is made to the same dimensions as the rim of the freezer that the lid seals against. The outer layer is made with wider boards attaches to the inner layer. This creates a collar that slides on and sits snugly on top of the freezer. The weight and fit of the collar will keep the weight of the open freezer lid from toppling off.
   
   I measured the freezer rim, drew a simple picture, and got materials. I borrowed my dad's miter saw to make the cuts. At this point the boards layed out looked like this:
   I used wood screws and L-brackets to join all of the cut boards into a rectangle the measurements of my drawing. After putting on a coat of stain, it looked like this:
   
   

Next I drilled holes for the taps using a 1" hole drill bit as well as a hole for the temperature control probe using a 1/4" drill bit. Then, I unscrewed the lid hinges from the freezer and re-attached it to the collar, then placed the new collar assembled with lid onto the freezer.

All that was left was to mount the taps and the temperature controller. Then, rack some home brew (cider was what I had on hand) into a keg and hook everything up to CO2.

The Kegerator has enough room to expand for 5 kegs. I may never need that many kegs. For now, in addition the two kegs, I store my bottled beer inside it. I keep the hole thing at 38°F. In the future I would like to add wheels to get it mobile.

Materials (for wooden collar)

• one 2x6x10 board
• one 1x10x10 board
• small can of stain
• can of spray polyurethane (optional)
• 1.5" and 2" wood screws
• 8 metal L-brackets for inside corners

Tools

• tape measure
• carpenter's square
• electric drill with phillips screwdriver bit, 1/4 drill bit, and 1" hole bit for drilling tap holes.
  
• miter saw or circular saw
• sand paper for smoothing rough edges
  

Bacon Cheddar Potato Casserole

Ingredients

• 1 lb red or baby yukon potatoes sliced thin
• 1 12-oz can sliced new potatoes
• 6oz sour cream
• 3-4 slices bacon. fried and crumbled into bits
• 1 tbsp dried basil
• small can of french fried onions
• 5oz condensed milk
• 12 -16 oz shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 oz melted unsalted butter
• salt & pepper to taste

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350°F. In an 8x8 square baking dish lay one layer of potatoes (both canned and freshly sliced mixed) at a time, topping each layer with light salt, pepper, basil, shredded cheese and bacon. On the third layer, spread a layer of sour cream. Add one or two more layers. Pour condensed milk and butter over the top of the casserole and then top with french fried onions. Cover dish with foil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour or until freshly sliced potatoes are tender. Allow to cool for five minutes before serving.