2012 Brew Year in Review

Well, today is the last day of 2012 and I would like to take a few minutes to step back and look at all which was accomplished this year.  First, and maybe most important to anyone reading, is I started this blog back in February.  It has provided me an outlet to spout my knowledge and opinions on craft and homebrewing beer, as well as, alleviate my wife's ears to my constant rambling of beer...well maybe not completely (She has picked up quite a bit of beer related knowledge and I am very impressed with her for that).  2012 marked my 3rd full year of being a homebrewer and I was able to accomplish the following:

The Brewery

I began kegging at the end of 2011, but didn't start to truly understand the difficulties surrounding draft beer until I let a couple of gallons of beer pour out onto the garage floor!  For Christmas I received 3 perlick stainless steel faucets and all the additional equipment to connect those faucets to my kegs.  Hopefully, this will prevent the beer spillage from happening again (although my velcrow solution for the picnic taps worked well).  I created a hopper extension out of some cardboard and duck tape for my Barley Crusher - now if I could just remember to keep my drill battery charged so I don't have to hand crank 12 lbs of grain every brew day!  Additionally, I am slowly creating a more organized brew area in the garage and getting my process down - I purchased some saw horses to hold my mash tun so I don't dump a mash tun full of grains and hot liquor on the floor.

(Trashcan-stand which is no longer being utilized due to being a brewery hazard)

The Beer

After reading Ray Daniels book, Designing Great Beers, I came up with one of my own recipes for an English Mild ale.  This beer was my first personal recipe to place in competition.  I also received a lot of great feedback on other beers and much gratitude from some friends who enjoyed Shegogue Brew at their housewarming party.  I began working on my house Pale Ale recipe and will continue to adjust the hops until I get the flavor profile I am looking for.  I even created a brew calendar, which it saddens me to admit I am already off pace and possibly going to change it up!

(Plastered Pilgrim - Spiced Pumpkin Ale)

Also, as you have seen in some recent recipe posts, I have been creating labels for my homebrew.  Just another way to enjoy the hobby and showcase my beer for friends and family.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to all who read this blog.  I occasionally check the site traffic statistics provided by Google and it is nice to see other people are frequenting the site.  Don't be scared to leave comments, criticism or other feedback.

So for a 2012 Happy Brew Year, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year for 2013!  Be safe out there tonight!

The Wall - Russian Imperial Stout

You can check out a little synopsis of the brew day on this post: Double Brew for Shegogue.

The Wall Recipe
Brewed On: July 14, 2012
Style: 13F - Russian Imperial Stout
Batch Size: 6 gallons
Efficiency: 63%
OG: 1.095
FG: 1.021
IBU: 166 calculated (Rager) More like in the 80-90 range, but we will say a nice 100
ABV: 9.7%
Yeast: Safale S-05 American Ale Yeast (2 Re-hydrated packs)

Grist Mashed at 150 for an hour
82% - Pale Ale Malt (Great Western) - 19.5 lbs
6% - Roasted Barley (Briess 300L)  - 1.5 lbs
4% - Caramunich (Weyermann) - 1 lb
4% - Special B (Dingemans 300L) - 1 lb
4% - Chocolate Malt (Briess 350L) - 1 lb

Hop Additions 
3oz of Warrior 15.8%AA - 60 minutes - 100 IBUs?

Tasting Notes:  The Wall pours almost pitch black in the glass, but held up to the light you can get a glimpse of a very dark brown (like the stain of a dark walnut wood) color.  The head on the beer is a dark tan and provides lacing while drinking.

(The Wall - Waxed and Labeled for Christmas Gifts!)

The beer has a bunch of different smells that I picked up on - coffee, chocolate, a dark fruitiness (grapes?) and a sweet malt aroma.  The Wall has a firm bitterness upfront, which is accompanied by moderate carbonation, and leads to the complex chewy flavors already perceived in the aroma.  The bitter from the hops and roasted malts packs a punch on the taste buds and invites the drinker back for another sip!

This beer should continue to age and improve.  If you received one of these as a gift I look forward to hearing your tasting notes in the comment section below!

Brewery Update - Early December 2012

So far the Plastered Pilgrim has been received well by family and friends.  Everyone really seems to enjoy the labels, which I plan to continue.  I did not get time to brew in November, which according to the Brew Calendar was supposed to be a Pale Ale.  At this point I am undecided on when the next brew day will be and what I will be brewing.  The ingredients I purchased for my porter, had some partial cracked grains (chocolate malt) so I made need to buy some new malt for freshness.  Additionally, I have some hops in the freezer I may just attempt a pale ale...Glad I gave myself some leniency when I constructed the Brew Calendar!

In other news, black friday was a big success for some brewery equipment purchases.  Expect to see a post and pictures to come of my new tap system.

Cheers!

Labeling your Homebrew

I have had to work 2 of the past 3 weekends, so I have had very little time to spending on brewing related items.  I missed my scheduled porter brewday and will need to reschedule to sometime in December.  I was able to carve out some time to bottle a case off of my Plastered Pilgrim keg and label them!

I thought I would post about some of the methods of creating and applying Labels for your homebrewed beer or wine.  Hopefully this post will alleviate you readers from some of the leg work.

Label Design

The key to a good label is being able to express your thoughts or theme which will attract and inform your consumers (friends).  Think about what draws your attention when looking for new beers at the bottle shop.  Maybe its a creative logo or cool font (DA Fonts).  Maybe its a picture or a beer name.  Homebrewer's tend to do labels in 1 of 2 ways:  (1) Labels which have consistency (Logo, font, layout etc.) or (2) each label is its own creation.  I like to side with the first option.  I like to think of my homebrew as if it was real brewery.  I want my labels to all have a feel which evokes brand recognition.  I think Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada are two breweries that effectively do this.

Now that you have some ideas, you need to decide how you will be creating the labels.  Some artistic folks decide to do it by hand.  These can be really awesome!  Unfortunately, I was not blessed with an artistic hand and tend to go the digital route.  I use GIMP, a program similar to photoshop, to create my labels.

Dimensions

Are you making labels for 12 oz or 22 oz bottles?  When I was looking online it seemed like a lot of labels for 12 ounce bottles were 3 inches high by 4 inches wide.  I went with this and, it produces a nice label, but I think I will increase the dimensions as it just didn't cover as much space as I as hoping for.  Additionally, the text which looked rather large on my computer monitor, was almost illegible when printed.  The "Surgeon General" warning I created was in 14px, and other text about the beer was 16px.  I had to increase this and recommend 20px or greater for any text.  In GIMP I set the pixels to match inches.  3x4 correlates to 900px by 1200px.  So keep that in mind with font sizes.  I think my next set of labels will be 4 inches high by 5.25 inches wide

Printing and Applying

Unfortunately, if you have an inkjet printer, you won't easily be able to label with my suggested adhesive (see below).  You can purchase specific adhesive papers from places online such as onlinelabels.com which will allow you to use inkjet.  If you have a laser printer, you're set!  If not just print out one color sheet from your inkjet printer and take it to a local copy center like Kinkos or Staples etc.  I used Staples and was able to use their straight-edge cutter, which was a real time saver!

Applying - Most homebrewers hate de-labeling commercial bottles.  It is a painstaking and time intensive process.  So why would you want to put labels on your beer that is hard to take off?  I browsed the forums, and although skeptical, found that milk was the best adhesive!  Sure enough, I poured an ounce of milk onto a plate and lightly dipped the back of the labels in the milk and applied them to the bottles.  Held strong!  Came off with a little water and scratching with my fingernail.  And they didn't smell :)

Plastered Pilgrim - Spiced Pumpkin Ale

I felt it appropriate to unveil the first of my new labels in the post for this beer.  I have created somewhat of a template which I hope to incorporate into future labels.

I have been doing some thinking about the best way to share my recipes/brewdays with everyone on the interwebs and decided it would be best to wait until I had the final product before me to do so.  In these and future posts I will give a short descriptive synopsis of the beer, followed by the recipe and sum it up with my thoughts.

The beer smells exactly like pumpkin pie, and not just the spices.  Call me crazy, but as I take deep sniff, I can pick out a the smell of pie crust.  The beer is a bronze-orange color, which at the time of tapping is a tad hazy (picture to come).  The pumpkin spices flood the mouth, followed by a moderate carbonation and creamy body.  The spicing is balanced, and the beer leans a tad towards the malty side.  The finish has a gentle tinge of alcohol warmth (most likely from the low level of bitterness).  This is a very palatable pumpkin ale, and one that could be consumed in session quantities.  The spicing does not overwhelm.

Plastered Pilgrim Recipe
Brewed On: September 15, 2012
Style: 21A - Spice, Herb, Vegetable Beer
Batch Size: 6 gallons
Efficiency: 82%
OG: 1.058
FG: 1.015
IBU: 18 (Rager)
ABV: 5.6% (forgot to change label, but close enough)
Yeast: WLP002 - English Ale Yeast - Rinsed from prior batch

Grist Mashed at 155 for an hour (sparging was a PITA with pumpkin!)66% - Maris Otter - 10lbs
25% - Pumpkin Puree - 60 oz (4, 15 oz cans baked at 350° for an hour)
3% - Biscuit - 8oz
3% - Crystal 40 - 8oz
3% - Crystal 120 - 8oz

Hop Additions 
1oz of Willamette 4.8%AA - 60 minutes - 18 IBUs

Overall - This beer is pretty tasty.  I can't take full credit for the recipe as I modeled it largely off of the hit "Thuderstruck Pumpkin Ale" on HBT.  I think this may become a seasonal for me, but I will leave it up to friends and relatives to decide.

Craft Beer, Costly in Montgomery County, MD

I moved to Maryland a little over a year ago.  It is a great state and has a lot of things going for it, but the alcohol situation in Montgomery County is not one of them. 

There are four counties in Maryland which are controlled jurisdictions.  This basically means that all liquor, wine and beer is controlled by the county.  This control allows for some positive things such as the department generating enough revenue that it can donate $32.4 million in 2011 or $240 million over the past 10 years to the counties general fund.  But it also means another middle man in the chain.  And it provides two additional times for the consumer to get hit where it hurts, in their pockets.  There are a few different scenarios beer gets to market.  The first two below are standard, the third is Montgomery County:

• Self Distribution - In some states, self distribution is allowed and provides the opportunity for the brewer to distributes its products directly to retailers (bars, bottle shops, liquor stores, and/or individuals)
• Required Distributor - That state requires breweries to work with a distributor; a company which specializes in selling your beer.
• Montgomery County - The county buys and sells all products from distributors.

There are varied rationale's on whether self distribution or a distributor is better for the brewery as far as opportunity costs and actual costs go.  Either way, the third option results in another mark up to the consumer.  The county controls which products can be sold and for what price.  Bottle shops are forced to take a drastic hit in profit or offer beers at a higher price than other counties in Maryland, but most of all higher than bordering state of Virginia... a craft beer oasis in comparison.  

Now we know the cause, but lets look at the effect. I have visited a few different bottle shops in my area, and I was actually really impressed with the selection.  The problem was the price.  I was finding six packs of California based breweries for $15-$18.  These sixers were sitting at room temperature and had some visible dust.  Green Flash and Firestone Walker make some great beers, but I just don't want to take a chance on their freshness, especially when I would be forking over $3 a bottle.  Depending on the shop you could have to pay $9-$10 for a six pack that would be $7-$8 in Virginia.

However, the price gouging doesn't stop a the sticker.  About a year ago, Montgomery County increased the sales tax on alcohol to 9%.  So not only would I potentially be paying 20%-30% more for my beer, I would then have to pay and addition 9%  in sales tax. Disappointed to say the least.  I am glad my hobby allows me to make flavor  beer on the cheap at home.

To end this discussion on a positive note, I will say that thankfully there were 4 grocery stores in the county which were grandfathered in.  These locations, of which I only am aware of one, somehow have reasonable prices and decent selection.  Maybe they get a volume discount, or maybe it is because they are the only grocery stores allowed to sell booze, but they do have reasonable prices.  All I know is I go to buy craft beer in the county, I will be willing forking over way to much cash, or going the Shoppers Food Warehouse in Germantown.

Brewery Update 10-7-2012

Here we are, into October already!  My Washington Nationals will be playing post season baseball this year, as well as the other local team - Baltimore Orioles, who I will also be rooting for!  Gotta keep up with my 2012-2013 Brew Schedule to ensure I won't go thirsty during the games!  Had a productive day in the Brewery yesterday accomplishing the following:

• Kegged and added the pumpkin pie spices to the Pumpkin Spiced ale - Still working on some potential names, "Naughty Gourd" is at the top of the list.
• Brewed the Northern English Brown ale - Need to reevaluate my boil off rates, it appears my preboil gravities are higher than expected, but then the post boil is lower than expected.
• Sampled the RIS which was brewed back in July - Definitely will benefit from some aging time.  Initial notes are a bold bitterness that is partially from the 3 oz of 15.8% Alpha Acid Warrior hops, but also from the large amount of roasted barley.  The bitterness lends to a very brief "flavor" profile period and is quickly washed away by alcohol warmth.  May or may not be at an acceptable profile for xmas gifts, but thats what happens when it gets brewed in July instead of January!

(Pumpkin Ale Hydrometer Sample definitely has a orange glow)

Also have been working on some labels for the brewery.  Hoping to unveil a few of those soon in a separate post.  Stay tuned!