Happy 1st Birthday Homebrew Blogging Day!

Yeah, that's right- i used an exclamation point. Do something about it.

Here we go. Thanks to Adam at Beer Bits 2, two obsessive worlds will now collide on a monthly basis as bloggers who homebrew (or vice versa, depending what the mirror looks like to you) have a Session-like place to pick a topic and all post about their own experiences and opinions. It's a great idea and i'm really looking forward to reading the posts for this month.

Adam chose the first topic and is hosting this month, as is the custom, and we're starting things off, well, at the beginning. Adam told all of the homebrew bloggers to write about how they got started, so the stories of disaster, infection, and falling in love should all start rolling in in a few hours.

My adventures begin at the click of the link....

It is really quite fitting that the first Homebrew Blogging Day is falling just before the beginning of June and even more fitting that it's all about my beginnings in making my own beer. In just a few short days i will be celebrating one year as a homebrewer. I think i made or participated in about 8 batches this year. Some came out great, some...well, that's what we're gathered here to talk about. Oy.

It seems like so many homebrewers that i talk to got their start the same way i did. I'm seeing friends getting into it right now in the exact same way. It's just one of those things that doesn't even really seem like a possibility until you think about it. You just need to hear that it isn't terribly difficult. That it's fun. That sooner or later you might start saving money by doing it (ha, someday).

Simple conversation.

Standing behind the bar with Ryan G, one of my favorite workmates (and now one of Vermont's newest education graduates) we got talking about beer that we love and somehow got talking about making beer ourselves. We laughed, thought about it, then thought more seriously about it. Why not? So we split a kit from Midwest and got ourselves two recipe kits and a few extra hops and set out to brew some beer.

I read a little, he read a little, we both got really excited, then we just picked a day and made it happen. Or tried to.

Here's the thing about homebrewing. When it's pretty foreign to you, there are a lot of ins and outs, a lot of things to think about and understand and pay close attention to. Once you get the knack for it, you can make much better use of your resources and have a lot of control over your beer's destiny.

The brewday didn't go too bad really, but let's review all of the mistakes we made:

-Squeezed the crap out of our specialty grains before removing the muslin bag from the steep. If what we made actually ended up tasting like beer, we'd probably had some serious tannic attack going on.

-Didn't have much of a plan for cooling the wort. An ice bath, sure we can make one of those. Three trays worth of melted ice later and our wort was still well over 100 degrees. We probably looked like we were handling plutonium or something, carefully running into the bathroom with a kettle full of hot wort, trying to make a cold bath for it.

-Fermentation. I take full responsibility for seriously ruining the first batch of beer. I knew you had to shake the bucket to aerate the wort before pitching yeast...i didn't realize or didn't read enough to know not to disturb it once fermentation took off and finished. This is something i'd learn the hard way a few batches in.

-My ideas of a rigorous fermentation and what a rigorous fermentation really is differed pretty greatly back then. As the airlock bubbled away, i couldn't hear anything churning in the bucket. I thought i was supposed to be able to hear this thing going crazy in there. No dice. Give it a shake.

-Dry Hop. Well if these hops are just going to sit on the surface of the beer then how's the beer in the middle and bottom going to even be affected by them? Shake it up.

Needless to say, Batch 1...not a success.

So batches came and batches went. I ruined a perfectly good pumpkin ale (made with real pumpkin) by trying to re-aerate my wort when repicthing more yeast. I made a nice strong dark and finally began to take my time in the reading aspect of homebrewing because there is a lot to learn.

Bryan, the other member of The Stout Yeomen Brewing Co (our pseudo-quasi Homebrew Club) got his kit for Christmas and just let it sit there as he read Palmer from cover to cover. His first batch, a dry hopped Copper Ale (the exact same kit and dry hop we'd attempted as our 1st batch last June) came out great. He knew what he was doing, knew what to expect, and made a really nice beer that scored well at the War of the Worts.

I'm the kind of guy that tends to learn from his mistakes and in that regard i find myself very smart. And i say that because i give myself a lot to learn from.

In this first year of brewing, i've finally started to turn out some nice batches, i'm using resources to put my own recipes together, learning a lot from other brewers that i speak to in real life and on homebrewing message boards, and things are good. When the time is right i'd like to invest in a kegorator and start to bottle a lot less beer. Bottles are a great way of sharing beer, but bottling a batch of beer alone isn't all its cracked up to be.

Dr. Joel's Bad Batches of Beer:

-Copper Ale
-Brown Ale (majorly infected..only infection to date)
-Peach Wheat (this was actually an ok batch of beer, but peach extract made it hard to have more than one)
-Spiced Pumpkin Ale (this thing was a winner until i shook the crap out of it on a repitch)

Dr. Joel's Good Batches of Beer:

-Brewer's Brune (or Dr. Joel's Jekyll Juice as name by the boys at Teresa's Next Door): A Belgian Strong Dark Ale made with a big grain bill, dark candi sugar, and the Ardennes yeast strain. It was strong, it was dark, it just didn't age the way i thought it would.

-Partially Free Brown Ale: Part of the Oak experiment with Bryan. We brewed the same batch of beer and oaked it differently. A brown ale made with Chocolate Rye. This was a last minute substitution aided by the guidance of George and Nancy at the homebrew shop. This beer came out really nice and is the first one that i was very happy with.

-Raucco's Rye Red Ale: This is the beer i blogged about during American Craft Beer week. I bottled on Sunday and cracked one open before TND last night. I'll probably just end up calling this an IPA because of my steeping problems- it doesn't scream Red Ale. But it's a nice beer and i look forward to cracking one open about two weeks from now for the full effect. I also owe my dentist some beer (really, i do) and i hope she likes this and can see the beauty of it despite the fact that i'll also be giving her a bottle of Nugget Nectar.

So that's it you creeps. More info than you probably wanted, but that's been my Homebrewing experience from the first batch. Homebrewing has been a great little hobby for me to dig my heels into. I've learned a lot about much more than beer as a result. I make tea differently now, i do little experiments with hops, i taste beer differently.

Adam has got me thinking about all of these homebrew t-shirts he's coming up with, so i will end my post with a t-shirt idea of my own:

"I Brewed This Shirt" Read more!

A Day In The Life

Another post, no pictures. There were going to be pictures, there were going to be a lot of things on Tuesday evening...then i lost my phone. The several hours of searching and hunting completely disabled me from getting done the important things in my life and i found it just in time to finalize sushi plans in Skippack at the awesome Tokyo. We were out on the deck ready to pop open a bottle* of Malheur Brut when the clouds rolled in and forced us, our bottle, and our boat indoors.

So the flyers to be posted about The Bridge Street Tasting Series will have to go up today. That's fine, i wouldn't have caught Mike at Cheese! on Tuesday anyway because they close up shop on Mon and Tues.

Anyhow, more pressing matters. Beer...

I hit the road Wednesday with the Beer Lass herself, Suzanne Woods for a glimpse into the life of a Sales Director. For those that don't know, Suz is the sales beacon for Sly Fox Brewing Company in addition to many other endeavors (both current and upcoming) in the sudsy world of beer. Full disclosure one way or the other of my reason for doing so will be forthcoming in a couple weeks, but for now i'll just say i had good reason to do some job shadowing. So i made like a shadow as we stopped in at a bunch of Sly Fox accounts and got a feel for what goes on in the world of beer. I learned a lot and we got to a bunch of great places.

I hadn't been to Devil's Alley and Memphis Taproom yet, so those were two great stops. I can't wait to get back to Memphis to try some food. That place is every bit as great as everyone says it is.

NOW HEAR THIS:

I will buy you a beer if you comment or email me the name of the photograph or photographer who's picture of the motorcycle flying through the window is framed in the Memphis Taproom's men's bathroom**. I think it's one of the greatest pictures i have ever seen.

So in addition to great food at Good Dog (as always), almost being a key witness in one publican's discovery of what was thought to be a dead homeless man, and a tense match of rock, paper, scissors (international rules), i learned a bunch of valuable stuff about how the beer sales business works.

Things all wrapped up at Jose Pistola's for their North Coast Promotion with Pranqster, Brother Thelonious, Acme Pale, Red Seal, and Old Rasputin on Nitrogen. Each beer got you a little closer to true bliss as promised by Casey Parker. Driving back to Phoenixville wasn't the only reason i stopped after three.

In all a very good day indeed. One of these days you people will clock into the Grain Bill and see more than words again. Seriously. Someday.

* Quick beer tip #1 - With a big corked bottle of beer and a place that serves beer you don't care for, calling ahead and asking if you can bring in a bottle of champagne is always worth a try. With Malheur you're kind of not even lying.

** Info must lead to me actually finding this picture on the interwebs. Read more!

This Is One Serious Lack of Images.

Short lived as it may be, i think this is the first time the front page of Grain Bill has had absolutely no pictures whatsoever. That's a problem. I didn't realize i had so much to say and so little to show. Surely that can be changed.

Just to catch up on a few things:

The Hop Head Red is out there and its fantastic, it came over here just in time for the Spring that finally decided to show up. The hopping is on the floral end of things which is just fine by me in this crisp clean beer from Green Flash.

Victory's Brewpub is doing some serious damage in the Cask ale department. Kev reports Hop Devil, Hop Wallop, Storm King, and Uncle Teddy's on as of yesterday with ESB ready once something kicks.

I still haven't made it into Ron's Schoolhouse since the bar was put it. Not gonna happen this week either. One of these days.

Not the most exciting blog post you ever did read, i realize that. I'm being very careful with what i say at the moment so Big Dan can't get a whiff of my trail. . Read more!

Seek Inclusion: Iron Hill and Brew Lounge 5/22/08

Wow. Ya know, i'm just gonna come clean. This blog is probably the closest thing to a confessional i'll come to for a while so the beans are gonna spill around here people.

I used to have a really short sided view of the Iron Hill brewpubs. If you've read much of my blog, you'll know that i now sing their praises pretty regularly...so what happened? Well, i opened up my mind and realized that i don't know everything after all. Full conversion began in Media with their Berliner. Larry Horowitz' lineup for the War of the Worts was just plain ridiculous (and you can't talk about the beer business with a more positive minded guy than Larry). I missed the Belgian event in West Chester, but have been told by a very reliable source that it is something to make a point of catching next year.

They used a tabasco barrel for God's sake. (Sake, not God's Sake)

Click to
I'd always been a fan of the food at Iron Hill and i thought i had them all figured out years back when i first checked them out. I thought they played it safe and just catered to a dinner/family crowd. I thought they didn't have anything to offer to me....Then i met the Quadfather, then i met their Wee Heavy, then i met their Roggenbier, then i met their dry hoppped Iron Bound on cask, then i met Iron Bound on nitro (an APA on Nitro?), then i met their mug club parties.

Tim Stumpf, 'my' Iron Hill brewer is doing a hell of a job in Phoenixville. I have been trying to stop weekly since joining the Mug Club and he has kept things really interesting. The staff is friendly as can be and i've even begun to meet some of the natives.

So to the Mug Club party then? Strap on your boots...here's what they had on tap:

Hefeweizen
Maibock
Pig Iron Porter
Wee Heavy
Bourbon Barrel Wee Heavy
Baltic Porter
Rye IPA
Cannibal

NITRO: Bourbon Barrel Russian Imperial Stout
CASK: West Coast Wheat

Add to that some Cypress Grove goat cheeses and something local (Birch Run?) from the Big Cheese himself, Mike Romando and you've got yourself a party.

Or you've got yourself a party to go to.

The Brew Lounge held a meetup last night at The Drafting Room in Exton. I was a late comer, but there was plenty of hanging out left to be done. TDR had tapped Hop Head Red, so i finally got a taste and as usual, they had a lot of great stuff to try.

Our wounded soldier, Cask Ale Kev was there as was Adam of Beer Bits 2. We talked homebrew with Jeremy and Greg from Exton beverage showed up for a chat. I'm sure Bryan will write the thing up properly so i'm reserving space to link to it right.......here.

Adam is starting a monthly homebrewing blog post, a' la The Session, so i'll definitely be hopping on that train. Check out his blog, its a great read.
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Let's Just Talk About Food For A Minute

I posted a quote from Brewmaster's Table in my scribblings about a Victory beer dinner a little while back and i am finding that it really, really rings true.

The jist, if you didn't click over, is that sometimes we get too wrapped up in the day to day operations of life to concentrate on a good meal. Sometimes we have to eat just to fuel up and don't get to sit down and really enjoy something.

This has been happening to me lately, i honestly don't know why, but i've been running around quite a bit during my prime kitchen hours and haven't been cooking nearly as much as i want to.

So here's where my head is at. I've been discovering all types of foods that i'd just never had before over the past few years. The more i read, the more i poke my head into different restaurants, etc the more i end up getting exposed to, as anyone would. I've been watching No Reservations too, so that has certainly opened my eyes (and in many cases my stomach...but not all).

So maybe it is ironic between gourmet Indian cuisine, traditional Indian fare, Thai, and getting over my fear of scallops (thank you Andy Dickerson) that what i've found myself getting into from a food shopping and meal prepping aspect has been food that is so much more simple and in many cases so much more plain. It's not laziness, i know at least that much. I love to let the hours slip away over the stove with a couple records playing.

I've made some connections with, of all things, traditional English cuisine. A long and winding story i'd tell you over a pint would reveal a novel i started writing sometime during college. At times the words poured out of me, but in other spells i would force sentences out one by one. I was overthinking something i didn't know how to properly execute and its ended up as chapters and notes and ideas on a computer disk.

But the place is very much like the portrayals of Olde England and port towns and villages i'd seen in books and cartoons growing up. They stuck, don't know why. Bustling cobblestone streets, voices all muddled together as people sell their wares in an open air market set up in an alley, fat red-faced men laughing as they sip from tin goblets, buskers that resemble The Band trying to make a pound on some corner.


This food falls right in line with that. Although not connected by geography, the writings of Dylan Thomas have always connected me to that same unconcious place. Whether it be men doing the devil's work or a simple rousing night on the town, Thomas would frequently takes us to a room full of characters deep into the night's allowance, with a watchful landlord presiding over the action.

The image in my mind was always one with a necessity for simplicity and these foods certainly represent that. Many derived more from an approach of 'What do we have left?' than anything else, this food has stayed very much the same for hundreds of years. It is easy to picture it served in a pub on a dull, rainy day just the same as i see it laid out in the hearth warmed kitchen of an English farmhouse. The dishes alone can blur the lines of time. I think that is a huge part of why i am drawn to it.


What am i eating you ask? Right now stuff that's easy to prepare. I've got a lot to learn in the kitchen, but these meals are as much a therapeutic touch as anything else really. They taste great, of course, but they're a transporter and that is really important.

The Ploughman's Lunch:

A lot of people believe this is a meal with a manufactured history, that's fine, i'll bite. The idea behind the meal is that it's a simple offering of goods a ploughman could take from home in a sack and unwrap and enjoy at midday right in the fields. You've got a nice chunk of English cheese, bread, pickle, tomato, and maybe some pickled onions and bit of mustard. There are variations, i've certainly added and subtracted for my own, but for such a raw, bits and pieces meal you really get to enjoy a lot of different tastes and flavors without eating a whole lot.

Toad In The Hole:

Basically it's sausage baked in Yorkshire pudding with gravy on top. I'm still working out an English ale gravy recipe, but this is easy to prep and easy to make and will fill you up in a hurry. Talk around the lunch table has involved tossing some veggies into the batter, so i may go in that direction next time around.

Bangers and Mash:

Of course. Sausages over mashed potatoes, gravy over everything. So simple, so delicious. There's a pub down the street from me with bangers on the menu and i ducked in during a snow storm over the winter and it was absolute perfection. Too messy to drive to work, not messy enough to keep the town out of the bars. Seems to be a theme every winter.

The English Breakfast:

Eat your heart out. Most everything is fried up in the full English Breakfast and that's just fine with me. Eggs, meat (sausage please), tomatoes, baked beans, fried bread, black pudding. Pile it on and pile it high boys.

Now i have never had black pudding, but i think i'm ready to try. It's not nearly as frightening as it might seem at the onset. What's the saying? Use everything but the squeal? I buy into that at the time being.

What to drink? There's no way to turn your back on the classic and obvious choices here. There are certainly a great number of American craft beers that would serve up well here...Brooklyn Brown was my beer for my first stab at Toad In The Hole, but let's remain in traditional form here.

I am very partial to the Brewery at Tadcaster, the Samuel Smith line of outstanding British Ales. This is due in part because i learned about many styles of British beer by way of their products. In the necks of the woods i was drinking beer in when i was learning about Porter, Oatmeal Stout, English IPA, and Nut Brown Ale, Sammy Smith was what as available. Thank you for your hard work Mr. Finkel.

Samuel Smith

Not to be a single-dimensional or brand loyal consumer, i've got to celebrate other good beers and breweries here who are owed their due. Fuller's is widely available and worth your while, the ESB and London Porter are all over the place. I've yet to try Adnam's and with rosy cheeks i'll admit to still not having experienced Old Speckled Hen or at least not since its meant anything anyway. Bitters and milds, bitters and milds, bitters and milds.

Fuller's
Adnams
Morland's
Conniston's
CAMRA Just because.

So there you have it, a lot of words about something really simple. That's exactly how i feel about this food though so it serves me right for opening my big mouth.

Cheers.


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How i don't set the world on fire, Vol. #1

Ok, status check.

Not a ton to report today, but i'd feel like all this gloomy weather was getting the best of me if i didn't post something.

Actually, truth be told i really enjoy days like the one a lot of us are looking out our windows and seeing. I've done some really cool stuff during rain storms and days of general gray.

My Dad used to take me on walks in thunderstorms in the summer and that was awesome. There was always that element of danger that makes it good to be close to your Dad, it's like some invincibility thing that you feel when you really trust someone.

Getting back on track though, what is happening this week?

Well i am pouring at the Full Mooner tonight at the Ugly Moose... 6:30 - 9:30 PM in the garage. We're pouring Dogfish Head, Southampton, Riverhorse, and Oskar Blues. If you're in the 'yunk and not at Flat Rock then you should come hang out. $10 gets you samples all night.

Thursday is full of events. I'm definitely starting at the Mug Club Party at Iron Hill in Phoenixville and wondering if there will actually be Cannabilistic left (doubtful)...they had on Rye IPA Cask, Rye IPA, and a Kev approved Baltic Porter yesterday too and they're rolling out something special for the muggies. If you've got a membership card i hope to see you there, it'd be cool to put some names to faces in there.

Then i really want to go show my support for The Brew Lounge at The Drafting Room even though Thursday is usually reserved for Teresas Next Door. Can i do all three? Heck no, i rise before 6 am Friday and work until midnight dude.

Other than that it's a very Tiki Memorial Day. Catch me behind the bar Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this weekend. We're rolling out some new beers soon, they may be in this week, they may be in the following.

I made Toad In The Hole last night and paired it with a Brooklyn Brown. I need to work on the recipe just a touch, but you'll definitely catch me making this often.

Raucco's Red Rye has got a nice blanket of Cascades floating on top and will be bottled next week. Johnny gets married the second week of June, the timing is perfect.

Read more!

Bridge Street Brewskies

You may have heard the rumors circulating wherever people are drinking good beer. You may have seen the flyer at your local fair trade, hand made joint. I am here to tell you that it's coming people. The organic beer is coming and you should be there to taste it.

What should be the very first of a bunch in the Bridge Street Tasting Series, the event is going down in Phoenixville's 'Happening District' and its approaching quickly.

On June 5th from 6 - 9pm at Earthmart on Bridge Street (in between Wolfgang Books and The Colonial Theater) we'll be tasting organic beers from Peak Organics and Wolaver's. A taster glass is $3 and you can taste until your heart's content.

Earthmart is more than meets the eye, while they offer a great variety of handmade products from kitchen utensils to glassware as well as organic and fair trade food and drink, Earthmart can help you turn your home into a center of energy and resource conservation. From sinks and flue-less fireplaces (which are really awesome) to solar fans for your attic. Where else can you get a veggie burrito and an environmentally safe fireplace in one stop?

This is sort of a pilot episode to see what the turnout looks like, but future tastings are planned to be a bit more involved, with a lot of different beer to be paired with a lot of the different businesses Phoenixville has to offer.

This one will be a good time though, that much is certain. The staff at Earthmart is a lot of fun, Peak is sending a rep, and i'll be humming symphonies and juggling toy cars as i pour from Wolaver's fine organic products.

While things like charity and bettering our quality of life are fresh in my mind, this event is being held simply to spread information about organic brewing and get the names Earthmart and Grain Bill (.blogspot.com) out there to you folks. The $3 will hopefully pay for the beer and ice. Come say hi.

If by some chance you're a business in the Phoenixville area and you'd like to put on a tasting of your own, please get in touch and we'll start planning. Read more!