Michael Kane, owner of Kane Brewing, gave a fantastic talk.  He talked mainly about the process of moving from homebrewing to commercial brewing, and about some of the differences between brewing 5 gallons batches and 30 barrel batches.  A lot of great information for those of us who have contemplated a similar move- and who amount us homebrewers hasn’t?

Thanks again to everyone for putting the meeting together!

Wow.

It pours with a nice, pillowy head.  The first sense is aroma, of a strong smelly cheese.  Like a Bleu, Stilton maybe, but smoother.  More like a very soft, runny cheese, but way more pungent than Brie.

The taste has a good malt start, which is followed by wave after wave of yeast flavors.  Some of it is familiar- Belgians often have distinctive yeast tastes- but others are downright odd.  “Complex” is an understatement.  Again, a full, ripe cheese comes time mind (which might sound like a gross thing to associate with a beer, but trust me, it is not).  Combine that with the malt, and you’ve got one hell of a ride in a glass.   I couldn’t put it down.

A big thanks to Olivia for the awesome Christmas gift in glass.

I managed a solid 81.8% mash efficiency, with my starting and final gravities hitting within a measurement error of the targets.  At 7% ABV, it’ll pack a wallop, but it should be nicely balanced out by the 90.2 IBU’s of hops, plus a lot more aroma and dry hops that should make this a true hop bomb.  

In technical terms, it should be very yummy.  Here’s the Beersmith file.

Incidentally, Google “cat piss” and see what you get.  Huh.

Reduced base grist weight to reduce OG.  Reformulated hop additions to keep BU/GU near .8.  Substituted Fuggles in place of Challenger as the aroma addition. 
Added flaked barley to help head retention.  Rebalanced specialty grains to bring color down.  Thickened mash.   Reduced amount of CO2.

Overall I’m pretty happy with how the brew went.  Hit the numbers dead-on (I moved the mash tun inside after the temperature problems I had last brew).  Perhaps a bit more dark than I hoped for.  More info when it becomes available…

A coworker directed us to a great German beer bar this weekend (thanks, Rene!).  Loreley in the Lower East Side has a great selection of German beers, especially Kölsch and Pilsner.  The Gaffel Kölsch was delicious and crisp, and the Jever Pisner was one of the best I’ve ever had.  But the hands-down winner of the evening was the  Spaten Oktoberfest  Ur-Märzen, in all of it’s amber malty deliciousness.  I know it’s a classic beer, but I feel like I’ve discovered a wonderful secret.  Prost!

Today I racked my Hoppy Gnome IPA off the yeast cake and onto the substantial amount of dry hops.  It’s almost reached the target FG, looks great, smells great, tastes great.  The citra hops smell amazing.  This is going to be a good one.  In about two months….

Immediately upon walking in the door, we overhear a passionate argument about whether Victory or Lagunitas is a better brewery.  Feels like home.

Excellent tap selection.  Good bottle list.  I really like the brewery wall of fame (with signatures by the brewers that have visited) and the “Rookie Suggestions” wall, with recommended selections for those who like Bud, Coors, etc.

Who knew that Midtown would be such a great beer location?  But between RnH and The Ginger Man, it really is.  Of course, Hell’s Kitchen isn’t too bad either, with Valhalla, the Pony, and the forthcoming Beer Authority (owned by the folks who own Rattle and Hum).

All told, it went ok.  This was my first cold-weather brew with this mash tun, and I was not prepared for how quickly the mash temp dropped.  Still, I ended up with 82% mash efficiency, although I suspect it’ll be a tad dryer and more attenuated than planned (which means the already dominant hops might overwhelm the malt).

The cold did make the wort chill very fast (my tap water, lukewarm during the summer, now runs ice-cold into my wort chiller).  I got TONS of cold break in the kettle.

I had two failures-of-concept during the brew, neither of which really had an effect on the resulting beer.  First, I discovered that my cordless drill has neither the torque nor the chuck strength to crank my grain mill with actually grain in the rollers (last night’s test without grain went fine, so go figure).  I was left hand-cranking the 14# of grain through the mill, which was hardly the end of the world.  I’ll save the crappy cordless drill for hanging curtains.

Second, my new-fangled stainless racking system failed again- starting the siphon has proven to be challenging.  I ended up dumping the contents of the kettle into the fermenter (minus a good amount of break, of course).   I’m abandoning this, and will simply use my plastic racking cane and autosiphon to rack from kettle to fermenter.

As an aside, I’m doing some research into the name “Hoppy Gnome” and have come up with some very interesting results.  More on this later.  Read more.

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