This is a test of Flickr’s blogging utility… At right is a picture of of the lifespan of my “Leftover EPA v2.0″ It was long ago kegged and consumed.
I’m not sure I like this… I would prefer an integrated flickr photo addition to wordpress. I’ll probably add picture’s manually in the future.
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve finally updated the “Now Brewing” page. I’ve also included that I drank the Leftover EPA v2.0, which I brewed many moons ago. I don’t rightly remember how it tasted, but here’s what I wrote about it, a week or two after drink it (FAIL):
Beer was tasted on two occasions, once at home and a second time at Andre’s apartment at NU. Both times were served from the keg.
This is written long after the fact…
I remember that the hop character was more pronounced, probably due to freshness, and the sweetness was considerably less than the previous batch.
Wow, what descriptive tasting notes. Anyway, I somewhat achieved my goal of improving the recipe, even if I can’t remember much of the details. I obviously plan on tweaking the recipe again to see what I can improve upon. If I change the beer at all for the upcoming batch, I will probably swap the belgian yeast for a typical English strain, hopefully something dryer. Otherwise, I’ve got plenty of other brewing left to do before Summer draws to a close.
Here is my second attempt at brewing a from-scratch EPA. If you remember, my last batch ended up being terribly sweet after several months in the bottle. For this batch, I toned down the original gravity and also decreased the amount of hops. Here is my entry in my beer journal:
Leftover E.P.A. v2 12-5-08
Goal: To recreate the previous recipe while improving the hop character, decreasing the sweetness, and scaling the recipe to 5 gallons.
Ingredients:
Malt- 1 lb medium crystal malt, 4 lb briess golden light DME, 3 lb briess wheat DME.
Hops- 4 oz. Cascade hops.
Yeast- Wyeast #3522 Belgian Ardennes.
Water- Bottled drinking water 5 gal.
Theoretical Specs:
O.G.- 1.061
F.G.-1.021
Alcohol (v/v)- 6.3%
Bitterness- 36 IBU
Color- 8 SRM
Procedure: Steep specialty grains for 15 minutes while bringing water to a boil. When water comes to a boil, remove from heat and add DME. Return the water to a boil and add hops to following schedule: 2oz @ 60min, 1oz @ 30min, 1oz @0min. Cool the water to 70ºF and pour into sterilized carboy. Top off with drinking water, to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast and ferment at 70ºF.
From the original recipe I substituted in the Ardennes yeast, as it has a high fermentation 
temperature and similar properties. I used Cascade pellets instead of fresh hops, as fresh hops are out of season and woudl be much more expensive on this scale. Northern Brewer was also out of Light crystal malt, so I substituted 22ºL in place of the original 10ºL crystal. I recorded the following notes while brewing:
DISSOLVING DME SUCKS
Placed specialty grains in water @ 10:36, removed at 10:50
Boiling start @ 11:20, 30 min @ 11:50, 0 min @ 12:20
Copper Cooling coil worked very fast with almost room temp water!
O.G. after moving to carboy was 1.082. Lots of hop trub left in the wort. Will definitely need to transfer to secondary fermentor after 1.5 weeks or so. I should take a second O.G. reading after all the hops have had time to settle.
I never did take that second reading, but given the extent of fermentation in the primary, I would imagine that the O.G. was in fact exagerated due to suspended hop trub in the freshly transferred wort. Oh, I also forgot to mention that I bought a copper wort cooler, and it is awesome. I have never cooled wort so fast, even using banks of snow. I failed to read the tag on the chiller however that sugested I boil it before my first batch to ensure any oil or residue had been removed. I did place the coils in the wort 15 minutes before cooling to sterilize it, but that may have some affect on the final beer. I also forgot to add Irish moss, so the beer may be less cloudy than it’s predecessor, but still cloudier than neccessary.
Here is my entry from racking the beer into the secondary:
Secondary:
The beer was racked from primary to secondary on 1-3-08. The beer was in the primary for 28 days. A gravity reading at the time of racking was 1.020 at 70ºF. Correcting for temperature gives a gravity of 1.021. A sample of the beer was a very light golf color, still cloudy but less so than the previous batch. The aroma was a very floral hop scent. The taste was malty yet not too sweet, with a decent bitterness. There were no apparent defects at this time.
Hopefully I won’t notice any defects later either. I should mention, that althoug the beer was left in primary for 28 days, I could have racked it sooner. I actually intended on doing so, but was out of town for most of the two weeks preceeding New Years Eve.
Filed under: Brewing, Misc | Tags: beer, Bike Sites, Bikes, Brewing, leftover epa, surly
It’s been quite a bit longer than I had planned since the last post. That’s not to say I haven’t been working on blog related things, I just haven’t done a good job documenting them. As my last post mentioned, I bought the ingredients for a second batch of Leftover EPA, and it is now resting in the secondary fermentor in my room. I plan on doing a full write-up of the beer shortly. I have also tasted many more beers since the last post, but I seem to have misplaced quite a few of my notes. I’ll post those tasting notes over the next week or so.
I’m still on break at the moment, but several obstacles have prevented me from completing the beer table and kegerator that I had planned on building over holiday. The first being that I managed to overdraft my checking account for the first and hopefully last time, and the second that I need to move at the end of February. I think I’ll wait until I have a more constant supply of money and housing before undertaking any more adventures.
While those plans seem to be on lay away, the biking world is still going strong. When I originally bought my Karate Monkey, I had the intention of riding it as a winter bike, using those ginormous 29″ tires to cuts through the banks of snow between me and my various destinations. So far, it has been a complete success. I have been working downtown the past few weeks and have been riding the KM from Dinkytown to work almost everyday (save for those few days where the temp was well below zero). As the temperature dropped, I’ve managed the cold pretty well. I’ve been layering various fleeces and sweatshirts and using my rainjacket as a windbreaking shell. My mish-mash collection of awesome (smart-wool) and terrible (5 year old, with holes in the bottom) boot socks have kept my toes and ankles warm successfully. To keep my noggin warm, I’ve been wearing a balaklava under my helmet. My old ski goggles have been protecting my eyes from wind, sun, and various debris.
About a month ago, I ventured over to Freewheel again, this time to by a bike rack. I would have ideally bought one of Surly’s “Nice Rack” racks, but they are hella expensive, and wouldn’t fit over my disc brake calipers. Instead, what I found was a seat post mounted rack with side mounts for panniers. I also bought two collapsible wire cargo… things that attach in place of panniers. The rack mounts to the post with four hex bolts, so I can attach/unattach it in under five minutes. This means I only have to ride with the extra weight when I plan on using the rack (ie, not when I’m on the single track at Theo Worth park).
Earlier this week, I got my first chance to actually put the thing to use when I bought my first groceries since buying the rack. 
I headed over to Rainbow and stocked up on the food stuff. I folded out the wire… things, and slid in my two reusable grocery bags. They fit perfectly. In between the two bags I nestled my OJ and potato chips then slapped two bungie cords across the top of the whole mess. I was suprised how much actually fit onto that bike. I was even more suprised When I tried to mount my bike and discovered how much those groceries actually weigh. Riding was fine once I got up to speed, but starting and stopping were more perilous as the rack would wobble with all the weight of the groceries hanging off the back of my seat. All in all, I would call the racks a success, especially considering I bought more groceries than I normally would. I plan on making a trip to northern brewer in the near future– the rack will be coming with me.
Filed under: Brewing, Cellar, Misc | Tags: beer, bells, Brewing, coffee, Lagunitas, leftover epa, mikkeller, peace coffee, speed racer, surly, Thomas Hardy's old ale
Quite a bit has happened in the last few days, expect more through updates on events in the near future…
On Friday, I ventured over to Northern Brewer and picked up some supplies. I bought a new auto-siphon and appropriate hosing, a copper wort chiller, and a faucet adapter. I can’t believe I 
waited this long to get a wort chiller. Even with basically room temp water, the chiller dropped the beer to within five degrees of 70F within ten minutes.
More importantly, I also purchased the necessary ingredients to make a five gallon batch of my Leftover EPA recipe. Which I brewed that night. It is currently chugging away in the primary fermentor. I made a couple modifications out of necessity and some of discretion. I also picked up a kit for “Peace Coffee Stout Porter,” made with local roaster, Peace Coffee’s beans. Their site describes the beer as such:
OG: 1046 / Ready: 4 weeks
Peace Coffee and Northern Brewer have teamed up to bring you an amazingly simple yet complex stout porter. Peace coffee works with local cooperatives to bring in 100% fair trade coffee from the farmers that grow it and delivers the coffee, through all seasons, by bicycle messenger. We love Peace Coffee for all these things, but just as importantly the coffee is freaking amazing! The stout porter has notes of black currants, black cherries, and cocoa with mouthfilling bready malt flavors. The specially formulated coffee blend was created to lend a rich, muscular coffee backbone and provides a fruity and spicy nose. Usually 1 + 1 = 2, but in this case 1 + 1 = 1000x times more awesomer than 2.
If I haven’t mentioned this already, my two favorite beer styles (by far and large, a million-trillion miles above anything else) are Old/Stock Ales, and Coffee beers. Specific favorites you might ask? Thomas Hardy’s Old Ale, Bell’s Java Stout (which I recently learned is no longer in production), and Surly’s Coffee Bender (which I recently learned will be in cans in the near future).
On Saturday, I ventured back to Haskell’s to submit a request for holiday hours, and picked up a couple beers to cellar for a while. I picked up two bottles of FullSail 21st anniversary Dopplebock, A bottle of Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout, and a bottle of Mikellor Black Hole Coffee Russian imperial Stout. In combination with a bottle of Rogue Double Dead Guy from my mother, think I’ve started a pretty good collection for a cellar. Now I just need somewhere to cellar these beers… Is there another project in my future? Maybe a nice bottle rack?
I also had a tulip of Surly smoke and it tasted like ribs. Delicious, delicious, ribs. Delicious enough for fragment sentences, even.
Lastly, my lovely girlfriend bought me a speed racer slot car track for x-mas (we couldn’t hold out given each other our gifts any longer). I will be playing with it later tonight.
