White House Honey Ale

Pretty easy kit on a pretty easy night with Montre, drinking up the remnants of the Wyeast version of the Super Bowl Blackout Oatmeal Stout. Not much to say, brewing went off without any monkey wrenches.

Steep:
0.75 lbs English Medium Crystal Malt
0.5 lbs Belgian Biscuit Malt

Boil
6.3 lbs Gold malt syrup (60 min)
1 lb Gold dry malt extract (60 min)
Gravity at .1050 prior to the honey,
1 lb Honey (5 min)

OG: 1072, which is higher than the expected 1062

1.5 oz East Kent Goldings 5.8% alpha (45 min)
1.5 oz UK Fuggles 4.5% alpha (15 min)
Danstar Windsor Ale - Optimum temperature: 64-70°F

... we'll see if the pantry sink can stay in the 75 degree range duing fermentation.

7 week mark:
Two day-long C02 infusions at 22lbs, and we tried it out for a session with Scottie and Monte. Yes, it's a real session beer. And, the light went on: it's an English ale with Honey. Guess I wasn't thinking too much about the White House aspect of the kit (since it was a freebie with my Northern Brewer order), but supposedly, Zero made a big splash by brewing beer in DC:

Inspired by home brewers from across the country, last year President Obama bought a home brewing kit for the kitchen. After the few first drafts we landed on some great recipes that came from a local brew shop. We received some tips from a couple of home brewers who work in the White House who helped us amend it and make it our own. To be honest, we were surprised that the beer turned out so well since none of us had brewed beer before.
As far as we know the White House Honey Brown Ale is the first alcohol brewed or distilled on the White House grounds. George Washington brewed beer and distilled whiskey at Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson made wine but there's no evidence that any beer has been brewed in the White House. (Although we do know there was some drinking during prohibition…)
Since our first batch of White House Honey Brown Ale, we've added the Honey Porter and have gone even further to add a Honey Blonde this past summer. Like many home brewers who add secret ingredients to make their beer unique, all of our brews have honey that we tapped from the first ever bee-hive on the South Lawn. The honey gives the beer a rich aroma and a nice finish but it doesn't sweeten it.

Um, like everything Obama's done during his worst-presidency ever, no one told him that he didn't have to brew an English Ale. Another case of either pathetically ignorant, or willfully errant.

Tres Bros Honey Brown

Dew and I at Dave P's place. First time I've packed up all the gear to do a remote brewing! Simply used the Northern Brewer Honey Brown kit, but swapped out the Wyeast 1056 for dry Nottingham.

SPECIALTY GRAINS - 25 mins up to 170 degrees
.25 lbs Simpson’s Chocolate
.25 lbs Dingemans Special B
.25 lbs Dingemans Biscuit
.25 lbs Briess Special Roast

FERMENTABLES
6 lbs Gold malt syrup
1 lb Honey late addition (45 min)

HOPS
1 oz Cluster @ 7.5% (4/5ths at 30 min, 1/5th aroma at 45 min)

Kinda knocking the Naughty Brown formula, but substituting Cluster for Cascade, and real grains (!) for the Quaker oats. This should be good!
Everything went like clockwork. Nice slow steeping on the grains, got up to a good boil after a 10 minute-ish in-between after adding in the extract - so, really a 50 minute rolling boil. Dew brought the magic in the form of a full Lengthwise pig of seasonal Brown and a good tri tip.

What to report? Hops went in and smelled yummy. Dave got the yeast wet in a cup and we dabbed in a spot of honey. Honey went into the boil and we skimmed off the foam impurities. Ran the hose chiller, put the yeast in first, and kegged in a leaker corney.
Shooting for an OG of 1050, hit it right on the mark. Grains and extract, before the honey, was 1030, FYI.

Day 2, the Nottingham is going great, pushing gas out of the top cap.

Day 3: Someone did me a favor and added some plastic atop the corney to keep it from making a mess. And, in the process, depressed the release valve, closing it. The perfect little slow-leak we had goin' was no more, the tank built up pressure all night, and the brew waited like a pandora's box for me to release it this morning. Which I did ... all over the floor, walls and my clothes.
The fermentation is vigorous, we'll say. Now to continue to pull the pin on that release valve everytime I think of it for the next few days – which I was hoping to be freed from thinking about. Ah well.

Day 6: Finished the ferment at 1008. Thrown into the fridge and we'll rack out of the bottom in a day or two.

9 Weeks Later:
There's still a bit of a funk to what's going on in that corney. Hit it really hard with the Co2 and will pull off anything that's still floating around in there. We drank up 5 gallons of this one's twin that was a week younger while brewing a chocolate Phat Tyre today, but when that ran out, we opted for real New Belgium/Rogue Muddy Tires instead of drinking this. Hope it can turn around.

Honey Brown Ale

What would happen if you augmented the slightly dry, caramelly and roasty character of a smooth, mellow English brown ale with the sweet floral flavor of clover honey? What if you added the honey at the very last possible minute to maximize its presence in the finished beer? What if it was delicious? Something with a little backbone, but still smooth.

So, the stuff came from Northern Brewer, who calls this "A light, clean fermenting ale modeled after the "cream lagers" of the northeast United States. Low in gravity, long on flavor, this beer is a pale thirst-quencher, great for brewing and enjoying in the summertime. Dingemans Biscuit Malt gives our Cream Ale a warm, toasty flavor that complements the light hopping." Bring it. We've got some Cream Stout that needs some pairing for Black n' Tannage.

Steeping: .5 lb. Simpson's Chocolate, .5 lb. Dingemans Special B, .5 lb. Dingemans Biscuit, .5 lb. Briess Special Roast
Extract: 12 lbs. Gold Malt Syrup
Honey: 2 lbs. Clover
Bitters: 1 oz. Cluster pellets (7.5%) at 30 minutes into boil; .75 oz Cluster at 50 minutes in, then .25 oz pellets and 1 oz Cascade leaf (8.7%)
Yeast: Safbrew S-33's, started on honey water 12 hours prior

Steeped the grains for 30 mins from 80 degrees up to 125, drinking up the last pitcherful of the Cream Ale. Hey look! We've got a corney of the Cream Stout in the fridge hiding behind that Ale. And it's good!
Took 30 minutes to get the 10 gallons up to a rolling boil, the first hops going in then. The biggest long chain bread crumbs floating around in their after the protein break that I'd ever seen.

Added the second Cluster, and let the boil go, thinking we'd get in a quick WoD during the half hour before the next batch of hops to go in, but it all took longer than we thought. Boiled 7 minutes longer than the 30 planned, put in the final Cascade and shut off the heat.

Oh, yeah, that honey stuff.

Fired up the gas again, started stirring, poured it in, then just shut it all back down. No honey boil. This ain't mead. heh.

Chilled and really took a long time to get back under 100 degrees. Two full corneys (not much head space) but a lot of yeast in there workin'. Corneys in the garage, should be at an optimum temperature of 59–75° F. It'll run a little warm, but let's git 'er done.

No real mishaps, everything tasting, looking and smelling good. Thinking that the normal OG would be in the low 1040ies, but we're at 1050. Rock the house.

Day 4: Fermentation stopping at 1011 for both corneys. Into the chiller wid' ye.

Three weeks later, we had a sweetish light brown liquid with an alcoholic sledgehammer hidden within every glass. Dry. 11.5% octane.

Six weeks later. It's smooth, smooth. The hammer's still within, but softened with a layer of brown velvet. It's a win, but don't drink it on an empty stomach.

Cream Ale on Walker's Dime.

Cream Ale was Walker's idea. A lawnmower beer for the guy who never comes over and mows my lawn. Bastard. His only saving grace is that he bought the ingredients.

So, the stuff came from Northern Brewer, who calls this "A light, clean fermenting ale modeled after the "cream lagers" of the northeast United States. Low in gravity, long on flavor, this beer is a pale thirst-quencher, great for brewing and enjoying in the summertime. Dingemans Biscuit Malt gives our Cream Ale a warm, toasty flavor that complements the light hopping." Bring it. We've got some Cream Stout that needs some pairing for Black n' Tannage.

Steeping: .75 lbs. Gambrinus Honey Malt & .25 lbs. Dingemans Biscuit
Extract: 6 lbs. Pilsen Malt Syrup
Bitters: 1 oz. Cluster
Yeast: Safale US-05

Shooting for an OG in the low 1040ies / FG: 1010.

Cooked up everything using a lot less water this go-round. Only making 5 gallons, but put in two to steep up the grains. Everything goes a lot faster this way! Got to 150 degrees in no time, then in goes the extract. A hard boil in a minute, and maybe a protein break at 20 mins. Hopefully a protein break at 20 minutes, because that's all the boil that was boil this batch. Quick with the hops, and used the new outdoor shower to fill with cool water, and aerate in one action. Wort was still hot though!

Left the batch in the new pepsi leaker to ferment while I took a trip to Anaheim - four days of 68 degrees did the trick. OG: 1042, FG: 1010. Love it when it all works out. Chilled and racked a bit, with no filtration, and gave it all an hour and a few shakes at 30 lbs carbonation.

Day 14: Still a bit green, and seems a mite cloudy, for what we're looking for. Or what Walker's looking for - that budmeister grass-cuttings flave. May need some filter.

Drank up the last of it on Oct 18th, as we brewed up a Honey Brown. An orangy brown, with some hoppiness and some sharp overtones. Better with age until the end.

Sweet Creamy Stout

Creamy has to do with adding Lactose, here, for the first time. Not because of what you're thinking, gutter-minded one.

Okay, so it's winter-going-on-spring, the wife likes the dark ales, and marathon training demands some recovery drink that's both hearty and nutritious. Time to brew up the first Stout ever in time for it to parade in all its green glory for Super Bowl Sunday.

* approx 1 lb. Quaker Oats (steeped)
* 1 lb. Dingemans Debitter Black (steeped)
* 1 lb. Simpson's Chocolate (steeped)
___
* 12 lb. Amber malt syrup
*. 2 lb. wildflower honey
* 2 oz. Willamette Pellets (4.4% alpha: Boil - 40 mins.)
___
* 1 oz. Fuggle Pellets for aroma (4.6% alpha: Chill steep)
* .75 lb. Lactose (we went light on this, because we're old and lactose intolerant)
* a pair of Danstar dry Nottinghams.

Shooting for an OG of 1040-5ish / FG: 1010.

So, I got everything cooking, and begged the wife to find my floating thermometer for me. I'd been waiting for the ingredients to arrive for over a week. One would think I'd be better prepped. Besides a mostly meaty pig of seasonal Brown Ale from Lengthwise and a good attitude, we weren't at all prepared for this.

From 140 to 160, we steeped up the grains and the oatmeals. Pulling out the muslin left brown-black drainage that one would expect from an old oil filter. Noice! We're getting Stoutish now, baby.

Got a light boil going for 40 mins, don't think we really hammered out a protein break. Everything smelled great with the malt and honey going at the half hour mark. Took a preliminary OG: 1043 at about 65 degrees. We're gonna kick some buttocks. Took a couple of mugs out of the wort and poured them into the corneys, after letting them cool, Walker and I added a pack of Nottingham each. He gets the right-side-up keg; I get the upside-down one. (Actually, I get them both, since I get to walk out to the garage and press my lips to the tap anytime I want. But you understand both what I mean, and the depth of my personal determination, responsibility and inpregnable integrity).

Mostly did some talking and stirring, and dropped in the Fuggles and the lactose after shutting down the heat. Walker got to babysit the chiller while I tucked CC in. All got cool, and poured the wort with the team effort we've developed over the long haul of doing this twice. We spilled a bunch but still got 4.75 gallons into mine, and 4.5 gallons into Walker's.

Out the corneys go to the service porch. We'll get a good, hard fermentation going before we go into the fridge. More soon.

Day 3: After two days of super-aggro fermentation at 68 degrees, I was afraid all was going too quickly. Moved everything into the cooler at 62 degrees for a day. Then, racked off some and gave it a hydro reading. 1030 for mine, and 1033 for Walker's. Hmmm. Moving it back into the warm.

Day 4: Now, everything's slowing down. Tomorrow morning, I jack you punks into the fridge at 40 and teach you a lesson.

Day 6: Racking off some of the flocculated yeast and cold slurry, then back into hibernation.

A few more days of that racking-off-the-bottom and the yeast is owning. Ordered a cartridge filter with a 1 micron mesh. It'll be here midweek to Save the Day.

Day 21: Wednesday = midweek, and 3 weeks from boil. Pushed my (read: not Walker's) corneyfull through the filter first, but Charlie's new/old soda kegs are both leakers (suitable for primaries; the other one is fermenting mead as we do this filtration). So, I ran "mine" through into the leaker, ran Walker's into mine after a rinse, then mine back outta the leaker into Walker's, after a rinse. So we swapped corneys, but most notably, "mine" got filtered twice. Ah, we'll see if there's magic in the mistakes.
On a side note, there's a gorgeous depth to the dark of this stout. Watching it bubble back and forth through the filtration hoses was picturesque.
Shame we're gonna have to turn it all back into piss!

Put 'em both on 30 lbs. pressure and shook 'em 50 times - hey! it's a new Crossfit exercise for time! - and put them back on ice. Tomorrow. Tomorrow will tell.

Day 35: So, it's 3 weeks-ish later, and after a long session for Big Sur, and I'm dreaming about spaghetti and a hearty, nutritious stout. This didn't disappoint. We hit the mark spot on with the gravity, mouth-feel (note to self: 1/3 the lactose of others' recipes is plenty good), chocolate and coffee hints all over. We win.

Cracked open the corney and hit it with some gas on Oct 18th, as we cooked up some Honey Brown - fine nitrogenous bubbles, double-barrelled coffee burst and a smooth finish. Wow, where'd this come from?

Beer: It Ain't Beer

The Bottom Line: It ain't beer.

We Americans put some really stupid stuff into our beer. We take out some really great stuff from our beer. We don't really deserve to call what we make and drink beer. We pretend we're drinking soft drinks. Where will it end?

We Americans put some really stupid stuff into our beer. That's why it ain't beer. If you plop a turd into a punch bowl, do you still consider the punch bowl's contents punch? Mmmm, poo-nch. Heck, no. But here we are, diluting good golden, sun-ripened heartland barley malt with corn and rice, cooking it up and calling the derivative beer.

The Germans knew we'd try to bastardize beer 500 years ago. In an effort to avert potential disaster, they wrote up the German Purity Law (in thick-tongued English, after a tipping a few back, pronounced "Reinheitsgebot") delineating barley, hops and water as the only possible ingredients used in the brewing of beer. I think it's because they'd tasted Sake and Moonshine and didn't want any parallel Teutonic futures to include beer-mutations made from rice or corn products. Forward-looking race, those Germans.
Anyway, barley, hops and water. That's beer. Since the Germans of 1516 didn't know anything about microorganisms, we give everyone a pass and include yeast in a modern listing of ingredients. Barley, hops, yeast and water, okay. But that's where it has to end! The Germans bombed and bombed and bombed the English during WWII for thumbing their reddened noses at the Reinheitsgebot with their upraised pints of Oatmeal stout. But did the English get the message? Heck no.

And neither did we, obviously. I mean, don't expect me to even go into how we Americans get really, really stupid and add peaches, limes, lemons, raspberry extracts, chili peppers and even Cheerios to our beers. That's not beer! You don't have to have read the Reinheitsgebot to know that nothing good can come of such unholy experimentation.
How long can we show such a blatant disregard for iron German law? It's only a matter of time before the Germans come for us. And we'll have no one to blame but ourselves for the carnage.
Besides, I think the Mexicans are behind it. I think they're trying to start some trouble between America and Germany, then woosh swoop in over our border and reclaim all that land they lost at the Alamo. And then some. The first time someone handed me a Mexican beer with a slice of lime stuffed into the bottle's mouth, I figured that the feller was trying to save me. You know, don't drink the water, and all that. I had no idea he was serious. But now I know what a deadly serious Fifth Columnist he was.

We Americans take out some really great stuff from our beers. Stuff like nutrition, flavor, and the yeast.
Beer is supposed to be a living thing - you know, little living yeasties consuming malt sugars and peeing out alcohol and tooting Co2. That's fermentation, the beer-making process. Open your mouth; taste; swallow water, malt, hops, yeast, peed alcohol; belch tooted Co2. That's intoxication, the beer-drinking process. At least in the countries where people drink real beer.

Here in America, brewing our proprietary beers is not so simple. We have to work to extract all the life from the stuff. Sure, we force the yeast to eat those corn/rice additives and still do their fermentation in lively fashion, but then what? Run the derivative through a filter and strain out the yeast. After all their hard work, is that all the thanks they get? Sure! Next, spin the concoction down in a centrifuge and separate the liquid from the color and substance. Fine! Oh, and then pasteurize the remainder to neutralize any elements left that even remotely show signs of life. Great!
Then, insult to injury, why not sticker the bottle with a Born-On dated label to create the illusion that it's a fresh and living thing instead of the flavorless, bodiless, lifeless corpse of a beer? Because that's what it is, I guarantee it.

As far as the beer-drinking process in America is concerned, the only ones who really get it are the high-school and college students. They're young. They don't appreciate what the breweries had to accomplish to remove the flavor and life from their beers. They only know that it shouldn't come in contact with their tastebuds, so they, in their youthful exuberance and creativity, build beer bongs, shotguns and funnels. And the flow continues.

But it's not beer that's flowing!

Let's hold up for a minute. We don't really even deserve to call what we make and drink beer. We can't in good conscience call this American corn/rice/malt derivative-beverage beer! I suggest that we hereafter use "corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverage" to avoid any misrepresentation. We're drinking corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages! That's why it ain't beer.

We add all this other stuff, we drain the life from it. It's no wonder we Americans pretend we're drinking soft drinks when we're sipping one of our corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages.
I mean, which came first? Lite beer, or diet Soda? Weren't they born-on the same date? Do you really think, oh smug American man with that Coors Light in your hand, that the Germans are going to be drinking light Bier as they marshal their strength for a sudden retributory strike at the heart of America? I don't think so! Don't you know what damage you're doing to the international prestige of The Home Of The Brave? Isn't it bad enough that Aussies snigger contemptuously and the Irish shoot ale from their noses when they talk about how insubstantial our regular corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages are? And yet you have the impudence to purchase a lightened version?
It's people like you who weaken America in the eyes of the world and make America a laughingstock to those who we would hope to lead. OH, sure! You didn't make America a laughingstock; Bill Clinton was to blame for that. Riiiight. Pointing fingers won't deflect attention from that pathetic can of mostly-water you're holding, son.

How twisted, emasculated and weak! How far we have fallen! And here is the ultimate sign that the apocalypse is upon us: the latest American craze is to paint and sugar corn/rice/malt derivative beer-alternative-beverages into lemonade or orangeade lookalikes; or to sweeten them up while simultaneously taking all the coloring and body out to simulate an alcoholic Seven-Up. It's the end of the world as we know it, surely.
But this final step into absurdity might actually be a hopeful, healthy step in the direction of healing. We may snap out of our inebriation to look with eyes that truly see upon that underachieving glass of liquid before us. We may awaken and avert certain destruction if we're actually no longer pretending that we're really drinking beer.

'Cause we ain't.