It's been a year...

And far too long, really, since I did anything with this blog.  It's high time I started updating it again, I think.  Life has kind of been tossed into the air of late, and shows no indication of landing before Midsummer, so my updates may be rather spotty, but I'll do what I can to keep things moving.

Without further ado, here's what I've been up to lately:

I'm busy doing a translation of a late-period (~1575) German book on beer.  I've got a rough version of one chapter down, and hope to do at least two more of the five total.  (The first chapter looks like a long-winded intro; the last chapter seems to rehash the first.  I'll do quick down-and-dirty runs through those, to double check, and revise my goals as needed.)  Among other things, there is a discussion of the ingredients of beer (water, barley and/or wheat, and hops--yeast is mentioned as an aside in one paragraph, not as an "ingredient"), as well as the characteristics that define good and bad beers, and what I've been terming a "beer tour of northern Germany," listing over 100 towns/villages and the types of beer that are brewed there.

I've also been playing with other things that I'll be detailing here.  Even if they aren't exactly beer-related, I feel they fit with the overall theme of the blog (hand-crafted, artisanal-type things).  I'm moving into cured meats, and will be posting about them from time to time; I've done a reasonable (and simple!) duck-breast prosciutto, and am currently sourcing pork bellies to make bacon.

All this, and I've done a little brewing, too.  Given the above-mentioned "up-in-the-air" factor, not nearly as much as I'd like, but there's been a little.  As soon as things settle somewhat, I hope to get firmly back into the swing of brewing at least monthly.  I also hope to be able to expand things somewhat on that front; I'll fill in info on that in a future post.

Thanks for sticking with me, and it's great to be back!

Long Hiatus

Whew!  And what a year it's been, so far...  On the home front, life has become extremely hectic--thus, my lack of attention to this blog, lately.  Things are plugging along at their usual pace on the brewing front.  The work front--well, it's become the cause for much of the business on the home front.

I've had at least two Brewing Days since my last post...  In all, four batches:  two smoked, two "regular."  The smoked included a smoked mild and a smoked porter, using home-smoked malt (smoked over apple wood).  In future, I need to let the freshly-smoked malt mellow at least a few days, as the smoke flavor was intense, and a bit acrid.  The leftover smoked malt from that brew day is noticeably milder and more pleasant.  Also, a mild ale seems not to be the best match to smoke, necessarily, as it lacks the full flavor to either compete with or complement the smoke.  The porter, on the other hand, is coming out nicely.

The latest brew day included another iteration of my Kolsch-style hybrid, this time using Papazian's Cry Havoc yeast from White Labs.  I haven't racked this yet, so haven't tasted it, but it appears to be behaving normally...  The other batch I made was a sweet stout, which seems to be doing its thing nicely.  Nothing to report; I'll talk about it more when I tap it.

The big news is that I'm trying to amass a large-ish stockpile, and I'll be having a blowout at the end of July--I'm anticipating 7 brews tapped at a time, plus barbecue and lots of company.  The reason?  I will have retired from 20 years in the Navy, and will need to celebrate, before going on to whatever Government Contracting job I can pick up between now and then.  So, it's back to tweaking the resume for me; I'll try to update more often, but can't promise much for a month or two.  Cheers!

Quick Mead Update

Just a quick note on how the quick mead turned out:  the pyment finished, cleared, and was bottled; the "traditional" mead was still cloudy as of Monday.  I'm visiting with family (I hope everyone's Thanksgiving is/was well); we've cracked one bottle of the pyment.

Overall, I'd call it a mixed success.  It came across as an off-dry red table wine.  Its concord grape character was still quite evident; the honey was very subdued.  I will absolutely have to do this again with "good" wine grapes--perhaps Riesling for a white; maybe a nice Cab-Sauv for a red.  It will, I'm sure, end up even more wine-like.  I'll probably sweeten it a bit further on the back end, as well: make it semi-sweet, and it will probably bear a strong resemblance to the Georgian wines I'm so fond of.  If I did a bit less back-sweetening, I think it would have more of a wine character, despite the concord grapes.

One area that I'm simply amazed: it dropped absolutely crystal clear, "read a newspaper through it" clear, and all that in under a month.  It's the most beautiful ruby red...  Photos will be forthcoming after I get home, next week.

Experimentation Update

Well, we're a little over a week into the experiment with quick meads, and I have a moment or two to spare, so I thought I'd give an update on where things are.

I had done two supposed "quick meads;" one a pyment, the other a traditional.  The pyment (done from this recipe) started at a gravity reading of 1.109; as of about 6pm today, it was at 0.999 (!).  It's not cleared at all, but fermentation does appear to be nearly over.  Flavor-wise, it tastes like your typical concord grape juice; granted, at a calculated 14-1/2% ABV, it'll be quite sneaky...  I'm probably going to rack it onto stabilizers and a little more juice & honey in an hour or so, but I may wait until tomorrow.

The traditional, done from another similar recipe, started at about 1.101, and has made it down to 1.038 today.  The two are sitting side-by-side, and are the same temperature; I've even given the traditional a little more nutrient, yet it's still going much more slowly.  Just goes to show how much wine yeasts like grape juice, I suppose...  This one is a little more "typical" tasting--nice honey notes; the buckwheat used (I'll track down the recipe and link to it next time) gives it a lovely depth--and will be quite nice, once it ferments its way down to where it should be--I'd like about 1.010 or so, but even a little lower would be nice.  I can always back-sweeten, after all.  The original recipe had it go from 1.100 to 1.020 in 2 weeks; I'll let it go, and see where it is come Monday.  Should be about right, unless the yeast decides to hang up completely. 

Here is a picture of how they looked when starting; adding one of how they look now would serve no purpose, as they haven't substantively changed:

Experimentation

So, while I've been lax in updating this blog, I've been (reasonably) active with some experimentation.  My last brew day, one week ago today, saw one modified "normal" batch and one experimental, and I'll be whipping up two more experimental batches tomorrow evening.

The modified batch was a version of my (quite popular) Kolsch recipe, but with the volume turned up to 11.  I believe it will end more like a pale ale than anything else.  I was down to basically dregs on my current base malt stash, and decided to use it all; this bumped the starting gravity up about 25-30 points.  I increased the bitterness by a similar amount, keeping the BU:GU ratio roughly the same...  It will still be quite pale, I believe--something in the golden range--but with a firm bittering, and a solid malt backbone.

The experimental batch was based on the idea of caramelizing honey for a mead.  Several folks have done so-called "bochet", or "burnt" meads, with the results being described as different, if not entirely to their liking.  I was going for a slightly less "cooked" flavor, and hoping for an improved color.  (Not that a straw-gold mead is a bad thing, but it's just a bit... well, overdone.)  I took my "spare" pot (7.5 gallons) and emptied 10lbs of wildflower honey into it.  With a touch of water to rinse the honey containers, the total volume was right about 1 gallon.

Honey, before the boil

All accounts that I've read regarding boiling/caramelizing honey indicate that it foams up quite a lot.  I had planned on simply stirring like mad to keep it from boiling over; let me recommend instead using a very low flame.  The stuff literally tried to crawl out of the pot.

45 minutes into the boil; still climbing the pot, but a lovely color.

I boiled for about an hour, all told; the honey turned a lovely deep amber, and even my kids commented on the "caramel" smell.  A second word of warning for those who would follow in my footsteps:  bees can smell the honey cooking.  They will come to try to "rescue" it.  Lots of them will.  At the end of the hour, there were about 6 big bumblebees and maybe 15-20 honeybees swarming the pot.  At least three of the honeybees gave their lives trying to grab some of the honey--they got "caught" by bursting bubbles, and fell into the pot.  I don't think they'll throw the flavor off by much, though.  At any rate, the end result is quite pretty, and is (still) fizzing away happily.

The mead and the Kolsch; the mead is the dark one just left of center.

As for tomorrow's adventures, I'll be throwing together some more meads--a few folks over on the GotMead forums have some "quick" meads, supposedly ready-to-drink in 3-5 weeks.  We shall see...  I'll try to document those with pics here.