Quarantine=really clean beer, right?

...at least that is what I am telling myself as I seek to brew my first batch of beer in about a year and a half. I have been in possession of some ingredients for 2.5 gal "half" batches for a little while now, but I just haven't had the time to *really* get my Madaket home ready for a good, clean brew day. After many weeks of quarantine, I am happy to say that the house is reaching a promising level of squeakiness, and I am ready to go. Here's what is on deck:

brACKfast stout: a coffee cream oatmeal stout. Notes of dry cocoa and coffee roast derived from dark malts and actual coffee from my favorite roaster, Armeno Coffee in Northboro, MA. Creamy mouthfeel thanks to the oats. Perfect for brunching. I know it's not exactly "dark beer season" but convention be damned...think cold brew coffee on a bright summer morning that's also a comforting warmer on those stormy days in June-uary.

Blonde Bees Have More Fun: tried and true, this is my house recipe Belgian-style blonde ale, to be brewed with local Nantucket honey (apiary citation needed). Target ABV 6-7%, with what you would expect from a Belgian, lots of banana/clove character from the yeast, reasonably effervescent, very dry finish. Good for literally anytime.

Huzzah. I've loved all my quarantine sourdough experiments, but it's definitely beer time.

The stuff on which dreams are made...literally

Greetings and cheers, readers! This entry finds me back in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, back where my wonderful journey with this hobby all began. As stated via Twitter earlier in the year, I have been sitting on ingredients for a couple of batches for a little while now. Since then, life happened and all of a sudden I found myself traveling, moving, and finally setting up shop back in my old stomping grounds. I am now finally in a place where I can actually get to brewing again. First up is a highly exciting project, one that literally came to me in a dream...

...Bacchanalia/Lisztomania--one grain bill, two beers. As previously seen with my Sea Symphony Barleywine, the last of which we drank on my birthday this year (nectar of the gods at 4 years old and around 10-11% ABV), I will do another go of one of the coolest and more historic brewing practices in existence--partigyle brewing. For the brewing novice, this is where we take one gigantic grain bill, this particular one involves 27 lbs of grain, and make two glorious batches from it. It is highly common in a home system to lose efficiency when brewing a super high gravity beer, so this process involves WAY overshooting the grain bill, making a large 10-12% beer from the first runnings with no sparge, then resparging and making a 3-4% small beer with the leftover sugars. This is great because we will end up with a delicious session beer that can be drunk right away and big ol' strong ale that will get better literally for years to come. But enough of the technical nonsense, let's get onto the beer.

Beer 1 - "Bacchanalia": a 10-12% dark Belgian strong ale with some oak aging (perhaps some wine-soaked oak aging). Expect lots of dark fruit, spicy complexity, and warming alcohol that will mellow over time.

Beer 2 - "Lisztomania": a virtuosic 3-4% pale ale with Belgian yeast, this experimental guy will be a sort of "mini-IPA" with Belma and Citra hop varieties, which carry lots of juicy, tropical fruit notes and a soft, mellow bitterness. I have a feeling this one will be gone in a flash.

More info to come once I get brewing. Until then, Prost!

Post-move return to the game

Greetings, readers! It has been quite a while. After a couple of wonderful summer brews, including several repeatable highlights, a few factors led to a temporary hiatus, including lots of time away from home and a move to a new apartment (more about that in a second). While I have missed brewing a great deal, I am supremely excited for my next reboot. With the new apartment, I have enough room again for my homemade four-tap kegerator! Naturally, I had to plan out four brilliant batches to go on it first. 

I wanted to do a few simple-but-wonderful explorations, with one really wild "homebrew"-style beer. As such, it's now time to play "One of these things is not like the others":

Belgian Honey Blonde: a classic exploration of a 6-7% abv flavorful Belgian blonde, but instead of the classic candi sugar, I will use honey. Honey is awesome and I love the floral subtleties it adds to beer.

"Mild Porter": a porter-inspired English mild, so named because it will straddle the line between robust mild and low-abv porter 

SMaSH English IPA: a big ol' English IPA using only Maris Otter (my all-time favorite base malt) and East Kent Goldings. I bought my first-ever 1-pound bag of hops, because I will be using a great deal of EKG in the IPA, and I will also be using them in ALL FOUR OF THESE BEERS, so it will be a total EKG party.

PSL Stout: make fun if you want, but I love pumpkin beers, and I do crave a pumpkin spice latte from time to time when the air gets colder and crisper and the leaves start changing colors. This beer will be a coffee milk stout brewed with pumpkin and a potion of pie spices. I haven't been into making many crazy flavored things lately, mostly because I like the classic ingredients speak for themselves, but this idea just seemed too delicious to pass up.

Return of the four-tapper! Woohoo!

My return to the game

For those of you that have been faithful readers of this blog in the past, you are well aware of the fact I haven't been brewing much in the last couple of years, as well as my propensity for lengthy (sometimes involuntary) hiatuses. Frankly, this makes me sad. I have plenty of free time, a little disposable income, and a fiery passion for beer. I would like to return to the days when I was brewing more consistently, firstly because I miss having homebrew in the house. Secondly--and perhaps most importantly--beer is a creative outlet for me. I'm starting to feel like a bedridden Keith Jarrett with all of these ideas whirring around in my head and nowhere to exercise them, and at this point I feel like I owe it to myself to get things rolling again. I'm hoping these upcoming batches will serve as my very own The Melody at Night, with You. 

Recently, I read an article (which I of course can't relocate at the moment, but for which I will post a link when I do find it) about brewing one-gallon batches of in lieu of making yeast starters (small batches of unhopped beer meant solely to stimulate yeast growth and get a proper volume of yeast to pitch into a 5-gallon batch). I don't always make starters, but in an attempt to hone my methods a bit and take my beer to the next level, I'm going to try and avoid underpitching from hear on out. To save my more casual beer fans from too much jargon, this way the yeast will do what it's supposed to, and the beer will taste better and be the correct ABV.

I have planned a simple but classic 1-gallon ordinary bitter to build up a nice yeast cake for my all-time favorite recipe, the Westminster 1839 Porter. Here are the two recipes:

Ordinary People:

Target OG: 1.038

Target FG: 1.012

Target ABV: 3.3%

Target IBU: 29

Projected SRM: 12°L (copper/amber)

1 lb Maris Otter

4 oz Crystal 60L

1 oz brown sugar

12 g (for accuracy) East Kent Goldings @30 min

7 g East Kent Goldings @flameout

WLP002 English Ale yeast

Westminster 1839 Porter:

Target OG: 1.057

Target FG: 1.019

Target ABV: 5%

Target IBU: 45

Projected SRM: 32°L (VERY dark, almost opaque)

8 lbs Maris Otter

2 lbs Brown malt

8 oz Black patent malt

2.5 oz Fuggles @60 minutes

1.5 oz Fuggles @5 minutes

WLP002 English Ale yeast cake from Ordinary People

I'm very excited about these. The porter was really tasty last time, and I just love a good, quaffable English bitter. If the porter comes out as well as last time, I've got my eye on a May competition in Philly...but more on that later.

Thanks for reading, and PROST!

Planning my triumphant return

Having not brewed in almost a year, I am finally making plans for my return-to-the-game batch. I am actually planning two brother batches, one session strength beer and one high ABV beer, using the same yeast strain.  I hope to brew one and possibly both in the first week of August, as it is my first truly free week of the summer. The plan is to brew two very exciting original Belgian hybrids, two brand new recipes that I've never done before.  Here is what we have to look forward to:

Friar Tuck Belgian Mild:
Target OG: 1.040
Target FG: 1.009
Target ABV: 4.1%
Target IBU: 13
Projected SRM: 23°L (brown)

6 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb flaked wheat
8 oz Special 'B'
4 oz Midnight Wheat (or Carafa III)

Single Infusion Mash @154°

8 oz Dark Belgian Candi Syrup

1 oz Styrian Goldings (pellet)  @First wort hop (so I can get some smooth bittering qualities as well as some late addition character)

WLP500 Trappist Ale


Belgocalifornication IPA:
Target OG: 1.075
Target FG: 1.017
Target ABV: 7.7%
Target Bitterness: 53 IBU
Projected Color: 14 °L (amber)

12 lbs Maris Otter
3 lbs flaked wheat
8 oz Special 'B'

Single Infusion Mash - 152°

8 oz Dark Belgian Candi Syrup

1 oz Columbus (pellet) @60

1 oz Amarillo (leaf) @10
1 oz Centennial (pellet) @10
1 oz Citra (leaf) @10

1 oz Amarillo (leaf) @flame out
1 oz Centennial (pellet)@flame out
1 oz Citra (leaf) @flame out

1 oz Centennial (pellet) dry-hop 14 days
1 oz Citra (leaf) dry-hop 7 days
1 oz Amarillo (leaf) dry-hop 5 days

WLP500 yeast cake from Friar Tuck Belgian Mild

I am super excited for these.  I love Belgian ales as much as I love breaking the rules, and these recipes satisfy both of those criteria.  I am also a big fan of reusing yeast as it saves a bunch of money per batch and doesn't require a starter.  More updates to come in a week or so.

Be back soon!

I'll be back in full swing once the school year starts and I get a few paychecks coming in, but in the meantime, I wanted to give a shoutout to HomebrewStuff.com and their fantastic products.  They're currently doing a raffling off of two tickets to GABF, so I'll keep my fingers crossed!

What I think I'll be brewing when I get up and going again:

• Steam beer
• Autumnal saison
• Ordinary bitter/EPA
• Westminster Porter #2

Those may change, but just thinking about some possibilities gets me looking forward to getting back in the game.  Until then!

Summer series!

Hey all!  I've been gone a long time because of busy life and out-of-townness.  I am now back for the rest of the summer, and once I get a handle on my summer finances, I'll start cranking out some tasty summer brews, particularly some lighter, refreshing ones.  Here are the ones I've got in mind as of now:

• Belgo-Moroccan Wit: a beer that I've been planning for a while!  Traditional Belgian witbier with Ras-el-hanout Morocc an spice blend [which I'm still looking for...may have to buckle down and make my own if I can't find it in a store]
• Hoppy American Wheat: a nice refreshing American "lawnmower" beer infused with citra hops
• Saison[s]: Not fully decided on exactly what I want to do with this one, but I think I want to do a session/table saison with traditional ingredients, or maybe I'll do one a little stronger [5-6% abv] to have a nice dinnertime sipping beer
• Christmas ales: I'm trying to decide if I want to do something a little different this year, but I'm feeling pretty set on a rebrew of the Père Noël de Bruxelles, because that was far and away the most popular of this past season.  I think it'll be great to do last year's method of brewing the Christmas ale[s] in the summer and letting them mellow out over time.  The Figgy Pudding Ale was a success as well, but I'm more inclined to just brew the Belgian and enjoy the few remaining Figgy Pudding bottles with a full year of age on them!

Other than these, I've got an IIPA/American Barleywineish thing that needs to have some dry-hopping and then go into bottles, but I've also got an "American Bitter" and my accidentally-brett'd smoked amber ale that was actually pretty tasty the last time I tried it.  Anyway, there will be some great beers on tap here in Jersey this summer, and I will definitely be hosting some parties to distribute delicious brew to the masses!  HINT: if the tip jar is full at the end of the first shindig, that means more parties and more brews over the summer!  Make it happen, friends!  I want to brew lots and have lots of people drink my beer!

1839 Westminster Porter

Westminster Porter FTW!

Smoky the brown is doing very well right now, and I'm pretty set on "darkening" that one when I keg it, as I can't really see any issue with that.  I set my sights now on the next brew day, in which I will be brewing my first ever historic recipe.  I was fumbling around on the internet for a historical porter recipe and I came upon one that looked rather accessible and completely do-able with modern ingredients and processes.  Turns out the one that really struck me was discovered in the 1839 records of the town of Westminster (now a borough of London) in England.  I took this as a sign of divine intervention, that I must brew this beer.  It's not the expected 1/2 pale malt 1/2 brown malt historical porter recipe, which makes it much more reasonable for modern use.  I scaled down the gravity a teensy bit, but kept with the overall recipe.  Here's what I plan on using:

8 lbs Maris Otter
2 lbs Brown Malt
.5 lbs Black Patent Malt

2.5 oz Fuggles @60 min
1.5 oz Fuggles @5 min

Wyeast 1275 Thames Valley Ale

Simple enough, right?  We'll see how this goes.  I'm pretty excited for it, particularly after seeing how easily I could make a wonderful stout with a super simple recipe last winter.  Continuing with the "experimental" nature of my current homebrews, which is pretty fun.  Cheers!

PS I acquired some amazing stuff to expand my system to four taps, and in doing so saved a lot of money.  So excited!  All I need is a cheap used fridge now, which should be quite easy to find.

Smokey the Brown

Well, after nearly a week's worth of runouts to Philly with the Westminster Symphonic Choir and a weekend full of wonderful performances of Ein Deutsches Requiem with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, I am back to the real world once again.  Why yesterday, I only had a mere solemn mass in Bordentown and a Compline service in Freehold on my singing agenda.  I even had a full thirty minutes in my schedule that allowed me a trip to Princeton Homebrew to finally pick up some ingredients for my next batch, and I'm really excited about this one.  As soon as is humanly possible, I'll be brewing up a cherrywood-smoked brown ale at 1.050 OG and 21°SRM, so somewhat toeing the line of an English brown porter.  Hey, it's homebrew and I can do whatever I want.  I think that this will be a perfect beer for late fall, and because of the style shouldn't take too long to be nice and drinkable.

Depending on how this comes out, I'm considering racking some/all of it onto some chipotle peppers for a nice smoky kick.  With the base recipe I'm using, there should be enough sweetness to counteract that nicely.  Here's what this guy is gonna look like:

6 lbs Maris Otter
2 lbs Briess Cherrywood smoked malt
1 lb English Crystal 60°L
.5 lbs Chocolate malt

1 oz. East Kent Goldings @60
1 oz. East Kent Goldings @15

WLP002 English Ale Yeast

Basically, it's a pretty standard brown ale with the smoked malt subbed in for some of the base malt, some finishing hops to add a little balance in the flavor, and a low-attenuating yeast to give it some sweetness.  I'm really excited to see how this turns out.  Stay tuned.

You wouldn't believe how good this grain smells

...and the going. Wow.

Snow on our Yuengling keg post-Halloween party

Well my lovely SMaSH bitter kicked SUPER fast, thanks to the help of a few friends.  It really was quite good, definitely something I can see brewing (or doing a variation of) lots more.  I would do it again in its purest form when the weather is warm, just because it was so delicate, floral and thirst-quenching.  I'm pretty sure I'd want some crystal and munich in the mix for my ideal, on-tap-all-the-time beer, just to add the malty depth.  NOT that Maris Otter didn't stand up really nicely, but hey, brewing is a wonderful art that is all about fine tuning...and hey, that's me.  I like a little malt with my hops.

The coming and going of this batch made me aware of a few things (several that I had already anticipated, really).  First, I need to be brewing more often.  I knew that already...I was just without my car for so long that I fell behind.  After coming weekend's performance of Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem in Philly, I'll def have some more time to brew again, particularly on Saturdays.  Also, I may really have to expand my keg system.  I've been tempted to upgrade to a two-tap tower for a while now, but the crazy thing is that, after doing a little research, I figured out that if I started from scratch and crafted my own four-tap kegerator (which was really my ultimate kegging goal and would be my ideal situation), it would actually be LESS expensive than switching to a two-tap on my existing kegerator...and I could do it gradually as I had the funds available.  Now I've really gotten an idea of my upcoming batches of brew, so here's what things are looking like:

1. Experimental smoked, malty English brown ale with one gallon of it (and maybe the whole thing) racked onto some smoky chipotle peppers

2. My own spin on a classic Steam (California Common) beer.

3. A classic, roasty historical porter recipe from 1839...from the historical archives of the town of Westminster!  Westminster porter ftw.

4. Opening the English and Belgian Christmas ales in about a month!  Aww yeah!

Whew!  Lots of good stuff.  It should be an exciting time of growth for the Rebel Opus Brewery.

Back in the game!

This weekend, with my car getting fixed and WCC having a day off on Monday, I was finally able to go home to Andover, MA and get my kegerator and C02 stuff, along with my kegs.  This means that I finally get to drink up my first Princeton batch of beer, the Maris Otter/Willamette SMaSH bitter that I brewed way back in late August/early September.  It tastes great, and I originally wanted to naturally carbonate it with some malt extract for some semblance of "real ale" authenticity, but I really want to start drinking this guy now, so I'm probably going to force carbonate it.  Depending on how I like the flavor, I may throw in a bag of whole keg hops for a little English hop freshness (gotta stick with Willamette to keep this beer Single Malt and Single Hop!).  I can't wait to finally be drinking this stuff, though.  I'll probably keg it tomorrow and that will put it ready to drink this weekend!

Since I finally have my lovely car back, I'll be brewing at a much higher rate again.  I'm really liking the idea of an amber-pumpkin-spice-autumnal-Franco-Belgian-saison-thing...so that's probably what I'll go for next.  It'll be a great cold weather/Thanksgiving/etc beer!  Stay tuned!

Waiting for Adams, my SMaSH bitter...

...and getting a little impatient.  The beer is ready to drink, but because my kegerator and C02 tank are still at my parents' house in MA, it looks like I'll have to wait a little longer.  My recent car woes (I am currently without one, as I was in a doozy of an accident last week) have been keeping me from going back to MA to retrieve my equipment.  It's so frustrating, because I know this is going to be a good beer, not to mention the fact that in my super busy life, I have really been wanting to just curl up with a nice pint of bitter when I get home at night.  Oh well, I'll be able to soon enough.  I was going to naturally carbonate this one, but depending on when I can retrieve my kegerator and C02 tank, I may just force carb it.  Oh well, things have been really busy anyway.  Honestly, I haven't even had a free day on which to get my second batch of the fall season going.  Depending on the weather, I'm still leaning towards either a Steam Beer or some sort of Autumnal (maybe pumpkin, maybe a little spiced) Farmhouse Ale/Saison.  If I do the saison, I'll just do the steam beer afterwards.  Soon soon soon!  Westminster buddies, get ready for a delicious Jeff homebrew experience!

It's sad, I am so decidedly out of homebrew that I had to use a stock photo for this blog entry...sheesh, haven't been in this position in months.  The drawbacks of moving, I suppose.