Bruery's available here in Mass. I like 'em a lot.

This would not make me want to try it.

I had this a little while back. Good, but pretty freaking unremarkable.

I'm just catching up on this thread.

Next time (if there is one), look me up. I live in Kalamazoo.

It's funny, sitting at my desk before-hand I was sure there was No Way I would miss Bell's being so close to it, and then when I was actually bouncing down the road alone in a Penske truck, several hours behind schedule, hungry etc, and I missed the exit, I just said Fuck It and kept going to my buddy's place.

Also, sorry to have missed you - I always like to have a beer with boarders when I can. Met some genuinely great people over the years.

Gonna go hit up one of the many new startup craft micros in town tonight after work with 'ol Shiv: Night Shift Brewing Co. And on the way there I'm picking up ingredients for the next batch at home. I think I just want a nice satisfying pale ale, since I have all the right hops and yeast for it at home. Just something to drink.

Tiny, difficult to reproduce Miracle Molecule found in beer and milk. Pretty crazy stuff. Seems to fight off obesity and diabetes, and increase energy.

Picked up homebrew ingredients yesterday after work on the way to that brewery, and I figured some of you fence-sitters might enjoy seeing a little of what it's like to go buy shit. My place is pretty small - this is half of it, and the other half mostly has non-ingredient stuff. But they have what I need.




Dried Malt Extract bags, my base malt type of choice right now. Dried stuff doesn't go bad as fast as the liquid, and it weighs less and packs smaller... strong points when you have to bike it 5 miles home. Those are 3lb and 1lb bags in 3 or 4 colors.




The cooler. Hops on the left, hops and dried yeast in the middle, liquid yeast at right. Hops come in pre-measured 1 oz bags, or loose (you weigh and bag), or some larger bulk bags (10 oz etc).




Malt tubs. The big floor tubs like these are for base malts and for specialty malts you can use a lot of in a recipe. You just scoop them up and weigh them on a scale. Also you can munch on little pinches of them as you go... it's tasty.




The scale, and smaller specialty malt containers behind it.




The mill. You have to think first about what's going to be mashed or boiled together, and keep those mixes separate when you grind. But you just hit the switch, dump your shit in, and it cracks the grains open for you into a bucket below. Then you bag it in clear plastic baggies.




My end result, packed into an Ortlieb bike bag for the trip to Night Shift brewing (to meet up with Shiv) and then home. I also got some more sanitizer and caps and bottling sugar. But a normal batch like this (5% alcohol, not too crazy hops) would set you back around $40, maybe $50.

Just say the word on this. I can sit on it for however long you think it should sit. It, along with the 2009 Yeti Krauth gave me, is just sitting in the back of my fridge right now.

Derris just hang on to 'er. What I fucked up on was using brown sugar in a moment of quick stupidity as my bottling sugar. It contains a lot of molasses by weight, and molasses don't ferment so good. So the yeast in the bottles were all "wtf, I can only eat 2/3 of this" and the result is lackluster carbonation and a little more sweetness than I wanted. -sad trombone- I'll try another one in a week and if it's passable I'll spread the word. Live and learn.


So that Night Shift brewery...


These guys brewed at their house aggressively for 5 years before doing this. And when I say aggressively, I mean it. I do a 5 gallon batch every 3 or 4 weeks. They did 3 batches a week, and 15 gallons per batch. That is a fuckload of beer. They had a googledocs spreadsheet for recipes, and they handed out comment cards at every week's tasting party. Why didn't I know these people back then... So they honed some recipes the hard way first, THEN got into business. And it tastes like it.

The place is in North Crackton, aka Everett. Industrial parks, chain link fences, 3 ft tall grass taking over empty parking lots, that kind of thing. The mayor appears to have made some sweetheart deals to small businesses to try to get something going over there, and so Night Owl (along with Putin's friend who runs similarly new-and-tiny Idle Hands brewery) has landed themselves into a good deal on a so-so space in a crappy part of town. The landlord has been especially good to them, they said, offering no rent charged until they got licensed, which took 9 months... that's 9 months they got to do paperwork, buy equipment, plan, etc without rent, before they were able to brew and sell beer and make money.

I had no idea Idle Hands was here too, much less literally sharing a wall with them.




When you first walk in there's a tiny little bar where they're allowed to serve free samples. They can also sell no more than 2 cases at a time to each person, which is cool. That's Mike, one of the 2 founders / full time employees. They have another clutch of 5 or 6 guys who help out.




It ain't glamorous. It's small, it's HOT when the burners are on, the place dates to the 30's and the concrete floor is original (not a good thing, has potholes and cracks like crazy which is bad when you handle grains and there are mice around), the floors don't slope towards the drains, and it's already a little cramped after only 4 months of brewing. They got there at 8:30 that morning, and they will stay until after 10. Everyday. (Me: "so none of you have kids, then." "-laugh- No, no way. Couldn't do it.") But when they do these open house things, you get to SEE them brewing. Literally stand amongst them and watch what they're doing as they mash, adjust burners, pump transfer through cooling gear into the fermentors, etc. I helped a guy take a specific gravity sample - hey man can you come hold this?- Nothing remotely like this will happen when you're touring Harpoon or Sam Adams. They let me stand there and ask 400 geeky stupid questions, though they were really interested in some of the details of what Bitburger did.




Shiv gets some samples, and some to-go goodies for a wedding coming up. Also these guys make the first GOOD beer I've ever had using hot peppers. They use hanaberos, and they cut half of them open and leave the other half intact so the heat is balanced with the pepper flavor. It was... good. Honestly really good.



And of course I got a growler (of their very good Belgian IPA), along with a bomber of an incredible quad they make. The Belgian IPA is called Trifecta, because they pitch 3 different belgian yeast strain into it. "So, what, all three get in there and duke it out and whoever is stronger or faster dominates?" He said that was the problem at first, the Westmalle strain won everytime, and it tasted too fruity / banana for them, so they worked out a ratio that balances. So they pitch an uneven, pre-determined ratio of all 3 that gets the flavors they want in the right proportions. That's good shit. And for the quad, they put in 20% shiraz grape juice (unfermented of course) right at flame-out. It tasted goddamned GOOD. So smooth, so balanced, nothing standing out too much. Just incredible.

This reminds me I still haven't paid a visit to that brewery that opened in Marietta despite driving right past the Exit a few times a week.

Man I really botched the spelling of habaneros.

It is Brasserie d'Achouffe Gnome week at the only worthwhile tap house in Lincoln, so I have consumed La Chouffe, McChouffe, Chouffe Biere du Soleil and Gnomengang a collaboration between Ommegang and d'Achouffe this week. I feel like I have lost my taste for Belgian beers at this point in time. They weren't bad, but none of them really made me excited. It might have something to do with homebrewing. I will be cutting back on my beer purchases, once I get one or two more beers bottled. I plan on entering my first AHA club only competition in October, with an American Rye Ale.

I will have to take some serious notes next weekend. I am going to a cellar party. My friend is liquidating some rare bottles of beer amongst a small group friends. We are paying $20 a head to help him recoup some of the cost, but his cellar has some amazing beers aging in it.

I feel like you missed your calling- it's not beer brewing, but maybe writing about beer. now even i want to check this place out.

10 20 years ago this kind of recap would have made a great zine or small run mag. now it seems like a blog would be passe, but I like hearing about these adventures.

Thanks man, that's actually the nicest thing anyone's typed at me in awhile. I guess I post this shit here as much for my own sake as anyone's. I sometimes go find things here to see what I thought of them the first time around. Nice to have it all in one place.

I actually bought a sixpack, it's been while.

Avery - Karma

It's a belgian pale somethingerother. It tastes a lot like Palm, which is underwhelming in the Belgian arena. It has a distinct "cheap beer" flavor profile in the malt, and I don't know enough yet to guess why exactly. There's something plain and thin and slightly off about it. The yeast is great, hops are spicey (guessing saaz), but overall it's just not special.


The Hoppy Tripel I made is better, but it's damned near flat. I had another one last night to see what's up, and the flavor has improved - it's really fucking sad knowing how good it could've been. Smells great, nice little west coast hop hit, fairly well balanced a pleasant, warm booze component.

I'm going to try my hand at brewing in a couple weeks. I've got most of the supplies, just need a couple more things and a free Saturday to brew. Going to try either an IPA or a pale ale, something hoppy.

I smell a podcast sentence.

Kyle, I didn't see your warning and drank my beer. It was a little under carbonated and very malty. I had had a martini, and 4 Palms before I decided to crack this (what can I say - IT WAS THERE). I woke up at 5AM and booted pretty hard in the back yard. I'm not really a puker - serious question - do you think these two events have any correlation?

And please don't think I'm blaming you, or mad or anything, I'm honestly curious, because this was the only dietary or intoxicatory anomaly.

Whoa.

"Revenge" Hoppy Tripel - Squirg Brewing?

Hooooly shit. What have I done...

I would guess that the near 10% alcohol content did you in, coming in after all the other booze. I've had several of the beers now and there's no off flavors, skunking, etc. Nothing that would make anyone sick for sure - the alcohol would've killed it off anyway, it's not a weak beer. Just a general lack of carbonation, which does two things - it feels different of course to not have the bubbling sensation, but also carbonation is dissolved carbonic acid, which gives a slightly sharp taste to whatever it's in. So that flavor is missing too, which would've helped balance the malty sweetness.

Damnation, sorry to have been any part of your first horch in awhile. Though this does dorta feel like NOW it was worth mailing down there.

Weak carbonation and association with a puking... there's no way Derris and Bloor are gonna touch theirs.

Whatever, dude, I'm just waiting for the go ahead.

Sig Worthy. And it would not put me off trying any other beers you make - if I drank it before it's time, seems like an "MP" and not a "YP." That's why I put the caveat in there, I don't want you to feel bad.

The interesting thing is that the beer never set well in my stomach, and I thought it might have had a little causal effect, but again, I think USER ERROR was as big a part.

It's a stealthy 8-9%. The sweetness (some intentional, some not because of the brown sugar bottling mixup) really hides the booze. Might just have been enough for your guts to hit the Eject button. I had a single of it the other day and was buzzed (and pissed about the carbonation.)

I've also opened 3 swingtop bottles of mine, poured in a small amount of real sugar, and re-sealed, to see what happens.