I recently bottled my first mead (or honey-wine for the uninformed)…

the Recipe

• clover honey
• orange
• whole clove
• ground cinnamon
• ground ginger
• raisins

For all you homebrewers out there, I have also posted a more detailed description of the recipe and process.

I also thought it would be a neat thing to come up with a cool label design for the bottles, most of which are the swing-top variety. The packaging design features a honey bee outline (it’s mead, remember?) and some honey comb and textural backgrounds.

By the way, if you are a friend of mine in the Jupiter, West Palm, or Palm Beach Gardens area, please let me know if you come across any of these swing-top bottles; I really love using them for all my homebrews.

Also, let me know what you think of my label design!

This beer has been a bit of a crowd pleaser (the recipe is posted below)… It started as a blonde ale, which I believe is in the American light category. However, a few days after fermentation began with regular dry beer yeast (Safale US-05), I added a packet of dry Champagne yeast, which ended up giving a nice, bright green apple- almost sour tinge. I also whipped up some custom labels for the brew, as you can see in the image.

Also, while preparing my bottling sugar (5oz sugar in 1 pint boiling h20), I added a spring of Thai Basil (pictured above), and a bit of Chinese 5-Spice which consists of:

• “Chinese cinnamon”
• powdered cassia buds
• star anise and anise seed
• ginger root
• ground cloves

Feel free to steal the recipe and leave some comments:

RECIPE (HTML|PDF)

Traditional Bock

If you don’t know anything about the Bock beer style, here’s a briefing: It is a darker-bodied, high-alcohol lager style from Germany. It was originally brewed by 14th century Roman Catholic monks to be high in food-value and nutrients, as they pretty much survived on it during Lent. So, you see, not even monks gave up drinking for Lent.

This one is brewed by homebrewer Alex Drobshoff from California.

From the bottle packaging…

Alex’s brew is a bright copper German inspired bock with a complex, full bodied mouthfeel. Hints of rich plum and cherry aromas paired with its toasty, malt flavor make this the perfect beer to linger over on a cool evening.

1. Pouring the Beer

Poured into a fairly standard clear glass mug, the kind a bar gives you when you order a pitcher with your friends.

2. Appearance

The head was fairly large-sized bubbles, light beige in color, almost like a Coca-Cola. It dissipated quickly leaving some white lacing up the sides of the mug. Cloudiness was non-existent and the color was coppery-brown, similar in hue to a Dos Equis Ambar or Yuengling.

3. Aroma

It smells primarily of malt, with a bit caramel and toffee.

4. First Sip

This is a sweet beer. Unfermented sugars definitely take the lead right away, and then the mild peppery nice of the high alcohol content (6.8%) make their way across the tongue

5. Mouthfeel

Mouthfeel is fairly full; whereas it is low in carbonation it has significant body.

6. Finish

This beer starts sweet, followed by a bit of alcohol pep, and a lingering finish. Not very dry and for that reason, not exactly the kind of beer you would sit around drinking several of.

from my series of Samuel Adams Longshot 2008 Tasting notes:
Part I: Cranberry Wit
Part II: Traditional Bock

The Samuel Adams Longshot Competition is one of the coolest things happening in homebrewing. This competition occurs once a year and is open to anyone (including Samuel Adams employees, who are given a homebrewing kit upon hiring). The winner of the competition gets his or her beer brewed and distributed by Samuel Adams (Boston Brewing Company). They even put an illustration of the brewer on the label!

I received a 6 pack of this beer as an early birthday present (September 30th) and will be posting tasting notes from the 3-way tie winning beers from in the 2008 competition.

About the 2008 winners from the Samuel Adams website:

Congratulations to Alex Drobshoff of California for being crowned the 2008 Samuel Adams® American Homebrew Contest™ National Champion! Alex’s Traditional Bock will appear in the LongShot® mix 6-pack beginning in April alongside Mike McDole’s Double IPA.

The third brew in the Longshot package will be a Cranberry Wit created by Carissa Sweigart, winner of the Samuel Adams employee homebrew competition. Carissa’s beer was chosen by over 1,111 beer lovers at the 2008 Great American Beer Festival™ from among the 3 employee homebrew finalist. Congratulations Carissa!

This year’s LongShot competition yielded 1,367 entries from just under 1,000 homebrewers! This is proof positive that homebrewing is alive and well!

Cranberry Wit

This one is brewed by the Samuel Adams employee Carissa Sweigart from Massachusetts.

From the bottle packaging…

Brewed with ingredients signature to Carissa’s home of Massachusetts this Cranberry Wit is spiced with a blend of cinnamon, orange peel, coriander and grains of paradise, and finished with a touch of cranberry. This bright, fruity and refreshing brew is reminiscent of an autumn day in New England.

1. Pouring

I felt the closest proper glass I had for this witbier style was a Widmer Hefeweizen glass, which is a long almost champagne flute-like shape. The beer poured cloudy, typical for the style, and there was a bit of sediment in the bottom, which I assumed to be yeast but a dark magenta clump was stuck down there as well, most likely actual cranberry.

2. Appearance

The poured beer has a fairly dense white head, smooth but not creamy. The color is mild golden, darker than most lagers but not quite as much so as the Samuel Adams flagship, Boston Lager. A fair amount of cloudiness was present, typical for most wheat beer styles.

3. Aroma

The gentle, not overpowering, smell of cranberry and subtle spicing dominates over any hops or malt smell.

4. First Sip

The flavor is pretty common for wheat beer: a mild sweetness and full, almost bready taste. This beer does not have a tart or sour quality that you may expect from cranberry. Regarding the cranberry, this beer has a nice level of fruitiness. Conservative levels of fruit in beer usually appeal to me more than beer-flavored fruit juice. There are many fruit wheat beers out there, and usually I don’t go for a second bottle of any of them, but this one has just the right level. The spicing is also moderate and well-done: not quite as complex as say, a tripel, but enough to notice.

5. Mouthfeel

This beer is not super carbonated. It has a pretty full mouthful, but the flavors do not linger a long time.

6. Finish

The initial feel is the fullness of wheat, which quickly dissipates into a rolling cranberry sweetness with a bit of spice. Overall, no individual aspects of the beer jump out, but that is because it is very well-balanced and well-brewed, which is typical for Samuel Adams in my opinion; solid beers but nothing outrageous.

from my series of Samuel Adams Longshot 2008 Tasting notes:
Part I: Cranberry Wit
Part II: Traditional Bock

The following is my notes on a recent completed brew: a  robust porter. This personal favorite is an old beer style, of British origin, characterized by a dark color, a fair amount of roastiness, and mild to firm hop bittering. For reference to commercial beers, it would fit somewhere between a Newcastle and a Guinness,  a Northern brown ale and dry stout, respectively.  Porters are not all that common in the US anymore, although that is changing. Historically, several of the founding fathers of the United States had recipes for a porter-like ale. Also, I find it interesting that this was considered the beer of the working class manual laborers of Great Britain, hence the name, porter.

In the name of experimentation, I decided to split this batch into two beers at bottling time. One half I left as a standard robust porter and the other half I dubbed a Mexican Coffee porter. To accomplish this, I added a few tablespoons of cocoa powder, a pinch of cinnamon, and 2 cups of cold-brewed coffee. Cold-brewed coffee is created by leaving coffee grounds in water overnight in the fridge, which are then filtered out. The resulting coffee is very smooth, and acid-free; it really allows the flavor of the bean to shine through. I recommend trying it, if you are a coffee-lover.

I submitted a few of these beers into the Coconut Cup homebrew competition in Miami, FL under the “specialty beer” category because of the extra ingredients. I was not able to attend unfortunately, but recently received my scoresheets in the mail. My score averaged out to 36/50 which is not bad, but not medal-worthy. Both judges seemed to think I had a bit too much coffee flavor and aroma and not enough body and mouthfeel. Next time I will cold brew with fewer beans and probably increase the malt extract level for more body. I also intend to add more cinnamon and cocoa because they were almost indetectable in the finished product.

For those seeking further edification, I have included some further details:

• Scoresheet1 (pdf)
• Scoresheet2 (pdf)
• ProMash recipe report (html)

Here are some resources for learning more about the porter beer style:

• Ratebeer’s Top Porters
• BeerAdvocate’s detailed Porter description
• Wikipedia: Porter (beer)

Please feel free to comment or email if you have any further questions.

beer goblet

The following are websites I frequent to find information about craft beer and homebrewing when I am too hungover to just go drink it or brew it.

Craft Beer

• Beer Advocate – Great hub for forums, education, directories, ratings, and much more
• Beertown – Brewers Association site, as well as registration for American Homebrewers Association, promoting the art and science of craft brewing, including information about local events
• Beer News – The Craft Beer News Leader
• Realbeer – News, articles, forum, and education
• Pubquest – Craft Brewery and Brewpub Locator featuring a handy Google maps mashup
• Ratebeer – Thorough resource for beer reviews and tasting notes
• European Beer Guide – Pubs, Bars, Beerhalls, Beer Gardens and Breweries throughout Europe
• Beer Education – Do some learning & pass it on
• Here’s to Beer – Cool, interactive beer education site
• GreatBrewers – Locate specific craft beers at stores and bars near you

Homebrewing

• The Brewing Network – Headquarters for a bad-ass homebrewing live web-radio show that doesn’t take itself too seriously but still provides great information and endless beer-geek comedy. Also includes a homebrewing forum.
• Mr. Malty – Straight-forward, handy homebrewing calculators and tools from Ninkasi Homebrewing Award winner Jamil Zainasheff (Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of beer)
• Beer Judge Certification Program – Become a certified beer-tasting judge, or find info about local homebrew contests
• Freshops – Online source for hops and hop rhizomes for home cultivation
• Brew Your Own – Homebrewing magazine
• TastyBrew – Resource and recipe database, complete with recipes, forums, brewing calculators, user journals, and more!
• The Beer Recipator – Brew calculators and plenty of recipes, both extract and all-grain
• How to Brew – Full online version of the bible of homebrewing, written by John Palmer

Blogs, Fun, Etc.

• Beer Haiku Daily – Pure drunken poetry
• Beer Flavor Wheel – Handy diagram to pinpoint tastes and aromas
• Brew Like A Monk – blog of brewing author Stan Hieronymous
• Legends of Beer – News, reviews, and trivia
• The Beer Wench – She admittedly has a gueuze fetish, and is drinking through the world, one beer at a time
• The Beer Babe’s Brew Reviews – Reviews of craft beer, breweries and brewpubs from the Beer Babe
• Beer and Blog – Weekly meet-ups of bloggers helping bloggers while drinking beer
• Visit Belgium – Belgium for Beer Lovers website
• Craft Beer on Twitter – An ever-evolving list of breweries on social network Twitter

Craft Brewing in South Florida

• Inlet Brewing Company – Jupiter, FL diviners of organic Belgian style Monk in the Trunk
• The Corner Cafe and Brewery – Tequesta, FL
• Titanic Brewery Restaurant – Coral Gables, FL
• Big Bear Brewing Company – Coral Gables, FL
• Gordash Brewing Company – Fort Lauderdale, FL brewers of Holy Mackerel Beers
• The Abbey Brewing Co. – Miami Beach, FL
• BX Beer Depot – South Florida’s Only Homebrew Supply Shop

This list, admittedly just a bubble in the pint glass of the online beer world, will be updated every now and then so please feel free to comment and plug your site, blog, brewery, etc. The important thing is to pour your beer knowledge all over those around you so the world will become more educated about the joys of craft brewing.

Prost!

Guten tag,

I am a brewer. Yes, I make my own beer. I will now answer the most common questions I hear about the great hobby.

Is the beer good?

Yes, the beer is good and you should try it because what you probably normally buy has no body or hops and is made with mostly rice and corn because they are cheap.

How much beer do you make?

5 gallons at a time.

How long does it take?

It ferments in a food-grade sanitized plastic bucket for 2 weeks or so, where it converts the malt sugars into alcohol, then it spends 2 to 3 weeks in bottles with a little extra added sugar where it becomes carbonated.

How do you get the caps on?

My homebrew kit came with a small hand-held capping press.

What kind of beers do you make?

I make ales (as opposed to lagers) because they are ready quicker and turn out better if you can only ferment at room temperature. The type of brewing I do is called extract brewing, because some of the base malt is already processed into a condensed syrup (as opposed to all-grain brewing which is brewing from scratch). Here’s what a recipe looks like..   it’s for a Saison which is a Belgian-style ale:

Saison

A ProMash Recipe Report

Recipe Specifics

—————-

Batch Size (Gal):         5.00    Wort Size (Gal):    5.00

Total Extract (Lbs):      9.00

Anticipated OG:          1.070    Plato:             16.98

Anticipated SRM:           5.3

Anticipated IBU:          26.8

Wort Boil Time:             60    Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar

%     Amount     Name                          Origin        Potential SRM

—————————————————————————–

66.7     6.00 lbs. Briess LME- Gold              America        1.035      4

11.1     1.00 lbs. Briess DME- Weizen            America        1.046      8

22.2     2.00 lbs. Cane Sugar                    Generic        1.046      0

Hops

Amount    Name                               Form    Alpha  IBU  Boil Time

—————————————————————————–

1.00 oz.    Hallertauer                       Pellet   5.70  25.6  60 min.

0.25 oz.    Hallertauer                       Pellet   5.70   1.3  10 min.

Extras

Amount      Name                           Type      Time

————————————————————————–

0.00 Oz     Coriander Seed              Spice      5 Min.(boil)

0.00 Oz     Ginger Root                    Spice      5 Min.(boil)

Yeast

—–

WYeast 3787 Trappist High Gravity

Notes

—–

In primary for 3 weeks @ 84 degrees. Primed w/ 5oz corn sugar.

How long have you been homebrewing?

I first bought a kit and brewed a batch about 5 yrs ago, but became more serious about around 2 yrs ago. I just entered my first competition. Yes there are frequently competitions in most states.. the judges all go through a certification process. Here is what a homebrew scoresheet looks like..

Thanks for reading. You should try homebrewing sometime, or at least start trying new craft/microbrews; you might like them.