And now, an informative piece of blogerature from Tewsday Brewsday.

Here I am again, it seems as though every two weeks is becoming the norm. Really what it is is I just need to get my butt in gear when I'm just chillin' on Sunday, and jot down my thoughts then, rather than waiting for Monday night to figure out what I want to write about. I suppose I'll work on that.

I'm still homebrewing. I'm trying to get a more regular schedule down, so that I can get what HomeBrewTalk (an awesome homebrew forum) calls a "pipeline," having one (or more) batch(es) just starting to ferment, one (or more) batch(es) just ready to be bottled, and one (or more) batch(es) that are just becoming really drinkable in bottles or keg. Right now, my "pipeline" is more like a 4-cylinder engine firing on one or two cylinders: I brew a batch, and it gets all the way through fermentation and into bottles, then a week or so later, I brew another batch. That's about 4-6 weeks apart. Of course, that's probably the best way for me to do it right now, as I am keeping myself from getting too entirely crazy with homebrewing just yet. But, soon. I have a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell homebrew.

Currently, I have a pale-ish ale which has been bottled for more than a month, I have Rasputin's Apprentice and all its variations, which are just past 3 weeks in bottle (and tasting AWESOME), and I have a an all-Amarillo amber IPA in secondary, dry-hopping.

What's secondary? What's dry-hopping? Glad you asked:
---"Secondary" refers to secondary fermentation. It's when you move the beer out of the primary fermentation vessel, where the yeast had most of its activity (and converted the majority of the sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide) to a clean, empty fermentation vessel - in my case, another 5 gallon carboy - where the yeast will continue to break apart the larger sugars and process them down to alcohol, carbon dioxide, and esters (flavors unique to each yeast strain). As a product of the initial, vigorous fermentation, there will always be a "yeast cake." This is a sediment, composed of mostly dormant yeast cells. As the yeast detect that they're running out of sugar to eat, they go dormant, and settle to the bottom of the fermentation vessel (thanks, gravity!). If beer is left on this "yeast cake" too long, off-flavors can occur.
---Dry-hopping is the process of adding dry hops to a beer, usually (but not necessarily) in secondary fermentation. The essential oils present in hops, which give them their unique and distinct flavors and aromas, are soluble in alcohol. Since most of the fermentable sugars are converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide in primary fermentation, there is plenty alcohol to extract the hops' essential oils into the beer. This lends a much more pronounced hop aroma to beer, which can also be interpreted as more hop flavor, due to the fancy-pants relationship between your sense of smell and your sense of taste.



In the realm of beer that is not my homebrew, we just had our April Brewsday this past month. Brewsday, as previously mentioned, is when me and a bunch of people who like beer get together and taste beer. We're constantly in the process of evolving it; April's Brewsday was our first style-centric tasting. We voted to do Scottish Ale/Scotch Ale (Wee Heavy)/American or English Strong Ale as our styles of choice this time. We ended up with 9 beers, 6 of which were Scotch Ales or Scottish Ales, and the other three being American and English Strong Ales.

Right to Left: 1. Bridgeport Highland Ambush (Scotch), 2. Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo (English Strong), 3. Ommegang Cup O Kyndnes (Scotch Ale with Heather), Grand Lake Plaid Bastard (Scotch), Stone/Port/Green Flash Highway 78 (Scotch), Moylan's Kilt Lifter (Scotch), Olfabrikken Kloster Jul (Strong Ale with Spices), Samuel Adams Wee Heavy, and Stone Arrogant Bastard (American Strong)

There was a lot of information to be extracted from this tasting. First of all, all of the beer was pretty tasty. There were a few standouts for me, the Yorkshire Stingo, Cup O Kyndnes, and Kloster Jul were the best of the bunch. Second of all, the styles for this tasting (Strong Ale excepted) were a fairly tightly-grouped bunch. To me, they all had subtle differences, but beyond subtle, they were all pretty similar. To someone who doesn't have practice picking out subtle differences in beers, I'm sure the beers started tasting the same towards the end. Of course, Arrogant Bastard was a refreshing change of pace, with its in-your-face assertiveness, after a night of deliciously smooth and malty Scottish styles of beer. Third, I expect that the beer style chosen for the tasting will have a drastic effect on how enjoyable it is. If there is room in the style for a lot of difference between beers, then I think it will keep people more engaged, and less likely to succumb to "palate fatigue." Something I think we'll do from this point on is have some sort of palate-cleansing snacks in between each beer, to keep everyone's "palate stamina" up. I had a lengthy discussion with my friend Cedric about this today, and he gave me lots of good food for thought. Brewsday is a constantly evolving thing, and I want to make it the most enjoyable and most engaging for everyone that attends.

It's fascinating how much I'm learning about beer since I started homebrewing. I thought I already knew a lot, just by drinking everyone else's beer, but I didn't really understand the process that went into creating beer. Now that I've been homebrewing for a couple months, and insatiably absorbing wisdom and information about the brewing process, I have a lot deeper of an understanding of the hidden processes in motion within a bottle of beer. I bring this up because the person who hosted this month's Brewsday, and has volunteered to host successive Brewsdays (thanks, Steve!!!), is an avid homebrewer. He had just put his own Scotch Ale on tap in his kegerator very recently. He used a good amount of smoked malt, and his wife described the taste as a "rotting campfire." I couldn't help but chuckle at the description, since "rotting" is actually a not-too-far-off relative of "fermenting," and "campfire" can be a very accurate way to describe a young, or overly assertive, smoked beer.

When I tasted it, I didn't necessarily get "rotting campfire," but I did realize that beers with smoked malts in them definitely require a longer period of maturation than (most) beers without. As a fresh beer, smoked malts can lend an "ashy" flavor to the beer when present in significant quantities. There was a hint of this roughness to Steve's Scotch Ale, but I knew, almost without thinking, that in a few months' time, the smoke flavor would mellow quite a bit, and the beer would be quite a bit different. I told Steve that I'm excited to see where the beer goes.

Speaking of "where the beer goes," that tends to be where I go, too. This weekend, the beer is going to Great Divide for a special party. They're releasing their farmhouse ale, Colette, their Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout, and their 18th Anniversary Oak Aged Imperial IPA. Color me excited! I haven't had Colette in a couple years, and the first time I had it, I'm pretty sure I only had a sample of it. Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti is probably my favorite in the series because of a little curveball they throw in: they add a touch of cayenne pepper, which comes in at the very end of the flavor, as a very refreshing, but mild, bite of heat. It's an extremely unique and great finish to a deliciously sumptuous, sweet, and seductive beer. The Oak Aged Imperial IPA is another fantastic beer, being that it's got so much going on. How do I know this? It's the same recipe as they used last year, and I loved it last year. There'll be live music, and food as well. It should be an awesome way to spend a Friday evening, and I'm looking forward to telling you all about it!

Until next time, beer on, and beer often. Cheers!