Black IPA! - 1st Post from Dave

As a new contributor to the Semper Fermentum crew, I wanted to give a quick rundown of my brewing background, and then on to what is kicking in my carboys right now. I have been brewing exactly half my life now, which equals 22 ½ years (brewing, not my life). I started in 1988, when my brother returned from a trip to England with a John Bull homebrew kit purchased with the last few Pounds in his wallet. We loosely followed the directions, let it bubble for a couple weeks, paid no heed to sanitation, and bitterly sipped the fouled wort that was our finished product. Easy to say that my first batch really sucked, but I saw potential in the craft, especially given the state of brewing at the time. The big three brewers (A-B, Miller, Coors) ruled the shelves, but Anchor Steam, Sam Adams, Pete’s Wicked and a small handful of others were setting sail for what would be a great expansion over the next 15 years.

Over the following 10 years, I became a founding member of Maryland Ale & Lager Technicians, one of Maryland’s larger homebrew clubs, was a founding officer of the Freestate Homebrewer’s Guild, published many articles in the local brewing newsletter, and eventually found ways to win several local homebrewing competitions. I have had the privilege to meet some of the industry legends during trips to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Savor in Washington, D.C., regional brewer’s festivals, beer dinners, as well as on their home turf - in their brewhouses. I found that the community of brewers is very generous with their time and information. It truly is a love affair more than a hobby, one that will generate a passion in the craft that hopefully will last a lifetime. For some, it ends up being not only their passion, but also their vocation. I have made it my calling to share my knowledge and enthusiasm with anyone who would listen, many times successfully encouraging them to join the ranks of “Craft Brewer”. Enough about me…let’s talk Ale!

Yesterday was a beautiful Annapolis spring day. Real cool early, but sunny and with the potential to be awesome. In other words, break out the brewing gear! I have brewed using the all-grain method for about 15 years, but time restraints caused by being a business owner, Dad, soccer coach, etc., have nudged me more toward the partial-mash/extract camp for a few years. Yesterday’s batch was what I will call an India Black Ale. Think of a well-hopped IPA, but dark as night. This year’s GABF in Denver showed a couple new wrinkles in brewing. We saw a few of these black ales that were twists of traditional style guidelines. Your eyes are preparing you for Guinness, but your nose and palate tell you Dogfish Head or Sierra Nevada. It’s a fun confusion the first time someone samples the new ale. The ale darkness is caused by CaraFa malt, a very dark specialty malt that loses the bitterness associated with stouts and porters by way of a tumbling that rids it of most of its husk. We also played with the bittering by using seven separate hop additions. Fermentation is courtesy of my favorite yeast, Wyeast 1056 American Ale yeast. Wyeast 1056 is a very clean and efficient yeast with vigorous action within 24 hours. So far in the primary fermenter, it smells and tastes right on the money. I will give an update when it finishes. Here is the recipe. Happy brewing!!!

This is for 10 Gallons…size the recipe for however much you are brewing:

13 lbs. light liquid malt extract

1 lb. CaraFa malt, crushed

1 lb. 20 lovibond Crystal malt, crushed

1 lb. 20 lovibond CaraMunich malt, crushed

1 oz. Magnum hops (60 Minutes)

1 oz. Simcoe hops (30 Minutes)

2 oz. Cascade (20 Minutes)

1 oz. Tettnang hops (10 Minutes)

2 oz. UK Kent Goldings hops (5 minutes)

2 oz. Amarillo hops (1 minute)

3 oz. Cascade hops (dry hopping in secondary)

I did a 40 minute steep of the crushed grains at 160 degrees. To that I added the malt extract, brought to a boil, and began the hop additions as noted above. I used an immersion chiller to bring the 10+ gallons down to about 90 degrees, and siphoned the wort to two 6-gallon carboys. I had stepped up my liquid yeast the night before into a 20 oz. bottle with 1 cup dry malt extract in solution. Add the yeast once the wort is cool, and give it a swirl. By this morning the airlocks were clicking away with beautiful fermentation!

Next time, I will give an update of this brew, as well as a few tricks we use to ensure our hard work returns a top flight product worthy of passing out to your friends.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Nothing says St. Patrick's Day like a nice pint of Guinness, but for us homebrewers this is one beer not easily cloned. First of all it uses 3 percent of spoiled beer in every batch, who keeps spoiled homebrew? No thank you. Secondly, Beer Gas or Nitrogen infused carbonation is not a common setup for most of us. In light of this, I came up with a Dry Stout recipe, low in alcohol but with a great depth of flavor (i bought some Guinness too!)

Starrs Dry Stout (5 gl - Allgrain)

6# Maris Otter

.75# Roasted Barley

.5# Chocolate

.33# Black Patent

.25# Black Barley

.5# Crystal 80

1.5 Flaked Barley

Mash at 149F for 60 min

1oz Northern Brewer(8.9%) @ 60

1oz Cascade(7.5%) @15

Irish Ale yeast/Cry Havoc yeast combined

Extra: 1# Cane Sugar @15

Kona Brewer's Festival 2009 - Trip Report by Zeke

There's no place like the Big Island. Sitting atop a mid-Pacific hot spot, the Big Island is where new earth is made. That’s hot.

March is a great time for whalewatching and the weather on the Kona Coast is as good as it gets.

And when brewers from around the country converge on the Big Island, there's no reason why we shouldn't all be there.

I attended the Kona Brewer's Fest last year with my new friend and homebrewer extraordinaire J.B. Zorn. In advance of the Festival, J.B. wanted to brew a beer with me at his homebrew garage in Lanikai. Being new to brewing, I was lucky to have such a professional to observe. Now, I used to live in Portland, Oregon - the nations preeminent locale for microbrews. While there I developed an affinity for hoppy India Pale Ales. I hung out at places like Bridgeport, Amnesia, Lucky Lab, New Old Lompoc and McMenamins to name a few. So naturally, when J.B. wanted me to choose a beer style, it was a simple choice. I wanted to brew a NW Style IPA. J.B. came up with the recipe and we went to Homebrew in Paradise to buy the Oregon hops and the rest of the supplies. We brewed on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the Zorn Homebrew Co. with his friend Paul.

I've tasted J.B.s beers before, even some of his IPAs and I would say that they are quite delicious, so I had high hopes for Zekimus IPA. I thought the hops were spot on and boy I couldn't wait to taste it. As J.B. led me through the brewing process (I pretty much stood there and stirred) I found it was not as complicated as I had thought. I looked forward to opening the packages of Hops as we put each in. When we were done, we had a nice orange Carboy of Zekimus IPA. J.B. spent the next week dry hopping the beer and we bottled it a few weeks later.

We sent off two bottles to the Homebrew contest for the Kona Brewers Fest. When the beer was ready, I shared it with some friends. Wow! This was as good as the real thing. This was better than some of the real things. J.B. was a genius! The color and the carbonation was perfect. It was the kind of beer that you could taste before you even sipped it.

J.B., Josh and I arrived in Kona on Thursday for the Brewers Dinner which took place at the luau garden of one of the Kona hotels right on the water. It was a gorgeous night and really set the tone for things to come. We ran into some folks that we new from work and also talked to a reporter who was covering the weekend (rough job). The next day Friday was a free day and we drove the high road to the far northern part of the island. We cooled off in Waimea which is a cowboy town up at about 4000 ft elevation. We stopped and found a few geocaches as we made our way to Hawi and the end of the road. On our way back south we drove down the Kohala coast which has all the nice resorts on the best beaches with the best weather in Hawaii. Everytime we looked to the ocean we saw whales. They were everywhere! Back in Kona, we stopped at the Kona Brewing Co. and ran into some more new and old friends. We talked to the brewmaster, Rich, I think was his name.

We filled up our growlers and brought some steaks back to the place to grill on our patio. The sunset was grand and later on in the night, Chris, Jake and Tim arrived from Honolulu.

On Saturday morning, we hit the road again and drove a very bumpy road across a desolate section of black lava to a beautiful oasis on the beach. The Big Island’s beaches are so beautiful as the black lava rocks are contrasted with the blue and white of the waves and water. There was actually quite a nice surf break off the point, but none of us had boards. We enjoyed a dip and headed back to get ready for the Festival.

We walked the mile or so down Alii Drive to the Festival at the King Kamehameha Hotel right on the pier at the bay. The crew was all lined up, many wearing medals from previous beer festivals and homebrew contests. There were some serious-looking brewers here. Most with beards and tie dyed shirts. I knew Zekimus was going to have some serious competition. The homebrew judging part of the festival took place on the days leading up the festival so the winners could be announced at the festival. When it was time to open we barged through the gates and hit the taps.

On tap was all professionally brewed beers from all over the country. Many of them were from my hometown on San Diego like Ballast Point, Green Flash and Stone. There were a lot from Oregon and Colorado too. Some of the biggies where there like Samuel Adams. We enjoyed tasting a bunch of the beers and waited for the announcement of the homebrew contest winners.

Low and behold, while I was sipping a cold one, J.B. came running over to me to tell me that Zekimus had placed FIRST in the American IPA division! I didn’t believe him at first so I ran over to the booth to see for myself. It was true. Zekimus was top of the list out of 22 entrants in the American IPA division.

The rest of the day and night, there were shouts of Zekimuuuuus IPAAAAA ringing through the streets of Kona. It was pretty cool. I was pretty darn proud of J.B. for winning his first Homebrew Contest. And I was pretty stoked that I had about 30 more bottles of award winning Zekimus at home.

This years Kona Brewers Festival is this weekend. I’ll see ya there!