BYO Blogs

You've probably gotten the look. That look you sometimes get when you tell someone you're a homebrewer -- and you know they view that as someone who makes a lot of booze, cheap. If you're unfortunate, you've had to explain that homebrew is not the equivalent of bathtub gin and you don't have a still hidden in the woods. If you're fortunate, you were regaled with the "funny" tale of Uncle So-and-So, who used to make homebrew and stored the bottles under the porch (for some reason, it's always under the porch), but then one day they all exploded. 

I'm always amused at the difference between the perception of homebrewers and the reality. This was drawn into sharp focus last weekend when I gave a talk on water chemistry for the Austin ZEALOTS. Keith Bradley, a longtime ZEALOT and award-winning competitive homebrewer, discussed hosting a water seminar for club members on our Yahoo (email) group and got several positive responses. Debbie Cerda, another ZEALOT, until recently worked at a water treatment facility and volunteered to discuss how our local water is treated. As a former chemistry major, I volunteered to explain a little bit about pH and buffers. 

We ended up holding the event at NXNW (an Austin brewpub) at 11 pm on Saturday, and it was "sold out" -- we didn't charge, but the room only held 40 people and we had that many register before hand. Debbie, Keith and I discussed water for 3 hours to a room full of homebrewers who not only stayed awake, but had lots of good questions. Imagine that, 40 homebrewers willing to spend 3 hours of their Saturday learning about water. 

Debbie started us off and discussed water treatment in the Austin area and how this affects our water. One part of this was how and why chloramines are used, and how to deal with these as a brewer. I took the second leg and talked about pH and buffers. The take home message of my segment was that you should measure the pH of your mash, your wort as you are running it off and your boiling wort (cool the sample down first), but you don't need to bother to take (or adjust) the pH of your strike water or sparge water. Because wort is much more heavily buffered, the pH of your strike or sparge water doesn't give you any information about what your mash or wort pH is going to be, unless you have worked out a correlation by trial and error (and if so, that information only applies to you). Keith finished things off with a hypothetical look at three beers -- a pale beer, an amber and a dark beer -- and what mineral adjustments you'd need to make to turn Austin water into a suitable brewing liquor. His presentation used John Palmer's spreadsheet to calculate all the possible options. 

I had a great weekend, the highlight of which was the Austin ZEALOTS annual Xmas party and chili cookoff. (The Austin ZEALOTS are the Austin, Texas homebrew club I belong to.) The party is hosted every year by Corey and Angela Martin and is always one of the highlights of the ZEALOTS calendar.

This year, we had 25 kegs of homebrew at the party, and lots of bottled beer -- both homebrewed and commercial -- was passed around as well. There were a lot of great beers there, ranging from a nicely-balanced Helles (Corey) to all manner of big and/or hoppy beers. I could go on and on about the homebrews there, but I realize that a long list of beers you can't taste, brewed by people you likely don't know, doesn't make for terrifically exciting reading. [So, I'll just give the short list instead: Black Forest Imperial Stout (way to go Will), smoked porter (yummy, thanks Joe), "Finnish porter" (awesome Jim), Octoberfest (killer as always Kerry), Xmas IPA (hop-a-licious Corey) and a bunch of others.]

As far as commercial beers went, JB from Austin Homebrew brought Saint Arnolds Divine Reserve numbers 3 through 8. (Saint Arnold is a Houston brewery; their Divine Reserve is brewed annually.) The Dewberrys (longtime ZEALOTS) brought a whole bunch of old Sierra Nevada Bigfoot's. I can't recall all of the years that were represented, but I remember enjoying the 2002. My wife and I brought a magnum of 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 Anchor Christmas beer. Another ZEALOT, Jonathan, brought a magnum from 1999. (I liked the 2006 and 2008 the best.)

There were also 25 chilis in the chili cookoff and a lot of people, including myself, were sweating as they made their way through the entries.

In the March 9, 2009 installment of my blog, I wrote about an attempt at recreating an ancient Sumerian beer, as described in "The Hymn to Ninkasi." Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of beer and the poem in her honor was found on 4,000 year old tablets written in cuniform. (See my previous blog entry for more info and a recipe.)

Joe Walton, Jim Michalk and I brewed this beer with wort made from smoked malt, bappir (or "beer bread") and honey. This wort was innoculated with fermenting date and grape wine. The dates and grapes were, in turn, innoculated with the dregs of a bottle of a Flander's red ale, a sour beer.

The resulting still beer was cloudy and had a nice honey aroma. It had a nice sweet/sour balance and was generally very tasty. I had expected the beer to be "interesting," and was shocked at how good it was. 

Joe entered a carbonated version of the beer in this year's Austin ZEALOTS Homebrew Inquisition and it won Second Runner Up to Best of Show.  The two Inquisitors gave it an 81 and an 83 out of a possible 100 and the comments focused on the beer being complex and balanced, with a clean sourness to it. (The judges did not detect any smoke character in the beer. It's so subtle that you really need to go hunting for it.)

My homebrew club, the Austin ZEALOTS, recently held their homebrew contest, the Homebrew Inquisition. Judging occurred two Saturdays ago (July 18) and this most recent Saturday (July 25). For the past few years, club member Chris Rauschuber has hosted the judging at his house. Our Primary Fermenter, Corey Martin, organized and stored all the entries at his house, then brought them over to Chris's the morning of the judging. We had 210 entries this year, which is more than we had last year. Most of our entries came from within the club.

On the 18th, I judged our malty beer category and later our yeasty beer category. The first beer I judged in the malty beer category was crystal clear and had a nice layer of foam. It smelled beautifully malty and tasted wonderful. It's always nice to start a round of judging with a great entry. The rest of the beers in the category were variable, but none showed any glaring faults. Having judged at homebrew contests for many years, it seems like the bar keeps getting raised every year.

The second flight I judged was "yeasty beers." This category is for beers that show yeast-derived characters different from "regular" ales and lagers. The category is usually full of German hefeweizens and all sorts of Belgian beers. This year, there was only one hefe, with the rest being (apparently) some style of Belgian beer. Most were good, although for a few, it was hard to tell that the yeast added a really distinctive note.

I did escape having to judge our Big and Boozy category this year. The first year of the contest, Jim Michalk and I ended up as the judges, as everyone else present at the judging had an entry in that category. We had over 20 beers to judges and, when it came to pick our top three for the winners of the category, Jim chose three beers and I chose three completely different beers. As our judging continued, club members gathered around the table and encouraged us to hurry up, as everything else was wrapped up. After discussing the pros and cons of just about every beer in the flight, and resampling them to confirm our impressions, we finally agreed on the first, second and third places. It was one of those experiences on which I look back fondly, but don't ever want to repeat. (In subsequent years, we made sure to break that category up into more than one flight, with two pairs of judges.)