Recent Posts

I got an email from Adam at Timberwood today saying someone left a yellow notebook with what looks like tasting notes in it after the meeting last night.  Please reply to this post or send me a PM so we can get the notebook back to you.  Adam currently has it in the Timberwood office.

Meghan and I (and Tres from Blackbox) are planning on dropping by after rehearsal tomorrow night.  We will probably miss you, but hopefully still be able to try McSteamy.

I am definitely interesting in getting some more juice later in the season.  Thanks for organizing this, Kevin.

Hi Folks,

Showalter's is starting up their press this week and will be pressing every Monday and Thursday for a while.

I'm planning to go next Monday, the 13th and can pick up juice for anyone who wants some.
It will be a mix of Gala, Cortland, MacIntosh, Honeycrisp & Jonathan - very similar to the mix I got around this time last year, which made great cider
Cost is the same as last year - 2.75/gal for bulk juice and 2.50/gal if we get 100 gallons or more

Please let me know ASAP if you are interested - they dont have a lot of Honeycrisp and Jonathan apples, but Shannon said he would set some aside for me if I let him know how much we wanted (otherwise the rest will get pressed this Thursday). Send me an email at klynch@cstone.net

Same as before, drop the sanitized carboys off with me before 7:30am on Monday morning and I will have them back around noon

I'll be making a run about every 3-4 weeks for the rest of the season

cheers - Kevin

The CASK Beer Blitz BJCP homebrew competition is coming up fast. It will be on September 25th at the St George Brewery in Hampton, Va.  Please set that day aside as they will need judges and stewards for the competition, and it is a fun time to talk shop and increase your tasting knowledge.

Also, please get your entries together ASAP. Much like the Dominion Cup, the CASK Beer Blitz has been moved up much earlier than last year. (It was in December last year.) So, although the judging is on the 25th, your entries need to be in Richmond by September 18th.   A member of the Williamsburg club (CASK) will be at our meeting tomorrow night (9/7/10), so if you have entries ready to go, please log in on their site http://www.colonialalesmiths.org/BeerBlitz/, print out your labels and pay for your entries. Their rep will be able to take your beers back with him to save you the cost and uncertainty of shipping your beers.

I’d love to see a great turn out from CAMRA for this gig. Both in bodies at the competition and beer entries.  While the Dominion Cup awards a Plato award of the best all around brewer, the Beer Blitz has a Blitzkrieg Award which goes to the homebrew club with the most points. I’m much, much more interested in a club award than an individual one. I’d love to see us in the running for this. We were in a three-way tie for it last year, but lost on BOS entries.

Please pull any beers you have ready together, and let’s have a great showing for this last full category competition (that I give a crap about) of the year.

As some of you might know, I brewed a Pro-Am beer with Starr Hill a month ago, and it will be going on tap at Beer Run on September 9th, which is this Thursday.
 
We all know about the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) so, to make a long email short, Starr Hill asked me to do one of my medal-winning recipes, chose my California Common (otherwise known as a “steam” beer), and I went out to the brewery on August 1st and made 360 gallons of it with them.  (Certainly much larger than the 5 gallon batches that I normally do.)  It will be on draft at Beer Run this Thursday, and I will be making the trip out to Denver on the 16th of this month with the beer to attend the festival and competition.
 
So, come if you can and please feel free to forward on this email on to other people who you think might be interested in attending. I’ll be at Beer Run from 6-8pm that night, and then ducking out to hit the Black Keys concert at the pavilion. 

Come check out “McSteamy” (yes, I named the original homebrewed beer that back in 2009 referencing the style’s nickname and making fun of the show Grey’s Anatomy) and celebrate with a pint if you can.
 
Jamey

I brewed a ESB and I set my recipe to 70% efficiency just to be safer, for a projected gravity of 1.055. Oh, and Spidey, there is plenty of art in maintaining a perfect slow flow with a bed of grain that is compressing like an accordion : ).  There is actually a phase where the flow slows and then speeds back up. After re-cycling for a while until clear, it was time to put the sparge to the test. By measuring the flow rate with the 1/2 cup per 15 seconds (0.5L/min), I was able to continue a 1.010 run-off up until I had collected 6.5 gallons for boil.  It took about an hour, and it was actually very relaxing. My goal was to stop the sparge early around 1.008 to reduce tannins; it never reached that gravity, which meant that sugar was still coming off the grain. Much different compared to a fast flow rate that would have bottomed out to 1.000 by then. After boil, my final gravity was 1.070 at 5.5 gallons, setting my efficiency at 90% ! Now I have an Extra extra special bitter. If I were to brew this again, I would use 2 pounds less to hit gravity. By the end of a 55 lb. bag of malt, I could save enough grain to brew an extra batch of beer. Compared to batch sparge, I call that a free batch of beer!  LOL

Cheers, Doc M.

I used Ward Labs to get my water tested.  As Greg says, it was very easy.  I got the household mineral test (now $13), as listed here:

http://wardlab.com/FeeSchedule/WaterAnalysis.aspx

I called the lab and they sent me a sample bottle.  I filled it up and mailed it back (you have to pay for postage to send it to the, so that costs a little bit more than the $13).  They mailed me my analysis back in about two weeks.

Aqua mails out a water quality report maybe twice a year, but this gives little information regarding the solutes as brewers we are interested in.  I have not gotten a Ward Labs report for Lake Monticello water. I guess that would be the thing to do. Tom says it's super easy and only cost ~$11 or so.
I've been using a Brita tap filter for years and it works great.  But with Aqua VA's cost for water lately, it might actually be cheaper to use bottled water for brewing (and everything else that we use water for)!!! But that's a whole different matter...

Hey thanks for the replies. Yes, the 5.2 does work.  I have used it a few times now with pH's around 5.2.  I was also using spring water at the time, but now have a carbon filter for tap water, so I am not sure what is going to happen there but, my guess would be that it buffers it. No off-flavors at recommended dose. Yeah you might have to add in some calcium carbonate for big stouts to raise the pH if it falls too low, but I probably would not add clacium sulfate at all with this product until boil time (after mash-out)say if you wanted to help bring out the hops, or sodium chloride if you wanted more focus on the malt.

The product description states that it is proven to: not add flavors, optimize enzymatic activity, help clarify wort, and raise starting gravities. It even stirs your mash for you.

Does anyone have a water report for Lake Monticello area (Aqua Virginia)?

For sparge time, if you can fill 1/2cup in 15 seconds, you are at the proper run-off rate.  That is slooow.

-DocM