review time.

Alright - time for a review:


I am by no means a pro taster, this is just collective thoughts from what I personally saw/tasted.


Spent Saturday in Seattle with my wife and some great friends.  We went to a new brewery in the Ballard area that had just opened up the night before - Hilliard's Beer.


It seems like they're pushing for the new trend of 'good beer in cans'.  This has been a recent movement with newer breweries in attempts to break the dogma of 'the only beer that comes in cans is bad beer'.  


First off - their facility is pretty impressive in terms of improving what it used to be.  There are before and after pictures and video on their website (below).  The brewing system is a 15bbl (465 gallons) skid mounted system.  Steam fired boiler to supply heat for mashing/boiling equipment.  4 main conical fermenters with what I'm assuming was a brite beer tank on the end.  They also had a canning machine that will do 24 cans per minute - I know nothing of canning/bottling equipment, but it looked impressive.  


The beer - 
I got to try all of their beer except for the Saison.  
I had a full pint of the Indomitable dry stout which was hands down my favorite.  It was a very balanced stout with full body and mouth feel that wasn't too dry or overpowering in toasted-ness.  
Britt had a Scottish Blonde which was my next favorite.  I'm usually not a huge fan of blondes, but this one was an exception.  It was fantastic!  I only got a few tastes of it so no huge review, I just remember it was very very smooth.  Had a bit of a spice and sweet taste like there was bitter orange peel and coriander and overall was not what I was expecting out of a blonde (probably where the Scottish comes from).  The Amber Ale was nothing special to me.  It was a pretty run of the mill Amber with a great aroma (Cascade?  Amarillo?  I wish I knew).  Nothing that tickled my fancy.  


The place-
Not sure if it the brewer was in a funk or what, but he wasn't very interested in answering questions or selling his beer to me.  I asked about their capacity and what they were using for energy and all I got were very short answers and no elaboration.  I don't know about you, but if I'm passionate about something - I'll talk your ears off about it (thanks dad for that attribute).  The place itself is very industrial - which was awesome - but they need to do a little more work on the inside as far as accommodating a crowd.  They had some pretty cool concrete benches and chair, but they really need to execute the arrangement better.  It also was a little weird seeing kids there.  Britt said "I feel like I should have brought my baby."  Lots of babies and kids running around - not that that's bad, just different in a taproom I guess.  


Overall thoughts - very very good beer, atmosphere needs a little work, I feel like the opening was a bit rushed, but I'm no pro at this.  With it being a taproom and not a food-serving pub, the atmosphere needs something else to keep it interesting, especially if the brewer isn't into talking/answering questions - shuffleboard?  Nonetheless it's worth checking out if you're in the Ballard area.  


Side note - their glassware is some of the coolest I've ever seen.


Hilliards Beer - 1550 NW 49th Street - Seattle WA 98107
http://hilliardsbeer.com/

apartment brewing

It freaking sucks!!!


I give my wife all the props in the world when I brew.  For one, she puts up with it.  For two, she helps out, and I'm very appreciative of that!  Hopefully we'll be in a house soon where I can have my very own brew shed, or garage to really take off with!


I jumped up to all-grain brewing about a two months ago.  Found a killer deal on some water coolers on good old craigslist and converted them into a hot liquor tank (HLT) and mashtun.  The jump hasn't been too hard - except for hitting my gravity and keeping temperatures where they need to be - but the main difference is it's cheaper, more time consuming (good thing in my book), and I feel you have more control over the brew.


Some pictures of the setup below.  It's a pretty ridiculous operation.  Dooney and I have really perfected the art of apartment brewing however - we've got it down to a science.  I've got hoses running from the sink to the porch, HLT on top of the fridge, sanitizing crap running everywhere, it's really a mess.  At least the beer turns out.


Couple pictures of what's in fermentation at the moment.


-'Merican Amber Ale
-'Test Batch' - More on this experiment later - will be tasting it at our annual 'Novemberfest'
-Autumn Wheat Wine

 yin/yang boil?

 my pathetic brew sculpture, using all parts of the kitchen.

 second run going into the kettle!  'Test Batch'

L-R: Autumn Wheat Wine (we hop), 'Merican Amber, 'Test Batch'.

Untappd

Small update - 


If you're on an iPhone or Android, or just don't mind logging into yet another social networking website - you should really check out 'Untappd'. 


It meshes aspects of foursquare, facebook, and twitter and then focuses all these efforts around beer.  It would be a very cool app if people used it and kept up with it!


Thanks to Alex Hackett for turning me on to the app. 

harvest season

Thanks to a good friend, Max Butler, we were able to harvest about 5 lbs of dry hops this year from his garden.  

I had 8 plants of my own growing up at the in laws house, but since it was the first year, we only got about a pound of wet hops.  

Max had Chinook (Bittering, Aroma), Mt. Hood (Finishing Aroma), Cascade (Bittering, Finishing Aroma), and Willamette (Bittering, Aroma).  

We had a 'harvest fest' so to speak and brewed up a couple batches of fresh hopped ale. 

A fresh hopped ale (also known as a wet hopped ale) is when you take hops right off the vine and use them in the boil.  It's usually between 4:1 - 6:1 ratio for wet to dry hops.  Where people make the mistake is at what point in the boil you add the fresh hops.  You can't add them at the beginning of the boil or even half way through, unless you love the taste of fresh cut grass.  Typically you want to add them no more than the last ten minutes of the boil.  When you're doing this, it's strictly aroma that you're going for.  

There is about a month every year where you can find these beers that the bigger breweries put out, and we're coming to the end of that season right now.  

Deschuttes does a 'Fresh Hop Mirror Pond' and a 'Fresh Hop Trip'.

Full Sail does a 'Lupulin Fresh Hop Ale'

Sierra Nevada puts out a 'Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale'

Lompoc (if you haven't had any Lompoc beers you're missing out) Puts out a couple different fresh hopped brews.  'Crystal Missile Fresh Hop Pale Ale' and 'Fresh Hop Harvest Man Red'. 

We're coming to the end of the harvest season, so keep an eye out for anything fresh hopped!  

On our 'harvest fest' weekend, Danny McCabe (or Dooney as he'll now be referred to) and myself did two experiments with wet hops.  

I came up with a fresh hop 'Autumn Wheat Wine' that I adopted from a recipe received from a friend in the OSU food science and fermentation program.  It's a wheat wine style that they did as a club brew.  I took the recipe and substituted a couple grains (mostly because I didn't have access to what they do) and upped the hop bill by a LOT.  The original IBUs on the recipe was somewhere around 100.  The final count on my autumn wheat wine was about 157 - adding 4 different varieties of hops to the original 2.  Technically I don't think we can physically taste anything over 100 IBUs, but that's not confirmed, just what I've heard.  Currently in secondary fermentation.

Dooney loves Citra hops.  In fact - he'd probably make love to Citra hops if possible.  I constructed the recipe for his 'Fresh Hop Citra IPA', but he executed like a boss.  Basically we took the standard Citra IPA recipe that we make quite often and doubled the hop bill with fresh hops.  Currently in Secondary fermentation so we'll see how it turns out!

 Drying racks set up in my tiny apartment - 

 Straight Lupulin that is left over from the drying racks.  

 Cascade buds off our plants - 

 Bags of fresh hops!

Picking to our hearts content.

first things first

Well here it is - my first attempts at a beer blog.  I've been 'stewing' over the idea of a beer blog for quite some time now.  I guess early on I was just intimidated by the massive amounts of beer blogs that were already out there, and always thinking 'who would read it?'  Who cares.  If you come across it by accident, welcome, if you subscribe and read regularly, more power to you.  


I'm going to try and do a review every once in a while on a good beer I come across, keep friends up to date on my current brews, and just talk very generally about beer.  There won't be any sort of structure to it based on content.  


The first couple post here will probably be old news to a couple people - I'm going to catch up on some noteworthy summer happenings. 


Cheers!


Primary - 'Merican Amber
Primary - 'Test Batch'
Secondary - Wet Hopped Autumn Wheat Wine
On Tap - Empty