Monday Night recap: “Eye candy” edition
Sometimes forgetting to do a yeast starter can be a good thing. Last night, for instance. We couldn’t do our regularly scheduled brew so we got to experiment with a hoppy Belgian pale ale which we will add smoked applewood chips to next week. Our OG, for those interested, was 1.049. Some of you might be asking what our target OG was. It was 1.049 too. That is what makes us ballers.
In other news, esteemed wedding photographer and MNB regular Matt Altmix brought his trillion-dollar camera last night to take some shots. He got some great stuff. I’m going to include some of my favorites here, but be sure to check out the entire set on Flickr.
Thanks to everyone who showed up last night, it was a fun time. Now sit back and enjoy the eye candy. NOTE: I have added exclamation points to each caption for emphasis, not because my keyboard had a seizure.
Watermelon!
Empty beer bottles!
Jonathan cleaning a fermenter with a bunch of people in the background!
Hydrometer clearly reads 1.049! The camera is just at a weird angle! I swear!
Jeff, Joel and Jonathan smiling probably because Joel made a fart noise with his mouth!
Joel monitoring our new cooling system! And he’s also trying to get that hose to make another fart noise!
Milk Stout, Take 2!
Last night we gave our milk stout a second swing after underpitching the yeast in our batch a couple of weeks ago. It was no walk in the park – the obstacles facing our attempt were numerous and horrific. No oats. Low propane. Frigid cold. Malfunctioning fermentation chamber. And most dire, Joel alone at the helm for the better part of the evening, thanks to late nights at the office for Jonathan and me. By some miracle, we ended the night with 10 gallons of milk stout dead on our target gravity of 1.068.
In other news, the fermentation chamber continues to be finicky. Rather, we continue to find ways to inhibit functionality of this remarkably simple contraption. This time, the heat lamp somehow came unplugged from the temperature regulator, and the air in the chamber had dropped to a chilly 52 degrees from 67. It can’t have been that way for long, because last week’s IPA still managed to attenuate about 50% – we’re hopeful the yeast can finish the job with the aid of our now-functioning heat lamp.
Monday Update: The Election, Our Lactic Stout, and Jeff’s Recipes
Yesterday was a big day with lots going on for MNB. Highlights are as follows…
Election Update (just when you thought you’d gotten enough)
We at MNB care deeply about the community we (literally) serve (beer to) here in Westside Atlanta. While you’ll notice we stayed far away from federal politics on this blog our local politics are a different issue. I’m proud to inform our readers that I officially launched my political career last night. That’s right, I was elected as an “at-large” board member of the Berkeley Park Neighborhood Association. Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal and if my meteoric rise tracks anywhere close to that of Obama or Palin they just might need to watch out for me in 2012.
Lactic Stout
We brewed a milk stout last night and despite the frigid weather had nearly forty people come out. Although Jonathan shared his thoughts on this beer in a previous post I think the real reason we were doing it is because Jeff is about to have a baby (well, not him literally but his wife). I think he read somewhere that a milk stout can be substituted for baby formula so he wants to perfect this beer long before the baby arrives. For those of you who think babies don’t enjoy a good beer I refer you to a previous post.
Jeff’s Recipes
Jeff has been hitting the books lately. Although we give him a fair amount of crap about it he has managed to come up with a few decent recipes and some that were not quite as hot. While I won’t go into the details here I uncovered some major deviations from MNB SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) last night and on top of that he was complaining about having to wash out a few kegs (he doesn’t do well with “manual labor”). What Jonathan and I have finally realized is that we need to embrace Jeff in his full Harvard-book-loving-excel-crunching glory. We love you Jeff.
120 Minute IPA
This is how we finished the evening.
Yummy.
We’re not weird, we swear
We had a good crowd last night as we brewed our second batch of pumpkin ale for the year. Shout-out to Wayne at Cigar City Brewing for some help with the recipe. This time we used less spices, fewer hops and also upped the caramel malts a smidge. We’re hoping for something similar to the last batch, but not quite as clove-ridden.
In between the brewing (shot of pumpkin beer above compliments of Jeanine) and the drinking, people inevitably start talking to each other. Stuff like, “So. How’d you hear about this?” or “How do you know these guys?” And increasingly the answer is, “I found them on the internet.” Which is inherently creepy, right?
We’ve heard numerous stories now from people who wanted to come… but at the same time didn’t want to come. I mean, we brew at a residence. And they don’t know us, just our internet presence. Fortunately, those same people bit the bullet and decided to come, and many have become regulars. There’s still that initial fear to overcome though. “Will these people harvest my organs? What if they’re not people at all, but vampires?” You know the drill.
Regardless, we would like to go on record as saying that we are actually fairly normal (except for Joel). We swear.
Brewing a pumpkin ale requires plenty of pumpkin
Actually, it doesn’t. A lot of the perfectly good pumpkin ales you’ll find in stores are brewed with 0 lbs of pumpkin. Much of the flavor comes from the spices, like a pumpkin pie. But in our case, we used 10 lbs of pumpkin for 10 gallons of beer. That’s almost 1 lb per gallon, if you do the math.
Check out the pumpkin (which Joel roasted beforehand to get it nice and soft) just simmering in the wort as we finish up the sparge:
That color is amazing. Here’s the first spice addition (of 4 total), including cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg:
We’re actually not quite sure how this beer will turn out. We took pretty crappy notes last year so “adjusting the amount of spices” was really more like “starting over.” But Jeff has informed me that he’s not afraid to brew another pumpkin beer this month if need be. Last but not least, a picture of 5 lbs of freshly-baked pumpkin sitting at the bottom of our fermenter, waiting to accept 10 gallons of 80-degree wort. Mmmmm.
Thanks to everyone who came last night! It was a fun time. If you didn’t make it, buy yourself some gas and come next time.
Brewing recap: a lot got done
Despite starting earlier than normal, we actually had a fairly late night last night. Things weren’t quite as smooth since Jeff couldn’t get there till later and Joel was suspiciously “out of town” for work. Methinks not.
We had a good turnout and brewed another batch of our popular Eye Patch Ale. We also had all 3 beers on tap, which was both rare and awesome.
However, we also had a lot of non-brewing tasks to complete, such as:
- Cleaning Joel’s dirty beer kegs from a private, non-sanctioned MNB event (his sister’s wedding). Seriously?
- Dry-hopping and draining an Eye Patch Ale
- Transferring our experimental stout into 2 batches, one with bourbon-soaked oak chips and the other with cherries and vanilla. Yes, we’re excited. We went a little light on all ingredients since we’ve had some bad luck with overdoing things the first time around. *cough* spruce beer *cough*
Thanks again to all who showed up. Sorry if Jeff and I seemed a little frazzled. Actually, Jeff was probably fine. But I was frazzled. It won’t happen again (it might happen again). I just need to relax and have a homebrew. Fortunately we were able to unwind at the end of the night and drink a few beers:
Man, I love our end-of-Monday-night ritual, even though it makes Tuesday morning tough. I also love Jeff’s weird dribble stain on his shirt. I think it’s yeast. Or dribble.
Brewing tonight: a crazy awesome stout
It’s been awhile since we’ve experimented with new beers. We’ve been concentrating almost exclusively on perfecting our Belgian wit, Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale and Eye Patch Ale. But Jeff is out of town, so Joel and I were given a little bit of a leash this Monday. We’re going to be brewing a hefty oatmeal stout tonight, which we will be breaking into two 5 gallon batches:
- A cherry vanilla stout
- A bourbon oak stout
Both will take a little while to age, but we’re already excited! Come brew with us tonight ? email if you need directions.