Fun surprises in Portland Maine

These past few days my family and I went on a mini vacation to Maine.  We planned on spending the days freezing and only braving the temperatures and elements to find the necessary food and drink, however; we ended up finding some great microbreweries and a distillery!  We toured Allagash  Brewery, Geary Brewery, and an up and coming distillery.  And the convenient thing is they were all within a half mile radius of each other!  Allagash was a larger brewery than we expected but they use and take pride in local suppliers. 

SP seemed to enjoy the brewery!

We then happened to stumble upon the up and coming New England Distilling, right next to Geary's Brewery.  The owner, operator, distiller, and basically one man show, Ned, was kind enough to give us a private tour.  Although he was in the middle of setting things up he showed us his layout and explained to us his plans for the first years. He will be distilling rums, gin, and whiskey, including one that is 110 proof and triple distilled.  Ned hopes to be up and running by this coming January.

Our last tour of the day was that at D.L. Geary's Brewery.  I had not heard much of them or their efforts but apparently they distribute to a vast area.   Steve, a brewer there, gave us a private tour.  Here they use brick covered kettles, open fermentation, and brew solely English stylish brews.  We sampled their Hampshire Ale (we highly recommend).

Summer label scholarship entries.

Who will win?  Find out Summer 2012!

Bottle line

Flaked hops

Open fermentation.

We ended the day with a sampler of brown ales and nachos at The Great Lost Bear pub that hosts over 50 brews on draft!  So in conclusion, we highly recommend stopping in at any one, or all, of these great spots if you find yourself in Portland. 

Streaking a Plate (Ipswich Ale Yeast)

Today I’m going to give you a little explanation on streaking a plate of yeast.  I recently had the good fortune to get my hands on some Ipswich ale yeast from the Ipswich brewery.  I managed to streak some of this yeast on to a plate.  A plate is simply another term for a petri dish.  I use glass petri dishes which I bought online, and I make my own medium for the plates.  This medium is just malt extract, mixed with agar and yeast nutrients.  The agar solidifies the malt to form a solid surface area.  To streak a plate I have a tool called an inoculation loop seen in the picture below.

 

The small metal loop on the end is what transfers the yeast from a liquid sample to the actual plate.  I first run the loop over an open flame until it is red hot.  This sterilizes the loop.  I then cool the loop by submerging it into the medium on the plate.  After this I dip the loop into the liquid sample and use the loop like a pen or paint brush and rub the loop onto the surface area of the plate making several lines.  I then turn the plate half way and do this again.  The idea is to spread the yeast out over the plate to form individual colonies of yeast, which can be stored in the refrigerator for later use.  There are several reasons for doing this, but most important is that you can get pure strains of yeast from a plate and know that your beer hasn't been infected by wild yeasts which can cause off flavors.

This is Irish ale yeast.  As you can see, I used a little too much yeast and though you can see the streaks there are no individual colonies to speak of.  I can, and have used this for propagation purposes because I took this straight from a store bought vial so I know it is not infected.  However it is not good technique.

This is the Ipswich ale yeast.  It was taken from a rather old sample and so the yeast aren't as healthy as in the pure Irish ale yeast.  However I will be able to use this for propagation and will streak another plate soon.  Also note the brown spots underneath the yeast are just malt that became more solidified than normal and resulted in some chunks in the mixture.  This doesn't affect the yeast, it just looks a little strange.

This is Bavarian Weiss yeast.  This is a much better example of what a properly plated yeast looks like.  Notice the individual circles, each of those is an individual colony.

 So you might be asking yourself where do I do all this stuff?  Well the answer is quite simple...right in my living room!!!  That's right, I use my living room table for my lab space and use an alcohol lamp to create a germ free zone.  An open flame creates an updraft which prevents micro-organisms from landing in the area you are working in.  I make sure all the doors are shut and there are no drafts in the area when I work.  I then clean the table with whatever cleaning products I have available and I go to work.

By keeping the plate underneath the open flame I can prevent unwanted micro organisms from landing on the plate.

I try to get as wide of a surface area as possible so that I don't have interference from nearby objects.

It may sound a little crazy but I also brush my teeth and rinse with mouth wash before I begin.  Even your mouth can contain germs, so I hope by doing this I'm lowering the chances of spreading germs by breathing on the plate.  I have yet to get one of those doctors surgical masks but I think it would be a better solution.  I also where rubber gloves too.  

I am still learning a lot about this stuff but it's certainly a fun and exciting part of brewing that I've come to love.  It also helps me make better beer, which at the end of the day, is what it's all about!

November update

I know it's been a while since I last updated the blog.  Jenna and I have been working a lot.  I managed to brew a maple porter.  For those of you who may not know what a porter is, a porter is an ale, usually with a light brown to dark brown appearance.  It typically has a malt aroma and flavor with some mild roastiness.  Sometimes it has a caramelly, grainy, bready, or nutty flavor as well.  I added pure grade A maple syrup to my beer to give it a nice sweet maple taste.  Porters originated in England and are considered the precursor to stouts.

 I also managed to make a Barley wine and did what is called a partygyle mashing technique.  Typically a Barley wine is a very strong beer usually between 8-12% abv.  Since so much grain is used in making a Barley wine, brewers will typically take the first wort (term used for pre-beer liquid) and start boiling it.  They then heat more water (liquor) and use that to get the rest of the sugars out of the grain making a substantially weaker beer but also getting a 2 for 1 deal out of the grains.  I took the second runnings from my Barley wine and made a cinnamon vanilla beer with some anise in there as well.  I'm hoping its a good spiced beer for Christmas time.  The Barley wine is going to be aged for a long time so I'll keep you all updated. 

I brewed an Imperial IPA a few weeks ago and its currently being dry-hopped with the last of my homegrown hops.  We recently acquired some Ipswich ale yeast and I've plated it on a petri dish and made a starter as well.  In my next update I'll be displaying pictures of the yeast plates and a little more information about the lab.

Almost ready for the big day

We've got the beers bottled and labeled we're buying the food today and we'll be cleaning off the deck whenever this rain decides to go away.  It's supposed to be a beautiful day Saturday high in the 60's and sunny.  We're looking forward to seeing all of you there.

Cheers!!

Most recent update on the brewing

The beers we've been brewing and the ones we think we're gonna brew soon.

Been brewed...
Maple Porter


Been Bottled
Summer ale
Sinfully Vanilla
Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout
Razzle Dazzle Raspberry wheat
Honey squeeze my lemon ale
Pumpkin ale
Pomegranate Wheat
IPA (unnamed) 8/5/11  dry hopped with my homegrown cascade hops on 8/25/11

Upcoming possible brews!!!
 
Imperial IPA (using homegrown hops)
Black Butte porter clone for Jim
Barley wine for Jenna


Have any idea's for a brew we should do? Email us at:

otisbrewing@gmail.com

Wild Yeast

So after being forced to work a double shift, I came home to a starter wort that was actively fermenting without me having added any yeast.  For all of you who don't know what that means, we brewers make a very small "starter" which is just a small amount of wort, a.k.a beer after it's been boiled but before the yeast is added.  This starter helps the yeast get ready for the big time.  Think of it like a professional sports team playing a college team.  Anyways, yeast is what makes beer....well beer.  Yeast eat sugar and turn it into alcohol; awesome isn't it.  But yeast sometimes need a little warm up hence the starter.  Well normally I add the yeast I want to add, but because I was stuck working much longer than anticipated, and the jar sat open longer than expected, some wild yeast found their way in and started eating up those sugars and voila! wild yeast!  They have a nice sour flavor which is typical for wild yeast and so I'm thinking of making a farmhouse ale.  Farmhouse ales are what most people drank back in the 1700's before we knew what yeast was.  Back then they just called it God is Good, a very appropriate name if you ask me! 

Hops Picking

 

So it took a while to put up them up but these are the pictures of our harvesting day.  We got over 4 ounces of hops once they were dried.  It was a good thing we picked them when we did because about 4 days later Hurricane Irene came and tore down the tree branch you see in the video holding up the hops.  She also slightly broke one of the trellis's.  Over all though we had a successful harvest and look forward to getting much more next year.  

Putting him to work early!!

Success!!!

The wedding beers were a huge success everybody seemed to really like them.  It was a great time had by all and our labels held up better than expected.  We've recently done another collaborative brew with George and this time we did a Pumpkin ale.  We gutted an 11 lb pumpkin and roasted it for about an hour then added it to the mash.  We also added some spices too, the end result smells delicious so we'll be looking for to trying it after it's done fermenting.

Recent activities

We've recently done another collaboration with George and this time we brewed up a Peanut butter chocolate stout!  When we added the peanut butter noticeable amounts of oil were on top so we're not sure how that's going to work.  However fermentation is going great and the air lock seems to be blowing off a scent of peanut butter!!!



Also on Thursday 8/25/11 we decided to go on an adventure to find wild hops, and we succeeded!! The only problem was the hops were surrounded by other thick vegetation and were very high up so we were not able to get any.  I'm planning on trying to find more, but we also marked where we were and we may return in the spring to see if we can get some cuttings from these hops and transplant them to our yard.

Wild hops

 

Update

Well it's been a busy week, but I can report that the Honey Lemon Ale and The Chocolate Oatmeal stout taste great!! Now I'll be bottling The strawberry and Raspberry wheat's in the next few days.  Also I'm keeping a close eye on the hops they should be ready real soon.  We will be doing the Chocolate peanut butter stout soon but probably not this week.  I'm probably going to brew up some additional honey squeeze my lemon ale real soon too.

Hops Hops Everywhere

Today our little man made his very first visit to the brew store to pick up more supplies for upcoming brews.  My wife briefly explained that the hops pellets sold at the store are the same as the hops we are currently growing, but just in a different form (it's never to early to start learning!).   Upon arrival at the house we watered our hops and checked on growth.   Our Cascade hops are doing exceptionally well and although we had heard that you often get limited yield in the first couple of years our plants tell us differently.  Probably a couple of more weeks before the hops are ready for picking, but we are certainly excited to use them in a brew!

Already seeing some cones coming in!

Having added string so the hops could continue growing.

Our blueberry bushes that we hope to use in a recipe.

Bottling day!! Chocolate oatmeal stout

Today is bottling day.  29 days after brewing the beer it's time to bottle it up.  This beer was brewed in collaboration with my good friend George.  George is new to homebrewing so we took this opportunity to learn some of the more basic steps in brewing.  Sometimes just seeing the process is a lot more helpful than reading about in a book. 

Bottling the beer takes patience so I always recommend doing it on a day off or when your nice and relaxed.  I've learned the hard way that bottling when you aggravated or have too many other things going on, can make it more challenging.  If your to busy, just wait till tomorrow.  The one or two days off, wont affect the outcome very much if at all.

 opening the fermentation bucket

   Final Gravity 1.015

  Adding priming sugar

 Stirring in the priming sugar, I love the foam on top. The head of the beer will look similar

Filling the bottles

   Capping the bottles

         THE FINISHED PRODUCT!!!

Time to clean!!


Tasting note: The chocolate is definitely present and there is a less subtle taste of oatmeal, but we shall see what the final taste is once it's been bottle conditioned for a few weeks.  I've learned from experience that stouts take more time to bottle condition then other beers.  This beer will probably taste best in about a month from now.

An afternoon exploring a Lavender Farm

For the Fourth of July weekend my wife, our newborn, and myself visited a lavender farm on Cape Cod.  My wife had mentioned experimenting with lavender for some brews so we definitely wanted to stop by here to see what this plant was all about.  We hope that we are able to come up with some innovative refreshing brews for the summer months.  Also if we pull this off we hope to share it with the Cape Cod Lavender Farm where we got the lavender to infuse the beer with.

What's brewing updated 10/01/11

We currently have  the following brews fermenting.

Summer ale
Sinnfully Vanilla (in the secondary)
Razzle Dazzle Raspberry wheat (in the secondary)
Chocolate Peanut Butter Stout (in the secondary)

Bottled
Honey squeeze my lemon ale
Pumped up Pumpkin patch ale
Pomegranate WheatChocolate oatmeal stout (unnamed)
IPA (unnamed) 8/5/11  dry hopped with my homegrown cascade hops on 8/25/11

Upcoming brews!!!

Maple Porter
Black Butte clone
Barley wine for Jenna


Have any idea's for a brew we should do? Email us at:

otisbrewing@gmail.com

Welcome

Welcome to our blog, we plan to use this blog to share our home brewing experiences with those around us.  We will be bringing you updates on projects and collaborations, as well as what's currently brewing and what we have planned for the future.  We hope to hear some great ideas from you along the way.  Please check back soon for the updates.