Vermont Beer Blog

Brewing a Batch: American Pale Ale

2007-05-13T17:10:00.000-05:00

Because I've made a few missteps lately I decided to brew my very tasty first batch again, though with a few modifications such as a liquid yeast and a bit more hops. Brewing was straightforward, though as usual the foam on the chilled wort prevented me from getting an accurate reading of the initial gravity. Another frustration is that I am going through C-Brite sanitizer like crazy. I will be looking for something more cost-effective on my next trip to the homebrew supply shop.

Batch Three Update Four

2007-05-11T17:05:00.001-05:00

After performing a messy recapping and letting it coolish-condition for another week, this brown ale has become drinkable if not great. Carbonation is now at reasonable levels, though the beer is still a little more fizzy than my other batches. It doesn't have any off flavors, so I am fairly sure the problem was bottling it too early. Lesson learned, hopefully.

Batch Five: Mild Porter

2007-05-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

Style: Porter
Grains: 32 oz., 60 minute soak in 1.5 gal.
Malt: 3.5 lbs. Muntons light, 2.5 lbs. Muntons dark, 60 minute boil in 3.0 gal.
Hops: 1.0 oz. Northern Brewer @ 60 minutes, 1.0 oz. Fuggles @ 15 minutes
Fermentation: 5.0 gal. total liquid, Wyeast London, 8 days
Yield: 47 12 oz. bottles, 3/4 cups corn sugar as primer

Appearance: Dark brown, brown-colored head that subsided after a few minutes, light lacings
Aroma: Traces of malt, smoke
Mouthfeel: Medium
Taste: Some smoke, some malt
Verdict: A decent porter
Comments: At the first sampling of this batch after two weeks in bottles I was unimpressed. But after another week the flavor was much improved and I am now really enjoying this beer. The two flavor aspects are nicely balanced, which is what I was aiming for, instead of a beer dominated by smoke like my previous porter. It is a bit thin for the style, but that just makes it more drinkable now that the weather has warmed up. Next time I will try to make it stronger while keeping the balance.

16th Annual Green Mountain Homebrew Competition

2007-05-03T21:51:00.000-05:00

For homebrewers in northern Vermont what might be a pretty fun event is on tap this weekend. The Masher's website doesn't give exact hours but the April edition of The Barleycorn Press says the action will start around 9:30 on Saturday the 5th of May. The location is near the airport in South Burlington, which isn't within walking distance of downtown but somewhat to Saint Michael's College in Winooski. I'll be checking it out for sure.

Bottling and Brewing

2007-05-02T22:45:00.000-05:00

In a marathon session in the kitchen I bottled my previous batch, which is a Belgian brown ale, cooked dinner, and brewed a new batch, which is a Kölsch. Before bottling I pulled the spigot off my bottling bucket. The helpful people at my local hombrew supply shop said it is a good area in which bits of trub get stuck and cause contamination. My spigot turned out to be pretty clean, though there are some suspicious looking dark blotches between the inner and outer sleeves, an area that liquid should only be able to enter very slowly. I will probably soak the parts in some bleach before the next bottling session. Brewing was straightforward, though with everything going on I was pretty beat by the end of the night.

Recapping a Batch

2007-04-26T19:30:00.000-05:00

After talking to the helpful people at my local homebrew supply store I decided to re-cap my (currently) disastrous batch four. First I stuck all the bottles in the fridge for a couple of hours so the C02 would be less likely to come out of solution. Then I grabbed one and popped the cap. No foam came out and I though I was good to go. I set the bottle down and turned to do something else for a minute, and when I came back foam was coming out at a good clip. Pretty soon the level of the beer was well below the bottom of the neck. Once the foaming stopped I poured the remaining beer into a glass and tried it. It wasn't great but I've bought worse.

With the rest I decided to just barely crack the seal, hoping that a slower release would result in less beer loss. It worked, though I ended up having to give each cap several gentle prys until I got the optimal opening. Even with patience a couple of bottles lost about a quarter of their contents, and all lost some. Once the flow stopped from the bottles I boiled some caps and re-sealed the bottles. I put the batch back in the basement to cool-ish condition for a week and I will sample it again in week or so.

Hopefully this is the first and last time I have to perform a re-capping.

Otter Creek Brewing Roundup

2007-04-25T18:16:00.004-05:00

Otter Creek Brewing makes two lines of beer, the other being Wolaver's Organic Ales. Most of beers marketed under the main line were decent and drinkable, without any bad flavors but also unexceptional, like the organics. As with the beers sampled under the last round of testing, several of these were pretty old and may not have had optimal flavor - especially the Copper Ale, which poured completely flat. I will get some fresh product and do a re-taste later in the summer.

Otter Creek Brewing beers
Otter Creek Vermont Lager
Otter Creek ESB
Otter Creek Pale Ale
Otter Creek Copper Ale
Otter Creek White Sail
Otter Creek Stovepipe Porter

Notes: Otter Creek recently installed a new bottling line for both of their brands. As of my last trip to the bevvy the new labels don't have date codes on them anywhere, nor do the bottles. In a few months the lack of dates could be seriously frustrating.

Otter Creek White Sail

2007-04-25T18:16:00.003-05:00

Style: Belgian White
Appearance: Medium gold, fizzy during pour, white-colored head that subsided almost immediately, no lacings
Aroma: Sweet, orangey
Mouthfeel: Light, creamy
Taste: Sweet,
Verdict: A decent beer
Comments: I am unfamiliar with this style but the beer was good and had a refreshing flavor

Links: Otter Creek Brewing, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Otter Creek Copper Ale

2007-04-25T18:16:00.002-05:00

Style: Amber
Appearance: Medium amber, no head, no lacings
Aroma: Sweet, caramel
Mouthfeel: Light
Taste: Sweet
Verdict: A tolerable amber ale
Comments: This ale was completely flat when poured and the flavor was rather simple.

Links: Otter Creek Brewing, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Notes: This can't be a typical bottle. I will re-sample and update at some point.

Otter Creek Pale Ale

2007-04-25T18:16:00.001-05:00

Style: Pale Ale
Appearance: Medium amber, small white-colored head that subsided almost immediately, no lacings
Aroma: Floral, hoppy
Mouthfeel: Light
Taste: Slightly sweet, nice hop bite
Verdict: A decent pale ale
Comments: This pale ale is pretty good and has a pleasantly hoppy aroma and flavor.

Links: Otter Creek Brewing, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Otter Creek ESB

2007-04-25T18:16:00.000-05:00

Style: ESB
Appearance: Medium amber, small white-colored head that subsided almost immediately, no lacings
Aroma: Hint of sweet and hops
Mouthfeel: Medium
Taste: Slightly sweet, moderately bitter
Verdict: A decent bitter
Comments: A decent, drinkable ale that has a bitter finish without the floral overtones of a pale ale.

Links: Otter Creek Brewing, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Otter Creek Vermont Lager

2007-04-25T18:15:00.000-05:00

Style: Lager
Appearance: Medium gold, small white-colored head that subsided almost immediately, no lacings
Aroma: Hint of sweet
Mouthfeel: Light
Taste: Slightly sweet, slightly dry finish
Verdict: A decent lager
Comments: Though much better than a macrobrew, this lager is unexceptional.

Links: Otter Creek Brewing, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Brewing a Batch: Belgian Pale Ale

2007-04-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

Brewing tonight's batch was pretty straightforward and the wonderful smell of malt now fills my humble abode. I have no idea what this style tastes like so I hope to have a pleasant surprise in a few weeks. Five different specialty grains totaling two pounds in weight should provide some interesting flavors.

Batch Three Update Three

2007-04-22T20:17:00.000-05:00

Since the batch four brown ale turned out to be a total bust and I had drained the last of the pretty good batch two smoked porter last night, I decided try my batch three altbier again. I have been letting it coolish-condition in my basement since my last sampling on the advice of Chris in comments. Good advice, Chris. The beer had lost all of its yeasty aroma and turned into a really smooth and drinkable ale. It now has a little malt flavor in the body and just a bit of mouth-drying hops at the finish. It has touches of other flavors I can't quite identify as my taste buds are rather primitive. But my buds do know what they like, and they have pronounced this beer ready to be downed on a regular basis.

Batch Four

2007-04-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

Style: Brown Ale
Grains: 18 oz., 60 minute soak in 1.5 gal.
Malt: 6.3 lbs Muntons light, 60 minute boil in 3.0 gal.
Hops: 1.0 oz. Styrian Goldings @ 60 minutes, 0.5 oz. Fuggles @ 30 minutes, 0.5 oz. Fuggles @ 5 minutes
Fermentation: 5.0 gal. total liquid, Wyeast London III
Yield: 47 12 oz. bottles, 3/4 cups corn sugar as primer

Appearance: Medium brown, cloudy, huge tan-colored head that subsided after several minutes, light lacings
Aroma: Trace of malt
Mouthfeel: Very full
Taste: Bitter, blah
Verdict: An unpleasant ale
Comments: Houston, we have a problem. Two, in fact.

First, the carbonation is excessive in this beer, and a normal pour results in a huge head. With a careful pour down the side and a judicious sip of foam near the end, I can work a whole beer into a glass. All the fizz ruins the mouthfeel and makes me look like rabid dog if swirl the beer around in my mouth a bit. Back when I was bottling this batch I complained about the lack of carbonation in previous batches but I was hoping to go from one to two, not from one to twenty.

Second, the taste is blah - slightly bitter at the beginning, slightly harsh at the end, and without much maltiness. Perhaps this is the style or recipe, but more likely is that whatever caused the carbonation problem also affected the taste.

One thing to note is that the problem is batch-wide. I tried three beers from one six-pack, and then two from elsewhere in the batch, and they all had the same problems. The last two behaved even worse as they were at room temperature when I opened them, and most of the beer promptly self-foamed out. This stirred up the fairly thick layer of sediment into the beer that remained, making it positively soupy instead of just cloudy.

So what went wrong? One possibility is that I bottled the beer too soon, when there was still a lot of fermentation to left to do. Another is that by cleaning my bottles a day early, they all had the chance to get contaminated by airborne nasties. Another is that it was contaminated elsewhere during the brewing or bottling process. I suspect the first, but I don't really know.

Well, I was bound to have a disappointing batch sometime. Still, it is frustrating. I've moved the batch to the basement to let it coolish-condition for a bit, and I will sample the batch again in two weeks. Fortunately I still have some tasty batch two porter left, and I am now off to drown my sorrows in that.

Wolaver's Organic Ales Roundup

2007-04-19T21:08:00.000-05:00

Wolaver's is a second brand or line of beer from Otter Creek Brewing that prominently touts its organic wholesomeness. The beers I had tonight were all decent and drinkable, but unexceptional. I was somewhat puzzled by the Pale Ale and India Pale Ale, as the former was more hoppy and the later more malty - if anything I would expect the opposite. I am fairly sure I didn't switch the two as I reviewed all my pictures closely. Perhaps the age of the pale ale threw the flavor off a bit. As with the Trout River beers, I plan to get fresh product if it is offered at the brewery and then do a second round of tasting this summer.

Wolaver's Organic Ales beers
Wolaver's Pale Ale
Wolaver's Brown Ale
Wolaver's India Pale Ale
Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout

Notes: I ran into a Wolaver's/Otter Creek rep when I was shopping for these beers, and he said that the brewery just switched to twist-off long necks for their beers from the slightly-shorter-than-longneck bottle seen above.

Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout

2007-04-19T20:22:00.001-05:00

Style: Oatmeal Stout
Appearance:Black, slightly fizzy during pour, brown-colored head that subsided in a few minutes, no lacings
Aroma: Smokey
Mouthfeel: Full
Taste: Smokey
Verdict: A decent oatmeal stout
Comments: This stout is dominated by smokey flavors, perhaps more so than any of the porters I've sampled. Good, but the flavor is strong and lingers.

Links: Wolaver's Organic Ales , Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Wolaver's India Pale Ale

2007-04-19T20:22:00.000-05:00

Style: India Pale Ale
Appearance: Light amber, clear, slightly fizzy during pour, white-colored head that subsided in a few minutes, light lacings
Aroma: Slightly sweet
Mouthfeel: Medium
Taste: Sweet, slightly bitter
Verdict: A decent IPA
Comments: This is a decent, drinkable beer but I am not sure should be called an IPA as the hop bite isn't that pronounced whereas the sweetness comes through.

Links: Wolaver's Organic Ales, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Wolaver's Brown Ale

2007-04-19T20:21:00.000-05:00

Style: Brown Ale
Appearance: Dark amber, clear, tan-colored head that subsided in a few minutes, no lacings
Aroma: Touch of roasty sweetness
Mouthfeel: Moderately full
Taste: Slightly bitter, slightly sweet
Verdict: A decent brown ale
Comments: I don't know much about the style but this is a decent beer with just a hint of roasty flavor along with the malt and hops. The sweetness builds at the end along with the hops, which is different from a lot of ales.

Links: Wolaver's Organic Ales , Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Wolaver's Pale Ale

2007-04-19T20:19:00.000-05:00

Style: Pale Ale
Appearance: Medium amber, clear, white-colored head that subsided in a few minutes, light lacings
Aroma: Slightly hoppy
Mouthfeel: Medium
Taste: Slightly sweet, bitter
Verdict: A decent pale ale
Comments: Pale ales can seem rather blah alongside an IPA but a less aggressive hop bite is good at times. However, this beer's bite seemed more pronounced than the IPA from the same company. The date on this bottle indicats it was from last September, so perhaps fresher beer would taste different. It was still a drinkable beer.

Links: Wolaver's Organic Ales, Rate Beer, Beer Advocate

Bottling a Batch: Condensed Version

2007-04-19T19:56:00.000-05:00

Even though Wednesday has been designated beer production day, I didn't get around to bottling my latest batch of porter until today. There was no floating crust on this batch, and the trub was stable and didn't get sucked into the bottling bucket. I could have gotten a tad more beer out of the bottling bucket but I was being overly cautious about the trub. That left my last bottle about half full, which I capped anyway just to see what will happen. Here are the steps I took, without last time's extended commentary.

-1) Locate 48 bottles and clean off any labels
0) Relax and have a homebrew (or sample some new beers)
1) Wash bottles in slightly soapy water, rinse, and drain
2) Mix 6 gallons of sanitizer in the bottling bucket
3) Force sanitizer through the autosiphon
4) Fill bottles with sanitizer
5) Rinse out bottling bucket and autosiphon
6) Pour sanitizer out of bottles and shake bottles dry
7) Boil 3/4 cup of sugar for a few minutes and pour into bottling bucket
8) Transfer beer from fermenting bucket to bottling bucket with autosiphon
9) Boil caps for a minute
10) Bottle beer
11) Cap beer bottles
12) Place beer back where it went through primary fermentation

Beer and the 2007 Vermont Legislative Session

2007-04-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

Four bills of note to beer drinkers have been introduced in the Vermont Legislature so far this year. I will be writing to my representatives to urge their support for the changes as noted, based on my understanding of the legalese.

Support: H.94/S.28 would raise the maximum alcohol by volume for beer and other malt beverages from 8 to 16 percent. This would allow more "big" and exotic beers to be sold through regular distribution channels instead of through the state monopoly. This would be a very worthwhile change as wine up to 16 percent ABV does not need to go through the state system already. I don't know why a different level of alcohol came to be allowed in the two types of beverage, but the mismatch has never made sense to me since in my experience it is just as easy to get drunk off of one type as the other.

Support: S.029 would amend the law so that both in-state and out-of-state brewers could not hold a liquor serving license where they served their own beverages. I presume this means other than brewpubs and on-site pubs of brewers. Previously only in-state brewers were prevented from owning a liquor serving license. It is quite reasonable to make the law uniform, and in general I think it is a good idea to limit brewers from owning their own bars. This is especially true in Vermont, which is so small that a major could probably buy most of the bars in the state with the money they find in their accounting errors.

Neutral: H.034 would expand the bottle bill. Unfortunately the text is not online as of this writing, so I can't say for sure how I feel. I don't have an opinion on bottle bills as a whole because I haven't seen any evidence that they reduce litter, which is their main intent. However, the current deposit levels are undoubtedly low at $0.05 (at least for beer bottles), and if bottle bills do work this one should be updated to increase the deposit levels and cover as many types of containers as is reasonable. Since I am used to putting all my containers out for curbside recycling and have continued to do so since I moved here, and because I am not jerk who litters, the bottle bill doesn't have much influence on my personal actions.

Already Passed: H.157 explicitly allows homebrewers to transport their creations for competitions, and provides for regulation of other beer tasting events, both with restrictions. This bill passed with a few bit more red tape and limitations lodged in it than I would like, but I take it that homebrew events were operating in a grey area before, and so the bill made improvements. I think area of law should be revisited after a few years of practice, or if data becomes available on how well similar regulations in other states have worked.

Orlio India Pale Ale

2007-04-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

Style: India Pale Ale
Appearance: Dark amber, clear, white colored head that subsided in a few minutes, no lacings
Aroma: Slightly hoppy, slightly sweet
Mouthfeel: Medium
Taste: Slightly sweet, bitter
Verdict: A decent IPA
Comments: Organic or not, this is a decent India pale ale. Tasty and drinkable, it has a nice hop bite and leaves the mouth a bit dry and eager for another sip.

Links: Orlio Organic Beer, Rate Beer (not yet), Beer Advocate

Notes: See previous entry.

Orlio Common Ale

2007-04-17T19:32:00.000-05:00

Style: Common Ale
Appearance: Deep gold, crystal clear, fizzy during pour, white colored head that subsided in a few minutes, heavy lacings
Aroma: Floral, citrus
Mouthfeel: Light
Taste: Hoppy, slightly sweet, hop aftertaste
Verdict: A decent ale
Comments: Organic or not, this is a decent beer that is a little unusual. It may be a California Common Ale but the website does not indicate in what subtype of ale the brewer would classify the brew. It is similar in taste to Magic Hat's hI.P.A. but toned down a good bit.

Links: Orlio Organic Beer, Rate Beer (not yet), Beer Advocate

Notes: Orlio seems to be another brand of beers from Magic Hat, similar to how Otter Creek also produces the Wolaver's brand of organic beers. It's brewed at the Magic Hat brewery in South Burlington, it uses the same PR person, and like Magic Hat it has an annoying Flash-based website, which as of this writing is rather lame and incomplete. From poking around on the web I can't tell for sure if it is owned by the same people, but it is quacking enough to make that assumption.

Farewell, Batch One

2007-04-15T20:58:00.000-05:00

With a little bit of sadness and a good deal of pleasure I downed the last bottle of my first batch of homebrewed beer tonight, along with some leftover masaman curry I happily rediscovered before it went bad. The beer remained quite good as it was bottled in late February. I am not sure if it improved over time but it certainly didn't acquire any off flavors. I didn't have a single contaminated bottle in the bunch, which surprised me as at the outset I was sure I would mess up on sanitization somewhere. While the first sip of the batch convinced me that homebrewing is something I wanted to make a major hobby, comparing my homebrewed beer to commercial beers made me a little proud (pat, pat) of how well I had done (or lucked out) with the first batch. Hopefully most of my batches will turn out as well as this one.

À votre santé!