Denny Creek Brewing

Two Beers in The Times

2008-06-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Joel Vandenbrink of Two Beers Brewery recently, so I was pleased to see this story in The Times about his brewery. A nice thumbnail sketch of brewing and a bit of good publicity for Joel. I'm looking forward to trying a couple more of his beers this weekend at the Washington Brewer's Festival.

Illegal Homebrew

2008-04-16T22:13:00.000-07:00

In some states, it is illegal to brew beer in your home. The situation was discussed recently in this story in The Boston Globe.

Yesterday, I saw the following posted in the American Homebrewers Association forum:

Today when I got home from work, there was a handwritten note stuck to my mailbox from an actual Alabama ABC Agent. Let me back up a bit for those who do not know me. My name is Scott Oberman. Some of you may have seen my pic and read the article in the LA Times or other media. I agreed to allow an LA Times reporter into my home to attend our homebrew club meeting. This was at the request (not directly) of FTH {Free the Hops] folks in hopes that we had something going on while she was in town. I gladly agreed to this thinking it would be great publicity for FTH and the homebrewing legalization efforts. I am a member of the Rocket City Brewers in the HSV area. I have been homebrewing for 11 years. I am a hardcore homebrewer.

The note said:
"To the Oberman's,
Please call me at

256-726-[xxxx]
256-261-[xxxx]

Sorry I don't have a card to leave you.

Agent Rob xxxx (not positive of last name spelling)
Alabama ABC Board
210-A Exchange Place
Huntsville, AL 35806"

At first I figured one of my brewing buds sure went a long way just to mess with me. I called the number just in case. It was legit. I was told by the agent that the Montgomery office instructed him to pay me a visit and ensure that I was fully aware of the AL code concerning making beer in the home. He asked if he could come over to talk to me. I asked if there was a website that I could download from and save him a trip. He said that he had to have me sign for the information to verify I received it. I asked if I could just come to his office and meet him and sign for it there and he agreed. I will try to get a better feel for the direction this is leading, but I am not feeling good about it. My situation is extra shaky because I am divorced and have joint custody of my 11 year old daughter. I also have a job with the DoD that requires a security clearance. You may think I was a dumbass for allowing my name, etc to be published in the article. I did not know the article was going to have full names printed nor did I know the tone it would be presented in. I did not get to read it before it was printed. I should have asked. At this point, I am very close to the decision to completely give up the best hobby in the world until such time that it is no longer illegal here in AL. This is a decision that I have not taken lightly, but my family has to come first. This is the real thing. This is a sad day for homebrewing. I urge you all to do whatever you can to get this thru the 2008 legislation. Your voices CAN be heard and CAN make a difference.

Scott Oberman

Next time you savor a homebrew, be thankful you don't have to look over your shoulder if you don't live in Alabama or one of the other few remaining states where homebrewing is illegal. Good luck, Scott, in your dealings with the state, and thanks for going out on a limb for the sake of homebrewing.

New Beer's Eve

2008-04-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

Seventy-five years ago today, beer became legal again for the first time since Prohibition, an event referred to by many people at the time as "New Beer's Eve". Lots of interesting stories posted on Maureen Ogle's blog the last few days.

I plan to start celebrating by hoisting a pint or two at lunch. Cheers!

CO2 Saga

2008-03-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

Thursday I stopped by my usual CO2 supplier to get my cylinder refilled. Usually they do it while I wait, but it turns out there is only one guy who can do it and he was out that day. "He should be back around 4:00, so if you want to leave it here, you can pick it up tomorrow." OK, no problem, I can wait a day.

The fellow running the shop that day also raved at length about 'The Ale House', a pub down in Mukilteo. I did a little research and figured out he was probably talking about Diamond Knot Ale House. I'm a fan of their beers, but had never been to their pub, so a couple of co-workers and I decided to give it a try for lunch the next day.

On the way to Diamond Knot on Friday, I stopped to pick up my CO2. However, the juice man never made it in to the shop the day before, and was not certain to be in that day either, so it might be Monday before they could fill my cylinder. That was longer than I wanted to wait, so I gathered up my empty and headed on down the Mukilteo Speedway for Diamond Knot.

The pub is right across the street from the ferry dock. They have an interesting way of presenting many of their menu items. They are served uncooked on a platter with a piping hot slab of granite. The diner cooks the meat, vegetables and anything else on the stone at the table. I had a salmon sandwich, and my buddies each had pork, one Hawaiian style and the other Jamaican style. It was all really good. So was the beer.

On the way out, I was poking my head in the brewhouse when Dan, one of the brewers, happened to walk by. He was very happy to chat, telling me how he runs things and answering my questions. What a treat! He even offered to send me home with some yeast if I came back with something to put it in when they were kegging.

On the way back to the office, I stopped by Central Welding, one of the alternate sources for CO2 recommended by my usual supplier. They would exchange my bright shiny new cylinder for a full one of theirs, but wouldn't fill it. Bummer. No thanks.

Back at the office, I began to search for other places I could get my cylinder filled. The only other place I could find was AAA Fire & Safety in Fremont. I had gone to them once before, but they are pretty far away and only open weekdays until 4:30. By this time it was 3:30 on Friday, and I was in Canyon Park. Since I had no other options, I decided to head on over.

Traffic was cooperative and I made it with about 10 minutes to spare. The guy I had talked to was there, with all the lights out and ready to go home for the weekend. "You made it! I was waiting for you." He suggested that I might save myself a trip in the future if I bought one of his 5 pound cylinders in addition to my own. He also showed me 10 and 20 pound cylinders. The 10 pound was quite a bit taller than the 5 pounders, and the 20 pounder was slightly taller than the 10. I decided to go for the gusto and bought the 20 pounder. It was $120 full. Also refilled my 5 pounder, so I have that as a backup now.

On the way home, I began to wonder if the new tank would fit in my cooler. I measured it before hefting it in, and it was almost exactly the height of the cooler. There is probably less than a quarter inch to spare. The regulator has to be mounted at just the right angle, but it fits too. Very cool (so to speak).

I'm very excited about this latest capital acquisition! It will save me three or four trips to the CO2 supplier and works perfectly with my existing setup.

Tour, Festivus, Refrigeration

2008-02-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

Lots of exciting news since the last post! First of all, I toured Two Beers Brewery last month. I was intrigued by the size, the newness and the philosophy of the brewery, so I sent Joel, the brewmaster, an email asking if I could take a tour. He graciously offered me an invitation, and after a short visit we retired to the Woodland Park Pub for a pint a and a bite to eat. I learned quite a bit from him about starting up a commercial brewery.

On the 19th, we brewed a batch of Festivus. Logistically, everything went very well. We got our mash tun good and warm before doughing in, which was a great help in maintaining the target temperature for the duration of the mash on a cold winter day. Also hit initial wort target quantity right on, and ended up with almost exactly 10 gallons of brew to ferment. It has been conditioning for about 10 days now. We'll probably keg this weekend.

And finally, additional refrigeration is now a reality. For quite some time, I've been searching for the ideal way to get more keg refrigeration space. Eventually I decided the best way would be to buy a new energy-efficient half chest freezer for our frozen food and free up the ancient Coldspot chest freezer that we had been using. With the addition of a "brewing gadget", it's now ready for refrigerating beer.

The idea originally came up when I ran into Scott, a friend of mine since childhood, at the last Dark Star Orchestra concert at the Showbox. He told me about using a temperature controller that overrides a freezer thermostat by cutting off power to the unit when a predetermined temperature is reached.

We've never had that big old freezer more than about half full at most, so the idea of making better use of that space was appealing. We do need some freezer space for food, though, so that's where the half chest came it.

To convert the Coldspot to the Frankenfreezer, I purchase a Johnson Controls A419 temperature control:

This thing is just great! You can set the set point to anything from -30 to 212 degrees F, set the differential (difference between cut in and cut out) in 1-degree increments up to 30 degrees, set an anti-short cycle delay, and set it to operate in heating mode instead of cooling mode.

I had to build and wire up the power in and power out cables. Instead of building the cords from the ground up, I picked up a 15' workshop cord with nice molded plugs for on each end. Cut it in half, and there were my professional looking in and out cables.

Once the temperature controller was wired up, all I had to do was run the temperature sensor cable along the wall to a convenient place to drop it in to the freezer. The cable will run under the seal between the door and the body of the freezer, shouldn't allow for too much air leakage. If it does, I may try to build a little wedge to run it through to smooth out the gap.

Here's the finished setup, ready and waiting for some kegs:

Since the temperatures outside are near ideal beer serving temperature these days, I'm keeping the Coldspot powered down for now and taking advantage of Mother Nature's cooler, but in a month or so we'll be putting it to work.

Brew Update

2008-01-12T09:06:00.000-08:00

We've brewed a couple more batches that I haven't mentioned yet. On the 4th of November, we set out to brew a Scottish Export ale. Being of adventurous spirit that day, we decided to separate the brew into two 5-gallon batches, a first runnings and a second runnings.

The first runnings came out very strong, more properly categorized as a Scotch or Wee Heavy ale. The second was extremely weak and produced a very light, watery beer that nobody except me seems to care for. My acceptance of it is probably driven more by frugality and pride than by taste.

On the 16th of December we brewed our Amber Ale. Chastened by the uneven results of the previous batch, we decided to get back to basics and stay close to the tried and true. We were forced into a little unplanned experimentation though, when we discovered that Bob had only one package of the yeast strain called for by our recipe (London Ale); we need two packages for a 10-gallon batch. We substituted London Ale III for the second yeast starter. As always, we ferment in 5-gallon batches, so we pitched the London in one and the London III in the other.

The fermentation has been fascinating. After 14 hours, the London III was off and running, but the London was still quiet. The only other time I've seen a yeast still quiet after 12 hours in recent brews was the last time we used the London.

At 28 hours, the London was finally getting going (54 ppm) and the London III was even more active (80 ppm). The London III peaked out there or shortly after, and the London peaked out sometime later and remained the more active one for the rest of the fermentation. Target range for the temperature of both yeasts overlapped in the 64 to 70 degree range, and I was able to keep them in that range the entire time.

Both yeasts produced a krausen of a couple inches in the fermenters, but the London was largely settled to the bottom after a week in primary, whereas the London III was still thick on the top.

Dramatic difference there. Poor flocculation? In any case, the bulk of the yeast was left behind in both primary fermenters when I racked to the conditioning carboys.

After racking, I was surprised to see how much activity there was. The London III developed a thick head that filled the small headspace left to it in the secondary fermenter and actually invaded the airlock. It was easy to see the bubbles running up the side of the carboy to join the head. The London showed some signs of continued activity, some thin foam at the top, but not nearly as much. It had more headspace to breathe into so maybe that helped.

It's been in the conditioning carboys for almost three weeks now. I will probably keg today.

Priming

2007-12-11T22:49:00.000-08:00

An interesting post on priming:

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1993 11:02:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Robert H. Reed"
Subject: Malt/Wort vs. Dextrose Bottle Priming

In HBD #1229, p.shaw5 at genie.geis.com writes:

> While I'm here and dyslurking, I have another question. Other than
> spiritual and philosophical blessings, are there any real, tangible
> advantages to priming with DME orusing a gyre to prime? I'm just an evil
> barbarian extract/dry yeast brewer at this stage in my experience and while
> lots of the stuff I make is quite decent, the flavors are always strong and
> harsh, like a Ben & Jerry's beer.

Theory tells us that due to the differences in the way that yeast ferments
malt and corn sugar, that there will be differences in the beer according
to the priming technique you choose: a beer primed with DME or wort will
go through both respiration and fermentation phases of yeast
metabolism. During yeast respiration, the yeast consume oxygen on their
journey to reproduction. The corn sugar primed beer will bypass the
respiration phase via the crabtree effect. Theoretically, the malt
primed beer will have better flavor stability as oxygen has been
scavenged from the bottle during the bottle fermentation.

Some unsolicited advice: If you switch to pure liquid yeast cultures,
you can make huge advances in your beer quality. Using some simple,
creative culturing techniques, you can use liquid yeast with minimal
price penalty. All you really lose is the ability to brew on a whim as
brewing good beer with liquid cultures requires the use of a yeast
starter and its associated leadtime.

***********************************************************************
**** Rob Reed Internet: rhreed at icdc.delcoelect.com ****
**** IC Design Center Delco Electronics Corporation ****
***********************************************************************

Found at http://hbd.org/hbd/archive/1230.html.

Why Guiness Tastes Better in Ireland

2007-11-22T21:46:00.000-08:00

While reading Jon Udell's technology blog this morning, I was pleased to run across this digression on Guiness: http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/11/22/why-guiness-tastes-better-in-ireland/

Recent Brews

2007-10-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

We've brewed two more batches since my last brewing status report. On September 1st, we brewed a 10 gallon batch of our Celebration clone and named it Festivus. It came out very well in my opinion, very hoppy and somewhat bitter. Since we forgot to measure the original gravity, we don't have an estimate for alcohol content, but I think the vast quantities of hops provide a significant psychoactive component. A very relaxing brew.

While we were brewing the Festivus, we were admiring the Chinook hops growing in my yard, approaching readiness for harvest. We decided to brew a fresh-hopped ale and scheduled another brew date just two week later to coincide with harvest. We gathered about a pound and a half and used it all in the brew.

When kegging the Fresh Hopped IPA, we only dry hopped one of the kegs (because we only had one hop sock free). The non-dry hopped keg was tapped a couple days ago, and the dry hopped keg was tapped this evening. I definitely prefer the dry hopped version. The difference is very noticeable. The hoppines of the batch that wasn't dry hopped is so much less pronounced, it may not even qualify as an IPA when measured against the style guidelines. But it's still a good brew.

Oktoberfest in Palestine

2007-10-02T21:18:00.001-07:00

Ran across this story on the BBC's site the other day. I found the closing paragraphs most inspiring:

At one point, a young man who has come from Ramallah confides to me that he is a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of the Fatah faction.

This shy young man tells me why he - a Christian - wanted to join the quasi-Islamist group, branded a terrorist organisation by Israel and its allies for a string of suicide bombings in Israeli cities.

Then he looks down at the glass of beer in his hand, and around at the smiling crowds, and says it is the first day he has been truly happy for many years.

Ribbons

2007-09-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

Our homebrew competition entries, proudly wearing their ribbons.

Recent Brews

2007-09-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

Lots to report since the last post, here's a quick catch-up.

Went to the Evergreen State Fair over Labor Day weekend to check out the judging of our entries in the homemade beverage competition. I was pleased to learn that our IPA earned a red ribbon and our wheat beer a white ribbon. White is nothing to boast about, of course, but then neither was our wheat beer, in my opinion. The IPA on the other hand was pretty good and earned a total score of 37 out of 50 points, just one point away from a blue ribbon. I think we'll enter again next year, and hopefully go home with a blue.

Here are our display bottles at the fair:

That same weekend, we brewed a 10 gallon batch our Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale clone recipe. We're calling it Festivus Ale. Kegged it last weekend. Looking forward to trying the finished product any day now.

After recently learning about fresh hopped beer, we decided to brew again when my homegrown Chinook hops were ready for harvest. We used the Hopitat IPA recipe and substituted the fresh hops for the Magnum that would normally go in at the beginning of the boil. That was on Sunday the 16th. Racked it last weekend. Very much looking forward to trying this one.

Michael Jackson, 1942 - 2007

2007-09-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports that Michael Jackson has died. I'm not as familiar with his work as I should be, but he is well known as a friend of beer. More on his passing and his legacy is at beerhunter.com.

From the caption to a photo on flickr :

Michael liked to joke, "They say abstaining from beer will make you live longer. It's not true. It just feels like it."

Homebrew Competition

2007-08-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

We decided to enter the homebrew competition at the Evergreen State Fair this year.

Our entries ended up being Batch #3, Hopitat IPA, and Batch #5, Denny Creek Wheat. Didn't enter Batch #4, Weihenstephan Wheat, due to various factors, basically lack of preparation.

On Saturday, Thorly and I bottled up as much of the #4 and #5 as we could, given our somewhat limited bottle supply. But the end result of our efforts was a brew fridge chock full of kegs and bottles.

Here are the display bottles we submitted to the competition:

And here are the actual entries containing the beer to be tasted by the judges:

Judging is this coming weekend, and results will be available when the fair starts later this month. Looking forward to hearing what the judges think of our efforts.

IPA Bottled, Wheat Tapped

2007-07-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

Robert and I bottled the rest of the IPA last week. Although we can actually fit all three kegs in the refrigerator, that doesn't leave room for the CO2, so it's really not very practical. It was good to empty one of the kegs.

We filled eleven 22 oz. bottles and two 12 oz. bottles. The latter are for entry in the upcoming homebrew competition at the Evergreen State Fair. We're now down to five bottles of the IPA on site here.

The wheat beer has been tapped. I'm not too impressed with it. It doesn't taste bad, but it seems to fall short of what a good wheat beer should be. It doesn't seem to want to accept enough carbonation, and the head retention is not that good. It almost seems closer to a commercial American lager than a wheat beer. Despite any shortcomings with regard to style guidelines, it's still a refreshing summer brew. A little lemon is a welcome addition.

Wheat Ale Kegged

2007-07-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

Kegged the two batches of wheat ale yesterday. Here they are en route to their next abode:

Despite the odd extended fermentation, I think the Weihenstephan batch may turn out OK. It still has a rather sour taste, but that seemed to diminish quickly as the sample of proto-brew breathed over an hour or so.

We barely have room in the refrigerator for all three of our kegs, and they are each almost full. There are probably over 13 gallons of fresh homebrew being kept cold on site now.

I can hardly wait to taste a fresh, crisp wheat ale straight from the keg on one of these hot summer days!

Fermentation Problem?

2007-06-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

I'm a little worried about batch #4, the wheat beer using Weihenstephan yeast. The fermentation had slowed down to a normal level before I racked last Sunday, but since then it seems to have increased. There is a good layer (half an inch or so) of krausen in the carboy.

The gravity at racking was a little high (1.017), but this much fermentation after 11 days is like nothing I've seen before. The proto brew had a bit of an off taste too, I thought. We'll just have to wait and see how it turns out, I guess.

Fortunately, batch #5 with the American yeast seems to be performing more or less as expected. It's a little active too, but nothing like #4.

Here's what the brews looked like just after racking:

Here's how they looked yesterday:

That's a lot of krausen in the carboy!

New Brews

2007-06-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

Despite the lack of posts, there's been a lot happening at Denny Creek Brewing. I guess we've just been too busy to post!

Our third batch, a variation on the Hopitat IPA, just passed a week in the keg. This time we used the 1098 British Ale yeast instead of the 1028 London. Had the first sip on Sunday evening. A prodigious brew!

The weekend before last we brewed our first wheat beer and our first 10 gallon batch! We invested in a new brew kettle that morning and decided to go for it. This will be batches #4 and #5. We split the boiled wort between two 5 gallon fermenters and used Weihenstephan yeast in one and American in the other. More details to come as the brew progresses.

Welcome!

2007-05-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the official Denny Creek Brewing blog!

Unlike my personal brewing blog, JBrog, I don't think we'll be publishing brewing notes directly to this blog. That was always a bit more of a chore than it should have been. Normally I log ongoing events and data for a batch of brew in a text file as the brew progresses, then I would transcribe the completed notes to a blog post.

Rather than transcribing the text file, the new plan is to post the text file directly to the server. Then, we can link to it from a page on the main web site. Also, we can add a post here with a link.

This should make the brewing notes better organized and make it easier to find information about a specific batch.

Also in the spirit of better organization, we're planning to number our batches. Batch #1 was the Amber Ale, batch #2 the Hopitat IPA.

Look for another post soon as our little brewing operation continues to evolve!