FloorBeer: A Concept

With a name like that, you must be wondering what I'm talking about. From the sound of it, you might be thinking "Beer spilled on the floor? beer fermented on the floor?" neither of those sounds particularly good, do they? Well, let me explain.

One of the perks of working at a home-brew supply store is the access to products that can no longer be sold because they are defective, expired, or you simply don't know what they are. Take our self-serve grain room, for example. After a busy day of sales, it is not uncommon to come across a small amount of grain left over in a bucket, sitting on the table, with no customers around to identify it. While most people would approach such a find with distaste of their customer's wasteful practices, I see an opportunity.

Now fast-forward 2 weeks. By now I've accumulated enough "floor grain" (though if the grain ends up on the floor, I don't actually take it) that I have the beginnings of a working grain bill for a 5 gallon batch. Take apart an all-grain kit that was never picked up, mix and match some ingredients, grab a few vials of expired yeast and BAM! You've got a beer to brew!

Will it taste awful? Quite possibly. Can I ever repeat it? Heavens no! But hey! This is home-brew, and on the 5 gallon scale we have room for random experimentation.

Stay tuned for floor beer stories and recipes in future posts!

Cheers,

-Richard

Brew a Light Beer? WHY?!?!

That question is what I had asked myself as soon as I discovered beers that were *not* light. Well, my class at UC Davis finally gave me a good answer to that question.

As with any good discussion of beer, a lot of unpleasant comments were made in reference to the most popular beers in this country during our class: Bud, Coors, and Miller. But the discussion took a turn that I did not expect. Our prof, Michael Ramsey, surprised us by commenting, "Say what you will about light beers, but try to brew one yourself and you'll find quite a challenge." He reasoned that brewing a beer with hardly any flavor is much more difficult than brewing one that is over-hopped, over-malted, or that is loaded with fruit or spices. "You have fewer flavors to hide your mistakes behind," he told us.

Well, I decided to take up his challenge and see how good my brewing, fermentation, and sanitation is. Today I brewed Morebeer's American Light Ale kit (from extract) at the shop.

First thing's first, I did a started of White Labs: California Ale Yeast (WLP001) to get the yeast culture awake and ready to go for pitching.

Then came brew day (another day I have been paid to brew). We were at a full boil by noon and well under way.

After some light hop additions and a good vigorous boil, it was time to cool the beer. Our immersion chiller works wonders for this process! And you can use the water for your cleaner, rinse, and sanitizer.

Finally I took a gravity (1.042: definitely on the lower end) and pitched in the yeast.

Lag time was about 35 seconds and it took off like a bat out of hell! I'm guessing the beer will finish faster than any other I've done before. This test will hopefully show where the mistakes I'm making are (assuming I'm making mistakes) and will tell me what I need to work on to make cleaner, better beer.

Thanks for reading!

-Richard

Update: 5/7/2012

Well,

LOTS has happened since our last update. Phil and I have brewed so many beers now that we've started to loose track!

There's been the:
Red (more like amber) Ale
Citra Pale Ale
Cardamom Blonde
Columbus IIPA
Black IPA
Hazelnut Brown Ale
Rye Beer
Plus many more!

Now we're 4 batches deep in bottling and have almost no time to do it...I guess that's the consequence of working too hard.

Recently I scored a job working at the local homebrew supply store in Los Altos, CA: www.morebeer.com which has been an amazing learning experience! I even had the pleasure of using their 10 gallon system to brew up a second version of our Black IPA (it's really, really good).

I also recently attended the "Going Beyond the Kit" brewing class at Sudwerks (through UC Davis Extensions) in Davis, CA and learned that I have way more questions about brewing than I had answers. Good thing too because I'm going back for the "Intensive Brewing Science for Practical Brewing" course in June.

Pictures at the end of the post. If you want to see anything in particular, post it in the comments and we'll make it happen.

Cheers, gentle readers!

-Richard

Mashing Out

Hops + Yeast

Boiling up the Wort. We're doing it wrong here though...this pot should be uncovered

The 10 Gallon brewing system that I get to use at work.

4 fermentations going at once is not too much...is it?