2nd saturday again?

It's time again for second saturday at one of my favorite San Diego bars, Hamilton's Tavern. Every 2nd saturday they celebrate a brewery by serving up many of their beers on tap including specialties. They also include free food, and its delicious too!

Last month there was 24 Rogue beers with 18 of them never leaving Oregon before. I only had a few pints, but they were delicious.

This month is Green Flash brewing served with New Mexican food. Hailing from New Mexico and knowing the guys at Green Flash I am looking forward to this one. Two beers I am looking forward to tasting are their Double Stout on cask and Super Freak (Le Freak but soured in a oak barrel). I can't wait!

Free $0.99...

Recently, many have been writing about the cost of homebrew prices. Which got me thinking of how I can reduce my homebrew cost. Sure, some of us already grow your own (hops/malt), purchase in bulk, reuse yeast, make our own homebrew equipment. Is that all we can do?

I think an overlooked aspect to homebrewing (if you can) is to use one of the best resources possible...commercial brewers. Ok, I know some of you already do this, but are you taking full advantage? Did you know that many commercial breweries simply dump thier excess yeast down the drain? Their yeast are very healthy, viable and better than what you would find in a vial/package.

With a friend (he works in a local brewery as a cellarmen), I recently did a small experiment where we used the same wort and 2 different yeast. The result: his healthy commercial yeast (taken straight from a 90-barrel fermentor) attenuated 8 points lower than mine.

Sure the yeast were some differences and slightly different pitching rates, but my point is you can get FREE HEALTHY YEAST! Zilch, Nada, Zero, for FREE $0.99. All you have to do is ask and more times than not they will give you some. It helps if you bring a steril container. This will save you $8. Well, at least in my case.

Hop plants

My hop plants are starting to come back after the white fly devastation. They are still not gone, but their population have been reduced in number. Note: An organic herbacide I bought does not do well with hop plants. It seems that the heat of the sun will burn the herbacide and the hop leaf. I have switched to spraying pure water and soapy water to get rid of the white flies.

The chile plants have had the same effect, from the herbacide, but they too are now bouncing back. In fact, some of them are now blooming. Pics to come soon.

Big Brew Day...

This year the big brew day event was being hosted by award winning Alesmith, so I had to participate. Plus they are located down the street from where I live. Alesmith was great and provided us with some beer and food. Thanks guys! We used my friend's set up (he has a fancy pump system) and I decided to make the big mile recipe:

WILD MILD
English Dark Mild 10gallon batch
O.G.: 1.037
F.G.: 1.012
IBU: 15
70% efficiency

11 lb (2.5 kg) 2-Row Pale Malt
22 oz (312 g) English Crystal 55° L
12 oz (170 g) Crystal 120° L
6 oz (85 g) British Chocolate Malt
6 oz (85 g) Dark Carastan

0.75 oz (21 g) East Kent Golding, 5.8% Alpha Acid, for 60 minutes

White Labs WLP002 English Ale Yeast

Force carbonate at approximately 1.75 to 2.0 volumes of CO₂

wort cooling

fancy pump system

pump in action
mmmm...
Alesmith, a few months old
(small container in front is their hopback)

1,2,3,4 I declare a war...

...on whiteflies!!!

Hops plants were growing well until recently when they were attacked by whiteflies. Anybody ever had this experience? My chile plants were also attacked so I bought some organocide and so far it seemed to have worked. I hope it stays that way... How do you know if you have any whiteflies? They are super small, white and like to hang out on the back side of the leaf. They suck out all of the juice from the leaf and in the process leave their saliva behind which is toxic to the plant. Eventually, the leaves wither and the plant dies. They can double in population in less than a week and 1 whitefly can reproduce ~9 times. I don't like them.

On the brighter side. Tomorrow I will be participating in big brew day, which will be held at Alesmith Brewing co. (they recently won small brewery of the year at GABF). I will be slitting a 10g batch with a friend. It will be an English Dark Mild and the recipe can be found at Beertown.org. We had to change it a bit due to a lack of ingredients being available (chose dark carastan for brown malt). Also, we will split the 10g batch and ferment one with WLP-001 & one with WLP-002.

Chile/Hop plants update:

1 1/2 week old hop plants Perle (far), Sterling (near)

Below: poblano (L), Serrano (R)

1930 German brewing film

Here is a film showing you how to brew the 1930 German way...

Tis' the season...

Yesterday, I planted 2 hop rhizomes and 3 different types of chili's. If you look closely you will see shoots (white roots) starting to already appear. These rhizomes seem to be healthy, we shall see if I can manage to destroy them. I was told that these do not grow well in San Diego, but these are perfect for cal commons and kolsch style beers.

Hop rhizomes, Perle (L) Sterling (R)

Perle rhizome

Sterling rhizome

Also, I planted a variety of green chili's (mostlyNew Mexico variety). They are similar to Big Jim's, but are much tastier.

Hatch Green Chili's (NM #6) are the most famous

There about 60 of these