Gratis Fest, Terrapin Fest and Classic City Brewfest

     Where to start? Well this incredible weekend all started with a leftover can of truck bed liner. It made the perfect brew-deck sealer. Re-painting the brew-deck twice a year was getting to be a hassle. Luckily, that will soon be a thing of the past. We had leftover paint from the kegbox refinish that we tackled the week prior. Unfortunately, we weren't done with the keg box in time to have draught beer at Gratis-Fest. That probably was for the better.

       We started Gratis-Fest the day before with a quick run to the brewstore. I had ordered super fresh lambic yeast and they had to ship it in. It arrived Friday afternoon and it is a funky looking yeast!

       I started setting the brewery up at 6am. This time I had gotten smart and hooked the hardware up the night before. This meant that I could start the burner at 6:15am. That was awesome and really helped us keep on track. We were mashing by 8:30am.

       We had a fantastic crew of folks. Every time someone moved or breathed we tweeted it. You can see the smart phone team in action here. They were busily texting, tweeting and facebooking the entire day. Well done team Gratis.

      The above picture is the initial Dough-In. Jeff Hall, one of the original Misty Mountain Cloggers, is up top stirring and Puddin' is pouring the grain. These guys got up at 4:30am to make it down in time to brew. The Mash process for the lambic was intense. It required five steps to get to sparge and they were averaging 20 minutes per increase point. 

     We started at 122 degrees and held that for 30 minutes. We hit that target right on the nose. That was impressive for a chilly morning. Our grains were basement temperature but the outside air was hovering in the 40's at this point. 

        The next mash steps were: 139 for 20 minutes, 144 for 15 minutes, 162 for 20 minutes and 172 for 10 minutes with a sparge at 172. I've never sparged over 170 for fear of off flavors. This might just be the key to a successful Lambic. The wurt was very grainy. I question the step process using modified malts, it seems unnecessary but so does having to age hops in your garage for three years. 

         Here's everyone at the lunch whistle. Let me add at this point that Jen Roth did an incredible job of taking care of all of us all day long. That woman was a machine. I would also like to point out that our "Rawlph Haus" sign does kind of look like "Rawlph Balls", hilarious! 

       Here are our three year old hops. They are dry and brittle and only slightly aromatic. They are perfect for a lambic, but they are useless for most modern styles.

        Here we are chiiling the wurt and adding it to the ceramic fermenter. Why not use the conical? Well. brettanomyces is a super agressive wild yeast that likes to hide in every nook and cranny. I don't want to risk having an infection that would require a day to get rid of. So we will keep all "brett" beers in the glass carboy and ceramic fermenter. This fermenter is designed for suerkraut fermentation so it is perfect for lambics. This beer will take one to two years to finish. That's a long time to tie up a vessel. 

 Here is the whole crew on our way to Terrapin's 10th anniversary party. I surprised the guys with Gratis shirts and they surprised me by choosing to wear them to Terrapin. We looked like an official brewery. We were locusts about to descend on a barley field ad we were about to have a great time.

      Cheers to all the guys that came out to help brew and a big Cheers to Julia and Dustin at Terrapin. They added us to the VIP guest list and we felt like Rock Stars! The event was incredible and the beers were awesome. Tree Hugger was great and it bested itself in the casked, oak version. We parked in the cask tent and had a great time catching up with old friends.

       Like these dudes! Russ Yates, Charlie Meers and Owen Ogletree. Owen is responsible for creating what I think is the greatest craft beer festival in America. Classic City Brewfest is awesome and it was happening the next day. Three truly great beer dudes. 

     Here's Denver and Caleb on the ride home. You can see that we all look like the Joker from Batman. We couldn't stop grinning. That's how awesome the day had been up to this point. 

       We got back to Gratis by 7:30 after picking up pizzas on the way back. This is shortly before we all headed to the fire pit for a relaxing evening. It was a great time and we "gestungled" every beer imaginable. That's where you take a hot poker and jam it into your beer. It caramelizes the sugars in your beer foam and heats it up like a marshmellow. The bottom stays cool and refreshing. It's a lot of fun.

     Here is tent city the following morning. We did some urban camping to cap the an already great day. Luckily they kept the pit going all night and stayed super cozy.

     This is a picture of me drinking Easy Rider on Cask. This was the beer to end the weekend. We were tired and had just finished attending another incredible brewfest. Spike is the brewer, and cofounder of Terrapin, he is responsible for this great cask beer. 

      A quick video of the German sauerkraut fermenter in action. It has a really nifty water-lock rim that I poured Starsan into. That's why it' s foaming so much. I love this sound. Much more vocal than a blowoff tube going into a bucket. 

       We also threw a portion of the batch into a carboy. I did this mainly because I wanted to watch the pellicle form. The pellicle is a microbial laver that forms and helps to make the lambic sour over a long period of time. It's a symbiotic relationship. One day in the fermenter and it already looks funky and sour. I hope your weekend was as great as ours!

Gratis Brewing and Falling Shoals Collaboration

3-14-2012

           We've been trying to keep a punch list of actionable needs/fixes after each brew session. The greatest thing about having multiple people over is that other people focus on different flaws. I have my pet peeves and comfort zones. Those comfort zones mean that sometimes I don't mind screwing up the same way over and over. You could call that lazy on my part. So when people come over and point to those issues it makes it tough to over look them. We used to run oxygen to the wurt straight out of an oxygen tank, without a regulator. That made for all kinds of headaches. Regulating air that way is nearly impossible. Time Winters did a great job of pointing out the ridiculousness of using a vinyl hose hooked directly to the tank. I had been meaning to fix the situation but it wasn't high on my list of things to do. That razzing put it at the top of the list and so i put together a professional system and we now have an insane degree of control over the airlfow. 

 Our fancy new regulator

           The hops rhizomes arrived from hops direct along with some nice fresh hops from the 2011 crop. Hops are only picked once a year and we like to only use hops from the previous growing season unless we're doing a style that benefits from aged hops. The Lambic that we are tackling in April will utilize 3 year old hops. It's amazing how fast these rhizomes are growing. We'll have them in the ground very soon. It will take a good three years to get a full crop but we already have three vines growing in the vine and it's their third year. 

 Hops Rhizomes from Hops Direct

       The brew day ended up being hot. It was the perfect day to brew. The morning started off clear and slightly chilly. The brewdeck peaked at 85 degrees around 4pm. Best winter ever! Setup went fairly smooth. A short in the RIMS system meant for some mild entertainment. We bottled this same day and that lead to a mash hiccup. I cut the burner on to pull the heat up until the coil could maintain the temp. It caused a spike in temp at the 30 minute mark that raised the mash to 160. I like to mash at 152 and it always makes me nervous when we climb over 158. Technically the higher you get the sweeter the final product. That's because sugars become harder to digest by the yeast so the attenuation drops. Lagunitas mashes at 160 so I know about what the end result will be. We're blending a Belgian Triple recipe with an American IPA and I think the sweeter liquid will play well with a higher bitterness. 

 HLT, Mash Tun and Coffee Pot

         We bottled the Karrot Kaboom the previous week and like we do everytime we brew we set up a taste panel to pick it apart. We also tried Ryan's first beer which is now called Private America's Brown Ale, and Richard Shockley's two new Beers: The Lemon's In It and the Orange Bee Hive. Ryan's first try was well done. He is well on the way. Richard's beers were very well balanced and the Lemon's In It had a fantastic subtle quality that played well off the hops. The Karrot Kaboom comes in three iterations. The far left has been infused with a tea made from curry and szechuan pepper flowers. The middle in unadulterated. The far right has been infused with Herbes De Provence (rosemary, thyme, savory, lavender and basil). It was great to see how much the aroma and really influenced the flavor. All three are carbonating at different rates which is interesting considering that they have the same amount of priming sugar. Note the subtle differences in the color.

 Karrot Kaboom in it's three forms.

         On to the Rhuberry bottling. This was a collaboration between Gratis and Chops and Hops co-founder and Head Chef Richard Miley. There are 16 pounds of blueberries and 4 and 1/2 pounds of Belgian Rhubarb in this Kolsch. The color is amazing and the fruit is there but the Kolsch still stands on its own. I must say that I love this beer. The sourness is well balanced and lends to the drinkability. We have been doing so many over the top styles that this is a refreshing change. We will definitely revisit this one. I need to grow some rhubarb!

 Rhuberry in all it's ruddy glory.

        Here are Richard and  Ryan working the grist mill. You'll notice that Ryan is on mill probation after he broke the hopper (while it was full of grain) during the Karrot Kaboom brew day. Luckily his daughter Sarah (who served as his grain mill for the Private American Brown Ale) pointed it out to everyone. We'll forever be saying "Momma, Daddy broke it" at Gratis.

Private America and Shock on the 

       All in all it was a fantastic day at Gratis. We went over schedule by 2 hours due to a few technical issues and a lot of talking. That's what I would expect for a lazy kind of brewday and the second brew of the season. This weeks punch list added a new base and handles for the grain mill (idea via Tim Winters), a chill bucket for the wurt chiller to increase it's efficiency (Richard Shockley) and tracing the short in the RIMS wizard. 

Here is a link to Richard's Blog :http://craftbeerathens.wordpress.com/category/homebrew/ 

He does an awesome job keeping up with all things beer.

Cheers Y'all