Brew Brain Blog

I moved my amber ale from primary to secondary over the weekend.  It tasted great and looked awesome.  I can’t wait until that one is ready.

The oatmeal stout was supposed to be moved as well, but when I checked the gravity, the attenuation was only at about 47%!  I thought that was strange.  I decided to pitch another package of yeast just to make sure things get cleaned up, but I haven’t seen any airlock activity.  It sure seems done, but it definitely shouldn’t be.  It should get down to around 73% or so.  I guess I’ll move it this coming weekend into secondary and see what happens.  If I bottle it at this gravity, I’ll be storing the bottles in a rubbermade tote that should contain the glass shards when the bottles explode:)  I really don’t know what to think about this.  It was the first time using the Safale -04.

I think I’ve decided to try to nail the oatmeal stout recipe down for my next recipe.  Next time, I’ll leave the mash working for an extra half hour or so.  My initial gravity reading was very low, and then I get no attenuation.  I just don’t know what to think.  Can I have a conversion issue?  I don’t know.  There was a very high percentage of specialty grains that can’t convert themselves in this recipe. 

Another late night bottling beer.  This time, it was my latest attempt at a pale ale.

The tasting was interesting.  I may be too far out of balance with this one.  I put just over 40 IBU’s of Centennial hops into a very light malt grainbill with an SRM of 5.0.  For those not familiar with the color chart, 5.0 is about as light in color as you can go without being a budweiser.  The hops were fairly harsh at the tasting, but they’ll calm down some.  I do suspect it won’t have the malt backbone to handle the hops.  We’ll see.  The gears are already grinding on my next pale ale recipe.  I’ll get all the components figured out just right one of these days.

I’ve sampled the IPA the past several days and stuck the entire batch in the fridge last night.  It is carbonated and ready for cold conditioning for a week.  It is tasty and quite drinkable, but not what I want for my Quicksilver IPA.  It’s probably a bit too rich with caramel flavors and the hops are not really popping the way I’d like.  It is going to be good and very drinkable, but not “it”.

I took a carb check sample of the first stout yesterday.  It was carbonated more fully than I expected.  The flavors, as expected, were too light for a stout.  It needs more “stuff” in there.  The flavor that was there was pleasant enough, and it will be a keeper.  A good start with stouts actually.  It smelled awesome with chocolate and coffee notes.  I look forward to the next one.

Today I’ll rack my latest amber ale and oatmeal stout to secondary.  I’ll bottle them the week before leaving for vacation for a couple weeks.

I’ve decided not to brew any more full batches until I get further into my Grain School batches and am set for kegging.  I hate bottling so much I would rather run out of beer than bottle beyond what I’ve got now.  Of course, I’ve strategically made this decision at a point where I have plenty of beer coming on line to last a good long time.

I put the lid on Batch #2 of Grain School today.  This time I added half a pound of Munich (10) malt to the 1.5 pounds of US Pale 2-row and the same rationing of hops.  I’m using 0.2 ounces of Cascade first wort hopping and another 0.2 ounces with 5 minutes left in the boil.

I figured out a couple more things with this batch, and I think I’m on my way to actually having a smooth brew day for the rest of these suckers.  After well over an hour of boiling on the stovetop at a very low boil, I decided to move the operation out to the gas burner outside.  That really got things hopping and I was able to boil off a lot of the wort in much better time.  I’ll need to use the outside burner from now on.  I’m not so sure, however, that using my IC chiller was a good idea.  Since it does not submerge fully, I’m somewhat concerned about infection from that thing.  It’s probably fine.

Since I hadn’t nailed my volume measurements in the small kettle yet, I overshot my boil a bit this time and wound up with a bit less than a gallon in the fermenter.  I was prepared for this - sort of - and had previously boiled water on stand-by.  However, that water was still very hot.  As luck would have it, I managed to try to dribble my thermometer on the cement patio out back.  I failed and broke it.  I knew the wort was too hot to pitch yeast, so I put the little fermenter in the freezer for a bit.  When it was cool to the touch, I pitched the yeast and locked it up.  Now, about five hours later I’m getting airlock activity, so it couldn’t have been too far off.

So, for next time, I’ll be going back to my big kettle.  It is way too big, but I did actually almost have a boilover in the 5 gallon kettle when I wasn’t at all ready for it.  Plus, it is notched for volume, so I’ll know when I’m at my necessary volume of wort.

I also need a new thermometr.  I should just start buying those and hydrometers in 6-packs.

er, bucket. It’s in the bucket.

I brewed up the US 2-row with Cascade today. This will be one light beer, and I don’t expect to like it particularly. I don’t expect to dislike it either, really. It’ll taste like a very light beer with some hops to it.

The brew day did not go off without a hitch. As it turns out, I don’t have equipment that handles a small batch very well. I tried to siphon wort from my mash tun, er, mash tupperware and it got stuck. I could not for the life of me get a siphon going, with or without a filter attached.

So, I dumped the hot wort into the kettle through a strainer. Hot side aeration? What hot side aeration? It may or may not be a myth. I’ll know for sure when I taste this batch, that’s for sure. Personally, I’ve always been on the “myth” side of that fence anyway, so I’m not worried. Of course, I don’t have much to base that opinion on.

Then, I overshot my fermenter volume by 50%. Instead of a gallon of wort, I ended up with 1.5 gallons. I didn’t really think much of it right away. I just simply poured a gallon into the fermenter, aerated, pitched and put the lid on. No biggie. until I poured the rest into a pitcher to see how much there was. I didn’t think there was much left, but it was a solid two quarts. The gravity reading was fine for 1.5 gallons, but I was looking at a 2.3% ABV or something on my one kept gallon. When I tasted the hydrometer sample from the pitcher it tasted like hoppy water. Crap. I boiled it down to half a quart and tossed it in the bucket. Now I have slightly more than a gallon, but it has all the sugar it should have had from the beginning.

In the end, assuming hot side aeration really is a myth, all should be fine with batch #1. Next up will be a Munich 10 addition. I know, I know. I’m going off the script. But, as I have decided to brew one at a time, I’m going to work through the grains I really want to understand and likely use most often first. So, the Munich, Honey and lighter Crystals will go first.

By the way, I’m typing this blog entry while thoroughly enjoying an Arrogant Bastard. You couldn’t be more jealous. I generally go with beers I’ve never tried before when I visit the beer store.  I do make exceptions for exceptional beers, and this is certainly one of them.  Other recent repeats have been Firestone Walker Pale Ale and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale along with Rogue’s Shakespear Stout.  I make a point to NEVER leave the store without a bottle or two of the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in particular as they make it available in 24 ounce bottles that are short and squatty and fit very nicely on the refrigerator shelves.  I will have an army of them for homebrews by the time I’m done.  Also, they currently have a Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale that is essentially an IPA that is very, very good.  It is also in those same bottles.  I definitely need another of those bad boys for a brew review entry.  Looks like a trip may be necessary tomorrow.  Damn the luck!

My 1.5 gallon fermentation buckets have arrived!  That means I kick off Grain School this weekend.

Grain school will be my way to really nail down what all the different grains actually cause beer to taste like.  I will be brewing a base recipe, and then several more recipes, each with a different grain added.  These will be one-gallon batches.

My schedule will look something like this:

Brew Day #1:
MO + Cascade hops
US 2-Row + Cascade hops

- all other recipes add one grain to US 2-Row + Cascade:

+Vienna
+Melanoiden

Brew Day #2:
+Honey Malt
+Crystal 20
+ Crystal 60
+ Crystal 80

Brew Day #3:
+ Biscuit Malt
+ Victory Malt
+ Munich 10
+ Munich

Brew Day #4:
+ Special B
+ Light Chocolate Malt
+ Chocolate Malt
+ Roasted Barley

Brew Day #5 - Head retention/mouth feel day:
+ Cara-Pils
+ Flaked Oats
+ Flaked Wheat
+ Flaked Barley

This will take me through at least the end of the year, but I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t wait to fill a notebook with geeky beer data!

In reality, I’ll probably brew up two batches a day instead of four, but you get the gist.  By the time I finish this I should be much better at crafting tasty recipes where the grains really work with each other to accomplish a goal.  Of course getting the ratios right will still take tweaking when perfecting a recipe, but I should at least usually get off to a good start.

I tasted my Spiced Holiday Ale last night while taking a gravity reading.  I could have barfed.  I knew when I put the recipe together that it was going to be very bad, but I tried anyway just to make sure.  I have always thought my vanilla chai beer would be either a stout or a porter, but I decided to see what would happen with a relatively light malt backbone.  Result:  Not good.  Not good at all.  Part of the problem is I put a bit of pale chocolate malt in at the last second.  That was a bad idea, but it wouldn’t have worked anyway.  I even tried adding a bit of vanilla extract just to make sure and it got worse.  Brutally bad flavor.

I’ll try again, but I’ll first develop a very tasty milk stout recipe that can stand on its own.  Then I’ll tweak it for the chai and vanilla additions.  It will take a malty and very sweet beer to handle the chai flavors.  Ever try to drink chai without a good rationing of sugar?  It just doesn’t taste very good.  I don’t know what I was thinking throwing that stuff in what was basically a pale ale grain bill.  Yuck!

On the bright side, I don’t have to bottle this weekend!

I had quite a long (meaning good) weekend of brewing.  I managed to brew two new beers, bottled one and racked another from primary to secondary.  It is quite a production line at this point.  Thoughts and experiences:

1)  Bottling blows goats.  I hate it and I’m done with it.  Today, I’ll be ordering a storage shed for the back yard so I can empty out half of the garage.  That space will be used for brewing stuff, including a keezer, which I will get started on as soon as I can clear the space.

I’ll need a freezer to turn into a keggerator for sure.  I’m going for four or five taps so I can always have my standard beers on tap.  There is every chance this may be overkill as I don’t really drink tons of beer.  I’m sort of a one beer a night sort of guy.  Five full kegs would last approximately a lifetime.  Worst case scenario is I end up with fewer taps going and use the extra space for bottle storage, freeing space in the spare refrigerator for family groceries.  Lord knows it gets used for that anyway.  Second scenario is I end up buying a two-tap keggerator and reconverting the freezer back to a deep freeze for family groceries.  Lord knows we could use that functionality as well.  Either way, nothing bad happens.  I hope to keg some of the beers I currently have in production.

 2) I brewed a stout recipe that got horrible efficiency numbers.  I’ve always just accepted the crushed grains I get from my LHBS and have been getting somewhat consistent numbers.  This one was quite a bit lower, to the point I was worried I screwed something up.  I think I’ve settled on an explanation.  I used 6 pounds of base malt and 6.75 pounds of specialty malts.  I wanted a nice thick mouth feel, so I mashed quite hot - about 158 degrees, and reduced the mash time from an hour to 45 minutes per instructions from my Beersmith software.  I managed to have the mash too hot to start with - about 162 or so.  I stirred it down over 5 or 10 minutes, but the temp problem may have  been a factor.  Also, I think I should have mashed longer since fewer enzymes than normal were converting more starches than normal.  Well, normal for my recipes.  Anyway, I think I’ll hold off on new stout recipes until I start drinking this one.  This will be my first real frame of reference for my target stout.

3) I put together my first honest educated shot at an Amber Ale.  I’m hoping for the best.  Efficience again was low, though, so I started wondering about the crush.  I hit all my numbers right on the dot with this recipe and still came in a bit low.  I’m toying with the idea of buying a barley crusher just to make sure I get a consistent crush with every recipe.  I can then buy bulk quantities of uncrushed base malt and run already crushed grains through as well, just to be safe.  It would cost under $200 shipped.  It may be worth it.  I don’t need to have the crush be a moving variable when I’m trying to dial in recipes.  My efficiency stats should not vary much from batch to batch.

4) I bottled my first stout recipe last night.  It is a miserable process.  I felt like just dumping the beer since I know I won’t love it.

5) I racked my latest pale ale to secondary.  The sample I drew smelled and tasted like a dream!  This may end up being the official Raccoon Trail Pale Ale recipe.  I’ve said that before at this stage of development.  We’ll see how it does under carbonation in about six weeks.  If I weren’t hoping to keg this one, I’d probably speed up the process.  It does not need two weeks in secondary.

I decided to measure the gravity on the stout last night since it came in a bit higher than expected after two weeks in primary.  It only dropped another point, so I guess its done.  I’ll bottle this weekend.

Unfortunately, it is very weak on flavor.  Anheuser Busch would be proud.  It is only slightly more flavorful than their Bare Knuckles Stout.

 Anyway, looking at the recipe, I can see I put in too much base malt and not enough of the rest.  The specialty grains would be fine, I suppose, if I had backed off significantly on the base malts.  It is also light in color at a brownish gray.  Also, it is an oatmeal stout and I only put half a pound of flaked oats in the 5-gallon recipe.  That just won’t cut it. 

It isn’t horrible, so I’ll bottle it and consider it a good first effort to build on.  I already have my next recipe worked out and may fire up the kettle this weekend - possibly as early as tonight as the rest of the weekend will be quite busy.  I’m searching for sweet creamy goodness, and I think I’ll get much closer with batch #2.

These are the two biggest selling designs so far:

You can click on the photos to see more.  I need to do some updating.  The “chunks” design isn’t even in the beer section.  Here’s the store front

Way back last September I bottled up a first shot at an amber ale.  Well, that one was a dud.  It never carbonated - or so I thought.

I took the remaining bottles out of the box they’ve been stored in at room temperatures all this time with the intent of dumping them down the drain.  I figured I’d dump them because the flavor was always less than good on top of the non-carbonation issue.  I pumped so many different grains into that recipe that it ended up tasting like mud.  Just not worth any salvage effort.

Anyway, when I popped the top off the first bottle, I was greeted with an enormous PFFFSSSSTTT!  I poured a mug of foam out of that bottle.  I chilled the rest of the bottles down and will sample tonight.  The flavor still wasn’t anything I’d shoot for again, but it was beer and it wasn’t horrible.  Certainly, it is no longer a dumper.

Good thing, because I’m down to my last few bottles of my last pale ale.  I have a new IPA effort in week #1 of bottle conditioning, so that’s a couple weeks away.  In the mean time, I’ve managed to relieve the new BevMo in town of many bottles of a variety of beers.  I’ve got some work to do if I want refrigerator room for the homebrews I’ve got coming on line over the next several weeks.

Speaking of the homebrews, there is a good chance my first Spiced Holiday Ale attempt is not going to be any good at all.  This was expected.  For some reason I thought I’d add chai spices to a lighter beer recipe.  It is basically a pale ale with a little chocolate malt.  Huh?  Ya.  It didn’t taste very good last night after two weeks in primary.  It may mellow out and be drinkable, but I seriously doubt it will be truly “good”.  The only decision is whether to do anything else weird to it, like adding lactose before bottling, or following through with the vanilla extract plan.  I don’t know yet.  I do know the next attempt will be with a stout recipe of some sort, likely a sweet stout.  That makes much more sense.  I did pretty much nail the spice quantity for a stout I think, so at least I get something out of it.

Next week I bottle up my first stout.  It tasted green, but fine when I racked it to secondary last week.  I don’t think it will be anything special, but a good first effort.  Certainly something to build on.

I’m sick and tired of two things - bottling beer and poker.

First, the poker.  I’m in a 20K+ hand stretch of running KK into AA and I’m sick of it.  Last night I decided to just move down and enjoy playing again.  Well, it was all going very well, chipping up over $100 on the $50 tables, when in the span of five hands on one table I ran KK into AA YET AGAIN - this KK vs. AA thing will now never even out for me; life just isn’t that long - and then ran a K-high flush into an A-high flush.  Bam!  Just like that I’m down to a $7 win for my efforts.  The frustration just isn’t worth it to me any more.  I have basically enough in my accounts to pay for everything I need, so that’s what I’m going to do.  I’ll keep enough in my account to make a go of running it up again, but I’m harvesting while I still have a crop.

The first step is to order a big shed for the back yard.  This is going to allow us to empty out the garage.  Half of the garage right now is piled high with “stuff” that is mostly in boxes and will stack nicely in the shed.  Lots of it can also probably be ditched in one way or another.

Once the shed is full, I can pick out a deep freeze and convert that into a keezer.  I’m thinking I’ll go with a 10 cubic foot model and go for five taps.  That is a lot of taps for me, but it will allow me to brew my standard offerings once and have them for a while as I’ll do them in 10-gallon batches.  That’s two kegs each, one on tap and one waiting and conditioning further.  I’ll probably need a second conditioning cabinet at some point as well.

Since I won’t have to brew my standard beers all that often, I’ll be able to brew smaller batches of specialty/experimental beers more often and just bottle those.  I’m finding I don’t like to take the time and bottles up with a recipe that may be a complete disaster when I have limited resources.  The kegs will eliminate that problem.

I’d love to get started very soon on this project as I have four beers to bottle over the next four weeks.  If I can get things together quickly enough, I can save some work.  I doubt I’ll be ready that quickly though.

The other thing I need to do is get some equipment together for very small test batches.  I want to brew a series of beers with one ingredient changed from one to the next.  This will teach me a ton about how the different grains/hops really change the flavor of beer in a vacuum.  I would love to brew one-gallon batches of each.  I don’t really want five gallons of each around.  I want to cycle through them much more quickly than that.  I expect many of them to be very good beer, actually, but this is for schooling purposes only.  If I like one enough, I can always brew a full batch.  I’ll stop by the home brew shop this weekend to see if I can get any ideas on what to use for a fermentor.  I’m not going to use a secondary for these test batches.

Oh, I picked up a 24 oz bottle of Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere yesterday.  I haven’t tried the beer yet, but that 24 oz. bottle is a real keeper!  It is fat and short and will fit on the refrigerator shelves just great.  The taller 22 oz. bottles don’t fit very well.  I may have to drink a ton of that stuff.  I hope it’s good!

So, after 9 months I decided to do something about my vanilla porter I’ve had lurking in the back of the closet.  I have never been able to motivate myself to bottle this thing since I’ve never liked any of the taste tests I’ve taken.  I tried to convince myself I liked it the first time or two, but never really did in truth.  It has four vanilla beans in there and a bunch of vanilla extract, but absolutely no vanilla flavor at all.  None.  Plus, the traditional porter flavors are harsh and unpleasant.  In short, I just don’t think I did a very good job on this one.  That, or the recipe was a dud from the beginning.  It has black patent malt in it, and I believe that stuff just has a tendency to overpower everything else. 

Also, it is a dry dark beer.  I tend to not like those much.  I much prefer the sweet dark beers.  Maybe that’s why I gravitate towards oatmeal stouts when looking for a dark beer. 

To top things off, the beer developed some sort of weird skin on top with bubbles.  It sure insn’t much of an infection if that’s what it is, and it gave no off flavors or off scents at all.  Just another mark against this beer.

In the end, I needed the carboy, and I have several beers stacking up that will need bottles.  I decided to just ~GASP~ dump the beer instead of allocating bottles that I’d never get around to drinking. 

This is my second dumper.  The first was my first shot at an amber ale.  That one didn’t carbonate properly.  Plus, it was my first clue that with beer, less is more.  I threw every sort of malt I could find at that beer.  In the end, it was a muddy mess of flavors with no real character.  Just not good.  And flat.  Gone.

Right now, I’ve got an IPA in secondary, an oatmeal stout headed to secondary this coming weekend, and my first shot at a spiced holiday beer in its first week of primary.  I have a pale ale planned for the weekend.  There just isn’t room for bad beers.

Speaking of the IPA, I tasted a sample when I racked it to secondary.  It was very good.  It should be a very clean, sessionable IPA.  The alcohol content will be towards the bottom of the range for the style due to a bit of an optimistic shot at efficiency.  To get what I was really aiming for, I would have needed more base malt, but that’s fine.  I’m good with a lower alcohol content.  I’m sure this isn’t my final version of the Quicksilver IPA anyway.  I’m still experimenting with different hopping combinations.  I do know the permanent version will be a mid-range IPA on both alcohol content and IBU scales for the style. 

The goal for all my “stock” beers will be to have a lineup of smooth, sessionable beers.  Then I’ll push the limits and create new limits for seasonal/specialty brews.

I hope you all have a chance to sit in my brewpub and enjoy them all someday.

A common topic of discussion among homebrewers is efficiency. That is, how much of the grain sugars we get into our beer. The better the efficiency, the less grain we need to buy to fill out a recipe.

The numbers will vary depending on the grain quality and freshness, grain crush and brewing methodology. From what I see on the internet, around 75 - 80% is fairly common with some getting worse efficiency and some superstars getting better. I’m talking efficiency into the boiler here.

My numbers are pretty consistently right around the 80% mark. Considering I really don’t do much to ensure good efficiency other that attempting to get close to my strike temperatures, I think pretty much everybody should be able to get at least into the 70%+ range without any trouble at all. Of course the commercial guys would probably croak if this was all the better they could do, but for homebrewing in small batches, it is just fine. The important thing is to be consistent so you can rely on your numbers when putting a recipe together. Plan for your average. Brewing is like golf - we all hit a great shot once in a while. If you plan every shot to be your best, you’ll be disappointed more often than not. Besides, your brew kettle is much harder than a driver to wrap around a tree, and you can’t throw it as far.

My plan as of right now is to document a brew day from start to finish on Monday. I have a pale ale I need to get done, and I’m hoping I’ll have time on Monday. What better way to spend a day off work than brewing up a batch of beer! I’ll start with a description of the equipment I use. I have a VERY simple setup with no bells and whistles, so if you have wanted to jump into all-grain brewing, but didn’t know if you could do it without all the fancy equipment, I’ll prove to you that you can. About the only piece of equipment I own that isn’t rock bottom simple is my cooler-conversion mash tun. The mash can be done with two plastic buckets and a blanket, but ……. no.

The one issue I may have is I plan to use crushed grains I’ve had for several months. I want to use them, though, just to see how they do after sitting on the shelf for that long. They have been vacuum sealed, so I’m hopeful they’ll behave just the same as the fresh stuff I get down at my LHBS. If the efficiency is horrible, I’ll just toss it and do the brew-day post some other weekend.

My first attempt at this beer went into the bucket last night.  I decided to make a lighter beer, both in color and in ABV.  It should clock in at just under 5% ABV.

For my 5 gallon batch, I used 8# MO Pale Malt, 1# honey malt, 1# Crystal 10 Malt and 1/4# Pale Chocolate malt.  The chocolate malt darkened things up a bit, but not too much.

I didn’t want to go too far with hops as I want the chai to sort of fill that roll.  I used 8oz Northern Brewer at the 60 minute mark.  At flame-out, I steeped 4 Double Spiced Chai tea bags for a few minutes.  I’ll cut up four vanilla beans and soak in vodka for a week or so before adding them to secondary for at least a week, maybe two.  Then I’ll bottle it all up and hope for the best.  I’m hoping it is drinkable, but fully expect to need to make some adjustments before the recipe is declared final.  My bet is I used too many chai bags for such a light grain bill.

The goal is a light, sweet malt backbone with noticeable, but not overpowering chai and vanilla flavors mixing well with chocolate notes.  I suspect I’ll get a barely perceptible malt presence overpowered by humongous volumes of harsh chai flavors masking any hint of $20 vanilla been additions.  We’ll see.

I found during my last brew review that I referenced two different beers that I’ve tried, but failed to post a review of.  I have no idea how that happened, considering I can remember sitting down and scratching out notes on both of them.  Both the Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale and Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale are missing in action.  Bummer since I have no desire to buy more Double Barrel and I’ll have to wait for the Celebration Ale to become available again.

In short summary:

Double Barrel Ale - Fat Tire on sterroids.  Very biscuity, which just doesn’t suit me very well.  Just not my style, but I’m sure Fat Tire lovers who are ready to step up a notch will love it.

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale - quite possibly the very best IPA I have tasted.  It is crisp, clean, nice lingering bitter and fresh hops flavors - prinarily NW “C” hops from what I remember.  I would travel to get more of it next holiday season if I had to.

Poor substitutes, but they’ll have to do for now.

By the way, I’ve stopped posting reviews of beers I just don’t feel right about reviewing.  I’m not going to like a sour beer very much, so when I dig into one, I don’t feel I should be giving a public critique.

Tonight I eagerly popped the cap on the new Union Jack IPA from Firestone Walker.

PHOTO WILL GO HERE

I’ve had a mixed reaction to the beers from Firestone Walker so far. Their Pale Ale is among the contenders if I could only drink one beer for the rest of my life. Their Double Barrel Ale didn’t quite do it for me. (I can’t believe I can’t find a review of the Double Barrel.  I must have forgotten to write one.  Crap!)  Now, on to the Union Jack IPA:

The pour is crystal clear light yellowish orange with a small head that dissipates fairly quickly. Lacing down the glass is not heavy, but fine.

The scents are of floral hops and sweet caramelized dark fruit. It smells great.

The taste is very much like the smell - sweet malts, a bit toasty or biscuity in my opinion, and some ripe peach notes. These are balanced well by fresh hops flavors of pine and citrus. It finishes with more sticky sweetness and just enough bitterness to give crisp getaway in the swallow.

The mouthfeel is maybe slightly on the thin side, but certainly not slippery. I think maybe it could use just a bit of a carbonation kick to thicken things up just a touch. Nothing major here, but I think it would help round out the mouthfeel.

Overall, I really enjoyed this IPA. It isn’t my favorite - certainly no Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale - but it is a fine IPA and I will be proud to share these with friends over the Memorial Day weekend. You have my permission to give it a try:)

Enjoy your beer,

Brew Brain

So I heard a rumor that a few Dogfish Head brews had found their way out west.  I drove by the ol’ beer store on my way home from work to see what I could see and came away with a bit of a haul, including a 4-pack of the DFH 90 Minute IIPA.  I was really looking forward to my first exposure to this Delaware brewery I’d heard so much about.  How did I like it?

The pour is a beautiful crystal clear rust orange color with a nice fluffy off-white head up top.  Once again, the photo does not do the head justice.  I poured right out of the refrigerator like a dork….AGAIN!  After letting it sit and warm slightly, I swirled the beer around my glass a bit and it built up very nicely.

The scents are quite complex.  At 9% I was not surprised to smell alcohol.  Also in there are flowery/pine sap hops and sweet malt scents.

The flavor is what surprised me.  This beer is not near as bitter as I was expecting.  I’d say this beer actually leans pretty hard on the caramel malts.  They are quite sticky and very, very sweet.  It’s like a fruit syrup smoothy in my glass, with piny hops entering in towards the finish.  I think they wanted complexity.  I’d say they achieved their mission.

The mouth feel is a solid medium - possibly favoring a fuller mouth feel than most IPA’s I’ve tasted.  There’s a lot more malt in here than I was expecting.  There must be about an acre of barley in this sucker to get 9% AND keep it this sweet and full.  Carbonation is perfect.

Overall, I’m betting the brewer is quite happy with this.  I’ve heard very good things about this brewery, and I have no reason to doubt the quality of the products they offer after tasting this beer.  To be honest, it is not quite “my thing”.  It’s too sweet for me, and I like my beers a bit smaller to be honest.  I top out right around 7.5%.  As they get bigger, the alcohol flavor starts to creep in a bit, and I’m just not an alcohol flavor fan.  It isn’t horribly pronounced, but I do detect some alcohol burn on the finish.  That said, I can tell quality even if I can’t totally appreciate it, and this beer is packed with it.  It just won’t be for everybody.  It does make me anxious to find that 60 Minute IPA of theirs!

Enjoy your beer,

Brew Brain

So, without some rules to live by, stock and especially options trading tends to be a losing proposition.  Here are the rules I intend to live by in order to make some scratch:

1) My target number of positions is 10, with representation at all times from both calls and puts.  I won’t force neutrality between the long and short side, but I will strive to be as market-neutral as possible in order to avoid a complete wipe-out should the market rocket one way or the other for whatever reason.  Ten positions should allow for some semblance of market/directional diversity without becoming overly burdensome to manage.

2) Each position will be entered at a time and price where the first stop will limit downside risk to an estimated 25% of position cost.  Obviously, this is impossible to pinpoint, but as long as the effort is made to limit risk to 25%, I shouldn’t blow too many positions by too much.

3) Stops will be adjusted on a daily basis as appropriate. 

Generally, new trend lows (highs for puts) will be used as stops.  A low is defined as the lowest trading point reached between the two most recent closing highs.  A new closing high can be achieved only after four or more consecutive days closed below the previous high close.

I will also use higher natural technical stops where appropriate, such as high-volume gaps.

4) Positions will be closed at the earlier of a) the stop is triggered, or b) 35 days prior to contract expiration.

5) Contracts traded will be in the money with a cost basis at or below intrinsic value +5%, generally 3 - 9 months from expiration.

6) I will trade a single contract of each position until I reach 10 positions, at which time I will switch to a 10% of bankroll position size.

This is a trading strategy I’ve been using successfully from the long side trading equities in my retirement account for quite awhile.  We’ll see if it translates well to ITM options.

Yesterday I put the lid on my first attempt at Almaden Valley Brewing’s Yellow Lantern Oatmeal Stout.  My goal is a rich, creamy, sweet malty stout without any of the harshness I taste in many stouts.  I don’t like the harsh graininess I taste in many of them. 

I’m hopeful I’ve pulled off an excellent first shot at it.  I want nice roasty flavors accented by chocolate/coffee notes with a hint of bitterness on the finish.  The sample out of the kettle tasted like I may just have a nice beer available in a couple months.  We’ll see.

Next weekend, time permitting, will be another shot at the Raccoon Trail Pale Ale.  My last attempt was a bit undercarbonated, but I think I may be on the way towards fixing that problem.  I pulled them all out of refrigeration, shook them up and left them at room temps for the past week.  I tested one yesterday, and it seemed a bit better.  The flavor also seemed to have picked up a notch as well with the added bubbles.  I’ll give them another week and try again.

Besides carbonation, I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of the galena hops I used.  The next batch will use Centennial for bittering/flavor and either Cascade or Amarillo for aroma.

First the bad news:  Warren Buffet’s most recent Berkshire portfolio release yesterday after the market close showed he increased his ownership in IR.  Stock goes up, I get stopped out.  That was a quick $145.91 loss.  Since when do traders/investors listen to that fat bastard over me, the all powerful BrewBrain? 

I picked up a couple contracts on a company I own in my IRA - BIDZ.  I think the long-term prospects are good for that company, and the chart looks ripe to me.  BIDZ has a jewelry auction model that looks to me like crack for stay-at-home moms. 

Anyway, I picked up some September 7.5 calls.  The stock gapped up this morning out of a short period of consolidation, I guess on news that a Spanish language version of the site has been released.  I’ll place my stop a bit below the gap.  Those gaps often represent support/resistance if enough volume pushes the stock, and we are seeing a bit of volume today.

Generally, for options trading the lower volume stocks should be handled very carefully I think, but since I’m trading so few contracts until I get stinking rich, I shouldn’t have problems here.  The spread is reasonable.

Now the worse news:  Poker sucks.  I’m in a horrifying stretch of coolers and bad beats.  I’m confident I’ll never post another winning session.  Yesterday it was QQ into KK against a very loose pf raiser, AT on a T flop all in against loosie goosie AQ with a gutter.  Gutter successfully rivered, thank you.  AK allin pf somewhat stupidly against a tightish pf raiser, but I was in EP and thought I could get him off JJ, another AK, etc.  It was AA and I was cooked there.

I finally flopped a couple sets after a very long drought, but I got paid very little for them, which was about the max I was going to get.

It just isn’t working for me right now.  I just need to power through this funk until the cards start to fall my way.  Unfortunately, I took $500 out to spread the wealth a bit since I spend a fair amount of time playing these days.  That combined with the downswing has me on the edge of having to move back down to .25/.50.  Unthinkable considering how the month began.  Oh well.

The good news:  I have a new IPA bubbling away in the beer closet.  This will be Quicksilver IPA v1.1.  If it is good it just may become the staple IPA in my lineup.  We’ll see.  I got a little fancy with the hops and used three varieties - Chinook for bittering, Centennial for bittering and flavoring and finished things off with Amarillo.  All I know so far is the airlock smells fantastic!