Tag Archive | dad life
May 9, 2016  

National Homebrew Day, Part 2 – Tasting the Frog and Gnome

About a week ago I wrote about the two big bottle-conditioned beers I brewed to commemorate the births of my children: Old Froglegs Barleywine and Gnome Brew Wheatwine. I set a reminder for myself to taste both of them on National Homebrew Day (May 7) and write up the results here. So here we are.

Both of these beers were brewed for extended cellaring and aging. My master plan – probably a very bad plan – is to ration the bottles out slowly on special occasions and give the last bottle of each batch to my children on their twenty-first birthdays (never let it be said I don’t think long term!). I say “probably a very bad plan” because I suspect that after twenty-one years, it will be little more than fancy-pants malt vinegar in the bottle that I give to my kids … in which case I’ll gladly help them fry up some fish and sprinkle the ancient beer on some chips.

So maybe twenty-one years is too ambitious. But as they were brewed with aging in mind, it’s not too surprising that they’re both still getting better. In fact, the barleywine – which just celebrated three years since its brew date – seems to be getting close to its peak. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Beer 1: Old Froglegs Barleywine

Brewed April 29, 2013. Bottled December 6, 2013.

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Old Froglegs poured a deep, cloudy mahogany with little carbonation and no head retention. Sniffing it was a delight, and I just wanted to crawl into the glass and explore its complexities – black cherry, tamarind, a cordial aroma like Grand Marnier.

The flavor didn’t disappoint either. After nearly three years in the bottle, it’s very smooth with no burn at all and no boozy bite. It’s thick, not quite syrupy but hefty like a liqueur, but the sweetness is full of caramel and melanoidin and not at all cloying. My wife got some woody flavors from it, though there was no wood in it. All in all it was a little like sipping brandy: a vinous, palate coating and very sophisticated-seeming beverage. It’s hard to imagine it getting better, and I’m starting to wonder whether I should worry less about saving bottles for the future, and enjoy more of this beer now while it’s so good. These are dangerous, dangerous thoughts …

Beer 2: Gnome Brew Wheatwine

Brewed February 23, 2015. Bottled November 2, 2015.

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A bit lighter in color than its older brother, Gnome Brew poured more of a dark bronze color. Similarly lacking in carbonation, and with no head retention. The aroma was nowhere near as complex, and there wasn’t much aroma to speak of at all. I got a hint of apple and pear, but that was it. Not green apple like the acetyldeyhde tang of green beer, but a riper, fruitier apple … but still pretty ordinary. There was a hint of alcohol on the nos as well.

The flavor was good, but coming on the heels of a well-aged barleywine, it was unfortunately lacking. A bit boozy – not at all a surprise given this has been aging in the bottle only seven months – and with a thinner mouthfeel, so it lacked that delightful “cordial” quality of the barleywine. There are good flavors in there: cranberry, red wine and/or port, a bit of tannin. And it’s much smoother than it was when I opened the first bottle at Christmas 2015. But it still has a way to go before it’s quite where it needs to be.

Here are both beers side by side, with Old Froglegs Barleywine on the left and Gnome Brew Wheatwine on the right:

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I don’t have to tell you it was a lovely evening. The only better way to celebrate National Homebrew Day would have been actually to brew (but it was my son’s birthday party; see last week’s story for details). And it was a wonderful way to remember the past: how in the weeks after each of my kids was born, I rallied myself – against the lack of sleep, the struggle to adjust to a needy new person in the house, and the feeling of untethered confusion about the future that accompanies the birth of a child – to brew a batch of beer that would give me a long-lasting memory of the time. Both beers have certainly done just that. And what delicious memories they are.

Check out the complete recipes for both beers in the Recipes section of the site.

Next week, I’ll write about the homebrew we served on tap at the birthday party on National Homebrew Day: a simple and tasty hopped cider that’s perfect for a Texas spring day. Until then, cheers from myBrewHome to yours.

May 1, 2016  

National Homebrew Day 2016, Part 1 – Brewing the Frog and Gnome

Saturday, May 7 is National Homebrew Day, which the American Homebrewers Association celebrates with its annual Big Brew. Homebrewers across the USA will head to their patios and garages to fire up their systems on the same day, like some coast-to-coast hive mind straight out of the pages of Arthur C. Clarke’s seminal science fiction novel Childhood’s End (but with beards and cargo pants); linked by social media and a common tipsy feeling. What better way to celebrate the fact that being a homebrewer has never been cooler in this country, that the brotherhood (and sisterhood) is growing faster day by day?

Unless you’re like me, and you won’t be homebrewing that day.

Now, before you scroll straight to the bottom of this page to post hasty invective against my not showing solidarity with my homebrewing brothers and sisters, let me explain my two very good reasons:

  1. I have no room to ferment another batch of beer until I keg the session IPA waiting in the closet, and I can’t keg that batch until my deceased kegerator “Chill Bill” is replaced; and
  2. It’s my son’s birthday party.

If #1 made you feel sorry for me, good. If #2 made you think I’m an awesome dad, great. Never mind the fact that my son’s birthday was almost a month ago and that this party is just a small affair to allow a few friends to celebrate with him, given that we were at Walt Frigging Disney World on his actual birthday. (See? Awesome dad.)

So I won’t be brewing. But that won’t stop me from enjoying a tasty homebrew, right?

Oh, right. The broken kegerator. So drinking draft is out of the question.

Fortunately, I do have a couple of bottled homebrews at the ready. For the past few years, I only bottle commemorative beers for cellaring, but I just happen to have a bottle each in the fridge of the barleywine I brewed to celebrate my son’s birth in 2013 (and bottled for sampling at future special occasions, such as his birthday … it seems almost like I planned this all along, doesn’t it? I didn’t), and the wheatwine I brewed to celebrate my daughter’s birth in 2014.

So in honor of National Homebrew Day, I have decided to drink both of these big beers after the kids go to bed. Rest assured that two bottles of 11-12% ABV homebrew in a row should have me nice and tipsy like the rest of you. Solidarity, brothers and sisters.

I wrote about Old Froglegs Barleywine back in 2013, and the recipe is posted here. Gnome Brew Wheatwine, on the other hand, has not yet made an appearance on this blog. So I’m posting the recipe below and a little bit of the story behind it.

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Gnome Brew Wheatwine

Story: I set a high bar for myself by brewing an American barleywine as my first homebrew after my first child was born. So when the second came along, I had to do something similar. And since I still had most of the barleywine in my cellar, I decided to do something “similar but different”, and brewed a wheatwine.

Wheatwine isn’t exactly a style that’s littering the shelves at the local bottle shop. I first heard of the style when I picked up a bottle of Boulevard Brewing’s Harvest Dance, and found it lighter and brighter than a syrupy, boozy barleywine. So a wheatwine seemed like an excellent thematic companion and a flavorful counterpoint to the barleywine I already had a stock of.

The BJCP Style Guidelines don’t even have a category for wheatwine, and there aren’t many recipes out there. So beyond the bulk of advice I read online that said “make a barleywine with up to 50% wheat,” it seemed like I had free rein. I went back to the recipe for Old Froglegs, and modified it with the goal of using almost half wheat and making an end product that was lighter and fruitier. Here’s what I ended up with:

Grist:

  • 10 lbs White Wheat Malt
  • 9 lbs 8 oz American Pale Malt
  • 3 lbs Vienna Malt
  • 8 oz Crystal 40L
  • 8 oz Caravienne Malt

Hops:

  • 2.5 oz Chinook (13% AA) at 60 minutes

Other:

  • 1 lb Agave Nectar, light

Yeast: Safale US-05 (28.75 grams)

Comparing it to the above-linked recipe for Old Froglegs, I split the base malt nearly in half with slightly more wheat than barley, and replaced the body malts with lighter versions (Munich with Vienna, Crystal 60 and 150 with Crystal 40 and Caravienne). Chinook was simply the highest alpha hop I had on hand, for maximum bitterness and no real flavor contribution. And I really liked the added fermentability from the pound of piloncillo I added in the boil to Old Froglegs, so I added simple sugar to the kettle here in the form of light agave nectar. I mashed at 149°F for 90 minutes, collected 9.5 gallons at 1.069 and then boiled for about 2 hours to achieve an OG of 1.101.

The beer fermented for 4 weeks before it was racked to secondary to age for another eight months. When it had smoothed out to my satisfaction, I bottled it with a half-pack of Danstar CBC-1. This is an incredible yeast for bottle conditioning. I highly recommend it when bottling beers with high ABV, after long aging, or both. It’s made specifically for bottle conditioning, but it’s not always easy to find, so in a pinch one can use champagne yeast.

The FG was 1.016, yielding a final ABV of 11.3%. I designed a label and named the beer Gnome Brew Wheatwine in honor of our daughter Vesper (Confused? Let’s just say that nicknames given to newborns before they’re discharged from the hospital have a habit of sticking around in my family).

So how did it come out? To be honest, it’s been in the bottle for less time than it was in the carboy, so it’s still mellowing, showing rapid improvement month to month. I’ll know for sure how it is this month when I open a bottle on National Homebrew Day for a side-by-side tasting against my 3-year-old barleywine. So watch this space, because I’ll be back next week with tasting notes for both beers.

Thoughts or questions about the recipe in the meantime? Comment below, or find me on Facebook. Happy National Homebrew Day a few days early … and until next week, cheers from myBrewHome to yours.

March 6, 2016  

Welcome to myBrewHome!

If this is your first visit, welcome! Pour yourself a beer and take a look around. Let me know if you like what you see or if you have questions about anything.

If this is not your first visit, you may notice that the name and look of the site have recently changed. So, still pour yourself a beer and look around, but rest assured that everything that was here before is still here. All posts from 2015 and earlier are still in the archives, along with the Brewing Glossary and the Recipes section that I hope to be updating soon. But I’ve changed the name of the site to reflect its new direction and focus.

What do I mean by new direction and focus? Well, my previous mission for this site – formerly titled Last of the Zyme Lords – was to merge my love of homebrewing and craft beer with the my love for writing and the geekier things in life, such as fantasy and science fiction. That mission kept this site alive for a long time, but I put it on hiatus early in 2015 when the birth of my second child started an avalanche of life changes in a very short time. I was never sure if I would come back to writing regularly on this site.

So here’s the good news: I’m back, and the site is back. And I’m still interested in all the same geeky stuff I was interested in before. In fact, if you’re interested in such things, check out The Prancing Pony Podcast, a podcast about J. R. R. Tolkien I co-host that launched in February.

But now that my life has changed, my priorities have changed, and so has my attitude towards brewing. Brewing and beer are not just another geeky pursuit for me anymore. I no longer brew just to pursue the excellence of a technically perfect (or as close as possible within my means) glass of beer, or to come up with recipes and names that reflect my love of Tolkien, Doctor Who, or Japanese horror movies.

Again, I still love all of those things, but they’re not my only inspiration as a brewer anymore.

As my family has grown, we’ve moved into a new house that was built with homebrewing in mind. Homebrew is a part of every event I host to see friends that I don’t see nearly enough anymore now that family life keeps me busy. I’ve brewed for baby showers, births and birthdays. My cellar is stocked with big beers brewed in commemoration of family milestones. I’ve explained it all on the page “Why ‘myBrewHome’?”

So we’re still having lots of fun over here, but our focus has expanded a bit. I’m happy to report that my kids are turning into geeks as big as I am. But at this point, I’m just as likely to brew a beer inspired by my son’s fascination with Kylo Ren or my baby daughter’s obsession with Winnie the Pooh as I am to brew a beer inspired by hobbits, Godzilla or John Landis films.

In fact, a Kylo Ren Black IPA or a Pooh Bear Hunny Braggot sounds delicious right about now. To the recipe creator!

Stay tuned, and I’ll be back very soon with more brew talk. Until then, cheers from myBrewHome to yours.