Lagering for the First Time

Bottled the Lager last night. It is pretty damn fine if I do say so myself. Style wise it's based on a American Premium Lager. My malts were 2-row and white wheat, single hopped and aged on Spanish Cedar. It's lite, refreshing and the Cedar added a spicy/bitter. This one goes into rotation for next year, I am going to try and save a case for summer.

Slacking

Okay I am sorry I have not blogged in a while, meanly because I have not brewed in a while. I started a lager since I was traveling for a couple of weeks straight and would not be home to keep an eye on a ales primary fermentation. The lager is like most everything else I brew, influenced heavily from my Cuban grandmother , growing up in Florida and my time as cook and understudy to some guys with serious cooking/chef chops. I am brewing what I hope reminds my mother of summer vacations in Cuba before Castro. Style wise it is a premium American Lager, infused with fresh sugar cane, mint, rum and aged on red cedar.

During my recent travels, I did get to spend too much money at the Brick Store in Decatur and Hop City in Atlanta. If you are driving in GA and want to bring back beers you can’t find in Florida go to Hop City, and until Cigar City gets to GA take some with you for trading. The Brick Store was great, good food awesome bottle list and great tap selection. I am not going to recommend anything because it changes so often. What I will recommend is hitting the Sweet Water Brewery. I don’t know why the tours are only Wed-Fri 5:30 – 7:30, but I will tell you the tour, glass and 6 half pints are well worth it. Better yet, bring a friend that doesn’t drink or hates real beer, get their drink tickets, and have them drive you home. Big thanks goes to my boss who has started to drink craft and homebrew this last couple of months, however he is a one or two beer guy so I got his 4 leftover tickets. The brewery is the from what I’ve seen the largest craft brewery in the south east and is a sight for those looking for start-up inspiration.

Visited the Titanic brewpub in Miami last week and it was a breath of fresh air for the no existent south Florida beer scene. Good traditional ales and they did all Belgium’s for their winter seasonal offerings. Also found a place today I have not visited but I am thinking about it call the Democratic Republic of Beer. 500 bottles and a dozen taps. Since Miami is the Manhattan of South America and the Caribbean they carry every crap pilsner made south of Miami. However, they also have over 100 Belgium bottles and all of Hitachino Nest beer exported to the States and the two beers from Lao, which are perfect with Thai Curries.

Okay back to the day job, I’ll be brewing soon with tasting notes on some of the items I bottled recently.

Been a while

Okay so it's been almost a month since i posted to the blog. Been busy with real work travel and with school (non-beer school). I did find sometime for brewing and have a 9 gallon batch of my signature Guava Wheat sitting in secondary waiting for me to come home and bottle. Looking at the calendar I should be able to get one or two brew days in the week of Dec 27th, hoping for one at the house and one assisting at a local brewery on big boy equipment.

With the lack of free time for brewing I am think about doing a larger. I will be traveling all of January, so I won't have time until February to really tend to it in terms of bottling or kegging if I have a draft system setup by then.

Narcoossee's at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa

Went to Narcoossee's for a nice dinner with the wife tonight. Great food wonderful menu. However they have one of the worst beer menu's of any restaurant I have been too in the the last month. I mean every place I went to in Tallahassee had a better offering. Disney needs to step it up on their craft beer offerings. A restaurant like Narcoossee's should have a wine and beer pairing for each dish.

Tally & Football

Well I am in Tallahassee for the week. Drove up yesterday listening to the Bucs games. When it rains it pours in football. My Noles last in great fashion in the 4th quarter. So did my Bucs, why did Rah not let Freeman go for the half yard.

Getting away from so depressing football news. I'll spend the week with my department and my brother in Tally, training on our new systems. Hoping to talk the guys into spending a couple of night at Fermentation Lounge. I also brought a case of home-brew so I know I'll be okay.

Creativity Put on Hold

It really is for the better meant of me as a brewer. I design new recipes almost everyday, if one doesn't get fleshed out the idea is written down and desired tasting notes or some sort of inspiration. But that's why I have a huge back log of brews to brew and updated recipes, for things that I need to tweak to a finished product. Not that I believe any of my beers are really finished products even those that I am happy with, equipment changes effect beer at every level so everything is a work in progress. But I am rambling.

I need to get back to working current beers to finished products so I have a line of a half dozen or so solid repeatable beers. Not 40 awesome idea beers that all need a little work, except my Rye first time was the charm, here is hoping my notes make since next time I brew it.

But now I am working on a schedule for when the semester is over on brewing my top 6 or 8 beers at least once a month until I am happy with them. Hence my creativity being put on hold, This morning I started working on a new winter session beer and just made some quick notes instead of fleshing it out. Winter will come again next year, I can brew my Nola Stout for Dec and Jan.

Bucco Bruce All Grain v1

Well I think the flavor will still change over the next couple of weeks. But Bucco has been bottle from 3 weeks now and I cracked one open last night. Color is spot not golden, not amber but that almost orange color. Now thing take a turn. When I brewed this last I wasn't setup for all grain and I did not have a temperature controlled fermentation environment. So the yeast was not really giving it's all in the scent and flavor category.

So I used the Wyeast Belgium Strong Ale, and I get a wonderful flowery alcoholic scent mixed in with orange and very little vanilla. If that what I was trying for I would be happy. I wanted more orange and vanilla in the nose.

The taste has tons for citrus up front followed by that very Belgium alcohol bite. Again I like, but not what I was trying for.

Head retention it great think white lacy head and hangs all over the glass.

I think I hit pretty well stylistically on a Belgium Strong Ale. However, to recreate my Bucco with my current equipment and process I need to change up the yeast and find thing that does over power my spices.