0:04

Hey, hey beer fans! Welcome to

0:06

Experimental Brewing with Denny and Drew. I'm

0:09

Denny Khan. And I'm Drew

0:11

Beecham. Together we're the authors of Experimental

0:13

Home Brewing, Bad Science and the Pursuit of Great Beer,

0:16

and Simple Home Brewing, as always

0:18

available at all your finest retailers, and even some

0:20

of your worst ones. No,

0:23

we wouldn't do that. Now

0:26

between the two of us, we have over 50 years

0:28

of home brewing experience. I'm the guy known for weird

0:30

beer and strange ideas. And I'm

0:32

the guy who's known for questioning the conventional

0:34

wisdom and checking it out. Alright,

0:36

and on today's episode, unlike last episode, we're going to

0:39

actually be heading to the pub to take care of

0:41

some business. And then of course we're

0:43

going to head into the brewery and talk about what

0:45

we're brewing, what we're about to brew, what we're thinking

0:47

about brewing, and what maybe we decided not to brew.

0:51

Does that confuse you? It confused me. Oh

0:53

well. Confuses me, yeah, but you know, that's nothing

0:55

new. No, that's just

0:57

age and beer. That's right.

1:00

But before we can do any of that

1:02

foolishness, take a listen to these messages from

1:04

the people who make the show possible. This

1:15

episode of the Experimental Brewing Podcast is

1:17

brought to you by you, our listeners.

1:20

Go to experimentalbrew.com to help

1:23

support us. Click

1:25

on the Patreon link to donate whatever

1:27

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1:29

our charities. Click on

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subscribe to BYO. Or

1:35

click on the AHA link to

1:37

join the American Home Brewers Association.

1:40

Part of the proceeds from those will go

1:42

to help support the podcast. And

1:44

thanks for your support. My

1:47

yeast's fourth quarter legacy curation features two

1:50

legendary strains for autumn brewing, 1968 London

1:52

ESB ale and 1728 Scottish ale. These

2:00

strains were isolated 30 years

2:02

ago for our culture collection

2:04

and continue to be brewmaster's

2:06

top traces for traditional multi-European

2:08

ales today. Both

2:10

are regarded for their high

2:12

flocculation and suitability for strong

2:15

and seasonal specialty styles, like

2:17

double IPAs, smoked and barrel-aged

2:19

beers, British bitters, barley wine,

2:21

and more. Completing this curation

2:24

are two limited-release lager favorites,

2:26

2000 Boudvar lager and 2001

2:29

Pilsner-Erkel H-strain. Available now

2:31

through the end of December, Boudvar

2:34

lager delivers rich multi-neth and subtle

2:36

fruit notes while allowing hop character

2:38

to come through in Czech lagers

2:41

and German helis styles. The Pilsner-Erkel

2:43

strain produces mild floral aromas and

2:46

a clean dry palate and full

2:48

mouthfeel for Czech lagers and Bohemian-style

2:50

Pilsners. Catch up on

2:53

our latest blog posts and learn

2:55

more about this release at yeastlab.com.

3:00

Welcome back. We're

3:24

going to start off, as usual,

3:26

with some announcements. The

3:29

announcement is, if you haven't noticed, your

3:31

podcast feed may have been blowing up

3:33

recently. Yeah. Because we're

3:35

releasing a lot of episodes as we get here to the end of

3:37

the year because we went, oh, we took

3:40

too many breaks early on in the year. Let's

3:44

see, what have we talked about recently? The last

3:46

episode of this show was the Anchor Union, or

3:48

the Anchor SF Cooperative. We wish those guys luck.

3:51

Go listen to that podcast and you can find

3:53

out how to support the effort to keep

3:55

Acre local to San Francisco. We've

3:58

talked about making mushrooms. I'm

6:00

not surprised at all that he would dump in a

6:02

full pound. Me either, but

6:04

I'm also fully believing that

6:06

it was leaping delicious. Yeah, me

6:09

too, man. Next brew

6:11

coming up for me is going to be a triple,

6:14

but after that I am going to be diving into

6:16

those Blue Lake hops and seeing what I can come

6:18

up with. Nice to hear

6:20

a good report from Graciani. Yeah, see

6:22

I'm still hung up on the idea of I don't

6:24

want to do a pale iron IPA just because I'm

6:26

stubborn. But,

6:29

you know... I'll do something different. But,

6:32

you know, it's kind of like cryo hops. That's what

6:34

they're made for, you know? I know. What

6:36

else would you look at? I know, but

6:38

work with me. Work with me. You know I'm difficult in this. In

6:42

this? Well,

6:46

I'm trying to be very accurate here. I'll

6:49

see what you come up with, but, you

6:51

know, I don't see any point in reinventing the

6:54

wheel, swimming upstream, all those other cliches. Well,

6:56

I mean, look, again, what do we say in

6:58

the opening every time? I'm the guy known

7:00

for weird beer and strange ideas. Yep,

7:02

well, there you go. I can't

7:04

wait to see how weird and strange this one comes

7:06

out to be. Yeah, gotta live up to my moniker.

7:10

Alright, I think after all that it's time for us to

7:12

go have a beer. Yep, we've been

7:14

talking about it. Let's go drink one. We're going to

7:16

head over to the pub and we'll see you there

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For sticking around. We are sitting here

9:42

in the experimental Bring pub as a

9:44

corner of everywhere and nowhere somewhere out

9:46

in cyberspace and we're having a couple

9:48

beers which is what we do here.

9:51

Is gonna tell you about his first.

9:54

Episode as will come into play here and

9:56

just by the minute I was over to

9:58

Iraq last night entered. I'd have a couple of

10:00

beers because well why wouldn't I have a couple of beers if

10:02

I'm at Eagle Rock Brewing Company and

10:05

the one I started with was

10:07

actually probably my favorite of the night because

10:09

it was also a little different. It was

10:11

their green bottle lager. Cool!

10:13

If you can think about it you can probably

10:15

guess what they're going for and

10:18

even though it was served on draft it was actually

10:20

kind of interesting it had a little bit of that

10:22

sulfur component that you'd expect from a

10:24

green bottle lager but it was

10:26

very refreshing 4.8% so

10:28

not super stocking high and

10:31

you know to put in the quotes

10:33

of some of our finest representatives in the US Congress it

10:37

drank good.

10:39

Okay actually I

10:41

think that was an Alabama representative not the

10:43

US Congress but the point

10:46

still stands. Good

10:48

man that's great. Yeah I'm

10:51

really pleased to see how many more

10:55

lagers we've been seeing over the past

10:57

couple years and I think they've been

10:59

improving quality so

11:01

and I'm not a German lagers not by any stretch

11:03

of the imagination but I've been really happy to see

11:07

both the breadth and the availability of

11:09

those rising and give me a

11:11

chance to have something that's not just you know another hot

11:13

bomb not that I argue but the value of a hot

11:15

bomb. To have something other

11:17

than IPA. Well you know 25 years ago people were

11:19

going oh

11:22

you know what we're not gonna brew lagers they

11:24

tie up the equipment for too long they take

11:26

too long and you know maybe

11:28

that was the reason or maybe the reason

11:31

was that people just weren't asking for them

11:33

you know breweries are gonna make what people

11:35

want to buy so if people

11:37

start getting back into lagers then breweries are

11:40

gonna start brewing them and I think that

11:42

you know maybe maybe a

11:44

little buzz got started out there and it's

11:46

kind of like build up and expanding. Yeah

11:49

and I think there was some that chauvinistic point of

11:51

view of craft beer at the time of like you

11:54

know well lagers the thing that the big guys do

11:56

we're not doing that. Yeah well

11:58

and fortunately craft lagers aren't much

12:00

like that. Yep. So again,

12:03

ERB green bottle lager tasty.

12:06

It would probably be tastier if it was

12:08

hotter but I'll deal at 68 degrees. Ound,

12:12

you sir? Well

12:15

I guess we are both going

12:17

for local breweries that most people won't be able

12:19

to get a hold of this time. I

12:22

just made a trip out to

12:24

Ailsong again to pick up my

12:26

latest quarterly allotment and one

12:28

of the beers in there was their French 75 which

12:31

you've heard me talk about before. It may

12:34

be in my mind just about the perfect

12:40

beer. It's

12:42

a farmhouse ale with

12:44

with Brett but it's not the funky

12:47

Brett you know it's the nice fruity

12:49

Brett aged

12:51

in long-time gin barrels

12:55

with a healthy dose of lemon based on the

12:57

French 75 cocktail if you're

13:00

familiar with that and man

13:02

is that a great

13:04

beer. I buy

13:07

12 bottles a quarter that's what

13:09

I committed to in my my

13:11

Blender's Club membership and

13:13

this time six of those 12 bottles

13:15

were French 75. It is

13:18

such a really good beer and yeah if

13:22

you don't remember what a French 75 cocktail

13:24

is imagine a Tom Collins which is basically

13:26

gin, lemon, sugar and soda

13:29

water or club soda but

13:32

the French 75 is a Tom Collins

13:34

but some champagne for the club soda.

13:39

The beer doesn't quite pack the punch of

13:41

a French 75 but

13:43

it's tasty. Yeah it really is and

13:45

what was really interesting we had met a

13:47

couple friends out there who'd come down from

13:50

Seattle and neither one

13:52

of them really are Brett beer

13:54

fans and they both just

13:56

absolutely loved that beer. Ale Song

13:59

is incredible. clever and experienced

14:01

at the use of various strains of

14:03

breath. They know what to

14:05

do, when, and how much, and man

14:08

this beer shows it. So

14:10

should you be lucky enough to get

14:12

your hands on some AleSong French 75,

14:14

and they do ship to a few

14:17

states I believe, AleSong Brewing and Blending.

14:21

You want to try this beer, believe me. Yeah,

14:24

and don't try the French 75 cocktail for

14:26

your New Year's Party. At least don't try

14:28

multiples of them. Do

14:30

you speak from experience there? I plead the

14:32

fifth. Okay,

14:36

we'll just leave it at that. Yep. Alright,

14:38

and so from these beers that we're having, I

14:40

had said that I went to Eagle Rock last

14:42

night, and that prompted one of these stories that

14:44

we're about to tell, because while

14:47

I was there, hanging up all around

14:49

the the brewery, and if you've ever

14:51

been to Eagle Rock, it's not a

14:53

terribly large space. No, I always say

14:55

it's a tiny space. Yeah, well I mean

14:57

the tapper is definitely tiny, the back has room in it, but

15:01

the whole place right now is currently

15:03

crammed to the gills with stuff. Cans,

15:06

tanks, everything else, and they have had a

15:08

bunch of signs hanging up around the brewery

15:10

saying, oh, don't mind

15:12

the dust, we're getting roommates. And

15:15

I'm beginning to think that this might be a thing

15:18

that we see more of now in the brewing world,

15:20

given where everybody's going in terms of rents,

15:23

and costs, and revenues, and all that.

15:25

But basically what ended up happening was

15:27

there's a brewery that was started by

15:30

a former head brewer at Eagle Rock

15:32

Brewing Company, Lee Bakowski, and Lee's

15:35

brewery, which is called Party Beer, lost

15:38

their lease in West Adams, and

15:40

because West Adams is an up-and-coming neighborhood, and the

15:42

landlord decided they wanted something other than a brewery

15:44

in there. So they literally had

15:46

a couple of weeks to move and shut down

15:48

the brewery. And so while they

15:51

were looking around trying to figure out what they were going

15:53

to do and not just lose the brewery, it

15:55

turns out that Eagle Rock needs to, you

15:57

know, had some room and needed some help.

16:00

the bills because that's what's happening right now in the graph of your

16:02

world. And so Lee's having a

16:04

bit of a homecoming and becoming Eagle Rock's

16:06

roommates. So out

16:08

with Eagle Rock's very old,

16:11

janky, strange, mid-90s dairy tank

16:13

equipment brew system, which

16:16

Denny I know you've seen, I've

16:18

actually worked on it and boy did I not like doing

16:20

that. And in with

16:23

Party Beer's modern system but they're going to be

16:25

sharing the space and it's going to now be

16:27

Eagle Rock Brewing Company and Party Beer and they

16:29

I think they're still trying to figure out what

16:31

they're going to do for the Taperum itself. But

16:36

needless to say I think it's kind of interesting

16:39

we've had these alternating proprietorships in the

16:41

past. I've

16:44

always wondered why

16:46

to be a brewery you had

16:48

to have your own gear that was

16:50

just your own gear because most part that gear

16:52

sits idle. Right? So

16:55

instead of taking

16:57

on the capital cost all by yourself, why not split

16:59

that out and actually turn around and spend

17:02

your money where you actually need to spend it. Or

17:05

do something like Aelsong does. They don't

17:07

have a brewing system at all because

17:10

there are so many breweries around these

17:12

days that have extra capacity. So

17:15

they partner up with a couple other

17:17

breweries and go and brew on their

17:19

systems when it's time for them to

17:21

brew. Yeah we saw that

17:23

here in LA with a

17:26

Célidor Brewing. Then they

17:28

just like Aelsong specialize in

17:30

mixed fermentation and

17:34

they've never had their own brewery and so now

17:36

Célidor had lost their original Taperum space and

17:39

their now co-resident was Smog City Brewing Company

17:42

in Torrance and so I would expect

17:44

to bring their beer at Smog City and then moving

17:46

the work. Right yeah yeah

17:48

that's exactly what Aelsong does. They

17:51

go brew someplace else, bring

17:53

the work back to their

17:55

warehouse location and ferment

17:57

it there and then start

18:00

blending and putting it in barrels after that.

18:02

Yeah, but it is funny to me because it seems to

18:04

mostly apply in the world of mixed culture fermentation where

18:06

I've seen that happen. Really? That's

18:09

interesting. Yeah, I can't think

18:11

of any, at least off the

18:13

top of my head, I can't think of any sort of nominally

18:16

clean, please hear the quotes around

18:18

clean, clean

18:20

beer company that does that sort of,

18:23

we produced the wort over here, trucking

18:25

over here to do the fermentation, but

18:28

hey, it works and anything

18:31

that keeps these breweries and ideas alive,

18:34

I'm all for it. Right, exactly.

18:37

And now for something completely different. And

18:40

now for something completely transparent. Yeah.

18:43

I saw this pop up the other day on one of

18:45

my feeds and it's from

18:48

outsider brewing around about Asheville

18:50

area, I believe in North Carolina, and

18:52

they've put together a whole

18:55

patented transparent

18:57

brewing system because

18:59

their whole thought was, well, you know,

19:02

we really need to improve beer

19:04

education and get people to understand what goes

19:06

on in the product and the process. And

19:09

so they built this thing that

19:11

is, literally, it's a

19:13

clear brewing system. Now, by the way,

19:16

it's not the first clear brewing system out there in the world,

19:19

but I just thought it was very interesting to

19:21

see them produce this and kind of try and

19:23

go, we're doing this for people's education and

19:26

try and get people more invested in the process and

19:29

understanding what's happening. But it's very, very cool because you

19:31

can actually see the whole thing like, oh yeah, here's

19:33

the mash tun and here's, here's the mash actually in

19:35

action, piped over into a boiler so it

19:37

can boil and you can see what's happening in there. So I

19:39

just thought it was kind of cool to see. Pun

19:43

not actually intended, but there

19:46

you are. And just to

19:48

see attempts

19:50

to do more education and the

19:53

only question I have other than the longevity of the

19:55

system is, will

19:58

the average punter care? I

20:01

don't think they will. Yeah,

20:03

I would have to say so too. You

20:06

know, I read that and said, oh, we want to

20:08

educate the public about how beer is brewed. It's like,

20:10

well, good on you. But

20:13

I don't know. I

20:15

think that that is the

20:17

kind of thing that only a beer

20:19

geek would care about, and maybe beer

20:21

geeks already know. Yeah,

20:24

but I think it's a pretty cool piece of kit. Yeah,

20:27

I agree, man. You

20:30

know, we'll just have to see if their idea takes off. Hopefully

20:36

it will, but if it doesn't,

20:38

they still got a darn cool system.

20:42

Yeah, and I

20:44

can't remember. We had an interview

20:46

with Brewmaster on a ship. I

20:49

don't know if we ever actually put that into the podcast. We

20:52

had an interview with a Brewmaster on a ship, and they

20:54

have a completely transparent mash tun. Showing

20:58

people on a cruise ship how that works. So it's

21:00

kind of cool to say. Not much to

21:02

see in a mash tun, is there? Just a bunch of grain

21:04

sitting there in water. It looks like

21:06

oatmeal. Yeah,

21:08

really, really, man. All

21:11

right, and final story of the day, everybody

21:14

here knows that Denny and

21:16

I are both, what's the term

21:18

the kids are using these days, sober curious? Oh, I

21:21

thought you were going to say Riz. No,

21:24

I can definitely not pull that

21:26

off. There's a lot

21:28

of the talk that we've had about low alcohol and

21:30

non-alcoholic beer, right? And there's

21:33

also been a lot of talk that we've had about hard seltzer.

21:36

So just this last

21:39

week, White Claw, the

21:41

people who sort of kicked off and promoted

21:44

the hell out of the hard seltzer craze, has

21:46

announced that they've released White

21:48

Claw's Zero, their

21:52

non-alcoholic hard seltzer. Let

21:55

that sink in for a second. Oh, all

21:58

right, Jeff. No,

24:00

that's usually flavoring agents. And

24:03

claims that the new offering will bring the same

24:05

experience. But this

24:08

is what I love because this feels like it's

24:10

straight out of idiocracy. Each

24:12

12 ounce can contains 2 grams of sugars

24:14

and 15 calories, as well as hydrating electrolytes.

24:19

Well, I know that's what I've been missing. Well, it's

24:21

what plants crave. But

24:24

there we go. So white

24:26

claw zero because

24:28

why not? Yeah, I

24:31

go. Or maybe why? Well, yeah,

24:33

you can split that into why, not. So

24:40

there you go. That's the news that we have right

24:42

now in the pub. I think it's time to go brew something. Yeah,

24:45

we're going to head over. When we get there,

24:47

we're going to tell you what we've been brewing,

24:49

what we'd like to brew, what the plans are

24:52

for the future, and anything

24:54

else we can think about. Stick around.

24:56

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26:39

buy. Check them out

26:41

at jadedbrewing.com. Welcome

27:19

to the brewery where things are

27:21

shiny and bubbling. Drew, what

27:23

have you been up to? Not

27:26

much because my brewery is a wreck right now. Just

27:29

like the rest of your life. It's

27:33

got lots of tools laying around and projects

27:35

in flight. Denny has pictures of

27:37

me doing woodworking. Right

27:41

now the brewery is a little bit of a mess. I've

27:44

got a couple things on the plate though. One, I'm

27:46

going to be brewing up a Falcon's Claws. That

27:48

was one of the episodes that we just released. Us

27:51

talking about the differences between the old and the

27:53

new Falcon's Claws recipe and why you should use

27:55

the new one and not the one I wrote around in 2001 or so. I'm

28:00

getting ready to brew that up a couple packs of

28:02

S189 so it's ready to go whenever I need it

28:04

to. And then otherwise

28:06

I'm about to have a holiday break. My

28:08

company does that whole thing of like use

28:10

it or lose it vacation. So

28:12

if you don't get all your vacation done by the end

28:14

of the year then you

28:16

lose out on that money and time and well

28:19

I don't like losing out on money or time. And

28:22

so I'm just going to take the rest of

28:24

the year off for a while. Hey,

28:27

it's about time. Well yeah,

28:29

by the way, the companies that

28:31

do this you can always guarantee they

28:34

ain't getting poop done during December. That's

28:37

true, huh? But what I'm

28:39

going to do is, aside from closing up some projects

28:41

around the house, like again more woodworking, somehow

28:45

I've become Ron Swanson, without the mustache.

28:50

Is I'm going to rearrange and reactivate my brewery

28:52

space and kick all the crap to the curb

28:54

so I can actually work in here and

28:57

do a couple of other things. Like one is I

28:59

have, my

29:01

gardener and I were talking about it, we think the persimmon

29:03

tree is probably about 60 to 70 years old.

29:06

It is a 30 foot tall persimmon tree.

29:09

It is a massive, massive tree. Yeah, that's

29:11

big. Yeah, and every year

29:14

this thing drops about 900 little

29:16

damn hand grenades on your head between

29:20

the squirrels and the birds and everything else. So

29:23

what I'm going to do is I've got

29:25

the persimmons. I've started harvesting them. Yes,

29:29

imagine me up on a big tall ladder with

29:31

a spiky basket thing going, please don't fall, please

29:33

don't fall, please don't fall. And

29:36

I've gathered up... Paula saw that picture and

29:38

went, oh hey, I've got one of those

29:40

too. Yeah, right, they're everywhere. I've

29:43

got probably, probably

29:46

got about 15 pounds of persimmons so far. And

29:48

I'm going to pulp them and turn them into puree and then

29:50

freeze it so it holds. It's

29:53

going to be a lot of food mill exercise. But

29:59

what I want to do with that is... I want to take and

30:01

turn that into persimmon wine, or

30:04

persimmon mead, depending upon the strength of

30:06

the pulp and all that sort of fun stuff. I

30:08

imagine I'll have to do some sort of shorter edition, so why

30:11

not mead? And then I'm gonna

30:13

take part of that and I'm gonna turn it into persimmon

30:15

brandy, because that just sounds good.

30:18

You know, save back some of the persimmon, use

30:20

it to sweeten it up kind of like an O2V. Yeah.

30:25

And so that's kind of what I got going on at the moment.

30:28

Wow. So, having experience with persimmons out there and

30:30

how really best to preserve it, let me know. Persimmons

30:32

need to be cooked before they can be eaten. Don't

30:35

know if that refers to fermentation,

30:37

but is that correct? No, the

30:41

main thing with persimmons is there

30:43

are two primary varieties. There's the American wild persimmon,

30:46

which is a whole other critter. Right.

30:48

But there are two primary varieties that we see here in

30:51

the US these days that aren't wild. And

30:53

they're both Asian persimmons. One's

30:55

called a fuyu, or a

30:57

tomato persimmon. Pick it up, it

30:59

looks like an orange tomato. Those

31:02

are considered a non-estringent variety. And

31:04

so those can be relatively

31:07

unripe. They'll

31:10

be tart, obviously. But they

31:12

aren't very stringent. The other variety, which

31:14

are called a chaya, or

31:17

acorn, persimmons, which,

31:19

guess what? They look like an acorn, big orange acorn.

31:23

Those are stringent. And

31:25

if you don't allow them to ripen, they

31:28

are nasty. They

31:31

are hard to deal with. And

31:34

so what you have to do is you basically have to

31:36

allow them to ripen into almost jelly.

31:38

You know, I thought, I guess,

31:41

what I thought that I had heard was that

31:44

there was something like, you know, poisonous or something

31:46

if they weren't cooked first. But apparently- Are you

31:48

sure you're not taking rhubarb? No,

31:50

no, no, no. Because rhubarb has oxalic acid. But

31:52

I haven't heard that about persimmons. Yeah,

31:55

well- Do a search. Yeah,

31:57

I guess maybe so. And I could be wrong.

31:59

I think that I remember that, but you know what

32:02

my memory's like. Full

32:04

of holes? Yeah,

32:06

at the very least.

32:09

So here we go. Untamed science

32:11

says, yes, persimmons can kill you, but

32:14

it's not because they're toxic or poisonous.

32:17

It says instead, because when they're unripe, they have

32:19

a unique chemical in their tissues that

32:22

will aid in forming a food lump in the

32:24

stomach known as a phytobasor,

32:27

or specifically, you know.

32:30

So yeah, basically, there's something in the

32:32

tannin compounds. She-ball

32:36

basically allows you to get like a

32:38

food clump in your stomach. So yeah,

32:40

don't apparently don't eat a raw astringent

32:43

persimmon. Okay, I promise

32:45

you I won't. There you go.

32:48

But again, if anybody's got any experience with

32:50

persimmons, let me know because I got a

32:53

lot of them. Yeah, and he doesn't want to die.

32:57

No, not yet. Not

32:59

yet, at least, yeah. Alright, Mr.

33:02

Dinchenzo. Okay,

33:04

well I think maybe you might remember

33:06

a couple months ago I was talking

33:08

about how I was going to brew

33:10

the homebrew version of GennyCon, and I

33:12

thought maybe I would just give a

33:14

bit of a report on

33:16

how that turned out, which

33:19

was freaking deeee-licious.

33:23

I wouldn't know because you haven't sent me one. I know,

33:25

and I have to do that. I just kind

33:27

of tapped the second keg, so I'll try and

33:30

get some into a bottle and get that down

33:32

there to you with your-along with your 702 so

33:34

that you can try making a batch yourself. There

33:36

you go. The

33:38

beer is great. I mean, you know,

33:40

I'm not going to tell you that

33:43

it is a clone of GennyCon and

33:45

tastes exactly the same, but

33:47

whenever I make an homage like that, my

33:50

entire goal is to at least get it close

33:52

enough so you can tell what I was shooting

33:54

for. That

33:56

is definitely the case in this. It

33:58

has that- tropical

34:00

fruitiness along with the firm

34:03

bitterness and some nice

34:06

lemon citrus kind of notes to

34:08

it. Totally,

34:10

totally enjoying it. Mine turned

34:13

out a little bit stronger.

34:15

Mine came in at 7.4%

34:17

because it fermented down farther.

34:19

To which I should

34:22

also address the hop creep question because

34:24

people are asking me a lot about

34:26

that because of all the dry hops

34:28

in this. And

34:31

the fact that also, while I

34:33

am normally a person who likes

34:35

to dry hop at cold temperatures,

34:38

because the original beer wasn't, I

34:40

went ahead and dry hopped it at

34:42

68 just like Kelsey had done. And

34:46

I could not detect

34:48

anything like continued fermentation or

34:51

hop creep or anything like

34:53

that. The

34:57

gravity after I dry hopped

34:59

it was say within

35:01

a point or so

35:03

of where it was prior to

35:06

dry hopping it. So

35:10

you know it could be that

35:12

it just still had another point

35:15

or two to go. You know

35:17

I can't say that it wasn't hop creep but

35:19

I don't see any signs that it was. The

35:22

only way I could possibly know for sure was if

35:24

I had another batch of lead made that I didn't

35:26

dry hop to compare. And who would

35:28

want to do that? So

35:31

I guess I can say that

35:33

at this point my

35:36

thoughts on hop creep are

35:38

the same as they have remained. Which

35:41

is you know it just is

35:43

not that much of an issue for

35:45

home brewers, at least for me as

35:47

a home brewer. Yeah I dry hopped

35:49

this I think to the tune of

35:51

about 12 ounces per five gallons, which

35:53

is really

35:55

getting up there. Yeah I know. Maybe

35:58

because it you know it was all cryo.

36:00

I guess it wasn't

36:02

all cryo, but it was mainly cryo.

36:05

So maybe without that much BRAC,

36:07

there wasn't as much diastatic power

36:09

in the hops. I

36:12

don't know, but hop creep did not seem to be

36:14

an issue with it. It could

36:16

also be, I could see an impact from how

36:20

much yeast is left in suspension, how much

36:23

time you gave it. There

36:26

was a lot of yeast left in suspension because

36:28

I hadn't dumped any yet. I

36:31

gave the hops probably, oh, overall, you write

36:33

it to double dry hops. So the first

36:36

dose of hops is probably enough for close

36:38

to a week by the time it

36:41

got kegged. So I would

36:43

think that that would be enough for it to

36:45

occur if it was going to occur. So at

36:48

any rate, I would say

36:52

you can't really say one way or another,

36:54

at least on this beer.

36:57

Remind me, how did you solve the dip

36:59

hop problem? I didn't

37:02

dip hop. So you just added

37:04

the 702 as a whirlpool or something? Yeah, exactly. I

37:07

cooled it down to about 170, 165, something like that. Added the 702, I guess,

37:17

in case you listened to previous

37:19

episodes, is kind

37:22

of like a hop

37:24

extract, an oil. Great

37:27

thing about it is it's extremely flowable.

37:30

I was expecting to have this stuff

37:32

just stick in the bottle, have a heck

37:34

of a time getting it out, and it just

37:36

poured very, very nicely. For

37:39

me, the biggest thing that I got

37:41

out of this beer was

37:44

the fermentables. I am

37:46

just absolutely loving the combination of Pils

37:48

malt, Vienna malt, and that little touch

37:50

of sugar. I think it was like

37:53

5% sugar, and I think that that

37:55

is now going to

38:00

become a standard addition to any IPA

38:02

that I make because, you know,

38:06

like in Belgian beers where the

38:08

idea is to make them kind

38:10

of light-bodied and extremely drinkable, that

38:12

is exactly what happens with the

38:14

IPA when you do that. You

38:17

get great flavor from the

38:20

the raw North Star pills

38:22

combined with a touch of

38:25

the Weiermann Vienna malt and

38:28

then you put in 5% sugar on

38:30

top of that to kind of like

38:32

drop the body down a little bit and it

38:34

is a dangerously drinkable beer.

38:37

Yeah at least according to

38:39

our notes, you know, the recipe on

38:41

the site, it's only about 2% shorter. Oh,

38:43

is that what it was? I didn't remember but

38:45

at any rate it works

38:49

and I'm going to continue doing that

38:52

in my IPAs. Yeah, which is, I mean,

38:55

that's a very Southern California sort of trick.

38:58

Yeah, well you know what and it's

39:00

a standard thing for like double

39:02

IPAs and stuff like that, right?

39:06

You always put sugar in those but,

39:10

you know, for just a regular IPA

39:12

a little bit is really,

39:15

really a good idea in my opinion.

39:18

If you haven't tried it, try

39:20

it. I just use regular

39:22

table sugar as I do for almost

39:24

everything. It's worth it.

39:26

There you go. And

39:29

then what about the alt? Okay,

39:32

yeah, I just I just kegged

39:34

an alt beer. Our

39:36

dear friend Larry Clauser sent

39:38

us some malt from

39:40

Montana Craft Malt, a company

39:43

he's working for these days and we're gonna have

39:45

Larry on the show here pretty soon to talk

39:47

about it. I am just

39:50

loving, absolutely loving the flavor of

39:52

the malt. It's

39:55

rich and malty without being

39:57

over the top. It's a coin-rich

40:00

maltiness if that makes any

40:06

sense. We're both big fans of

40:08

malt made with full pint barley, right? But

40:12

full pint has its own unique flavor, which

40:14

is not bad. I

40:17

mean, not bad. I

40:19

mean, it's not a bad thing. And

40:21

it works really, really well a lot of the time.

40:24

The flavor of the Montana craft

40:26

malt is different

40:29

from the full

40:32

pint malt. I

40:35

don't know what barley variety Montana is using.

40:37

I think it's set on the bags, but

40:39

I don't recall. But

40:42

it's almost like a cleaner, straight

40:44

ahead malt flavor. But by that,

40:46

I don't mean that it's like

40:48

weak or insipid or anything like

40:50

that. It is a

40:53

great, great full flavored malt, but

40:55

a very clean flavor, right? No

40:58

side notes. Does that make

41:00

any sense whatsoever? Yeah, absolutely.

41:04

And the other thing I was going to mention

41:06

too is I have been using YEAST 1007 in

41:08

my alts for

41:11

OGs in excess of 20 years. I

41:14

absolutely love the yeast. And

41:17

there are people who say, oh man, you

41:19

know, I have a terrible time getting that

41:21

yeast to flocculate. And

41:23

I've never run across that

41:25

before. I've always gotten great flocculation

41:27

from it until this

41:29

current patch. And

41:32

while the beer looks crystal clear,

41:35

when you drink it, you kind of get a

41:37

dusty, gritty mouth feel from it

41:40

that is the yeast that's still

41:42

in suspension. So

41:45

I left it for a couple

41:47

weeks in the fermenter at about

41:50

35 degrees. I

41:52

ferment this beer at 53. Believe

41:54

it or not, YEAST 1007 loves to work at

41:57

53 degrees. So

41:59

then I left it for 53. for a couple weeks at 35

42:01

and it cleared pretty well.

42:04

Now it's kegged and sitting in a cooler

42:07

waiting to clarify a little bit more.

42:10

It is still a delicious, delicious beer.

42:12

You can taste that malt. I

42:14

hopped, it ended up being about a 1052 beer

42:16

that I hopped to about 40 IBU

42:20

because that's where I like

42:22

my alt. And you

42:24

know, it's really delicious but again when

42:27

you drink it you can

42:29

almost feel the grittiness when you clench

42:31

your teeth or something like that even

42:33

though you can't see it. So

42:35

it's just going to sit there until it's ready. And

42:39

this kind of goes back to a question

42:42

we got asked a few shows

42:44

ago about, you know, should

42:46

I age my beer? Should I not age

42:48

my beer? And the answer

42:50

is the beer will answer that

42:52

question for you. You

42:55

know, this beer, it needs a

42:57

little bit more time before it's at its

43:00

peak. Denny Kong

43:02

on the other hand, when it came

43:04

out of the fermenter it was ready

43:06

to go. It didn't need any more

43:08

time whatsoever. So no hard

43:11

and fast rules people. Pay

43:13

attention and listen to

43:15

what the beer is telling you. There

43:18

you go. Beer will tell you. That's

43:21

right. What

43:23

was the old La Ganea's

43:26

slogan? Beer speaks

43:28

people mumble. Drink

43:32

no beer before it's time and

43:34

it's time. Exactly.

43:37

It's been running for five minutes. Let's drink it. And speaking

43:39

of which, let's get out of here and get the people

43:41

on their way. All right. We

43:44

are going to take another quick break here

43:46

and when we come back we

43:48

will have the quick tip. We'll have

43:50

something other and we'll send you on

43:52

your Merry Christmas way. Stick

43:54

around. We'll be right back. With

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44:34

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44:44

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44:46

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this offer expires December 31st. Welcome

45:48

back. It is time for us to wrap things

45:50

up and get out of here. I'll start

45:53

off with a quick tip and it's something

45:55

we just discussed which is

45:57

the beer makes the schedule Don't

46:01

be one of those people who say oh man,

46:03

it's got to have two weeks or it's got

46:05

to have four weeks or whatever Try

46:08

the beer Listen to the

46:10

beer watch the beer the beer will

46:13

tell you what it wants So

46:15

remember always the beer makes the

46:18

schedule not the calendar Yeah,

46:20

and if you need beer for a party plan ahead

46:22

and give yourself a little extra time. Yeah,

46:24

right, you know Either that or pick

46:27

a beer that's gonna be ready in three days like

46:29

it 10 20 something Well,

46:32

I think I can turn if I try I can

46:34

turn my mild around it about four to five

46:38

That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah So,

46:40

all right. There we go So the beer makes a

46:43

schedule and now of course it's time for

46:45

something other than beer because man cannot live on beer

46:47

alone You must educate your mind

46:49

tease it and so I actually have

46:51

two things one of which is not gonna be controversial in

46:53

the other One which will probably make Denny Gack The

46:58

first one is I've been watching recently

47:00

the gilded age on HBO or max if

47:02

you had did the streaming service and

47:05

it is the sequel series

47:07

or prequel series actually prequel

47:09

series from Julian fellows Aka the guy who

47:12

created down nabi and seems to absolutely obsessed

47:14

with the idea of upper class and lower

47:16

class people But this time

47:18

the gilded age takes place in New

47:20

York City and oddly enough it takes

47:22

place during the gilded age Which was that period time

47:25

the 1880s and whatnot the time of the

47:27

robber barons and you know Gould and Carnegie

47:30

and all those people and

47:34

The show is about absolutely horrible people

47:36

who care about weird stupid etiquette

47:39

crap. The clothing is

47:41

fantastic Fantastic And

47:43

the visuals are absolutely stunning But

47:45

I keep waiting for the serving staff to rise up

47:47

and stab everybody with their oyster forks Yeah,

47:52

yeah, but I will say this so

47:55

many hats so many absolutely

47:58

fabulous hats The

48:01

other one, now we get into the place where Denny's gonna gack,

48:03

and I just added this into the script at the last minute

48:05

here because I was thinking about it. The

48:08

other day I got reminded of

48:11

the Seaburg 1000. Denny,

48:13

you're an old audio guy. Do you remember the Seaburg 1000? Is

48:16

this like a jukebox? Kind

48:19

of. It's the commercial music

48:22

jukebox. Sort

48:24

of a musak player. Big

48:27

platters of records that would play over and over again in the

48:29

stores. And

48:33

what actually really reminded me of is going to the

48:35

grocery store today, you hear a whole

48:38

bunch of songs that are targeted towards my generation. But

48:42

a lot of pop songs and rock songs and all that sort of

48:44

fun stuff. And of course right now, a ton

48:47

of holiday music. In this holiday

48:50

music. Yeah. And

48:53

it got me to thinking, there are channels

48:55

out there on YouTube, there's literally a website

48:57

called seaburg1000.com. They're

49:00

dedicated to preserving old

49:03

commercial retail music.

49:05

So things like everybody's favorite,

49:08

musak. By the way,

49:10

musak is still actually around. I think they call themselves some mood music

49:12

now. But Denny,

49:16

I know you probably have the opinion. I had the opinion

49:18

for the longest time of musak

49:20

is crap. Right? It's terrible. Yeah.

49:23

But you learn to appreciate it for

49:25

what it is after you're beaten over

49:27

the head with it for enough years.

49:30

Yeah. And also if you have

49:32

to listen to Mariah Carey on repeat 900 times,

49:35

it turns out musak is actually kind of nice.

49:39

So there are lots of YouTube channels out there.

49:41

And like I said, there's the seaburg1000.com website. They

49:46

literally rescue old versions of this sort of

49:48

retail music and keep it playing on channels.

49:50

The reason why I'm saying it Kind

49:52

of in defense of it and rescuing it. And It's

49:55

actually really good working music. Okay. This

50:00

is everything that you can spit on about company

50:02

and low, right? Now bad and just have

50:04

a can of play in the background that sort of engages

50:06

for your brain while you're off during the lungs. And

50:09

it's very much the old version that the

50:11

old people version of the a lo fi

50:13

hip hop beats stuff that you find on

50:16

Youtube that kids today used to study. For.

50:18

It so well. In defense of Muzak. Snow

50:22

melts ah I can listen to it but

50:24

I don't work so I guess may be

50:26

as to find some other reason to listen

50:28

to it is that it doesn't have a

50:30

beat Me: can't dance know it was her

50:32

friends I tell us what I like amount

50:34

of mean. Okay,

50:37

thank you everybody for listening to

50:39

Experimental Brewing. You can catch all

50:41

of our latest adventures and writings

50:43

by going to our website which

50:45

is Experimental brew.com Don't forget that

50:47

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50:49

where we're at the Sp. Bruins

50:51

were on Facebook or on Instagram.

50:53

I drew hangs out on the

50:55

home brewing sub Reddit and the

50:57

slack homering town may be ah

50:59

using fi me hanging around the

51:01

A T discussion forum. I spend

51:04

a whole bunch of time and

51:06

space births are I'm in the

51:08

brew houses beer garden. I'm in

51:10

a bunch of places to cruise

51:12

around the internet. you'll find somewhere

51:14

is basically tied into his I

51:16

pad at all times. yeah that's

51:18

right, if he would ask a

51:20

question or suggests topics. Recipes experiments

51:22

are just rant and rave

51:24

using email us, had pod

51:26

tested experimental brew.com or if

51:28

you want to get a

51:30

hold of each of us

51:32

individually, I'm getting an experimental

51:34

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51:36

experimental brew.com or you can

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six seven Six Five One

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Il Sixty Six Seven Six

51:49

Five One Ale if Drew

51:51

answers. Gift Surprise wherever that

51:53

is, And I'll ask you what to

51:55

do. What's the, what's the noise like? To

51:59

do you make those. So

52:01

until next time remember to always

52:03

brew experimentally or brewacky

52:05

and we'll see you on

52:07

the next episode of experimental

52:09

brewing. All.