I’ve been wondering about beer time activities. Those times when I start something and think “man, a beer would be good right now…” . Besides the obvious like brewing, or catching up with old friends, or after mowing the lawn on a hot day I wonder what other activities go well with a beer.

Working on the car always seems like the time to have a can in hand. Miller High Life or Milwaukee’s Best seem to be the proper choice. Only one or two through the whole process though, otherwise things stop working right. I haven’t changed the oil in my vehicles in a long time, but when I did, I wouldn’t have a beer until it was done. Its a short job anyway. Now I’m looking at some rear shock absorbers, I wonder if I can get it done in two beers time, or if I will get so far and have to call in help!

Grilling usually finds a beer in my hand too. Homebrew for that though. Serious grilling takes serious beer. Since all grilling is serious… I haven’t timed the beer to medium rare ratio yet. Perhaps thats a topic for further research. “To achieve a perfect medium rare steak, cook on mid-high heat for exactly three quarters of an IPA.” 

Too bad shopping trips don’t have little refreshment kiosks. Maybe instead of having the bars on the third floor of Mall of America if they spread it out every fifteen shops or something I might get there more than three times in my life. (For the record, apparently that big shopping monstrosity is only 40 minutes from me.)

I suppose sporting events might be a good place for a beer, but since I haven’t been to a game, any game, in years I can’t say with any certainty any more. Grabbing a Grain Belt Premium at the Blue Line Club was fun between periods of college hockey, but alas, that was years ago.

If I’ve missed something, let me know!

Cheers!

Now thats a mouthful.

On the front of the label its identified as Buffalo Bill’s Brewery Orange Blossom Cream Ale, and on the side brewed on contract by Pyramid Brewing Co out of Oregon. The bottle doesn’t have much for aroma. It pours out slightly hazy, and light… well, light orange.

This is a fruit beer. An orange cream ale. The first one tastes like a treat, the second one starts to get pretty sweet. I gave the rest of it to my wife. She liked it but agreed that one or two is good, but no more. The aftertaste is more lingering orange.

I’m trying to be nice about it, but frankly, I won’t buy this one again. If you like fruit beers, go for it, but its just not my thing. I prefer the beer to come with a hint of fruit, not the other way around.

Cheers!

Since I’m visiting the Eastern side of Wisconsin over the weekend, I thought I would pick up a couple of different beers that I haven’t seen in my local liquor store and give them a review. (”Its all for the blog honey, I have to buy these beers!” )

The first in line comes out of La Crosse, WI from the City Brewery. Since it is well known that I enjoy hoppy beers, it should be obvious that my pick was the Golden Leaf Pale Ale. The bottle has mostly green lable with two hop cones pictured prominently on the front. The descriptor is “cascade hops with a citrus floral bouquet”.

Opening the bottle gave me a nice hoppy sniff of Cascades. Once I poured it into the glass after taking a sip, it is a deep golden color with a little amber mixed in. The hop aroma isn’t as prevalent as a Hazed and Infuzed, but still, its there.

It drinks easily and leaves behind a typical pale ale film of hoppy bitterness in the back of my mouth. It definately has the hops.

Over all, it is a typical pale ale. I’d buy it again if I couldn’t find my usual hoppy favorites. If you don’t like hoppy beer, I would not recommend buying it. Actually, if you don’t like hoppy beer, don’t buy pale ales!

Cheers!

Many thanks to the RealBeer blog for posting about the behind the scenes article on A-B Brewmaster Steve Foppe and his job.  Its a really cool brief overview about brewing for one of the HUGE guys. One of my favorite quotes:

And it takes pinpoint results like that to get a beer made in Jacksonville to taste the same as a beer made in St. Louis or anywhere else.

These folks are proud of that consistency — and proud that the beer they brew here is some of the toughest to make.

Something I’ve said before about the macro brew, its a very difficult style to brew. Flaws show through like cracks in a windshield! When there is so little flavor profile involved, the most minute flaw is glaring.

Enjoy the read.

Cheers!

There are two options for converting a chest freezer into a kegerator. Putting a tower on top and building a collar. Thankfully, I have done both and will share how its accomplished!

The first option is by installing a tower on the freezer lid. This is my current set up in our family room. The tap is high enough that the kids can’t reach it easily. I like having it right at the level to pour without stooping. Putting the tower on the freezer is less labor intensive than building a collar, but once its done, the appliance will never be a freezer again without some patch work.

The actual drilling is simple, get a hole saw that is smaller than the inner diameter of the tower. Figure out where it would be best placed and go to it. Unless the plan includes multiple towers, try and get it centered on the lid, at least side to side. The one in our family room has the tower slightly forward of the center line since its a big freezer. There is enough room in there for four, maybe five homebrew kegs.

Center the tower over the hole, use a marker to dot where the mounting screws will go, predrill the holes and screw the tower down. If the lid of the freezer isn’t very thick or sturdy enough to hold the tower in place, it gets a little more tricky. What I would do is take a square of plywood, drill a hole through the lid into the plywood and mount the tower using bolts. In cross section it would be from the top: tower, freezer lid, plywood.

Most towers out there only have three and a half feet of tubing attached, and they end with the “beer nut” connection instead of a homebrew ready connector. I’ve just slightly dropped my carbonation preference  for kegging the beer and it works fine. It is possible to re-run the beer lines, but I haven’t bothered with that yet. (If it works, don’t break it.)

Finally, which ever route picked for the chest freezer, there will have to be a temperature controller involved. I have a simple analog one that plugs between the wall and the freezer. I purchased it during a clearance even years ago from one of the bigger online brewing retailers. I lucked out, everywhere I look now they are $20 more than what I paid.

Look for a more detailed article about building this chest freezer kegerator  on DadCenter soon!

As a brief aside, this method can also be used on sufficiently sized minifridges. Care needs to be taken though, since cooling lines are run throughout the shell of those fridges, and they make very poor paperweights.

Cheers!

I had the opportunity to enjoy Leinie’s Sunset Wheat this weekend. I’ve had it before, and put it on the “special occasion” list. This weekend wasn’t a special occasion, it was brought over, so that makes it all the more drinkable, right?

Its got an almost lemony aroma, and the taste is sweetly spiced. A bit cloying after swallowing but a decent variation on a wheat. I’d almost liken it to a Belgian Wit, it has that same orange sweet taste and aroma.

All in all, a good beer to have one or two of, definitely not a session beer. Or, if you have a friend that doesn’t like beer all that much, let them try it. On the Brew Dad Leinenkugel Likes List I’d put it below the Red, but well above the Berry Wiess.

(If Leinenkugel is unknown to you, I’m very sorry. Look around at your next beer run, they’re a midsized brewery originally based in Chippewa Falls, Wi since bought by Miller. Leinies is my hands down favorite fall back beer, and the samplers are always fun.)

Cheers!

Ryan Shamus has come up with a clever way to get more comments from his blog. He is giving away a Mr. Beer home brew all in one set up. If you are interested in brewing but haven’t made the leap into a full five gallon set up, perhaps a free Mr. Beer kit might be the way to go.

His stipulations are simple, make a pertinent comment on his blog and be the 504th commenter. Head over, give it a read and come up with something clever to type. There might be a chance 503 people have commented before you get there you could end up with the prize. I know in the homebrewing community there is a lot of disdain for Mr. Beer kits, but for someone who is not willing to put the initial investment into a full five gallon set up, it might be a good “testing the waters” unit. I can honestly say I have never tried a beer from a Mr. Beer, so I can not in good conscience make any comment on the quality of brew resulting.

I can speculate, but I won’t. Since I already have a few primary fermenters, a few more secondaries, four or five kegs, kegerator and all the assorted little goodies that a full blown homebrewer hobbyist might have I’ll not be buying one soon. Winning one, on the other hand, might be fun to test it out and give an honest review of the resultant beer!

If you get it, let me know how the beer is.

Cheers!

Here’s a recipe for my Belgian tripel. It needs at least four months aging to finish off and come out clear, smooth and dangerously easy to drink.

• 12 lbs Muntons Light LME
• 1 lb Clear Belgian candi sugar
• 0.5 lb Caravienne Malt
• 0.25 Aromatic Malt
• 2 oz Fuggles 60mins
• 0.5 oz Fuggles 25mins
• 1 oz Sweet orange peel 5mins
• White Labs Trappist Ale yeast

Pitch temp was 78degF and original gravity was 1.099

Kegged with a final gravity of 1.018

This very strong beer was deceptively light flavored, even folks who didn’t care for heavier beers really liked this one. I only allowed one or two pints though, because of its strength. In a previous post I mistakenly stated there was honey in this recipe. Thats when my brewlog was still missing.

As another note, when I made this beer I was buying liquid malt extract in bulk, it really cut the cost of the LME.

Cheers!

God bless my wife! She found my brew log that I had lost! Look forward to a recipe or two from it this week! Everyone raise your glass in a hearty “cheers” some time today. Happy Fourth of July, and happy return to my brewlog!

I finally got the wireless connection working on my Wii, and one of the features is a news browser. Two pages down was an article about people stealing kegs to recycle them! What really bummed me out, was a Google News search about it showed up that a lot of microbreweries were being hit pretty hard by that.

If you like the microbreweries beer enough that you are willing to buy the keg, or more accurately rent the keg, buy the beer contained within, wouldn’t it be prudent to return the keg so it can be refilled? Instead folks are swiping it and bringing it to the recyclers.

I’m not going to say I haven’t been tempted to hang on to a 16 gallon keg to convert to a brew kettle, but since I don’t buy 16 gallon kegs, I’ve never had to deal with that temptation. It just seems … wrong to take the keg to the recycler. When you pay for the keg, you put down a deposit for the return! Does taking it to the recycler for a few dollars more make sense? Maybe its worth way more and I should read my news better. I’ve always been taught “return what you borrow in good or better condition than when you got it” and bringing back a nice light keg that you picked up so heavy, well, doesn’t that fit in too?!?

Cheers!

(Totally off topic: If you are interested in your Second Amendment rights, please check out Moose Droppings for an interesting development. I might write only about beer, but I do have other interests.)