The St. Louis Brews, one of the local St. Louis homebrewing clubs will be holding their monthly meeting tonight at the Annunciation Church in Webster Groves. The meeting starts at about 7PM. Tonight’s styles are as follows:

Cat. 1 Light Lager

• 1A. Lite American Lager
• 1B. Standard American Lager
• 1C. Premium American Lager

Cat. 2 Pilsner

• 2C. Classic American Pilsner

Cat. 4 Dark Lager

• 4A. Dark American Lager

Cat. 6 Light Hybrid Beer

• 6A. Cream Ale
• 6B. Blond Ale

Cat. 7 Amber Hybrid Beer

• 7B. California Common Beer

Cat. 10 American Ale

• 10A. American Pale Ale
• 10B. American Amber Ale
• 10C. American Brown

I will be bringing two beers for evaluation. It’s always an interesting experience and provides you with a lot of great feedback. If you’re looking to try some great beer tonight, this is your place.

This weekend is fast approaching and you haven’t bought your tickets to the 2008 St. Louis Microfest yet, have you? Well fear not, because thanks to Paul Hayden from the Wine and Cheese Place in Clayton, I’m giving away two free passes for the Saturday session. Now, it would be easy for me just to randomly pick an email out of a hat and hand the prizes to that person, but there’s no fun in that!

So, you have to answer this little trivia question as well. What five categories are beers being judged in for this years Microfest Homebrew competition? Email your answer to contest@stlhops.com, I’ll choose a winner out of the correct entries on Thursday, June 5th at 11AM. Winners must be at least 21 years old to enter this contest.

As I’m sure most of you are aware of the upcoming St. Louis Microfest being held on June 6th and 7th, I’m just going to get straight to the meat and give you the tentative beer list for both nights of the event:

Friday:

Bottles

Belhaven Scottish Ale
Duvel Belgian Beer
Lindeman’s Framboise
Lindeman’s Pomme
Moretti Lager
Newcastle Brown Ale
Orval Trappist
Paulander Hefe-Weizen
Samuel Smith Imperial Stout
Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout
Singha
Strongbow Cider
Warsteiner Pilsner
Warsteiner Dunkel
Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
Peroni Pilsner
Negra Modelo
Tsing Tao
Sapporo
Estrella Damm
Tooheys
Barons Black Wattle
Sol
Tona

Draught

Stella Artois
Smithwick
Harp
Guinness
Beamish Irish

Read the rest…

It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled down Watson Road, it’s amazing to see some of the changes. There’s a whole new complex west of the Best Buy and Schnucks, Crestwood Mall is called Crestwood Court (also, it’s interesting that I remember when Crestwood was considered the “nice” mall and South County was the dirt mall, but it seems like they’ve swapped and South County is the nice one now) and the complex that houses Friar Tuck once held a Sport Authority and a Sears store. Anyway, enough of this Andy Rooney-esque rant.

Store: Friar Tuck Address: 9053 Watson Road, St. Louis, MO 63126 (Map it) Phone: 314-918-9230 Selection: “Everything that is offered in Missouri”

I’ll be perfectly honest, I was really impressed with Friar Tuck when I first walked in. It’s extremely well organized and very visually appealing. I probably should have snapped some photos of the wine section, but hey, this is a beer blog. After talking to a few to the store manager and assistant store manager, I quickly realized these guys were all about beer as well. They talked to me about what they had, what they’d like to see and even asked me what my dream list of breweries not distributed would be.

They claimed they have acquired every beer that’s currently being distributed in Missouri and after quickly looking over their selection, I’m prone to believe them. While the beer on the shelves is very impressive what also got my attention were the massive beer coolers. If I had to take a guess, about 60% of the beer on the shelves was also available cold.

Some other neat areas of mention was the large line of unbranded glassware they have to offer. Bill and I have discussed this quite a bit, and as we’ve gotten older, we’re not as interested in having advertisements on our beer glassware. I’d like to have glassware I can use for everyday use without looking like I’m still in college. Also mentioned was that they’re going to begin selling homebrewing equipment and ingredients as well.

Be sure to stop in and tell them what you think and what you’d like to see. It’s good to have another option in the excellent St. Louis beer retail scene.

OK, back to brewing this weekend after a 3 week break. I almost did an extract batch this weekend just to save a little time, but I couldn’t bring myself to spend the extra $20-25.This weekend will be another Two Hearted IPA clone. I’m extremely happy with how this last one turned out, even if it is a bit cloudy. It smells and tastes fantastic. I’m probably going to end up making it my go to brewing beer from here on ou, hoping to perfect it along the way.

Pictured in the photo to the right is my Mango Blonde, my Raspberry Wheat and my Imperial IPA. After working on the Mango for 4 years, I think this is my last attempt.  I just don’t get any mango taste or aroma that comes through so it seems like a waste of time and energy.  It was a worthy effort but it’s time to hang it up.

You may remember my brewing schedule that I set up back in January, here’s the list as it stands right now:

May
Russian Imperial Stout
Weissbier
Two Hearted Clone

June
Belgian Dark Strong
Oktoberfest

July
Pumpkin Beer
Chocolate Cherry Stout

August
Schwarzbier
Robust Porter

September
Dopplebock
Christmas Ale
Imperial IPA

October
80 Schilling
Southern English Brown

November
Belgian Dubbel
Oatmeal Stout
Two Hearted Clone

December
English Barleywine
Brown Porter

I originally was going to brew a Belgian Dark Strong this month, but the Belgian beers just aren’t doing it for me as much anymore. I find them a bit too sweet and I can’t drink more than one without wishing I had something a bit hoppier. So I’ve decided to move the Weiss beer up to May and I’m thinking about taking the BDS out all together and moving the English Barleywine up to June and finding something else to brew in December.

Also, if anyone is interesting in homebrewing and has never done it or if you just want to help, you’re always welcome to come over to the house and help out.

What is it about beer events on Saturdays that means, “Hey! It’s time to freeze your butt off!” It’s May, I shouldn’t have to worry about frostbite. But on the plus side, there was always beer to make the event tolerable. Irene and I headed out to O’Fallon Brewery on Saturday morning to begin the day with the Garage Brewing Society. When we arrive at about 11:30, things were in full swing.

Many different kinds of brewing systems. The photo in the lower right is Drew Huerter sparging his American English Barleywine.

You can always count on two thing to warm you up, fire and beer. In this case this beer is Augie Altenbaumer’s Rye Pale Ale that was brewed for the upcoming Heritage Festival.

We then celebrated the worldwide toast at Noon. This was a touching toast that not only celebrated homebrewing but to honor Beer Hunter Michael Jackson as well.

Homebrewers weren’t the only ones brewing on Saturday. Brian Owens, the head brewer at O’Fallon, was brewing up a batch of the O’Fallon Pumpkin Ale. Brian accidentally forgot the rice hulls in this batch until he had sparged about six barrels. Whoops! We then made our way to Worm’s Way to visit the St. Louis Brew’s event.

Read the rest…

Just an update on some of my brewing from over the past few weekends.

• Brewed the Two Hearted Clone last Saturday.
  • OG finished a little lower than I would have liked, but nothing terrible at 1.062 (was shooting for 1.065)
  • Lag time of about 8 hours. Also added 8 drops of FermCap to keep down on the krausen.
  • Dry hopped with 2oz of Centennial hops this weekend and moved into the closest for one week on the hops.
• Moved the Pliny the Elder (Imperial IPA) clone from a carboy into a bright keg.
  • Unfortunately the pelletized hops clogged up my ball lock, so I had to just open the keg and rack it in.
  • Finished out at 1.014 from an OG of 1.088. I tasted it and was quite impressed. I had the girlfriend taste it and she said even at this point, it’s better than Hopslam.
  • Noticed a bit of fusel alcohol aroma as it warmed. Hopefully some of this will age off a bit.
• Brought the Mango Blonde down to 37° last weekend.
  • Transfered to bright keg this weekend and added 6lbs of mango. Looking back at it though, should not have moved this into the bright tank. I think I’ll just swap dip tubes.
  • Also, fitting 6lbs of mango into the keg lost me about a gallon of beer. Not a big deal.
• Chilled and carbonated the La Fin Du Monde clone.
• Bottled 20 bottles of my Oatmeal Stout and 14 Bottles of the Southern English Brown. Dumped the rest of the Oatmeal Stout.
  • Had a lot of foaming with the Oatmeal Stout, I think it was due to the keg being warm.

This weekend I tackled a Raspberry Wheat beer. 47.9% Pils, 47.9% White Wheat and 4.3% Crystal 15. One additional of Willamette at 60 minutes to bring it to 18 IBUs. I’ll add 3lbs of raspberry puree after primary fermentation has ceased.

I also did overnight mash for this beer. I’m trying to avoid brewing on Sundays and thanks to the awesome Repeal of Prohibition festival I was busy Saturday afternoon. So I began my mash right before heading for dinner on Friday night, came home and brought the temperature up to 174 with my heatstick and left it overnight. I woke up early on Saturday morning and began heating my sparge water. The temp on the mash dropped to 153 overnight, so I used the heatstick to bring it back up to 170. Did my sparge and then boiled. I was hoping this would make a 6 hour brew day only 3-4 hour day, but thanks to a 90 minute boil it was closer to 4.5-5 hours. Still made for an interesting experiment.

Oh, this was also my 6th batch in 6 weeks. Whew. Talking a Belgian Wit this weekend and then taking off a few weeks from brewing. I’m sure it’ll make Irene happy.

I mentioned in Friday’s Round-Up that I was brewing a clone of Russian River’s Pliny the Elder. I thought I’d provide a picture of it fermenting because I was pretty shocked just how violent it became. I brew 5.5 gallons of beer and put it into 6.5 gallon carboys to allow room for the krausen (that brownish-yellow foam on top). But when you have bigger (as in sugar/alcohol) beers such as this one, you’ll usually need to have a blow off tube to catch any additional krausen that may come out of the fermenter.

Here are some quick specifics about my beer:

• OG 1.088
• IBUs: 100+ (ProMash estimated it at 284)
• Lag time: About 8 Hours

This is a bit bigger than Vinnie’s beer, but I’m sure that the amount of hops added should be able to handle the extra 15 points of sugar. After the primary finishes I’ll rack to a 5 gallon carboy and dry hop with about 7 more ounces of hops. This will probably be the first beer I try my Randal on. Exciting stuff, though I guess this means I’m officially a hop head.

The item you see on the left is what’s known as a heatstick. There are two different ways to heat up a mash (the mixture of water and grain) One is by infusions of hot water. The problem with this method is let’s say your mash tun can only hold a total of 10 gallons. You have 7 gallons of mash in the tun, but to bring your temperature up 10 degrees it may require 4 gallons of water. A big mess is what you have. The other method of heating your mash is directly applying heat to it via flame or in this case a heatstick.

Basically, this is nothing more than an electric hot water heater coil, a couple of pipes, and a hell of a lot of silicone to keep the electricity away from the water. I gave this it’s maiden voyage while making a Saison last Saturday. I’m happy to say, not only did I not die, but it worked pretty damned well.

The other item is used after the beer has been finished. It’s basically the homebrewer’s version of a Randal the Enamel Animal. If you love hops, then this is your dream device. It’s basically a water filler that you fill with fresh whole hops that the beer passes by on the way to your glass. From what I’ve been told it really helps to give the beer a real final shot of fresh hop aroma that can’t be beat. If you want to see a picture of something like this in action, head over to the Maltose Falcoln’s website or if you’re interested in building one of these yourself, click here.

I mentioned this class about a month ago, but I think I’d give you a quick update. As of the time of this post, there are only 2 spots left in this class. If you’re interesting in learning the basics of homebrewing, here is a great chance to learn with a great teacher.

Dan George of the St. Louis Brews is holding a homebrewing class on March 1st from 9AM - 12:30PM at Forest Park Community College. He’s an excellent brewer and an all around nice guy. I’d also suggest that you attend some of the local homebrew club meetings. You’ll get a chance to meet other homebrewers, many of whom would be happy to help you out with your first brewing session.