Paul from the Wine and Cheese Place on Forsyth emailed to let me know that the Sam Adams 2008 Long Shot winning six-packs have now arrived at his store.  For those of you unfamiliar with Boston Brewery Sam Adams Long Shot Competition, basically it’s a nation-wide homebrew competition where the winners will have their beer brewed by the Boston Brewery and then distributed throughout the nation.

While this is a an extremely cool contest, what sets this year’s winning pack apart is that it contains Mike McDole’s Double IPA.  But this is no normal Double IPA, Mike based his recipe off of a clone of Russian River’s extremely sought after beer, Pliny the Elder.  So, while this isn’t exactly the PtE that many of you are clamoring after, this is about your best opportunity to try about the closest thing here in St. Louis.

While I may be Irish, I don’t have a real allegience to St. Patrick’s Day.  I don’t wear green.  I don’t really celebrate.  The only St. Patrick’s thing I look forward to is some of the food.  I don’t know how met Drew Huerter’s mom, but she’s pretty great.  I mean, how can you not be great when your favorite beer is Pliny the Elder?

Well, she’s passed along her recipe for Irish Soda Bread which she makes using up spent grain from Drew’s dad Dan’s latest homebrew.  So, I thought I’d pass it along to you.  Enjoy your St. Patty’s day.

1. Pre heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan, or four baby loaf pans which are 5 3/4 by 3 1/4 by 2 inch.
2. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, then mix in spent grain.  Blend egg, buttemilk and ale; add to flour mixture.  Mix just enough to blend ingredients.  Stir in melted butter and mix well.
3. Pour into pan(s) and sprinkle with a little of the reserved spent grain.  If using large loaf pan bake 65 to 75 minutes.  If using baby loaf pans bake 45 to 50 minutes.  Do not underbake.
4. Remove from pan(s) and cool completely on wire rack.  Place in airtight wrap or container and store at least 8 hours before slicing.  Serve with imported Irish butter (optional).

While I expressed a bit of dissatisfaction with the Great American Beer Festival, one of the things that would keep me going back to Denver during the GABF is all of the extra activities going on during the festival.  Since Colorado houses over 80 brewpubs and 18 breweries, there is always something to keep you interested during GABF week.

As Irene and I had a very early flight on Sunday morning, we took it relatively easy on Saturday night.  We decided that after eating crappy hotel food for both dinner the night before and breakfast, it was time to get the hell out.  Picking out a restaurant was pretty easy.  Earlier in the day, the 2008 GABF Awards were handed out and Wynkoop Brewing Company had won two gold medals for the B3K Schwarzbier and Wixa Weiss.  And in case you didn’t know, one of the new brewers over at Wynkoop is Charlie Berger, who previously worked for O’Fallon.  Congrats to Charlie!

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After dinner, I wanted to show Irene the Falling Rock Tap Room, home to over 60+ taps and a crap-ton of bottled beer.  This was the first place that we went to when Mike Leahy and I arrived in Denver, so it seemed fitting to make it the last place as well.  Nothing quite like having Pliny the Elder on draught the moment you walk into a bar.  I don’t care if it’s not during GABF, any time you’re in Denver, please be certain to check out Falling Rock.

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This package was originally supposed to arrive on Friday, but unfortunately the FedEx guy showed up before my lunch time and I wasn’t able to be home to accepted the package.  So my poor beer had to sit in a hot truck all day on Friday and then in a hot warehouse overnight.  Sure one more day of heat probably doesn’t mean much after sitting in a truck coming all the way from California, but it still hurts a bit.  As for the beer, we drank the Pliny and the Blind Pig the night they arrived.  Both lived up to their reputation and were fantastic beers.  What did you enjoy this weekend?

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.

I hope the freshly new year finds you well. I spent my New Years Eve attempting to finish off the keg of my 80 Schilling. (Unfortunately, I failed. But I put up a mighty strong fight.) Rather than make a list of resolutions I’ve decided to make a list of beers I plan on brewing this year. This will be by far the most beer I’ve ever brewed in one year. It’s a pretty ambitious schedule, but I don’t think it’s unachievable.

January

• La Fin du Monden Clone
• Southern English Brown
• Oatmeal Stout

February

• Saison
• Schwarzbier (my first lager)

March

• Imperial IPA (Pliny the Elder Clone)
• Mango Blonde (A recipe I’ve been playing with for some time.)

April

• Raspberry Wheat
• Witbier
• Classic American Pils

May

• Southern English Brown
• Belgian Dark Strong

June

• Weissbier
• California Common

July

• Flanders Red
• Wee Heavy

August

• Oktoberfest
• Pumpkin Beer

September

• Robust Porter
• 80 Schilling
• Christmas Ale

October

• Southern English Brown
• Dopplebock

November

• Belgian Dubbel
• Russian Imperial Stout
• December Chocolate Cherry Stout

December

• English Barleywine
• Brown Porter

I’ve already begun purchasing my hops now (wow, what a pain in the pocketbook) to make sure I’m fully stocked for the year. I’m going to continue to use the blog to update my progress along the way. Make sure to stay tuned to find out which ones flounder (hopefully none) and which ones flourish (hopefully all.)