No real aroma. Slightly crisp hop bite at initial taste, fades slowly and blends with some malty sharpnesses. Taste lingers with a slight hop sharpnesses.
3 out of 5 Stars
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All posts by micraftbeer
What Might be Lurking in Your Empty Bottles
I sanitize my bottles in the oven. It’s fairly easy, and I hate seeing residual “no rinse” sanitizer lingering in my bottles that I’m about to put my precious beer into. So I cover the tops with a bit of aluminum foil, stick them in the oven,
and set the oven to do a timed cook at 320 degrees for 2 hours and 15 minutes. I do that the night before and they are ready to go the next day. Or even sit around a few days because I’ve got the convenient aluminum foil “lids” on them.
My empties I keep in the basement in an open-top box, slowly accumulating as I work my way toward the next bottling day. Whenever I empty a bottle, I always give it a good thorough 3x rinse with hot water and some sloshing around to ensure I get any residue out of the bottom. So for the most part the bottles are clean, just not sanitized.
When it comes to my oven sanitizing process, since the bottles I’ve got coming in are already clean per my rinse procedure after I empty one, I don’t wash them or do anything specific with them. In one instance I had a box of new bottles from the homebrew shop, so I knew they would be clean. They had a bit of dust on them, so I figured I’d rinse them out just to wash out any accumulated dust. I was surprised to find a nasty looking creepy crawly 
had taken up residence in one of my empty bottles in the basement. Had I not done the “one last rinse” just before my sanitizing, that little guy would’ve been in the bottle as I unknowingly capped him with aluminum foil and stuck him in the oven for a couple of hours. That would have been a “The last time I ever had homebrew story…” for someone had one of those come floating out as I was serving my family.
So if you store your empties open topped, even if they’re clean, be sure to give a quick rinse just in case something has decided to take up residence there!
Chilling Your Wort in the Summer- Making a Pre-Chiller
I always brew outside, as I think most people do. Or at least people brewing all-grain, since you need a serious heat source to boil that much water and indoor stovetops don’t cut it. But that’s OK, because brewing outside is great, as you get to enjoy the out of doors. Different weather seasons bring different brewing challenges, and the heat of the summer is no different.
The main challenge I encountered was getting my wort to cool down. Oh the first 100 degrees was not an issue, but trying to get down to 65F or so when it’s 85F out was a challenge. I’d be running the hose through the wort chiller and as I kept checking the temperature, I was disappointed at how slowly it was dropping the final degrees I needed. It made me even contemplate backtracking to the days before my wort chiller and filling a sink up with ice water to put the pot into.
Then I read about making a pre-chiller for your wort chiller. Basically you hook another chiller up and connect it to your wort chiller. You plumb it into a cooler, which you then fill with ice water. Then your garden hose water goes through the pre-chiller, which drops its temperature a few degrees before heading into your wort chiller.
I made mine pretty simply. I had a sm
all drink cooler, bought a small coil of soft copper tubing, length of hose and a couple screw clamps. I wound the copper tubing around a bottle and made sure the inlet was hooked up to the end that would coil around and loop through the ice water before connecting to the outlet. Small drilling in the lid and I was all set to go.
Don’t Do a Yeast Starter in a Dark Growler
I had frequently wondered about my fermenting yeast starter I had gurgling away in a clear growler. I thought, “A starter is nothing more than a jug of fermenting beer. Since I know I don’t want to buy beer from a clear bottle because of the ability for light wavelengths to get in there and wreak havoc with the beer, I should also be concerned about my starter.” I researched it a bit on the internet in various forums but found either inconclusive statements, or no one that really thought/cared about it.
So as I made them and let them sit 
on a high shelf to be in the warm part of the room, I was always a bit worried about how bright the room was. Finally, I had a genius idea- “Why grab the clear growler for my starter when I have a perfectly good and light-impenetrable brown glass growler sitting right next to it?” With this eureka moment I decided this was so obvious I didn’t know why I didn’t think of it before. So I made a yeast starter in my brown jug.
Moments afterwards, I realized the problem. The dark brown glass was so good at keeping light out that I also couldn’t really see in. So as I pitched the yeast and did my frequent vigorous shakes to aerate, I couldn’t see what was going on in the jug. I couldn’t tell if I had any kind of krausen forming, or if I was totally devoid of life. I wouldn’t know if I had a yeast factory going until the day I dumped it in my beer, so I was suddenly feeling not so bright.
Then, since I’m paranoid of extract
flavors sneaking into my beer, I always chill my yeast starter in the fridge for a few days to get the yeast to collect at the bottom and then decant off the extract beer water. This is another time when you want to see what’s inside in your growler. The last thing you want to do after nurturing your little crop of yeast over the last few days is to pour some of it down the drain on brew day.
So don’t do it. Do your yeast starter in a clear or see-through container. If you’re worried about the light getting to it (which I never really could find if this was something to be worried about or not), but it in a box or wrap it with a towel or something.
New Holland Dragon’s Milk Reserve with Raspberries
Nice clean aroma with a hint of raspberries. Slight edge of bourbon flavor that gets replaced by dark malt, and then a nice raspberry flavor comes in. Overall very balanced 3-way tug-of-war going on between bourbon, dark malt, and raspberries. You can feel the alcohol heart in the aftertaste, slightly lingering in the back of the throat. I think I would like it more of there were less bourbon presence, and it was just the dark malt and raspberries commingling.
Bottled 10/06/15, drank 11/17/15.
4 out of 5 stars.
Filling Station Walla Walla IPA
No noticeable hop aroma. Sweet taste with a bit of bitterness on the back end. A hint of grapefruit-like palate cleansing effect, with a hint of bitterness. Smooth malt taste in the middle.
4 out of 5 Stars.
Filling Station The Wobbly Double IPA
Excellent sweet hop aroma, smells like a bag full of fresh hops. Smooth mouthfeel with a nice moderate hop flavor, lingers slightly hoppy but not bitter at all. Can’t tell it’s 8.3%.
5 out of 5 Stars.
Filling Station Omena Harvest Ale
Fresh taste, not as hoppy as the description makes it sound. Fairly low bitterness bite, but decent hop flavor. Can taste the malt backing, menu days German pale, biscuit makes, and hint of crystal. I think I can taste the biscuit.
4 out of 5 Stars.
The Great Beerd Run 2015
Grand Traverse Resort and Spa, Traverse City, MI
This sounded like a unique event- a 5k run with beer stations on the course. This year was the second year for the event. Held in November so as to tie in the beard theme with no-shave November charity. With the course going through one of the on-site golf courses of Grand Traverse Resort, mid-November also ensures runners aren’t competing with golfers for green space.
I came up the night before and stayed in the resort so I wouldn’t have a 4 hour drive ahead of a 10:00 am race start time. I made a poorly thought-out choice of doing the breakfast buffet the morning of the race. Sometimes they’re just too good to pass up, even if you know you don’t need all that food. It was in the mid-30’s Saturday morning so it was going to be a fresh morning run. As I was walking around checking out the post-race party tent, I heard the greatest exchange between a couple of women who had just registered for the race-
Woman 1, “It’s a run that has beer stations ON the course. Of course it makes sense to have alcohol this morning before we start.”
Woman 2, “This is just the greatest event ever that we found.”
The race had about 300 – 350 people take part. As we lined up to start, they reminded us that this was an untimed race. Although there was a clock running, there was no chip timing keeping track of each individual runner as they crossed the start and finish time. This of course was fitting with the crowd and the event itself. They had people group themselves into 3 groups. Racers lined up in the front, Runners in the middle, and Beer Conniseur’s at the end. The group of racers only numbered about 20, so after we saw them off, the main group of us headed out next.
The run followed the golf cart path 
that wove around, up, and down through the hills of the golf course providing nice scenery. Just before the first mile marker we had our first beer station. As we got there, the table was covered with scores of small plastic tasting cups filled with the first beer, about 3 oz. size. People lined up orderly, got their beer and then stood around a bit while drinking their sampler. Once done people started up again down the path towards station #2.
The first beer was a saison of some sort by Beard’s Brewery, and I wasn’t a big fan. As I continued on to station #2/mile #2, I was starting to regret the breakfast buffet and the sausage gravy biscuits. It sloshed around in my stomach with that slightly sweet/sour saison beer making me wonder what I was thinking. Station #2 was a good pale ale from Right Brain Brewery. Right up my alley for beer style, I was starting to change my opinion of whether or not beer & running was OK to mix like this.
Approaching the 3rd/last beer station there was a giant hill. Pushing myself up the hill and telling myself I couldn’t walk, I got to the top feeling quite exerted but happy to be at the Short’s beer stop. My high hopes were crushed as I saw they had a pumpkin spice beer. I understand that was probably in season, but I’m not a pumpkin or spiced beer fan- especially at the 3 mile mark. But since I signed up to drink beer while running, I of course had to finish it. I noticed most of the conversation around me was how most people didn’t like the beer. But I didn’t notice a single person pour it out or toss a half-full cup in the garbage. Apparently everyone else was of the same mindset that this was part of what they paid for.
At the end of the race, they had a DJ going underneath an open-air tent/canopy top. You could get cookies, granola bars, bananas, bagels, water. Once adequately recovered, you could go over to the 
beer table and collect your 16 oz. pour of one of about 10 different beers from either Short’s, Beards, or Right Brain. I had an awesome pale ale by Beards, made with Galaxy hops. It was fresh, slightly fruity, and nice and cold. I thoroughly enjoyed it while sitting and soaking up some sun.
The question is- would I do it again? Yes. It was cool running on the golf course, and even though it was well into fall and the trees were all leaf-less, it was still nice outside. It was also fun running outside in the cold weather. I would probably follow the tip from some fellow runners we saw that instead of the small medicine cup-sized beer sample, somehow managed to have a full 12 oz. glass. The trick they said was to first get a glass of water (bigger cup), drink that down, and then fill it up with 3 sample cups. That would’ve been good for beer#2, but the small size was just fine for beer#1 and #3.
Short’s Bellaire Pub Visit
I’m a huge Short’s fan, so naturally as I found myself driving North, I figured out a way to work in a visit to the Bellaire pub. It wasn’t my 
first visit there, so I pretty much knew what to expect. I was curious if their expansion had opened yet, but it was still in the works apparently with a floorplan taped to the window and some “coming
soon” verbiage. It was mid-afternoon on a Friday, and about 3:00 PM it wasn’t very busy. I grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a Huma Lupa Licious. Probably my favorite Short’s beer if I had to pick, and whenever I’ve had it at the pub it has always been the best/freshest Huma. As usual, it didn’t disappoint.
Knowing that I had to drive the 
30-40 minutes over to Traverse City shortly after, I had to gauge myself. Since I couldn’t decide on just 1 more beer to try, I went for a flight and got 5 different ones. I saw on the chalkboard that they seemed to now be carrying a “mac n cheese of the day”. I ordered that, and the Cheddar and Bratwurst was amazing, and for only $3 it was a steal.
After I finished my beers and mac n cheese, I spotted that they had Devil’s Lettuce 6-packs for sale. This came & went through the local beer shops so fast that I never even saw it, I just heard I missed it all. So I picked up one for me, and one for a friend. I then also saw they were trying to move out their Oktoberfest beer, Noble Chaos and were therefore selling 12-packs for $9.99. What a deal. Got some of that, too…
Here’s how I rated the beers, Left to Right in the picture below:
- Chocolate Wheat: 3 out of 5 Stars
- Pontius Road Pilsner: 3 Stars
- Noble Chaos: 4.5 Stars
- The Village Reserve: 5 Stars
- Alter Spalter: 4 Stars
