Magic Hat #9

Here's my first beer review!!

Magic Hat #9 - A "not quite pale ale". I would defiently have to agree with Magic Hat's description. It uses the crystal and pale malt like a typical pale along with the classic Cascade hop and a new hop, Apolo. This new hop isn't available for homebrewers yet. It is a high alpha acidic hop (15-19%).

Overall, it was nice, crisp and clean. A little estery and some slight notable corriander. Not much after flavor or bitterness. Poor head retintion. Definitely a british pale ale, an IBU of only 2o and british yeast. I would call this a session beer, low ABV (5.1%). Good for the summertime, especially after working outside.

Would I rush out to the store to buy some, no. Would I turn one down if offered, no.

I'd give it 3 out of 5 beer mugs.

My Double IPA

Well I've always been a fan of the hops. It started with American Pale Ales. I loved the citrus, floral kick of the hops. Then I had my first IPA. It was 75th Street's Good Hope IPA in Kansas City. I was blown away. Since then, if I can find an IPA in the store or at a restaurant or brewery, I have to try it.

Then I heard about Pliny the Elder from my SoCal friend RJ. Living in Rolla, MO doesn't afford me the opportunity to imbibe in this highly regarded beer. Luckily I'm an AHA member and get Zymurgy. I noticed in one of my issues they interview Russian River Brewery and they gave a recipe.

I modified it a little by substituting Cascade hops for the Centennial hops. Kept the Columbus and Simcoe hops. Other than that, I stuck to the recipe. I tried something different this time though. I did a cold crash on the secondary to really drop the sediment. Only problem, it was too cold for the yeast to interact with the sugar fully. This left me with an under carbonated beer. Was I pissed. There was some minor carbonation, but not enough. It had great flavor, it was just missing that extra umph of carbonation.

So luckily for Christmas my dad got me a Corney keg and his old 20 lbs CO2 tank. So today I finally assembled the tank and keg, transferred the beer, injected it with CO2 at 16 psi and put it in the beer fridge.

Here's to hoping it works!!

PS - I haven't named the beer yet, so if anyone reads this and has some ideas, let me know.

My take on the canned Craftbrew

My family and I always travel to Colorado in the summer to camp, enjoy the outdoors, and enjoy the wonderful craft beer of the state. This past year, by dad and I were at the local liquor store deciding on a six pack when we saw Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale. We thought, pale ale in a can??? We gotta try this.

I went to crack open the first one and couldn't help but imagine the taste of Bud Light before it touched my lips. Wow!! What a shock. Hops galore!! This was already a winner in my book being such a hop head. And yet eveytime I took a sip, the hop flavor surprised me.

Did I think much else about the canned craft brew after that? Not really, not until recently when I started using Twitter and following some great bloggers (@hoptopia, @TheBeerWench, and @AndyTheBeerman). I started reading blogs and learned that there are great reasons for going with cans.

One is the seal, bottles are either crimped on or twisted on. In a sense, there is only one seal where as with cans, there is a double seal. As any homebrewer knows, a bad crimp in a bottle cap will ruin a beer. I am very fortunate that my wife has only crimped one bottle cap poorly, what a trooper!!

Secondly is the lack of light that will affect the beer. As most homebrewers know, brown is the best way to go. It limits the amount of light that enters the bottle.

Also, cans are lighter than bottles, more easily recycled and more easily stacked on stored shelves.

So far I've only had two canned craft brews, Dale's Pale Ale and Caldera's IPA. I enjoyed my Caldera's on a float trip this past weekend. It was snowing and 27 degrees out, so I wasn't swirling it around to review it. My goal is to find all of the craft beer that is canned and review them.

My only problem is that I live in Missouri. The majority of our canned beer is AB-Inbev. I know of a few liquor stores I can hit up in the bigger towns. I also plan to make a trip to Oskar Blues this July. If anyone has suggestions or canned beers they want reviewed, let me know. I plan to keep a running list of canned craftbrew.

I do need to give credit to a couple blogs for my inspiration:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/01/serious-beer-canned-craft-beers-reviews.html

http://stephweber.hoppress.com/2010/02/12/cans-not-just-for-pbr-anymore/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Stay tuned for more....

What a day..

Well last night I was unable to get my key to turn in the ignition so I had to borrow my wife's car. This isn't the first time this had happened, I'm usually able to get it to work eventually, just not last night. So I go to start it this morning and no luck. Didn't help that I couldn't have my coffee or eat this morning because of my physical I had today for life insurance.

I never realized how much I rely on my coffee and breakfast in the morning. This sucked, I was dragging at work and started getting a headache. Luckily the physical only took 15 minutes and I went to Quizzno's to celebrate. Nothing tastes better than greasy Italian meat after fasting for over 12 hours.

While I was out I swung by the bank because I had snapped my debit card almost in half. Luckily I was able to get a temporary card until my new one comes in. After I got home I called Fidelity to get another room hooked up to cable and was told that I didn't have authorization to do this even though Becca and I went and signed up so I could have auth. What the hell if Fidelity's problem??? Why do they care so much? It's not like Becca and I don't have the same last name or anything....

So while I was home this afternoon I did some looking for my ignition problem, I stumbled across a topic on the subject and learned how to fix it. All I had to do was stick my key in the ignition and pound it with a rubber mallet. Yes, I hit it a couple times nice and hard with the mallet and the key turned!!!

Luckily tonight ends with pancakes at our Shrove Tuesday pancake supper at church.

What a day....

Home Brewing

Well I've been homebrewing for about 7 years. I started by helping my dad with his brews, then went solo about 3 years ago. I started out as a extract brewer, then moved on to the partial mash last year and finally made the big move up to all-grain this year.

I have to pat myself on the back and mention that I have 2 award winning homebrews. My pale ale took second place in the American Ale category in a regional competition. My smoked beer took second as well in the wood-aged/smoked category. I have to say that my favorite beer was the smoked one. I actually smoked all of my grains over hickory before brewing. Some day I may post the recipe. I am looking into tweaking it and might post the process down the road.

Stay tuned.....

First Blog

Well after getting hooked on Twitter and checking out all of the blogs from the twitter accounts I follow, I decided maybe I could do a blog as well. I'm not sure what the goal of this blog is quite yet or what the main focus will be, but I'm sure I'll eventually get there. I plan to review beer and talk about my own brewing stories. I'll probably discuss some movies and TV shows. And of course there will have to be a few tidbits about current events, humorous and important.

In closing, wish me luck.... Maybe I'll come up with something good

Casey