And the Brewing Continues. Well this raining cold weather might be crappy, but it does have one good side effect.  It makes for perfect brewing weather.  All righty folks based upon all the useful comments from the party last night, I have brewed a second version of our original brown ale.  I have added some more hops and tweaked the type of sugars used, to give it more body.  

The night went like pretty much every other brewing night, complete with disasters, more flooding and hilarious dog interventions.  This time however it was just me and Buffett because Dan was at a concert and missed the craziness.  Buffett again tried to eat the recipe.  But this time it is because I decided that it was good luck, and I held it right over his head until he went for it.  He also started licking the beer hose that I had spent 20 minutes sanitizing.  Have I mentioned this dog loves everything to do with beer? Then out of some odd universal energy shift, I became very clumsy and started injuring myself.  This started with a steam scalding and ending when I knocked myself on the floor and got a gash in my head from a cabinet door.  I am a superstitious man and I believe that if you truly want to make something great, then you have to be willing to pay the price and sacrifice.  Haha, I think that knocking myself out in search for the perfect beer recipe counts as paying my dues. The beer is in the fermenter and it smells beautiful, so with a little magic and some good sanitation we might have a good beer on our hands in 2 weeks.  We have one name that is the frontrunner for this particular beer, and that is 'Break a leg Brown Ale', cleverly thought up by Dee last night.  If you have any more great name suggestions send them our way.  Night everyone, hope the rain doesn't get you down.  I recommend having a beer and kickin back.  

Burn Baby Burn

And the Brewing Continues!  Tonight the specialty is a really dark Porter that I created the recipe for.  I take it as a good sign that while holding the recipe, Buffett tried to jump up and take it out of my hand and eat it.  Considering that Buffett ate the recipe of our first beer, and that it came out quite nice, I hope that this pattern continues.  Highlights of the night:

-Dan spills beer on himself  ( auspicious sign)

-Dan burns his forearm

-We drink some ridiculously good beer while brewing

-Dan burns his fingers

-We drink more ridiculously good beer 

-The Beer boils over and gets the flour all sticky

-I forget what I am doing and almost don't add the second round of hops

-We drink even more ridiculously good beer 

-We create lake Cox in my kitchen when we lose track of one of the hoses for the wort chiller. Luckily the towels came out quickly and we also used Buffett to mop up the floor, which saved the night.

-We get to watch as our beer gets poured into a fancy new clear carboy so we can watch the fermentation happen.

-We drink EVEN more ridiculously good beer.

We'll let you know how it tastes in 2 weeks.  Keep your fingers crossed

Explanation

So it dawned on me that I should probably explain the origins of the name Apotrope Alehouse.  Well, here's the deal:

Bit of background for you... I for years have been thinking up fun names for beers or brewpubs because let's face it, it has always been a fun and welcome distraction.  I in fact even submitted the name Apotrope Ale to the beeradvocate "name the beer" competition they had... but had unfortunately not read the rules entirely and submitted that with a few other names as well more than likely disqualifying myself.

I generally get annoyed at the lack of creativity and originality in beer naming, but over the past couple years some breweries have really been doing a fantastic job with awesome artwork and fun naming conventions (a la Southern Tier as a quick example).

So, why Apotrope?

In ancient greek times, when citizens would drink they would usually paint pictures of the evil eye on their drinking vessels for good luck and to help ward away evil spirits.  The evil eye, also known as the apotropaic eye, is a symbol of good luck, and hence, an apotrope (generally seen as a good luck charm).   

With that in mind, I thought it could lead to great stories to tell about a beer, and a phenomenal logo/tap handle/naming convention system.  Everyone loves a good story, and an evil eye design for a logo is something I've considered using a pint glass as the iris or a hop flower (clearly... that's just in my head.  I have no art skill.   We have friends with art skills.  Yay friends!!) With the help of some more friends (Brad and I know people, we're kind of a big deal and have many leather bound books) just tossing out names we've already come up with potential ideas such as Rabbits Foot Red, Lucky 13 Lager, Pragmatic's Porter, and my personal favorite, the Knock on Wood series for anything we end up doing involving aging in wooden barrels.

So that's the story.  Hopefully you like it and think it's "cool"... not "rad"... or whatever the kids are saying these days and, well, "get it".

Upon further review...

pulled the beer out of the freezer last night with a good chill on it, and WOW!!

yes, WOW!!

WOW as in holy crap that's sweet.  The carbonation appears to have kicked the sweetness into high gear a bit, but it's still drinkable.  I'm sure much worse has been made in batch 1 of someone's brewing life.

Theories:

-Too much sugar

-Not enough yeast to properly "eat" the sugar that was present

-Pyhtagorean

-Not enough filtration between the boil and the fermenter

-Relativity, where c is of course the speed of light in a vacuum

-The carbonation needs more time to get all the way through and sit for a bit to help condition the beer

-Barney Stinson is the greatest sitcom character since George, Kramer, and the parents Costanza

We'll see what happens in the coming week.  If all else fails, it doesn't suck, so friends, be ready to come over and have a beer and tell us what you think went wrong or would like changed...

ps - i also like ellipses... a lot... potentially even more than oxford commas...

The Apron

Brad just read the post I made.  He's still wearing the apron.  He suggests I change the wording of the last post as it sounds a bit awkward and more towards the homosexual side (which i clearly stated it was the opposite).  

facts are facts brad.  he will learn to deal with them.

other facts:

-andrew horowitz is awesome

-chocolate chip is the best type of cookie

-we've had a mixture of Parachute, The Script, and Guster playing in the background all night and it's glorious

-i heart the oxford comma, a lot

Keg Stands? Yes please.

Proper?  No

Awesome?  Yes

Sanitary?  Probably not

In a modified keg stand of sorts brad just had the first sips of carbonated beer.  yeah yeah, you're supposed to let it sit to get it all the way through, etc etc.  It's been about an hour.  So I shook the keg a bit, and lo and behold, carbonated beer!!!

modified keg stand you say?  i poured a glass of beer after attaching the spigot, which is now chilling in the freezer by the way (after it formed a head!!!) and then unattached the hose, and poured what was in there directly into brad's mouth.  yep, heterosexual manliness at it's best.  did i mention brad was wearing a red and white striped apron through this process?  i'm not even kidding.

You know what's fun?

pretending to know what we are doing!!!

so Brad went out and got a kegging system today for us.  that's right, we're kegging beer to start, we do things right around here...

after some serious trials and tribulations, we THINK, repeat, THINK, we have managed to carbonate the beer in a 5 gallon corny keg.  I imagine we'll really find out in a week when we go to pour our first carbonated alcoholic beverage.

It appears we somehow made a nice mild ale?  Let's see what happens.  We tried some straight out of the fermenter and it wasn't quite brown, nor quite amber, but somehow in the middle and weighing in at about 3.9% abv.  On the upside, no off tastes!  A little light on the flavor profile, but hey, it has a lot of that "drinkability" that bud light always talks about.   Yes I just said bud light in a somewhat non-derogatory way, that may be the first and the last time that happens.  ever.

at some point i'll figure out how to add pictures to this thing.

brad plans to brew tomorrow by himself.  here is to hoping he does it and pulls off something good.  then again, he just checked the weather.  it's supposed to be 78 and sunny.  i don't have high hopes.

AHHH!!! BEER!!!

Alright, the first batch... EVER!!!... is in the primary fermenter.   Brad and i understand it may suck ass, but you know what?  eventually it will be alcoholic, and we have nice enough friends that will drink it with us anyway... and if all else fails we'll ship it up to bryce and he'll make some sort of bbq sauce out of it.  

So, here's the deal;

2 oz black patent

1 lb crystal 40

topped off w/ chocolate to 1.5 lbs

1/4 lb coffee

willamette 1oz

cascade .5oz

6.6 lbs LME Briess Sparkling Amber

1 lb golden dme

hopped w/ 1/3 of hops during boil, another 1/3 during last 10 minutes with 1 lb maltodextrin and 2 pinches of irish moss

remainder of hops pitched with 11.5 grams of yeast 

let's just say none of that measuring was entirely scientific, today is the day we see if "magic" can happen.  I was talking with Will Shelton a few weeks ago and he told me himself making beer is half magic, and half sanitation.  Well, we sanitized the shit out of stuff, now lets see some magic happen!

Buffett with not 1, but 2 t's

can't lie, since buffett read our first post, he's been barking incessantly to let me know that I spelt his name wrong.  Listen, I'm not perfect, I make mistakes, Buffett, it won't happen again.

First Day...

So it's our first day trying to make some beer... and of course Buffet ate the recipe last night.  I'm not even kidding.  I'll upload a picture later, but Brad's dog took our recipe out of a book and ate it.  Luckily... we were able to put it back together... so we may have to name it Buffet's Brown Experimental Ale or something like that, which lets face it, isn't entirely creative or awesome.

Other things of note:

-I soaked myself trying to fit a wort chiller onto the sink.  Half of me is wet, the other half is dry.  I'm like a badly cooked steak only not nearly as tasty 

-The brewhouse forgot to send a top to our fermenting bucket.  This seems a rather vital piece of equipment and all... so yeah, we need to go buy a bucket top this afternoon

-I really want a cookie right now

-Were going to celebrate  by cracking open a bottle of Ithaca TEN as soon as we actually get started

Also... how the hell does one sanitize something?  All I know is that if I get this stuff on me I may melt wicked witch style according to the label, but I suppose worse things have happened.