HomebrewCon 2017: The Last Day

It's over.

It's finally over.

Now I can dry out.

The last day was a bit of a scamper, with two seminars to hit before one last pass at the expo floor. Then there's acquiring some of the finest liquid souvenirs from the nearest liquor store. Oh, and I had to buy and mail a Father's Day card. No pressure.

The first seminar was "Recipe Development with Dangerous Man" and their three brewers, Alxndr Jones, John Leingang and Rob Miller. It was alright. They discussed how they, well, came up with recipes. Early on, it was a lot of trial and error. Their first batch of rye beer gummed up their mash tun, so maybe 40% is too much.

The next session was "Kinda Brown, Mostly Sexy: A Semi-autobiographical Account of the Actual History and Brewing of Porters and Stouts" presented by Kris England. He's head brewer at Bent Brewstillery in town and - perhaps more importantly - a BJCP Grand Master IV judge and co-author of the BJCP 2015 Guidelines. He's also a gonzo dresser. It's hard to make out in the picture, but he's wearing a blue blazer with white stars, red trousers and black wellies with a floral pattern.

Kris England, dressed to kill you with laughter

Kris said right off the bat that he's highly caffeinated, but he learned in grad school that people won't pay attention to your lectures if you're boring. "Delivery beats content," he said. And he's right.

He went over the history of stouts and porters while occasionally badgering his friends in the audience and imploring us to drink more of the beer. (Speaking of which, he was kind enough to say at the very beginning what the beers were - Bent's Nicked and Schell's Stag Series #10 Tropical Stout - so we can get our Untapped check-ins out of the way.)

If you're a AHA member, this is one of the seminar recordings you need to watch. It's simply that good.
On a completely unrelated note, I thought this shirt in the audience was hilarious:

I darted to the expo floor to meet some folks for a Northern Brewer giveaway. Everyone got one of four beer superhero trading cards in their bag. Form a superhero team and you got a small prize (a NB logo tasting glass) and entry into a drawing for a $250 gift card and a $1000 gift card. As it turns out, forming teams was probably more trouble than most people wanted to bother with, so there weren't a lot of entries. They haven't called or e-mailed me yet, so I'm guessing I didn't win. Oh well.

I nabbed some grain samples for the gang back at the homebrew shop. Then there's the pillaging of the leftover swag bags. If you want another pen or cleaner sample, this is the time.

I made it to the post office with less than two minutes to spare, and I had to jog several blocks to manage even that. On the way back to the hotel, I detoured to Haskell's ("The Wine People!") for some beer to take home. The selection at this downtown location wasn't great, but it had more than I could fit in a duffel bag.

Souvenirs. #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/jNta7O4GYm

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 17, 2017

Did all the beer, grain, hops, and tchochke fit? As they say up here, "You betcha!"

Will it all fit? Yeah! #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/wrmiXlikyG

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 17, 2017

And that was how my second HomebrewCon went. Hard to say if it was better than Baltimore, but I'm definitely glad I went. Next year's event is a bit later in June in Portland. There's a beer city for you. I might even get the Mrs and the boy to fly out ... and find other things to do.

Meanwhile, it's back to the real world, and getting my home brewery space built!

HomebrewCon 2017: Day 2

Yet another day at HomebrewCon. After the swag-o-rama and dickchimping of Day 1, Day 2 was more about the seminars.

The nice thing about this conference is that all the seminars are recorded, and they are posted to the AHA website soon afterwards. For some time slots, I had four seminars I was interested in. Knowing I can watch them all later frees me to pick one that might have a good Q&A or - more importantly - accompanying beers.

First up was a session on using dry yeast for bottle conditioning by Jennifer Helber, who set up Boulevard Brewing's quality assurance lab back in the 1990s. I never thought to add dry yeast to finished beer, but damned if it isn't a good idea. Boulevard  filters out the first yeast, then adds a different yeast for conditioning. The new yeast also helps clean up diacetyl and other off flavors.

Next was a historical presentation on molasses beer. The presenter was Frank Clark from Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He has a particularly cool job in that he researches food from a historical standpoint and tries to replicate them. Seeing as he works for a colonial-era living museum, he researches and brews colonial-era beer. And wears period clothing.

Frank Clark from @colonialwmsburg discussing molasses beer in style. #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/cktyQ2S4eZ

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 16, 2017

Molasses beer was a combo of molasses, wheat bran and hops. As it turns out, molasses and liquid malt extract have the same PPG (1.036) so this was effectively the first partial-mash beer. What's old is new again. The beer itself is cloudy but pretty tasty.

Then we got all sciencey with Rahr Malting's hops wizard, Patti Aron.

@rahr_malt 's Patti Aron talking IBUs and bitterness #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/0YvuwdeYjD

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 16, 2017

Good info on past research into hops, how IBUs are calculated, how aging can actually make hops better, and why isomerized hops don't skunk easily. Also plenty of molecule diagrams, which made a bit of sense to a guy who managed a C in freshman chemistry.

Phew! Time for beer! Before long I found the line for the Dickie's booth. Someone at the Briess booth told me the day before that were giving away work shirts. Sure, why not?

If there's a line, there's usually something good at the end. @Dickies #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/0uESJ2FOzg

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 16, 2017

It took a while (20 minutes?), but I walked away with a navy blue Dickie's short-sleeve shirt freshly pressed with my choice of patch. They only had XL shirts left by the time I got there, but that happens to be my size (and probably a third of all convention-goers). Score.

Quick break for lunch and then another seminar on how to evaluate your beer like a beer judge. Gordon Strong gave a great presentation, and there were two beers offered (Schell's Pils and Summit Extra Pale Ale) to practice sniffing and sipping. Who knew there were eight different ways to smell beer?

Tasting beer like a beer judge with Gordon Strong. #homebrewcon2017 pic.twitter.com/NjWKFCBAiN

— Zymurginian (@zymurginian) June 16, 2017

One last turn of the expo floor to see what's up. Yakima Valley Hops did a HomebrewCon promo using plinko. One-pound bags of pellet hops were $20, and you could get a discount (up to 50%) depending on where the puck landed. First try stuck on a peg about a third of the way up from the bottom.

"That means I get it for free, right?"

"Ha! Not quite. Try again."

This time it landed on 3, so 30% off or $14/lb. Not too shabby.  I picked Medusa, a recent hybrid of a neomexicanus variety that was unlike anything I had. And since I hit the peg (or, more likely, they wanted to unload it) the guy even threw in an opened bag of Loral that had been on the counter as a sample. It weighs about as much as the sealed bag, so I'll call it 2lbs for $14. I'll vacuum-seal and freeze the Loral when I get home, but at 10.2% alpha it will have enough punch for some autumn brews.

Friday's catch

After dinner I braved Club Night. Only one other guy (that I know of) is here from my club in VA, so this might be short. I managed about an hour and a half, trying a few tasty-looking beers. Props to clubs with Randalls and beer engines.

It's a pig. Bourbon barrel stout
comes out the butt tap. 

M.A.S.H. with an IPA line split in two.
One fed into the Randall. Very tasty.

SMASH with a pretty righteous
slide-in reefer unit converted to
a trailer.

I may have gotten a shot (actually a syringe) of Maker's Mark from a guy dressed like a doctor. He looked legit. :D

HomebrewCon 2017: Day 1

Day one of HomebrewCon began quietly for your humble blogger. The morning sessions were for industry types, so I had a leisurely breakfast and wrote the prologue post before heading over to hit the expo floor. I learned from last year that there's a lot of swag handed out and many good products to check out, so I made a point to spend several hours checking out the booths. I work part-time at a homebrew shop so I was also on the lookout for products that might do well there. Just because I wouldn't buy some gizmo doesn't mean our customers won't.

I picked up the swag bag and it was already heavy. This year there's a commemorative beer by Surly called Walezbrah. It's an auburn-colored beer (7.5% ABV) and maded with an oaked pale wheat wort. "Whalezbrah! is tart, funky, wheaty, and contains waves of weird wood throughout," says Surly's webpage about the beer. "We’re never brewing it again, so it’s truly a whale. Brah." I managed to get extra bottles of last year's Airwaves, so maybe I can bag a second bottle later on.

This year we also got Beeginnings, a small (6.3oz) bottle of blackberry/raspberry/black currant mead (12% ABV) made with orange blossom honey. Three meaderies and a local homebrew club collaborated to make this clear, raspberry-colored gem and mead. There's also a small bottle of fruit puree (I got blood orange). Then there's a few stickers, a pen, two lip balms, a bottle opener, and some other small tchochke. On to the expo floor!

Weyermann's Axel Jany

Weyermann brought in Axel Jany from Germany to talk about the company and some of their products. He's a great speaker and quite entertaining. He passed around small samples of their various products so folks could do a little chew-testing. At then end, they gave away 10lb bags of a new floor-malted grain. They brought 100 bags, but there were way more than that at the demo. Yours truly missed out. Oh well.

I asked him afterwards what made floor-malted grain different (aside from the price). He chuckled and said there wasn't a huge difference. He said brewers were mainly interested in it for the "story:" It's how grain used to be malted, and some brewers want that old-school product. He said the Czechs can't get enough of it.

Later on I found myself at the Briess booth to get my free pound of Carapils Copper malt and to try some new (for me) varieties. I asked Bob Hansen how I could best use their Extra Special malt, and I got a 10-15 minute discourse on the various caramel malts and how Extra Special is different. The color in the Caremel malts is linear (1oz of Caramel 90 will give you the same color as 9oz of Caramel 10) but the flavors will be quite different. Extra Special is a 130L hybrid that has qualities of both caramel and dry malts. It's less roasty, and Bob said it would be excellent in an Irish stout like Beamish.

Then I got the lowdown on their CBW Rye, which I've used before and rather like. It was originally made for a customer to include in a beer kit, but Briess was later allowed to sell it separately. It's 20% rye with 10% Caramel 40 and 70% base malt (normally 2-row). Bob can talk your ear off, but that's enthusiasm for you. That's also why I come to these things.

Denny Conn, Marshall Schott, Drew Beechum
and Malcolm Frazier

After trying many tasty beers (Bent Paddle's amber ESB is fan-frickin-tastic!) I finally took in a seminar. The guys behind Brulosophy (Marshall Schott and Malcolm Frazier) and Experimental Brewing (Denny Conn and Drew Beechum) did a session on "citizen science" and their efforts to do experiments in the realm of homebrewing. It was a fun and enlightening session.

Then they said "dickchimp."

The "dickchimp" slide

Dickchimp is a verb meaning "to make a mistake, screw up." Denny hopes it will make it into the homebrew lexicon. I think we can make that happen.

Aside from being a hilarious word, the point was that you can learn a lot from your mistakes. Science involves a lot of mistakes, goofs and happy accidents. Also, YMMV: Your process may lead to different results than they got, so don't take their results as gospel.

I accumulated a lot of stuff on this day so I could spend more time in the seminars. The bag was almost full by the time I was done and boy were my arms tired.

Swag bag

And here's what I picked up:

The big contents

The flat stuff

This year seems to be the year for trucker hats. I was offered several, but politely took just one. Also, Spike Brewing is giving away a conical Friday and Saturday to someone wearing that bright green shirt. Guess what I'm wearing?

Surly's Omar Ansari gave the keynote speech. Very entertaining and passionate guy. After some good stories about him building hs brewery (and giving himself carbon monoxide poisoning in the process) he ended with a call to promote and protect craft beer.

The beer they poured was also tasty, but I have no idea what it was. Guessing a Surly brew. Maybe the commemorative beer?

Next time - Day 2.

HomebrewCon 2017: Prologue

I'm attending the 2017 National Homebrewer's Conference (aka HomebrewCon) in Minneapolis this week. I was sitting on a bunch of airline miles and hotel points, so why not? 😁
I flew in on Wednesday to give myself a little time to explore a new city... and drink its beer. I'm not going to write a blow-by-blow travelogue here. I'll keep it something akin to long-winded tweets on a page.
After checking in to the Hilton Minneapolis, I followed a tip from my Lyft driver and hit a place called Hell's Kitchen for lunch. Their marquee item is a cheese-filled burger called the Juicy Lucifer. It's tough to eat such a thick patty, but it is delicious. The cole slaw was the real surprise with a true-to-theme spiciness to it.

Hell's Kitchen's Juicy Lucifer 

Practically next door is the Angel Food bakery. (They're at street level, while Hell's Kitchen is in the basement. The ironies were not lost on me.) The have an outpost at MSP and man their stuff looked fantastic. I hit them up this morning and got their crullers. Mmmmm. I didn't know crullers could be so airy.

Angel Food cinnamon sugar (L)
and plain cruller

Just across the street is Haskell's Wine. It's the closest liquor store for local beer purchases. Other stores probably have better beer selection, but being less than two blocks away wins out.
And just up the street from there is Target, the hometown big-box retailer. Perfect place to get some cheap lunchable-type food and B-complex to survive several days of drinking.
All this convenience is within two blocks of the hotel. I may never leave. Well, I would when winter comes.
The Minneapolis Convention Center is about two blocks away. It can be reached using the city's extensive Skywalk system of pedestrian corridors, but the weather up here is fantastic, so I might as well walk on the street.
I took the Hoppy Trolley's hop-on, hop-off shuttle to Near Northeast to hit some breweries up that way. It's $1/ride, which is a bargain at twice the price if you're leaving or returning to the Convention Center.
I hit 3 breweries: Able, 612 Brew and BauHaus. They weren't too busy so I managed to chat with some of the brewers. 612's rye IPA was fantastic (17% rye, per the brewer), and BauHaus's "belgo-american" ale was superb.
Last night I hoofed it up to Target Field to watch the Twins play the Mariners. The home team lost 6-4, but they do have a nice roomy stadium that feels very social.
The expo floor opens shortly, so I get to kill some time there while waiting for the first round of homebrewer seminars this afternoon.
Follow me on Twitter! I'm @Zymurginian
Cheers!

Review: Blichmann Beer Gun 2

I still had some tax-refund money burning a hole in my pocket, so I bought a Blichmann New BeerGun from Home Brewing Warehouse. I had been using a macgyvered beer gun made up of a picnic tap and bottling wand to bottle beer for competition. It seemed to work OK, but the judges consistently pointed out the carbonation was low. The time had come for a purpose-built beer gun.

The New Beer Gun in its case

What's In the Box?

Blichmann has a reputation for making quality stuff, and it was evident the moment I unboxed it. Inside the plastic case is the New Beer Gun, a roughly 6' gas line, a cleaning brush a 10ft beer line with a MFL attachment on one end, a liquid MFL quick disconnect and the ever-important instructions. Most of these small parts were sold by Blichmann as a separate kit, but they've been included here.

The New Beer Gun with gas line, beer line, cleaning brush
and liquid MFL quick disconnect

The New Beer Gun looks more like a gun. It has a molded plastic grip that reminds me of a semi-automatic pistol. It's comfortable to hold, with an ambidextrous thumb lever for CO2 and a trigger for beer. The previous model had exposed pipe, so the operator's hand would slightly warm the beer during filling and cramp up during long bottling sessions. The gas line runs from your CO2 tank to a connection at the bottom of the handle (or - sticking with the semi-auto pistol metaphor - where the magazine well would be). The beer line goes from your keg and slips over the back end of the fill tube (or the breech of the barrel). At first, this seems like a bad idea, but the gun is meant to be used at low pressures (<4 PSI).

Gas attaches at bottom of handle, while beer
line simply slides over end of fill tube

The barrel is two pieces, with the fill tube running inside a larger diameter gas tube. Pressing down on the CO2 lever opens a valve and sends gas down to purge the barrel. (The guys at Brulosophy recently did an experiment putting the older Beer Gun up against bottling with a picnic tap. They purged the bottles for 45 seconds.) Pulling the trigger pulls the beer tubs back from a small rubber ball clipped to the end of the gas tube.

"Muzzle" of Beer Gun barrel with the trigger fully open.
Photo: Blichmann Engineering

Filling bottles

I hooked everything up and started filling 6 bottles for an upcoming competition. I first hooked the Beer Gun up to my keg of Star-San and ran a quick blast through it to sanitize. Mechanically, the Beer Gun worked great. I had the pressure up too high, so I got more foaming than I would have liked. Blichmann recommends slowly releasing pressure on the keg, then putting on just enough pressure to push the beer. I chill my bottles before filling to reduce foam, so I also recommend chilling the Beer Gun and tubing before filling to reduce foaming.

Cleaning Up

This thing breaks down easily for cleaning and requires no tools. The back end of the trigger slips into a notch on the beer tube. Simply pop it out, and then slide the barrel off the handle. The rubber stopper pops off easily. The gas parts stay put, but something would have to go horribly wrong to require cleaning. The cleaning brush is just the right size for cleaning the barrel. Blichmann advises against long soaks in PBW-like cleaners as it can damage the steel.

To Sum Up: It's a Buy If You Bottle A Lot

Like so many brew toys, the New Beer Gun is great if you need it. If you keg and rarely bottle, save your coin. But if you pull off many bottles for competitions or giving away, it's well worth a look.

Small-Batch Brewing with an Induction Burner

Starting the boil

Since the IRS was kind enough to refund some overpaid taxes, I spent a bit of it on some new brew gear. I bought the Secura 9100MC 1800W Portable Induction Cooktop and the Cook n Home 8-quart stockpot from Amazon. These would allow me to make small batches outside (or inside if the Mrs allows). This cooktop isn't quite strong enough to handle my larger batches: Its weight limit is 25lb, which isn't enough to support my current kettle and 3-gallon extract boils. Nevertheless, it is excellent for small BIAB batches and heating up mash water.

Initial Impressions

The cooktop is pretty easy to use. There's a simple power setting (1-10) and a temperature setting where you can pick from

The first job was to figure out how much the new pot-and-cooktop combo will boil off in an hour. I put one gallon in the pot and set it on 10 power.

My first check was to see how quickly it could get up to mash temperature (~170°F). The burner got it there in about 12-13 minutes. I say "about" because I was double-checking my Polder thermometer with my ThermaPen instant-read thermometer and they didn't agree. The Polder hit 170F in just over 12 minutes, but the ThermaPen didn't hit that mark until 13 minutes and change. Not too bad for mash water, but I'm starting to question the accuracy of my old Polder.

Thermapen: 211F
Polder: 237F

Onward to boiling.  And it didn't take that long.

The Thermapen recorded 212°F after 21 minutes of heating. The Polder recorded 237°F! Even more worrisome since this was the thermometer I was using to monitor my wort cooldown in previous batches. The probe is replaceable, but this is the second one and it's probably better to replace the whole thing.

Now that we've achieved boil, it's time to set the timer for an hour and let it steam away. After the timer went off, I cut the heat and carefully poured the water into a large glass measuring cup. I had just over 4 cups of water, so roughly half a gallon boiled off. Not too shabby.

Mashing and Boiling

A week later, I prepared a small BIAB recipe to test how well I can mash with this setup. This particular cooktop can be set to a certain temperature, which suggests it could possibly hold at mash temperature. The cooktop's temperature sensor is in the cooktop itself, so it's regulating that temperature, not the temperature of the pot or what's in it. Also, you can only select one of several preset temperatures. The only settings close to mash are 140°F and 170°F, so I tried 170°F to see how well it worked.

Mashing in

Like the previous test, it got the water up to 170°F and did a good job holding it there. I turned the cooktop down to 140°F, but it took a while for the water to cool down. My grain bill was pretty light, so it didn't bring the temperature down very much. It eventually held at 154°F, though I was doing this test outside on a cool and breezy April afternoon. While the temperature setting is convenient, it'll take some tinkering to figure out how to make it work for mashing.

Once I was done mashing, I cranked the temperature setting up to 235°F, which was what my Polder indicated as boiling in previous worts. It got the wort up to a slow boil and held it, but it eventually turned itself off due to overheating. At that point, it had been running for well over an hour between mash and boil. After a short cooldown and reset, the boil was back on. I wasn't that impressed with the boil ferocity based on temperature, but it was getting the job done since I could smell the DMS in the vapors. In the future, I'll just use the power setting to get a rolling boil going.

Last month, I did another mash for a competition beer using this set-up. It was a hot mess. Instead of just letting the mash temperature drop, I tried to use the cooktop to hold temperature. It was way too hot (170°F) and knowing it takes a while to cool, I added a few cups of cold water. Then it was too cool (140ish°), so I tried warming it up. It got to about 150°F, but I wasn't happy with the rollercoaster. Despite this (and a lovely late boilover) the blonde ale tied for first in the competition with 41 points.

Verdict: It works!

I managed to make one pretty good beer with this combo, so it has earned a place in the new brewery. But like a lot of new gizmos, it will take a little while to figure out how to get the most out of it. It works great for strike water and the boil, but I'll need to keep tinkering with it on the mash.