A Moving Day

In addition to the explosive qualities of Batch Gimmel 2, we had another reason to be a little off-kilter. For reasons we couldn't avoid, the 2JB operation had to hit the road from Nahum's house to the 2JB Annex (aka, my house across the street). We packed up all of the equipment and ingredients into the back of a car and drove the full 50 or 60 yards to my back door.



It was strangely melancholy. I mean, we weren't throwing in the towel or crippling the 2JB machine in any way...it was just kind of weird seeing everything in the car trunk, like school had ended and now we had to get going into a post-graduation future. Which was across the street.



The strange juju of the move was quick to dissipate once we got to brewing. The task at hand: a second batch of 2JB Originale. Once again, we had in mind to test our ability to keep a consistent flavor batch-to-batch...and once again we were foiled. This time it was right in the bag of ingredients. The 1st pail of Originale had mixed a full can of light amber malt with the leftover dark malt from a previous brew. We'd asked for the same stuff, but our homebrew shop seemed to have supplied us with regular amber malt. No biggie, but it meant we'd already sealed our fate and an inconsistently darker batch of beer was to come.



Shrugging our shoulders, we set to it and dipped a grain bag filled with 1/2 lb. of crystal malt into 2 gallons of water (plus 1 tsp. of gypsum). Just before the boil, the bag came out and in went 20 oz. of dried malt extract, our 3.3 lb. can of Munton's regular malt and somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 lbs. of dark malt extract.



The hops went according to plan, at least. 1 oz. of Northern Brewers hops at the boil, followed by 1/2 oz. of East Kent Goldings + 1 tsp. of Irish Moss half an hour later. Ten minutes before the end of the boil we added 1/2 oz. of Cascase hops, and another 1/2 oz. 5 minutes later.



We sparged to the Ale Pail and added 3 gallons of water. Now, I should point out that we picked an unusually hot day for this brew: it was mid-April and we were facing temperatures in the mid-90s. Our wort was at 120 degrees...and we didn't seem to have a smart way to bring hte temperature down to a yeast-able level. We figured this out doubly when we looked at the prepped yeast...and it was already bubbling and multiplying before it had tasted a bit of hops!



No big deal: in the end, we just brought the bucket to the basement, which in the 2JB Annex is consistently cool. The wort got down into the 70s in a little over an hour, and we pitched in 1/2 a package of Windsor Ale Brew yeast (about 5.5 grams) along with another 5.5 g. of Saf Lager S23 Dry Lager yeast.



The cap went on tight, and before we knew it the air lock was bubbling away contentedly. It was an odd brew, and maybe not quite what we'd been aiming for, but the 5 gallons currently doing its thing in my basement is clearly destined to be a top-notch batch of Originale.

Explosivo!

Our confidence had been somewhat shaken by the exploding vat of beer, so Nahum and I approached Bottling Day with a step or two missing from our game. The beer looked, smelled and tasted fine (not like any kind of stout, but more like a Becks Dark or other dark ale), and had an SG reading of 1.024.



But as soon as we started the bottling process, it was clear that our normally steadfast rhythm was off. I forgot to rinse the bottles before sterilizing them. Nahum kept dumping out the sterilizing solution before we'd wiped everything down. We almost forgot to get the sugar boiling. It was kind of a mess.




So, in my infinite wisdom, I served up this brilliant nugget: Why not switch our normal bottling tasks? See, Nahum always fills the bottles, and I always cap & label them and get the bottles into the cases. And we've developed a sort of effortless production-line rhythm, churning out full bottles with a smile and a spring in our step.

This, on the other hand, was a disaster. I couldn't get the bottles filled quite right, and I didn't have a smooth flow of empties into the bottling area as I got each one done. Nahum struggled to work the capper, with each one seeming to take an inordinate amount of time. We weren't getting anywhere, and it was taking a long while to get there.

In a moment of simultaneous epiphany, we looked at each other, put down our unfamiliar tools and switched into our "normal" positions. Within minutes, we had 42 bottles of beer capped and stacked for a week or two in the cold room. I labeled them "E," both to commemorate the explosion that helped birth this particular batch and the enormous effort it took to get it done.



This one was in no way smooth sailing and at no point easy. But it also seems like it's going to taste just fine, and there was a lesson there: we may not have the pro-level skills for consistent back-to-back batches, but we're at a point where we're unlikely to make a genuinely bad bucket o' brew. I take quite a bit of comfort in that, and I look forward to kicking back with a fresh bottle of Explosivo Beer!

Bound to Happen

Uh-oh. This just in from Nahum:

So. It was bound to happen.

About an hour ago, I opened the door to the basement to do basement chores, and remarked out loud, "wow, I really smell the beer already and it smells great! It has never been such a strong aroma." Half way down the stairs, I saw, to my dismay, an ale pail with no lid, and with a big head of krausen, and some that had already poured over one edge.



What I didn't see, was the lid to the pail. After some searching, I found it, a few feet away and wedged on its side against the wall.



So what we had was an open bucket of not-yet fermented beer, exposed to the basement ambiance. What to do? Well, I am pleased to say the first thing I decided to do was--you guessed it--not worry. Instead, I thought about the bottled of homebrew waiting to help me relax. Next, I took the lid upstairs, with the airlock, which was full of, and likely clogged with, krausen (thus, I hypothesize, causing a build-up of carbon dioxide, which lead to our beer blowing its top). I washed the lid and sanitized it. I found a clean airlock and sanitized it. I wiped off the edges of the pail with a wet cloth, followed by a paper towel soaked in sanitizing solution. And I closed it up. Tight.

When we open it, if it tastes normal, then we escaped bacterial contamination. I think we will know pretty quickly after the first (pre-bottling) sip whether we dodged a bullet. At some point, I will clean the basement floor of the wort spatter so it no longer looks like a beer-crime-scene. In the meantime, I am going to relax and have a homebrew.

P.S.: The thermometer on the ail pail read 79 degrees, which cannot be correct. However, it is probably warmer than in the past, and I moved the newly capped bucket to the 60 degree room.

Back to the Brewhouse

After an uncharacteristically long layoff from brewing (caused by a combo of Passover, busy schedules and a slight overabundance of beer), the 2JB crew met this Sunday morning to get back to the brewhouse and back in the saddle.

The return to brewing was marked by another new corner turned: we were, for the 1st time since we started this enterprise in the fall, planning to repeat ourselves. Now that we'd successfully produced more than a half-dozen varieties of tasty beer (including one original recipe), Nahum and I had figured that it would be important to see if we had any consistency. After all, it's one thing to be able to make a good batch of beer, but quite another to make multiple batches that are both good and similar. So we planned to go back to two of our greatest hits: a 2nd batch of Gimmel (aka, stout) and a 2nd run at the Originale.

...and right off the bat, we pretty much failed. Part of consistency is repeating your process, but an even bigger part involves using the same ingredients. Since our 1st run at the stout was a half-batch (part of the inaugural-themed black & tan), we needed to double certain parts of the recipe. The calculations were off just a bit, and we found ourselves there on a Sunday morning half a pound shy of the correct weight of dry malt.

Oh well. It'll still be good, though probably lighter than Stout 1.0...which we decided will be perfect for warm-weather drinking! And we do have the right weight of hops - which we know because Nahum's wife found a digital food scale for us at a dollar store. Our 1st new piece of equipment in a while, and one that will come in very handy.



And so 4 oz. of crushed roasted barley and 8 oz. of Black Patent went into the grain bag and into 2 gallons of water. As we waited for the boil, Nahum and I stepped outside to check out the newest members of the 2JB family: the two strains of hops he'd planted out in the garden.




They're already starting to bud, and each plant has a thin pole nearby so they can grow upward & onward (apparently these suckers grow fast) and we'll be able to start using fresh, homegrown hops for some autumn homebrewing.



Back to the kitchen. We're pulling out the grain bag and adding in 6.6 lbs. of dark malt extract and 1 lb. of dry malt (instead of 1.5 lbs...) along with a bit of gypsum. When we hit the boil at 9:35am, we very nearly had a tragic boil-over (the Papazian book warns of avoiding the Boil-over Blues), but Nahum's fast reflexes on the stove dials brought it under control. In went 1 oz. of Northern Brewer hops; 30 minutes later another 1/2 oz. of NB with a bit of Irish moss; and we finished with a 1/2 oz. of Cascade hops.



After Nahum reconstituted 11 g. of Windsor yeast in 4 oz. of water, we sparged the wort into the Ale Pail (along with more water). It looked good, smelled good...and most amazingly, we lost very little liquid to either the boil or the transfer: it hit the 5 gallon line almost right on the nose.



Our original gravity reading was 1.052, which is not quite what Batch Gimmel had yielded (that was 1.070), but given that the ingredients for Batch Gimmel 2 were different and our process more streamlined, it was just fine.



The Ale Pail is now sealed up and fermenting in the basement. Next weekend: another run at the Originale. This one is more important for the side-by-side comparison between the two batches. Now that we're back into the rhythm of the brew again, I'm pretty confident that we'll get everything squared away for a consistent batch of brew.



P.S.: On my way out of the house after we'd wrapped up, I nearly tripped over something sitting in front of the front door. Mike, our benevolent donator of many many bottles, had left a trio of six-packs of empties along with a note:

2JB Interlude: Scotland

Nahum and I are enjoying a short (and rare) break between batches, but that doesn't mean there is no beer news to report. Last week, I took a 5-day trip to Scotland with my friend Lee. He was going on an art-related trip and invited me along...which I took as a sign to make it a beer-related trip, too.

A quick bit of back-story: I've lived in Scotland for periods here & there, and I visit when I can. In fact, my time in the UK is where my "beer palate" did most of its maturing. I was very excited to return, not least of all to have some of my fave Brit Brews and try some new ones. I documented all of my Scotland beers, and present a wee travel diary:

3/11/09: Arrived in Edinburgh for the first time in about 5 years. After a quick nap, I headed to one of my old haunts, the Royal Ettrick Hotel, for a proper pub lunch. (How I missed you, pub lunches!). I quenched my jet-lagged thirst with a pint of Tennant's lager, brewed in Glasgow.


It's a cold, clear lager with carbonation roughly akin to champagne. It made me happy all the way down to my toes, and paired with the lasagna perfectly. Actually, I have no idea if it went with the food...the whole experience was just heavenly, though.

Later that evening, Lee arrived and it was right back to the Ettrick for another round of Tennant's. I wouldn't want to keep it all to myself, right?


3/12/09: After a long day of travel through the Highlands, Lee and I arrive in Ft. William (up the west coast of Scotland). Ft. William is at the foot of the tallest peak in the UK, Ben Nevis...so it's no surprise that the Ben Nevis pub offers one of the nicest views in town. I started with a McEwan's 70, which is a smooth, creamy ale with a medium color and light carbonation.


McEwan's is a longtime Edinburgh brewery that was later bought by Caledonian...but I believe it is still made right in Scotland. Speaking of Caledonian...Lee had the Caledonian 80 and spoke so highly of it that I joined in for a second round. The Callie was even creamier than the McE, and a bit darker. (Neither was particularly hoppy...these Scottish brewers seem to be more into the malts, which I guess shouldn't be too surprising).



Oh, and dinner was a steak & ale pie. What goes with steak & ale pie? Some McEwan's ale, that's what!


3/13/09: We spent the day doing quite a bit of trekking, and even had a near-miss with some aggressive Highland bulls.


After some nice locals in a way out-of-the-way town gave us a lift to a slightly bigger town, we waited for the train at the Marine Hotel's bar. The pickings were slim, so we went for half-pints of Guinness.


I should note that there is a promotion of sorts with Guinness that was new to me: Guinness Extra Cold. It's a separate tap, with its own logo and everything. It's just like Guinness...but colder. Still delicious, though.

For dinner, we headed to the Grog & Gruel, which aside from a bizarre Tex-Mex menu (In the Highlands? Really?) boasted of a large selection of Scottish cask-conditioned ales! How was I going to pass that up? Well, I didn't.

It was a bit of a tease, though. The menu listed about 25 beers from 5 local brewers, each with descriptions that made the mouth water. I'd picked out the Orkney Dark Island beer from the Sinclair Brewery...when the waitress informed us that the list was just a representation of all the beers they might have. The board behind the bar showed that, in fact, there were 4 to choose from.


I was a bit disappointed, but that all went away when I sipped the pint of Black Cullin from the Isle of Skye Brewing Co. The ingredients included chocolate, oats and other stouty markers, but the beer was decidedly not stout-like. More like the darkest ale you've ever had, with a light body and a ton of flavor. Lee went with the Callie 80 he'd liked so much the night before, but learned the hard way that the hand-pump tap they had at Ben Nevis made a big difference in how the pint went down. Still, better than a can of Coors, right?


For round 2, we ordered the other beers: Young Pretender, also from Isle of Skye, and William's Joker from the Williams Brothers Brewing Company in Alloa.


The Pretender was a very light ale with a crisp flavor and barely any body (but still quite good). The Joker, on the other hand, was heavy, malty and very strong: a bit over 5% alcohol. The overall effect was actually too much for me, and Lee and I had to share responsibility for dealing with the Joker.

At the end of the night, we each had a Tetley ale while bowling 2 games in a black-lit alley. No, I'm not making any of that up. It was the only decent beer they had at the bowling alley, and it went down easy, like a cuppa tea!


3/14: We traveled south again, toward the city. On the train I was busying myself with a crossword puzzle...and wouldn't you know that that answer to 62 across was "beer."


It was our last night in Scotland, back in Edinburgh and staying with our friend Chris. We bought him a 4-pack of McEwan's Export, but ended up going through a couple of bottles of wine before getting some sleep ahead of an early-morning flight.


It was a bit odd to end the trip with wine rather than beer, but I certainly can't complain that I didn't get a sufficient number of Scottish pints. It was great to drink them again, especially now that my 2JB experience allowed me to deliniate some of what was going on in each beer I tried. Nahum and I are in a pretty good spot when it comes to US brews, but we've still got a long way to go to top the centuries of malt & hops goodness to be found in the Scottish cities & Highlands.

Porch Sippin'

We had just lost an hour to Daylight Savings, but true to its name there seemed to be lots of spring-like daylight on offer this weekend. Since the 2JB Originale had spent just about a week finishing up in the bottles, we'd already planned to sample the brew...and then Nahum asked if I might be interested in sitting out on the front porch to have some beer.

Would I? In the words of the country's most famous Alaskan: You betcha!

I walked across the street, and Nahum was already out with two bottles and a bag of chips.




We popped the tops, settled back into the wooden chairs, raised a hearty "L'chaim" and tipped 'em back.



The verdict, all at once, was that our first shot at an original recipe was right on the money. Floral & a bit citrusy, with lots of layered hops flavors, just a touch of sweetness and a long, smooth aftertaste. Balanced flavor, nice color, just enough of an aroma to tease the taste. Really just a pleasure to drink. And as the just-saved late-day daylight kept the afternoon going, we mused that this was a beer we both really, really liked. And other people would, too. Heck, they might even buy it. From us.



Don't tell the wives, but we spent a solid 15 minutes thinking aloud about how 2JB could be the real thing. That we could go from being guys who made beer to being beer makers. Of course, there are a ton of obstacles (not the least of which being that neither of us is eager to toss aside the jobs we like for something like this...at least not right now) and it's not something we're seriously considering for the immediate future.



But the future is long. It could still happen. To keep things moving in the right direction, we've decided to make another batch or two of the same Originale recipe and see if we have the ability to stay consistent batch to batch (we've yet to make the same thing twice, so we honestly have no idea). And we'll keep our 2JB pipe dreams humming quietly in the background...but mostly just keep on enjoying the brewing and the brews and look forward to more days where we can just sit out on the porch tipping back our very own beer.

School's Out for Homebrew

And so it came to pass that the Two Jews beheld their first-ever original-recipe ale. The aroma was most pleasing, the color was bold, and the taste...well, it seems like the Originale is gonna be pretty damn good.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We arranged to bottle Batch Vav once again during Nahum's kid's time at Hebrew school. I take no small pleasure that this has come to be the (more or less) regular time for 2JB activity. When I was a kid, one of the things I didn't like about Hebrew school was an unconfirmable but certain feeling that these weekend hours I spent in Hebrew school were being used by other people for seriously fun stuff. And a mere quarter-century later, I have my proof. We're using this little slice of weekend time for serious, big-smile fun...and all because a kid is in Hebrew school and we're not.

But I digress.



Nahum and I got into our now-familiar bottling rhythm: he'd soaked the bottles in a large pot, so I took to sanitizing them while he prepped & sanitized the bottling equipment. He boiled the priming sugar (additional Originale experiment: 4 oz. of brown sugar dissolved into boiling water instead of the corn-starch sugar we've been using) while I sanitized and laid out the bottle caps. After a quick SG reading (1.014), we racked to the bottling bucket, and Nahum filled as I capped. This might be our single smoothest process thus far - efficient, nearly wordless and still producing the deep pleasure of seeing the bottles pile up in the box. Plus, we usually sample the pre-carbonated brew while we do it.




And as I said, the sampling made us very, very happy. As we'd hoped, the beer is floral and a little citrusy; to our surprise, it also has a subtle but sharp sweetness, making it feel crisp even though it's yet to get either bubbly or cold. And it had a noticeably pleasant aftertaste, something I don't think we'd achieved previously.

The extra hops (25% more than we've used for previous brews), the mix of light & dark malts and the double fermentation seem to have led to a beer that is likely to be very good right away, but will also benefit from a little bit of tinkering & adjusting. I can easily see us working with this brew for a few more batches, trying a little extra something here and a little less of something else there...until it's just right. Worthy of the 2JB label. (Note to self: we really need to make labels.)



But until then, we've got 43 bottles of Originale carbonating in the basement. We'll sample a bottle in a week (maybe during Hebrew school again? Hah!), then move them to the cold room to finish up for another week. Now that we've got a solid idea of how tasty our new concoction is likely to be, that could be a long 2 weeks to wait.