The Great Pumpkin Festival!

Attention Boston area residents. Mark your calendar for the 27th of October. The 2012 Great Pumpkin Festival is coming. It will be held at the Cambridge Brewing Company (CBC) near Kendall Square. This event is a celebratory fall festival featuring over 40 pumpkin beers from all across the US as well as plenty of local beer and delicious food from CBC. The event starts at 1pm and last into the night (12:30 am). There is a 10 dollar cover but you get a sweet pint glass. The beer and food tickets are only 4 for $5, which is really reasonable. Some of the great pumpkin offerings that are being featured are from Cambridge Brewing Company, Dogfish Head, Southern Tier, as well as 8 different beers from Elysian Brewing Company from Seattle, WA. Those 8 offerings alone are reason enough to attend as Elysian makes phenomenal beers, but you can't really get any in MA. Stop by the fest for at least a little at some point for at least a hour. I promise you won't be let down. For the complete list of beers and the food check out the full event page here

2012 Great American Beer Festival

This past weekend was the 2012 Great American Beer Festival and I just recently had a chance to look at the list of winners. This is one festival I need to go to at least once in my life. For those of you that do not know about the GABF it is the largest beer festival in America. It is where hundreds of breweries put their best beers up against each other in 75 different style categories. Thousands of beer lovers made the pilgrimage to Denver, the Mecca of American beer, for this festival. As bummed as I was that I couldn't attend this year, I know that there will be more to come. Take a look at the winners from this year and previous years from the link above. See if your favorite beer or brewery won any awards!

Most Recent Brewing Adventures.

A couple weeks ago I made my most recent two creations a Red Ale and a Cider. These both were recipes that I got from a homebrewing site and tweaked to my liking. The Red Ale was an all grain recipe that used some crystal malts, 2-row, and a little bit of roasted malt. I changed the hops used to just two varieties rather than three while still keeping the same addition times and number of additions. It came out at 5.1% abv with a nice deep red color, a full bodied mouthfeel and nice bitter finish. However, if anyone wants any you'll have to come over because I kegged it so its on tap only. Some pics below....

The second project I have been working on, which is almost complete, is a hard cider. This was my first attempt at one and from the small taste tests I did while bottling, it turned out a lot better than I was expecting. For those of you wondering how to make a cider, it is pretty simple. You just get either apple cider or apple juice, put it in a fermenter and pitch some yeast into it. There are other things you can do to make it sweeter or have a higher alcohol content, but essentially its apple juice and yeast. Mine was not overly sweet or too dry. It's bottle conditioning and carbonating right now so I'll see how the carbonation is in another couple of days. I was surprised when I did the abv calculations and found it was at 8.4% so it is a strong cider to say the least. Unfortunately I only made a gallon so not enough to share with everyone this time. Next round I will make more.

Stay Pretty and Hangout With Real Brewers

One of my favorite breweries is Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. Lately they have been doing a lot of events at certain bars and pubs in the greater Boston area. Based out of Summerville they are a unique operation that has been getting more and more recognition, and respect over the past year or two. Martha and Dann are the brains of the operation and they are some of the most passionate and knowledgable brewers I have ever met and talked to.

Last night they were having an event at Clover Food Lab in Harvard Square to celebrate the launch of their flagship beer, Jack D'or, being served at Clover. Unfortunately I didn't make it out to the event but I did still get to hang out with Dann and Martha about an hour before it started thanks to Google+ and their Hangout feature.

It was a really great opportunity for any beer geeks or people who aspire to become brewers to have an informal conversation with a couple who are having great success brewing fantastic beer. Overall, it was a really cool experience to be able to get to know more about Dann and Martha's background as brewers as well as some of the story behind some of their beers. One in particular Dann talked about was their recently released Babayaga, an export stout brewed with grains smoked over rosemary branches. 

They spoke about being a gypsy brewery for a while, where they get their inspiration from for certain beers, their time living in England, people they collaborate with, and future beers they are planning on brewing. It was really fascinating to pick their brains, and I hope they do more hangouts in the future.

Dann and Martha are very receptive to fans and beer enthusiasts so BUY THIER BEER, follow them on twitter (@prettybeer) and like them on facebook so you can know when they are doing events so you can meet them!

Back to the BeerLOG

Yeah I know everyone who used to actually read this blog thought it was probably dead by now, but you're wrong. I will admit I have neglected it as of late but the important thing is that that's behind us now and let's focus on the future. Or I guess focus on the recent past and near future.

I'm sure you are all aware that September and October are probably the two most beer-centric months of the year. Oktoberfest is one reason and the other is just because fall is coming and there is no better way to celebrate it by warming up with a Pumpkin spice late beer or Octoberfest.

If you still don't believe me then look online, in the paper or where ever you find out about events in your town or city. I guarantee there has been or is a beer festival this month. I have been lucky enough to attend one the past two weekends.

The first was Harpoon Brewery's 23rd Annual Octoberfest. It was a lot of fun I managed to score some free passes, which I promptly gave to friends so I could drag them along. Once inside I stocked up on beer tickets and got a Harpoon Octoberfest for my first beer (duh). While I am all for being in the spirit and celebrating I have to say my favorite beer I had at the festival was the Harpoon Dark (formerly known as Munich Dark) a dunkel which is just a fancy German word for dark. But despite its appearance as a heavy porter or stout it is actually a lager and is quite light and refreshing while still having some roasted malt and bready characteristics of a darker beer. Here are some photos from the  festival!

The second festival was smaller in scale but still pretty fun and full of great beer, food and of course oompah bands. This was the Davis Square Octoberfest. When my friends and I rolled up on Davis Square this past Sunday we were in the midst of a bizarre hipster parade, but it was awesome! Once the parade passed we sought out the small side street where Red Bones BBQ resides and found the party. The side street was closed off and there was delicious food from Red Bones and beer lining it as well as an oompah band down at the end of the street near the tap trailer (see below). I went for the Pretty Things Babayaga because I was in the mood for a stout and it had just been released the week prior so it was fresh. A delicious full bodied export stout that has a subtle smoked flavor to it (because they smoke the grains over rosemary branches before brewing). If you are a stout/porter drinker, SEEK THIS BEER OUT it is worth the try.

Finally, I wanted to just give everyone in the Boston area a heads up of the next beer festival I am probably attending on October 27th. It is the 5th Annual Great Pumpkin Festival at Cambridge Brewing Company. Hope to see you there.

Math equation... And Something "New" out of Harpoon!

What do you get when you add a 4.6 cubic foot mini fridge, a 5 lb CO2 tank, a couple of hoses, a regulator, 5 gallon corney keg, and some other bits and pieces?

The answer is something that I have wanted for a while now and vowed that I would one day have it in my house when I am an old man...It just so happens that this is not the case and I am getting it now instead, because waiting that long is really hard. It is my very own kegorator.

The other day I practically stole a barely used mini fridge off craigslist and am getting the rest of the parts together in the next few days. Hopefully, I will be pouring delicious beer on draught in my apartment within the next few weeks. I will definitely be taking pictures and posting about the conversion process. I'm very excited, and if you are friends with me and like beer, you should be too.

Also, in other news, Harpoon is releasing a new year round beer today. Well it is sort of new...It is one of their previous 100-barrel series beers, Rich and Dan's Rye IPA. The owners of Harpoon (Rich and Dan) developed this beer last year as part of that 100-barrel small batch series and it sold so well and got such good feed back they said, why don't we make it year round!? So they did. I have had this beer quite a few times the first was at the American Craft Beer Fest last year and it is delicious. Make sure you grab some if you see it! Read the full article about Rich and Dan's Rye IPA here on BeerAdvocate. Or here on Harpoon's website.

I've been thinking...

So I have been thinking a lot lately about beer and making beer and drinking beer and all that jazz. I recently bottled and have tried my most recent Porter that I made and it turned out pretty good. At this point I am really trying to perfect this recipe and trying to figure out ways to improve the quality of the beer as well as the quantity (yield). I do however want to make a new beer very soon. Which brings me to my dilemma...what beer do I make next and should I buy a keg and kegerator set up to make it easier to serve, drink, and carbonate my beer? I am thinking of trying a Russian Imperial Stout or an IPA (very different styles) I feel like I should make a lighter beer since spring is coming and all, however, I really think a Russian Imperial Stout would be fun. The real question I should ask is, if I brewed either a IPA or Russian Imperial Stout and served it on draught out of a keg....would you come and drink it with me?

Wow, I feel like I totally just had a LeBron James/ "Brett Favre" moment there...

I have been a bad blogger...

It has been far too long since my last blog post and I apologize for my inconsistency. I recently decided to take this blog, brewing, beer and everything a lot more seriously. Especially if this is something that I am going to strive to do later in life (brewing that is). So what better way to get back into the swing of thing than to get back to making some good ol' fashioned home-brew.  I believe that one of my last posts was about how I brewed my first original recipe (a porter) and It turned out pretty good for my first time brewing an original all-grain beer. Well I went back, tweaked the recipe, gained some more knowledge about effective ways to mash and sparge a successful amount of wort and what did I get? My new porter. My wort yield was about 100% better than the first time which will hopefully give my beer a much more full bodied feel. I also upped the amount of specialty malts to give it an even more roasty and malty flavor. I am extremely excited for this beer to be done. I measured the OG around 1.070 which means this should be a fairly alcoholic beer too. I'll let you all know when it is finished but until then here are some pictures from this most recent brewing event. 

Mashing away

Mash from the top looking in

Mash pose

Sparging 1

Sparging 2

Sparging from down below

Brew Cat

Look at all that juice!