September 25, 2013

Brew Day: Coconut Porter Round Two

The other night, we decided to brew a second batch of our Honeymooner Coconut Porter, but we are doing a few things differently this time. We added some flaked barley to the grain bill, in hopes that it will improve the head retention of the beer. We also plan on increasing the amount of toasted coconut we add to the secondary for a stronger coconut flavour.

The first batch is an absolutely delicious, rich porter, with a subtle toasted coconut and vanilla flavour. We really want to get a little more coconut flavour and aroma in this version, if possible, so we’ll be upping the toasted coconut addition from 1 lb, to 1.5 or 2 lbs.

This one smells amazing when it’s boiling.

Here is a our revised recipe:
www.brewtoad.com/recipes/honeymooner-v20

And here is the post on adding the coconut to our first version of this brew:
www.ltdsupply.ca/?p=1352

September 20, 2013

We Made Our Carrot Cake Ale & Drank It Too

This past tuesday (Sept. 17, 2013) was the much anticipated Homebrew Tap Takeover event put on by BrauHaus and Indie Alehouse. We finally got to try the fruits of our labour, our carrot cake ale, “Have Your Carrot Cake & Drink It Too,” and it was delicious!

The beer turned out even better than we had hoped. It poured a murky, dark copper, with flashes of orange if it caught the light just right, and a thick, creamy white head. The aroma was all nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove, with a hint of sweet bread. There was a nicely balanced sweetness in the taste, with just the right amount of spice. The carrot flavour was subtle but came through just enough from beneath the smooth, creamy, bready malt character. We’re not sure ourselves, but some people mentioned that they could even taste cream cheese icing (possibly the combination of vanilla and notes from the hefewiezen ale yeast?). All in all, it was definitely reminiscent of carrot cake in a glass.

Along with ours, there were 13 other homebrews on tap to try, and we made sure to have a sample of them all. There were some really great beers available, made by some extremely talented home brewers.

Some of our favourites were…

“Marshmallow Mild,” a 4.5% english mild brewed with vanilla beans and actual marshmallows by Mark Brosens and Andrew Cooke.

“Relax This Won’t Hurt,” a hoppy imperial porter by the Biergotter Homebrew Club, featuring an extreme grapefruit and pine flavour that dominated the chocolately malt base.

“I Hefe Dream,” by The Three Sheets homebrewing. A smoky oaked dunkelweizen with a lot of big ripe banana and clove notes in the finish.

“Quittin’ Time Grisette,” a very tart, very refreshing grissette brewed with sour cherries, raspberries and blackberries, by Sean Crawford.

There was also the intensely boozy “Winter Is Coming” Russian Imperial Stout, with an ABV of 13% (or higher?), and aged in a whiskey barrel, it packs a very distinctly hot punch. It would definitely keep you warm enough to endure a winter north of the wall.

While we could keep going, those were some of the ones that stood out the most to us. There were some really great tasting “simpler” brews though, like the juicy “Amarillo Slim” American pale ale, among others.

The place filled up fast by 6:00, forcing some unlucky guests to put up with one or two hour wait times, but those who did finally get in seemed to have a blast.

We hope this is just the first of many homebrew tap takeovers that we get to be a part of (or even just attend, really) in the city. It’s a great way to taste some truly unique and inspiring beers that you would otherwise be missing out on.

Big thanks to BrauHaus and Indie Alehouse for organizing and hosting the event, to Jeff and Brandon from Indie for helping us all brew, and to all the homebrewers themselves for creating such delicious beers!

September 16, 2013

Indie Alehouse/Brauhaus Homebrew Tap Takeover Update

Above: Mashing in the carrots for our “Have Your Carrot Cake and Drink it Too” Carrot Cake Ale

Back in July, we brewed a beer at Indie Alehouse for an upcoming Homebrew Tap Takeover. This event, organized by BrauHaus, will be hosted at Indie Alehouse on Tuesday, September 17th 2013, during Toronto Beer Week.

The recipe we put together is a Carrot Cake Ale that we are dubbing “Have Your Carrot Cake and Drink it Too.” The beer (which we mashed with real fresh carrots along with a variety of grains, and spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla beans) will be available on tap alongside eleven other home brews at Indie Alehouse during the tasting event.

We recently tasted the beer, pre-carbonation but post-spice-addition. It was already tasting pretty delicious and carrot-cakey, but we still have no idea what it will be like fully finished!

We’re excited to taste all the other homebrew creations, and we’re sure there will be many extremely creative and delicious beers on tap that night. If you’re in the area, be sure to drop in for some samples!

Visit the Toronto Beer Week website for official event details:
http://torontobeerweek.com/calendar/indie-alehouse-homebrew-tap-takeover/?instance_id

See our post about brewing Have Your Carrot Cake And Drink It Too:
http://www.ltdsupply.ca/?p=1628

Update: Here is the official homebrew lineup via event organizers, BrauHaus:
http://www.brauhausto.com/BrauhausTO/Upcoming.html

September 10, 2013

Brewery Visit: Lake of Bays

A few weekends ago I (Jen) was lucky enough to visit a friends cottage in Gravenhurst. We decided to check out the breweries in the area and visited Lake of Bays Brewing Company.

The brewery is located in Baysville, a tiny village in Muskoka with a population of 350. It was founded in 2010 and has been quickly growing since then. Many of their beers are currently available in the LCBO.

The brewery is open 7 days a week and you can go in and sample their selection of beers and take a tour. I had actually tasted all of their beers at the LCBO, with exception of the Spark House Red Ale. This was a really smooth, sessionable beer with a slightly chocolately, nutty flavour.

The brewery offers tours from 11-3 on Saturday and 12-3 on Sunday. We arrived at 2:50, but the staff was nice enough to show us around.

They named each of their fermentors. Here’s Admiral Lord Nelson, Big Brother, Temperance’s Bane and Darwin.

We were able to meet the brewer Mark Campbell who was hard a work on a Saturday, checking the gravity of their Rock Cut lager.

Some hops growing outside the brewery.

If you are in the Muskoka area stop by and visit!

(Photo credit – Andrea Switzer)

September 8, 2013

Brewing an experimental Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin beer season is coming, and we love our pumpkin beers! Last year we tasted every pumpkin beer we could get our hands on and now this year, we are finally able to experiment with brewing out own. We put together a recipe of our own based on a number of different recipes and tips found online. What we came up with was a sort of dark farmhouse pumpkin ale…

For the pumpkin portion we settled on using pure canned pumpkin (above). We spread the 2 large cans of pumpkin out onto a baking sheet, and baked at 350°F for 45-60 minutes.

Part of what inspired this recipe was wanting to try out this American Farmhouse yeast from White Labs (WLP670). Here’s the description from White Labs:

Inspired by local American brewers crafting semi-traditional Belgian-style ales. This blend creates a complex flavor profile with a moderate level of sourness. It consists of a traditional farmhouse yeast strain and Brettanomyces. Great yeast for farmhouse ales, Saisons, and other Belgian-inspired beers.

We almost went for a straight up Pumpkin Saison in the beginning, but then decided to throw some dark and roasted malts into the mix for added complexity.

pumpkingoingintomash

Our grain bill for the mash consisted of 9 lb Pearl Malt, 2 lb Chocolate Malt,1 lb Carahell, 8 oz Roasted Barley, 4.5 oz Melanoidin Malt. Then we also added the 2 large cans of baked pumpkin into the mash. All of this was for a 5.5 gallon batch.

hopsandsugar

For the boil, we bittered the beer with 1 oz of Styrian Golding hops at 60 minutes, followed by another half an ounce at 45 minutes. We also threw in a dash of Citra hops at 60 minutes and 0.5 oz at 10 minutes. We also added a pound of brown sugar to the boil at 10 minutes.

Our brew day beer of choice this time was a Titan IPA by Great Divide Brewing Co. Great beer!

Finally, with 5 minutes left in the boil, we tossed in 1.5 tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice.

The beer ended up with a starting gravity of about 1.072, higher than the 1.067 that our recipe program predicted.

After aerating, pitching the yeast, and sealing up the airlock, we’ve been waiting a couple of weeks before transferring the beer into a secondary fermenter. We’ll then wait a few more weeks just to make sure the beer really has some good time to age and condition. We really have no idea how well this beer will turn out, but we’re extremely excited to try it out!

Stay tuned on more updates on this beer as well…

September 7, 2013

Mint-Chocolate Milk-Stout, Part 1

Recently, we brewed what will eventually become a (hopefully delicious) Mint-Chocolate Milk-Stout. So far we have brewed the milk-stout base, and racked the beer onto 8oz of cocoa nibs in the secondary, which we are letting age for a couple of weeks. A day or two before we bottle, we plan to drop a few mint leaves into the fermenter for flavour.

Our grain bill (above) consisted of 61% Maris Otter, 11% Roasted Barley, 7% Toasted Barley Flakes, 7% Chocolate Malt, 7% Caramel 60L Malt, and 3% Flaked Oats. Check out our full recipe here on brewtoad here.

We mashed the grains for about an hour at 154°F. Chocolate malt always smells so good when it’s brewing!

During the boil, we added some Norther Brewer hops at 60 minutes and 8 minutes, as well as 1 lb of lactose sugar (above) at 10 minutes. Lactose sugar is unfermentable, so it leaves the beer with a fuller-body and added sweetness. Perfect for a chocolate beer.

After the 60 minute boil, chilling the wort, and transfering into the carboy, we pitched some White Labs English Ale Yeast (WLP002).

After the primary fermentation, we got ready to transfer the beer into a freshly sanitized secondary fermenter.

We had soaked the 8 oz of cocoa nibs in a little bit of vodka the night before, to sanitize and also help extract some flavour. We spooned it all into the fermenter before racking the beer onto it.

8 oz of cocoa nibs, ready to soak into our stout…

We then siphoned the beer onto the nibs, and sealed it up.

Now we wait a couple more weeks before we add the mint, and then bottle. It will be our first time brewing a beer with lactose sugar, as well as our first attempt at using mint in a beer, so we have our fingers crossed that everything comes out well! Stay tuned for an update on this one soon…

September 1, 2013

Cleveland, Part 3: Tremont Taphouse

One of the places that our Nano Brew server, Alex (from our first Cleveland post), recommended we visit was the Tremont Taphouse, in the Tremont neighbourhood of Cleveland.

Tremont is one of the oldest parts of Cleveland. It is home to many restaurants and art galleries. Every second Friday is the Tremont Art Walk and we were lucky enough to be there for this event. After a long walk around the neighbourhood we headed to the Tremont Tap House for dinner and drinks, the first gastropub in Cleveland.

When we walked in and saw their beer list we were extremely excited, they had 48 amazingly curated craft beers on tap!

We ordered the Epic Hopulant IPA on Nitro. It was a beautiful site to see this thick copper IPA cascading before our eyes. Super creamy with herbal and citrusy hops, with a touch of soft caramel in the background.

I ordered the Grill Cheese which was sour dough, sharp cheddar, buffalo mozzarella and shaved tomato, I actually had a dream about the sandwich later that night it was so good. Taylor ordered the Joshua Burger with with applewood bacon, smoked cheddar and house sauces.

There were so many great choices that we had a tough time choosing what to order.

A few of the interesting beers we tried was a collaboration between Maui Brewing and Jolly Pumkin called Sobrehumano Palena ’Ole. It was a special sour beer aged on organic Royal Diamond plums; it’s an amber with a hint of roast, malty, sweet, and sour.

The other favourite pictured above was Founder’s Porter. It was one of the best porter’s we have tasted, dark, rich, chocolately, malty, nutty, creamy perfection.

The staff was exceptionally knowledgable and friendly, we ended up showing up there two nights in a row because there was so much to try! We wish this awesome little pub could be a little closer to home!

August 29, 2013

Cleveland, Part 2: Market Garden Brewery & Distillery

In part 1 of our Cleveland visit, we checked out Nano Brew in the Ohio City Neighbourhood. As we mentioned, Ohio City is home to a number of different breweries and bars, many of which are part of the same family of businesses founded by a guy named Sam McNulty. Our next stop on the Ohio City tour was the Market Garden Brewery & Distillery.

Market Garden features a nice selection of beers brewed on premises. MGB serves up their takes on a number of standard and classic styles of beer. We went for the Citramax IPA (an IPA brewed with only Citra hops) and the St. Emeric’s Stout on Nitro. Both were great, especially the Citramax. We’re suckers for citra!

If there’s one thing that goes well with a beer, it’s a nice warm pretzel. We’ve always felt that not enough bars in Toronto serve pretzels, but oddly enough Cleveland seems to have an abundance of them. This one was delicious, and was served with a grainy mustard and a garlic cheese for dipping ($7).

The St. Emeric’s Stout, served on nitro. Dry, roasty, and super creamy.

For dinner, we shared the Fried Chicken Sandwich, topped with Smoked Cheddar, BBQ Onion, Bacon Mayo, and Arugula ($11).

The inside bar. We grabbed a seat on the front patio, but inside there were a few more areas/rooms with a couple of bars (one that seemed to focus on spirits, and one for beer), as well as a courtyard beer garden.

The tap handles were modelled after The Guardians of Traffic of the Hope Memorial Bridge in Cleveland.

Some of the fermenters visible inside the brewery. We didn’t get a chance to check out the rest of the brewery… maybe next time?

The courtyard beer garden features a huge amount of communal seating around huge wooden tables. Unfortunately we weren’t able to enjoy it that night as most of those empty seats were reserved. The Market Garden Brewery is definitely a popular place, and for good reason. Nice beers, great good, friendly staff and a beautiful space… another great reason to visit Cleveland.

August 23, 2013

Cleveland, Part 1: Nano Brew

After our recent cottaging weekend, we made a trip down to Cleveland Ohio. One of the first places we visited was Nano Brew Cleveland, located in the beautiful Ohio City neighbourhood.

Nano Brew is one of three breweries/brew-pubs in the Ohio City Neighbourhood, two of which are owned by a very creative businessman, Sam McNulty. Since 2005, McNulty has opened up The Bier Markt (a beer bar specializing in imported Belgian beers), Bar Cento (an italian restaurant), Speakeasy (a cocktail bar), Market Garden Brewery & Distillery (a huge brewpub and beer garden) and Nano Brew. All of these businesses opening up alongside the already established Great Lakes Brewing Co. (who has been in the neighbourhood since 1988), has turned Ohio City into a real beer destination in Cleveland.

Nano Brew serves as a testing ground for new beer ideas that may or may not eventually make their way into larger scale production down the street at Market Garden Brewery & Distillery. They brew on a 1 barrel capacity system, which looks very much like a glorified homebrewing setup, next to the bar.

They usually have about three original brews rotating at any given time. During our visit we were able to try Cluster Bomb (an American IPA brewed with Cluster hops), a Gruit, and Citramax (an IPA brewed with a ton of Citra hops, and already in full-scale production at the Market Garden Brewery).

The brewpub also boasts a nice selection of other American craft beers to fill out the menu. Some of our favourites like Left Hand Milk Stout were available, as well as a few beers from another Cleveland brewery, Fat Head’s.

Along with all of the great beers, Nano Brew boasts a large outdoor patio, and a bike tune-up station which has all of the tools and air pumps you might need to fix up your bike while you enjoy a nice pint of craft beer!

After sampling a couple of Nano Brew’s own offerings, we opted to try a couple of new craft beers from their list: Cali-Belgique by Stone Brewing (a really awesome version of their IPA fermented with a Belgian yeast strain), and Festina Pêche by Dogfish Head (a very tasty peach Berliner Weissbier).

While finishing up our beers we struck up a conversation with our awesome server, Alex. We asked him if he had any other recommendations, and he eagerly wrote us out a great list of craft beer destinations; bars, breweries and beer stores. With our list in hand, we ventured out to see what else Cleveland had to offer…

August 22, 2013

Cottage Weekend, Part 2

As we mentioned in our previous post, we recently spent 5 days at our friends cottage on Balm Beach. Every morning was a treat, waking up in the cottage pictured above, and walking down the path to the beach and looking out over the lake with coffee in hand.

The water was pretty cold this year, but we still managed to get out into the waves for a few swims.

One of our go-to simple cottage beers is Anchor Steam by Anchor Brewing. We also love their Liberty Ale, which packs a little bit more of a hoppy punch.

Of course no weekend at the cottage is complete without beer from Muskoka Brewery. Mad Tom IPA is one of our favourite Ontario IPAs.

As the sun began to set, John fired up the BBQ and started preparing a special meal for us, while we enjoyed the view some more.

John put together an amazing dinner featuring fresh lake trout, which he cooked to perfection on the BBQ.

The trout was served with fresh dill, lemon, a side of grilled onion and beets. It was amazing!

It was a great long weekend at Juli and John’s beautiful cottage. We were sad to leave, but excited for the next leg of our trip: Cleveland, Ohio…