Flagon Slayer Brewery

New Mead Recipe + Linkdump

November 22, 2008 at 6:35 pm (mead, recipes)

Well, I finally unveiled one of the meads from January at Ross’s brewparty last weekend, and it was enough of a hit that I decided to post the recipe. Briefly:

4 lbs Honey
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Cloves
1/2 tsp Ginger
1/2 Tbs Cardamom, coarse ground
10 bags Black Tea
Brandy (for bottling)

For the full instructions, check out the full recipe.

As far as the links go, I’m a fan of the gravity calculator on Got Mead. It’s for meads and fruit wines, not beer, but it makes planning your basic brews really quick. I’ve been meaning to link to Jon Sarriugarte’s project VOLT/AGED for a while now, and here’s a good excuse. He ages spirits with a 15kv Jacob’s Ladder, which is possibly the coolest thing a man can ever hope to do.

The windfall cider I mentioned in the last post has been bubbling away happily. Should it turn it, I’m thinking about trying to culture the yeast that fermented it. My cousin Nate, a homebrewer and programmer out in Colorado, gave me the idea, as he’s been doing this for a while with no ill effects. It’ll drive down costs, and allow me to be EVEN MORE OBSESSED with brewing. This can only be a good thing.

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Adventures in Cidering

November 13, 2008 at 2:36 am (brewing)

I’ll admit it, I’m on a cider kick. It’s just that time of year. Example given: tonight’s experiment. While hiking last week, we found a wild apple tree, full of small, exceedingly tart apples, almost perfectly ripe, and I happened to have a backpack. Serendipitously, today I found a nice juice extractor for $8 at a thrift store, and thus began my attempt at a wild fermentation. I didn’t have enough apples to make a full gallon of juice (far from it), so I mixed the juice I pulled out with some Simply Apple juice from the local grocery store. Now, we wait. I figure I have a 50% chance at this working, and from what I’ve heard, natural cider fermentations, when they work, give some of the best tasting hard ciders possible. I’m willing to risk vinegar for such a prize.

That being said, I’m risking it because I have 5 gallons of cider bubbling away in primary at the moment. For those of you who don’t want to risk a natural fermentation, let me direct you to two heroes, valiantly experimenting with different combinations of yeasts and sugars in cider.

Link the first. Link the second.

The first link is why I’m using Lavlin 1118 on my current big batch of cider, and the second one… I just envy. If my basement looks like that in five years, I’ll be a happy man.

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We Have Hops Sign!

August 19, 2008 at 6:02 pm (news)

My cascade hops are flowering!

The likes of which even God has never seen? Not quite, but I’m just happy that they’re producing in the first year, as I had heard different stories about the viability of hops in the Louisville area. We’ll see if they taste anything like the Cascades we know and love shortly.

In other news, thanks to my current obsession with apple-based drinks, I got the idea for an Apple Porto. I’m not sure if such a thing exists, but here’s how I went about making it:

I wanted something with a strong apple taste, high alcohol by volume, and sweet, for sipping through the winters. To figure out what I needed to do to get the concentration high enough, I bought a bunch of frozen apple juice concentrate cans, mixed them with a ratio of water, and began taking specific gravity measurements. As presented below, 1 part water to n parts concentrate gives:

1 to 1: 1.090
1 to 2: 1.120
1 to 3: 1.135
1 to 4: 1.143

That’s about where I want it to be, allowing the yeast to complete to tolerance with residual sweetness and flavor. Double 1 to 4 to get two parts water, eight parts apple juice concentrate gives 120 oz, or a gallon with some space for a starter. I threw the starter into a maybe 24 oz of the must, and have been adding 8 – 12 oz every day, keeping the must in a refrigerated carboy until it’s empty. This is an attempt to maximize the fermentation and keep “ramping up” the yeast concentration. After one week of doing this, the active must was at 1.040. I expect a long secondary, oaked tertiary, then fortification with brandy to reach a portish level of 20% or so. I’m excited to see how it turns out.

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The countdown begins.

July 18, 2008 at 4:08 am (holidays)

So, while transferring, fortifying, and oaking what remains of last year’s Chaimera tonight, I had an idea that I’d like to throw out to the rest of the valiant Flagon Slayers: Year End Party. Bring the best you’ve made, period. I’ll put down a bottle of Chaimera, Cyser, Cider, some of the Atomic Porter, and anything I make for the rest of the year that makes the cut.

Here’s how to play along at home: when you determine something’s worth this final second year throwdown, just label it specially and hide it in the cellar somewhere. Sometime around the start of 2009, we have a Bacchanalian tasting party, the likes never seen by mortal men. Gentlemen, start your fermenters. Fautz, start making excuses.

Leave me a comment if you’re in.

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And Tonight’s Experiment…

July 10, 2008 at 6:19 am (brewing)

My brain really wasn’t up to programming today, so I went to Fautz’s and bartered for another carboy (and got an old SPARCstation IPX from his collection, somehow), then tried my hand at a rice wine. Not sake, but an interesting looking recipe from The Joy of Home Winemaking. The whole section on grain wines holds a strange fascination for me, and in two weeks when I rack this one, I’ll be making a wheat wine as well. Anyway, after the rice wine was put into primary and I was racking some of the other brews that are in the works, I remembered an idea I had read the previous night, in a forum thread about making hard cider.

The basic idea was that you could simply dump your apple juice and other fermentables onto the yeast left over from a previous batch of beer. Having four gallons of the Christmas Cyser that needed racking, this seemed the perfect time to test the method out, and one-up it. Not only was the yeast used to reproducing like mad in apple juice, but the spices were still in the bottom, and so would impart some of the cyser flavor to the new brew. After a quick $10 visit to the grocery store, I added 3 gallons of unfiltered apple juice and 3 cups brown sugar to the remnants of the cyser, coming out to a healthy 1.065 original gravity. Hopefully it takes on the character of the original, as it looks like a quick and easy way to make ’seconds’ of more complex brews. We’ll see how it all turns out in a few months.

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Ginger Ale at 13%? Impossible!

June 10, 2008 at 8:33 pm (recipes)

Oh, but it’s not only possible, but delicious. Just in time for summer, the recipe is here: Ripper Jack Ginger Ale. And, since I’ve been sitting here procrastinating, here’s another for Pomegranate Mead.

Some interesting news from the Wall Street Journal, now, on the Campaign for Real Ale. Do you get your full pint at your favorite pub?

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Traveling brewparty for the win!

April 14, 2008 at 2:11 am (brewing)

Sorry, once again it’s been too long since we’ve posted anything. The current plan for the intrepid Flagon Slayers is still the traveling party, brewing together a minimum of every two weeks. Ross and I are trying hand at growing our own hops this year, as well: Fuggles and Cascade for me, and Wilamette, Cascade, and Tettnag for Ross. Additionally, we’re attempting fruit gardening for more wine and melomel fodder, and I’ll even be making a lavender wine. Homebrewing is amazing in that almost anything can become delicious boozeahol. For inspiration, check Jack Keller’s wine recipes. There’s a man to be proud of.

Brewing this often really adds up. What we’ve got in carboys this week:

TheRussian has the experimental Atomic Porter (1.090 OG), black cherry wine, raspberry champagne, pomegranate mead, Ripper Jack (High abv / high ginger applejack), Nepali Spiced Tea Mead, some sort of peachy white melomel that I made when I was drunk, and Thundertrain (I swear it’s not a bum wine…)

Chris is rocking out lately, with his now legendary Baconated Porter (it literally has a pound of bacon), raspberry melomel, a traditional plain mead, piesporter, a nut brown, and, in a first for our group, sake!

Ross is coming on strong with a nut brown, a crazy high hop IPA, and a volcanic (yes, it erupted) strawberry mead. We just need to convince him to get more carboys, and it’s ON.

Finally, Fautz can’t brew.

I’ll be putting some of the more interesting recipes up after finals, but in the meantime, if there’s anything that looks interesting, leave a comment and we’ll try to post it. That’s all for now, and may the party continue…

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2008 already?

January 18, 2008 at 9:49 pm (holidays, recipes)

Wow, time flies. I’ve been brewing a lot more than I’ve been writing lately, which is good for me, bad for those following along at home. I did find the time to finish writing up my favorite of the latest brews, the Christmas Cyser, and it’s one I’d really recommend.

Big news on the Flagon Slayer front, as well. It’s become a sort of travelling brewing party, and as a group, we’re attempting to make two batches a month, showing up on the weekend to whoever has an empty carboy. That being said, I’d like to welcome Chris and Ross on board!

January is Porter season: Chris brewed one (his first brew!) last week, and I’ll be putting one down this weekend if all goes well, and post the recipe.

Finally, I just have to share this: Linux-Based Wine Cellar Monitor. How cool is that?

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Fun with Pumpkins

October 26, 2007 at 5:55 pm (beer, brewing, holidays)

Well, Halloween’s coming up, and I haven’t updated in quite some time, for the simple reason that we haven’t been up to brewing anything lately. There are two links that really need to be passed on, though, both involving pumpkins. The first is actually brewing related: an interesting flickr photo stream about brewing in a pumpkin. The second is just plain cool, for those who are electrically inclined: Evil Mad Scientist’s Snap-O-Lantern. Very nice!

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Happy Programmers’ Day!

September 14, 2007 at 1:36 am (holidays)

September 13th is the 256th day of the year, which we all know is the number of possible values in 8 bits (what most people mean when they refer to a byte. Not the old PDP guys with their 36 bit words, but I digress), and is therefore suited to a semi-unofficial holiday. I took a semi-holiday while at work, thanks to Kingdom of Loathing, and now am celebrating by drinking some of the beer left over from the last holiday we celebrated, St. Bartholomew’s Day.

What else did we do, you ask? Well, I’d be happy to answer: we brewed a pomegranate mead, and Cory taught us how to breathe fire. Pictures at the bottom. Also, it occurs to me that with saints Bartholomew, Arnold, Hildegarde, Augustine, and the like, we could have a pretty good set of holidays…

What’s next for this intrepid gang of brewers? Well, Aaron and I have been cooking up a scheme evil enough to match his brilliant name of Zombeer. Sticking with an islandy, White Zombie theme, we’ve decided it should include sugar cane, kava, and blue lotus. Should be interesting, no matter what.