#14 - Brown Ale - A Beer With No Name

So we are finally here to share our latest beer and first brown ale, a beer with no name.

We bottled it probably 2 months ago now and have been slowly enjoying it. If you have followed our previous brewing attempts you know we have had some trouble with a skunky taste. After some research and soul searching we modified our technique and bought some new equipment.

Here are our impressions:

Sergio-sweet with light roasty notes
Jason-light malty beer without a hint of skunk

To be honest, there isn't really much more to say.

We haven't yet made plans for our next beer but we expect there will be one. -jkr

Flightless Bird Brewery Tour March/April 2010

Well, it took us a while to get this edited and posted. It's a little late but some of you may still like to see it. This is how we remember the trip...

Flightless Bird Brewery Tour 2010 from Sergio Salgado on Vimeo.

Here is a link to the YouTube version for those of you if Vimeo is a bit slow for you.

ss

Another conversation with Lee

A few weeks ago Nate, Sergio, and I went back to Blind Lady Ale House to talk to Lee. We spoke with him near the start of our homebrew career and he told us that if we ever had a beer we wanted him to try, to bring it in. After our most recent failure we decided it was time to take him up on his offer.

We took our latest marzen in a 22oz and found him speaking with some customers. He greeted us and then poured four glasses, one for each of us. He smelled it, looked up, and said, "that's (messed) up." He didn't even need to drink it to know it was a failed batch. We then had an extended conversation about sanitation and all the various steps in the process that can introduce contamination.

the water
siphon
carboys
cooling process
sugar
yeast
transfer equipment
sanitizer

We went back and reviewed every process of our operation, replacing pieces that were old, returning to our most stringent procedures. We also built a wort chiller from scrap at home depot to reduce the cooling process from overnight to 10 minutes. We recently tested out these changes with our first brown ale which we bottled this past Saturday.

We're excited to see if our changes made a difference. We'll let you know.

-jck

A history of failure

For record keeping purposes, and cause we're honest, this post simply states our recent failures.

#12: red ale V (it was bad)
#13: marzen (it was badder)

And here's to hoping our recent brown ale isn't added to this list.

-jck

Some Serious Failure

Don't worry, we're still alive. And we're still brewing.

The problem is that we're still brewing, but we aren't brewing anything worth writing about.

Truth be told, we're actually brewing horrible beer. We've been doing so for awhile now. I've lost count, but I think it would be safe to say we've brewed at least three bad batches in a row. We thought we had it all figured out. It's got to be the ceramic pot, we figured, because the coating had worn off and there was visible rust inside. Makes sense, right?

Nope.

We got a nice new stainless steel pot and there was no difference. So now we really have no idea what's going on. We even brewed a batch with a friend of Sergio's who has been brewing some good beer lately and he didn't see much wrong with our processes. Our last batch, just to let you know how far we've taken this, was the Marzen that was our second brew ever. We brewed it because we liked it so much and followed our prior recipe to the letter and number. No deal.

So although we are disheartened we haven't given up hope. We plan to swallow our pride and take a bottle of our disgusting brew to Lee, the guy we've blogged about previously who worked at Stone Brewing and now co-owns Blind Lady Ale House in North Park, San Diego. He gave us the green light to bring something in if we ever need help.

If ever there was a time, it's now.

-jck