And Tits -- George Carlin Tribute Beer

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"There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous to be seperated from a group that large. All of you over here,you 7, Bad Words. That's what they told us they were, remember? "That's a bad word!" No bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions, and words. You know the 7, don't you, that you can't say on television? "Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits" Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. "Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits" Wow! ...and Tits doesn't even belong on the list." --George Carlin

As you may know, Drew and I (and especially Drew) like to do tribute beers when people we like die. We're getting ready to brew up the fourth year of Gonzo -- the Hunter S. Thompson tribute beer with rum, tequila, bourbon, mushrooms, hemp and poppy -- among other adulterations. Drew brewed a tribute to Michael Jackson. Well, when my hero George Carlin died, I contacted Drew and he felt just as strongly -- we had to brew something. We went back and forth (for months) on the recipe almost going for an imperial Irish stout before settling on a very bitter big Irish red with American yeast. Figured that was a good translation of Carlin into beer. The name? I think Drew's calling it "Carlin's 7," but the actual name is "Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits." "And Tits," for short.

Aiming for a 1.087 OG, we wanted a lot of yeast. You're looking at a 3-gallon carboy sitting on a stir-plate filled with Wyeast 1272 (American Ale II). We went with 1272 because while it's still a neutral American yeast, I feel it accentuates the malt a bit more than the hops. Which may work with our Irish/American hybrid.

That's me starting to vourlaf. Our grain bill consisted of 40% Marris Otter, 40% US 2-Row, 5.75% Caramel 60, 5.75% Munich 8L, 4.25% Caramel 120, 3% Biscuit and .75% Carafa II. Seven malts, get it? Well, that's what it was supposed to be, but we screwed up and added two pounds of Biscuit. C'est la vie! I believe this grain bill is loosely based on AleSmith/Jamil Z's "Evil Dead Red" beer, but obviously pumped up. We mashed it at 151 for about 70 minutes. Now you hear from a lot of people that tell you to just pull off the first quart or so when you Vorlauf and then begin collecting your sweet wort in the kettle. Speaking for Drew, we feel different. In fact, depending on the beer, I might recirculate the entire volume of the mash tun twice. Why?

Here's the wort after a gallon or so has been recirculated. Yeah, it's free from particulate matter, but it's still a bit murky.

And here's that same wort after we've recirculated 20 gallons or so. You tell me which you'd rather runoff into your kettle. Yes, it takes longer. But so what?



Not to belabor the point, but I (and we) just think this is the superior starting point. And it costs you nothing but time. Plus you'll get better efficiency and fewer tannic-causing particles in your beer.



It's always teach a friend to homebrew day! That's Dr. Drew on the left and my buddy Josh Liberman (no relation, spelled different) on the right. Josh's first brew. He did real good.



There's Sven and Amy adding some hops. Oh yeah, we hopped this guy with 3 ounces of Chinook for 71 minutes (George died when he was 71) to make it as roughly bitter as possible. We added a 3 ounce blend of Columbus, Warrior, Chinook and Cascade at 15 minutes and another 3 ounce blend of Chinook, Amarillo Gold, Palisade and Simcoe at flame out. Seven kinds of hops...

Drew finally busted out his ThruMometer. Pretty fricking (excuse me Mr. Carlin fucking) handy actually. The Thrumometer is showing the temp post wort chiller. The handy part is being able to adjust the out valve of the pump so as to maintain a temp around 68-70 -- good for pitching. Anyhow, the beer's fermenting away. The only bummer was that we missed our gravity by quite a bit -- something like 15 points (Target was 1.087, OG was 1.072 or so). After thinking about it we've narrowed it down to three culprits. 

1) Drew's grain mill is set poorly (I don't think that's it)

2) Somebody weighed the grains out incorrectly

3) Drew's cheapo stupid braided SS hose (instead of a manifold) got crushed by the 35.75 popunds of grains or got twisted in some way.

I'm not mad, just disapointed, as it was an otherwise flawless brew day. Er, OK, fine -- forgot to add the Whirlflock. Bite us.

Blasts from Pasts

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Just going through some old photos and found these.

My old 48 qt mashtun on the right, my (now old, but then new) 100 qt job on the left.

Me and Nick holding the California Homebrew Club of the Year Trophy at Anchor in Feb, 2005.

Don't drink and brew. Or use Glass.

Tobacco Sunburst runoff. I think this was from the Pretzel beer.

Spent pretzels. Yup.

Green Beer

Hi there! Last week this blog chronicled the brewing of The Audacity of Hops, a big sticky DIPA. Well, here's a pic of part of the beer in primary. It's the greener one in the back. I'm glad you can see the blue painter's tape label that reads "Essex Ale" just to give you a known commodity to compare the green to. Neat, huh? That's what you get when you overhop your beer.

Here's another picture. Go dry yeast, huh? We'll let you know how it tastes in a few weeks. Also, I don't know why Drew's using an airlock in the background there, either. Cheers!

Double Audacity

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Hello there! I know it's been since May, but life is a funny thing. Long story short, the lovely Amy and I moved in together and there's no way to brew it up at the new place. So, I hung up the kettles and have been in semi-retirement drinking Pliny in bottles. But, once you're bit with the homebrew bug, you're sick and infected for life. And my good buddy Drew Beechum finally got his Stout Guy Brewery up and running at his new place, it was time to dust off the mash paddle and brew some damn beer! Mother Nature felt the same way and she gave us the single most beautiful day in recent memory. Gotta love late January in North Eastern Los Angeles.

What to brew? Well, the only beer I'm really interested in anymore are DIPAs. Sue me. And then I saw a wonderful typo/malapropism on some forum somewhere, "The Audacity of Hop." This beer quickly became a no brainer. Now, Amy and I had brewed a nice big DIPA just before we moved called Sea of Love, but sadly we never got to drink very much of it. Jimmy saw to that. Anyhow, The Audacity of Hops is based on the earlier recipe with a couple changes. Namely, more hops.

In addition to the 20 pounds of domestic 2-Row, 12 pounds of Marris Otter and 2 pounds of Carapils, we added 0.25 pounds of Black Patent Malt. Just, you know, why not? And then we decided to darken the beer further by tossing in a bottle of that Dark Belgian Syrup stuff. So we'd wind up with a (fairly) dark, highly attenuated beer with no discernable roast character and hopped out both the wazoo and ying yang. 

Oh yeah, we added 1.5 pounds of this yummy raw, organic Malawian, fair trade cane sugar, too. Despite the darkening, we're still following the Vinnie method of adding lightness (i.e. sugar) and body (i.e. lotsa dextrin via the carapils). But which hops?

While we did forget to hop the sparge water, every other point of this beer's creation got hopped. Mash Hops? Hell yeah! We used a varietal from New Zealand called, "Green Bullet." Smelled good, in sort of a resiny, high-alpha hop way (I think the alpha acid was 13.3%).Hey, with a name like "Audacity" what else you going to do?

One addition for each day of the week! From left to right you're looking at 2 ounces of Amarillo Gold as a FWH (First Wort Hop), 3 ounces of Warrior + 1 ounce of Newport for the 90 minute bittering charge, an ounce of Simcoe at 45 minutes, 1 ounce of Amarillo Gold + 1 ounce of Columbus at 30 minutes, 1 ounce of Palisade + 1 ounce of Columbus at 10 minutes and another 2 ounce mix of Palisade and Columbus at flame out. Counting the Green Bullet Mash Hops, that's 15 ounces of hops in 10 gallons of beer with 221.3 IBUs. Ha ha ha! And that's not even considering the 4 additional ounces of hops we'll be using to dry hops these suckers. 

That's right, I said suckers. As in plural, two. The first of the two, The Audacity of Hops, is going to get dry hopped with 2 ounces of Amarillo Gold. The second beer, The Audacity of Aretha Franklin's Hat (seriously), is getting an ounce of Columbus and an ounce of Summit. Personally, I'm equally interested in both.

Thankfully the day went off without a hitch. Hey, we even had John Palmer on hand to remind us to toss pennies into the kettle when it began boiling over. And I trust John Palmer. Drew, John and I all tasted the 1.096 (target was 1.098) wort just after it cooled and prior to entering the fermenter. We all agreed that for a pre-yeast beer this one tasted really good. Perhaps audaciously so.

Arroganter Sombrero: Adam 2.0

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Last year Kelsey, myself and Jimmy McGowan whipped up Arrogant Sombrero -- a 13% "Adambier" that took a first place and a Second Runner Up Best of Show in the only competition we bothered to enter it in. That particular brew day was plagued with every sort of problem imaginable. Including my favorite, a busted pump. This year would be different.



Or not. For one thing, we didn't have Jimmy. That's another set of arms to stir the damn decoctions... Anyhow, based on the fact that I was... uh... a bit hungover (or lazy, or not thinking... dumb?) I didn't give Kelsey's recipe a proper once over before we embarked. Long story short, 53 pounds of grain and 17 gallons of water (12.5 or so gallons for an initial strike plus 3.5 gallons for infusion) have a hell of a hard time fitting in a 100 quart cooler. You'll notice above that the mash tun was so full you can see the frigging lid indents.



Above is all those ingredients. Kelsey was a little miffed because usually the two home despot buckets hold all his grain. With this sucker we had to grab a pot. And then another pot. That's overkill for you. Grain bill is something like: Mostly Munich, 30% Golden Promise, 15% Vienna, 5% Rauch malt, half a pound of Acidulated malt and a sprinkle of Black Patent. We First Wort Hopped with Domestic Hallertau, bittered with Magnum and then dropped in 3 more ounces of (this time) German Hallertau at flame out.



For those who don't know how we do it out West, we (apparently) decoct our Adams. A single decoction is the way of the loser. Two decoctions -- especially during a late April heatwave -- now that's some manly shit. Then of course there's the dumb-ass way to go -- three decoctions -- which is exactly what we did. Above is Kelsey during the first hour long plus decoction. What's a decoction? It's where you remove about a 1/3 of the mash, put it in a pot and boil it. The trouble is, the mash needs to be constantly stirred otherwise it will scorch. It sucks. Kelsey's not looking happy. And yes, he's 11-feet tall.



World's longest mash. Seriously, this sucker turned into a 10-hour brew day. Like last year, we missed out target OG by 10 points, but were still up in the 1.120 range. Furthermore, that lovely brown color is from the decoction. Wort tasted good, too.




Showing up to save us from ourselves by providing yummy refreshments was XL Perro. Yeah, yes sir, you betcha, that's a Magnum of 2006 Stone Double Bastard. And holy fuck was it good. Lee's last batch of Double Bastard if I'm not mistaken. Excellent. Also fantastic was was Big Dog's funky stuff in a bucket sour beer. 3 1/2 years old and WAY freshing after standing over a murderous-hot kettle. I believe he added hibiscus flowers (to the bucket) which gave it a lovely pink/reddish hue. Seriously nice American-made sour beer. Anyhow, the pic is XL unlocking his well cared for 3.0-liter. Oh, and remember how I said the Sombrero wort tasted pretty good? Big Dog added it (unboiled) to his tulip of Double Bastard. Surprisingly, it tasted good.



It wouldn't be "brewing with Kelsey" unless Kelsey had some sort of jealously-inducing new toy to play with. Yeah, that's a conical. Fucker. Below you can see the beer being pumped into the neato fermentor. Kelsey said it's halfway through with primary and that it's much hoppier than batch #1. We'll let you know.

Someone's Tax Dollars At Work

The best part? This is real. Poor Alabama.

The Trophy at Rest

So, when you win the California Homebrew Club of the year (like we did) Anchor gives you the trophy. And, for the next year that trophy has to reside somewhere. Until it goes back and the next club gets it. Which will hopefully be us. Again. Above is the trophy resting comfortably at Falcon President Steve Cook's home. Top o'the homebrew world, ma.