SleezySherm

Welcome back

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:26:00 +0000

It's been a long strange time since I've posted.

I have 2 main excuses:

1) My website software was doing a bad job at keeping out spammers comments and I was discouraged by having to clean them out.
2) I had 6 cases of beer and moved into a much smaller apartment, so I haven't brewed in almost a year.

I also have 2 lesser excuses:

1) I'm lazy
2) I suck

Anyway, I hope that by moving to blogger I will be less depressed by fighting spam and more excited to just come and post. Also, I'm almost out of beer and getting ready to brew again.

So welcome back!

Also, I'm almost out of beer and getting ready to

Peanut Butter Porter V 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:05:00 +0000

Almost an entire year after I starting telling my friends to expect a new batch of Peanut Butter Porter 'soon', it's finally here. This builds off my last try and keeps several of the uniquely random aspects of the beer, such as lager yeast (to help emphasize the malt and peanut flavors) and oats (to help with head stabilization).

Grains/Extracts

8oz Chocolate Malt

12oz Black Patent Malt

4oz Roast Barley

3oz Oats (Steel Cut, not instant)

8oz Crystal, 60L

8oz Munich 10L

4.5lbs DME

Hops

1oz Perle 7.6% AA

1oz Fuggle 4.5% AA

Yeast

While Labs Oktoberfest

Adjuncts

8oz De-oiled peanut butter ("100% Real Peanut Butter" brand) - see this post for de-oiling info

Directions

Infusion mash

Added DME and Perle hops at beginning of boil

Added 2oz of PB at 5min, 25 min, 40min, 55min

Added 1/2 oz Fuggle at 40 and 55 min

Ferment a week, then rack. Pay attention to the surface of the beer to keep any excess oil from getting to the secondary

Secondary 3 weeks at 50F (remember lager yeast), reracked to remove trub and remaining oil slick

Bottled at 6 weeks, age at least 2 weeks, preferably 3 before drinking. The peanut butter flavor will continue to change.

Gravities

OG 1.047

FG 1.014

Nose: Some malt sweetness with a noticable arroma of peanut butter. No hops. There should be some, maybe mine are old and have gotten oxidized.

Pour: Dark with highlights. Lasting medium head (a worry with the peanut oil, but the oats seem to be doing their job).

Taste: Medium body, a little low for a porter (probably the result of the lager yeast). The peanut butter pushes through the malt (again, not much in the way of hops) as the beer moves back along the tongue. Strong peanut butter flavor in the swallow.

Conclusion: Peanut butter without the oil is crumbly but I still ended up with large clumps in my brewpot. 8oz seems like a sufficient amount with homebrew equipment/methods. I'm going to keep trying different de-oiling techniques to see if I can get more of it into suspension. This beer is highly drinkable, I recommend you try it yourself.

Sleezy light honey lager

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:29:00 +0000

Earlier this year I made a batch of 'leftovers' beer. I had a bit of this, some of that, some yeast that I've recultured 3 times, and other assorted beer detritus. So I put it all together and made what could best be called 'Light honey lager'.

Here's what I had to throw in:

Grains/Extracts

20oz 2-Row

4oz Munich 10L

2lbs Honey

2lbs DME

5oz Table Sugar

Hops

1oz Saaz 4.4%AA

1oz Cluster 6.1%AA

Yeast

White Labs Oktoberfest

Directions

Soaked grain for an hour

Added DME, Sugar, Honey Cluster Hops

Boiled 60 min, added half oz of Fuggle at 30 min, and 45 min

Lagered for a week at 55f

Rack and lager for another 2 weeks at 50f

Ready to drink about 2 weeks after bottling

Gravities

OG 1.040

FG 1.009

Nose: Low honey aroma, no malt or hop aroma. The lack of hop aroma is a little odd, maybe the minimal amount is being drowned by the honey. My sense of smell sucks as always.

Pour: Golden, clear, thin long lasting head. The clear golden beer shows off the excellent natural carbonation bubbles.

Taste: Bitter hops in the initial taste with honey sweetness coming through as you swollow. No malt flavor at all, but a surprisingly moderate amount of body. Very crisp.

Conclusion: The bitter start with a sweet finish is an odd dichotomy, not one that I'm sure works. It's highly drinkable and quiet pleasant, but I'm not sure I would go out of my way to try it again. Still for a batch of leftover scraps, it's a solid showing.

Scotch Ale by Gregory J. Noonan

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:27:00 +0000

I'm conflicted about this book. The first 1/3 is the history of brewing in Scotland, which provides lots of background into the evolution of Scottish beer styles. The last 1/3 is a listing of Scotch breweries and products, it's only slightly interesting and 15 years out of date at this point.

This only leaves 60 pages specifically devoted to malts, hops, water, yeast and brewing techniques. Noonan does an excellent job of packing a lot of information in, but it's not well organized. There's brewing technique information in the history section and even a few gems scattered in the brewery listing section.

Basically this book reminded me of eating a lobster - to get everything out of it, you really have to work over the whole book for small morsels.

That said, I do like this book. It's the best resource on Scotch Ale I've seen and has great recipes for making both modern and historical Scotch Ales. With the price of hops going through the roof I expect we'll see a resergence of interest in this low hoped style

So get ahead of the wave and start working on your Scotch Ales now.

Buy it here

Cider review

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:27:00 +0000

Late last year I made a batch of hard cider from Trader Joe's pure organic cider. Their cider is UV pasteurized (all cider sold in the US must be pasteurized in some manner), which is the least invasive pasteurizing method (adding sulfites is the worst as it actively retards bacteria growth instead of just killing whatever is already there). The bottle doesn't list apple types and it's a good bet that the contents vary from region to region with whatever local farmers provide.

I used White Lab's English Cider Yeast ( WLP775 ) and fermented a 5 gallon batch without additives. Original Gravity 1.055.

Results:

Very clear, very tart and very slow fermenting cider, it took over a month to reach a final gravity of 1.012. I primed with 3/4 of a cup of sugar, but never achieved much carbonation. The cider is mellowing nicely over time and should be very drinkable after about 3 months in the bottles.

Conclusion:

I wouldn't rush out to buy it, but if you live in a city and can't get unsulfated cider any other way, Trader Joe's does offer you a viable cider. I would recommend it more as a base for my spiced cider.

At least I’m brewing

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 23:20:00 +0000

I've been brewing up a storm lately, which is good because it gives me something to talk about. One nice thing about moving to Chicago is that I can now lager in my home. Closets with an outer wall, far from heaters are great lagerring areas - 45-55 and stable, very nice. My goal is to make as much lager this winter as I've made in my entire career. I think it's about time to make a maibock, one of the styles I've never tried.

I finally made and bottled my 3rd batch of Peanut Butter Porter. The first batch had too little peanut butter taste, with the second batch I achieved a very good balance. So of course I ramped it up even more for this batch - seems like I went to far this time, but I'll wait until I'm drinking it to post the recipe and review.

I also made a light honey pilsner (aka I threw whatever I had in a pot) -it's carbonating nicely, however the honey and hops aren't playing nice. I'll post a recipe and review in a few weeks.

Not living up to potential

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:59:00 +0000

When I lived in New York I would brew in a kitchen that could be summed up as a stove, a sink, and the 2 square feet of counter space needed to secure them to the wall. I made amazing beer in that kitchen, almost effortlessly. I even switched to all grain using a hodgepodge of chairs and a homemade sparger.

I would ferment at ambient temperatures, and it always worked, even when it was 90 degrees out.

Now I'm in Chicago and I have a real kitchen with tons of counterspace, and nearly all of my batches fail. I made cider, but it didn't carbonate. I made a raspberry imperial stout, it got contaminated (my first contaminated batch ever). Heck, I can't even get people over to empty enough bottles to let me brew more. Woe is me!

Part of the problem is that my equipment is new, I'm missing a few pieces and have gone back to extract brewing. Some of it might be because of Chicago's hard water vs New York's soft. Mostly though, I think I'm just not living up to my potential. I don't have much to say, but I can't even be bothered to post my results on my own blog.

So, time to stop sucking, and start posting.

The agony of bottles

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:12:00 +0000

When I bottled I dreamed of kegging, and once I started kegging I would find myself frustrated at needing to finish a keg to make room for the next batch - 3 half empty kegs gets me nowhere, but if I have 3 half drank batches of beers, then I have 3 cases of empty bottles, enough to bottle another batch.

Oh how I longed to be able to improve my utilization, I looked into the 1 gallon mini-kegs (now easily available thanks to Heineken).

Now, I'm bottling again, and I have the same trouble - I don't have room. At least with bottles I can rotate what I'm drinking to make space (and even drink commercial beer, a bottle is a bottle). Of course, drinking to make room to store beer sounds like a vicious cycle.

But my cider needs bottles and I will just have to rise to the challenge!

Excellent Scotch Ale

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 11:52:00 +0000

After nearly dying out in Scotland, Scotch Ale is making a huge comeback in the US. I made an excellent one on my first try, it has a sweet caramel flavor with a touch of smoke, highly refreshing. It's an excellent fall beer.

Grains/Extracts

6oz Peet Malt

6oz Crystal Malt, 60L

4oz Chocolate Malt

4oz Roast Malt

7lbs Extra Lite Liquid Extract

Hops

2oz Fuggle 4.4% AA

Yeast

Wyeast IPA

Directions

Put 2 gallons of water in a pot on high heat

Put the grains in a bag and steep in the water until just before boiling (you want it to be about 30 minutes), then remove the grains

Once the water is boiling add the liquid extract and all the hops

Boil for an hour (Add Irish Moss 10 minutes before the end for clarity)

Cool rapidly, transfer to a fermenter, fill to 5 gallons and pitch yeast.

Let sit for 7 days in the primary fermenter, then rack it to a secondary for 2 weeks.

Gravities

Original 1.060

Final 1.010

Broken Links - Peanut Butter Porter

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:38:00 +0000

Most of my links related to my Peanut Butter Porter experements

Here are their new links:

First Try

Second Try

Finding myself motivated again

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:26:00 +0000

After winding down much of the chaos in my life, I've found that my motivation for hobbies has increased tremendously.

I've got 2 beers in secondary aging (one is a completely crazy Oktoberfest that I should have a review and recipe for next month), and I'm working on the site again.

I was using Nucleus CMS, but it wasn't working out and I've switched to Wordpress, which is much easier to use. The only downside is that I've lost all my old comments and links, but on the plus side their anti-spam utils mean I can re-enable comments.

Overall things should get busy here, and I've got a half dozen recipes to post.

How to do everything but brew beer

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 23:36:00 +0000

2006 was a very crazy year for me.

I worked hard so I could get a transfer to Chicago, and once in Chicago invested in a bar.

All of which left me very little time for brewing.

Plus I left my fermenters, kegs, airlocks, etc in New York (ok, I left everything but the grain mill).

My first batch in Chicago was an imperial raspberry stout, but the raspberry's were contaminated with mold, I did a poor job of pasteurizing them in the microwave, and a week later I had an inch of mold on my fermenter. Luckily it was a carboy, my tubing and racking cane were also contaminated and had to go.

I poured the beer down the drain (still smelled amazing).

So much for 2006 (actually the stout didn't get contaminated until 2007).

Things are less crazy now, just bottled a simple honey brown and have a batch of my spiced cider going (a disaster in it's own right).

Going to try coming back from the dead

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:54:00 +0000

I spent the last 9 months working extremely hard at my job, and little else. That's calmed down to sane levels so I'm going to try getting back into posting on the site.

Of course as soon as I made this decision my home computer died.

But sometime in the next week or so I should be able to post the 3-4 recipes I did have time to fiddle with during my long dark period.

Work 1, Brewing 0

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:57:00 +0000

Not quite true, but close.

I made up a very rich brown ale, but nothing went wrong so it's not much of a story.

I've been meaning to make up a Hefenweizen and raspberry American wheat for a month now (pink beer for Valentine’s Day! ) - but I just haven't had the time...makes me think I should switch back to extract.

I did buy a whole bunch of new equipment - replacing my original fermenters (they were 3 years old and stained brown), bought a good malt mill, and a wort chiller. So now I have all the big ticket items I can ever get and live in Manhattan.

Having said that I'll have to figure out how to convince my landlord that my 150 year old, highly flammable, tenement building would be improved by having a gas powered recalculating mash system installed on the roof...

Peanut Butter Porter Try 2

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:09:00 +0000

This was an excellent beer - the nose and aftertaste were full of peanut butter, while the taste and feel was all porter. There were some odd flavors which I attribute to my having to use an Oktoberfest lager yeast instead of an ale yeast (not something I recommend), but overall I'd say this recipe is a good basis for making your own peanut butter porter.

Ingredients:
8lbs 2-row malt
1lb Crystal 60L
8oz Black Malt
10oz Chocolate Malt
4oz Roast Barley
(To make an extract version, replace the 2-row with 4-5lbs of pale liquid malt)

2oz Fuggle Hop Pellets AA 4.4% (about 9 HBUs)
6oz de-oiled peanut butter (see the bottom)

Do an infusion mash at 154 for 60 minutes, raise to 170 to end enzyme conversion and sparge the grain.

Boil for 60 minutes.
Add 1oz Fuggle and 4oz de-oiled peanut butter at the start of the boil.

Add 1/2oz Fuggle and 2oz peanut butter at 30 minutes

Add 1/2oz Fuggle and Irish Moss after 45 minutes

Cool and transfer to a fermenter for a week.

My ale yeast died on me so I ended up using Oktoberfest lager at ale temperatures - this worked surprisingly well, but I wouldn't recommend it. Any regular ale yeast should work fine for this.

Rack to a secondary; be careful not to rack any oil that may have floated to the top of the beer. Leave in the secondary 5-7 days, re-rack ever 2 days after that until you no longer have oil on the surface (you shouldn't have an oil after the first rack, but it depends on how good a job you did de-oiling the peanut butter).

Prime and bottle or keg. Let condition at least 2 weeks before serving.

--------------

De-oiling peanut butter

Buy a jar of natural peanut butter (the kind without stabilizers that has an inch of oil floating on top).

Poor out the oil and leave the jar on its side on a counter. Every day or 2 open the jar and poor out the oil that has collected, and stir the peanut butter together.

After 5-6 weeks the peanut butter should be very crumbly and oil will no longer be rising out. That's when it's ready to use.

Improved Spiced Cider

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:01:00 +0000

I tweaked my spiced cider recipe from last year and it's even better now. It's got a wonderful apple flavor with a good balance of spices and some residual sweetness. It only takes about 2 hours from start to finish and there’s just enough time to make this for the holiday season, so get brewing.

Women will flock to your house to drink this - it is the perfect beverage to serve the beer hating women in your life.

5 Gallons of Sweet Cider
10 Stick of Cinnamon
1 tps cloves whole
1 tps nutmeg powder
1 tbs all spice whole
8oz light brown sugar
8oz honey

Throw everything into a big pot and heat to 170 degrees. It is important not to go over 175 or your cider will end up cloudy.

Hold the cider at 170 for about 10 minutes, turn off the heat, and bring the temperature down to 75 for pitching.

Strain out the Cinnamon and other undissolved spices and put into a fermenter.

Pitch with White Labs Cider Yeast.

Wait a week, rack to a secondary. Wait 2-3 more weeks, bottle or keg with table sugar as a primer (to keep the cider gluten free). I recommend a high carbonation level with this one, the residual sweetness and high carbonation will give the cider something of a champaign feel. Let it condition for 2-3 weeks and serve.

Peanut Butter Porter was a hit

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:57:00 +0000

My peanut butter porter was a hit at brewtopia. Despite some connoisseurs noting the presence of sulfer (a side affect of lager yeast fermenting at a very warm 68-70), the whole batch was gone in 2 hours. We had to disappoint dozens of people who came over to us specifically looking for the peanut butter porter.

While I'm certain the popularity was due entirely to the rarity of a genuine Sleezy Sherm product being offered to the public, there might also be some lessons there for the other brewtopia participants.

Brewtopia is a general beer festival, and as I wandered around I realized that I have had over 2/3rds of the 300 beers being served. Blue moon is a nice wit, and Chimey is always excellent, but I didn't stop at their booths because I've had them before and their products are easily available in New York when I want them again. Even breweries like Rouge and Dogfish Head didn't bring anything that wasn't available in my supermarket.

So, some small part of the success of the porter, and the other homebrewer's beers might have been because we were unique. There were no other peanut butter beers, no other lemongrass beers, and no other spruce beers (even though I know Rouge makes one). The beer festival circuit in Boston is theme based - Belgian Beer Fest, Extreme Beer Fest, and American Beer Fest which provides more focus. As Brewtopia grows and expands I suspect the New York festivals will also become more focused.

Anyway, a good time - if you missed it, you should make sure to go to the next one in April and support New York beer festivals.

I'll post the improved peanut butter porter recipe in a bit.

Thank you Brooklyn Brewery!

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 20:34:00 +0000

Last week Brooklyn Brewery held a launch party of sorts for their new beer trivia game. I went because 3 hours of all I can drink Brooklyn Monster (barely wine), Black Chocolate Stout (Russian Imperial Stout), and Christmas Ale for $25 was a research opportunity I couldn't pass up.

Really, I was doing research - I wanted to learn...uhm...stuff...about...things...

Anyway, the important thing is that I was not going just to drink cheap!

So, given that they were launching a trivia game, they had a beer trivia contest. I won 4 cases of beer (and won a case, 2 glasses, a hat and a t-shirt for my friend).

The moral of this story? I think it's that Brooklyn Brewery makes some good beer, they have good events, and when the greatest non-existent brewery in the city suckers the biggest brewery in the city out of beer, they pay up.

All ready for Brewtopia

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 13:26:00 +0000

I kegged the Peanut Butter porter last night, and you can smell the peanut butter in the nose this time.

As for the taste - it seems to have an oddly light mouthfeel (not surprising given the lager yeast) but otherwise seems ok.

We'll all know for sure in 3 weeks.

Sometimes it all goes horribly wrong

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:31:00 +0000

I have the beginnings of a great story of salvaging beer - but right now I'm just at the disaster part.

On Sunday I was making a second batch of my Peanut Butter Porter for Brewtopia - and everything was going poorly.

My new grain mill was making a mess, not cracking some kernels, turning others into flower, and doing it all very very slowly. As you might expect, all the bad milling resulted in a stuck sparger - after an hour I had about 1 gallon of wort. So I ended up having to stir the bucket nearly continuously for 3 hours, leaving me with a very cloudy brew.

I finally finish up at 2:30am, throw the brew kettle in the sink to cool and go to sleep.

At 5:00am something wakes me up. Not knowing why I had woken up I go to answer nature's call, and see a note being slipped under my door. It's from my downstairs neighbor informing me that my shower pipes are leaking onto her ceiling and I need to shut off my water until the plumber arrives.

That's when I see and smell the puddle of wort on the floor - I had left the sparger's tap open, and the mash had become unstuck and leaked a gallon or 2 of wort onto my floor, and apparently onto my neighbor's ceiling. By the time I finished cleaning that up I realized that there was no way to play dumb and let the plumber rip up my floor looking for non-existent leaks, so in the morning I left a note under my neighbor's door apologizing and offering to have her apartment cleaned.

And the final thing? 24 hours after pitching my yeast I see no activity, the surface of the wort is completely still, the yeast was dead. The only other yeasts I've got are Oktoberfest and Hefenweizen - which one of those do you think will make a better porter?

So, it is the beginning of a great beer disaster recovery story - if you want to taste how it ends you'll have to come to brewtopia and try the New York Noble Peanut Butter Porter - or whatever it turns out to be.

So you want to ride the train…

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 13:56:00 +0000

I visited my brother in Boston last week, and picked up 3 more kegs from the local homebrew store. Because of the timing, I was going to have to take Amtrak home rather than the $15 Chinatown bus.

This was a problem because while the Chinatown bus is pretty relaxed - Amtrak has security guards. I got to the train station a little early expecting a hassle - but I walked right by 3 clusters of Boston police with my kegs, and they didn't say anything.

But you should have seen the private security guard's eyes light up when he saw me heading down the platform to actually get on the train. After a couple questions (what are those, why are you taking them on a train) I took the initiative of opening up the empty kegs to prove that they were empty (because I'm clearly so big and strong that I can swing 50lb full kegs around like they're 5lb empty kegs) - and I was allowed on the train.

Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 22:21:00 +0000

I've been slogging through this book for a while, and finally finished it over the long hot summer.

If you are a technically minded brewer you need this book, it has detailed information that will let you design a recipe for any of the major styles of beer. If you are more of an artistic brewer, this book will put you to sleep. It is very chart heavy, with statistical analysis of the recipes for award winning homebrews.

In addition it also has information about most varieties of hops, a guide for hitting your target gravity during the brewing process, a guide for water modification, and others.

Overall, I'd say if you have any desire to brew to style, you should buy this book. If you are more of a free spirit and don't want to be tied down, put your money into another batch of beer.

Buy it here

Start me up!

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 22:12:00 +0000

Made 2 starters yesterday for my upcoming Oktoberfest and a Hefenweizen - yes, I'm not starting my Oktoberfest until October, that happens some time.

I made this year’s spiced cider a little early and racked it to the keg - I tweaked the recipe, cut some spices, added honey - I'll post if it turns out well.

Getting 3 more kegs next week which will allow me to bring production back up to its usual levels, and let me figure out if it will be a 3 or 4 tap keggerator.

Most famous non-existent brewery in New York City

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 20:15:00 +0000

I got written up in the village voice back in August, but I forgot to post it on the site.

With that kind of press, I'm going to declare myself the most famous non-existent brewery in New York City. Anyone want to challenge me for the title?

It lives!

noreply@blogger.com (jeff) — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 09:45:00 +0000

As I mentioned earlier I have built a keggerator, which is a refrigerator that has had its food loving soul scooped out and replaced with a beer swilling demon. This was a simple honest refrigerator, without all the modern bells and whistles like an icemaker, self defrosting, or a separate freezer door and I have turned it into a beast with arteries of co2 and veins of beer.

The shelves that once held wholesome milk have been removed to make room for kegs, the door shelves snapped off to make room for their distended round bellies. You don't even want to know what happened to that vegetable consorting crisper - let’s just say that vegetables looking for crisping are no longer welcome.

We drilled holes in the door, filled them with shanks and taps to allow easy access to the beer. We did not ask the fridge if it wanted it's A sized front increased to a stainless steal D, this was done for our pleasure, without regard for the fridge's wholesome image.

There is no lightweight co2 regulator in the heart of this beast, but a medium duty monster from a welding company. Consider the fact that they would call something medium duty and that the instruction manual had lots to say about arc-welding and o2-cutting torches but nothing at all about beer and you will know the beast's cold industrial heart.

We have transformed this wholesome refrigerator that was kicked to the curb for being old and ugly into one sexy beast!