Try Some Cool New Hops!

hopunion

It's like a party in your mouth and everyone's invited!

MORE NEW HOPS TO TRY! 
Come get 'em, while supplies last:
GERMAN MANDARINA BAVARIA
GERMAN POLARIS
GERMAN HULL MELON
GERMAN HALLERTAU BLANC

EL DORADO

CALYPSO

DANA
APOLLO
AUSTRALIAN SUMMER
ORGANIC CHINOOK

---GERMAN MANDARINA BAVARIA---
Pedigree: Daughter of Cascade
Brewing Usage: Aroma
Aroma: Distinct tangerine and citrus flavors
Additional Information: Bred at the Hop Research Institute in Hull and released in 2012
Alpha Acids
7.6
Beta Acids
5.0 - 6.5%

---GERMAN POLARIS---
Pedigree: Hull breeding line
Brewing Usage: Aroma
Aroma: Intense floral and pleasant mint tones
Additional Information: Bred at the Hop Research Institute in Hull and released in 2012
Alpha Acids
18.1%
Beta Acids
4.5 - 6.0%

---GERMAN HULL MELON---
Pedigree: Daughter of Cascade
Brewing Usage: Aroma
Aroma: Distinct fruit characteristics including honeydew melon and strawberry flavors
Additional Information: Bred at the Hop Research Institute in Hull and released in 2012
Alpha Acids
6.3%
Beta Acids
7.3 - 7.9%

---GERMAN HALLERTAU BLANC---
Pedigree: Daughter of Cascade
Brewing Usage: Aroma
Aroma: Floral and fruity with passion fruit, grapefruit, pineapple, grape and lemongrass overtones
Typical Beer Styles: American-style Ale
Additional Information: Released in 2012
Alpha Acids
7.6%
Beta Acids
4.5 - 5.5%

---EL DORADO---
Brewing Usage: Dual Use
Aroma: El Dorado hops consistently elicit responses of fruity notes, specifically tropical fruit flavors. Other fruit notes offered have been pear, watermelon candy and stone fruit.
Typical Beer Styles: American-style Ale
Alpha Acids
15.7%
Beta Acids
7.0 - 8.0%

---CALYPSO---
Brewing Usage: Dual Use
Aroma: pleasantly complex fruity, citrusy aroma, hints of pear, apple, sweet lemon lime brilliance, as well as notes of earthy tea, hints of unique tropical fruit aroma.
Typical Beer Styles: American-style Ale, Stout, and Barley Wine
Alpha Acids
15.3%

---DANA---
Brewing Usage: Dual Use
Aroma: hop with a lemony, pine, and floral aroma
Typical Beer Styles: American-style Ale, Euro-style Ale
Alpha Acids
12.3%

---APOLLO---
Brewing Usage: Bittering
Aroma: hop with an intense,  pleasant  citrusy,  orange, resiney and spicy aroma.
Typical Beer Styles: All beers with a big hop profile.
Alpha Acids
18.0%

---AUSTRALIAN SUMMER---
Pedigree: Open pollination of a tetraploid Czech Saaz
Brewing Usage: Dual Purpose
Aroma: Balanced citrus, melon and light apricot tones
Typical Beer Styles: Ale or Lager
Additional Information: Bred by Hop Products Australia at Tasmanian Bushy Park Breeding Garden in 1997
Alpha Acids
5.5%
Beta Acids
4.5%

---CHINOOK---
2oz Organic Chinook hops from a small, independently owned hop farm in Palisade Colorado.
Brewing Usage: Dual Use
Aroma: Slightly spicy and very piny with some grapefruit
Typical Beer Styles: US-style Pale Ale, IPA, Stout, Porter, Lager
Alpha Acids
10.2
Beta Acids
3.0-4.0

A Stout History

1759 - Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease on an unused brewery at St. James’s Gate, Dublin. It costs him an initial £100 (about $147 US dollars) with an annual rent of £45 (about $66 US dollars) - this includes crucial water rights. The brewery covers four acres and consists of a copper, a kieve, a mill, two malthouses, stabling for 12 horses and a loft to hold 200 tons of hay. Arthur begins brewing porter and ale.

In honor of the St. Patrick's Day holiday we thought we would cover that classic beer style; the Stout. Although there are many stout styles outlined by the BJCP, there is one that is more prolific than the others, and we can thank the Irish for it.

American Stout
OG: 1.050 – 1.075, IBUs: 35 – 75, FG: 1.010 – 1.022, SRM: 30 – 40, ABV: 5 – 7%

Foreign Extra Stout
OG: 1.056 – 1.075, IBUs: 30 – 70, FG: 1.010 – 1.018 SRM: 30 – 40, ABV: 5.5 – 8%

Sweet Stout
OG: 1.044 – 1.060, IBUs: 20 – 40, FG: 1.012 – 1.024, SRM: 30 – 40, ABV: 4 – 6%

Oatmeal Stout
OG: 1.048 – 1.065, IBUs: 25 – 40, FG: 1.010 – 1.018, SRM: 22 – 40, ABV: 4.2 – 5.9%

Russian Imperial Stout
OG: 1.075 – 1.115, IBUs: 50 – 90m FG: 1.018 – 1.030, SRM: 30 – 40, ABV: 8 – 12%

Dry Irish Stout
OG: 1.036 – 1.050, IBUs: 30 – 45, FG: 1.007 – 1.011, SRM: 25 – 40, ABV: 4 – 5%

Of Course the Dry Irish Stout has been popularized by that iconic Irish brewery, Guinness. So how did the Irish (dry) stout come to be so popular? Well, stout is actually a relatively new type of ale for the Irish. Some kind of red ale is mentioned in am 8^th century poem about Irish ale, among other beers from the around the Emerald Isle, but sadly the poem makes no mention of a Stout or other dark roasted barley beer. But the Irish have a long history of beer. Old Irish laws required farmers to have brewing equipment and room for malting beer, just so they would have beer on hand in case they had to entertain nobles. Laws also required brewers to adhere to specific malting practices. Seems like the Irish were even more strict about their country's beer production than the German's Reinheitsgebot.

While there are mention of red and brown ales in the UK before 1772 it seems like dark toasted malt wasn't used in excess until the invention of the malt roaster in 1817 made a smooth black malt available. The history of the stout starts a bit earlier though and in fact were not stouts at all, but porters. It is generally accepted that porters date back to 1722 and a London Brewer Ralph Harwood who made what was called an “Entire” which was a blend of different beers. Many believe this blend became popular with the dock workers and quickly became known as “Porter”. This already strong beer eventually broke into different variants of color and alcohol content; “export”, “stout, and “extra stout”. These British porters quickly made their way across the water to Ireland (and other parts of Europe), and large breweries put their own spin on it using their own yeast strains and local water. The Irish generally used mostly pale malt with just enough roasted malt to darken the beer, and with the porter's popularity growing, Guinness doubled down on the porter by excluding all other styles by 1799.

The Irish Stout was further defined by Ireland's tariffs on barley which lead to a lower gravity porter. The use of black malt lead to a darker smoother beer, and the Guinness version of the Irish Stout was born, and through shipping, marketing, and production volume (the Guinness brewery was the largest in the world for a time), their version of the Dry Stout became synonymous with the style itself like Budweiser is to the Standard American Lager.

So even though St. Patty's day may seem a bit trite, go ahead and drink an Irish stout and know that there is some very real history in your mouth.

Sláinte mhaith!



Want to know more about the Guinness Brewery:
http://www.guinness.com/en-us/thestory.html

Hop Rhizomes

Planting, harvesting and using your own hops can be a fun and rewarding hobby. They smell good, and can look nice growing up the side of a fence, trellis or patio, especially if you don't mind the company of s few bees.

You can pre order your Rhizomes now for planting in March, and while they don't typically produce much there first year, you could be experimenting with "wet" hop additions next summer.

Not sure what a Rhisome is, or what to do with them. Here is a bit of info to get you acquainted:

Hop rhizomes are a cut from the root of an established hop plant. They must not be allowed to dry out before planting, need well drained “workable” soil, lots of sunlight and need approximately 4 months of frost free growing for fully developed flowers. Well established plants may require a couple of growing seasons, but can produce around 2 pounds of hops per vine under the right conditions.

Planting – you can plant your rhizomes horizontally or vertically 1-2 inches below the surface in fertilized soil. If the rhizome has started to bud, orient the plant facing the bud towards the surface. Hops like the sun and grow quickly, so a Southern exposure works best and separate multiple plants 3-5 feet apart to avoid tangling. Do not let the soil get overly dried out. Frequent short watering is recommended.

Growing – While a first year plant may only need a 6-10 foot support system (stake, fence, wire,
etc.) mature healthy plants can grow 20+ feet under the right conditions, but for the home grower 10+ feet of support will work just fine. The hop plant is durable and can survive harsh winters. The plant will die back to just the bottom stock in the fall and grow back in the spring. Pruning back to the stock is recommended at this time during the first growth.
Picking/Harvesting – Once the hops are most fragrant and before the first frost it is time to pick the cones from the vines. The cone's “petals” will be papery and fragrant when crushed. Sticky yellow powder should be evident, as this is the lupulin produced by the cone and what is responsible for the bitterness used in brewing. A little bit of browning is normal for mature cones. Pick from the top of the plant first and work your way to the bottom. Dry the hops while avoiding direct sunlight before storing. The hops are dry when the inner part of the cone is brittle. Hops degrade when exposed to oxygen, heat, and light, so store your dried hops in a cold dark place with little exposure to oxygen. Packing tightly in a ziplock back and storing in a freezer works great, but vacuum packing in oxygen barrier plastic is ideal.

Usage – When growing your own hops, your Alpha and Beta Acids will not be known, but should fall within the range specified for that specific plant type. You will need to get a feel for the bitterness through some testing. Undried "Wet" hops require a 6:1 ratio by weight as compared to hop pellets. Dried hop cones have a 1:1 ratio in weight to hop pellets, but of course the voume of Wet or Dry hops will be much more than pellets.

Pitch Rate and New Yeast

While most of this information has been covered in previous posts, we have a new product on the shelf that we wanted to highlight, and it is always good to go over things that are important. There is a new player in the liquid yeast scene. GigaYeast, Inc. "laboratory was opened in July 2011 to create perfect.... And by perfect we mean the right yeast, the right pitch rate and no detectable contamination.”

We have picked up GigaYeast as a product for a couple of reasons; One, they offer some yeast strands that are not available from both Wyeast and White Labs, and Two, they provide a real pitchable yeast for the consumer without the need for a starter, for most 5 gallon batches of ale.

Putting the correct amount of yeast in your beer can be one of the easiest ways to eliminate off-flavors. However, it is probably one of the most common oversights by the home brewer. Most people like the variety available in liquid yeast, and feel like it is a better product than the dry counterpart, but the fact is, the large Wyeast pack and the standard Whitelabs vial, contain about half the necessary yeast for clean start to fermentation for a 5%, 5 gallon batch of ale. Doing a yeast starter is a great way to use liquid yeast correctly, but many beginners are intimidated by them. Giga Yeast has twice as many yeast cells at the time of packaging as their liquid yeast counterparts, which is ideal for many beers.

We of course recommend figuring out what your correct pitch rate should be for any beer before adding your yeast. While pitching yeast is a fairly straight forward process, there is a bit of mathematical magic happening in the background that has to do with keeping your yeast cells happy and healthy. But, since math is hard and magic doesn't exist, let's make this as easy as possible, first we need to find how many degrees Plato your beer wort will be. Like specific gravity, Plato is just a measure of density, and approximating Plato can be done by taking the numbers after the decimal of your Original Gravity (O.G.) and dividing them by 4. So, an O.G. of 1.048 would be 12 degrees Plato (1.080 would be 20 degrees Plato). Once you know how

to find Plato you can easily find your pitch rate using one of the below:

Find Plato, double that number, add a zero after it, and then say billion after that... it's easy. “My recipe is going to have a 1.048 O.G, so 48 divided by 4 is 12, double that is 24, or 240... Billion”. Subtract 25% for ales, or add 25% for lagers.

Or, an even shorter version; calculate Plato, then times that number by 15. That is it for ales. Double that number for Lagers.

Sanitation Iodophor vs. Star-San

A question we get a lot in the store is why to use a no rinse sanitizer, and whether or not the One Step or PBW is a sanitizer at all. So, I thought I would cover those very common questions.

Unlike other posts, I will be slanting this towards the products we sell in the store and giving my opinion based on what I have use, seen, and read about. It seems there are neverending threads on forums on whether or not Bicarbonate cleansers such as PBW, One-Step, and B-Brite work as a sanitizer, but for the purposes of this post, I will just say they are NOT sanitizers. Yes, it used to be. Yes, it kills microbes. Yes, people use it as a sanitizer successfully. But it is not classified as a sanitizer any longer because it doesn’t kill enough microbes. They also leave a film and granules behind that I wouldn’t really want in my beer or wine, which means you need to rinse it… and if you are rinsing you are reintroducing microbes.

So, we recommend treating your equipment like a commercial kitchen treats their dishing and cookware. Clean (with cleanser), Rinse (with water), Sanitize (no rinse sanitizer).

Since One-Step, PBW, and B-Brite are virtually the same thing and are all really good at removing organic material, you could go with whatever one you would like with similar results, but there are a couple popular no rinse sanitizers that are fairly different, so here is an over vew of Both:

Iodophor

This is an iodine based sanitizer that is great for home brewers. There is no real Iodine smell, and if diluted properly, should not affect the taste of your beer either, but if you have a severe iodine allergy, I would probably stay away from it. The main benefit of this product is price. It is a bit cheaper than Star-Stan.

Dilution: 1oz to 5 gallons

Contact Time: 1 minute

Dry Time: None

Min Cost/Oz: $.66

Star-San

Built specifically for the home brewer, this product is acid-based and uses a low PH to kill microbes. The diluted solution will quickly degrade in the presence of beer (wort) and break down into yeast nutrient. It is a bit more expensive, but you can keep the diluted solution around for several weeks (as long as the PH says below a 3) and reuse it, which makes up for the added cost. This product also produces a lot of foam, which turns some people off, but in my experience has never caused any off flavors or issues with fermentation.

Dilution: 1oz to 5 gallons

Contact Time: 30 Seconds

Dry Time: None

Min Cost/Oz: $.70

We suggest trying both products to see which one works best for you, but because of the longevity we give the edge to Star-San.

In full disclosure there are other products, such as Caustic soda, sodium hydroxide and lye which are a VERY effective cleaners for organic solids but rather dangerous to use without protection and not very friendly to the environment.

CyBeer Monday (Through Friday)

 Give the gift of brewing this Holiday Season with Salt City Brew Supply! This Basic Brewing Kit is a great way to start Homebrewing 5 gallons of beer, and this week you get free ingredients also!

Includes all of the following equipment:
- 6.5 gallon primary fermenting bucket with lid (drilled for airlock)
- Bottling bucket (6.5 gallon) with spigot (3/8" opening)
- Rack and fill kit (auto siphon, siphon hose, bottle filler)
- Air lock
- Adhesive thermometer
- Triple scale hydrometer
- Beer bottle brush
- Twin lever capper
- Oxy-based Cleanser
- True Brew basic brewing handbook

 

Plus, pick one of the following ingredient kits FREE!*

      

*Available online only. One promotional ingredient kit per equipment kit purchased at full price.
Not valid with other offers. Ends 12/6/13

Time To Parti-Gyle

Have you ever brewed a large beer, say an Imperial Stout, or Imperial IPA, or maybe even a Barley Wine, and felt a little guilty throwing out that large grain bill when you finished making your beer? Some people compost, some people feed their chickens, some people put it in bread, and while these ideas are all fine and good, I personally make more beer with it.

You may have heard the term “parti-gyle” before, but wasn't sure what it was, or it sounded like some new-fangled process to make all grain brewing more complicated. Well, in fact, it is a very old and traditional way to brew, dating back hundreds of years, and with some math and some practice it is a great way for you to walk away from your brew day with not one, but two beers in the fermenter(s).

Historically brewers would mash and lauter the same grain bill several times producing a batch of wort and subsequent beer with each individual mash. Most likely this is where the Belgians got their terminology for their Trapist ales; Trippel (highest alcohol first runnings), Dubbel (high alcohol second runnings), and Pater or Table Beer (low alcohol third runnings). And, in early American colonies beer was made for sale at taverns, but “small” beer was made from the second runnings which was consumed by workers and even children as to avoid drinking the water which was often considered unfit to drink. Since the total potential of the original grain bill was known as a “gyle”, the process of splitting or partitioning the runnings became known as “parti-gyling”

Today, the homebrewer typically just sparges the grain after the initial mash and combines the first runnings (mash) with the second runnings (sparge) producing a full gyle. So why do it differently? Well, because two beers are better than one, and if you don't think so, you are probably reading the wrong blog... And since you bought all that grain with your hard earned money, why don't you get the most out of it.

Practically speaking, there are a few different ways to use a parti-gyle brew day.

One: you can just keep sparging your grain until your runnings hit a gravity of 1.010 rather than to a specific volume size. Depending on the grain you are using you can maybe pull out double the volume of beer you would have got otherwise. But remember that if your grain bill was built for a 5 gallon batch of 1.060 beer, that will be the gravity of the first 5 gallons. If you run out another 5 gallons at say 1.020, then your combined 10 gallon gyle will yield a 1.040 beer. As you can see, there are lots of gravity readings required. This is impractical for a hydrometer. Get yourself a refractometer.

Two: Make a grain bill for your Imperial Stout/Porter/IPA etc, then continue to sparge until your runnings hit a gravity of 1.010 but make it a true pari-gyle and keep them separate. How you split it will be entirely up to you. Maybe split it in thirds for three similar beers but with varying alcohol, or maybe keep one an imperial, and the other a small session beer.

Three: After one of the partitions add some adjuncts or specialty grain to your mash for a different beer from your second (or third) runnings. Just add some roasted barley and flaked oats to your grain to turn what was an Imperial IPA first runnings into a small stout second runnings.

Pretty awesome right? Are you asking yourself, “why haven't I been doing this since I started brewing?” Well there are a couple of reasons it can be a hassle, and it isn't for everyone. Sorry extract brewers, I don't think your way is inferior, but you just can't play here. The next biggest hurdle is your ability to brew and ferment two beers (or three) at once? Two burners, two kettles, two fermenters. Otherwise you are looking at a tremendously long brew day. Fortunately for me I have my old extract equipment so I usually brew a 3 gallon Imperial on the stove top and my 5 gallons session beer on my regular equipment. The other downside is the math. It isn't rocket science, but once you figure out what you are doing it will still take some practice to get the process down to something you are comfortable with. I will provide some more detail in a subsequent post on the mathematics of a parti-gyle, but don't wait for me. Jump in with both feet and make a couple of beers during your next brew day. Don't worry, it will make beer. We are happy to help you with this in the store also.