This is the fourth attempt at my summer citrus pale ale.

Last year, I brewed three varieties of a pale ale with lots of citrus peels and experimental hop additions.

For the sake of science, here are the three previous recipes:

Citrus Pale I

6lb US Two-row pale malt

Filtered water + 1/2tsp Calcium Sulfate (CaSO4/Gypsum) in both the Mash and Sparge (6qt Mash, 15qt Sparge)

2oz Cascade pellets 5.5%AA, full boil

1oz Citra whole cones, 20min

1oz Citra whole, 5min

1oz Amarillo whole 8.5%AA, whirlpool (after the heat of the boil is turned off)

4 Dried orange peel + 1 dried lemon peel, 10min

Mash temp 152-156* for 60min

Boil for 90min

Saf-Ale S-05 American Ale yeast pitch at 84*

Citrus Pale II

5lb US two-row pale malt

1lb Flaked wheat

1lb Rice hulls

Filtered water + 1tsp CaSO4 in the Sparge water (6qt Mash, 14qt Sparge)

1oz Cascade pellets 5%AA, Full boil

1oz Centennial whole cones 10.3%AA, 20min

1oz Centennial whole, 10min

1oz Chinook whole 13.8%AA, Dry hop

5 Dried orange, 2 limes, 2 lemon peels, 10min

Irish moss 1 pinch, 10min

Mash 155* for 60min

Boil for 90min

Saf-Ale S-05 American Ale yeast pitched at 84*

Citrus Pale III AKA Wedding Ale AKA Ball and Chain Ale AKA I Told You Guys I Wasn't Gay Ale

6lb US Two-row pale malt

1lb Carapils

1/2lb Rice Hulls

Filtered water + 1/2tsp CaSO4 in the Mash (7qt Mash, 14.5qt Sparge)

1oz Cascade pellets, Full boil

1oz Centennial whole cone, 20min

1oz Centennial whole, 5min

1oz Amarillo whole, whirlpool

9 dried grapefruit + 1 lemon peel, 10min

1 pinch Irish moss 10min

Mash at 152-154* for 60min

Boil for 90min

Saf-Ale S-05 American Ale yeast pitched at ~78*

This last one was the recipe that I had served at mine and Stephanie's wedding. After the ceremony and pictures I urgently told the bar tender to reserve a few bottles for myself as I had only brought 24 beers for 60+ guests. I got a few compliments on the "hefeweizen" that I brewed, even though it didn't have any wheat in it. It turned out a bit cloudy, so I could see that mistake. It was tasty though.

Citrus Pale Ale IV

6lb US Two-row pale malt

1lb Carapils

Filtered water + 1/2tsp in both the Mash and Sparge (7qt Mash, 13.5qt Sparge)

1oz Centennial whole cone 10.5%AA, Full boil

1oz Centennial whole, 60min

1oz Cascade whole 8.9%AA, 30min

1oz Cascade pellets 7.4%AA, 15min

1oz Amarillo pellets 8.7%AA, 10min

5 dried orange, 3 lemon, 3 lime peels at 15min

Blended pulp and juice from 3 orange, 1 lemon, 1 lime at 10min

4 pinches of Irish moss at 10min

2tsp crushed Coriander at 10min

Mash at 145-160* for 60min (I can't explain this range, it's just what I got...)

Boil for 120min

White Labs WLP001 California Ale liquid yeast pitched at 78*

Hopefully this one turns out worlds better than the others. The large quantity of Irish moss I added is already evident in the clarity of the fermenting beer. The whole hops which floated freely in the boil with the citrus peels and Coriander smelled like a warm Spring day with flowers blooming all around and sunscreen on my sunburned skin.

The alchemy begins!

Delectably pale grains

Sparging

Nice and pale

Pre-boil gravity check. This beer is going to be a beautiful pale.

Whole hops in the boil

Rinsing the wort chiller

Crushed Coriander smells really good! I'm glad I crushed it near the beginning of this process, I kept smelling it and it made me happy.

Celebratory finish!

A very clear fermentation. Those little floaties will fall and I may not have to do a secondary with this brew.

This brew went really well. I didn't forget

There's no doubt about one thing - Canadian brewing company Unibroue makes some gorgeous bottle labels. Their Éphémère Apple is no exception: 

Éphémère is billed as a white ale brewed with apples and other spices, but I think deep down inside it wants to be a cider. Everything about this beer hits you like a cider would: it's crisp with a spicy edge (that would be the coriander and orange peel) and was delicious after coming right out of the fridge. It's got a perfect, light aftertaste that stays on your tongue with a hint of apple/citrus sweetness. Maybe it's just the overflowing Granny Smith apples on the label, but the tartness did perfectly remind me of biting into a green apple. However, this ale doesn't overwhelm you with all the sweetness it contains. The spices and sweets here balance out nicely to make an extremely drinkable concoction with plenty of full flavor. Since I tend to drink much, much darker stouts and porters, when I find an extremely light beer done well, I really enjoy the change. I would honestly drink the hell out of this beer during Summer and wish our local BevMo carried it in six packs. We drank it in our small tulip glasses seen here and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you can see, it has a gorgeous light color and perfectly fluffy head. It's like drinking an apple tart!

I would say that if you really enjoy a well-made cider or mead, this white ale is DEFINITELY for you. It's good choice for people who want a lighter tasting beer but don't want to sacrifice flavor. 

I had decided last week, much to Stephanie’s approval, to replace the mini fridge of the kegerator with a new one. When the original fridge kicked on, it was just too noisy. I had stuck it on a timer to only be on when we were either at work or asleep, to no avail.

We’ve grown accustomed to the sounds of the freight train blaring by in the middle of the night. We’ve also gotten used to two cats waking us up with many annoyances.

This particular grievance was too much to bear.

Hence…

Shiny new fridge! After some browsing around on the internets, I found what looked to be the perfect one. What I narrowed my selection down to was the Frigidaire model FFPH44M4LM. That information may not be interesting to everyone, but some of you might find it very handy.

I made sure to ask the guy at Lowe’s if it was quiet. He told me he’s owned one for a couple years and it’s nearly silent and it still runs like a champ.

Stripped down, the freezer door and shelf were simple enough to remove with a screwdriver.

With the bulky temperature controller housing removed, two kegs fit tightly. That means no cutting into the door for proper fitting!

Now, this fridge doesn’t have the chilling element inside of it, leaving the top free of hazards and making the tap tower installation rather simple. Instead, it’s tucked away in between the inner and outer walls somewhere. After allowing the fridge to run for a few minutes, I could feel that the roof of the fridge was cold. So that’s where I determined the chilling coils must be. I carefully pried off the top plastic piece and began to carve away the insulating foam, thus exposing the elements.

After careful measuring and drilling, the tap tower eagerly awaits it’s new perch.

I replaced some of the foam I’d removed, so to give support and insulation, glued the top back on, and installed the tap tower.

Done! For now I have Airman, Hobbes, Dalmore whisky, and honey porter to encourage this project.

I’ve yet to drill a hole in the side to feed the CO2 line, so the tank sits behind the kegs for now. The digital temperature controller is currently wired up inside the fridge as well. More on that later. I got the important parts out of the way.

Salud!

This picture speaks for itself.

Fresh, cold porter in my belly... Pretty tasty too, if I don't say so myself.

There's plenty more if you want to sample it and check out this successful project.

I racked the White House Honey Porter into a keg today!

It was super easy. I don’t know why I ever bothered with bottles...

I’m sorry, bottles. Please don’t spoil the glorious beer inside each of you while I write this.

But really. All I had to do was clean and sanitize the keg, fill it with beer and purge air (oxygen) out of it with CO2. Now it sits in the sweet kegerator I built until it’s cold and carbonated and… I can drink it! Nice.

Here’s some pictures of how I did it.

Ready and waiting

Let the suction begin!

Good to the last drop.

All set! The lid is set, the oxygen has been purged and the keg stands tall in the kegerator.

To allow carbon dioxide to dissolve in the beer, it is recommended that the initial pressure be set to 30psi for 48 hours. This will allow adequate time for the beer to chill and for Steph and I to party at my dad’s house this weekend.

¡Viva Latringo!

This tasting was a grab bag. Only two beers, but worlds apart.

Spaten – Optimador

The first is a German doppelbock from Spaten brewery. The name sounds more intimidating than it drinks. Though their Oktoberfest brew is absolutely delicious, this beer is very unique. I’ve not tasted many doppelbocks, but if they’re all like this, I want more.

It smells faintly roasted with some fruity aromas invited to the party. The head is not thick, but persistent, kinda like a nagging housecat (I guess…). It has a mild mouthfeel, not too thick but the flavor of roasted malts is subtle enough to give it some body.

It tastes like munich malt. That is, it’s sweet, kind of bitter and somewhat sour. Munich malt is difficult to explain other than how I just did, but you know it’s there. It makes sense in my mind since this is a German beer. I dunno, I guess. I could drink more of this beer. In fact, I am drinking more of this beer as I write this. Beginning this review made me want more, after the fact that we tasted this brew last night.

This is a great beer to drink with a steak or with a movie.

New Belgium – Rampant

Hold up. Wait a minute. No, really. Listen to me, guys.

This beer will kick your ass. The ABV isn’t what will do it. The carbonation is not intense.

But if you like hops, Ranger IPA, or your baby smooth chest… This is not a beer for you. It makes Ranger taste like a pale ale that’s been dipped in hops, then rung out and set to dry near a field of hop vines.

This beer IS liquid hops.

It’s like five thousand pounds of hop cones were tossed into an industrial blender, liquefied, and poured slowly into a vat of ready-to-be bottled IPA already saturated with hop oils. Then it was bottled into bottles containing concentrated hop oils. Capped with a hop soaked crown. Served in a glass half full of hop cones, and kicked into your face with a steel toed boot.

Okay. So, it’s not that involved. Probably not, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. BUT I can guess what they did. I’m pretty sure they sold me hop concentrate that was meant to be added to the boiling wort in the brewing process.

The head on this beer is like marshmallow cream, and it’s just as sticky. I’ve seen beers that leave a “lacing” down the side of the glass. This beer leaves cobwebs. It must have been the insane amount of hop oils present that created this unique effect.

Okay. Enough pandering to the hop gods. This beer smells like I just opened a bag of hops I boiled in my wort for an hour. This usually comes out in a sickly green lump of cud and smells like a filled lawnmower bag of grass clippings. But better. It smells like delicious hops: Mosaic, Calypso, and Centennial hops to be precise. There must be a pound’s worth of hops in each bottle. Seriously.

The taste made Steph gasp for air and stick out her tongue like a dog with peanut butter on the roof of her mouth. That was just a small taste, barely enough to wet her lips. I really liked it. I chew on a whole hop cone when I brew, so of course I liked the liquid hop juice beer. Though, I must admit that after I drank half the bottle I felt as if I were punishing myself with the intense hoppiness. I soldiered through the punishment anyway.

Good to drink with… nothing. This beer will ruin your palate for anything. After the first taste of it, I couldn’t smell it let alone taste it. I knew it was there. But as far as I knew it was bitter water.

Enjoyable? No. Maybe. If you’re a masochist.

Delicious? Yes, once.

Worth a shot? Yes. But so is a round of Five Finger Fillet.

“The General” – Lewis Beer Co., Temecula, CA

I’m always interested in purchasing local beers I haven’t heard of yet, which is why this “All-American” Stout caught my eye. We’ve been tasting so many stouts and porters lately that at this point, some of these darker beers from microbreweries kind of get lost in the beer fray; however, this one was pretty damn enjoyable!

As you can see from the picture, the beer looks pretty on the outside: dark, smooth, and nice head after pouring. It has a fantastically sweet aroma that is followed perfectly by a bold, up-front chocolate/coffee taste. The coffee flavor bites back a little, but the bitterness is actually pretty enjoyable and very easy to sip. Depending on what you prefer with flavor, you might not like how quickly the taste hits you, but I definitely enjoyed the promised flavors being the first to hit my tongue instead of having to wait for them in an aftertaste.

And that chocolate/coffee mixture (although bold) isn’t too overpowering or syrupy. The flavors are well-balanced and they leave a nice, roasty aftertaste in your mouth. They even leave a sort of bitterness, but not the bad sort. We both enjoyed sitting and sipping on this beer for a while, and even as it warmed up a bit, the flavors didn’t diminish or change all that much. This was a nice surprise from a rather local brewery and I would DEFINITELY recommend it to lovers of chocolate stouts.

It hath arrived!

Well… technically I bought and picked it up from the Beverage Factory showroom. But nonetheless, I have a shiny new tap tower!

I was excited to install it so I did it right away.

I found the centerline of the fridge and marked it with tape. Then I aligned and taped down the template that came with the tower. I used a punch to mark the centers of the holes for the mounting screws. And…

…drilled them. I had previously felt the top surface of the fridge for any warmth after it had run for a while. Sometimes these mini fridges will have a refrigerant line running across the top that warms up and can be felt under the surface. Steph nor I would be too happy if I drilled into that. It did feel a bit warm near the rear of the top surface, so I avoided that area.

Drilling larger holes with a hole saw had to be done gingerly. Drilling too fast broke the plastic. Oops. I got it done though. Two 7/8” holes worked better for me than one large 3” hole, as was suggested.

All the way through.

Here be the inside of the fridge, with the CO2 gas line coming through in the corner.

With the kegs! It’s a beautiful thing. All I need now is a drip tray, sweet custom tap handles and some filled kegs!

Oh, and I switched which way the door opened.

Airman is there for emotional support.

Cheers!

I decided to try my hand at Steph’s Honey Porter recipe. This one is an all-grain version with a different type of yeast. Because we were told that the cause for such a pungent banana aroma and flavor most likely would have come from the yeast we used, I thought it most pertinent to try something different. And of course, I’m a huge fan of brewing with grains.

Lars at Hydrobrew could not find anything in the fermenting steps that would suggest a higher level of esters (fruity, sometimes banana-y) in the final product. These would include a high fermentation temp, insufficient aeration of the wort, or the addition of refined sugars (honey doesn’t count as being refined). The only thing he could suggest was that Danstar, the makers of the Nottingham dry yeast we used, makes a Hefeweizen yeast which may have contaminated our batch of yeast. Hefeweizen yeast strains have a tendency to produce more estery aromas and flavors. It sounds like he nailed it.

And thus…

In converting this recipe to one which does not utilize liquid malt extract for the majority of fermentable sugars, I went online to find the converted recipe. I tweaked it a little bit and came up with:

4lb 11oz US 2-Row Pale Malt

11oz Crystal 20L

9oz Munich Malt

4oz Black Patent Malt

2oz Chocolate Malt

1oz Columbus Hops (13.9% AA) – 1/2oz full boil, 1/2oz 30 minute

1oz Hallertau Hops (3.1% AA) – 1oz 10 minutes

White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP001

Filtered water with no added salts

Mash at 153* for 60 min

Boil for 80 min

Better translated into… a bag of grains, some nearby hops, and a vial of yeast.

I was eager to use my new outdoor burner that I hooked up to the gas line to my house. The flame wasn’t quite up to the task and didn’t heat the water nearly quick enough. I'm looking into utilizing a propane tank left by my courteous neighbors.

And so I moved it inside. I believe the pressure on the natural gas line is just too low to power the 60,000 BTU burner. Oh well, better luck next time.

Mashing in!

The grains are sufficiently soaked at this point. Now to sit back for an hour and let the enzymes in the grains work their magic to convert starches to delicious fermentable sugars.

I didn’t have my wonderful photographer this time, but I got the important pictures! I think. I didn’t get any pictures of the sparge, but here’s a picture of Sam instead.

These are muslin bags full of the hop additions. I had already dumped half an ounce of Columbus hops into the boiling wort without a bag. That won’t be too big of a problem, I just like to use the bags for easier cleanup and removal of the hop debris.

Once the wort boiled for about 70 minutes, I got the wort chiller set up and I tossed in the last hop addition.

Again, no pictures of the chilling process, but here’s Spoon (helper cat)!

All said and done, here is the porter wort sitting in it’s home for the next couple of weeks.

This brew will be the first to go into a keg! Stay tuned to see how that process goes, and don’t forget to stop by for a sample!

Well, I bought the critical parts of this build. I got a second keg, a CO2 tank, a regulator, beer and air lines, ball lock fittings for both kegs, and dispensers for both until I can get the coup de grace, the dual tap tower. Now I need beer!

This is most of what the kit came with. I had to buy a second air line, beer line, and ball lock fittings to account for the extra keg. I’ll split the CO2 pressure with a tee somewhere down the line.

Here’s the placement of the tank for now. I’ll most likely mount it so the cats don’t knock it down and cause a missile to launch through my house. I cut a hole in the rear to feed the gas line through.

Both kegs fit in the fridge! Some modification to the door needed to happen so that the door closed. On to that…

This took a lot of detaching/reattaching so that they would fit. Once again, my trusty Dremel came in handy. I’m thinking to tape or silicone the open insulation to make it look cleaner. I like clean edges.

And that’s pretty much it for now.

This is a short post, but holy cow did it take way more work than it seems.