A few months ago I announced my intention to start a short blog series on long-aging beer, in a post where I outlined a couple of my more recent vintage brews. This was followed by a review of THE book any brewer serious about brewing vintage beers (or collecting commercial vintage beers) must have in their library, In this, the third post in this series I will go over some of the rules for designing, brewing and aging these beers.
The ideas in this post are largely my own, but as I mentioned in the aforementioned book review, the reading of Patrick Dawson's "Vintage Beer" was key to crystallizing these ideas in my mind, so I'd like to encourage my readers once again to buy this amazing book.
This is going to be a long post, so the details can be found below the fold.
Thursday, 15 January 2015
Friday, 2 January 2015
A Year in Review
Its officially 2015, so happy brew-year everyone! I thought I'd use my first post in 2015 to look back at 2014...
The good...
Lots of good things happened this year. My wild yeast collection activities and yeast identification methods are up and running smoothly. I had a number of rather successful brews this year - most of which I posted here. Both my blog and youtube channel are getting a lot more hits - 75,000 and 10,000 hits respectively last year.
The bad..
2014 was not as busy a year for me as 2013. A rather pathetic 15 batches were brewed this year - 18 if you count the wine kits I did along the way, 16 (or 13 if you discount the wine) if you subtract the two infected brews I had this year. My blogging was also down - 11 fewer than 2013. Hopefully we can pick up both those numbers this year.
The ugly...
As mentioned in "the bad", I had my first (non-deliberately) infected beers this year in over a decade. That sucked...and it hurt even more as the infection was something I brought home from work with me. In addition, for the first year since 2008, I failed to hit the 400 liters of brewed goodness mark (roughly equivalent to 100 US gallons).
Some quick stats:
My Favourite Beer Blogs of 2014:
The good...
Lots of good things happened this year. My wild yeast collection activities and yeast identification methods are up and running smoothly. I had a number of rather successful brews this year - most of which I posted here. Both my blog and youtube channel are getting a lot more hits - 75,000 and 10,000 hits respectively last year.
The bad..
2014 was not as busy a year for me as 2013. A rather pathetic 15 batches were brewed this year - 18 if you count the wine kits I did along the way, 16 (or 13 if you discount the wine) if you subtract the two infected brews I had this year. My blogging was also down - 11 fewer than 2013. Hopefully we can pick up both those numbers this year.
The ugly...
As mentioned in "the bad", I had my first (non-deliberately) infected beers this year in over a decade. That sucked...and it hurt even more as the infection was something I brought home from work with me. In addition, for the first year since 2008, I failed to hit the 400 liters of brewed goodness mark (roughly equivalent to 100 US gallons).
Some quick stats:
- Most popular posts of 2014:
- #1: This months post on how Brettanomyces trois (WLP644) is likely a Saccharomyces, not a Brettanomyces. 5900 hits in three weeks.
- #2: 2013's post on identifying yeast by ribosomal sequencing.
- #3 & 4: 2013's posts on making Belgian candi sugar (Posts 1, 2).
- #5: 2013's post on making a sour-mashed Beliner weiss.
- Top Traffic Sources: Google (7%), Reddit (4%), Home Brew Talk (2%), Jeffrey Cranes Blog (1%), Bootleg Biology (1%) and Canadian Homebrewers (0.5%).
- Top Viewing Countries: #1: USA, #2: Canada, #3: Ukraine, #4: Germany, #5: UK
- Top Youtube Videos:
My Favourite Beer Blogs of 2014:
In no particular order...
- Shut Up About Barklay Perkins
- |Brülosophy|
- St. Johns Wort
- Life Fermented
- The Mad Fermentationist
- DC Yeast Lab
- The Mark of the Yeast
- Eureka Brewing
Most Ordered Yeast From My Yeast Bank:
- #1&2 (tied): Russian River Sanctification (#69 & 70, Commercial Bank)
- #3: Conan/Headdy Topper (#80, Commercial Bank)
- #4, 5, 6 (tied): DCYeast 01/02/03 (#6, 7 & 8, Wild Yeast Bank)
- #7: Brettanomyces claussenii (#109, Commercial Bank)
- #8: Bells Brewery Yeast (#19, Commercial Bank)
- #9: Berliner Weiss Blend (#132, Commercial Bank)
- #10: Thames Valley (#20, Commercial Bank)
Here's hoping that 2015 exceeds 2014 in every way - in my brewing & in yours.
Bryan
Sunday, 28 December 2014
New Video! Identifying Wild Yeast & Bacteria
Finally, the last video in my "Hunting Wild Yeast" video series is complete. In this, the third and final video, I briefly discuss some of the things you can look for when assessing yeast/bacteria growing on an agar plate, in order to avoid potentially dangerous organisms and to increase your odds of identifying something good.
Both videos are based off of this years wild yeast hunt, whose methodology and results are summarized over two blog posts.
Both videos are based off of this years wild yeast hunt, whose methodology and results are summarized over two blog posts.
Friday, 26 December 2014
Book Review: Vintage Beer by Patrick Dawson
You'll notice that I said "beer book" not "brewing book", because nowhere in the pages of this book will you find brewing tips or recipes, nor any discussions of bringing commercial-scale processes into the home brewery, nor any discussion relating to home brewing ingredients, scales or methods. Despite this, this is one of the most important home brewing books I've added to my book collection in many years. This book is a must have for any home brewer who brews - or is thinking of brewing - long-aging beers.
Confused? This apparent contradiction is explained below the fold...
Friday, 19 December 2014
A small step...maybe
After a month of bad press the "owner" of our major alcohol distribution system - e.g. the government - finally appears to have noticed that there is a problem. Although whether they perceive the problem as being an unfair system that increases costs while decreasing selection, or merely one of bad press, is yet to be seen.
But at least our Premier, Kathleen Wynn, has said that the system is unfair and "will be changed".
Of course the big brewers are crying like babies, and making up stories about how competition is somehow going to lead to prices going up by ~15%...
But at least our Premier, Kathleen Wynn, has said that the system is unfair and "will be changed".
Of course the big brewers are crying like babies, and making up stories about how competition is somehow going to lead to prices going up by ~15%...
Monday, 15 December 2014
Brett Trois - A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.
So recently a youtube viewer of mine (Dan Aba, whose youtube channel you need to check out if you haven't already) turned me onto a Facebook group dedicated to sour beers. Lo and behold, the first thread I see on the forum is one claiming that Brettanomyces trois is actually a Saccharomyces yeast! This info didn't just come from nowhere; Lance Shaner of Omega Yeast Labs sent of the strain to a friend for sequencing, and the sequence came back Saccharomyces. Unfortunately, the sequence quality was poor and the sample appears to be a mix of two strains - so I thought it was time to do my own investigation.
The process I followed was fairly straight forward:
The process I followed was fairly straight forward:
- I grew up B. trois from my yeast bank, overnight in a 37oC shaking culture - 1.040 wort + penicillin and streptomycin (to ensure a bacteria-free culture, not because my stocks are dirty)
- I took some images to assess morphology of the yeast
- I isolated some DNA and sequenced the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) and part of the small (18s) rRNA gene to identify the yeast, using an optimized version of what I was doing in my previous posts.
So what did these experiments show? . . . . . . . Answer (and details) below the fold.
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
The Conspiracy - Revealed
This is another of my Ontario-centric rants about beer distribution in my province - so my non-local readers may want to pass this post buy (unless you want to see just how crazy things here are). In Ontario beer is distributed via two government-maintained channels. A government owned/run LCBO chain of stores, and a foreign-owned beer monopoly (the beer store) whose monopoly is maintained via government fiat.
The system is flawed beyond belief; the beer has a secret agreement with the LCBO that gives it a near monopoly on beer sales; the LCBO is limited to some pretty strange rules when it comes to the selling of the beer. And the beer store takes advantage of their position - by using a series of extremely expensive "listing fees" the beer store ensures that small brewers cannot complete with the brewers who own the beers store (InBev, Saporro, Molson-Coors). It costs $77,000 to have the beer store carry a single product in a single format across all their stores. Meaning if a brewery wants to sell the same beer in a 6-pack and 12-pack format, it'll cost them $154,000. Obviously, those fees are deadly to small breweries, and all-but-prevents the distribution of 1-off and seasonal brews that are the lifeblood of most craft brewers. And even with this power, the owners still engage in underhanded marketing to further suppress the craft brewing industry.
The big mystery for beer consumers has been why the LCBO doesn't compete in any meaningful fashion with the beer store. There is no legal limitations that would prevent this, and yet the LCBO limits itself to selling singles and the odd six-pack of beer. In some ways the LCBO is more open to craft brewers - but in place of exhoberant listing fees, the LCBO instead has a series of asinine labelling rules and an excessively slow and convoluted listing process. That aside, the question remains why doesn't the LCBO complete.
The answer has finally been provided by The Star, thanks to a whistleblower. The leaked document shows that the LCBO and beer store have a secret non-competition agreement meant to keep the LCBO from competing with the beer store (with no apparent gain for the LCBO). Indeed, a former head of the LCBO has complained (without revealing details) about how this agreement was forced on the LCBO, apparently by government ministers.
Sounds fishy...if not outright corrupt.
At least now we know why the LCBO doesn't compete with the beer store and offer a meaningful second option to craft brewers. Whether this revelation will mean anything in terms of reform (or even better, outright privatization) is yet to be seen. But at least the agreement is now out there under public scrutiny.
The system is flawed beyond belief; the beer has a secret agreement with the LCBO that gives it a near monopoly on beer sales; the LCBO is limited to some pretty strange rules when it comes to the selling of the beer. And the beer store takes advantage of their position - by using a series of extremely expensive "listing fees" the beer store ensures that small brewers cannot complete with the brewers who own the beers store (InBev, Saporro, Molson-Coors). It costs $77,000 to have the beer store carry a single product in a single format across all their stores. Meaning if a brewery wants to sell the same beer in a 6-pack and 12-pack format, it'll cost them $154,000. Obviously, those fees are deadly to small breweries, and all-but-prevents the distribution of 1-off and seasonal brews that are the lifeblood of most craft brewers. And even with this power, the owners still engage in underhanded marketing to further suppress the craft brewing industry.
The big mystery for beer consumers has been why the LCBO doesn't compete in any meaningful fashion with the beer store. There is no legal limitations that would prevent this, and yet the LCBO limits itself to selling singles and the odd six-pack of beer. In some ways the LCBO is more open to craft brewers - but in place of exhoberant listing fees, the LCBO instead has a series of asinine labelling rules and an excessively slow and convoluted listing process. That aside, the question remains why doesn't the LCBO complete.
The answer has finally been provided by The Star, thanks to a whistleblower. The leaked document shows that the LCBO and beer store have a secret non-competition agreement meant to keep the LCBO from competing with the beer store (with no apparent gain for the LCBO). Indeed, a former head of the LCBO has complained (without revealing details) about how this agreement was forced on the LCBO, apparently by government ministers.
Sounds fishy...if not outright corrupt.
At least now we know why the LCBO doesn't compete with the beer store and offer a meaningful second option to craft brewers. Whether this revelation will mean anything in terms of reform (or even better, outright privatization) is yet to be seen. But at least the agreement is now out there under public scrutiny.
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