The Koehler Brewery

The hops just keep growing. The largest plant is now one of the Cascades which overtook the Centennials this past week. It is almost 10 feet tall. The other plants are between 7 and 8 feet tall, except for the second Cascade plant which is just barely 5 feet tall. I’ve got 2 Cascade plants; one of them is the largest and one of them is the smallest. I wish I knew why.

Both the Cascades and Centennials have begun to sprout hop cones. They look like little spiky shower heads. The Cascades are definitely ahead in terms of the number of cones. The largest plant has at least 100 of these things on it, which I hope means an abundant harvest. No cones on the Newports at all and the very beginnings of some cones on the Willamettes.

One more developing cone picture, this time on a Centennial.

Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen pours a hazy yellow with a creamy persistent head. The aroma is of bananas and cream, sweetness like a banana candy or syrup, and a mild lemony citrus smell. The palate opens with light creamy banana, and follows immediately with a mild citrusy lemon flavor. Where the banana is dominant in the aroma, the lemony malt dominates the flavor. The beer is well carbonated, which contributes to its mouth feel. A mild tartness completes the palate.

I’m not a big fan of wheat beers. UFO is no exception, though I find it to be milder and thus more tolerable than other hefeweizens. I just don’t like the banana or lemon flavors.

We had another round of Friday beer at work.

Garde Dog poured an orangish tan with ample head and very visible carbonation. Grape dominated the aroma, with a background of berries and straw/grain husks. The flavor opens with grapes, an almost wine like taste, followed by a belgian-like carbonation and finishes with a light malty sweetness. Definitely not what I expected from biere de garde and certainly not what I expected based on the label. I liked it. Check out Flying Dog online.

I made another self-made sampler pack from Frugal MacDoogal from Fort Collins Brewery. They have had Fort Collins beer for a while now, but I just got around to trying them out. We tasted these the same day we tasted the beer from Great Divide Brewing. As you can tell from the slowly degrading quality of the bottle pictures, the amount of beer we drank up to this point may have impacted our ability to accurately judge the beer. Alison was officially drunk.

Major Tom’s Pomegranate Wheat pours a pale yellow with a light head and heavy, audible carbonation. The aroma is yeasty and smells lightly of berries. The palate opens with ample carbonation on the tongue followed by a soapy flavor, some tartness, and a light tang in the aftertaste. Not great.

Z Lager pours and reddish/tan color with a clear aroma of grain husks, smoked beech wood, and kalamata olives. I can distinctly smell the beech wood. The flavor opens with toasted malt, then merges bitter and beech wood smoke together in the middle of the palate, and ends with that same kalamata olive flavor from the aroma. Geoff first identified the kalamata olive aroma in this beer, and once he said that, I could clearly smell and taste olives. I actually didn’t dislike this beer, which is what I anticipated from myself after having recently tried smoked beer for the first time. I think I enjoyed the lighter character of the beech wood smoke over the darker smoke flavor of the O’Fallon smoked porter I tried. Perhaps I just tolerate smoke better in a lager than in a porter. I’d like to try this again sometime as a full pint.

Rocky Mountain IPA pours an orange/copper color with an ample head and plenty of hop aroma. Citrusy C hop aroma clearly present with grapefruit dominant followed by tangerine. The palate is moderately bitter for an IPA, not excessive, and the finish is mostly dry with just a hint of sweetness. The dryness of the finish is much like a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Bitterness builds in the aftertaste. This is a good example of a standard American IPA, no complaints. This was clearly the best of the tasting session of Fort Collins and Great Divide beers.

With the ongoing hop shortage people are looking for other ways to bitter their beer.  Here’s an interesting idea from the East Germans as documented in the New York Times back in 1991.

“They convinced us that to be competitive, we had to brew under the German beer purity law,” Mr. Funk said. “And they created marketing and advertising concepts for our products. Before unity we used to put cattle bile in our beer to give it the bitter flavor of hops, which we couldn’t always get.” The brewery now spends $533,333 annually on advertising, compared with $6,666 under Communism.

Cattle bile does sound bitter.

I was at Frugal MacDoogal’s last week and picked up a self-made sampler from Great Divide Brewing Company. I hadn’t seen Great Divide beers for sale in Nashville before, so I thought I would give them a try. I ended up with a couple of bottles of Samurai Ale, Wild Raspberry Ale, and Denver Pale Ale.

Geoff, Alison, and Charlotte came over and we had a tasting session. It’s way easier to taste beer with a group of people. You don’t have to drink the entire bottle, so you can taste a far greater variety of beer. I’m also willing to try things I might not otherwise try since I don’t have to drink the entire thing. It’s nice to discuss the beers; it makes it much easier to develop an opinion when you can talk about what you are tasting and smelling.

Samurai Ale poured a very pale, hazy yellow with a minimal head and plenty of fizzy carbonation. The aroma is lightly grainy, but there is only a slight aroma at all despite all those bubbles. The drink opens with a slight, clean sweetness, but generally resembles water. A slight fruity flavor develops and the drink ends with some bitterness. I assume the clean/watery body is a result of the rice used in brewing the beer. It has that distinctly Budweiser feel. I’d say this tastes a lot like a slightly hoppier Budweiser despite being an ale. Not very exciting.

Wild Raspberry Ale poured a reddish-purple and looked remarkably like a glass of iced tea. The beer smelled like raspberry candy, sweet and fruity. The flavor is exactly like raspberry syrup but with far less sweetness and with a light body; I’d say it tastes something like raspberry Kool-Aid. Stephanie thought it tasted like raspberry cough medicine with a lighter body. I think I’ve had too many things flavored with raspberries (candy, medicine, whatever) to really enjoy a beer flavored with them. Pass.

Denver Pale Ale pours an orange, tan color with a moderate head. The aroma smells like canned vegetables, which I understand to be DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide), a common off flavor/aroma in beer. I’ve always wondered about DMS, but I smelled it clearly in this beer. I think it smelled mostly like canned green beans. I got zero hop aroma. Maybe there was something wrong with the bottles I bought, as I find lots of discussion of hop aroma and no discussion of DMS on RateBeer. The beer opens with hop bitterness followed by a light malt body and finishes with bitterness in the back of the mouth. Basically, something was wrong with this beer; it tasted like a pale ale from a bad brew pub. I’d try it again to make sure I didn’t get a bad bottle, but I also think that there are enough american pale ale’s out there that all basically taste the same, and this one was not one of the better ones.

So overall I was definitely not impressed by Great Divide. I’m glad I didn’t have to drink a whole pint of any of these beers and wouldn’t really buy them again. Like I said, I might try the DPA again to verify my first impressions, but I think that I am done with these beers.

I came across this Q&A exchange between Dan Listermann and Dr. Clayton Cone regarding the proper rehydration of dry yeast and thought I would post it here. I haven’t had time to do any of the tests I want to do comparing dry yeast and liquid yeast, but I will certainly incorporate a comparison of rehydrated yeast and yeast sprinkled directly on the wort.

From: Dan Listermann
Subject: Yeast Hydration, Infusion Mashing and England

My question to Dr. Cone regards yeast rehydration. All the packages of
yeast contain instructions for rehydration yet they all ferment just fine
without it. I have to believe that such a procedure may be theoretically
beneficial, however it would seem to be margionally usefull at least on a
homebrew scale.

I own a home brew shop and a very common phone call is the ” My beer is not
fermenting.” problem. I go through the list of potential causes ( plastic
bucket lid leaks, too cold, ect.) About twice a week the caller will
indicate that he rehydreated the yeast. This is a strong signal that the
yeast has been damaged and will need to be replaced. I have come to the
conclusion that, since rehydration is not necessary to ferment beer
properly and there is a strong chance that the yeast will be damaged in a
botched rehydration, it is not desirable to recommend such a proceedure.
Just how important is rehydration and is it worth the risk?

Dan Listermann dan at listermann.com 72723.1707 at compuserve.com

Dan,
I appreciate your dilemma It is a universal problem for those that market
Active Dry Yeast.

Let me give you some facts regarding rehydration and you can decide for
yourself where you want to compromise.
Every strain of yeast has its own optimum rehydration temperature. All of
them range between 95 F to 105F. Most of them closer to 105F. The dried
yeast cell wall is fragile and it is the first few minutes (possibly
seconds) of rehydration that the warm temperature is critical while it is
reconstituting its cell wall structure.

As you drop the initial temperature of the water from 95 to 85 or 75 or 65F
the yeast leached out more and more of its insides damaging the each cell.
The yeast viability also drops proportionally. At 95 - 105 F, there is
100% recovery of the viable dry yeast. At 60F, there can be as much as 60%
dead cells.

The water should be tap water with the normal amount of hardness present.
The hardness is essential for good recovery. 250 -500 ppm hardness is
ideal. This means that deionized or distilled water should not be used.
Ideally, the warm rehydration water should contain about 0.5 - 1.0% yeast
extract

For the initial few minutes (perhaps seconds) of rehydration, the yeast
cell wall cannot differentiate what passes through the wall. Toxic
materials like sprays, hops, SO2 and sugars in high levels, that the yeast
normally can selectively keep from passing through its cell wall rush right
in and seriously damage the cells. The moment that the cell wall is
properly reconstituted, the yeast can then regulate what goes in and out of
the cell. That is why we hesitate to recommend rehydration in wort or
must. Very dilute wort seems to be OK.

We recommend that the rehydrated yeast be added to the wort within 30
minutes. We have built into each cell a large amount of glycogen and
trehalose that give the yeast a burst of energy to kick off the growth
cycle when it is in the wort. It is quickly used up if the yeast is
rehydrated for more than 30 minutes. There is no damage done here if it is
not immediatly add to the wort. You just do not get the added benefit of
that sudden burst of energy. We also recommend that you attemperate the
rehydrated yeast to with in 15F of the wort before adding to the wort.
Warm yeast into a cold wort will cause many of the yeast to produce petite
mutants that will never grow or ferment properly and will cause them to
produce H2S. The attemperation can take place over a very brief period by
adding, in encrements, a small amount of the cooler wort to the rehydrated
yeast.

Many times we find that warm water is added to a very cold container that
drops the rehydrating water below the desired temperature.

Sometimes refrigerated, very cold, dry yeast is added directly to the warm
water with out giving it time to come to room temperature. The initial
water intering the cell is then cool.

How do many beer and wine makers have successful fermentations when they
ignore all the above? I believe that it is just a numbers game. Each gram
of Active Dry Yeast contains about 20 billion live yeast cells. If you
slightly damage the cells, they have a remarkable ability to recover in the
rich wort. If you kill 60% of the cell you still have 8 billion cells per
gram that can go on to do the job at a slower rate.

The manufacturer of Active Dry Beer Yeast would be remiss if they offered
rehydration instructions that were less than the very best that their data
indicated.

One very important factor that the distributor and beer maker should keep
in mind is that Active Dry Yeast is dormant or inactive and not inert, so
keep refrigerated at all times. Do not store in a tin roofed warehouse
that becomes an oven or on a window sill that gets equally hot.

Active Dry Yeast looses about 20% of its activity in a year when it is
stored at 75 F and only 4% when refrigerated.

The above overview of rehydration should tell you that there is a very best
way to rehydrate. It should also tell you where you are safe in adapting
the rehydration procedure to fit your clients.

Clayton Cone.

Sweetwater Georgia Brown pours a reddish dark brown with a minimal head. The aroma is of malt. I get lots of caramel and nuttiness with hints of banana in the aroma. The flavor is again malty, with plenty of caramel and nuttiness, but with a hint of chocolate malt in place of the banana aroma. The body is relatively thin for such a malty beer; perhaps this is due in part to the very light carbonation. There is a very slight bittering quality in the drink that fades quickly, leaving a malty taste in the mouth.

I just bought some Schlafly Summer Kölsch for a Friday afternoon of hanging around at work.  We’ve been trying to enjoy ourselves a little more at the office and relax for a change. I figured I might as well try some new beers while someone else is buying.

I also tend to write way to much in these beer reviews. I’m going to try to keep it under control from here on out, if I don’t I think I’ll stop writing reviews because they take too long.

Summer Kölsch pours a pale golden color with an average head. The aroma is sweet like orange blossom honey and smells a bit like freshly picked grapes. The flavor is light, lemony malt. The bitterness is light but more than I expected for a kölsch, but I haven’t had one in Köln in 5 years, so I’m not sure how good my memory is. The body is light and the carbonation is fine bubbles and tingles the tongue. This is definitely an easy drinking summer beer.

The hops keep on growing. These are my two Centenntial plants in the foreground with two Newports behind them; behind the picture are two Willamette and two Cascade plants also in pots. The Centennials are out-pacing the other plants so far. They were the first to sprout and have been the fastest growers after sprouting. I also have a larger number of bines on the Centennials plants than I do on the others. I’m not sure why that is the case, but I assume it has something to do with the variety as I am basically treating all the plants the same.

One of the most common searches people use to find my blog is ‘growing hops in pots’, with people often trying to find the correct size of pot to use. I’ve got eight plants in two different size pots. The Centennial and Newport plants shown here are potted in 12″ plastic pots from the hardware store. The Willamettes and Cascades are planted in 16″ pots. I was originally only going to have the four 12″ pots, but ended up getting four more rhizomes to plant. I decided that bigger was better, and the 12″ pots were looking pretty small to me once I the rhizomes had started to sprout. From general reading about hop online, I suspect that even the 16″ pots are too small for the hops to grow to their full potential. I can only wait and see. This is my first year growing hops, so I certainly have things to learn.

I am using pots because I don’t have a place to grow the hops at home at the moment. My backyard is both too small and is sort of under construction at the moment. Once it’s all sorted out, I might be able to have a few plants there. So I have the hops growing at the office up the side of an old silo. They get lots of sun and have plenty of room above them to grow. Part of the deal is that I have to keep them in pots so that they are relatively contained and can be removed at the end of the season. This is fine with me as I’d like to take them home someday as well.

Since they are growing in pots and have relatively little soil for nutrients, I have been watering them daily with Miracle Grow solution. I use a 1 gallon water jug to water the 8 plants once a day, so each plant is getting about 1/8 of a gallon of Miracle Grow water per weekday plus whatever rain they get naturally. I’m not in the office on weekends, so they have to fend for themselves. I try to give them 2 waterings on Friday, but I generally forget in the rush to get home for the weekend. I might have to start watering them twice a day when they get bigger. I’ll be checking for any leaf damage or stunted growth to determine if they are lacking nutrients. I’m also considering switching to a bloom fertilizer once they plants stop growing foliage and start growing hop cones so that I can maximize production.

Again this is my first year growing hops, so take my processes with a grain of salt. So far, they seem to be working just fine, but I’ll not really know how successful I have been until the fall.