PACIFIC GRAVITY CASK ALE PROJECT WITH LA ALEWORKS!

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GamsBart_BFosters_Simmzys_06-300x199Everyone-

Two quick announcements.  First, Los Angeles Ale Works (LAAW) is going to have a cask of their latest beer on tap tonight at City Tavern in Culver City. Tonight’s beer will be a cask of their latest beer Dampfmaschine (California Common with Rye) where Magnum hops have been added to the Cask.  One of the latest trends in the commercial beer industry is for craft breweries to offer 5 gallon casks of their beers spiked with additional ingredients.  The great thing about these beers is that they offer a unique presentation of beers produced by your favorite breweries.  This past January Smog City hosted their first Battle of the Cask where they were serving a Porter in 5 different casks as a competition between employees at the brewery.  LAAW has poured a variety of casks at different bars around Los Angeles to coincide with releases of different beers from their lineup.

Second, LAAW has offered to start a semi-regular project with Pacific Gravity.  Pacific Gravity recently purchased our own Pin cask to be used by club associates as well as for collaborating with LAAW.  With LAAW, we will occasionally host a competition within the club where homebrewers will submit their idea’s for ingredients to add to a cask of LAAW beer.  The winning flavor combination will be selected by Kip and John and will be served at a bar here in Los Angeles.  This will be an awesome chance for club members to have a beer on tap at a bar that they had a part in creating – something that is a dream for a lot of us.  This event will only be open to club members who are paid in full for the 2014 year – so make sure you get your dues in tomorrow night (or ASAP) so you can have a chance at winning the first competition.

At April’s club meeting we will be distributing ingredient forms to all associates who are in attendance and have paid for their 2014 club membership.  The next beer that LAAW is going to brew is their Lievre Saison with kumquats and some additional subtle spicing.  It should make for a perfect beer to start this fun project.  I could see some cool cask hopping ideas for that beer, or even additional spicing.

For now, here is a quick blurb the guys at LAAW put together for us to describe their beer that will be serving on cask TONIGHT at City Tavern as well as info about their cask projects:

From LAAW:

Dampfmaschine is a California Common style beer with rye and finished with magnum.  It has a persistant bitterness and a sikly mouthfeel.  The cask that will be at City Tavern tonight 3/19 is dry hopped with magnum, which will help bring to light even more, this amazing german hop.

We’re really excited to be collaborating with Pacific Gravity on this cask project.  This will be a great opportunity for us to get the word out about the club and serve beer in bars the club helped to make.  We’re always open to having people visit us during our brew day as well so if anyone is interested in coming down to Ohana when we make our monthly beer, let us know.  We’ve been collaborating with local restaurants and our Kickstarter backers as well to help us select the special ingredients.  Whether it’s an extra hop addition only or the addition of tea and spices, we’re really up for trying anything.  Obviously balance is key and bringing the club out to taste the beer is also a huge plus. A Pin hold 5.5 gallons of naturally carbonated beer.  We would love to have Pacific Gravity help choose the special ingredients that go into the cask.  We’ll put the PG logo on the cask head along with whomever chooses the winning ingredients.

Here’s an example of what goes into one of our casks.

          • Yeast – re-pitch main yeast into cask
          • Priming Sugar – Cane, Turbinado, Palm, Jaggery, Beet, etc
          • Special Ingredients – hops, tea, spices, herbs, cocao beans, coffee, etc

We typically make casks 10-14 days after the beer goes into the fermenter.  The only draw back will be that you’ll have to be creative if it’s a new beer style we’re doing as we won’t have the base beer for you to try.

Once it’s tapped, it must be consumed quickly – 12-24 hours is best.  If we can get the club out to the event, the bars are more likely to continue doing cask events with us – quickly emptied casks mean they get their money and no beer goes to waste.  We’re open to pouring at most bars as long as they are okay handling a cask.  City Tavern has agreed to carry our casks on a semi regular basis so this is an easy location and probably the location of the first PG tapping.

Here is a link to the website for the Campaign For Real Ale – http://www.camra.org.uk/ – where you can read more about cask ales.  Thanks everyone, see you tomorrow night at CCHBS @ 7:30pm!

Brian
President  | Pacific Gravity Homebrew Club

PACIFIC GRAVITY CLUB MEETING (MARCH 20th) **Reminder**

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Here’s a friendly reminder about coming to our March Club Meeting @ CCBS! It’s club dues time. So please bring cash our check to Ramesh to receive your new membership cards and the benefits that come with them! For our commercial STOUT tasting Ian has been digging up and awesome selection…so bring your best homebrewed STOUT to compare!

CLUB MEETING | Thursday March 20th, 2014  | 7pm | Culver CIty Brew Supply
link:  http://pacificgravity.org/event/pacific-gravity-club-meeting-march-20th-2014-culver-city-brew-supply

Cheers!

Kingsley | VP

 

FIRST FRIDAY! | APRIL 4, 2014 | GULP! (WESTWOOD)

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Hello Pacific Gravity members!

This year is going by fast! Our next FIRST FRIDAY will be at GULP in Westwood!

The owners of the old Bourbon Street Shrmp have switched gears and have opened a new Gastropub. The food there is pretty damn good and thier draft selection is an impressive mix of local craft and others beyond the state line. Some great belgians in the mix as well.

So join us on Friday, April 4th and check out what GULP has to offer.

GULP
10928 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064
(310) 474-0007
www.bourbonstreetshrimp.com

AHA NHC Competition Entries Due Friday 3/14.

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Just a quick reminder that AHA entries that are going to San Diego are due at the Culver City shop by the close of business Friday  March 14th (7:00 PM.)

If your entries are going anywhere else, you need to ship them off ASAP.  Beers must arrive at their destination by March 17th.

Good Luck!
Carl Townsend
Competition Coordinator

Pacific Gravity Sour Beer Project

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I am really pleased to officially announce for those of you who didnt attend or could not hear me at the Monster Brew on Saturday @ Smog City that the club is starting up a new project for 2014.  One of the many things the board has discussed this year so far is starting up a few new brewing projects throughout the year.  Our first of these projects was to brew a “clone” of Firestone Walker’s PNC this past New Years Day.  Our intent with that project is to be able to barrel age a beer for the club that will be served at the Christmas Party later this year.

Project #2 is a larger project.  Inspired by the beers from Brussels we decided to take the opportunity presented by the monster brew this past weekend @ Smog City to purchase 60 gallons of wort and innoculate it with different types of yeast, wild yeast and other microorganisms in a 60 gallon wine barrel.  Not many of us have the space, money or brewing capacity to brew enough beer to fill a 60 gallon barrel.  For those of you who have wanted to do this in the past but were unable to brew to that scale you will now have an opportunity to participate in this experiment.

The guys @ Phantom Carriage graciously donated a wine barrel to the club for this project and offered some great insight into the process we should

Details on the barrel donated by Phantom Carriage.

Details on the barrel donated by Phantom Carriage.

follow.  For those of you who don’t know, two of our fellow homebrew club associates – Martin Svab and Simon Ford – are two of the guys behind one of LA’s newest breweries.  They have secured a lease on a facility in Carson – about 10 minutes or so from Smog City and Monkish – which is set to open sometime in the next year and will offer tons of awesome small batch beers.  So a big thank you goes out to the guys at Phantom Carriage for their barrel donation and advice, along with Smog City supplying the wort from their Monster Brew to make this project happen.  I also want to thank Kingsley for offering to house this barrel in his garage for the next year.

We are still working out a lot of the details on how we will divide up this project among the club brewers, but at some point in the next year we will divide up an undecided amount of this barrel to homebrewers who are eager to participate.  Ideally brewers will be able to hold onto their portions for as long as they feel the beer needs to mature, or they can add fruit and other flavorings.  Ideas and recommendations are welcome because we have plenty of time until this thing is finished.  Unfortunately there will not be enough for everyone to get their hands on some of it – but over the next few months we will figure out a way to divide it up between those interested.

For now, even though our experiment is technically not a Lambic, the idea of fermenting in the barrel is based off of the processes employed by Lambic producers like Cantillon.  Here is a writeup from the form handed out to visitors of Brewery Cantillon about the first stages of fermentation with their traditional lambic:

Barrel Store

In contrast to winemaking, the type of wood used to make casks is not of critical importance in Lambic production.  For the brewer, the wood is necessary to allow the beer to exchange gases with the surrounding air.  Since there is no need for the tannins present in new wood, we only work with casks which have already been used by winemakers or, more rarely, Cognac producers.  Slowly maturing Lambic in barrels lends it a wine-like flavour, and this lies at the origin of its moniker “cereal wine”.

Invented by the Gaul, wooden barrels were used by brewers for centuries.  Nowadays, however, modern breweries use stainless steel vessels and cooling systems to control the fermentation process.

Fermentation

After a few days, the wild yeasts reacting with the sugars in the wort results in spontaneous fermentation.  At first, the fermentation process is relatively violent and visible.  In fact, for 3 or 4 days the production of CO2 is such that the barrels cannot be sealed because there is a risk that they might otherwise explode.  As part of the process a whitish foam comes out of the bunghole and this can lead to a loss of 5 to 10 litres of wort per barrel.

Maturing

Slow fermentation begins 3 to 4 weeks later.  As there is no longer a risk of explosion the barrel is hermetically sealed.  It is at this point that Lambic is born.  Continued fermentation, which is an extremely complex process, will now go on for another 3 years.

To date, 100 different strains of yeast have been identified in Lambic, with two of them, Brettanomyces Bruxellensis and Lambicus, playing a very important role.  Specifically, they assimilate non-fermentable sugars (dextrins) and reduce the sugar content of 3 year old Lambic to just .02%.

Unlike winemakers, Lambic brewers do not top up barrels to counter the effects of evaporation.  Therefore, after 3 years of maturing in a barrel some 20% of the original liquid will have been lost and the sellable volume contained in a cask will have dropped from 400 to 320 litres.  To protect themselves, certain types of yeasts agglomerate to form a film (flora) which completely separates the beer from the air in the barrel.

Lambic can be drunk after just a few weeks but a brewer will have to wait a year to have a more refined beer which can be used for making more elaborate products (Gueuze, Kriek, etc.)  Like all liquids matured in wooden barrels, Lambic does not foam (cereal wine).  Its acid taste, unique flavours and aftertaste make it a very complex product which is quite distinct from all other beers.

For our project, we scraped together the following assortment of bugs and yeast for the barrel project:

I built up a 3 gallon starter on Monday 3/2/2014 with an OG of 1.035 made with Wheat Malt Extract and pitched the WY3788 and WY1214 smack packs.  On Friday night before the Monster Brew we added the Brett, Pedio, Bug Farm and Bug County.  We pitched the entire 3 gallons of starter into the barrel after adding the first 30 gallons.  Below you can find pictures of the barrel after 24 hours of fermentation.  It definitely foamed out the top!  We placed a #10 stopper with an airlock in the barrel – this stopper is slightly smaller than the standard bunghole which will allow the stopper to be popped out of the barrel easily if it builds up too much pressure.  I am going to add wort from a mostly raw wheat and 2-row mash next weekend to add some starches to the wort composition.  Once active fermentation stops we will replace the small stopper with a more standard stopper for long term aging.

If you have any questions about this project please don’t hesitate to post about it here on our website or you can contact me @ president [at] pacificgravity.com

Brian.

 

Competition Corner – March, 2014

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As the Ides of March approach, it is time to check up on the homebrew competition schedule.    If you have entries for the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrew Competition, here are the submission instructions.

For the San Diego region ONLY, you may drop off your entries at the Culver City shop no later than Friday, March 14th. .  (Note new address:  4234 Sepulveda Blvd, next to Dominoes Pizza.)  Mike Patterson has volunteered to hand-carry them to San Diego.   For any other region, you will need to ship your entries.  The regional addresses can be found here: http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/national-homebrew-competition/competition-information/.  All entries must arrive by March 17th, regardless of site.   Also, if anyone is interested in judging in San Diego, I’ll be driving down for the Friday and Saturday sessions on April 4th and 5th.

Results are now out for America’s Finest City homebrew competition, hosted by QUAFF.  Congratulations are in order for Mike Patterson  for Flanders Red (3rd place) Kingsley Toby and Brian Holter for their Sled Dog Imperial Stout (3rd place) and Carl Townsend for his Earthquakes are Common (2nd place).  Full results can be found  at http://www.quaff.org/AFC-2014/.

Looking into April, registration is now open for Mayfaire hosted by the Maltose Falcons.  Entries are eue April 10th at the Culver City Shop.  On-line registration is up and running at http://www.maltosefalcons.com/comps/2014Mayfaire.  Please sign up to judge and steward too; they will need our help.   Judging will take place on Saturday April 26, 2013 9:00 AM at St Martins in the Fields Church 7136 Winnetka Ave Winnetka CA, 91306 (click for map).

Also due in late April is the California State Fair.  We are looking for a road trip volunteer to deliver these entries, so if you are interested, please contact me at Competitions@PacificGravity.com.

Looking ahead we will be tallying wins in the same set of competitions as last year, though please note the AHA “club-only” series has been discontinued.   If you are hard-core competition junkie, there are a bazillion other contests to enter.  The AHA has their master list at http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/competitions/aha-bjcp-sanctioned-competition/.

2014 Pacific Gravity Brewer of the Year Competition Schedule

March 14th:         AHA Nationals entries due at the Culver City shop for San Diego ONLY.
March 17th:         AHA Nationals entries due by shipping by all other sites.
April 10th:             Mayfaire entries due at the Culver City shop
April Date TBD   California State Fair
July                        Los Angeles County Fair
September         Pacific Brewers Cup
October               California State Homebrew Competition

Smog City Monster Brew – Last Minute Notes

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Here are a couple last minute reminders for the Monster Brew at Smog City Brewery tomorrow morning:

Parking:  Porter wants us to park behind the brewery on the West side.  The back door will be open. This will free up spaces in front of the brewery for the tap room crowd.

Payment:   Please check in with Ramesh our treasurer and get your ticket(s) for the wort pour.  If you haven’t already dropped off your payment, bring cash or check ($30 per batch) to the brewery.

Buckets: Please pre-sterilize your bucket.  If you need to buy a new bucket, Tim Bardet will have a couple for sale. NO GLASS and NO Narrow-neck bottles.  Corny kegs are OK.

The entire batch has been allocated, so we cannot take any more wort reservations.  You are welcome to come see the process even if you are not buying wort.

TIME & LOCATION

The event will be starting EARLY, at 7:30AM. If that is too early, you may show up by 12 noon and still get your pre-purchased wort. Of course, you’ll not get to take part in the actual brewing. Projected ending time will be between 2-3 PM.  Smog City Brewing Company is at 1901 Del Amo Blvd., Ste B, Torrance, CA 90501

FOOD

Smog City will have coffee, bagels, pastries, etc. for breakfast.  In addition, Porter has arranged for Serendoggity Hot Dog cart to arrive at 11:00 AM.  They have amazing hot dogs and sausages at $4-6 for extreme yumminess.

 

PACIFIC GRAVITY CLUB MEETING | March 20th, 2014 | CULVER CITY BREW SUPPLY

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Hello PG Members!

Just like ‘ol times! This month’s Pacific Gravity Meeting will be held @ Culver City Brew Supply’s new location!

Join us and get updates on club business, events, and other beer-centric items.

COMMERCIAL TASTING:   This Style of the Month is STOUT! We have some good commercial samples in the mix and will be adding to then in the foillowing weeks! Bring your best homebrewed stout and share with fellow members!

THE RAFFLE IS BACK!  We have some new items that are a must have for any homebrewer! Get some tickets and good luck!

So come on down to Culver CIty Brew Supply, get some ingredients for the weekend, share your best hombrew, and join the experience.

MARCH 20th, 2014, 7:00pm-10pm.

Culver City Home Brewing Supply
4234 Sepulveda Blvd
Culver City, CA 90230
310-397-3453
CCHBS@yahoo.com

 

Smog City Monster Brew Update!

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Everyone-

Small update.  As of this morning we still have a number of spots open for the Monster Brew this Saturday.  If you haven’t signed up yet for your wort, please email competitions@pacificgravity.com to sign up so you can reserve your spot.  We opened up the monster brew to other homebrew clubs in the area this morning to make sure we go through all of the wort – so I am sure spots will fill up fast so get your reservations in asap!

The rest of the information pertaining to this event can be found by clicking on this link – CLICK!  You can also review Carl’s recipe specific post on what the recipe is going to be along with suggestions on how to modify your wort HERE.

Here is a copy of the recipe:

  • Kolsch Malt – 550lbs – (67%)
  • German Pilsner – 220lbs – (27%)
  • Wheat Malt – 55lbs – (7%)
  • Summit – 32oz – (FWH)
  • Tettnang – 50oz – (15 min)
  • Hallertau – 48oz – (Flame Out)
  • Target OG – 1.052
  • Target SRM – 4
  • Target IBU – 25

The recipe that we are brewing is really the perfect canvas for a monster brew – I really cant wait to see what everyone comes up with individually.

Just a reminder about fermenting vessels.  At the Congregation monster brew last year we had a difficult time filling all better bottle (or other plastic type carboy’s with small openings) carboys due to the small opening at the top.  We are dealing with a large volume of wort along with hoses that are larger than typical homebrewing hoses which adds to the difficulty.  To avoid problems like we experienced last time we are not allowing skinny neck containers – please only bring fermenters that have large openings like plastic buckets or cornelius kegs.  Absolultely NO GLASS is allowed.

There will be breakfast provided by Smog City and the Serendoggity Hot Dog cart will be there around 11am.

Thank you again to Smog City for hosting this event, its going to be an amazing event.  Get your reservations for wort in!

-Brian

How Do I Modify My Smog City Monster Brew?

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This Month’s Question:  How do I modify my wort from the Monster Brew at Smog City Brewing?SmogCityLogo

 

Answer:

I hope you are all planning to join us at Smog City Brewing Company’s First Annual Monster Brew, Saturday, March 8th, 2014, from 7:30 AM to 2 PM hosted by our very own Jon Porter.  See the main article about the logistics for the day. We’ll be brewing up a batch of Kölsch-based wort.  Where it goes from there is up to you!  We’re hoping to have as many variations on the theme as possible for upcoming events such as the Southern California Homebrew Fest, club meetings and summer party.  Read more →