Announcing: Gameday Summer Series

Planning a Summer of Love here, complete with tarot cards and palm readings. We've roughed up our summer brew schedule and are proud to announce the styles:
Blueberry Wheat
Hefeweisen
Custom Recipe American Ale
Blonde
Duvel Clone
Pilsner*

Note I don't even like half of those, but do it for the Love. So in that spirit if you have any suggested changes to the schedule let us know. We'll consider them.**

Also, Misc Alc Rainwater to debut early next week likely. A slightly modified version of our Misc Alc line. Specifically more caramel malt for richer color, more hops for the fuck of it, rain.

*don't have equipment for required temp control, so need your donations
**by consider, i mean not LOLPWNT

EMERGENCY!!! MISSING BEERS

Three Misc Alc bottles went missing yesterday and we need your help. If you or anyone you know has any information regarding these three lost beers please contact us.

What Happened
Three (3) bottles of the could have been award winning Misc Alc SNPA Clone from Gameday Brewery were shipped last week via ups from Raleign, NC to Austin, TX. Our Austin contact however received not the beer but instead a few gallons of industrial strength shoe polish.

So someone, if things work this way, was expecting heavy duty shoe polish and got three of our beers. Our beer is not shoe polish.

If you are that person, please know we will not press charges or otherwise pursue legal remedies - we just want our beer back.

Thank you.

Ask the Brewmasters

The recent surge in traffic on our blog has us thinking that some of you may have brewing-related questions that just aren't getting the answers they deserve. We feel obliged to give back to the brewing community that has given so much by offering this new column: Ask the Brewmasters. No question is dumb enough for us so ask away. The doctor is in.

First question comes from Mike and His Four Noble Truths:

Q: Any plans on attempting a lager?

A: No immediate plans, unfortunately, as we lack the necessary equipment to control fermentation and lagering temperatures. We are big Pilsner fans (Paulaner Pils especially) so logic dictates that we try it. Prognosis: lagering mini-fridge within 3 months.

Label: Misc Alc

Misc Alc debut + double blind results

Apologies to all the gameday fans out there for the delayed Misc Alc review - just been too stumbling drunk off this INCREDIBLE FUCKING BEER to write a coherent one. So here it is: A sierra nevada clone of the highest quality - quenches like water, exceptional in every way. Except that we don't have a label yet.

A good friend and fellow drunk Al drinks Sierra Nevada exclusively. Don't argue with him about SNPA being the greatest beer ever produced - he'll beat you to a bloody pulp with his sports radio argument skillZ until you finally cede, ultimately just agreeing with him that yes, sierra is indeed the mother of all things alcohol, and yes, can we please talk/argue about something else now. Like how the song we just wrote sounds EXACTLY LIKE motley crew mixed with enuff-z-nuff doing a cover of this obscure live recording of jane says from the mid-nineties.

Wait, what?

So he was an excellent subject for our Double Blind Taste Test: Misc Alc v. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. He claimed one tasted like a typical first sierra of the night, the other like a typical fourth. No discussion what second or third taste like. But he chose ours as the sierra. Meaning he FAILED. Or we succeeded, either way.

Photo is Al sleeping in the band room and dreaming of a world where the ocean is made of perfectly chilled SNPA (or indistinguishable clone holler), the wind sings sweet obscure hair metal in everyone's ears, and salary is determined by how many shits you take at work. Cheers!

THE 27 POINTS: LABEL

CONDITION DEEZ

We're good now - out of the fermenter and into our respective kegs. Breed has a real keg, full setup, very nice actually which he should live motherfucking blog about sometime. I've got the party pig which is not as high quality, obviously, but makes up for it by being the shit. Click the logo and enjoy the most god awful website you've ever seen. Bottled four as well.

We're at roughly 6% alcohol, and taste is superb, must say. No question Misc Alc will be the best batch to date. Too cold / too early / too much of a water shortage / too lazy to brew another batch today, but will get back up on it next weekend hopefully.

Misc Alc to debut a week from wednesday.
HOLLA BACK IN TEN DAY

In the can

We are in the can. yeast fully hydrated hopefully eating away at the delicious goodness we fed to them tonight. 6.5 gallons of what hopefully will turn out to be something nearly indistinguishable from Sierra Nevada (located in Chico, CA)'s Pale Ale. We absolutely fucking nailed our target color and gravity (1.049 for those of you scoring at home). This is a first for us considering that we have heretofore had to throw in a random package of dry extract ("you think this will bring our gravity needs to be?" "fuck it. throw it in"). The perfection of this month's concoction only exacerbating the pain over neglecting to add the clarifying agent at 10 minutes to go in the boil. Oh well. Hazy Sierra tastes just as good as the real thing, I suppose (hope). With any luck, by this time tomorrow we will see an explosion of CO2 pumping out of the blow-off tube in my downstairs closet. Fingers crossed.

Hoppy Hour

So, I think I may have just had a breakthrough with this whole beer brewing/connoisseur-ship/obsession thing that I've been subjected to over the past few months. My specialty in the beer brewing process is the making of hop bags. And by specialty I mean what the boys get me to do so I don't get bored and start complaining. I was making a hop bag earlier and found myself appreciating the smell of the tiny pellets, which was unusual because normally any scent involved in the beer making process makes we want to vomit. Later when I took a sip of a beer, that is apparently very hoppy, I noticed a familiar flavor that I happened to really like. Then it dawned on me that the flavor I was tasting was the same smell I was appreciating earlier. Holy shit! It's the hops! I actually discerned the flavor of hops from a beer and what's more, I LIKED IT! I've always been more of a wine-lover than a beer drinker except for the occasional Miller Lite, but I think I may have just been converted thanks to the hops. Miller Lite, Schmiller Lite.

-Cydne (Guest Blogger)

Managing the hot break

Everyone loves a chaotic hot break except for the person/s responsible for fucking dealing with it - the ones who risk nth degree burns trying to get you drunk.

Seeing as I'm one of those people, i agreed to split the cost of a much larger brewpot so we could:
- keep our skin tone
- brew more per batch

But as it turns out, brewing 7.5 gallons in a 10 gallon pot leaves about the same room as our previous amount per patch/pot volume ratio. Except this time the brewpot is much larger/heavier and is impossible for one person to handle. So we called for EVACUATION OF BREWING AREA and nerves shot up, etc, in anticipation of what could potentially be the worst hot break EVER

Turns out though simply using a spray bottle with cold water to calm down the break as it happens

HOLY FUCK OUT OF NOWHERE WITH 10 MINUTES TO GO JUST DEALT WITH SPILL OVER ON A MINII BREAK WTF

jesus

Misc Alc Pale Ale - Ingredients List

grains:
11.5 lb American Pale Malt 2 Row
1 lb Caramel malt

hops:
.4oz Magnum alpha 14% at 60 min
.5oz Pearle alpha 5.7% at 30 min
1oz Cascade alpha 7.4% at 10 min
2oz Cascade alpha 4.9% at 0 min

Yeast:
California Ale by White Labs

Water:
10 gallons deer park

Panty Hose:
1 pack

Cost:
$28

Intended Yield:
4 gallons in br33ts keg
2.5 gallons in party pig

30 minutes in, twice screwed

new brewpot so to avoid hot break madness. this one a 40qt with valve and an added temperature gauge, which we obviously need.

First step in the process is to boil ~4gallons of water to steep our grains. Important the water is at 165 degrees. Unfortunately we:
- used the tube which closes the spout for the mash tun as the tube to get the water from the brewpot into the tun (tough to follow, but basically we were pouring water into a tub, and neglected to realize tub had an open spout)
- didnt think to notice the temperature gauge is at the 3 gallon or so water line, so once water fell below that, temp gauge showed a drastic decrease which we attriburted to who the fuck knows, and just increased the propane. Once we realized, we check the temp with another thermometer, and water, of course, was near boiling at 200. Fortunately we stopped the flow once we saw something was wrong. Unfortunately, about half the water already in the grain.

the result will still be golden

Picture is said brewpot, courtesy of profit sharing despite recession worries, etc

IT'S GAMEDAY

OK motherfuckers time for another brew. We slacked off the liveblogging for the 27 points but don't think that means it isn't better than your favorite beer. Carbonation / taste / aroma / outstanding. clarity not the greatest but best thus far. Beerstore dood recommended pellets for clarity which we'll use in this batch to be named:

Misc Alc Pale Ale
A sierra nevada pale ale clone recipe created by some dood on the internet and tweaked to correction by head brewmaster at sierra himself. Or, more plausibly, tweaked by some middle aged dood eating stale doritos in his pj's posting to the brewboard claiming to be head brewmaster at sierra.

Checklist:
hops? check. grains? check. water? check. full propane tank? hopefully. Anopther $300 spent at brewstore for more equipment? check. Hangover? check.

pass the grass

ordered two ounces of these to dry hop our IPA. wait a week, chuck them in the fermenter, enjoy the taste of freshly cut grass.

12 Hours Later

100 billion little bartenders making my drink

The Wait

Two weeks in here

Hop it ir, cool it down

The wort boils for one hour and at certain intervals we add hops. First at the very start with the 1oz of Centennial. then with 30 minutes left 2oz of Saaz. With 5 minutes left we add the remaining Saaz and we're good. At five minutes we add a teaspoon or tablespoon can't remember of irish moss to help with clarity - last batch we made forgot the moss and although it tasted great, wasn't something you'd like to look at.

Cydne was nice enough to make hop bags out of panty hose, and here she is showing off her skills

At five minutes we also put our wort chiller into the boil to sanitize. Sounds like a strange thing to do but brad read about it on the internet, so it works for me

After 60 minutes heat turned off. Then plug wort chiller into hose and waste way too much water just so we don't have to wait 2+ hours for our wort to get to room temperature. The wort chiller is fucking magic, and the person who invented it fucking genius.

Once cooled, pour into fermentation bucket, nice and clear so you can see nature working. Now we pitch the yeast, which both sexes agree smells like hell, seal the bucket, sit it in a closet. Clean up, have a beer, done.

HOLY SHIT IT WONT STOP BREAKING IT'S SO HOT BURNING MY LEGS

The best 6 or 7 minutes of our brewmaking experience is waiting for the so-called hot break. Very shortly after the boil starts to roll the proteins in the wort coagulate and start to foam up. This happens without warning and is chaos. If we had a seven or eight gallon brew pot this wouldn't be a deal at all. But our wort comes right to the top of the pot as it is, and add in a boiling hot foam that grows 5/6 inches without warning and you've got a good time. This batch broke seven times, 5 more than normal

Photo is breet freaking the fuck out completely, taking the pot off the heat source, all the while spilling scalding hot wort all over himself. Picture does no justice, next batch with yutube

FUCK GRAVITY

Your gravity tells you the alcohol percentage of your beer. You measure prior to the boil, perform some calculation, and hopefully you get close to the number your recipe specifies. How close you get to that number is a measure of your efficency - essentially how well you did extracting the sugars from your grains

Yeah but we fuck this up every time. Which is why we consistently purchase extra malt to throw in right before the boil. If we knew what we were doing this wouldn't be a required step, but we don't, so it is.


Our gravity was at 1.3, and the recipe called for 1.6. So we are way off. BUT we have no good way of measuring exact, i think the calculations are off somehow, plus i mean it always ends up fine, so i couldn't care less what some recipe author thinks my efficiency is. how about fuck you and your efficiency LOL

Photo above is us making up for our horribly inefficient sugar extracting skills by just pouring in however much extra malt we want whenever we want and however we want, lawya.

Then into the turkey fryer and on with the boil

Sparge

good words:
Beer
Wort
Sparge
Lauter
Mash

Still smelling good, and getting close to where we start the boil. NOW WE SPARGE.

Sparging is "getting the sugars out of the grains so the yeast can eat them later". One of the best parts of the process because it's the first time you get the liquid form.

So you have grains fully whetted sitting in your cooler and it's time to extract the liquid. We start by letting loose on the drain and getting about a quart of liquid into a container. Then pour same back into cooler. Did this three times until the liquid was "kind of clearer". Conversation something like:
You think this looks good?
Yeah maybe one more time?
OK let's do one more.

Then full on drain into the boiling pot until gone. At this point we have about 4 gallons or so but need more. So we take 3.5 gallons of boiling water and slowly pour into the mash tun, stirring. Then recirculate as before, have same conversation, and let it open again, resulting in 7 gallons of final wort.