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Well, it appears that no matter how hard I try, there is no possible way I am going to be the proprietor of Eugene’s next brewery. Not that I’m waving the white flag on my nano-plans or anything like that. It’s just that Jason Carriere is going to beat me to it.
Jason, the owner of Valley Vintner and Brewer and recipient of a 2011 Glen Hay Falconer Foundation Brewing Scholarship, is in the process of building Falling Sky Brew House, an 8.5 bbl brewpub. The new brewery will coexist with the soon-to-be-renamed homebrew shop at Valley Vintner’s current location on 13th Ave. in downtown Eugene.
 Falling Sky will be another welcome addition to the craft beer corridor that has began to grow down E. 13th. Across the street from Mr. Carriere’s new brewery (in the back of the former Oregon Fields Brewpub building) is Cornucopia’s Maize Lounge and the 16 Tons Taphouse is just a couple blocks away.
Cheers to Jason and Falling Sky Brew House!
Kevin
The nanobrewery idea is still on hold until after the baby is born, but I thought I’d share a picture of my latest project.
This barrel happens to be one of the freshly-dumped, French Oak, Pinot Noir variety. Now I have to decide whether I want to brew a half-dozen back-to-back batches to fill it, or upgrade the old brew pot.
Cheers!
Kevin
Note: This is the first post in my new Going Nano series, a platform to discuss the various stumbling blocks and hurdles I encounter while attempting to go pro.
Over Labor Day weekend, my salacity for session strength spirits led me to brew a beautifully-bantam British Bitter. No, it’s not going to be one of those posts, the alliteration itch just needed a bit of scratching.
And with that silly business out of the way, let’s talk a little about recipe formulation. Living in Eugene, I am pretty blessed when it comes to brewing options. Between the two well-stocked, local homebrew shops, I have 100+ grains from over a dozen maltsters at my disposal. And barring the occasional outages of Citra, Amarillo and Simcoe, every major hop is available too. As a home brewer, having such an enormous palette is fantastic, but as I work out the logistics of becoming a fledgling nano brewer, I am finding that I may need to narrow my tools.
Hmm, that paragraph sounded a lot better in my head, let me see if I can explain it a different way. I recently brewed a Bourbon Rye Helles Bock, The grain bill consisted of Great Western 2-Row, Gambrinus Honey Malt and Weyermann Pilsner, Munich and Rye malts. No problem. I walked into one of my local shops and everything was right there on the shelf. How did get there? Who cares! I just scooped the malts out of the little bins, paid the proprietor and went on my merry way.
Well, when (or if – Reality Editor) I go pro, I will have to start caring. Homebrew shops and breweries purchase their malt from suppliers. Different suppliers represent different maltsters, each having minimum order requirements and freight charges. Ideally, I would find a single supplier that sells all the different malts I use. Easy, right? Not so much. The Helles recipe uses malts from Great Western, Gambrinus and Weyermann. Great Western is distributed through Country Malt, Weyermann, through Brewers Supply and Gambrinus, through both. So, that’s two suppliers, two minimums and two freight charges to accomplish at the nano level what was a 5 minute trip as a home brewer.
The other issue is what to do with the leftover grain. As a home brewer, if I need half a pound of Honey Malt for my batch of Helles, I buy half a pound of Honey Malt. As a nano brewer, if I need 4 pounds of Honey Malt for a one-barrel batch of Helles, I buy a 55 pound sack and then figure out what to do with the additional 51 pounds. This same logic also applies to hops. I may have a great IPA recipe that uses 7 different hops, but when I move from buying hops by the ounce to purchasing them in 11 pound packages, I better be ready to either brew that great IPA every week, or come up with a lot of other recipes that can use up to surplus. That is, of course, assuming that the hops I want to use are even available at the spot price and not all spoken for by contracts.
So, with all this in mind, I sat down late last week and roughed out a recipe for ~4% Bitter. The goals were to keep the number of specialty grains to a minimum and choose both malts and hops that would work in a wide variety of beers.
Bantam Bitter
Batch Size: 5.0 gallons
Boil Volume: 6.5 gallons
6.5 lb Great Western Northwest Pale Ale Malt (81.3%)
7 oz Crisp Crystal 50-60L (5.5%)
5.5 oz Crisp Brown Malt (4.3%)
1.5 oz Crisp Chocolate Malt (1.2%)
10 oz Organic Unrefined Cane Sugar (7.8%)
1.0 oz Goldings (4.5 AA%) @ 15
0.5 oz Chinook (10.9 AA%) @ 15
1.0 oz Goldings (4.5 AA%) @ Flame Out, steeped for 1 hour
0.5 oz Chinook (10.9 AA%) @ Flame Out, steeped for 1 hour
1 pt slurry of Wyeast 1469 – West Yorkshire (Timothy Taylor)
Estimated Efficiency: 70%
Estimated Attenuation 75%
Estimated OG: 1.043
Estimated FG: 1.011
Estimated ABV: 4.1%
Estimated IBU: 24(?)
Estimated SRM: 12
Mash @ 154º(F) for 1 hour
Ferment @ 66º(F)
As you can see, I stuck to two maltsters for this recipe, Great Western and Crisp. I have been leaning toward using GW for all my base malts for a while now. I really like how consistent their malts are to work with. They are also the most local of the American producers, with malting plants in both Washington and Idaho. My favorite malt from GW is their Northwest Pale Ale malt, a sort of Maris Otter-light grain that works great in British-style ales and isn’t so strong it couldn’t be used in cleaner American beers. As for Crisp, they produce my favorite British chocolate malt. It has a rich, roasty cocoa flavor and an insanely-deep color, averaging 630L. Their brown malt if very nice too, coming in somewhere in the middle of the other maltsters. It has a full, toasted flavor and some light coffee notes, but avoids coming across as roasted.
For hops, I chose Chinook and Goldings. Golding is one of my go-to hops and, while distinctly American, I have found that I really enjoy the flavor of Chinook as a late hop in British-style ales. These are two hops I would use in a wide variety of beers and two that are readily available. With this beer, I attempted a late-hop only schedule, ala Pelican’s Kiwanda Cream Ale. This technique requires more hops to reach my desired IBUs, but results in a very smooth bitterness and a bursting hop flavor.
Sounds good so far? Well, here comes the rub. Great Western and Crisp are distributed through two different suppliers, bringing back into play the situation outlined above. Since I am pretty much set on the GW base malts, moving from Crisp to either Hugh Baird or Thomas Fawcett would be the frugal choice. Unfortunately, I am not a fan of Hugh Baird specialty malts, though McMenamins and Rogue use them to much (depending on who you ask) success. I don’t have much experience with TF, except that I find their brown malt too burnt of my liking. What to do, oh, what to do.
I decided to listen to the inner-Republican and plow on, brewing the recipe exactly as written. Compromise be damned! This should give me a solid base line, from which to work. Once I get the beer on tap in a couple weeks and have an opportunity to dissect it, I will brew it again, subbing out the Crisp malts for HB or TF. This should allow me to see exactly the “cost” of frugality. And who know, I may even stumble into something I prefer.
Finally, if anyone in the Eugene area wants to give the test batch of Bantam a try in a couple weeks, let me know and I will see what I can do.
Cheers!
Kevin
Following an 11th hour reminder from GoDaddy to re-up my expiring domain and a frantic scour of the old grey matter for the password required to do so, Beer and Coding has now safely reached its second birthday. And with another anniversary in the books comes the near-requisite look backward and the even nearer-requisite look forward that tend to accompany such an event. Here we go.
Where Has All the Coding Gone?
Yes, it has been another coding-lite year on the old blog. The bulk of my coding over the last year has revolved around credit card security and the black hole that is PCI-DSS. If you know this acronym, then you understand what I am talking about. If you don’t, consider yourself lucky but be warned, if any aspect of your job deals with the accepting of credit-type cards, it is only a matter of time. Doom and gloom aside, the nature of my work, coupled with a new “Social Media” policy at work, has severely limited what I can discuss. One thing I can say is that 8+ hour days of attempting to meet ambiguous PCI standards and security auditor requests, all the while doing the real work necessary to keep customer information safe, has left me more than a little coded-out at the end of the day. And with my PCI workload continuing to progress on what seems like an exponential curve, I don’t foresee my situation changing anytime in the near future. The way I see it, I have two options at this point. I can either buck up and find something to talk about, or I can find a new name for the blog. And since I just paid for another year of hosting, I’ll be going with the former.
So, what is the plan for year three? How about some brewing tools? Sure, there are plenty of them out there already, but most are long abandoned and like any (good?) programmer, I am fully confident that my re-invention of the wheel will be the design that finally gets it right. Failing that, we will still have a series of coding exercises to discuss. First up, a force carbonation calculator with a “burst carbing” schedule for those of us who don’t want to wait for the keg pressure to normalize on its own. It should be up next week.
No Brewery Yet, But an Assistant Brewer on the Way
Another year spent refining my home brewing skills, a couple of ribbons from the last Sasquatch Brewfest and a few extra bucks in the bank account had me ready to plunge headfirst into the exciting, fast-paced world of nanobrewing. I even got the green light from the wife. I started with a couple very helpful exchanges with Mike at Beetje Brewery on equipment options and techniques. After deciding that it would be possible to fund a home-based brewery out of pocket, I then participated in a couple exchanges with the TTB, which proved less helpful.
For those of you who haven’t seen the Brewers Association’s newest figures, there are over 700 US breweries currently in the planning stage. Many of these are nanos, and a good portion of which are home-based operations. This run on variances has caused the TTB to become much stricter on what types of residential structures get the stamp of approval. I wish I could have known the importance of the phrase “detached garage” a few years back when my wife and I bought our house, with its 500+ square feet of open, gas-plumbed and completed attached garage. Of course there is also the whole proximity to a grade school thing, another no-no for which the Feds seemed none-to-keen on granting a variance.
About the time I was deciding between sending out the feelers for interest in an alternating proprietorship and scouring the area for dirt-cheap warehouse space, I received some news that put the whole venture on hold. With any luck, by the first of the year, my wife and I will be the proud parents of our first child and my yet-to-materialize brewery will have its first assistant brewer. Here is a shot of the guy/gal, already hard at work refining his/her palette.
 I detect a strong note of Amniotic Fluid... So, with the brewery plans on the back burner while we enjoy the run-up to parenthood, I’ll have some extra time to do my homework. Over the next year, expect a good number of posts dedicated to over-analysis of equipment, DYI projects and my attempts to create a “brand” for myself. In the mean time, if any of you local breweries would like for some free evening or weekend labor, shoot me an e-mail. I can use any hands-on experience I can get, especially washing kegs.
Onward, Upward
As I’ve mentioned before, each day it gets a little easier to blog about beer in Eugene. 16 Tons was a boon to the craft beer community last year. Mike and Jeff’s arrival and the first Eugene Beer Week were no coincidence. And the guys’ newest venture, The Union, can only help to further cultivate it. Add in The Pantry and Pub and Cornucopia’s newest restaurant, The Maize, and we have several new options for craft beer around town. But this is a topic better suited for the next State of Beer in Eugene post.
So, let me end by saying thank you to everyone who makes Oregon the greatest craft beer state; brewers, bloggers, publicans and enthusiasts.
Cheers to another year!
Kevin
In February I wrote a Nanobrewery Primer, the starting point for a series of posts about nanobrewing. I received a lot of positive response from readers, so much so that it is still the most viewed post on Beer and Coding. Unfortunately, the enthusiasm did not carry over to many of the brewers I reached out to. Brian and Eric at Mt. Tabor and Don and Donald at Naked City were amazingly prompt and very helpful, but they were also the only ones I heard back from. In July I tried again and got some help from a pair of Cali brewers; Kevin at Healdsburg Beer Company and Mike at Hess Brewing.
So, now I am sitting here with a notebook of information, some reader interest and a little free time; let’s see what we can make happen. For this first spin around the block, we will be taking a look at some of the equipment used by nanobreweries.
Nanos are the wild west of brewing. A combination of lack of equipment options and DIY attitude has created an environment where pretty much anything goes. From homebrew rigs to repurposed pilot systems to retrofitted brewhouses, if it can, or can be made to brew beer, it can be found in a nanobrewery. There are no rules, there are no guides. Welcome to Thunderdome.
In the Primer, I stated that I consider nanos to be breweries that operate systems under 7 bbl. This establishes a ceiling, but there is really no limit to how low you can go. Some Nanobreweries operate systems that produce as little as 10 gallons per batch. For the most part, these are simply licensed homebrew rigs; about the least expensive way to start a commercial brewery.
Mt. Tabor started brewing on one such system. When I talked with Eric and Brian earlier this year, many of their batches were being produced on a standard 10 gallon keggle system; a trio of half-barrel kegs, converted into a hot liquor tank (HLT), mash lauter tun (MLT) and boil kettle. Keggle systems have long been a homebrew mainstay. Jeff Althouse brewed on a keggle system before founding Oakshire and Sam Calagione started Dogfish Head on a similar rig.
Kevin operates a similar system at Healdsburg Beer Company, but uses commercial brewpots instead of repurposed kegs. One of the biggest advantages of the DIY approach to constructing a brewhouse is that you can take into account future expansion at build time. This puts you in a better position down the road than someone who is married to an off-the-shelf system. In Kevin’s case, he started with pots large enough to produce 20 gallons at a time, but decided before ever receiving his license that they were too small. For a larger brewery, this would have meant tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, in new equipment. But for Kevin, just a swap of the pots for larger 55 gallon ones and his capacity jumped from 20 gallons to just over 1 bbl without any other changes to his system.
In the case of both Mt. Tabor and Healdsburg, their brewing systems are custom-built creations, but an afternoon with a welding torch isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Luckily for those mechanically challenged souls among us, there are a few companies willing to do the work. Sabco has been selling its signature single-tier keggle system for years and MoreBeer has an entire line of BrewSculptures, ranging from 5 to 20 gallons. Newcomer Psycho Brew recently entered homebrew/nano market with a 1 bbl single-tier pilot system that uses 55 gallon brewpots, quite similar Kevin’s custom-built rig. Marty at Brickyard Brewery became the first Psycho Brew customer earlier this year.
Stepping up slightly to the 1.5-2.5 bbl range, we find ourselves in the area that offers the fewest off-the-shelf solutions for aspiring nanobrewers. Too large for homebrew gear and too small for most prefabbed equipment, breweries in this range have to rely heavily on custom work. Mike at Hess Brewing found himself here after outgrowing several homebrew rigs, including a 20 gallon MoreBeer 2050 three-tier system. He handcrafted a 1.6 bbl brewhouse; a custom single-tier 4 vessel (HLT, MLT, kettle and whirlpool) rig.
This range also offers the fewest options for appropriate fermentation vessels. The glut starts at 42 gallons with the largest Blichmann conical and extends to around 4 bbl, where standard brewery fermentors become available. Again, custom fabrication is an option, but repurposing is another powerful tool of the nanobrewer. Food-grade plastic conicals, used primarily in wine and biodiesel production are gaining popularity among brewers. Mike uses them at Hess, as do the Mikes at Vertigo and Scott and Tony at Breakside.
Above 3 bbl, the clouds begin to part once again. Many brewpub and small production breweries operate systems in the 3-7 bbl range. These breweries expand and fail every day. And while we generally prefer the prior, both situations result in used equipment entering the secondary market. Ted’s 3 bbl system at Brewers Union once belonged to the now defunct Hawks Brewing of Roseburg. And Naked City’s “used” 3 bbl DME brewhouse was purchased from Two Beers Brewing, who bought the equipment new, but never used it, opting instead for a larger 7 bbl system.
Buying new is also an option at this level, albeit an option that often flies in the face of the nanobrewing ethos. Although, within the last year or so a few manufacturers have started fabricating more customizable equipment with the nanobrewer in mind, or at least started marketing it as such. Blind Bat Brewery recently installed a complete 3bbl brewhouse from Premier Stainless. Premier’s setup, which includes a direct-fired kettle, combi-MLT/HLT and a pair of jacketed conical fermentors starts under 38K.
 It will be interesting to see if the nanobrewing equipment market continues to develop as the concept gains more exposure. Conventional wisdom dictates that untapped markets seldom remain that way, but for many nanobrewers, creating something out of nothing is as much art as it is necessity. These guys and gals are the gearheads of their trade. And for them, handcrafting a functioning brewhouse gets the feel-good endorphines flowing just as much as selling the first pint of beer it produces.
Cheers to all the nanobrewers out there!
Kevin
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