Category: Brews

The level of buzz is starting to rise for the Free The Hops‘ Beer Tasting in Huntsville. This will be the first tasting in Huntsville for the organization.

It is a great opportunity to try beers NOT available within Alabama due to the prohibition era laws. The laws in Alabama define beer as follows:

BEER, or MALT OR BREWED BEVERAGES. Any beer, lager beer, ale, porter, malt or brewed beverage, or similar fermented malt liquor containing one-half of one percent or more of alcohol by volume and not in excess of five percent alcohol by weight and six percent by volume, by whatever name the same may be called.

Free The Hops wants to change this law to allow speciality beers in this state. Many speciality beer are over 6% in alcohol by volume and we want to raise that limit to 14.9%.

You to can join the cause at Free The Hops. If you join, you will get to help bring great beer to Alabamians and you can join us at our tastings.

Here is a picture from the last tasting which was held in Birmingham.

I hauled beer back from Colorado Springs to server up at the Free The Hops Beer Tasting which is just around the corner.

As you may or may not know, Alabama does not allow a beer to have more than 6% alcohol by volume and the beer bottle can not be larger than 16 ounces. Free The Hops is working to change these laws. Presently, we are seeking a state representative to sponsor the bill. We are planning on making a presentation to the Madison County Caucus of representative which meets the first Monday in February at the City of Huntsville building.

Our tastings require our members to bring a beer that can not be purchased in Alabama. I selected Mojo Indian Pale Ale from the Boulder Beer Company. Mojo IPA has a 6.8% alcohol by volume. Boulder Beer has a number of great beers and you will enjoy their web site which features a Lego bartender serving beer.

Karen and I went to our first tasting in Birmingham before the holidays and it was a blast. We met a lot of new people and saw a hugh selection of beer from all around the country.

Finally, we are having beer tasting in Huntsville. About every other month, the Free The Hops organization has a beer tasting for its members.

The idea is to bring a friend to find out about the organization and bring a beer that you can't get in Alabama due to the laws.

The first beer, to be tasted, was the High Red Tide Bock which turned out to be flat! Bummer. I have my CO2 on it now forcing in the carbonation. I have the CO2 set to 35 pounds of pressure and in a few days it should be good to go.

Next, I tried the Vincent's Wee Heavy. Well, it was over carbonated. I expected this given how strong the fermentation went. I had to bleed off some of the pressure. This beer has some kick! Given the overpressure, I had to pour to beer into a pitcher to let the foam settle out. This beer is on the sweet side as beers go.

[Update: I given to shaking the High Red Tide Bock keg to speed up the carbonation.]

I talked with Don Alan Hankins of Olde Towne Brewing Co. last night and he indicated that their are going to open a brew pub.

Technically, the pub will not be Olde Towne Brewing Co., because Alabama Laws prevent a brewery from servering beer and brew pub can only sell on-premise.

Don Alan indicated they had purchased the building and have started ordering equipment.

Karen and I kegged our bock beer last night. We still have one beer working. And, I expect that we will be kegging it this weekend. But, the beer is still going strong.

We still have not found all of our Mini Kegs, but they should turn up some day.

Our beers have been working nicely for some time now. We have one that has all, but stopped so that means only one thing.

Time to keg that beer!

I would be kegging it today, but I determined that I was out of CO2. (You need to fill the keg with CO2 prior to filling in order to remove the air.)

Normally, I keg my beer in soda kegs. This time, I had wanted to use Fass Frisch Mini Kegs which hold about 1 1/3 gallons. I received these as a gift years ago from my mother, but I have never used them. I am missing the bung which seals the keg. I may have to switch back to using my soda kegs, but I want to try these mini kegs so that I could take keg to parties. “Have beer will travel” has always been my idea planning ahead.

We are starting out by testing our immersion chiller. It worked well. We were able to reduce to temperature of 2 gallon to the 80 in just a few minutes. But, failure struck with the outlet hose burst do to over heating.

Chalk that up to not thinking!

New technique:
We are putting the chiller in after we turn off the gas burner. This should allow the temperature to start dropping.

Our first beer is High Red Tide Bock which is made from 7.7 lbs light malt extract, 1 lb Weyermann Light Munich, and 4 oz. Muntons Roasted Barley. I don't remember the type of hops. I'll be using a White Labs German Ale/Kolsch yeast.

Our second beer is called Vincent's Wee Heavy. It is called this because of the 11 lbs of light malt extract used. The speciality grains Muntons Crystal 60 and Roasted Barley are inlcuded.

Karen and I built an immersion chiller to speed up our brewing. You can easily make one of these for your homebrewing. All you need is 25 to 50 feet of copper tubing. The 1/4 inch diameter tubing is cheapest and will work well. You will need two adapters to convert the 1/4 tubing to garden hose. HomeDepot has all these parts. You can get it all for about 20 to 30 bucks.

The chiller will shorten brewing time greatly. With all malt or partial malt recipes, the chiller will reduce the cooling time required prior to pitching your yeast to 15 minutes or less.

To use the chiller, you connect your garden hose to one of the inlets on the chiller. You connect another hose to the outlet. This second hose is just to direct the waste water away from you and the beer so any hose should work. (I have heard some people connect the hose to a sprinkler to water their yard at the same time.) After connecting everything together, you place the chiller in your brew pot and turn on the water.

It should be noted that the chiller should be cleaned just as all brewing equipment must be sanitized prior to usage. If your brewing method includes boiling the malt, you can sanitize the chiller by placing it directly into the brew pot during the boil to sanitize the chiller.

Well, I put in our order for brewing supplies. We are trying out ALABREW for our supplies.

We meet Kim Thomson of ALABREW during a Free The Hops Beer Tasting in Birmingham, Alabama.

ALABREW has a rich selection of supplies for the homebrewer and winemaker.

We ordered the High Red Tide Bock and Vincent's Wee Heavy kits.