349 weeks waving the #beer flag on the #blockchain and throwing you a curve ball this week with an inside looks at some brewing!

Being The Blockchain Beerologist definitely has its perks, including but not limited to getting paid to tour breweries and sample new beers! When I am not globetrotting or brewing my own beer, my fridge looks like a colorful mosaic of regional craft beer I enjoy sharing with the #beersaturday alliance of #beer bloggers on #hive.

This week, I am taking matters into my own hands and brewing an IPA myself with a fella that has a fantastic garage brewery and tap room!

Pint of the Week

The pint of the week is usually one I have on the town or in a social situation for fun. This one is the same in that it was a social session but different as it is not bought off the shelf. It is a beautiful nitro stout brewed by a local buddy of ours! I love how beers carbonated and pressurized with nitrogen (as opposed to Co2) layer out when poured and settle in to a nice smooth beer.



You know what is good brewing fuel? A fresh pizza oven pie! It is a little brisk in the garage and there is a propane heater so why not divert some of that gas into the over to get it up to 1000 F? At that temp, the pizza is ready in under a minute and is fresh and delicious.

Brew Time

Here we have Derek the brewmaster general who so graciously volunteered his operation, expertise and company to help us create an IPA. Not only does he have a few taps to sample while brewing, (which we definitely did!) he has the hops, malts and grains in the raw form rather than use any kits or pre-prepped ingredients. The only difference here is we use standard buckets to catch the ground up grains and use a nice compact mill to go from raw to ready-to-brew.

There is something very satisfying in starting from the raw ingredients like they have done for hundreds of years. Surprising how much actually goes into a brew and how quickly it can be milled when powered by a cordless drill that spins the grinder or millstone.

We opted for the standard 2-row strain of hops found in to many modern beers and added a bit of wheat for a smoother mouthfeel as I enjoy in IPAs from Great Lakes Brewery and Nickelbrook Brewing Company to name a couple. Of course I am going to snap some stock photos for the beer blog and who says you can't smell a photo?

Mash & Boil

These are a couple all in one brew systems I have never used before. Not only do they boil the gains at a specific temperature, they have really neat controls to manage the time at each stage, alert you when it is time to switch, and really enable you to dial in the temps. The one on the left is bubbling away in boiling mode while the one on the right is finished that stage and ready for a sparge. Basically pulling the boiled grains and hops out of the water and rinsing them with a bit more water to drain the residual sugars/flavour into the wort for fermentation.



You can see how bubbly it gets in the 100 degree Celsius boiling phase by the steam it lets off when you pull the unit up to sparge.



Another neat thing about these units is how the line chiller can be popped right on top so that you don't have to wait for it to cool to transfer it to the fermenter (Stainless steel thing behind to the right.) Brew day could get messy with all that downtime and bottomless draft beer on tap to drink while waiting. Not only that, a quick temperature drop while transferring to the next stage will mean less time exposed to the air and environment which could result in atmospheric contamination or chemicals released in the brewing cycle at different temperatures between stages.

It works simply by using tap water in the tubes against those with the beer in them and transfers the heat from the hot wort to the cool water. Can you see how hazy the beer is at this stage?

Did I Say Hops?

Long time followers and IPA hopheads will know hops are a steady part of my diet with my love of IPAs. for this brew, we used a combination of Galaxy, Mosaic, Citra and a little Chinook.

When I last brewed, we would add a palmful of hops to add a little zing and flavour to our standard ales, lagers and pilsners. For an IPA, it was a full solo pint cup and our brewer says we are using almost a pound of hops for this 1 batch when you consider the dry hopping stage. I am a little concerned we have sport-hopped this beer up into the extreme IBU level but that is what the recipe called for and we will see!

Check out the hops on the driveway after just rinsing the brewers! ;)



Checking out the hydrometer which measures the relative gravity of the beer and gives us an idea what the ABV - Alcohol by Volume will be, you can see how hazy we are at this point.



Taking a closer look, the first half of the brew weighed in at just over 6% ABV and the second one was ~6.4% so we should have your standard strong beer/IPA level.



Now, we play the waiting game. First stage of fermentation is approximately a week and then we rack (drain out the sediment in the bottom which includes most of the yeast.) Then, we add more hops (dry hopping) for a little more flavour and let it settle for another week or 2. Then, we keg and then carbonate. The waiting game is not so bad when there is beer to drink!

Have we created a masterpiece? Will this beerologist eat his words when he gives breweries grief for less than stellar IPAs? Will this be a sport-hopped monster with over 100 IBUs? Probably all of the above but tune in for future Zeke's Hops to find out!

#BEERSaturday!

Maybe I should have studied the Beeriodic Table before brewing? Join me, @detlev , and the other beerologists and instantly become a beer blogger at this week's Beer Saturday gathering... @detlev/beersaturday-349

This week for #BeerSaturday, I am would like to invite @whangster79 as I KNOW Taiwan has a love for cool refreshing beer! Take a few pictures, tag #beersaturday and raise a glass with us on Hive!

Cheers to our global family of beer-drinkers!!

What should we name this beer? Blockchain IPA?