Knuttelbrau goes public

Ah, so it has been a week or two since I last wrote in this (I really don't know why, either) but what better way to get back into the swing of things than to talk about beer.  What's better than beer?  Nothing.  Nothing is better than beer.

So, this past weekend was Blue and White.  We tailgate every year, so what better venue to show the fruits of my homebrewing labor?

I brought down roughly 2 cases of "Spider-man" and the third case was approximately split between "Doppeldecker" and "Heart of the Sun-Ryes".

"Spider-man" is an American Amber Ale.  It is brownish (amber) in color, has a sweet bready malt backbone and a strong but not too assertive hop character.

"Doppeldecker" is a doppelbock.  I realize it looks like I bucked the tradition of ending doppelbocks with "-ator" but the full title has it, I assure you.  At 8% ABV it can knock you on your ass.  Due to the decocted mash, the malt is front and center in flavor and it has good head retention.

"Heart of the Sun-Ryes" is a roggenbier.  It will be changed in future iterations due somewhat to the impossibility (both physically and willingly) of me repeating the exact circumstances of it being created and due to its overwhelming thickness (70% of the mash was flaked).  The flavor is very good though, coming mostly from the rye and wheat.

Flavors were overall commended.  I did well there.

The issues were bottles foaming or fizzing too much (one even ended up being a bottle rocket) and clarity.  The foaming is rather inconsistent though.

Foaming could be by either over-carbing in the bottling process.  I bottle condition my beers, carefully measure the right amount of sugar and mix it totally in the bottling bucket before filling the bottles, so I don't think it's that.  The other cause is not sanitizing enough, and I think this could be the issue.  I guess I'll find out after my next batch.

The clarity issue is due to not cooling my beer very rapidly and not letting the yeast fall from suspension.  I could solve this by using a wort chiller (under construction) to cool it down faster and a bright tank in secondary fermentation to let more yeast fall from suspension.  I don't really care about the clarity of the rye beer, I kind of want it to be cloudy like a hefeweissen, but the other two definitely need to be clearer (murky brown doesn't exactly have an appealing look).

So that's where I am at.  I am currently making a wort chiller to fix the cooling issue, and may be in the market for a glass carboy to use as a bright tank.  My next brew will either be an attempt at re-doing/fixing the rye beer or doing a saison or something else I've been working on.

-- Knuttel