Hand-Crafted Tap Handles

A couple of months ago, one of the members of our homebrewing club offered to help anyone who was interested make their own tap handles. Eric had just gotten a small lathe for his wood-working shop. The type of lathe he purchased was most often used to make fancy wooden pens or small ornamental dowels, but Eric figured it could also make great tap handles. He wanted to get a feel for what the lathe could do, so he wanted some "guinea pigs" to try different techniques out. I immediately volunteered, as anything we could come up with would be better than the small plastic handles I was currently using.

On three nights over the span of a couple of months, I met Eric in his shop and we created three completely different handles. Eric let me select pieces of wood to use from his furniture-making scrap pile, which had a lot of off-cuts. I selected three different woods, so that I could get significant variation in the tap handle appearance (from left to right, in the picture, we have maple, cherry, and walnut wood). We drew some inspiration for the tap handle shapes from on-line pictures, but most of it came spontaneously as we worked with the wood. I was able to help do some of the less detailed work, but Eric usually had to step in at the end with his more delicate touch.

Thanks for your help, Eric. I had fun making them and I think they look great.

Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day - 2009

Yesterday was the American Homebrewing Association's (AHA) annual Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day. This is an event that the AHA organizes to help show people how homebrewing works and encourage interest in the hobby. It is one of my favorite "group brewing" events of the year, as I really enjoy showing off the process and talking to prospective brewers. I have participated in this event for the past three years, by hosting an event at my house in 2007 and then helping with the events at The Fermentation Trap in both 2008 and 2009.

This year, my good friend and fellow CAMRA-member, Greg, and I decided we should do a joint-brew of a Belgian Dubbel. We had been planning on doing another join-brewing session for a while and this seemed a great way to profile the hobby and our local homebrewing club, as well as making some good beer. The recipe we chose to follow is Tomme Arthur's dubbel, as documented in Brew Like a Monk (see my review of Tomme's Lost & Found Abbey Ale here). To do a 10-gallon batch of this beer, we required more than 31 pounds of grain, three pounds of dark candy syrup, and over a pound of raisins. The sheer volume of grain meant that we needed to use both our mash tuns, which allowed us to show the differences between batch and fly sparging. We ended up calling our beer "Double-Wide Dubbel," as it was a double-sized batch and we brewed the batch in the parking lot, while taking up two parking spots.

We had about 14 people stop by and chat with us during the event at The Fermentation Trap. I hope that we were able to provide some useful information and encourage interest in our favorite hobby. In the end, Greg and I each got six gallons of 1.083 wort (higher than we expected) that will make a great beer. I greatly enjoyed brewing with Greg, as he is a fantastic brewer with different processes than mine and because we are good friends. Thank you to Randy and the staff of The Fermentation Trap for hosting the demonstration and for being so supportive of CAMRA and homebrewing in Central Virginia. They are great and I would recommend people stop by their online or retail store and pick something up (http://www.fermentationtrap.com/).

Dark Mild - Multi-Yeast Experiment

A little while ago, Greg, a fellow CAMRA club member, and I started talking about doing a cooperative brew. We share a number of common interests: brewing, breadmaking, cooking, kids; so it seemed a great idea to share a brewing session. We both enjoy English session ales, so we figured we would brew a dark mild, as they are not commonly available here in the U.S. and are best drunk fresh. Additionally, to make things interesting, we decided to do a yeast experiment.

I have often heard people state that the liquid yeast products that brewers pay a premium for are far superior to the dry yeast equivalents. Some things about the two yeast forms can definitely be attributed to fact. Liquid yeast strains can be designated as pure and without contamination, which means with proper sanitation, a brewer has very little chance of getting wild yeast contamination. Dry yeasts always have some wild yeast contamination as part of their manufacturing process. This is minimized, but how great is the risk of infection? Several podcasts and homebrewing magazines have done experiments on the dry versus liquid yeast packages, but Greg and I wanted to do our own.

The plan was to use one common wort source, split in half, and then to use two different yeasts to determine the yeast form's impact. Further, we wanted to use dry and liquid yeast strains that came from the same historical source. So, we picked Wyeast 1968 London ESB and Safale S-04 Dry English Ale. Both of these strains are based on the Whitbread yeast strain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitbread). This should provide us with a situation where the dry versus liquid yeast difference would be maximized, if any existed at all.

The following stats applied to both beers:
SG: 1.039 (both yeasts)
FG: 1.011 liquid, 1.012 dry
Starter Size: 1 L liquid, no starter dry (10 gram pack)
Pitching Temp: 72 F (both yeasts)
Fermentation Temp: 68 F (both yeasts)
Fermentation Length: 4 days liquid, 3 days dry

The results were extremely close. The liquid yeast beer (Duval glasses in picture) was slightly lighter in color than the dry yeast batch. The liquid yeast beer also had a slightly more definable aroma, but it came from a keg, so the aroma could well be from a slightly higher carbonation rate. The most definable difference was in the intensity and length of flavor. The liquid yeast batch's flavor lasted longer and was more intense than the dry yeast, but not by a large factor. I did not get any off flavors from the dry yeast, and I think it was quite comparable to the liquid offering.

Bottom line was that they were VERY close. Given that the dry yeast is much cheaper and it is easier to use, I think I would recommend using dry yeast when a version that has been well received by the brewing community is available.

Thanks for a great brew day and tasting, Greg. It was a lot of fun.

First Homebrew Club Meeting

Jamey, Christopher and I have been meeting a couple times a month for the past several of months to get our concept of a homebrew club ready. Well, now the invitation has gone out to a bunch of our friends and other people we think might be interested in brewing. The first meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 5th at 6:30pm at Court Square Tavern. The response has been favorable so far, and we expect more than 10 people to come out and join us.

The goal, at first, is to have meetings on the first Tuesday of each month to provide a social gathering of people who enjoy homebrewing beer, with the longer term idea of providing speakers, tastings, and other similar events of interest. We may also organize informal gatherings to go to breweries and maybe even go to the American Homebrewing Association Conference in Cincinnati (I am now an AHA Member - a Christmas present from my in-laws - thank you!).

Stay tuned for more details and check out our club's website and forums at:

http://www.cvillebrewing.com/