KBS is that you?

It’s not a bird, it’s not a plane, it’s the birth of KBS. Well sort of. It’s the birth of FatCat’s own version of KBS.  Oak chips and bourbon, now that's pretty.

As I mentioned in my LOST post, I have been sucked into the bulk homebrew vortex of insanity. Not only is the price of homebrew (when done in bulk) ridiculously cheap, you also have the opportunity to try and replicate your favorite brews. For years the untouchables have tempted my wallet and my better judgment. Dark Lord, KBS, The Abyss, Kate the Great, the list could go on forever. You could spend exorbitant amounts of cash trying to buy these off Ebay or trying to convince someone to trade you through the mail. Or you could just read the forums, salivate over other peoples descriptions, and allow your jealousy to build to the point where you secretly hope for them to contract VD while simultaneously being struck by a flaming bus. I digress. As a way to ease my jealousy, I began to search for homebrewing clone recipes. I found a clone recipe for regular Founder’s Breakfast Stout out of Brew Your Own magazine. Jackpot!

After extensive ingredient hunting and gathering we brewed FatCat’s Fat Kid’s Breakfast Stout. We hit our original gravity on the nose and have been waiting patiently for the yeast to do its magic. Three weeks passed and it was time to move out of the primary fermenter. While transferring the stout I grabbed a quick sample and this brew should be awesome. It seemed a little sweet compared to what I remember the original Founder’s Breakfast Stout being but the coffee character was superb. Hurry up and carbonate you dark sultry strumpet.

The Breakfast Stout clone is alliiiivvvveee!!!! Why not put some of it on bourbon soaked oak chips and go for the gusto of creating KBS? I haven’t had the opportunity to partake in the authentic KBS as of yet but I conjecture if the original Breakfast Stout clone is fairly close in character why wouldn’t our KBS be close as well? With no KBS to compare it to we will have to use our imaginations. So if anyone has a spare bottle of KBS laying around go ahead and send it to me. It will be a month or so before my KBS’esque Breakfast Stout is ready so you have plenty of time to get it to me.

I’m getting the crew together this week and we will be comparing some Founder’s Breakfast Stout to FatCat’s Fat Kid’s Breakfast Stout. How close did we get? Stay tuned and you will find out.

Cheers!

The Opposite of Wings...



In the absence of critical thinking and writing composition I give you the simple gift of humor.  Enjoy!

LOST

I have ventured to the outer reaches of the earth (not really) and now I’m back to tell the tale. It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog and I’m sure all of you are very concerned about the wellbeing of FatCat and whether the action will continue on the blog. Rest assured FatCat is alive and well. Some minor shifts in interest have taken place in the past few months which have limited my blog posts and my involvement in Kansas City’s great craft brew culture. I’ve recently been on a “craft beer hiatus” and on a “bulk hombrew infatuation”.


There has been a nasty epidemic going around and I was unable to avoid it. I’ve caught the let’s-buy-homebrew-ingredients-in-bulk-bug. As hard as I try to fight it I have not been able to shake it. Hundreds of pounds of grain? Yes please. Pounds of hops? Thank you sir may I have another. $1.70 six packs of homebrew? Um yeah! How about having enough kegs on tap in your garage to rival some bars? SOLD! I think I’m am too far gone to be saved, you should save yourselves.

A few stars aligned and fate has steered me into this wonderful delirium. It all began last year when I was “hunting” down all the special release brews that I could get my hands on. I had a solid plan, spend enough money at a single liquor store to pay their rent. Surely, I will be on “the list” then? Well it turned out like a solid plan and I was able to get most of the limited brews released in the KC area last year. I gathered friends to share in the brewing gold contained within these limited edition bottles and we came to a disappointing conclusion. Most of the brews didn’t really live up to their hype. They were good, but on several occasions we agreed that we preferred some non-limited releases to the limited ones. This started the shift into thinking, “Hey this may not be worth it”. A little more time passed and the dreaded Boulevard Chocolate Ale fiasco hit the area. The new wave of Chocolate Ale related insanity left a sour taste in some of the local stores managers/employees mouths regarding special releases. Facebook comments about people being overly obnoxious and/or rude while searching for Chocolate Ale were numerous. A conversation with my beer guy revealed he had to deal with numerous criticisms from customers about how special releases were being handled. That seemed to signal the downfall of my plan to support a single store with my beer/bourbon purchases in exchange for being on “the list”. Ever since then when I inquire about limited releases over the phone, I basically get hung up on. At one point I was told to call back tomorrow after 2pm and see if someone is available and they will decide if I am “eligible” to buy it. This solidified the point that special releases are clearly not worth the hassle for me. As such there is no need for me to patronize a single store anymore.

As all of this “special release” clarity was becoming apparent I was lucky enough to acquire some brewing partners. With a few of us involved we were able to make large batches of homebrew in about the same amount of time. A few equipment upgrades, some yeast farming, and a few bulk homebrew ingredient orders later we are producing some $2.00-$3.00 six-packs of homebrew. No real need to visit the stores anymore right? Well I’ve held out as long as I can but it’s that time of year when Oktoberfests start making their appearance and are usually followed by imperial stouts. I have a built in weakness for these styles so I’m afraid resistance to commercial brew/prices will be futile. I was looking the other day and saw one of my favorite Oktoberfests from Free State at $7.99. I thought to myself immediately, “Man that is expensive!” When I came back to reality, I realized how ridiculously good of a price that was for commercial brew. I told you I'm delirious.

I did manage to get to the liquor store a few times this summer so I have a couple reviews on deck. I also found the perfect brew to drink out of the Spiegelau glasses. Hopefully I can get the crew together for a second annual Oktoberfest Shootout! Big things are coming don’t miss it!

Cheers!

Spiegelau Tulip vs Sam Adams Perfect Pint

Craft beer popularity is exploding and is gaining attention from companies normally reserved to wine drinkers.  Riedel is a name usually associated with quality wine glasses but now the Spiegelau division of Riedel has their sights set on hardcore beer nuts with super premium glassware made specifically for enjoying quality craft brew.  I’ve heard about Spiegelau glassware in the past but either didn’t pay attention or just assumed it would cost more than I was willing to pay.  The other day I was perusing The Beer and Whiskey Brothers post about the virtues of Spiegelau beer glasses when I was pleasantly surprised.  It was interesting to read all the scientific reasons provided by the manufacturer why the Spiegelau glass is supposed to be tip top.  The real exciting part of that post was the fact that Spiegelau now had a 4 glass variety set available for $39.99 on Amazon. SOLD!

I did tons of research as to whether these Spiegelau beer glasses were really worth it and whether they really offered a better beer drinking experience.  Everyone seemed to provide glowing reviews about how awesome these glasses are.  Ok t-minus 5 days until delivery from Amazon.  The package arrived but the postal worker gave me devastating news, “It sounds like it is broken”.  You could hear the broken glass sliding from one side of the box to the other, nice packaging Amazon.  Son of a motherless f…I digress.  Amazon was more than willing to refund my purchase price but I wanted my damn glasses.  I went with Wine Enthusiast for my reorder but they didn’t have the variety pack so I just got two tulip glasses or stemmed pilsner glass as Spiegelau calls them for $24.99 + shipping.  The glasses arrived still intact and it was time to test the Holy Grail of beer glasses! 

My favorite beer glass of all-time is the Sam Adams Perfect Pint glass.  I’ve used it so much that the graphics are starting to wear off.  The kicker is that the Sam Adams Perfect Pint was also made by Riedel.  Hmmmm!  Could the Perfect Pint stand up to the Spiegelau crystal goblet sent from the beer gods themselves?  This could get interesting.

Ska True Blonde Ale

The first beer to try out was the lightest beer I had on hand, Ska True Blonde Ale.  I tried this brew previously and thought it was decent for what it was.  If you want an American Light Lager substitute for the lake or whatever other all day drinking event, the True Blonde is great.  The Perfect Pint produced a much better head and held the head for longer than the Spiegelau which was the case in all of my tests

.NOSE:  The Perfect Pint gave off a grainy/bready malt aroma with a very subtle grass hop character.  The Spiegelau nose is more delicate but easier to sense.  The grainy malt character and delicate hop grassy character blend much more eloquently. 

WINNER: Spiegelau

TASTE:  The Perfect Pint taste was very “thin” with very little taste up front.  The grainy malt character shows up about mid palate and then leads to a bit of grassy hop character on the finish.  The overall character is very dry and seems a bit rough around the edges.  The Spiegelau blends the grain/hop character better and makes the roughness go away.  The mellower grainy malt character starts faster on the palette and leads to a fuller taste.  The grassy hop character is not as harsh and the taste actually brightens up slightly on the finish.

WINNER: Spiegelau

Omalley’s IPA

I got a six pack of this the other day on a whim.  If you follow me, you know I really want to like this local brewery but they seem to ride mediocrity with most of their offerings I’ve tried.  The one thing I can applaud Weston for is that they are coming out with new stuff all the time.  When I tried this the other day I was impressed with the uniqueness of this IPA.  It’s not super hoppy but the earthy/floral hop character is a nice change of pace from the typical citrusy IPAs. 

NOSE:   The nose from the Perfect Pint was dominated by caramel notes without much in the way of hop character.  The nose from the Spiegelau was a more robust caramel character and was much easier to pick up.

WINNER: Spiegelau

TASTE:  From the Perfect Pint, the IPA had good sweetness up front with a bit of caramel coming in mid palette.  The finish has an interesting earthy/floral hop character with a slight fruity/tart character at the end.  From the Speigelau the malt caramel character was more robust and the overall character seemed to have more bitterness.  The taste was smoother and better rounded but was not as “detailed” as the Perfect Pint.

WINNER:  Perfect Pint

Great Divide Wolfgang

This brew is completely new to me so I had no expectations of what it was going to taste like.  8.0% ABV.  Up to this point the differences in taste between the Perfect Pint and the Spiegelau have been very slight so for a curveball I decided to throw in a New Belgium tulip glass.

NOSE:  From the Perfect Pint there is a bit of malt sweetness with a grainy straw-like aroma.  From the Spiegelau there was a less harsh grainy character but very similar to the aroma from the Perfect Pint.

WINNER: Spiegelau

TASTE:  From the Perfect Pint there was a soft sweetness initially that was not overly “simple”.  The sweetness was more of a dark flavor that was reminiscent of a light molasses or maybe even a mild prune character.  From the Spiegelau the taste was very similar except there was a bit more bitterness on the finish and the overall character was more crisp.  From the New Belgium tulip there was a distinct fruity character not present in either of the other two glasses.  I went back through and tasted the three samples one right after another and it was pretty amazing the nuance in each glass.  The Perfect Pint had a better darker malt character, the Spiegelau had more bitterness with more crispness, and the New Belgium had a fruity character.

WINNER: Perfect Pint

CONCLUSION:

As I said before the taste differences between the Perfect Pint and the Spiegelau were very slight.  It was not what I was expecting as far the definition of taste in each glass.  It seemed like the Perfect Pint had higher definition in individual flavors and the Spiegelau seemed to blend the flavors better for a smoother experience.  I thought the Spiegelau would have the higher definition flavors vs the Perfect Pint.  The Spiegelau had hands down the better nose definition so that is a plus for it.  Building head and keeping head was better in all cases with the Perfect Pint. 

What turned out to be the deciding factor for me doesn’t have anything to do with the nose or the taste.  The reason I would say I prefer the Spiegelau glass is the glass itself.  When I first started this test I preferred how the Perfect Pint’s flared rim fit in my mouth.  The flared rim excels in pulling out malt character when compared with the Spiegelau.  The Spiegelau’s rim is super thin and offers the least interference in your mouth when enjoying a brew.  It doesn’t take up as much real estate on your lips while drinking. 

There was another thing related to the glass itself that took me a while to put my finger on.  The beer in the Spiegelau always seemed to be colder than the beer in the Perfect Pint.  I got out a thermometer and tested it out.  There wasn’t much difference in how fast beer in either glass warmed up.  It was always pretty much the same temperature in both glasses throughout the drinking process.  What could this perceived coolness come from?  I finally figured out that the thicker glass in the Perfect Pint picked up more heat from your hands.  This didn’t heat the beer any faster but when you put the rim of the Perfect Pint to your lip it was clearly much much warmer than the rim of the Spiegelau.  So it tricked your palate into thinking the incoming beer from the Perfect Pint was warmer than incoming beer from the Spiegelau.  Now that I’m aware of how warm the Perfect Pint rim is on my lips, it drives me crazy. 

There you have it, my beer geekdom in full force.  I have dissected all the reasons and minute details regarding how my beloved Perfect Pint compares to the Spiegelau stemmed pilsner glass.  The deciding factor turned out to be the thinness of the Spiegelau glass and how it is the least intrusive beer consumption method I have.  It would be awesome if Spiegelau flared the rims on their glass to pick up that extra malt character.  A beer geek can only wish.  Is it worth the price?  It probably depends on your drinking habits and/or environment.  If you are kind of wild and tend to break a lot of glassware then the Spiegelau is probably not worth it.  If you take the time to relax and taste your beer without the ever present threat of shattering your beloved glassware then the Spiegelau would be a good idea.  Not to mention when you flick the Spiegelau it makes a cool noise.  Now that’s worth the price of admission.

OVERALL WINNER:  SPIEGELAU

Cheers!

Holy 4th of July Batman!

Hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th of July. This year I experimented with constructing a mortar rack for my finale. There is nothing more exciting than building a contraption that launches 24 artillery shells in less the 30 seconds while in the close confines of a suburban environment.  What could go wrong?  Luckily everything went off smoothly and no one or thing was blown up.  As much as I worried about something going wrong with the mortars, a fountain proved to be the scariest firework we had.  The Tailgate Party fountain started out unassuming enough and then about 5 minutes in it got angry.  People were running, the neighbor’s truck was endangered, traffic was halted, it was awesome!    

If you decide you want to endanger yourselves, your property, and your neighbors property by building a mortar rack be sure to get the right tubes.  DO NOT USE PVC PIPE.  I got my tubes from Pyrodirect.com.

And for everyone that said, "It's dry, don't catch anything on fire..." suck it.  Nothing even came close to catching on fire, well except the neighbors trash can but that wasn't my fault.  Here is my mortar rack in action.  The video is terribly composed because I went from horizontal to vertical with my phone midway through the shot so it looks like the mortars are shooting sideways.  I assure you the mortars were shooting UP into the air.  I also forgot I was shooting video and only got about half of the breaks in the sky.  Oops!

So You Want to Go All Grain?

I have been brewing for about 5 years now and my process/equipment haven’t changed much from the beginning.  I’m going to give you an overview of my mash tun set up and how I accomplish my sparge.  There are other methods out their but these are the ones that seemed the simplest to me when I started and the ones I continue to use today.  If you are new to homebrewing and /or all grain some of this might seem overly complicated but don’t be discouraged.  If you can make tea, you have all the mechanics down to make beer. 

One of the first decisions you have to make when making the jump to all grain is what kind of mash tun you are going to use.  My Mash Tun of choice is a rectangular Coleman Cooler.  This is what I had in the garage when I decided to make the jump to all grain and have loved it ever since.  Wait WTF is a mash tun?  A mash tun is basically where you are going to mix your cracked grains and your heated water.  Inside the tun the heated water will cause the starches in the grains to “convert” and change into sugar.  There are different variables to change the outcome of the beer profile but the typical values are 1.5 quarts of mash water to 1lb of grain at a temperature of around 152 F.  Once the grain is mixed with the water, you have to let it rest.  This will typically take about 1 hour and then you are ready to start rinsing the sugar out of the grain.  To do this you will be completing a process called sparging. 

Sparging involves taking 170F water and “sprinkling” it over the grain bed to rinse the sugars from the grain.  The methods of sparging generally comes in two flavors, batch sparging and fly sparging.  Briefly peruse the interwebs and you can see the homebrew community is locked into a heated battle over which method is best.  I think only a few people have lost their lives in this debate but be careful, homebrewers are crazy.  I’m sure both methods have their positive attributes but I’ve  personally only used the fly sparging method.  Fly sparging involves dripping your sparge water onto your grain bed from above in a steady amount while at the same time draining your wort (sugar water) from the bottom of the tun at approximately the same ratio.  Both methods accomplish the same goal (rinsing sugars out of the grain) but when I started brewing, the fly sparging method seemed less complicated.   I hold my sparge water in a 10 gallon round cooler (called a hot liquor tank) on top of my refrigerator.  I used a 5 gallon round cooler for years when I was brewing 5 gallon batches.  I just recently bought the 10 gallon cooler to accommodate 10+gallon batches.  When I’m ready to sparge (sparge water already in my hot liquor tank) I run a hose from the hot liquor tank down to the mash tun and let gravity do its work.  As with everything in homebrewing you can make this as elaborate or complicated as you want.  You can add fancy ball valves and plumbing if you like but it is not necessary.  Some vinyl tubing and a cheap plastic valve is all you need.

While sparging you must separate the wort(sugar water) from the grain and drain it into our brew kettle without excess grain/husk material.  To do this you will need to use a “manifold” device to strain the wort out of the grain.  Many people use a stainless steel braid manifold but I chose to go with good old copper.  It was cheap to buy, easy to make, and is easy to clean.  I started off with a 2 leg copper manifold in my previous mash tun and stepped up to a 4 leg copper manifold in my newer mash tun.  The 2 leg was super easy to make and netted me about 70% mash efficiency which isn’t outstanding but gets the job done.  The 4 leg manifold in my larger mash tun gets me about 80% mash efficiency but was a little more complicated to build.  If you are just getting started, I recommend the 2 leg copper manifold for the construction simplicity.  The slits in the copper tubing were cut using a hacksaw blade and some elbow grease.  The copper manifold is not soldered together so it will come apart easily for cleaning.  The only real design consideration is that you don’t want the legs/drains of your manifold too close to the wall of the cooler.  If it is too close the water will run down the cooler walls instead of running through the grain.  According to John Palmer you want the distance of the outside leg/drain to be ½ the distance of the spacing of the legs.  So if you have a manifold with two legs spaced 6 inches apart the closest you want it to the cooler walls is 3 inches.  A lot of photos you see where people are using coolers for mash tuns they have replaced the stock drain hole with a ball valve.  I found that vinyl tubing fits perfectly in the stock drain hole and I can use a plastic valve on the end of the tubing to control flow.  That saves your from having to buy a ball valve and bulkhead assembly.

The next area a lot of people get glossy eyed when I start rambling is about water chemistry.  It seems a ton more difficult than it really is.  John Palmer does an outstanding job explaining how water chemistry effects theoutcome of a mash.  I use his spreadsheet to calculate all my water additions prior to brewing which is simply a matter of typing in the numbers of my local water report and choosing the amount to dilute with distilled water.  The only issue I have found with our local water is it is really high in sulfate which has the potential to make hop bitterness very astringent.  To combat this I typically add some calcium chloride to my water which will even out the effects of having too much sulfate.   Water chemistry is a big hang up for a lot of would-be all grainers but it is not near as complicated as it seems.  Once you get a couple brews under your belt figuring the water will be second nature.

If you’ve made it this far you are on the home stretch.  The other major equipment upgrades you will need for all grain is a turkey fyrer/burner and a wort chiller.  With all grain you will be doing full batch boiling and you will need to heat up a full 7.5 gallons (or whatever batch size) worth of wort and on the flipside cool all that hot wort down.  Cooling could take hours if you are trying to submerge your pot in an ice bath.  The cooling solution is an immersion chiller.  You can make one of these for the cost of copper tubing and the labor of wrapping it around a cylindrical object.  I used 50 feet of 3/8 inch copper tubing to make mine.  One important concept to help cut your cooling time down is to stir the wort with a sanitized spoon as it is cooling.  If you ever go full force into brewing and buy a pump, check out Jamil’s Whirlpool Chiller.

What will I need to go all grain:

Mash Tun – Cooler  $40.00

Hot Liquor Tank – 5 or 10gal round cooler $25.00-$50.00

Copper Manifold - $25.00 for simple 2 leg design

Plastic Valves  2X – $6.50

Boil kettle capable of boiling 7.5 gallons of wort - $80.00

Turkey Fryer - $50.00

Immersion chiller – 50’ of 3/8in copper tubing $60.00

Total approximate cost to go all grain - $286.00

Cost of taking grain and making beer out of it – priceless

References:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/how-big-your-mash-tun-needs-123585/

http://www.mrmalty.com/chiller.php

http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15.html

http://www.rackers.org/calcs.shtml

In the Ring with Yakima Wheat

There was an invisible force drawing me towards Schlafly’s Yakima Wheat.  Why?  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  This curiosity was overwhelming and I was getting telepathic visions of this brews greatness (you know mind bullets).  I didn’t know what the future had in store for me but subconsciously I knew I was destined to meet this brew in a glass encased ring of taste bud battle.  Would the Yakima Wheat conquer my palate with delicious liquid warfare or would my palate destroy a dull opponent?  Only one way to find out and that is to go at it mano a mano.

The Yakima Wheat pours with a beautiful fluffy white head protruding out of the top of the glass.  The body is a pale straw color with a nice cloudy character.  The nose fights through the towering head to serve up a citrusy lemon character coupled with a subtle wheat spice.  The mouthfeel seemed a bit thick from what I was expecting out of a spring/summer wheat beer.  A wheat spice character was the first in the line of assault followed by a fairly substantial malty sweetness coming on mid palate.  Once again another surprise with the sweetness which I was not expecting from a spring/summer wheat beer.  Even with the uncexpected character the initial balance between the wheat spice and the sweetness is very well done.  The only question left, could this wheat beer deliver on the YAKIMA?  As a brother in arms, a citrusy/earthy hop character comes in and joins the malty sweetness about mid palate.  They remain together through the finish where a nice mellow bitterness rounds out the brew.  Nothing is really overpowering but overall the adjective that comes to mind is, “smooth”.

The Yakima Wheat came at me with several tricks up its sleeve and ultimately defeated my palate with awesomeness.  Being a wheat beer I was expecting a heavy wheat spice with a thin dry body, of which this brew was neither.  I would also assume the Yakima portion of this brew would mean big hop presence and a substantial bitterness on the finish.  This was also not the case and a surprise.  When my expectations are different that what a brew delivers I am usually disappointed.  It turns out that's not the case in this instance and I thoroughly enjoyed this new Schlafly offering.  Everything was in balance and the overall character is just so smooth.  The fight is over, thank you sir may I have another?!?! 

Cheers!