Homemade Hellenbock

On February 1st, I started brewing Hellenbock with the Mr. Beer kit. It is a strong, German-style lager that is primarily served at spring festivals, its variation being the lighter Maibock. The Hellenbock marked my 6th batch of Mr. Beer beer. I have learned a lot from my previous brewing experiments and decided I would experiment a little bit with this beer by adding a different kind of hops than the recipe called for. I obtained actual German hops to use in place of the Argentine Cascade hops the recipe called for. I also decided I would add honey to the beer in the bottling stage instead of sugar. The reason a sweetener is added in the bottling stage is for carbonation purposes. I have found that the cane sugar the recipe called for makes the beer taste much like champagne, while agave or honey don't affect the taste in that manner. Below is a picture of the Mr. Beer kit with the keg and 8-1 Liter bottles it comes with

Just like winemaking, sanitizing the utensils that will be used along with the kit itself is a key part of the process. Once that is done, the cans of unhopped malt extract and vienna lager oktoberfest hopped malt extract are mixed over the stove and then mixed into the keg along with water and a cheese cloth satchel containing the fresh hops, and a little bit of honey

 

After the keg is filled, it is put in a place with constant cool temperature and no direct light. I put it under a small table that has a top cover that reaches down all the way to the ground, preventing any direct light from entering. 

After two weeks of keg fermentation, the contents of the keg are added to bottle along with a small amount of sweetener for carbonation purposes, as I mentioned above. Finally, after another two weeks of bottle fermentation, the beer is places in the refrigerator for an additional two weeks for what is known as lagering. Then, the beer is finally ready to drink. I tend to allow extra time in the keg, bottle, and refrigerator, for the beer's flavors to have more of a chance to develop, but for the sake of the blog I opened one bottle early in the lagering phase. The beer is a soft brown color, quite clear and smells pretty good. When tasting it, it becomes apparent that despite the high alcohol percentage (7%), the beer is quite easy to drink. It is not bitter, and the honey has given it a nice, even finish that does not mask its delicious, hoppy flavor. Overall, it is probably the second best beer I have made using the Mr. Beer kit, with the Cranberry Maibock being the top. Still, I do not want o be quick to judge it, since I believe that after more lagering, the flavors will develop fully and the overall taste might be substantially different, hopefully for the better.

 

Homemade Pinot Noir tasting notes and Hellenbock status update

Quick refresher: Made 12 bottles of this:

 

I got the grape juice from this:

Then, I put it all together inside of this: 

Now, the moment of truth came. I opened the first "immediate consumption" bottle after the recommended 2 weeks in a bottle passed. Poured it into the glass, tasted and...not good. Tasted very much like a 1-note wine with very heavy tanning flavors. I called my father who has made wine from scratch in his youth and told him of my failure. He told me not to be discouraged, that he could maybe help me with the next batch despite his lack of experience with this particular kit. Feeling less disheartened, I got off the phone and took another sip and wow! I had forgotten to let the wine aerate, which basically means that once the wine is in the glass and comes in contact with the air, it opens up and its flavors develop. Most expensive wine has a recommended period of aeration which is usually about an hour. While my wine is nowhere near as fancy, that second sip was entirely different than the first one. Encouraged, I let it sit in the glass for another half an hour before returning to it. Just smelling the wine in the class confirmed that indeed, the wine had opened up and even an untrained nose like mine could detect a berry and oaky aroma. 

Tasting notes: Medium ruby; silky mouth-feel, pleasant, sweet, bright cherry, raspberry, and strawberry fruit aromas with spicy, oaky flavors, deep, medium-to-full body, with a smooth, but short finish. 

Overall, I was pleased. So much so that after having half a glass of Lindeman's Australian Shiraz with dinner, I decided to go back to the Pinot, since I thought it had a more complex bouquet, something I had not expected to think about wine made using this rather amateurish method. I am soon going to get started on my next Artful Winemaker adventure, namely Pinot Grigio. My other source of excitement is that last week I put my eight 1-Liter bottles of Hellenbock in the fridge for what they call "lagering" (the final stage of the brewing process). In 1 week from today, I should have homemade beer, hopefully something that resembles Hellenbock, the German-style beer I am trying to make, for which I used German Hops.

Pinot Noir in my kitchen

This Christmas, I got The Artful Winemaker kit as a present, along with several wine packages including Pinot Noir, which I chose as my first wine to make.

The process of the artful Winemaker takes 28 days from beginning to bottle. Step 1 is easy enough. After careful sanitation of the kit and all its components, the grape juice bag inside the square box in the photo is poured into the winemaker with a few wooden oak pieces added, undoubtedly to give the wine a barrel-like flavor.Then fermenting yeast is added. There is of course, an airlock at the top. Step 2 occurs after 14 days and involves more sanitizing and the mounting of the interior cones and removal of the oak pieces.

Step 3 comes after an additional 14 days, when the wine is bottled. The instructions recommended to bottle 6 of the 12 bottles for immediate consumptions and 6 for later, the difference between the two bottling procedures consisting of the way the bottle is rinsed. It is further recommended to let the immediate consumption bottles age for an additional 1-2 weeks before consuming them, so that the flavors and bouquet have a more of a chance to develop.

The last step of the bottling procedure was labeling the bottles with the labels provided, and further labeling by hand the bottles meant for immediate consumption and those for aging.

Overall, I found it to be a pretty straight-forward, easy process. Full results are pending, since I just bottled my wine late last week, but I have high hopes that the results will not be 12 bottles of homemade vinegar. Tasting notes coming in about one week, but in the meantime, my Napa tasting experience will be the subject of my next post.

McGrail and Crooked Vine Wineries

Recently, I spent a gorgeously warm and sunny Saturday in Livermore, one of the lesser visited wine regions in Northern California, yet one that is known for consistently producing high quality wine. While I am very familiar with Concanon's and Wente's wines, due to their wide availability in most major grocery stores, I realized, while that those were indeed the ONLY two wineries I knew in the area. Taking advantage of two same-week deals on LivingSocial and TravelZoo, I reserved a mini-tasting event for myself in Livermore. I purchased a winery tour complete with a free tasting and 1 bottle to take home from McGrail Vineyards and Winery, along with a free tasting and 2 bottles to take home from Crooked Vine Stony Ridge Wineries. My first destination was McGrail and I must admit, that I began to have reservations while driving along the dusty road to the winery that gave an impression of a "middle of nowhere" establishment, much different from the lush, green landscapes usually seen in the Napa Valley. However, as soon as I drove through the front gate, my misgivings were quickly dispelled when I saw how elegant the tasting room looked from the outside.

Our tour was led by Ginger McGrail, the co-owner of the winery. She was very informative during our wallk through the vines and gave us a brief history of the winery from its beginning is 1999 up to its Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon's win in the Chronicle competition best of class.

We were treated to the winery's Rosé and Chardonnay as we walked along the vines. We were then ushered inside, in the barrel room, adjacent to the tasting room, where a folding table and chairs were set up surrounded by barrels on each side. While I thought that the whites are good, I generally prefer reds, so I was delighted to taste the limited-edition Patriot Cabernet Sauvignon (a wine conceived in honor of local law-enforcement officers fallen in the line of duty with proceeds donated to the related agencies). The wine was absolutely sublime. Slightly fruitier and less oaky then a regular Cabernet, it was full of flavor and had a wonderful finish. The Reserve Cabernet (the award-winner) did not impress me as much to be honest, but then again I am only an amateur, not a professional wine-critic, so what do I know? The A Jo Elet Cabernet and the Syrah were also quite good, but none eclipsed the Patriot Cabernet in my opinion.

Therefore, I could barely contain my excitement when it turned out that the Patriot would be the take-home wine along with two McGrail wine glasses. Being the clumsy guy I am, I've already broke one out of two glasses, but at least I made it home with both of them in one piece. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at McGrail, loved the fact that the tour was led by the owner who answered what could only be described as an exhaustive barrage of questions from an elderly gentleman from Michigan who, although seemingly quite knowledgeable about wines, treated the tour as more of a "quiz the owner" event. Still, though a bit tedious, all the questions he posed gave less knowledgeable people such as myself an opportunity to be privy to the more intimate details of a smaller wine-making business. In fact, I learned that despite the winery's success, both Ginger and her husband Jim still have different day jobs, but are both hoping to be able to focus on wine-making full time as soon as that will be financially possible.
I left McGrail with a smile on my face and drove down to Croked Vine, only a few miles away. The tasting room looked nice from the outside, yet nowhere nearly as elegant as McGrail's

Right away, the inside felt less intimate and more like a regular tasting room. The lady that poured the wine was very friendly though and gave us some very good tasting notes. I found out that Stony Ridge is the boutique label of Crooked Vine and was allowed to pick six wines to try from a pretty expansive list. In trying to be fair, i chose three from the Crooked Vine side of the tasting menu and three from the other. I especially enjoyed the Cabernet Franc, but I though that most of the wines I tried were pretty average and was surprised at the high price tag as per tasting menu. Still, the tasting was pleasant. The two take-home wines were the less-than impressive Cabernet Sauvignon, and the delicious Sangiovese, an Italian-style wine that I would describe as the ideal pairing with pretty much any food with strong flavor and spice. Bold, yet aromatic and refined.

However, I feel that the real find was Crooked Vine's homemade raspberry mustard, described as the perfect mustard for homemade pretzels. It was so good that I bought a jar along with a jar of the equally amazing balsamic mustard. I left less satisfied with the wine, but entirely ecstatic about the mustard. Overall, I loved my Livermore wine-tasting experience and would love returning for a second visit to McGrail as well as exploring some of the other local wineries. The area has a smaller, homelier feel than Napa and it is very apparent the growers and winemakers have bonded together to bring more traffic to the area, since both McGrail and Crooked Vine offered extensive recommendations of other wineries in the area worth visiting. I also appreciated the complete and utter lack of snobbery, self-assuredness, and condescension that can sometimes be directed towards the more amateurish wine enthusiasts such as myself in some of the Napa tasting rooms. Instead, my experience was one of boundless hospitality and warmth, for which I am more than thankful.



View Larger Map

Ale Industries Tap Room

Last Friday, my friend Dave and I tackled our first local brewery, Ale Industries,  in Concord. I should specify that I've lived down the street from this brewery for the 3 years it has been open and I have never heard it mentioned by name, but more in a hushed tone reserved for rumors. Typical mention "Dude, have you heard there is a local place that fills beer growlers (64 oz glass containers) for cheap?" Everyone that has mentioned this place to me could not come up with its name and location until recently i googled "concord brewery" and presto. I knew the other local (larger) brewery so through the process of elimination, i found myself on Ale Industries' Yelp Page. 26 reviews, all of them 5 stars. Perhaps this place is not that bad.

I dug up two growlers I had in the attic, patiently waited for 3 pm to roll around so the tap room would be open. Their tap room is inside a small warehouse that looks sort of like a loading dock. It turns out that it is the same place they brew their beers, which accounts for the tap room's odd hours and it being closed 4 out of 7 days, since they cannot brew while people are tasting due to limited space and the loud noises/powerful scents associated with the brewing process. I mentioned that this was my first time visiting and Maureen, the wonderfully friendly tap room manager, promptly offered to sample all their beers. The four that were available were Uncle Jesse's Ale (a west coast session ale), R'yed Piper (a rye-based ale), Orange Sush (a Belgian-style unfiltered wheat beer), and East Bay IPA (a classic IPA with 7.5% alcohol). As I was tasting them, Maureen gave me a little more background on each of the beers, the styles and a few tasting notes. They all tasted great, with Uncle Jesse and East Bay IPA being my favorites. I found all the beers to be full-bodied and flavorful without being over-hopped, a common complaint I have about American Microbrews. I promptly filled both growlers, each of them with my two favorite varieties, then asked if I could purchase and bring in a couple of tacos from the Taqueria across the street to enjoy with my beer. I was told that was fine, so after bringing the food in, I ordered a pint of the R'yed Piper, sat down and slowly sipped my beer, noticing that its flavor went pretty well with the spiciness of the tacos. No, my palate is not sophisticated enough to point out why they tasted so good together, so the most I can say in terms of food pairing is tacos + ale industries = delicious. Stay tuned for my next entry when I will be brewing my own beer or making my own wine. As of yet, i haven't decided which to start on first.

View Larger Map

Local Wine and Beer

I have decided that 2012 is the year I finally start making wine and brewing beer (longtime dream). I plan on starting to make a batch of Pinot Noir Red this week as well as to begin brewing a Hellenbock, traditional German Ale. I will update my progress (with some pictures too) on this blog. In addition to brewing and wine making, I plan on visiting local breweries' tap rooms and wineries' tasting rooms (Napa and Sonoma excluded) and writing about their offerings. I intend for this blog to be both a resource for local Bay Area beers and wines as well as a log of a complete amateur's foray into beer and wine making. I will be visiting the tap room of Ale Industries in Concord this week.

Test Entry/A new beginning

"Every new beginning  comes from some other new beginning's end" ~Semisonic