What's Brewin' News

December 2006 Newsletter

For a printable version of this newsletter, click here (PDF, 75KB)

Happy Holidays Fermenting Friends!

Break out those brew kettles, fire up your burners and fireplaces, dust the snow off those fermenters, pour yourself a tall glass of your favorite home-made beverage and nestle up next to the fire, because it's time for an exciting, spectacularly newly revised, Holiday edition of the What's Brewin' News.

Behold the New Newsletter. New Mail Program, New Format.

CONTENTS:

• Competitions & Mead Festival
• New Website & Email Address
• Wyeast Very Special Series changing for '07
• White Labs Platinum Strains
• 2006 Crop Hops
• Holiday Hours
• What's Brewin' December Events Schedule
• December's Holiday Beverage Recipe

Competitions & Mead Festival

First off, a much needed Mountain Sun Stout Competition update. The original entry deadline has been pushed back until Tuesday, January 2nd. So if you were panicking about your beer not being carbonated in time or not finished fermenting in time to bottle, relax, don't worry... you've got an extra 2 weeks to get things done. If you have any further questions about this competition please contact Brian Hutchinson at B88hutch@hotmail.com

Coming up in February, is the International Mead Festival. There is an amateur meadmaking competition along with the main event that I highly recommend entering in if you already have some mead bottled, or if you have something that is just sitting around that you can bottle up real quick like. Unfortunately I wasn't given very much notice for the deadline for entries, and thus not able to give any of you very much notice. The deadline for entries for this event is Friday, December 15th. For entry forms go to
http://www.meadfest.com/2007Forms/2007_IMF_HMMC_EntryPacket_v3.pdf

The actual Festival will be held Friday and Saturday February 9th-10th, so if you are interested in going you should get your tickets soon. This year the Mead Fest will be held in Denver at the Sheraton Denver West Hotel, for tickets and more info go to www.meadfest.com. This is an event that I highly recommend going to if you are even remotely interested in mead. There is always an incredible array of meads from all over the world, and an assortment of different honeys to try.
Don't forget to get your competition entries in on time, and good luck to everyone competing!

New Website & Email Address

A lot of you probably already know, but for those of you who don't we have changed our web address, and thus our email address due mainly to spam, but also because it made sense since we were already switching domain registers. That's as much as I feel like explaining in this newsletter, we have had some suggestions from some of you, which we appreciate, but rest assured our web master has everything under control for our needs and our set up, and everything with the switch has gone smoothly so far (knock on wood). The new website is http://www.whatsbrewing.biz with the "g" at the end of whatsbrewin, being the only difference from before. And the new email address brewguy (at) whatsbrewing.biz, which you were probably able to figure out already. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience that this may have already caused, and any it may cause in the future as well. I also totally encourage you to check out our new website if you haven't been in a while, or even if you have. It's pretty cool, a lot nicer than the old one, still isn't finished yet but we're gettin' there. Plan to get the recipes from the book here at the store on there, plus some new ones. Eventually would like to set up online sales, but hold on to your britches, that'll be a while still.

We also are sending our newsletter via a new method, through PHPLIST, which makes subscribing and unsubscribing much easier for you, and filtering bounces a lot easier for us. We just love these win-win situations, don't you. If you want to know more about PHPLIST just click on our link to sign up for the newsletter on our new and improved website, then click on one of their multitude of links to learn all kinds of groovy stuff, that I couldn't tell you about. Some of your email accounts spam blockers may not recognize our newsletter now because of the change, in which case you're probably not reading this anyway, but just in case, you may need to update your list of friendlies with your email account.

Wyeast Very Special Strains

Wyeast's VSS series is unfortunately a seasonal deal, so that means we won't have Rougue's Pacman strain much longer. I ordered extra in anticipation of them ending the series soon, so we should have enough here to last into next year. But not to worry folks, Wyeast is proud to announce the release of Flying Dog Ale Yeast for January - March. Other VSS strains offered for Jan - Mar are the new 1469 West Yorkshire Ale, a chewy, malty, dry finishing strain with moderate nutty and stone-fruity esters, perfect for traditional English Ales. 2782 Staropramen Czech Lager, is a Pilsner yeast that doesn't finish as dry as typical Pilsner strains do leaving a little more body and a distinct bread-like maltiness. For more info on any of Wyeast's strains visit http://www.wyeastlab.com.

White Labs Platinum Strains

Just as Wyeast does their VSS program, White Labs has a program of their own, the White Labs Platinum Strains. Still available for December are WLP885 Zurich Lager Yeast, a Swiss style lager yeast that can easily ferment to 11% ABV, and WLP920 Bavarian Lager Yeast, great for any malty german lager especially dark ones. Coming soon for Jan - Feb '07 are, WLP022 Essex Ale Yeast, a flavorful dry finishing British style yeast with slight fruit and bread characters, and WLP510 Bastogne Belgian Ale Yeast, a high gravity Trappist style yeast with a slightly acidic finish and less phenolic character than similar strains. For more info on White Labs strains go to http://www.whitelabs.com.

2006 Crop Hops

This years hop harvest is in, we currently have several varieties in stock and it won't be long before we run completely out of last years crop and have the shelves full of the freshest hops available. Right now we have a few varieties of whole hops, and within a month or two we should see the rest of the whole hops, and the pellets, trickle in. Just ask us when you're in, which ones are the 2006 crop.

Holiday Hours

For Xmas we will be closed Sunday, December 24th through Tuesday, December 26th. For New Years we will be closing early Saturday, December 30th, at 5:00pm and Sunday, December 31st, at 3:00pm and then we'll be closed Monday, January 1st and Tuesday, January 2nd.

December Events Schedule

Beginner Brewing Class Wednesday, December 13th, 7:00pm.
- Remember to sign up for the class in advance here at What's Brewin', or you can call to sign up. Also remember to tell your friends and bring them with you to learn about the exciting craft of homebrewing!
- Classes are free, fun, and you get free beer, so what are you waiting for, come and learn about homebrewing!

Tasting Session Wednesday, December 20th, 6:30pm.
- I'll bet everyone is totally jonesin' for a tasting sess this month
since it's been a while. Well you don't want to miss this bodacious holiday session, because there's going to be some goood stuff! Brian and I are breaking into the barchives for this one, and bringin' out some tasty cellared treats. We'll also have some gourmet cheese and crackers for snacking, yum!
- Remember to bring in a homemade beverage of your own to share,
and if you feel like bringing something that you've aged a while, we aren't going to stop you.

December's Holiday Recipe

Christmas is right around the corner, so hopefully you planned ahead and made something a few months ago to drink with the family Christmas morning while the kids open their presents under the tree. What?...You mean to tell me that you don't celebrate Christmas morning with a warm Barley Wine while you empty goodies from your stocking. What kind of a holiday do you expect to have. Remember you can't drink all Christmas Day unless you drink for Christmas breakfast, or preferably before that while the kids are opening their presents around the tree... wee! In all seriousness though, if you haven't already made something, or even better, just bottled something for this Christmas, then you're probably better off just getting something at the liquor store at this point. Which isn't that bad really, there are a lot of really good beers out this time of year and I highly recommend and encourage that you go see what's out there and splurge a little on something new and different. Even if you already have plenty of homebrew, this is one of the best times of year to check out new beers to help give you new style and recipe ideas.

That all being said, this months recipe is not intended to be a holiday recipe in the sense that it will be drank during the holidays (although it's perfectly suitable for that). Rather, a fun and easy holiday activity, to be savored as soon as a couple of months from now, or to be cellared until next holiday season. This is quite possibly one of the easiest methods of making a really good alcoholic beverage, and acquiring a one-gallon glass jug at the same time. " Just what is he talking about?" you ask. Well I'll tell you just what I'm talking about...

Easy As Pie Holiday Cider

Ingredients:

One-gallon Organic Apple Juice
1 lb Honey
1/2 tsp each Ground Cinnamon & Ground Clove
1/2 tsp Yeast Nutrient
1/4 tsp Yeast Energizer
1 packet Lalvin 71B-1122 Narbone Yeast (for a dry finish), or
1 packet Muntons Active Dry Ale Yeast (for a sweet finish)

Method:

This is seriously easy. All you have to do is go to a Wild Oats Market, or some similar health food store, and buy a one-gallon jug of ORGANIC apple juice. It has to be organic because they don't add any preservatives, which would prevent fermentation. Then pour out a pint size glass of the juice and drink it, or pour down the drain, or give it to a neighborhood kid, or something like that, the point here is to reduce some of the volume of the juice to make some room for the honey (which it might be a good idea to put in a sink full of warm water to soften up for easy pouring and mixing). It's a good idea to have some sanitizer solution mixed up while you are doing all of this, if you hadn't already thought of that. Once you've reduced the volume of juice in your jug, you are ready to add all of the other ingredients. It doesn't really matter what order you put things in except you want to add the yeast last. Once you've got everything in the jug, put a sanitized #8 stopper in the opening, put your sanitized thumb over the hole in the stopper, and shake like a paint mixer until you couldn't possibly shake any more... and then shake it some more. Now put your sanitized airlock in the stopper and then wrap the jug with a towel so no light can get in. The main reason for the towel is to collect the mess that will undoubtedly spew out of the airlock within the next couple of days, if you want to avoid this mess then set up a blow off tube instead of the airlock. After a month you'll want to transfer to secondary, which I suggest you siphon the cider into a sanitized bucket temporarily while you clean out the jug, then transfer back into the freshly sanitized jug. You can let it sit in secondary as long as 10 years or so, but if you aren't that patient it will be ready in as soon as two months. I suggest a year to three for optimal flavor. Let sit in bottles for at least two weeks before drinking. The bulk of the aging can be done in the bottles if you don't age it in secondary. Now you have excellent hard cider, and a one-gallon jug that you can use for other ciders, or mead, or experimental batches of beer or wine.

Well that's it for this edition of the What's Brewin' News. All of us here would like to wish all of you and your kin the Happiest of Holidays! Keep those fermenters full, and remember we are what's brewin'!