Kickstarter for Brewers

I stumbled across 'The Bootlegger Bottle' on Kickstarter the other day and wanted to share it because it looks like a great way for anyone to try 'brewing' up something in their own home with very little overhead. According to their site, one could get a beer or other spirit fermented in as little as 12 hours in this vessel!  All you need to do is add some sort of beverage with fermentable sugar to the bottle, and wait a day or so.

Home Brew, Caramelized (Burnt) Sugar & Odell Brewing Company

Please help us re-welcome Justin Carpenter to the Focus on the Beer blog. He wrote an article about a year and a half ago and now we've invited him to write another when we learned that his beer was chosen to be brewed up at Odell Brewing. He'll tell you all about his beer, and we'll give you the details on how you can get some of it!

Yes, this is a beer blog, and yes, we’re going to talk about beer, but first, we have to head back in time about 80 years, to a quiet town in Kansas, to the tranquil home of Walt and Gertrude Zscheile (shī´ lē). Every Sunday, true to family tradition and recipes brought over through Ellis Island, Walt and Gertrude would milk their Jersey cow and make two batches of ice cream for themselves and their four children: one was a regular batch, and one was made with burnt sugar. This burnt sugar recipe was coveted, cherished, and once again passed down through a few more generations. As a child, I salivated at the thought of my mom cooking it on the stove; as an adult, I often made it for myself, and even shared it with close friends.

Start of caramelization

Now for the beer part: I began brewing about five years ago and was focused on learning traditional techniques and styles. As I slowly began to experiment with various hops, yeasts, grains and special ingredients, I was amazed to discover that there is really no end to the uniqueness that a beer can become. Late one night, I literally woke up with a “Eureka!” on the tip of my tongue. I shook my wife awake (much to her chagrin) to explain that I had finally thought of a way to bring family and beer together in my own creation. But how could I do it? I initially planned to attempt some burnt sugar with a brown ale, but the recipe felt like it would become a stuck mash; so I cellared the idea for a few years.

Inaugural Homebrew Competition at the El Paso County Fair

There's a new homebrew competition coming up and while this isn't in any way enough notice for you to make a beer, if you've made some summer style beers recently you may want to consider entering them into this. Here's all the details:

Competition:
The El Paso County Fair homebrew competition is an AHA/BJCP sanctioned event.

Categories accepted: Summer styles: Light Lager (BJCP style 1), Pils (2), Light Hybrid (6), American Ale (10), German Wheat and Rye (15), Belgian & French (16), and Fruit Beer (20).

National Homebrew Day / Big Brew 2012!

Lefty making beer at last year's Big Brew Day

National Homebrew Day is coming up on May 7th, and the Homebrewers Association calls for a Big Brew Day to celebrate on May 5th. Our local homebrew club always has a special brew day for the occasion where basically they cram as many homebrewers into one spot, complete with brewing equipment and ingredients and everyone makes beer at the same time. It's an awesome way to celebrate homebrewing and craft beer. Folks bring food and beer along and it turns out to be a really lovely day. This year both Pikes Peak Brewing and Rocky Mountain Brewing will host, so depending on your location you can choose which one to go to. Even if you don't homebrew, you can head up to the event and learn a lot and have a few homebrews. If you do brew, you should show up! We went last year and snapped a few photos but weren't able to bring our equipment with us. It was a great time.

Big Brew Day
Brewers will probably be set up in both locations by 10am.
Pikes Peak Brewing: 1756 Lake Woodmoor Dr., Monument 
Rocky Mountain Brewery: 625 Paonia St., Colorado Springs

A fun set up by another homebrewer last year.

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The Brew Brothers Barrel Brew Day

The local homebrew club of Colorado Springs area, The Brew Brothers of Pikes Peak, got together this Sunday before the Super Bowl to collaborate and brew a beer to put into the club's Stranahan's whiskey barrel. Each brewer brought his own equipment and brewed the same recipe so as to have enough beer to fill the barrrel. They decided to brew a Flanders red ale. The beer will be fermented out with American Wyeast 1056 yeast and then will be added to the bourbon barrel. The beer will be inoculated with Wyeast Roeselare yeast which is a blend of Lambic cultures that includes two Brettanomyces strains, a Lactobacillus culture, and a Pediococcus culture. The club is also adding the yeast dregs from some of the homebrewers favorite sour beers and yeast from previous barelled beers that the club has made. They are hoping to age the beer for a year. Here are some pictures of the brew day as well as profiles on the brewers who are helping fill the barrel.

A beatiful brew day in the Black Forest

Busy Beer Weekend Coming in February! 2012

Just want to get this onto your radar. In about a months timing there will be a pretty huge beer weekend in Colorado Springs. For some of the events you need to register in advance to participate so check out what's happening on Feb. 17th and 18th, 2012. More events may be added on at the last minute too, but here's what's happening so far...read more for info on Trinity's Brain of the Turtle Release, Peterson Air Force Base Homebrew Party, Rocky Mountain Microbrewing Symposium, and the Firkin Rendezvous at Bristol!

Brew Bros. of Pikes Peak: Homebrewer's Gone Wild

Brew Bros, friends, and family gather to help scale up the homebrew at Rockyard.

A couple times a year Jim Stinson and Kjell Wygant at Rockyard Brewing, in Castle Rock, invite a Colorado based homebrew club to enter a competition through Rockyard called Homebrewer's Gone Wild. One beer is chosen, it is then scaled up and brewed on the large commercial system at Rockyard, all the people in the homebrew club get to come and help make the beer, and then the beer is bottled and available for purchase at liquor stores around the state. This is a pretty cool series, as any homebrewer would love to work on a commercial system AND love to see their beer on the shelves.

John Garbett doing a yeast count for the Ringwood Ale yeast.

Rockyard extended the invitation to our local Colorado Springs area homebrew club, the Brew Brother's of Pikes Peak (BBoPP). The challenge was to come up with an original recipe for either an Old Ale or a Scottish Ale. John Garbett, who just resigned as four-year president of the club, won the friendly competition with his Old Ale. I wasn't able to make it to the brew day on Saturday but here's what fellow homebrewer Robert Cloutier reported:

3rd Annual Biere De Rock Homebrew Competition

For those of you who enjoy homebrewing Belgian style beers, our friends up in Castle Rock are putting together a Belgian style homebrew competition. The Rock Hopper's Brew Club invite you to participate in the third annual Biere De Rock. The beer categories that will be accepted include:
16A Witbier 17D Straight Lambic

16B Belgian Pale Ale 17E Gueze
16C Saison 17F Fruit Lambic
16D Biere de Garde 18A Belgian Blond
16E Belgian Specialty Ale 18B Belgian Dubbel
17B Flanders Red Ale 18C Belgian Tripel
17C Flanders Brown/Oud Bruin 18D Belgian Golden Strong
18E Belgian Dark Strong

For more information of BJCP style guidelines, check them out here.

Judging Saisons at last years competition.

Last years best of show winner Charlie Gottenkieny

Registration for beers is open until November 26th and is $5 per entry. You can drop off your

Christmas Beer Homebrew Competition at Bierwerks

Bierwerks Brewery, in Woodland Park, is hosting the second annual American Homebrewers Association-sanctioned event for holiday beers. Entries will be accepted for one category only - 21.B, (Spice, Herb and Vegetable) Christmas/Winter Specialty Spiced Beer. This should give you enough advanced notice to put together a beer and have it submitted by Dec. 15th.

What is Christmas Beer? This is one broad category. Ales and lagers, spices and dried fruits - this beer can be anything that recalls the flavors and scents of the holidays. According to style guidelines, these beers are often amber or darker, leaning towards the malty end of the spectrum. Spices and other adjuncts can range from molasses to mint to spruce. A specific description can be found on the Beer Judge Certification Program web site here: Christmas Beer. The BJCP describes it this way, in brief - “A stronger, darker, spiced beer that often has a rich body and warming finish suggesting a good accompaniment for the cold winter season.”

Details:

A Homebrewing Celebration

On Saturday we celebrated homebrewing. It was National Homebrewing Day and here in Colorado Springs we had our own party and it was a ton of fun. The event took place at Rocky Mountain Brewing, a lot of the brewers that showed up were a part of the local homebrew club, The Brew Bros. I had hoped to get all of my homebrew equipment together but I had too much to do before my trip to Kansas City (where I'm writing this post now). What I was really excited about was seeing all the variations of homebrewing equipment, and how some have jury-rigged their systems, built their own tier-systems, each mash tun is slightly different, some drastically different, lots of kegs converted to boil kettles, each person has built their own thing to suit their various idiosyncracies. I was talking to Isaac about how I saw each setup as a type of sculptural art piece and that the lawn in front of Rocky Mountain Brewing was the gallery or exhibition space. I thought it was really wonderful, so I snapped a photo of each set up and I want to share that with you.

John Landerman sipping back a beer while he waits for his wort to finish up. John was making an English Bitter.

This is Russ Dewey and his homebrewing set-up. He's been piecing this thing together for about 18 years. Today he was brewing a Dortmunder Export, a type of lager.

Russ' system up close revealed an elaborate system of hoses, thermometers, chillers, pumps and other parts of this compartmentalized system. This was a lot of fun to look at.

Get Your Homebrew on at Rocky Mountain Brewing

It's been a while since we heard from Rocky Mountain Brewery but we haven't forgotten about them! After all, we're planning Beers Made By Walking with them and one of FotB's favorite people is Grant Goodwiler, one of the RMB brewers.

Anyway, Rocky Mountain Brewing will help Colorado Springs celebrate National Homebrew Day (May 7th) in one of the most fantastic ways imaginable...a giant slew of homebrewers all brewing together! FotB will be heading to the eastern part of town and we'll set up at least one homebrewing station along with many other homebrewers. Anyone and everyone who homebrews, no matter what level you're at, is welcome to participate in this event. Bring your equipment and your ingredients, Rocky Mountain will provide your cold and hot water. It's going to be one big huge potluck of homebrewing, everyone brewing all at the same time. Bring some of your beers too because at 10am there's going to be a nationwide toast to homebrewing! If you don't brew, come along anyway, there will be plenty of stuff to drink and people to talk to/watch.

Big Brew Event
Sat. May 7th, starting at 9:30am
Rocky Mountain Brewing is located at 625 Paonia St. Colorado Springs, CO.
Big Brew FB event page

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Call for Pikes Peak Region Homebrewers: Beers Made By Walking

I thought now would be a good time to introduce you all to a summer long beer program that I'm putting together in Colorado Springs. If you are a homebrewer in the greater Pikes Peak Region, please read through this and see if you are interested in being involved in some way. I think it will a real blast. I apologize that my "bio" is in third person, ignore that...

Beers Made By Walking:
Beers Made By Walking is a project that is sponsored by Rocky Mountain Brewing and the Gallery of Contemporary Arts in Colorado Springs. Seven times throughout the summer of 2011 a group of people consisting of myself, a Homebrewer, a commercial Brewer, and a Naturalist (who can identify wild plants) will go on a hike or walk in the Pikes Peak Region. The hike will be open to the public and the purpose of the hike is to identify edible and medicinal plants that could potentially be used in the making of a beer. The hikes will range in time from an hour to a few hours, and possibly an overnight camping trip. After the hike, a private session will occur where the Brewer, Homebrewer and Naturalist will build a beer recipe, taking into consideration the plants and ingredients they identified. After the ingredients have been collected, the beer will be brewed by the Homebrewer in the commercial space of Rocky Mountain Brewery. Two or three times during the summer, Rocky Mountain Brewing will have a special event where the beers will be put on tap and available to the general public.

Call for Pikes Peak Region Homebrewers:
I'm trying to find seven homebrewers who would like to participate in this project. We will select dates together for the hikes and the brewing session. You need to be able to go on a hike that might last for three hours. You need to be able to formulate your own beer recipes (with the aid of the Naturalist and Brewer). This event will likely take two full days, back-to-back, of fun beer making. I'm hoping to have at least three women homebrewers on board and four men homebrewers.

Contact Eric Steen:
If you are interested in this, please get in touch with me before March 1st and I will be in touch with you shortly with more details:
ericmsteen(at)gmail(dot)com

About Eric Steen:
Eric is a homebrewer and he teaches art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He's the writer for Beer and Sci-Fi as well as Focus on the Beer, which is a Pikes Peak Region Beer Blog. He's organized many beer events, such as this one, for the last few years in Oregon, Michigan, Missouri, New York, and Glasgow, Scotland.

Peterson Air Force Base Homebrew Competition

  

Homebrew Competition

The Peterson Air Force Base (AFB) Homebrew competition is an AHA/BJCP sanctioned event.

Categories

All BJCP including mead and cider Categories may be combined/separated based on number of entries at the discretion of the organizer.

Entries and Fees

Entries will be accepted Jan 24– Feb 2, 2011.
Entry fee is $5 each and $20 for unlimited. You can only enter one beer per BJCP sub-category.

Drop your beer off (8am to 4pm) or ship to:
260 Glasgow Ave Building 1013 Peterson AFB, CO 80914

Each entry consists of two (2) bottles, entry fee and an entry/recipe form. Each bottle must have a bottle ID form attached with rubber bands. Bottles must have no labels, or other identifying markings (besides the bottle ID form). Entry/recipe and bottle ID forms can be downloaded here: BJCP Entry Recipe and BJCP Bottle ID

Alternate Drop-Off Sites: Hop to It! in Boulder, Stomp Them Grapes in Denver, Hops & Berries in Fort Collins, and The Brew Hut in Aurora.

Beer Week In Review

Last week was really busy both beer-wise and in-general. My classes were celebrating their final days and I had much grading to do. As a result, my blogging suffered, but my beer-drinking did not! Let me tell you all about it:

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday night I headed over Trinity Brewing to snap some photographs of the Double Rainbow beer and I posted the image next to the interview I did with John Schneider of Black Fox Brewing and Jason Yester of Trinity Brewing. You can read the interview here. After that I went home and quickly uploaded the pictures because I was in a hurry to get to Brewer's Republic and meet the ladies of Sisterhood of the Suds. As a result I rushed my computer and I lost my best images! Haste makes waste. Well, at that point I needed a beer so I biked on over to Brewer's Republic.

Isaac and Daniel at Brewer's Republic

Guess what Brewer's Republic had on tap? They had Black Fox's El Noche del Diablo, a black saison with chocolate, cherries, and pepper. I love this beer. I figured it was the last place in town to have it so through the course of the night I ordered 3 pints worth! Before I said hi to the people of Sisterhood of the Suds I ran into Isaac, whom I had just met thirty minutes ago at Trinity. Crazy! Isaac is a member of the Brew Bros, a group I hope to find more out about soon. I didn't know he would be here, but he was, so we hung out most of the night. Isaac's pal Daniel was there. Turns out Daniel is a photographer and we will hopefully be seeing his photographs on this blog! I look forward to that.

At this point about 15-20 women from Sisterhood of the Suds were sitting at some tables at Brewer's Republic. They looked like they were having a really great time and it looked like they were doing some beer and food pairings but I didn't intrude too much, as I'm a guy. But I did manage to snap this photo and talk with one of the main organizers, Zenia Brink. SotS is based in Colorado Springs and was developed as a part of the Beer Drinkers Guide to Colorado (they put out that amazing beer map that you can buy around town). It is basically a monthly event where women can come together and drink together. I'll be asking Zenia some more questions about

Bierwerks Hosts Homebrew Christmas Beer Competition

Bierwerks Brewery in Woodland Park is hosting Holiday Cheer Christmas Beer Homebrew Competition, which is sanctioned by the American Homebrewers Association. Entries will be accepted for one category only: 21.B, (Spice, Herb and Vegetable) Christmas/Winter Specialty Spiced Beer.

Deadline: Dec. 7 with brewer's party to follow on Dec. 11

Details:
This contest is open to all amateur brewers. Two (2) bottles of your beer must be submitted along with the completed entry form and a $5 entry fee.