BEER THREAD!

leagued · Post by **leagued** » 01 Aug 2008 16:40

If I'm drinking with my poor college buds, I settle for Bud Select as the least of all evils.
In Kansas I got fairly addicted to Boulevard Wheat- a local brew that's great with a slice of orange.
The best American beer is Yuengling; its also the oldest American brewery.

My favorite beer though is Guinness or any of several Guinness combos (Black&Tan (Guinness/Bass), Blacksmith (Guinness/Smithwicks), Darkling (Guinness/Yuengling) or a SnakeBite (Guinness/Woodchuck cider)).
If I'm drinking to get drunk, I don't go the Guinness route though, because why waste it on numb taste-buds?

Non-beer I like scotch (w/ a little ice) or a crown&coke. A white russian is also good just before bed and some bailey's is a good addition to the morning coffee.

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 01 Aug 2008 17:39

Boulevard makes a good product, they have some really good seasonals. But
if you're in Kansas, the Free State Brewery is the way to go!

Where in Kansas?

leagued · Post by **leagued** » 01 Aug 2008 17:45

Up until about middle-July I was living in Lawrence; I did also enjoy Free State- they had some good food as well as some awesome beers (Ad Astra Ale was great)

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 01 Aug 2008 21:55

leagued wrote:Up until about middle-July I was living in Lawrence; I did also enjoy Free State- they had some good food as well as some awesome beers (Ad Astra Ale was great)

Ahhh, Lawrence. Try living there as a Mizzou fan, because that's what I've
been doing since 2002. Great town, now if they could only do something
about all those KU fans.

leagued · Post by **leagued** » 04 Aug 2008 09:47

Ahhh, Lawrence. Try living there as a Mizzou fan, because that's what I've
been doing since 2002. Great town, now if they could only do something
about all those KU fans. Wink

The KU/MU hatred is on a whole different level from any rivalry I've ever experienced. I thought being a lifelong Husker moving to Lawrence would be a problem, but the KU fans don't have the energy or time to hate anyone else the way they hate Mizzou I guess.

Post by **Freakzilla** » 04 Aug 2008 10:27

I heard that Budweiser buys %20 of US rice crop.

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 04 Aug 2008 11:18

Freakzilla wrote:I heard that Budweiser buys %20 of US rice crop.

Then figurer in Miller's and Coor's, and I bet you there ain't much left.

Post by **Freakzilla** » 04 Aug 2008 12:15

Spicelon wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:I heard that Budweiser buys %20 of US rice crop.

Then figurer in Miller's and Coor's, and I bet you there ain't much left.

Do they use rice?

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 04 Aug 2008 13:14

Freakzilla wrote:
Spicelon wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:I heard that Budweiser buys %20 of US rice crop.

Then figurer in Miller's and Coor's, and I bet you there ain't much left.
Do they use rice?

All BMC beers use rice (Bud-Miller-Coors).

Tleilax Master B · Post by **Tleilax Master B** » 04 Aug 2008 13:24

^^Yup. And a fair amount of it. As an adjunct it makes a beer with less flavor and alchohol. One thing you don't want to do is muck up a good beer with a bunch of malt taste!

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 04 Aug 2008 13:39

As much as I appreciate AB, having grown up in the Lou, for all the good they
did in the community, I can't see how I'll ever willingly drink their beer
again.

trang · Post by **trang** » 04 Aug 2008 15:30

Spicelon wrote:Boulevard makes a good product, they have some really good seasonals. But
if you're in Kansas, the Free State Brewery is the way to go!

Where in Kansas?

Interesting, My new job is about 250 yards from the Boulevard brewery. When I go outside to smoke I can see into the big out building with the big silver silo things.

Small world.
Im up in KC. and the MU/KU rivel extends beyond the school rivalry, its a KS/MO thing... reaching back in history.

Trang

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 04 Aug 2008 16:22

trang wrote:Small world.
Im up in KC. and the MU/KU rivel extends beyond the school rivalry, its a KS/MO thing... reaching back in history.

Trang

Oh you know it! Seems a bunch of Missourians (well, they were mostly
from other places, but they operated out MO for a while) burned Lawrence
down and stole all the gold and killed a bunch of defenseless people, and
I guess that's kinda hard to forget even after 150 years. But, try to bring
up to the Lawrencians that they weren't exactly guiltless in this (ok,
nobody deserves to be killed, but there were plenty of Kansans doing
some very bad things in Missouri at the time) and they look at you like
you're crazy. I find Lawrence to be particularly full of hypocrites, far more
than the local tree-huggers will admit. But, I'm biased like that.

Can't wait till Free State Brewery starts their bottling operation up in '09!!
Woot!!

Robspierre · Post by **Robspierre** » 04 Aug 2008 20:58

Spicelon wrote:As much as I appreciate AB, having grown up in the Lou, for all the good they
did in the community, I can't see how I'll ever willingly drink their beer
again.

The Michelob label has a few all right brews.

Rob

Tleilax Master B · Post by **Tleilax Master B** » 05 Aug 2008 09:13

Baraka Bryan wrote:tried for the first time this weekend one of those beers aged in a used rye barrel. Innis and Gunn.

bloody good beer. I'd be buying it a whole lot more if it weren't $3.50 a bottle

I just kegged a 10 gallon batch of Roggenbier that used a pretty heavy rye bill. It came out quite nice and will improve with conditioning.

Innis and Gunn make a fine beer aged in oak. Little hard for us to get here in the states, but you do find it. they have recently added one that is conditioned in old rum casks. Sound very interesting. I'm jealous; I'd like to quaff a pint of that right freaking now!!

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 05 Aug 2008 09:57

Our Brew Club just picked up a 24 year old whiskey barrel. Still had a
gallon of whiskey in it!

Anyway, yeah the grain bill in general for a barrel brew is huge, well over
200 pounds. And the hop schedule is unreal, like over $90 in hops alone.
The brew will be a slight variation of this:

BARREL OF MONKEYS

2 row 88#
M.O. 65
Flaked Oats 10
Carastan 12
Crystal 90 7
Black Patent 7
Chocolate 7
Roast Barley 10.5
Flaked Rye 10.5
Victory 18

10. oz Columbus@ 60
21 oz Perle @60
10.5 Amarillo @20
8.5 Mt Hood@20
14.5 Centenial @ 5
14.5 Amarillo @ 5

Tleilax Master B · Post by **Tleilax Master B** » 05 Aug 2008 11:32

^^^ I like the looks of that! Are you guys planning on brewing it??

Spicelon · Post by **Spicelon** » 05 Aug 2008 11:41

Tleilax Master B wrote:^^^ I like the looks of that! Are you guys planning on brewing it??

Yup, probably in about two weeks. We're actually going to go with 70 gallons
in primary, which will actually be two large plastic drums. Then we'll rack
about 20 gallons off of that into carboys, then rack the remaining into the
barrel for a secondary/conditioning. I don't actually know the conditioning
schedule, but I assume it will be sort of lengthy.

Also I just picked up a free keggle. Helloooo 10 gallon batches - finally!!

Post by **Omphalos** » 05 Aug 2008 12:26

How much does all this cost? If I wanted to get into home brewing, what kind of costs am I looking at? I dont mean start up and for simple starter-brewing. I mean if I get into it, and like it, how much of a committment is this?

Post by **Freakzilla** » 05 Aug 2008 12:57

I've been wanting a keg cooler for a long time but I think $600 is outrageous.

Post by **Freakzilla** » 05 Aug 2008 12:58

Freakzilla wrote:I've been wanting a keg cooler for a long time but I think $600 is outrageous.

Maybe that would make a good anniversary gift for the wife?

Post by **Omphalos** » 05 Aug 2008 13:42

Freakzilla wrote:I've been wanting a keg cooler for a long time but I think $600 is outrageous.

You can make your own for much less, I think. All you have to do is drill a hole into one of those small fridges and put the works through.

Tleilax Master B · Post by **Tleilax Master B** » 05 Aug 2008 13:43

Omphalos wrote:How much does all this cost? If I wanted to get into home brewing, what kind of costs am I looking at? I dont mean start up and for simple starter-brewing. I mean if I get into it, and like it, how much of a committment is this?

The short, and not very helpful answer, is literally as much as you want to put into it. You can upgrade on equipment and stuff ad naseum. I have done it for about 10 years now and have upgraded quite substantially. I'm at the place now where the next step is stainless steel conical fermentors and brewing sculptures. realistically, to do it right from the beginning I would recommend:

80-100 bucks for a high capacity stainless steel brewing pot
50-60 bucks for two 6.5 gallon glass carboys
100 bucks for a nice outdoor burner and tank
and maybe another 50-80 bucks for extraneous equipment (hydrometers, thermometers, racking canes, bottles, etc.).

This will give you everything you need to start out with extract brewing (or partial mash) in 5 gallon increments. Once you go all-grain there is additional equipment that starts running up the bill again. Each 5 gallon batch of extract ingredients will cost you 30-50 bucks and yield about 2.5 cases of 12oz beers.

Once you go all grain you need to build a mash tun, a sparger, and some other stuff. However, the cost per batch goes down into the 20 dollar range to do 5 gallons.

Tleilax Master B · Post by **Tleilax Master B** » 05 Aug 2008 13:46

Spicelon wrote:
Tleilax Master B wrote:^^^ I like the looks of that! Are you guys planning on brewing it??
Yup, probably in about two weeks. We're actually going to go with 70 gallons
in primary, which will actually be two large plastic drums. Then we'll rack
about 20 gallons off of that into carboys, then rack the remaining into the
barrel for a secondary/conditioning. I don't actually know the conditioning
schedule, but I assume it will be sort of lengthy.

Also I just picked up a free keggle. Helloooo 10 gallon batches - finally!!

Neat, how are you guys doing such high capacity??? Do you have a brewing sculpture or something?? I can do up to 12 gallon batches, but I would have to do 5 of them to get that volume which would take a couple of days.

Tleilax Master B · Post by **Tleilax Master B** » 05 Aug 2008 13:50

Omphalos wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:I've been wanting a keg cooler for a long time but I think $600 is outrageous.

You can make your own for much less, I think. All you have to do is drill a hole into one of those small fridges and put the works through.

Yup, and they work better and you can customize them they way you want. Of course, they take up more space. I converted a chest freezer into a kegerator with multiple taps, like so (this one isn't mine, just a quick pic from the net):