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The link for registration for hopeful tickets is Here.
Well here is the update I meant to write over a week ago. Somehow the summer weather starting and the need to be outside and doing things like camping and pressure washing the driveway have gotten in my way of kicking huge amounts of ass in the brewery building.
Most of the brewery room itself is complete. I have gotten a bar top completed as well as the install of the sink, dishwasher, tv, chest freezers, refrigerators, shelving and trim work completed. So enjoying a beer down in the brewery can now happen. What cant happen yet is brewing as I step into the vast unknown of the building of what is probably the most complex electrical machine I will ever build.
Before I get too far into the update I will add a bit to the story. When I originally planned on starting this brewery was about 3 years ago. I am sure many guys in the club will remember me talking about going all electric very soon back then. What happened is my job at work changed, my son got older and needed much more attention, my wife switched jobs as well as I discovered the need to completely gut and refinish a 20′ trailer. So back when I was doing a lot of graphic design work on the side I would take that extra change and slowly accumulate parts for this build. Even as short of a window of 3 years ago was there wasn’t really any off the shelf electrical brew systems that a guy could just go buy without going into the expensive pilot systems. I became obsessed with Kal and his system over at the Electic Brewery and dreamed of the day I would have something similar. So I acquired many of the parts and then even designed my own 60 amp 3 element brew panel. The sad part was this project was shelved but not forgotten.
It wasn’t until I got a hair up my ass and found some free time did I start taking the steps necessary to make this project happen. I realized I would do so much better if I redid my entire brew room and not just parts of it. As well as realizing that this was a much bigger project than I ever projected. It really was when I found the deal on my sink that I realized I had so much shit sitting in my basement and garage that I really needed to get my ass to work.
So in the last week, I have opened all of the boxes of parts and pieces and had to make sense of the hairbrained idea I had laid out years ago. I will tell you I have had more than one evening sipping on beers in the new brewery trying to reverse engineer my brain from 3 years ago and understand what the fuck all these parts meant to me. Thank god I had some logic to save about 3 scraps of paper with diagrams that helped me decode the disaster of parts I had accumulated. So as you will see in the following photos I crossed one hurdle with the room only to reach another hurdle with designing and building an electric brewery. But, really, this is my favorite type of project one that I am puzzled by and have to push myself into understanding.
Chuck, yes I for sure looked into epoxy counters/bar tops. For probably a little to long I was obsessed with watching they guys over at Stone Coat Countertops making all the crazy things that they do with Epoxy.
I ended up going with wood because I needed something to warm up the room. With so much stainless, FRP, and epoxy already in the room, I wanted some natural materials to offset these colder type materials. Maybe one day I will get around to playing with epoxy like those guys do in their fancy youtube videos but for now, I needed simple executable actions and a little less experimentation.
Thanks for reaching out! It looks like the best bet will be to purchase tickets during the sale. We do have our members-only pre-sale on July 30th, where there will be an 8 ticket limit. If you can get a few of the club members that are also AHA members to help you with the purchase, you should be able to take care of it! Thanks again and have a great day!
That is the official response to group bys for GABF. If we can identify a few people willing to help with this project we can probably accommodate all of the people who want to attend.
Saturday early session is what we are looking for. Something Thad talked to me about at the meeting was looking to see if the brewers association would get us in on a group buy. I will inquire about this and see if this is an option. Otherwise, we will all be left to fend for ourselves and figure out how to get tickets to this session.
This would be a super cool club trip if we can pull this off. As I have typically attended with beer novices I would love to go with some beer tasting veterans.
I would like to see some plan of attack ideas from our club. Like which beers and breweries are important and then map some shit out on the app that the brewers association provides.
Totally welcome to feedback on this. I know I would like to see a good turn out from the club on this operation, this could be a really good time.
Well, the school gods have allowed me more time away from the small screaming children once again. This year it means getting down to business with my main focus the basement. Since my last post, I have logged many hours of research on how to get FRP wall installed correctly as well as how to to build farmhouse tables. We will see how my homework paid off.
I did get my walls installed, which meant getting all the electrical and plumbing completed, tested and working; also entailing baseboard and trim work to clean up my edges. Just tonight I finally brought the giant sink in from the garage to the brewery, I am sure my wife is thrilled. And also began work on the bar top, rollable table/bar, and glass storage.
After putting up my baseboard and finishing out the walls this morning I took a trip out and found some stainless steel shelving. I spent so many hours pouring over reviews of these online that I decided to go to a restaurant supply shop to purchase them. I was so afraid of the shitty reviews of them online that I wanted a face to put to them so if I had a problem that I could take them back. In retrospect, this was an amazing adventure into a world that I don’t often see. All sorts of parts and pieces of equipment that reminded me of my early 20’s working in kitchens. In a small way, I wanted to get a giant 208v Hobart mixer and a flat top and grill to really make my “commercial kitchen” complete. I was super pumped when I saw how much the asking price was for a 3 basin commercial dish station, well over $1000, made my purchase of one so much sweeter. This adventure really was about stainless shelving and after 3 stops I had 3 pieces that would work for me. So off to home to move the dish station with the neighbor.
The bar top and table I am working on at the moment have gained focus over the last day and a half. I am waiting on a lot of hardware to show up to complete the project. No need for a rush on this, I have something like 9 more coats of urethane to throw on top of these bad boys before they are ready for service. They are made of 2″x 10″ pine. After screwing and gluing them together I torched them up a bit with the Harbor Freight weed burner to give them some of the “so sugi ban” flavor and then began to urethane them. I do have concerns about how well they will hold up over time to abusive guests and their drunken ways, but honestly, my budget wouldn’t allow for some wood higher up on the Janka hardwood scale. We will see, I think I may have shelled out $60 for all of the wood, not bad at all in my eyes; I am hoping the Varthane I am coating it with will prove to be worthy.
So stay tuned. I am hoping for another banner week next week we well as sometime this Father’s Day weekend. As long as I can keep that job stuff at bay here in June I will be tearing it up here at home. Just hoping to maintain the speed of this week.
Jim, I have to say that I really appreciate the taste scale you developed.
Bier Ratings:
Exceptional = 10 You would look forward to having another right away!
Very Good = 9 You would enjoy drinking this bier, but might not seek it out first.
Good = 8 Drinkable, but you may dislike something about this beir.
Fair = 7 Drinkable, but only if you REALLY want a beer.
No go = 6 (or lower) You may choke this down to be polite, or leave it unconsumed.This scale is genius because it is so damn simple and doesn’t confuse itself with complexities and nuances that can be found in beer. Maybe we should institute this into the club reviews of other beers to some degree.
Sam that is a great question you asked. I don’t know if I am the most skilled taster in the club, certainly, others have certifications that exceed anything I have attained. For me, the revelation came more so when I gained a language of how to talk about the flavors. Without some vocabulary to describe how to talk about beer we are left with very little in how to discuss our beers. Additionally, if we have a common language to discuss beer we can also reverse engineer parts of our process to find out where we went wrong. Acetaldehyde is one of the elements that once I knew how to discuss it and what to look for, then I was able to figure out where in my process I went wrong; it imparts a cidery taste that I used to get in my beers when I used a different transfer method that let some air in.
When I was taught brewing one of the items I was told to always do is taste the ingredients and smell the ingredients. Grain I will always eat a few to get some perceptions of the raw taste. Hops will always get a big whiff of before adding to the boil. Smash beers (single malt / single hop) can be a good place to start to identify hop tastes. Or doing minimalistic beers like Ron Pattinson does in his recipes can help identify what flavors are coming from where. Split batches and using two different yeast strains can also help you develop some of your knowledge of what characteristics the yeast is imparting on the final product.
I would also add that in the 5 years that I have been part of the club the beer tastings at the meetings really helped me identify what I need to be going after in my recipes. Talking to others about how they achieved certain tastes and profiles in their beers and how this all translates to process.
Some of the richness I find in homebrewing is that you can give the same recipe to two different brewers and if you were to come back and then taste the samples after fermentation you would have two different brews. This is because of how each of us has our own process and our methods in brewing. Sort of like a bad golf swing can be accounted for in the game it isn’t really till you iron out your own issues do you find out why you were missing the entire time.
As I have contributed to this thread and reflected on my voyage in recipe formulation I would have to say that this is one of the most complex topics in brewing because it encapsulates everything we do. All of us want to make award-winning beers that can knock the socks off the others in the club. There is no simple answer to how to get to the end other than conducting experiments and trials and then discussing and reflecting; which is probably why all of us sought out a club to join to grow and become better brewers.
Make up some stencils and get some spray chalk and then hit the town spraying the sidewalks. You could be the next Banksy.
Jim, I am interested in knowing how many versions/alterations would you say you made to a recipe before calling it complete? or do you consider any of your beers complete? What would the period of time look like while the beer is in development through completion?
The reason I ask Jim, is I know you probably have the largest catalog of recorded brew sessions in the club. Your longevity in the game could aggregate out some interesting results and findings if someone was to pour over your brew logs and data.
I will point to one of my beers I would still say is in development is my Southern English Brown. In version #1 you can see how I started with a very simple beer. I had notes that indicated I wanted more complex notes to the body and then by the time version #6 came around the beer looked wildly different. Sure I have not brewed this beer since 2017 but improvements can still be made to this beer. I do know that even better record keeping on my part will drive this beer to be the best version of itself one day; for now, I know I have a good beer in the arsenal to go to.
What comes to mind is also how many beers out there that are commercial beers that would rank around the low to mid 30’s? A lot of them, actually I would say a majority of the entirety of the craft beer scene is built on these type beers. They are solid beers with no technical issues but they don’t stand out from the crowd when in comparison. Then look at how few beers in each style can break into the mid 40’s or better, not many. These stylistic flagship beers could have easily taken the brewery and brewer years if not decades or in some European cases centuries of development. The odds are stacked against the homebrewer because of the scale and scope of how we dabble in this world of complexities in controlling a wild product.
Chuck, your endeavor is a noble one and you are not alone in wanting these results out of your beers. I would guess most homebrewers don’t go down these paths as they can be long and lonely while in the development of their flagship beers. Most homebrewers are at peace with the results of their craft after a certain point, there is nothing wrong with that. Don’t let any of this dissuade you; the challenge of brewing amazing beer has moving goal posts that even professional brewers struggle to keep going after.
This is a great question! I know the challenge and the struggle of many of the things you can run into when getting into recipe formulation. There are really three things that come to my mind when improving upon recipes:
- What is the source of your original recipe and do you trust this recipe and the review of it? Do you trust this brewer on their skill set in brewing and knowledge?
- How confident are you in the consistency of your method and procedure of brewing?
- Are you making clear and definitive decisions about where you are taking your beers? What are the goals?
I know I was very guilty of finding multiple recipes online and assuming these were good recipes to start with when I got more serious about brewing. In doing this you are giving a lot of credit to basically an unaccredited source. Sure, I have ran into some good recipes but I find the internet somewhat a crap shoot of a place for a starting place.
Now years into my brewing I am more likely to review a book for the classical definitions of the style. Books like Brewing Classic Styles or Designing Great Beers come to mind. I am also more likely to keep things rather simple when I start and making calculated additions one at a time. If time allows this is when small batch brewing 2-3 gallons at a time can really help dial in beers.
This is also where brewers logs and tasting notes can give you the whole picture and put things into perspective. The more data you have on the brew day and the minor variations and adjustments you can make really can paint the picture about your process and the impacts that are made from these minor alterations. Tasting notes can also do the same for you but on the other end. Are you confident in your perceptions of your beer and your ability to taste the ingredients one by one in the beer? Keeping logs or your notes and others feedback can be the key to getting insights into the profile and perception of the beer. In your tasting notes give yourself feedback on everything and remember to offer yourself suggestions or considerations.
Of the things that really helped me grow as a brewer were learning how to taste beer and then really dial in and lock down my process and have each process in control. This is how brewers end up with so much equipment and tools/instruments. I feel that this is how the brewer can exert total control over their processes and all of these processes can be called into questioning and necessity frequently. Without being open to make alterations to your processes and procedures your brewing sessions can become stale and not pushed to be better.
I am interested to know how other brewers approach this topic as I feel most of us are after some real go-to recipes in our catalogue. Or if people have some real go to recipes they have developed; how did you get there and what processes/tools/controls helped you achieve this desired outcome?
You should be fine without a primer. Since you are mechanically grinding down the surface it should be very porous. This will mean that the epoxy will really be soaked up into the surface and should have great adhesion.
As for the flakes I would do them right after you finish the colored base epoxy. That way the color chips will adhere to this first coat. You can let them sit for a moment and brush them into the surface if you want all of them to stick, otherwise you will have to sweep up the ones that landed on each other or that didn’t stick. Out of my 4lbs (about the volume of a basketball) that I put on my floor maybe a handful didn’t stick to the base coat; I didn’t sweep my flakes into the surface for fear of leaving any marks.
Yes, I did add the anti-slip to the top coat of urethane, this way the traction is closest to the surface and isn’t covered up by additional layers. The flakes will give a light amount of traction but the silica really makes a difference when the floor is wet because the epoxy is very slick when wet.
