Session Beers Are Only Part of the Plan

Between many meetings and occupancy negotiations, I was able to sneak in a brewday last week. The beer - a massively strong blond farmhouse ale for my brother's wedding anniversary - is still fermenting at a moderate pace. If the beer turns out to my liking, i.e. dry as hell with subtle saison-like flavors, I may use it as the base of my Grand Cru. Here are some pictures of the brewing process.

A 1.1-gallon yeast starter:


My mash tun capacity limited the total batch size to 4.5 gallons:


First wort hops:


An unreadable pre-boil gravity of 1.091 (after temperature correction):


It was only 0.003 below my target, which is pretty close for such a strong beer. It means the lautering efficiency curve in my recipe spreadsheet is valid near the upper end.

Yeast vs. pH

I bottled my sour red ale last month. Forgetting that low pH inhibits most brewers' yeasts, I pitched some into the year-old beer beforehand. Two weeks later, the beer was tasty but dead flat. Hopefully the souring microorganisms will consume the aftermath of the impending yeast autolysis, benefiting from the extra nutrition as they carbonate the beer at a leisurely pace. I plan to crack open the next bottle in about five months.

Vague Good News

Jane and I have found a bank that's willing to apply for an SBA guaranty on our behalf. Before we can submit the application, we'll probably need to provide the following information:

-Location. We've chosen a space and are in the process of negotiating our occupancy, but securing a building with financing contingencies is tricky business.
-Detailed estimates of construction costs. We're currently using a ballpark dollar per square foot number, but the SBA will likely want to see an itemized list based on a specific location. I recently met with a construction manager and learned that it can be done much faster than I expected.
-Accountant's contact info. I figured we'd retain an accountant when we're ready to select the pub's bookkeeping and point of sale systems, but we may have to do it sooner. I know who I'd like to hire, but I need to make sure that Jane agrees.
-Insurance (physical damage and fire) on loan collateral. Hopefully some of the pub's assets will suffice for collateral. After all, the SBA could provide a guaranty for up to 90% of the loan's value. The potential problem is that the pub won't have any assets until we receive a loan. Will an insurance estimate on future assets suffice? We hope so!

There's a lot more, but we already know most of it. Our past diligence is paying off.

The Restaurant Business

Last November, I noticed this ad near the back of an issue of Restaurant Startup & Growth magazine:


When I followed web address, I was shocked at what I saw:

-No mention of boiling the wort.
-No mention of tank cleaning.
-No mention of oxygenation.
-No mention of how to deal with the CO2 produced during fermentation.
-No mention of how to troubleshoot problems without a qualified brewer.
-A requirement for a hot water source, but no warning that the water can't be softened.
-A 7-day fermentation cycle that includes two days of cooling. No maturation.
-A claim that three tanks equals five beers on tap at all times ("ask about mixing beers to produce additional flavors").
-A claim that ingredients alone cost $0.26 per pint, which makes a total cost of $0.30 per pint highly suspect.
-A claim that SPI's beer won a bunch of awards from a competition that I can't find any record of.
-A claim that a book written by Leigh Beadle, the company founder, started the US homebrewing revolution.

That's the short list. It's possible that Specialty Products International conducts itself with the utmost integrity and addresses all of these issues in their dealings with individual customers. I doubt it, though. If their system was really a convenient solution to a whole host of brewing problems, I'd expect to find at least find one mention of it in a search of brewing industry publications. One thing is certain: SPI isn't marketing its products to people who know how to make beer.

That bothered me quite a bit, but what bothered me more was RS&G's response when I wrote to one of their publishers to point out that the ad was likely exploiting their subscribers' ignorance: no acknowledgment of any sort. A "thanks for the info, but we need to honor our current agreement with SPI" or "you're biased and have insufficient credentials for us to take action on" or "we care more about ad revenue than actually helping restaurateurs" would have been fine. Pulling the ad would've sufficed as well, but it's appeared in every single issue since. I'm sure it brings in more money than my subscription, which will hopefully expire soon.

Does anyone who reads this weblog have firsthand experience with a Beadle Brewing System? I'd call SPI and ask a bunch of questions myself, but doing so with no intention of becoming a customer would make me feel dirty. That's why reporters are paid the big bucks.

Multivariable Equations

When I was working as an engineer, I came up with a way to combine two physical dependencies into one equation (I'm sure a lot of people have figured the same thing out, but I'm still proud of myself). I think my original intent was to predict a jet engine's maximum thrust at a given temperature and pressure, but I don't remember for sure. Whatever it was, the method works beautifully for determining a beer's carbonation level at a given temperature and pressure. Here's how to do it:

-Plot the values from a carbonation table (I used an American Society of Brewing Chemists version) and create linear equations of CO2 volumes vs. pressure at each temperature. It should look like this, but without the haphazard legend order:


-Each equation has a first order coefficient and a constant. We'll call those values x1 and x0 respectively. Note that CO2 volumes = x1*P + x0 at a given temperature.
-Plot the x1 values vs. temperature and create an equation that describes the relationship:


-Do the same thing with the x0 values:


-Replace the coefficients of the pressure equation with the equations that describe x1 and x0. The result is this:

CO2 volumes = x1*P + x0 = ((0.00000981*T-0.00229169)*T+0.16809729)*P+(0.00024826*T-0.04710192)*T+2.87424296

You could just look up CO2 volumes in a table instead, but what fun is that?

Sour Beers

I apologize for the lack of activity around here. Things are happening, but not the types of things I should be publicizing yet. I'm not terribly paranoid about people having sinister motives, but securing a location for the pub is a big exception. In my mind, the threat of somebody buying a site for the sole purpose of preventing me from moving there is very real. So is the threat of somebody opening a brewpub right next door and, more importantly, beating me to opening day because they don't have to deal with such time-consuming nuisances as raising outside capital.

In less fear-mongering news, I bottled my year-old sour red ale last week. The one I talked about here. The acidity is smooth, but it's primarily lactic. I was hoping for more acetic acid, but that's the way things go. Once carbonated, it should be a refreshingly tart session beer for these hot summer days. The beer didn't have any wood character, which means the vodka (and subsequent boiling of the wood chips) did its job. The woody vodka was nasty, by the way. It tasted like whiskey to me, but it probably tasted worse than whiskey to people who like whiskey.

Wanting to keep my souring microbes healthy, I brewed an old ale two weeks ago. After bottling the sour red ale a week later, I pulled a gallon of old ale from its fermenter and added it to the wood chips. I dry hopped the remaining beer in the fermenter and will bottle it next week for fresh, bacteria-free consumption. New ale, if you will. Around this time next year, I'll brew another batch of old ale and blend it with the wood-aged gallon. Hopefully the result will be a complex ale with a subtle sourness and - if I'm lucky - some controlled oxidation.

New Briess Organics

The latest New Brewer has a press release for Briess Organic Pale Ale and Black malts. Finally! Briess must have listened to me. I use their specialty malts almost exclusively, but Gambrinus is winning the battle for organic base malt supremacy. I'm looking forward to finding out how the new Pale Ale stacks up (I'm already sold on the Black).