SD Brewery Tour: Hess North Park

I have been a big fan of Hess Brewing for a long time. San Diego's 1st Nano Brewery, it makes the rest of us homebrewers think "Hey! Maybe I can do that too!" If you are so inclined...

Personally, I'm happy making my own small batches and sharing with friends. Not interested in turning my hobby into my job. Not to mention the fact that, my beers are not nearly the quality for mass production!

This is certainly not the case with Hess. As I said, I've been a fan for some time, having visited their Miramar location many many times. It doesn't hurt that they are super close to my office. So when I first heard that they were moving production to a new location in North Park I was worried. Getting my Purrowler fills will not be so convenient now! But fear not! Two things about this... First, they are not closing the Miramar location (yet) and since I first heard the news I have moved a little bit closer to the NP location. Yay for me!!

And even better yet, the new location is Really Cool! I love how, when you first walk in, it's basically an overhead walkway through the brewery. Right away you see the brewhouse and then the massive fermentaion vessels all lined up. I hope they give tours some day, because I really want to see the inner workings down there!

Then the pathway leads you to, what else?
The beer!

This was the Soft Opening, and they had 9 beers on tap! Unfortunately, they didn't have one of my favorites, Deceptio Black IPA on that day, but many other fantastic beers. I had the Pallidus, a Belgian Pale which I had never had from them before. Very tasty! I also sampled the Brunus Robustus, a Robust Porter. Also, very good.

With limited time, I wasn't able to sample too many on this day, but these are not new beers to me. If they are to you, I highly recommend stopping by this new brewery/tasting room.  The Grand Opening is this Fri/Sat, August 9/10, and as of this posting there are still tickets available for the Sat 1pm session. The $30 includes a commemorative glass and all beer during the event(excluding growler fills). Looks like they are going to have 12 or 13 beers then.
So, check them out! Yet, one more of the fantastic San Diego breweries that we are spoiled with!!

Double IPA - Bottled

Bottling is so much fun!!! Right kids?!? Right....?

Shortly after this shot, all of my helpers seemed to disappear.

Oh well, 5 gal (actually more like 4-1/4) bottled and waiting to be bottle conditioned.

Who needs kegging?!?! :-(

Beer Review: Mother Earth Brew Co (CA) Hop Diggity

 New Feature!! This is more of a personal notebook of new beers that I'm trying, rather than any real review format. Gonna share some thoughts, without getting too in-depth. I'll also give it a personal rating.

So, first up is Hop Diggity from Mother Earth Brew Co, in Vista California. I say this part only because there is another Mother Earth. Mother Earth Brewing from North Carolina. I haven't been able to try any of the East Coast brewery's beers, but I have had a few from here in SD county.

Very nice Double IPA, checking in at 8% ABV. Good and hoppy, with a balanced malt kick! I poured this into my 8 oz glass, so it took a few fills to finish and savor the whole bottle, and my last pour I didn't realize that there was a fair amount of yeast sediment in the bottom. No worries, it didn't affect the flavor too much at this point.

Overall a very tasty DIPA.

7 out of 10 pints.

New Brew Pot!!!

So, I needed some new headphones and I could find the ones I need at Target, so I decided to look on Amazon.

I forgot that I had this 40 qt Aluminum Stock Pot in my basket. $40 bucks, and with free shipping!
But I didn't have $40 bucks to spend, at least not for beer-related stuff. So I was ready to remove it from the cart when I saw that there was an offer for an Amazon VISA, sign up and get an automatic $50 gift card. So the pot & the headphones, plus shipping turned out to be $1.23. Not bad! Can't wait to start the inaugural brew with this set up which as you may have read was in bad need of a bigger pot.

SD Brewery Tour: Intergalactic Brewing

So, our plan last week was to visit Belching Beaver's new tasting room in North Park.
But since Dave's plan is to visit actual breweries, and not just tasting rooms, our plan changed. I'm sure we will go visit BB soon, but not as part of the Brewery Tour.

So, with a new plan we decided to visit Intergalactic Brewing instead. Man were we not disappointed! Nice little tastin room, with some really well-made beers. I'll be coming back here again soon. Check out Dave's full revew over at Hop-Daddy.

San Diego Brewery Tour

So, inspired by my friend Dave over at Hop-Daddy I'm attempting to visit as many breweries in San Diego as possible. I don't plan on writing any full on reviews, just more of a log of which breweries I do visit and my general impressions.

As Dave will attest, I'm pretty liberal with my reviews. I like them ALL!! usually....

Tonight, Belching Beaver's new tasting room in North Park. I've never had any of their beers, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Brew Day - 4/14/13 - Double IPA

So, today's Brew Day (which was actually over a week ago...) involves several firsts. The first first (heh) was this is the first beer that I am brewing in my new facilities (i.e. our new house). We moved in last October, and with the garage being a total mess, I have been putting off making any beer just for sheer logistical reasons. Well, 6 months later, and the garage is still a mess, but a little bit more of a controlled mess. I was really itching to make something, so I set aside some space and some time and away I went...

That brings us to the next first (second first?). My new Mash tun!!

I've finally got a proper 10 gal MT and now I can start making full 5 gal All grain batches. Cool!

I need to focus a little bit better on my calculating because my mash temp was higher than I anticipated. I think I assumed that my grains were colder and adjusted too much. I'll be sure to get a better read next time.

Now I just need to get a bigger boil kettle because it's REALLY hard to prevent boil-overs with this "7.5" gal turkey fryer. I say "7.5" because that's how it's advertised, but I measured it and it's closer to 6.2-6.5 gal. If you look closely at the next picture, you can see the residuals of the boil-over... Oh well, one more piece of equipment to look for. This will make a nice HLT some day. BTW, I have found some great deals for 10 gal kettles over at http://www.homebrewfinds.com/ .

Ok, so the next first for this brew day is this is the first time I've used the super-hyped Mosaic hops. I was surprised at how fruity these smelled. A lot of pineapple and mango. I was expecting more citrus and pine for some reason. I don't know why. In any case, they smelled AMAZING before and after throwing them into the boil.

So that's pretty much it. I also used my new refractometer for the first time this day, but I didn't get any pictures of that. For the most part the brew day went pretty well. My OG was a little bit lower than I was shooting for, I think that is because of the higher temp in the mash. Not too bad for a day of firsts!

Recipe:

The recipe is based on a Ruination clone I found on homebrew talk. I used the same malt bill, but replaced the hops with what I had on hand.

Malt bill

14 Lbs Pale Malt (2 row)

1 lb. Crystal 20L

Mash - 152 Est OG - 1.077 (I hit closer to 156 and my OG was 1.071)

Hops

1.75 oz. Cascade hops (60 min boil)

1 oz. Citra hops (30 min boil)

1 oz. Citra (10 min)

1 tablet Whirfloc (15 Min Boil)

1 oz. Citra (1 min)

1 oz. Mosaic (1 min)

1 oz. Citra (dryhopped)

1 oz. Mosaic (dryhopped)

Hydrated US-05

14 days ferment @ 62

Then DryHop 7 days @ 65

Est FG - 1.013