Wagner Beers

3-and-Out Oktoberfest. 6.7% APV target, last brewed November 13, 2011, batch #15.  This is the beer of  choice for watching the Michigan Wolverines on the gridiron on crisp fall Saturdays. Named after a book of a similar name which chronicalled the difficult 3 years of Michigan football under RichRod, this brew is celebratory.  It celebrates the ringing-in of the Brady Hoke era and a return to the great tradition of MEEEEECHIGAN football, especially a tradition of outstanding defense.  

To maximize enjoyment of this beer, prior to drinking, please don your maize and blue, turn up your speakers and listen to the Michigan Marching Band play either the all instrumental or band and male glee club version of Louis Elbel's "Victors" - the stirring composition that John Philip Sousa called "the greatest college fight song ever written". For a special treat, listen to the Michigan football team sing the Victors, recorded on 11/26/2011, the day Michigan played the school from Ohio in Brady Hoke's first year as head coach.  Or only for the most dedicated Wolverine fans, check out the Michigan Marching Band playing in Hill Auditorium. Wolverine fans will undoubtedly sing along exuberantly, perhaps preferring the original sheet music in the key of D (803k PDF View Download). Die-hard Wolverine fans will forgo the sheet music - the song is already indelibly imprinted on their consciousness and more deeply in their DNA.

Like all Oktoberfest brews, this interpretation is malty and substantial, all the better to sustain the true fan through Michigan autumn afternoons. It has a deep coppery amber hue with creamy texture. When you pour this beer from a bottle, pour it right down the middle (not touching the sides) from about 2-3 inches above the lip of your glass. You want to experience the head on this puppy. Many thanks to Ronnie for initiating me into this beer pouring technique.

This was inspired by a brew Kristin and I had with good friends Jim and Dana in downtown Ann Arbor.  Good friends deserve good beers, and vice versa. This beer is a good reason to rename every month, "Oktober".  [All-grain recipe, BJCP description].

3 Wise Men Boston Lager.  ~5.5% ABV, last brewed October 30, 2011, batch #17.  I have three great friends who live in the Boston area: Gary Allen, Pat Deyo and Ed Manning - all people that I came to know and respect through my tenure at HP.  Maybe it is something in the Boston water.  Or perhaps it is the humility you gain from all those years of seeing the Red Sox fold. Whatever the case, Boston has helped mold these men who are considerably wise beyond their years (though their years be considerable). This is therefore a tribute beer for my friends and the fair city they call home. Their likeness is at left. I thought the name appropriate to capture my friends' essence and to give a nod to the holiday timing of this beer's first brewing. 

This brew is patterned after Sam Adams Boston Lager, probably my favorite commercial light lager. Like it's relative, this beer is a paradox of simplicity and complexity.  It's ingredients are simple: almost completely two-row barley and nothing but "noble" German hops that carry a unique smooth bitterness.  The brewing process, however, is complex: a traditional double decoction mash - a crafty German invention before the age of thermometers. This process gives the brewermeister a feeling of being a mad scientist with a grand chemistry set, but also a sense of connectedness to the rich legacy of fine German brewing.  Like every great legacy, this brew process includes equal parts mystery, out-dated ritual, wonder and profound truth.  

My first attempt at this clone resulted in a very tasty brew a shade lighter and sporting a decidedly more hoppy finish than true Sammy. And such is the beauty of brewing: take a whack at the plate and see what you can do. As I continue to brew this into the future it will be fun and informative to morph the recipe and brew process to approach the precise Sammy taste. In the grand gestalt of things, Sammy matches my friends more than I had imagined - both are really good and tough to duplicate.

Here's to you, gentlemen. Thanks for your friendship. I hope this brew always finds a welcomed place at your table.  [All-grain recipe]

Älteren Bruder Altbier (Dusseldorf Style). ~5.5% ABV, brewed June 24, 2012 with my 3 bros, batch #34. I have to admit that I've been on a German beer kick lately. As you might guess from the name of the beer, this is a decidedly German brew.

"Alt" in German means "old". So this "old beer" is brewed in the old German tradition before people came to love those new fangdangled lagers. Altbier comes in two varieties: Düsseldorf and Northern German, with the former a tad hoppier.  

Stylistically altbier is akin to a German Kölsch. Both are fermented with ale yeast but are then cold-conditioned like a lager. Both rely predominantly on German Pilsner grain, and both use a high-attenuating yeast that leaves few esters and sports a clean taste. Both avoid an overpowering hoppiness. The major difference lies is their color (altbier is darker - a coppery amber) and maltiness (altbier is maltier and is therefore beefed up with about 15-20% Munich grain).  

At the same time I became interested in altbier, I was wondering what sort of beer I should brew in honor of my favorite elder brother Chris to acknowledge his success in reaching 60 years of age this year. As fate would have it, Tess and cousins entered Düsseldorf on the very day of my wondering. How auspicious! Clearly the universe was crying out for a tasty new Düsseldorf altbier so I thought it my duty to accommodate. The result: "Älteren Bruder Altbier" (elder brother Altbier). 

This brew is from a traditional German recipe with German Pilsner, German Munich (so tasty to eat a small handful of this grain right out of the bag) and a little black malt for coloring (though I underestimated the darkening power of black malt so my beer ended up darker than the style constraints, but still tasty). Although American brewers often get creative with German alt recipes by adding interesting alternative grains, I wanted none of that. German brewers like myself are well served not messing with German beer traditions (at least not initially). 

Chris' picture on the label shows him in the cowboy outfit he used to always wear. I think he doesn't do that any longer. Chris has had a strong positive impact on me as I grew up. I drafted behind him as he was the first to negotiate the difficult teenager-parent boundaries, I became interested in theater and vocal music in high school after seeing his efforts, and he was a major influence on my decision to craft a career in computers. Here's to you, bro! [All-grain recipe, BJCP description, German Beer Institute Overview].

Blackwood Schwarzbier. 4.6% ABV, not yet brewed. Newfoundland-born David Blackwood is my favorite visual artist. His prints portray the hard, precarious, and beautiful fishing life of the the people of Newfoundland in the days before fishing was carved up for outside interests. He strips things to their essence, portraying the harsh lines of beauty in humanity and nature with almost mythical overtones. This beer is dedicated to Blackwood.

I first became aware of Blackwood from our 2004 family trip to Newfoundland with the four of us and Agnes. We stayed in Port Rexton on the Bonavista peninsula and still stay in contact with a girl, now young woman and mother, Stephanie Ploughman and her friend Heidi Ballett, who we met there. We rented a trim house near the sea where I found the book, "David Blackwood: Master Print Maker" and I was hooked.  

His creations have the double beauty of performance art: the original creative composition (the fabrication of the printing plates) followed by the unique performance (the printing from the plates). Kristin and I saw a display of his artwork south of Windsor some years back. 

Blackwood was brought to mind most recently after seeing a remake of the film "The Grand Seduction" filmed in Trinity and other locales on the Bonavista peninsula. It is a story of a proud people wanting to return to the hard work that brings great satisfaction. We also thoroughly enjoyed the mini-series, "Random Passage", filmed in New Bonaventure, Trinity Bay, NL and went on a trip to see the filming site.

This beer that I dedicate to Mr. Blackwood is a schwarzbier, a dark lager that is considered the oldest European beer style. There is evidence suggesting that schwartzbier has been continuously brewed (though originally as an ale) in the Kulmbach region of Germany since about 800 BCE, potentially avoiding the sobriety demands of the Koran that held sway for a considerable time.

Schwarzbier is to lagers what stouts are to ales - the darkest version - rich, earthy, stripped down (subdued hopping), nothing extraneous; in many ways like a Blackwood print. I was struggling for a name and label graphic for the beer and kept on coming back to the word "ebony" to give a sense of the beauty of the dark. I eventually understood that my creative source was being quite literal - asking me to think one step beyond ebony to what ebony really is: black wood. So Blackwood schwarzbier was born.

Once brewed I will send some off to Mr. Blackwood. I have taken liberty by using a detail from one of his prints, "Fire Down on the Labrador", for the beer label. When I send him the beer, I'll ask for permission to use his wonderful whale - yes, asking for permission after the fact, but I'm thinking that might be OK since he can see exactly how I would like to use it. Of course, I will defer to his wishes. [All-grain recipe, BJCP Description, German Beer Institute Overview].

Buffalo Breath Brown Ale. ABV TBD, to be brewed in spring 2015. This beer will be brewed for the second annual Brewers Without Borders program supplying beer to friends in need. In conversation with Kristin Guenther, we agreed that I would brew up a mixed case for their yearly July office party - combining a good Kolsch with something akin to Moose Drool brown ale.  

The good news is that I have solid recipes for both. Buffalo Breath is a Moose Drool clone, but I made a slight adjustment by adding carafoam to the grain bill for better head retention. 

I've always liked the stately looking buffalo nickle which was slightly modified for a later short-run dollar. I pilfered the buffalo (actually an American bison) from the dollar for this label design. The Buffalo nickel was a copper-nickel five-cent piece struck by the United States Mint from 1913 to 1938. It was designed by sculptor James Earle Fraser.

I chose the name of the brew to reflect a certain dental theme.

Burly Bastard Brown Ale. 6.2% ABV, last brewed 12/21/2012, batch #42.  This beer has an interesting history. Back in my early days of brewing I managed to get distracted from watching the temperature on my mash kettle (the disadvantages of being a social animal!) and the temperature spiked, nuking all the needed enzymes that convert starch into sugar. It appeared as though my brew day might  be over quickly and my pale ale destined to be dumped on the grass. 

But my buddy Tom had a better idea - he offered to give me a gallon of his stout with plenty of good enzymes that I could mix in with my questionable pale ale. We both knew that a pale ale and a stout are worlds apart, but I decided to give it a go - not knowing what a 5/6 pale ale and 1/6 stout brew would taste like. 

After fermentation and carbonation my daughter Tess and friends weighed in: it tasted great! So, over a year later when I asked her what she wanted to brew with her friends over the winter holiday, she requested another batch of what we call "Burly Bastard" since it was indeed a bastardized brew.

The grain bill is as you would expect: a full pale ale recipe plus 1/5 of a a stout recipe. I decided to replace the typical Newport hops with a new variety I had not tried before (Belma) for bittering and stayed with the tried and true Cascade for taste/aroma hops. The result is a brew that I like to call "painfully good". 

In remembrance of my inadvertent nuking of my brew kettle I chose a fiery witch's cauldron as the graphic for the label. Try the brew and see what you think! [All-grain recipe].

Cold & Mostly Cloudy Weissbier. 5.2% ABV, last brewed 6/15/2012, batch #33.  After the smashing success Corbin and I had with Corby's Kolsch - a wonderful German beer - I just had to try and brew another new (to me) German ale. I think there must be a few strains of German beer yeast bonded to my DNA. 

I chose a German weissbier (often called hefeweizen in North America) and brewed it with Corbin on a hot June day when we both felt it had been too long since we had brewed. In German, "hefe" means "yeast", "weizen" means "wheat", and "weiss" means "white in color". So this is a yeasty tasting wheat beer that is light in color.  

The first thing you notice about this beer is its cloudy appearance - cloudy by design.  When you taste it, you get a surprisingly interesting collection of tastes.  The first to hit you is the very bready taste from the wheat - this reminds me why monks used to call their ales "liquid bread".  

Then comes the duo of wonderfully subtle tastes: banana and cloves.  These later flavors are esters produced by the specific strain of yeast used, in this case White Labs 300.  In talking with a hefeweizen maven at Adventures in Home Brewing, I found out that the fermentation temperature is very important to sculpting the taste of hefeweizens.  The higher the temperature, the more banana flavor comes forward, the lower the temperature the more the cloves are pronounced.  In my first attempt, I chose a relatively low temperature since banana-tasting beer can be a bit much. You can get the hint of banana if you fix the idea of banana in your mind, then take a drink and have your mind search your palate for the corresponding flavor.

I dedicate this beer to Alex Kapteyn at Central Michigan Piano, the craftsman that turned the ugly duckling Steinway D in my care into an incredibly beautiful instrument.  He filled all the dings and scratches, refinished the case in the most exquisite hand-rubbed black matte finish, re-guilded the harp, installed a new pinblock, polished all the hardware and added two elements of his family's own design: an elegant 3-post lid support and a more flexible music stand. He and family are crazy talented and I thank my lucky stars for that craziness. On top of all that, Alex has some great jazz chops that I heard when he and his wife Julie stopped by our house where we hit it off famously.  I've named the beer "Cold and Mostly Cloudy" to give a sense of the sensory experience when you savor one of these.

When Alex and I started talking beer (it seems to be a habit of mine) he shared with me a phrase that included the word Reinheitsbegot (the German beer purity law enacted in 1516) - a clear signal that I had found a man who deserved a beer brewed in his honor. The fact that he has incredible piano craftsmanship talents just add fuel to the brewing fire! I'll get the beer truck gassed up for a trip north of Lansing. [All-grain recipe].

Colin's Baritone Deep Brown Ale.  ABV % TDB, first brewed circa April 2011. This brew is made in the tradition of olde English brown ales that have the substantive character to stand up to lengthy pub sessions with music and friends. This brew is my interpretation of a Northern Brewer ale called "Caribou Slobber" which itself is a clone of "Moose Drool Brown Ale" (you have to love the creative naming of brew-folk), crafted in Missoula, Montana.  

My interpretation is named after Colin Dipper, concertina maker extraordinaire (arguably the best in the world), who lives and plies his craft in Heytesbury, Warminster, UK.  We met Colin a number of years ago in his jumbled concertina workshop and patiently awaited the building of the Baritone pictured at left.  The tenor version of the concertina is often played in traditional Irish music sessions at pubs, so the instrument has a close affinity with good beer.  

The  baritone is an octave lower than the tenor and shares the same deep undertones as this rich brown ale of it's namesake. The brew has dense layers of malt, caramel, a hint of baking chocolate and light-roast coffee all punctuated with a balanced hop bitterness. [All-grain recipe]

Cörby's Kölsch. 5.3% ABV, last brewed 6/16/13, batch #48. I designed this beer for my little brother, Corbin, pictured at left from his kindergarten days (doesn't he look like a little brother?).  Corbin is the first of my brothers to have succumbed to home brewing so I dedicate this beer to him. He first brewed it in November, 2011, with his son, Keith, and me on an unseasonably warm day. As it turns out, Corbin's daughter Jacquelyn lives in Berlin and her favorite beer is German Kölsch. Wendy, Corbin's wife, also loves it.  

This brew is a classic German Kölsch, one of those unusual beers that can't really decide whether it is an ale or a lager. On the one hand, it is positively an ale: it uses an ale yeast that ferments like any other top-fermenting ale yeast. However, once fermented, Kolschs are cold conditioned for three or more weeks, the process typically reserved only for lagers.  When you taste it you might swear it is a lager.  Kölschs are great for those homebrewers that want to take the first step toward lagers but don't want to worry about the paraphernalia needed to closely manage the primary fermentation temperature.  

When I make a Kölsch, I require good German grain and good German Kölsch yeast -after all, I'm a brewmeister with strong German roots. Kölsch magic is in the yeast which imparts a wonderfully complex taste with a hint of sweetness.  This beer features primarily German Pilsner barley, but has Munich malt for a good grainy German taste, some Torrified Wheat for body and German Carafoam for a nice thick head. The result is a very pleasant beer: light and crisp. Very drinkable. 

This beer has been a hit every time it is brewed and I plan to always have a keg of this on tap. I really like this unique very drinkable beer since it has a subtly curious taste that invites you back for more. Anyone who likes beer should like this beer. 

The first time I brewed with Lance, we brewed this beer. When I am tired, I sometimes call Lance, Corbin and Corbin Lance. They are both the young man I hold dear. [All grain recipe, style description, brewing notes].. 

 Cotswold Cottage Extra Special Bitter. ~5.5% ABV, last brewed October 8, 2012, batch #39 . This is my second effort at the classic British staple that can be enjoyed at pubs across the UK.  I was initially disappointed with my first brewing of an ESB. It just didn't seem to have the needed mellowness after I let it ferment and carbonate. So, I simply let it age and to my delight a couple of months later it was a delight! In talking with beer buddies, it isn't unusual to let ESBs sit a little longer than typical.

The name of this beer came from a conversation I had with Kristin. We were thinking about European vacations and she really had a hankering to take a hiking trip through the pastoral Cotswold area of England - staying at hostels and bed & breakfasts as we explore the country side. That sounded grand!  So, "Cottswold Cottage ESB" was born.

Thinking of the Cotswolds also had me thinking of "Rose Cottage", the Costwold cottage pictured in the label, originally built in the 17th century in England and later transported to Greenfield Village, the famed historic outdoor museum created by Henry Ford in Michigan. Kristin's grandfather was the personal secretary of Henry Ford, and her mother, Agnes, as well as her uncle Henry Stuart Waddell, attended school in the historic Village. Kristin's masters degree in historic preservation also led her to the Village. These ties have led us to see and enjoy this wonderful Cotswold cottage often.

The recipe for this brew includes UK Marris Otter barley for substance and a little British caramel malt for color, Carapills for head retention, and of course British hops.  As something special, we've added a small bottle of Lyle's Golden Syrup, the exact liquid that Lance put on his pancakes on our first trip to the UK as he attempted to approximate Kristin's home cooking. Many thanks to Tyler at Adventures in Home Brewing for the idea for the Lyle's and also the Essex yeast.  [All-grain recipe].

Crimson Flush. ABV anybody's guess, last brewed July 17, 2011, batch #8.   This was a great idea by Tess and was one of the first batches I brewed with her.  We took your basic wheat beer all-grain recipe and added 4 pounds of homegrown raspberries picked fresh from our recently reclaimed raspberry bushes. The berries give the beer a deep crimson color - and it is easy to understand why. When I pulled the raspberries out of the fermenter after about 4 days, all of them had turned white, having transferred all of their color to the brew! Even the head on this beer has a nice crimson hue to it. Like all good wheat beers, it has a healthy somewhat cloudy appearance. 

This beer has a tart and refreshing raspberry aftertaste - none of the cough-syrup like taste that is often found in commercial berry/cherry beer. This is a beer I plan on brewing every July until I drop having it reflect the bounty of our garden. Now with some blueberry bushes planted, I'm hoping to have a blueberry companion to this in the future.

This is a good brew to have after a meal. The mild raspberry taste gives one a sense of dessert. Made entirely with K-Hill filtered hard water which adds to a slight bitterness in the after taste.  [All-grain recipe].

 Debayan's Cardamom Milk Stout. ~5.9%, ABV, first brewed 6/29/14, batch #54.  For context, see Debayan's Chai Milk Stout below. This brew is based on the exact same milk stout recipe, in fact the base milk stout for this beer is a split batch with its Chai Milk Stout brother. 

These two beers are all about experimenting with adjuncts. The original recipe called for adding spices via a tincture. This is basically stewing the spices in a small amount of vodka and then pouring/pressing it through a strainer so that the vodka and the spice flavorings come through but none of the solid spice.

I like this approach since it makes it easy to incrementally add spice into the beer, mix it up, then see what you think. Progressing slowly, you can ensure that you don't overshoot the amount of spice you add. Also important is to work with small amounts of vodka so that you avoid an alcohol/medicine taste in your beer.

I used green cardamom seeds, crushing them, separating the shells and then crushing the seed centers with a rolling pin. I used about 10 seeds for about 2 gallons - quite a bit more than I've seen elsewhere in working with cardamom (which I believe was 2 seeds/gallon). I ended up with a two-step tincture add since my first addition was barely noticeable. I have a device that I attach to my drill that I put into the keg to mix up the beer nicely.

Debayan's Chai Milk Stout. ~5.9%, ABV, first brewed 6/29/14, batch #54. One of Tess' good friends, Debayan Mazumder, has been aregular brew buddy. He is the guy I go to whenever I have questions about Indian cuisine since I understand that his mother is one of the world's best cooks of this style. We've talked about various spiced beer and he mentioned an interest in a cardamom flavored brew.

I started the dangerous process of thinking and found a recipe for a Chai milk stout - a homebrew version of Yak and Yeti’s award winning Chai Milk Stout as suggested in the May/June 2013 issue of the definitive Zymurgy magazine. The brew won silver mdedal for Herb and Spice Beer at the 2013 Great American Beer Festival.

The Zymurgy recipe looked sound in its grain bill - a solid milk stout with lactose sugar. I made a couple of changes however: I added a bit of carafoam for head retention and a pound of flaked barley for a bit more of a crisp taste and a tad higher alcohol content.

The only iss ue is that the recipe is silent about the specific ingredients of the masala chai tincture that it uses. Who better to fill in the blanks than Debayan? I asked him about it and he suggested a mixture of green cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, ground cloves, ground ginger, black peppercorns and perhaps onion seeds. His parents suggested even a simpler version with cardamom and ginger only. Since he provided the essence of the special ingredients, this needed to be a Debayan honorary brew. 

As a further starting point, I asked the proprietor of a good local Indian restaurant named "Cardamom" what spices went into a masala chai mixture. He said that there were five ingredients: cardamom (he said the green pods are much preferred to the black), ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves - very similar to what Debayan had suggested. Check out brewing with spices and especially cardamom.

Since the masala chai tincture is added after fermentation, it can be a straight-forward effort to test out a variety of spice combinations by splitting the 5 gallon batch into a set of smaller (perhaps much smaller) batches to test flavors. We can then arrive at a mixture that we like best.  [All-grain recipe, style description].

Denali Double IPA. ~8.2%, ABV. Russian River Brewing Company has created Pliny the Elder, a brew that is probably the most celebrated Double IPA on the market. A double IPA doubles down on both alcohol and hop bitterness with Pliny delivering 8.0% ABV and a whopping 100 IBUs of hop bitterness. As a way to understand the hoppiness of a double IPA, consider that a Double IPA is twice as hoppy as an IPA, which is twice as hoppy as a pale ale, which is a fair bit more hoppy than a Pilsner, and you can notice the hops in a Pilsner.

Denali Double IPA is an improvisation on the Pliny clone recipe as published in Zymurgy magazine, the definitive homebrewing periodical.  In this recipe I've dropped the corn sugar and upped the pale barley content for a slightly maltier taste while keeping with ingredients you can recognize as natural. I've kept the eye-popping 12.5 oz of leaf hops including a double dry hopping. But, I'm using somewhat different hops - retaining Centennial, but substituting Newport for Simcoe and Nugget for Columbus.  I also use first wort hopping.

The brew is named after Denali (meaning "the big one" in the native Athabaskan language), Alaska's majestic mountain - the tallest peak in North America and the largest in mass in the world. Kristin and I spent time around Denali during our 3 month extended honeymoon through the far north. We were graced with a rare mist-free day at our first sighting of Denali, something I'll always remember. Just as Denali stops you in awe when you first view it, this brew is designed to stop the true "hop head" in awe at the first taste. 

In December 2012, my brother, Corbin, and his son, Keith, flew solo for their first time on all-grain brewing and wanted a good double IPA as a launch pad. I just HAD to accommodate.  Brewing a double IPA for your first solo brew is a little like running the Boston Marathon on your first jog - no matter how it turns out you have to love the attitude.  I offered this as a recipe and I will cautiously add this to my own brewing priority list. [All-grain recipe].

Detroit Sunrise Breakfast Stout. ~8.0% ABV, last brewed  11/21/2012, batch #41. I've always been a morning person, some would say an ultra-morning person. I often wake early and get excited about what I might do in the new day - every day has such a freshness of possibility. So it probably isn't surprising that breakfast has always been important to me. 

Some of the most wonderful breakfasts I remember were at Cappy's restaurant in Detroit on Woodward just north of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. Kristin, Tom and I would walk the 2 1/2 short blocks passing the Smiley Brothers Music mansion to arrive at Cappy's to have their great eggs, hashbrowns and orange juice and use the time to plan the creativity we would muster for the day. This brew is named in honor of those great Detroit breakfasts.

The brew itself was first made by my brother Corbin after a recipe he found to approximate Founders Brewing Company's breakfast stout. It starts with a sound base recipe for a stout but tacks on some wonderful additions of chocolate and Sumatran coffee in the boil with further coffee in the secondary fermenter. With all that coffee, it certainly tastes inspired by breakfast. 

My good buddy Ronnie just loves this brew and has been bugging me to brew it for a while.  So on "stout day" in November 2012 Corbin and I brewed this along with Shaggy Mane White Stout.  At Corbin's recommendation, we doubled the amount of coffee from the original recipe. [All-grain recipe].

Donaldson & Guenther Pale Ale. 5.5% ABV, last brewed 5/22/2014, batch #52. We've never had an issue with dental care in our household. A simple reason: we go to a fantastic dental practice: Donaldson and Guenther Dentistry of Ann Arbor. It is a pretty amazing group of people. 

No matter whether it is Kristin Guenther (Craig's dentist) painstakingly navigating the twists and turns of the roots of Craig's tooth during a root canal, or Kirk Donaldson (my wife Kristin's dentist) meticulously replacing a crown, or both dentists coming in for after-hours emergency work on Eugene's tooth (and refusing to take payment for it), or the talented and ever-friendly dental hygienists and staff, or the calm ambiance of their office, or Kirk's stunning photography hanging on the walls, or Kristin G's interesting dialog about her equestrian activities, or their kindness in not making an issue when I have a brain fart and forgets the occasional appointment ..... well you get the idea, they are REALLY good and friendly.

Recently, out of the blue we received a discount from them - a long-term-customer discount that was neither expected nor necessary, but certainly appreciated. Kristin and I both had crown work recently on new insurance so nearly all of the expense was out of pocket. The discount was a sizable gift from them that hit us at the right time.

Although I won't claim that I'm making a gift back to them in similar dollar value, I can say without doubt that this gift of an honorary brew to Kristin Guenther, Kirk Donaldson and staff reflects our family's sincere appreciation for their many years of friendship and quality dental care.  Lance and I dropped off a case of the brew and a card on July 1 and Kristin Guenther was excited about sharing it at their upcoming office party. From the pics Kirk sent (including his nice close-up at right), the party seemed to be a smashing success and we now have official new brew buddies.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, I'll suggest to them that they raise the bar on their already-high dental care standards by keeping a stash of this pale ale on ice in their office to use as a novocaine alternative (back to old-school dental pain relief - sign me up!). [All-grain recipe].

Heavenly Helles

I became interested in Helles after watching a number of videos by a down-to-earth  brewer from Minnesota, Don Osborne. Although he has wide-ranging beer tastes, helles is one of his go-to beers, and he seems to always have one on tap.

After brewing my first helles, I can understand his enthusiasm. It is a very approachable beer, clean, and simple, with a wonderful grainy character in both taste and aroma. The grain bill isn't complex - predominantly pilsner with a bit of munich, so not too far different from a pale ale. However, it is less hoppy, and more drinkable. I think I'll keep a helles on tap as well!

[All-grain recipe, BJCP Description, German Beer Institute Overview].

Jungfernreise Oktoberfest.  5.5% ABV, last brewed 1/14/2012, batch #24. Our beer brewing posse has roped  in another innocent bystander: Ronnie Hammond (this is getting WAY too easy). In the fall of 2011 he bought 4 cases of Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest. He became simply fanatical about this beer and was turning desperate over the winter holiday when he realized that he was running low on his new favorite beer and would be unable to purchase more until next Oktober.

He turned to his brewing buddies with a plea for assistance. We rushed to his rescue and brewed a Hacker-Pschorr clone in mid-January. Ronnie found a person who swore he had the perfect clone recipe, so we ran with that including a small addition of Carapils for head retention. Since this is Ronnie's first foray into all-grain brewing we named this beer "Jungfernreise", German for "first voyage". 

Ronnie pegged Hacker-Pshorr as very close in taste to my 3-and-out Oktoberfest when we did a side-by-side taste test while watching Meechigan thump Virginia Tech in the 2012 Sugar Bowl. 3-and-Out was a tad maltier (I designed it to be very malty) so we are brewing Jungfernreise with a modified sulphate/chloride water chemistry ratio to lean more toward the bitterness side.

Ronnie has waffled on whether or not he wants to get into all-grain brewing and lagering. He is a minimalist at heart, and truth be told, brewing does accumulate gear. But, he is showing all the signs of succumbing (tee-hee!). We bottled this for Ronnie on the day before Easter 2012 when we had the extended brew clan together at the K-Hill brewery. Even as we were bottling, Ronnie spoke of the latest beers that sent into a state of euphoria. That is one of the great things about brewing: it is very accommodating to wild swings in brewing preferences!  [All-grain recipe, style description].

Kevy's Oktoberfest. 5.5% ABV, last brewed June 14, 2014, batch #53. Kevin is my brother, two years younger than me. When we were kids we did a lot together, most of it was sports: baseball, football, basketball and kickball. We would also improvise a lot: we would "bat 'em out", play a multi-level baseball catching came (I recall one level was "doah fig"), play a home run derby of sorts with a wiffle ball/bat, and for a while we played a lot of "between the wires" - where we kicked a ball at overhead wires near our home. And, oh yes, we found great pleasure throwing snowballs at cars, not really appreciating that could be dangerous.

We also enjoyed cross-crountry skiing, whitewater canoeing and exploring Alaska together a couple of times - one that found us 100 miles from civilization, drunk (having split a fifth of Yukon Jack), in socks without shoes, in grizzly bear territory, and not knowing exactly where our camp site was. It is amazing how we can survive our own ignorance!

We both enjoy music so we were also in a wedding band together, "The Blue Menagerie" - a great way to make money and have fun in the process. Although we came close, we never came to blows over who drew the short straw and had to lead the Hokie Pokie.

So, this brew is dedicated to my bro Kevin and the many great times we've had together and the many more that I'm sure will come. I wanted to come up with a good German beer for our shared German heritage and chose an Oktoberfest. It seemed appropriate since late spring is a good time to brew an Oktoberfest - allowing enough time for a good 3-4 months of lagering to make it nice and mellow when we crack it open in the fall. This recipe for this Oktoberfest is dominated by Dark Munich grain - a more fully roasted version of Munich barley, my favorite grain. I've never used Dark Munich before, so I'm excited to see what it will taste like both in the brew and in the small handful I'll chew on to get a sense of this new-to-me product of Nature's bounty.

This is my third brotherly honorary brew, each a classic German beer style, so now I have all of my bros covered. Another bucket-list item complete.  [All-grain recipe, style description].

Let There Be Dark Bavarian Dunkel. %5.0 ABV, last brewed January 22, 2012, batch #25. I must admit that I have always had a preference for dark ("dunkel" in German) beers. There is something fundamentally pleasing about the malty smooth character that typically accompanies these brews. I find their richer character much more arresting - causing me to pause, experience and dive into their sensory pleasures much more deeply than I'm apt to do drinking a blend-into-the-background so-what light lager. Dark beers are more assertive and demanding of attention. They are a bit like odd and opinionated dinner guests - as long as they have something interesting to convey, I'll gladly invite them to my table and indulge in their character.

This dunkel, DOES have something interesting to convey.  It is dark coppery amber in color with an earthy and bready taste. Full-bodied and malty. And yes, arresting. The Bavarian yeast does its work well, creating a complex and rewarding sensory experience.

This brew was made with Corbin, my youngest brother, on a cold January 2012 day, brewing in my basement brewery. We were able to accommodate two brew setups simultaneously and avoided the need to run hoses from outside spigots thanks to my recent (and frightening) plumbing escapades.

I hope that no offense is taken by my paraphrasing words attributed to the Big Guy for the name of this beer. Just as darkness was present before light in Genesis, we should perhaps extend this universal truism to seek the experience of dark beers prior to their light brethren.  [All-grain recipe, BJCP style description, German Beer Institute Overview].

LVB 32, Joel Schoenhals' Kolsch. ~5.2%. ABV.  Last brewed summer, 2013. This brew is dedicated to good friend and talented musician Joel Schoenhals. Joel is a professor of piano at Eastern Michigan University and he committed himself to a wonderful Beethoven Odyssey. He decided to perform all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas over a 4-year, 8-concert series (hence LVB 32).

To prepare for his 8 public performances, Joel plays a series of warm-up recitals at homes in the SE Michigan area. We have been very fortunate to have Joel choose our home as one of his venues.

With such a creative and inspiring effort, I couldn't resist making an honorary brew for Joel. With LVB's German heritage (and Schoenhals strikes me as German), a German brew was mandatory. The brew had to be very drinkable and mix well with Joel's music. A Kolsch sounded just right. 

It has been a great delight knowing Joel, his wife Bing (also a talented pianist), son Aaron and Bing's parents. We had them all over to the K-Hill farm one delightful summer day. I was doubled over in laughter as Aaron drove our tractor sitting on Kristin's lap - the steering wheel seemed bigger than he was, but he maneuvered with great skill!  Coordinated hands, just like his mom and dad!  [All-grain recipe].

Majestic Thunder Belgian Blonde.  ~6.2%. ABV.  Last brewed January 22, 2012, brewed by Corbin, split batch. Belgium has a very rich history of brewing, most notably through the prized Belgian Trappist brews created in the monasteries that dot the country side. I've been itching to brew these Belgian delights ever since being introduced to them at the home of our friends Dana and Jim. This urge then collided with a desire by Corbin to create a blonde ale for his wife Wendy. From this confluence of interests Majestic Thunder was born.

Most Belgian brews tend toward high alcohol content and achieve some of that by adding sugar to the grain bill. Majestic Thunder is no different. The grain bill for this brew is fairly simple, dominated by German Pilsner barley with the slightest hint of color from the lightest caramel malt. A Belgian Abbey yeast is used to sculpt a unique Belgian taste profile.

I've named this brew in honor of Kristin's life-long love for horses. She has owned and ridden horses since she was a kid and has gravitated to the even tempered breeds with a special interest in draft horses and especially Belgian draft horses. Belgians are truly beautiful animals - big,  well proportioned, with a presence of strength and a light blonde mane contrasting beautifully with a darker blonde coat. Simply majestic. Both the horse and the brew are blonde, striking, and can pack a whollop.  "Majestic Thunder" seemed to fit them both.

This beer was brewed by Corbin in one of our "split batch" efforts (while experimenting, we brew 2 different 5 gallon batches each taking half of each) in my brewery basement. It is a great beer in it's own right but is also a stepping stone to more complex Belgian dark Dubels and light Tripels.  Brewing Onward!   [All-grain recipe].

Milagro de Mexico, Vienna Lager.  5.5% ABV, last brewed March 30, 2013 batch #45. Prior batches are September 2, 2011, batch #11; and December 31, 2011, batch #22; Innkeeper and brewer Anton Dreher is credited with inventing cold-fermented Vienna lager in 1841. Traditionally made in March when ice was still available, this copper-brown colored beer was a hit, winning the gold medal at the 1858 Beer Exhibit in Vienna. Other Vienna brewmeisters started making this beer, and later in the 19th century some of these stout-hearted (lager-hearted?) men emigrated to Mexico and brought their brewing tradition with them. The Mexican people knew a good beer when they tasted it, and Mexico's first large-scale brewery - Cuauhtemoc in Montery - was established in 1890 by a German brewmeister, who introduced Vienna-style beers and won the Grand prize at the Chicago International Beer Exposition in 1893.

Negra Modelo is one of these Mexican Vienna lagers, and is perhaps my favorite commercial beer, first tasted in a restaurant in Cupertino, California when I had a hankering for Mexican food. I had asked for a Dos Equis from the bar keep and was somewhat disappointed when they didn't have it. But, as is oft possible in life, the disappointment of not experiencing the familiar was quickly replaced with the delight of experiencing the new.  Brewed since 1926, Negra Modelo was for many years one of the few existing Vienna-style lagers in the world. European breweries abandoned the style.

Milagro de Mexico ("Miracle of Mexico") Vienna Lager is my interpretation of my Mexican favorite, as I suspect Anton would have made it. It is a dark amber, but somewhat lighter in color than Negra Modelo, minimicking Anton's original coloration. Although we can't claim this brew to be a "milagro", it is pointed in that direction. It is smooth and malty with a hint of sweetness that makes it slither down the throat.  It has a rich off-white head and is a great companion to food with friends, especially hot and spicy Mexican food! 

Of all the beers I've brewed this is the one that people like the most and is the one that gets drained quickly at poker gatherings. In fact, at the last poker game my buddy Ronnie (a die-hard Pilsner and light lager fan) held a tight grip on the Milagro de Mexico growler all night - a great sight indeed.  [All-grain recipe, style description].

Mischievous Monk Belgian Strong Dark Ale. ~8.0% ABV, last brewed  July 4, 2012. A number of Trappist abbey's  dot the Belgium countryside. Trappists, a.k.a  the Order of Cistercians of Strict Observance, are cloistered contemplative Catholic monks whose order was named after La Trappe abbey in Normandy where a reform movement began in 1664 in reaction to what was perceived as overly lax practices in other abbeys. 

These devout monks developed into some of the best brewers in the world. I'm humbled by their creativity (using the art of beer brewing to fund philanthropic efforts), their clarity of thought (seeing no conflict between strict observance of religious practices and the joys of making and consuming outstanding beer) and pragmatism (adopting just enough modern brewing techniques to create a world-class product). These are people I'd like to know personally.

My first introduction to Belgian beer was to Chimay Blue, arguably the gold standard of Belgian Strong Dark Ales. Like all dark Belgian brews, Chimay Blue is big in alcohol, but carries it incredibly well in the midst of a lacy-smooth, malty, dark caramel highly effervescent complexity. 

This beer is my attempt to duplicate Chimay Blue, first brewed on a hot Independence day with Corbin and my new Belgian "cousin" Manu. I started with a Belgian Dubbel recipe for a Chimay Red clone from Tomme Arthur and grew it up from there. Being true to style, it is dominated by Belgian Pilsner but includes a rich mix of other barleys including Belgian Aromatic, CaraMunich, CaraVienna, Special "B", and Belgian Biscuit. Dark candi sugar is added to up the alcohol content and help sculpt the amber color. We've added a bit of torrified wheat for extra body. A slight whiff of hoppiness is added ensuring that it takes a respectful backseat to the strong malty presence.

While we were brewing, Manu treated us to a sampling of Belgian/French cheeses and Belgian beers, paired for their compatibility. He had us put a thin later of French butter (a little fat always helps flavor!) on a cracker then topped with the appropriate cheese. Exquisite! He also played vacation planner and recommended "must see" sites in Brussels and beyond for our upcoming trip to Europe. 

The monk on the label is by Eduard von Grützner, a 19th century German painter who liked a bit of irreverence in his work and often painted monks drinking. He worked for a time in Munich (less than 500 miles from Brussels) so I suspect he enjoyed a good Belgian strong dark ale now and again. 

Kristin and I will spend a week in Belgium this summer where I hope to dive into the wonderful world of Belgian brews. Although the Trappist monasteries are predominantly off limits to the public, we can visit a number of breweries and sample these delights - including some outstanding lambic beers (but more on that later)! [All-grain recipe, style description].

Montreal Midnight Cherry Chocolate Stout. ~6.5% ABV, last brewed January 5, 2012, batch #23. Before Tess came home from  school at McGill in Montreal for the winter holiday 2011, she asked me if we could brew a beer with cherry and chocolate in it. That sounded incredibly good!   

We started with a clone recipe for Rogue Ale's Chocolate Stout. In brewing circles, this chocolate stout has insanely good reviews and a clone recipe was published in Zymergy, the Homebrewing magazine. From this basis we shifted the recipe to more of a sweet stout by adding one pound of unfermentable sugar (lactose) in the boil. We also swapped out the chocolate extract for more natural cocoa nibs (gently roasted in our oven) and cut back on the hoppiness (from 69 to 38 IBUs) to let more of the cherry sweetness come through. The final addition was a combo of great flavors in the secondary fermenter (2 vanilla beans soaked in Jack Daniels and a pound of dried Michigan Montmorency cherries)!  

I've slightly overcarbonated this brew which adds to it's already unbelievably thick and creamy head. It is a sweet-but-not-overly-so sipping brew, almost akin to an aperitif. For the adventurous, especially on cold Montreal nights (are there any other kind in Montreal?), put some rich french vanilla ice cream in a mug, fill it to the brim with Montreal Midnight and start your delicious slide into decadence.

Brewing this beer for the first time was a delight since Tess invited Lorne and Colin, buddies from her Steiner school days, to brew with us. Her friend Jordan dropped by at the end as well. In a late-march brewing session with Colin and Lorne we tasted the result and we all agreed it was delicious!

I decided to name this brew after Tess' home away from home. Kristin and I have made numerous trips by train to Montreal to see Tess, typically every 6-8 weeks. We really feel as though we have a sense of the city and whenever we go there I have a distinct feeling of "coming home" partly because of the many personal Montreal traditions we've created. Before we check into the hotel I go into the nearby Dep and buy the same Sauvignon Blanc that helps me unwind after the long train trip. We always stay at the Auberge Bonaparte in the old part of Montreal and Kristin gets a room on the street side where we open the French windows regardless of the weather so we can hear the horses clip-clopping by at night. Before Kristin awakes I take my crisp early morning walk through the empty streets past the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral heading off to Tim Horton's to get my cup of Joe and take in the city. Kristin makes the sojourn off to get incomparable Montreal bagels. Typically on our last night in town, Tess, Kristin and I go out to a great Indian restaurant, the Taj, and relax, talk and laugh before we both jump back to our other lives. 

Tradition is a grand thing and I hope to add Montreal Midnight to our other great Montreal traditions.  [All-grain recipe, style description]

Night Kitchen Belgian White Ale. 5.5% ABV, first brewed June 13, 2013, batch #47. My friend Tyler from Adventures in Homebrewing is a great brewer. When I was recently in the store Aaron was helping me and offered me a sampling of Tyler's great white ale. It was fantastic - a wonderful citrusy taste and smell! Ever since tasting a very citrusy IPA with my friend Jim Gramprie, I knew I had to attempt a duplication of this great taste. This was the nudge I needed to make it real. I contacted Tyler and he sent me the recipe.

I was struggling to come up with a good name for this brew and an associated label. Thankfully, Tess offered the inspiration. On Maurice Sendak's birthday she suggested I check out the Google search engine home page and there I saw a tribute to this beloved author. Memories of my absolute favorite kids book - Night Kitchen - came flooding back and Night Kitchen Belgian White Ale was born. 

I recall reading Night Kitchen to Lance and Tess when they were young.  I loved the whimsy and fantasy of the whole thing. As I read it I felt a real kinship between Mickie and Lance. I brewed this for the first time with my good friend Dan Harteau and his son Matt on their very first brew day as Dan tested out his recently purchased equipment. Lance stopped by briefly and I look forward to brewing with him in the future!

I've put this brew into the Belgian Witbier category but it admittedly is a bit far-a-field of style with an American edge. Using fully American Cascade hops (to about double the bitterness of a traditional witbier), replacing the Belgian white wheat with American white wheat (Belgian unavailable), forgoing adjuncts (which some will say are a requirement for Witbier) and going with an American yeast tilts the brew decidedly in that direction. I usually stay close to style but I wanted to give Tyler's recipe a try. But as always, I have to change it. As a nod to Belgian tradition I've added flaked oats not found in Tyler's recipe.  [All-grain recipe, style description]

Orange Chocolate Cardamom Porter. 6.0% ABV, first brewed 6/29/14 batch #55. The first half of 2014 has not seen a  great deal of brewing from me. That's not good. I decided it was time to get out of that funk so I started looking for something a bit exotic. I talked with Brew Buddy Debayan and he likes the idea of cardamom in a beer so that was a good starting point. 

After a bit of searching I found a recipe for an Orange Chocolate Cardamom Porter. The only changes I made were to put chocolate nibs in the secondary instead of chocolate powder in the boil kettle (a number of reports of the latter spoiling head retention can be found). I also added a bit of carafoam to help protect the head. This recipe seems decidedly on the fringe of beer brewing - a great place to be!

I've always enjoyed tromping around on the fringe of things since that is where you can see the arbitrariness of the boundaries we often set for ourselves. Informed of these artificial limits, we can gently cast them aside, freeing ourselves to explore and create in new territories.  In brewing, these new territories are a place with a near unlimited palette of tastes and aromas. An adventurous, experimentive and - at times - solitary spirit is required to trod this road less traveled, but it is often handsomely rewarded. Onward! 

But enough of philosophy - back to the serious business of beer!  We brewed this in a double batch with Debayan's Chai milk stout. Lance, Tess, Kristin and Debayan were on hand for brew day. Debayan brought over two different varieties of cardamom in pods that we added to the brew. Both smelled incredible. Debayan loves dark brews and this one is designed to be a monster "robust porter" having a 19 pound grain bill for 5 gallons. 

We had a trifecta of interesting occurances on this brewday. First, we had a fox kill one of our chickens. Debayan saw it from our deck and Tess "ran like wonder woman" (per Debayan) to see if she could intervene. Unfortunately, she was unable to. Second, we had a downpour that caused me to delicately move the stove under the canopy while it had two full brew kettles on it (I did so very carefully!). Then finally, I think this massive grain bill contributed to a rare stuck sparge. 

I had never really had a stuck sparge before so was not experienced in recovering from one. As a result I lost a significant amount of sugar in the process, going from an expected 1.080 OG to 1.060. I later thought through how to avoid and recover from stuck sparges and will use a grain bag going forward for big grain bills. The beer should be still be very good, just with less alcohol. Once this brew has fermented, we'll get back together and fine tune the adjuncts in this (and Debayan's milk stout). I suspect we'll be adding more cardamom. 

Since this brew has very interesting added tastes, It harkens back to Montreal Midnight Cherry Chocolate Stout that Tess suggested I brew while she was going to school at McGill in Montreal. That brew tastes fantastic over vanilla ice cream and I'm guessing this porter will do the same.

My other two ventures with fruit in beer (cherry and raspberry) have both turned out quite well so I'm hoping this will as well. 

An update.  The chocolate nibs worked well.  The orange, however turns up as aroma, but no real taste. I'm considering adding blackberries into the mix (5 lb) in the secondary. To avoid fermenting away the blackberry sweetness, I will likely either add campden tablets or add the blackberries in the cold-conditioning phase (probably the latter). [All-grain recipe, style description]

Perfection's Pursuit D-Boys Pale Ale.  5.5% ABV, batch #30, brewed 4/4/2012. Although I haven't developed professional piano chops, playing piano has always been a passion of mine. For me, it is the easiest vehicle to approach that wonderful creative essence we all have within ourselves. With Kristin's encouragement, I bought a 9-foot Steinway Concert Grand (Model D) before I retired so I could really pursue it. 

I bought it from a church in Los Angeles sight unseen at a bargain basement price since it needed work: the case was really banged up from having being moved about, the hammer felt was on its last legs and the strings didn't have a lot of life left to them. But, the sound board seemed to be very good and it carried a "CD" serial number indicating it's history as part of Steinway's "Concert Piano bank" - pianos available to touring artists. This typically means someone at Steinway thought the piano special.

After getting the piano to Michigan I found Dan Harteau, a "piano whisperer" (my term, he would never be so self-possessed) who tunes, repairs and understands the heart and soul of these Model D's.  He has the uncanny ability to coax every last bit of clarity and richness out of the pianos he maintains. He characterizes his craft as a "journey" toward that perfect sound - never quite arriving, but getting very close and having great fun and meeting great people along the way.

I've been fortunate to get to know Dan and have him restore the "D" in my home (not "the D that I own" since we're more temporary stewards of these pianos than owners). I'm not alone - most every "D" steward in Michigan gravitates to Dan. Knowing that these stewards share a deep appreciation for the piano, Dan introduced us to one another at the home of David Milling, a talented Ann Arbor architect with a breathtaking 1920s Steinway.

At David's we were treated to an intimate concert by Joel Schoenhals, professor of piano at Eastern Michigan University. It was a magical experience, not only due to Joel's piano mastery, but because we all seemed to find it exciting to speak with others who share such a deep and common singular interest. I'm not sure how it started, but the name "D-Boys" popped up to identify this clan.

I thought it a good idea to create a brew for the D-Boys and dedicate it to Dan Harteau - the person who gave us the common bond of breathtaking Steinway "D"s. I call it "Perfection's Pursuit" since that is what playing and maintaining "Ds" is all about. You never quite get there but have a blast taking the journey. In that spirit, this pale ale is brewed from a straight-ahead American pale ale recipe that I will evolve over time. Currently it features Cascade and Newport hops, but I will likely be adjusting that on future batches (perhaps Simco and Citra?) to reach toward perfect hoppiness. Ah, the pleasure of the journey!  [All-grain recipe]

Pumpkin Fest Ale. 6.2% ABV, last brewed September 14, 2011, batch #13. Kristin and I live in South Lyon, Michigan. Each year, the major civic event is our Pumpkin fest that includes a parade, floats, pie-eating contests, a pancake breakfast, babies in strollers, fire trucks - the whole nine yards. 

This ale is made in honor of that event and was made with my brother Corbin, from a good ale grain bill, real pumpkin and a dose of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves...).  

One must be vigilant in brewing with pumpkin since its dense consistency tends to clog the false bottom of one's mash tun (kettle). Constant stirring is a must. I've heard brew friends say that they don't want to bother with the real pumpkin because of this difficulty, rather, choosing to simply throw in spices.  Humbug!  To me, that is a little like choosing turkey cold-cuts instead of a fat and sassy baked turkey that fills the house and hearts with Thanksgiving cheer. There is well-grounded wisdom in tradition, so be mindful of the subtle, yet deep loss in disregarding it. [All-grain recipe].

Ragtime Rye. ~4.5% ABV, last brewed 3/7/13, batch #44.  My good buddy Gerry likes to keep beer brewing simple. He has found three great beers that he likes and he keeps a supply of all three on hand to enjoy. No need to get exotic and brew things that you may not like and may not like as much as the core three. 

Gerry's three beers are Stan's Pale Ale, Alaskan Amber and a mighty fine tasting Rye. Gerry's Rye came from a recipe suggested by our brew buddy Stan who had a rye on tap at his pub/brew supply store. This rye has a nice crisp clean taste and is a beer you can simply sit back and relax to.

If Gerry tells me a beer is good then I simply need to brew it. So Ragtime Rye has now shown up as one of my brews. My recipe is very similar to Gerry's but I've added a little carafoam for a nice head. 

My first brewing of this beer turned out very different from Gerry's because of a fulfillment error in my specialty grain bill. I some how ended up with an extra pound of grain (probably Special B) which gave the beer a much stronger taste. Not bad, but not what I intended.

The name of this beer was inspired by the people I met at the Michigan Ragtime Retreat held in Lapeer, Michigan. This is a group of people who get together yearly to learn ragtime piano technique, tidbits from the far reaches of music (including Mozart and Beethoven) and whatever else our music mentor, Bob Milne, has to tell us.

For those of you who don't know Bob, I must tell you: fix that right away. You are missing out on meeting one of the most incredible people I've ever met. In addition to being an author, his ability to process music in his brain is so remarkable that neuro-scientists have studied his jaw-dropping ability and are left fairly dumbfounded, details of which can be downloaded as a RadioLab podcast. All of this from a man who is humble, approachable and just a fun guy to be around.  Oh, by the way, he is considered one of the best ragtime and boogie-woogie piano players in the world. I therefore dedicate this beer to Bob. I won't send Bob any of the brew since he has chosen to stay away from alcohol, but I thought it appropriate to dedicate a bit of my creativity to a man who has shown a mountain of creativity himself. [All-grain recipe].

RFA Rejuvenator. ABV TBD, not yet brewed but high on my brewing priority list.  I tasted a doppelbock at Michigan's first microbrewery, the Traffic Jam and Snug (TJ's) south of Wayne State University in Detroit. I really enjoyed the dark caramel malt flavor and also enjoyed the company of Kristin as we relaxed in the restaurant that we had frequented together so often before we were married. It was a delightful experience to be back in Detroit - we had many wonderful times in this urban grittiness. It was great to see the area around TJ's sprouting with life and thriving businesses in contrast to the blight that is currently much of Detroit.  And, what delightful beer!

One thing that our tight-knit group of friends developed back in those Detroit days while working at Burroughs was the RFA. The RFA is the Right Attitude, a certain way of being and thinking. The RFA includes a healthy dose of confidence, a dash of open irreverence, a dollop of friendliness and a large helping of uncontrollable belly laugh. It's a little hard to explain, but you certainly recognize it when you've got it. Being with Kristin at TJ's brought back a full flush of the RFA. So what better way to honor those special times than to brew a beer designed to rejuvenate the attitude that made those times special.

Doppel ("double") bocks are wonderfully dark and malty brews designed to be double the intensity of the bock beers on which they are based. Doppelbocks were first created as "liquid bread", drunk by pious monks during Advent and Lent. The monks were required to fast during these periods so they put their grain in brew pots instead of in loaves - creating an amazing, rich, malty, dark beer that packs a pious punch. Creative guys! 

The first doppelbock was named "Salvator" (Savior) in honor of the spiritual purpose of their fasting. To this day, when naming doppelbocks many brewers follow the lead of these original monks by creating a brew with a name ending with the letters "ator". I respect that wonderful tradition along with the monks that started it and name this "RFA Rejuvinator".  [All-grain recipe: German Beer Institute Overview].

Road to Bombay IPA.  ~6.3% ABV, last brewed 3/30/2012 with Colin and Lorne, batch #29.  While the British Empire was still in full flower, English brewers would load their pale ales with extra portions of hops so that their precious brews would be well-preserved during the long journey across the oceans to their colony, India. Later named India Pale Ales (IPAs), these super-hopped brews defined the taste of beer for generations of English expatriates who later demanded this same taste when they came back to haunt the pubs of London and beyond.  

I was first enthusiastically introduced to IPAs through my friend Jim Gramprie, perhaps the first person I recognized as suffering from the affliction of being a "hop head".  In the spirit of true IPAs, this brew includes generous doses of freshly harvested leaf hops and uses a technique known as "First Wort Hopping" - a light pre-stewing of the hops in the warmth of a 170 degree pre-boil bath to refine the hop aroma and offer a more harmonious bitterness profile.  For extra punch, the brew is also "dry hopped" with leaf hops added directly into the secondary fermenter. 

This recipe has gone through many revisions, primarily by my brother Corbin and his son Keith as they explored their way toward greater and greater hoppiness. In the end, we've settled into this recipe which gives a refreshingly pleasant hop presence - assertive, but not overpowering. I just love approaching this brew: the nose has a citrusy punch of Cascade hops that jumps right to your brain!  Mmmmmm!.  Interestingly, there seems to be something more to hops than just a nice smell. Over the years hops have been sewn into cloth pouches to create "dream pillows".  If you sleep with one near your head, many people find that their dreams become more vivid.  I'll have to try that!

In the latest brewing, Colin and Lorne manned the kettles and shepherded the brew through to completion. For their efforts, each will get a case of this IPA. At the same time we sampled some Chimay Red (great Belgian ale) and the Montreal Midnight cherry chocolate stout they helped make in their first brewing adventure.  All agree: these were divine!  [All-grain recipe, style description].

Shaggy Mane White Stout. ~6.0% ABV target, last brewed 11/21/12.  For me beer brewing is all about experimentation: the journey rather than the destination. So, when Corbin found this recipe for a White Stout it was just impossible to resist. After all, stouts are by nature very dark, so the whole notion of a white (light colored) stout was intriguing due to its oddity. I've always liked paradoxical things so this fit the bill nicely.

The grain bill looks like a lot like an English Stout (with a whopping 14 pounds of Marris Otter British 2-row barley and flaked oats), except it is missing the dark malts that give the characteristic blackness that we expect in stouts. Sumatran coffee is added for substance along with cocoa nibs. All in all, an interesting experiment.

Corbin and I brewed this on a gorgeous fall day at the K-Hill farm on November 21, 2012. As always, Corbin brought with him gorrrgeeeous weather! The brewing started at 7:00am with a film of ice on the back deck, but by mid morning the sun was shining brightly and I had removed both my Carhart overcoat and hooded sweatshirt to bask in the warmth with only a T-shirt. We talked about Corbin's upcoming interview at Michigan State to become a horn professor - a change of job after 35 years in the Detroit Symphony. This brew day was a "stout day", he brewed this Shaggy Mane White Stout and I tried my hand for the first time at the Detroit Sunrise Breakfast Stout.

In thinking of the oddity of having a white stout, the thought of another oddly white thing - an albino lion - came to mind. I liked the picture on the label and "Shaggy Mane" was born! [All-grain recipe, style description].

Sheriff John Waddell's Goderich Wee Heavy Ale.  ~8.0% ABV target, last brewed 11/20/11, batch #18.  Kristin and I have always spent the majority of our vacation time in Canada, even more now that Tess goes to school at McGill in Montreal. I therefore chose to make a beer with a Canadian tie and dedicate it to one of Kristin's famous ancestors, Sheriff John Waddell. Sheriff John's likeness is at left from an oil painting that hangs majestically over the hearth of Sheriff John's great grandson, Henry Stuart Waddell, and his wife Carol.  Sheriff John lived and kept the peace in the area of Goderich, Ontario, a Lake Huron port town.  Sheriff John died by drowning in a valiant attempt to save a boater in distress. 

I suggest you go to Goderich, and when you do, try to catch the Celtic Blue Highlanders, the Scottish highland piping band based there.  A special delight is the Friday evening "piping down the sun" in the summer where the pipers accompany a beautiful sunset until it is extinguished in depths of Lake Huron.  One of my fondest memories is of sitting with Kristin on the square in Goderich at a small outdoor cafe on a late balmy summer's day, sipping a beer as shadows started to creep across this peaceful town, and thinking, "how can it get any better than this?". As if on cue, the full Celtic Blue Highlander band rounded the corner in full regalia marching ramrod-straight heading right toward us, sending their gorgeous piping to the heavens. It POSITIVELY doesn't get any better than that! Although Goderich was hit by a devastating tornado in August, 2011, the city is recovering and I suspect will soon regain the full charm that caused it to be recognized as "Canada's Prettiest Town".  I will always have an affection for Goderich, so this beer is also a tribute to this great town.

Sheriff John is of Scottish ancestry, so this tribute brew is a Scotch "wee heavy ale", loosely patterned after Founder's Brewing Co's "Dirty Bastard" ale (no slight to Sheriff John intended). Thanks for the recipe to Tyler, of Adventures in Homebrewing, a place I much too often frequent.  Like all Scotch ales, this brew is very light on hop bitterness, and provides a strong malty presence.  The maltiness comes as no surprise since we went big - VERY big - on malted barley. A whopping 19.4 pounds of Scottish grain strained the limits of my mash kettle and was composed of a wonderful combination of 8 different imported malt varieties.  This brew provides a mildly smoked and earthy flavor, helped along with a wee bit of Scottish Peated Malt and a dollop of Roasted Barley. The end result has a complex finish and dark ruby color. 

Scottish Ales have a wonderfully antiquated classification system based on the brew's 19th century barrel tax in shillings: 60 (light ale), 70 (heavy ale), 80 (export) and 90 ("wee heavy" - the grandest of them all). Sheriff John's is a robust 90 shilling wee heavy ale - a good match for a man and clan so robust of will and heart. When Waddells do things, they tend to do it full throttle, so a full-throttle brew seemed appropriate.  Here's to you Sheriff John! [All-grain recipe, style description].

Tandemonium Beer Bust Steam Lager.  Beer recipe in progress, not yet brewed. This is the first beerwhere the beer name rose up long before any idea of a recipe. It was spawned by annual holiday meeting of the Out-State Tandem alumni clan at Mr. B's Rustic Tavern in Howell, MI. This is a group of friends that I've known from Tandem Computers where I started working in 1983. This group includes Brian Williams, "Ricky D" Dupuis, Bob North, Keith "Jack and Master of all trades" Moore, Debbie Kooperman, Mike Kaucheck, Kelly Knotts and more.  

A wonderful tradition of Tandem was the Friday 4:00 beer bust. We all worked hard, but at 4:00 every Friday we shut down, joined together in our office for beer, relaxation and conversation. It was one of the best ideas I've ever seen in a work environment. It fostered community and a lot of job satisfaction. It was a wonderful way to set your attitude aright going into the weekend.

Like any big company, Tandem had its bouts with chaos. When they occurred someone had the creative idea of calling them bouts of Tandemonium (Tandem Pandemonium). Since Tandem is all about "interlocked pairs", I thought the interlaced beer mugs were a good fit for the beer label.

I haven't designed this brew yet, but I think it will be to  a California Common or "steam" beer.  Since both steam beer and Tandem are native to California, I thought it a perfect match! Steam beers often use California Common lager yeasts but ferment at unusually high temperatures for lagers, perhaps 60-65 degrees F. [All grain recipe: TBD, style description]  

Titania's Revenge. ~5.8% ABV, last brewed December 19, 2011, batch #20.  Titania, Queen of the Fairies, is a proud creature and every bit the match for husband, Oberon, both enlivened in the Bard's Midsummer Night's Dream. Since Oberon's servant, Puck, cast an undeserved spell on Titania I've always thought it fitting that she be given the opportunity to respond, but alas Shakespeare is no longer with us to accommodate. As luck would have it, I discovered a way to correct this injustice after I had the delightful experience of tasting Bell's Brewery Oberon ale. 

How fitting to create Titania's Revenge as an interpretation of Oberon's brew. This beer, like Titania herself, will treat you very differently depending on how you treat her: treat her wisely and she will surely delight, but treat her disrespectfully and she will surely be a headache.

I first tasted Bell's Oberon at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater, the wonderfully restored silent movie era venue built just before the stock market crash of 1929. With ostentatious colorful decor and one of the last working original theater organ's in the country, this historic theater is a delight to enter even if you see no performance. On special occasions silent films are brought to life by the improvisations of talented organists. Watching one of these classics with a good beer in hand is a grand experience and underscores that computer animation and digital audio in today's films is different from, but not necessarily better than, experiencing historic works of art in their original form.

Like Oberon Ale, this beer is made with half wheat grain and the rest primarily light barley. A little crystal malt is added for color and a hint of sweetness. It carries a light hoppiness. Although Oberon Ale is typically considered a good summer beer, Titania's Revenge is brewed in winter, primarily to be contrary. It was first brewed with all three of my brothers and nephew Keith on an unseasonably warm winter day. Curl up with one next to the hearth and perhaps you'll find it a true Midwinter Night's Dream. [All-grain recipe].

Wagner Warsteiner. 5.1% ABV, last brewed 3/20/12, batch # 28.  Warsteiner (pronounced "Var-Schteiner") is Germany's largest privately owned brewery. They create a wonderfully curious and slightly tart Pilsner. Perhaps I'm influenced by my German heritage, but you have to love how seriously German's take their beer. The folks at Warsteiner go as far as creating a detailed video on how to pour their brew, cautioning you that once the beer is drawn to move the glass out from under the tap so that errant beer drops  don't "damage the beer head". Even if you don't like the beer, you have to admire their panache!

This brew was recommended by my brother Corbin after a suggestion from his daughter, Jacquelyn. She lives in Berlin, has a discriminating palate for beer, and really likes Warsteiner. She challenged Corbin and me to try to duplicate the beer she drinks in local pubs. So here it is.

The grain bill for this brew is predominantly Belgian Pilsner (yes, it seems only appropriate to create a batch with German Pilsner as a comparison) with a bit of Munich for a slight grainy taste.  It was "mashed" (cooked) at a low temperature, unlike about any other beer we've made before. This creates a very light-bodied beer with very little sweetness. [All-grain recipe].

Westvlyteren Pilgrimage. 9.0% ABV, last brewed September 3, 2012, batch #36.  Westvlyteren is the name of a small village in Western Belgium that is home to an even smaller Trappist abbey that has always brewed the most exquisite beers, earning them at various times the recognition from beer aficionados as producing "the best beer in the world". Westvlyteren ale is extremely difficult to buy since there is only one place in the world that sells it - a cafe across the street from the abbey in Westvlytteren.

I must admit that the difficulty in acquiring this brew added to it's mystique. While Kristin and I were in Belgium, we felt as though a "pilgrimage" to taste the beer from this legendary abbey was the right thing to do. So we set out on a Sunday morning from our base in Ghent, Belgium, and took a train to Poperinge, the nearest train stop to Westvlyteren. From there we had hoped to bicycle the remaining 10 kms, but since it was Sunday, all bike rental shops were closed.  Undeterred, we decided to walk the remainder of the distance.  

This walk turned out to be one of the most magical times of our 3-week vacation. The weather was absolutely beautiful as we walked down a narrow winding road through farm fields and beautiful countryside. The clouds were different from what you see in North America and I noticed that they were the same clouds that I had admired in the Dutch and Belgian paintings we had seen on the trip. The clouds were stacked high in many different forms - many clouds, but not seemingly overcast. I talked to cows I saw along the way and admired the large hop fields. When I finally arrived, I had both a Westvlyteren 12 and 10.  Given the high alcohol content of these and the 10km walk back to Poperinge, I decided I better not have more than two. On the way back I walked and jogged with my senses wide open, very present, very happy.

This brew is dedicated to that memorable pilgrimage (yes, it is all about the journey, but the destination can be cool too). I had intended to brew it with Jim Gramprie, my Ann Arbor buddy, whose wife Dana adores tripels. That didn't work out, but Kristin and I will find time to share this with Jim and Dana and to thank Dana for the nudge into appreciating tripels. The recipe used Belgian Trappist yeast, a full two pounds of candi sugar all added to the robust Belgian Pilsner-dominated grain bill. The picture on the label is of the Abbey of Saint Sixtus at Westvlyteren, home of the brewers that God has surely blessed and who in turn have blessed generations of beer lovers around the world.  [All-grain recipe].

Whatta Pilsner! 5.9% ABV, last brewed October 13, 2011, batch #16.  Here is a classic German Pilsner (named after Pilsen, Bohemia, where it was first made), brewed with my brother, Corbin. Light, crisp, sunshine yellow with a balanced assertive hoppiness. Chosen in response to Corbin's comment, "Craig, not another dark beer, please!" and to satisfy the pallet of my good buddy Ronnie (a fellow legacy Lutheran) who likes his beer on the clean and refreshing side, especially in the summer.  The grain bill understandably features German Pilsner barley and the hops are leaf Czech Saaz hops fresh from the fall 2011 harvest. Like all good lagers, this brew is fermented at cooler temperatures than ales, then briefly warmed to drive off diacetyl, then finally cold-crash lagered near freezing to clarify and finish. 

This was my first brewing experience with leaf hops and I trust I'll be hard pressed to go back to hop pellets. Sure, both produce the same good beer, but I would rather work with Nature's leafy bounty instead of something pounded, pulverized and pancaked into shape with a machine.  Also, a good bed of leaf hops can act as a filter to remove unwanted protein trub early in the brew process.  This is the first beer brewed on Corbin's all-grain brewing equipment.  Alas, another otherwise-normal man succumbs to the home brewing bug.  Beware, lest I infect you!  [All-grain recipe, style description].

White House Honey Ale. ABV TBD, not yet brewed. Regardless of your political persuasion we should all doff our hats to President Barack Obama for being the first president to openly embrace home brewing. His White House chefs/brewers created two new recipes (Honey Ale and Honey Porter) and shared them with the world. The Honey Ale is probably best classified as a specialty ale (due to the honey inclusion), but also has the character of English ale.

The recipes from our Commander in Chief Brewmeister call for malt extracts with specialty grains. Although these recipes can undoubtedly create great beers, I prefer all-grain brewing so have made modifications. I've gone a tad out of bounds from the base recipe by adding a Munich and Honey malt for their grainy/nutty taste. Included in the original recipe is one pound of honey from the White House bees, but we'll make a small compromise by substituting quality Michigan honey.

Like the President's recipe, I'm using dry Windsor yeast to give an English character. I rarely use dry yeast, so wanted to explore this newness a little. I often find that there is a certain benefit in doing things differently - just for the sake of doing them differently - since it shakes you out of a state of mindless doing that can be co-resident with atrophy. As an example, I like to do things left-handed at times, just to experience the little discomfort and newness of the different.

White House Honey Ale should be a decidedly satisfying beer: one you could sit down and enjoy as you solve the world's biggest problems or breathe in the world's smallest nuance; a beer over which one can work out reasoned compromise; and a beer with which one can make friends and forge a bond of common interest.

To aid in unknotting Washington gridlock please write your Congressional representative (template provided) urging them to consider serving White House Ales at each session of Congress. Just as it is almost impossible to frown and be nasty while playing the banjo, it's hard to find ways to disagree while sharing a cold home brew with a compatriot. Make beer not war!  [All-grain recipe:].

Whitmore Lake Preserve Pale Ale. 6.0% ABV target, last brewed August 15, 2017.  In 2016, Kristin and I were delighted when 235 acres of forest, wetlands and farm fields was acquired as part of the Washtenaw County Natural Areas Preservation Program. This chunk of land is a little over half a mile from our home and is called Whitmore Lake Preserve. The preserve is owned and maintained by Washtenaw County Parks & Rec. It allows no dogs, fires, bikes, horses, vehicles, etc. - so it is simply a great place to walk.

And walk it I did, starting in February, 2017. It is a beautiful piece of land, but there was a lot of debris - tires, beer cans, lumber, bricks, old camping refuse and more - especially in the southern part of the preserve. So I started spending 2-3 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, hauling things out of the woods and putting them into piles. The more I looked, the more I found. The number of piles grew. And the size of the piles grew.

By the time spring hit, I had created over 30 piles of garbage. I worked with Allison Krueger and Faye Stoner from WC Parks & Rec and they arranged to bring in two huge dumpsters and a crew to load the piles up and cart them off. They also did a controlled burn and reseeding in the oak savanna, a major erosion control effort on the road entering the preserve, as well as continuing trail maintenance. By late summer, the place was looking fantastic! Take a look at the Friends of Whitmore Lake Preserve site.

This beer is brewed in honor of all those who have worked to acquire, restore and maintain Whitmore Lake Preserve. Many hanks for their vision, commitment, and activity to protect the wildlands and wildlife of Washtenaw County.  I brewed up a case for them and gave it to them with a poem commemorating our effort together in the preserve.

Zeitgeist Pale Ale. 

7.1% ABV target, last brewed December 24, 2011, batch #21.  "Zeitgeist" can be loosely defined as "the spirit of the times".  I thought it a fitting name for a brew that I plan on altering every time I brew it. Additionally, as a brewmeister with German roots, a harsh-sounding German word that loosens phlegm in your throat just in its speaking felt like a good name for a brew.  The beer is based on a traditional American Pale Ale recipe from brewer-friend, Stan (check out his Malty Dog pub & brew supply store). 

Refreshing, light amber gold in color with a nice hoppy presence that lets you savor the hops without being overpowered by bitterness. Batch #14 was brewed at the home of good friend and brew-buddy, Gerry (a.k.a Jay Dub), on what was arguably the best brewing weather I've ever seen: a beautiful Michigan fall day.  I think the rich Michigan autumn colors made their way into that batch.The intensity of the changing seasons is one good reason to call Michigan home.

Zeitgeist Pale Ale varies batch to batch, based on equal parts whimsy and mischief, and I've been increasing the grain bill (and therefore ABV) in successive brews of this beer because it seemed to ask for it. In this last brewing the grain bill equals an IPA but with the bitterness of a Pale Ale. Kick back and drink this with friends, though the brew will do some kicking of its own. Zeitgeist is one of my favorites, so you can count on me always having this on tap for you to sample.  [All-grain recipe].