Brouwerij West Belgian Blond 5 bids LA farewell for the weekend

After packing for my red eye flight to Chi-town to visit Sarah and Andrea, David invites me to join his coworkers for a beer at Library Ale House. He's preselected a belgian sounding brewery that actually hails from Paso Robles. They have a cool tap handle that's easy to remember:

The aroma is light and floral and it goes down easily. A very smooth blond that's full bodied and slightly sweet. This would go really well with food, especially fish or pasta. THE ROCK rating.

Tiffany soon arrives and she orders the Straffe Hendrik Quadruple, which we had last Saturday. Couldn't believe that a Belgian Quad is actually on tap! Now I'm off to catch a red-eye to Chicago, so excited!

Westvleteren Blonde is one of the Emanuel brothers

Got a big night ahead! I left for Whole Foods with the Mavericks game in the toilet and I return with 1 minute left and the Mavericks have pulled it off! Hot damn! Time to celebrate their win and our 301st beer (since we didn't realize yesterday was 300) with a real treat from the one Trappist Brewery whose beers are hardest to find, Westvleteren - Westvleteren info (Lost Abbey Inferno post).

The Westie Blonde is actually the least sought after of this brewery's beers - although the other two are the highest rated beers in the world for their style Beer Advocate Westvleteren. It's kinda like the Emanuel brothers. Ari is the president of the second largest talent agency in the world and has a character based on him in Entourage; Rahm was the Chief of Staff for Obama and is now running for the mayor of Chicago; and Ezekial is the Director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a leading proponent to legalize euthanasia. They are all leading men in their fields, but let's be honest, the Westie Blonde is probably an Ezekial Emanuel.

This lady is one smooth talking blonde who gets a little sassy as the night wares on. There is a malty sweet smell and I'm really enjoying the creamy, buttery and herbal flavor profile, but the grainy bite at the end jolts me. It's a grainy or clove like bite and it shadows my every sip. This is very well rated on every beer site, but the finish really nags me, like an itchy bug bite or a woman (winks). I want to say it's a Transformers rating, but I know that it's a Westie and other might enjoy it more than I, it gets a THE ROCK rating. However I personally wouldn't buy it again - not that I plan on going to Bruge anytime soon.

Next on the books is the great Sea Salt and Caramel experiment of 2011. I'm forging new ground with my next homebrew and so I need to test it. It's a wild recipe with a lot of new ground to cover. I have to reduce part of the wort to aid caramelization and then actually caramelize the brown sugar while I boil the wort for an extended time (90mins) - at least that's the plan. We'll see how it actually goes down.

The recipe is in the final stages of development and is go for brew this Sunday. It's based on these chocolate caramels that have sea salt on top, which explodes the flavor in your mouth. Love it. Here's my recipe: Savory Caramel Sea Salt

I'm testing how much salt should be used in the boil. Too little and I make an overly caramel beer, too much and I ruin it for everyone. I bought a can of caramel and dumped it in a specific amount of water in order to provide some flavor consistency, and then I'm adding sea salt at specific increments and tasting.

1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon yield nothing. 1 teaspoon we're getting there. 2 teaspoons and we've ruined it. This is a 2 quart batch and in 5 gallons there's 20 quarts, so we're multiplying by 10 and thus I'm looking to add 10 teaspoons to the boil. I'd rather go under rather than over. Another reason to test the salt now rather than later is, if I miss the correct salt amount in the boil, I can't add it when I bottle because salt de-carbonates beer. You've probably seen people add salt to beer at bars, particularly to Corona in the summer. That's why. Adding salt at bottling will make my beer flat. #notwinning

Tonight I'm also making a yeast starter for the brew, which is the easiest and quickest part of the process. My math is a little fuzzy, but each container has roughly 50 billion cells of yeast in it, and a yeast starter can double that amount. It's important to the fermentation process that there is enough yeast to eat the sugar. I think it's important to make one with any beer over 4% and more importantly, your beer will ferment faster, sometimes as soon as 4 -6 hours after pitching it. Party

Moinette Blonde helps me kill lobsters and brew my first partial mash home brew

It's the day before my berfday and I got lots going on. I'm gonna kill a lobster using a butcher's knife (I can't believe this is the humane way) and then I'm going to make my first partial-mash home brew. I've been eying this day for a while because brewing partial mash is a completely new process compared to extract brewing and it requires some science and solid execution. Good thing I'm going sharpen my execution skills with these pound and a half crustaceans first!

Sara names her lobbie William, David's is Garth and mine is Newton. We read on a website after we bought and named them, that whatever you do don't name them! Because then you get attached. Well, I suppose I've had friends for shorter time periods but I've never put a knife through their brain. Time to knock that off my bucket list.

David likes to get really close to his subjects before execution. It makes doing business personal.

Newton is gonna be delicious

Because I knew this would hilarious, I took video of each of us wielding the killing stroke. David is the pioneer, Sara is hilarious, and mine is 'efficient' (I suppose). I'm very proud of these videos, not just because I went hand-held Paul Greengrass style, but really because David and Sara are energetic participants in them. It was weird to end a lobster like this, but it is much more humane than throwing them in a boiling pot and letting them die a slow, agonizing death.

*Please know the videos are slightly graphic - we are killing animals. If you have a problem watching Shark Week or 'When Hungry, Hungry Hippos Attack' on the Nat Geo channel, this is not for you. Otherwise, I think you'll be entertained. I was a little squeamish at first, but it turned out to be (too much) fun and is one of those experiences I can cross off my life list.

Do note, that when they are moving afterwords, they're dead but their nerves are still going. It's creepy and crazy. The same thing happens when you kill a snake. The videos are short, between 1 minute and 1:30. Below is what happens when brain meets knife.

 David

 Sara

 Walker

This was quickly becoming an incredibly fun day. After slicing and dicing them, David and Sara stuffed the lobsters with crab whilst I prepared my brewing equipment.

The champagne below (I will post a video tomorrow with more detail) was a gift from my dad for my 21st birthday. It's a pretty nice bottle so at the time I planned to have it on a 'Special Occasion.' And I could never decide when that occasion was, so it's been on my desk, under my bed and in my wine cooler for the past 7 years. It's not like champagne ages, would it still bubble?

To my delight, the bubbly and food was amazing. The champers was surprisingly complex. Champagne with crab stuffed lobsters, wow, a pretty high-class meal. Thanks to Sara and David, who made my last day as a 27 year-old an awesome day.

So instead of celebrating the birthday weekend by paintballing today, I decided to grill seafood and make my first partial mash beer. Homebrewing with extract is how I made my previous 4 beers, but by learning partial mash, I gain an understanding of All-Grain brewing (the third and final tier of homebrewing) and hopefully create more complex beers. It's more complex though and I had to outfit two 5 gallon coolers with special equipment.

I won't describe the process in depth here because it's detailed online, but it simply involves 'cooking' the grains (I have 5.5 lbs) in 152 degrees for an hour (mashing the grains), and then sparging the grains (washing them with 180 degree water) again, to create the wort. The hard part is getting the right water temperature and then maintaining it and figuring out how much water to use. Overall, it took me 4.5 hours to mash the grains and cook the wort. Usually it takes me 2, 2.5 hours.  

I'll post the recipe below, but first let me review the beer of the day. I'm making a Belgian Blonde so I picked one of the few Belgian Blondes I saw in Beverage Warehouse today and it was fantastic. It has a strong yeast smell and great color. The pop when I uncorked it was stronger than my champagne pop, and it has great carbonation and sexy Belgian lace. There is a smooth and balanced pilsner malt base and has a subtle spicy flavor that adds a delicious twist. Moinette blonde is a flat out fantastic for the style. BAD BOYS rating.

Here's the two-tier system in action

Untitled Belgian Blonde
Here is a link to the recipe that is reprinted below: Summer Belgian Blonde. I built this recipe from scratch.

Malt Extract:     Pale 3 lbs
                        Dry Pilsner Extract 1lb

Sugar:              Light Belgian Candy Sugar 1 lb

Grain Bill:          Belgian Pilsner 3 lb 4oz

                        Vieanna Malt 1 lb

                        Caramel Crystal Malt 10L 12 oz

                        Cara-Puls 8 oz               

Hop Schedule:  Hallertau (3.0%) 1.5 oz at 60 mins
                       Hallertau (3.0%) 1oz at 30 mins
                       Cascade (4.0%) 1oz at 15 mins
                      
Yeast:            Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes (made a yeast starter Friday night at 3:30am after partying, HA).
                 
IBU is  22.5 (style is typically between 15 and 30)

Potential Alcohol 6.7%
SRM (color) is 5

The gravity was a little lower than I expected coming out of the Mash-Tun, so I added a cup of dry pilsner extract to the boil. The OG reading at the boil's end malfunctioned and said my beer is 10%+ which is not possible. Overall, I hit the temperatures I wanted but had trouble maintaining the 150 degree plus temp while Mashing. The process kept me busy but wasn't as stressful as I thought. It was fun though, I'm already looking forward to creating another recipe!

 Here are 5.5 lbs of grains being mashed.