Allstar Break, I'm back.

Wow,what a hectic month and a half its been.  Between work, moving, traveling, and brewing I have neglected you all and I feel terrible about it.  The MLB All Star game is upon us, and while the Cubs are sending Starlin Castro, really no one gives a care about the game.  Hopefully we will see a Josh Hamilton-esque performance at the home run derby.  Cubs are bad, so that takes care of baseball for the time being. Onto the brewing.

Lets start with the news that Crooked Number should have a logo soon, which will double as a label.  Once I get the finished product I will post it here, as well as add it to the banner on the blog.  When I last left you, I had mentioned I had finished brewing my first ever IPA for a coworkers wedding present.  The recipe is below:

• 14 lbs Pale 2-Row
• 1/2 lb Crystal 60L
• 1/2 lb Malotdextrin
• 2 oz Magnum
• 1 oz Cascade
• 1.5 oz Amarillo
• WLP 001 California Ale Yeast

This resulted in an OG of 1.070 and a FG of 1.008 for an ABV of 8.3%.  This beer is a dark golden color, and an IBU of 84.2 according to BrewTarget.  I will update you with a picture and tasting notes in my next post.

I also started a new tradition of brewing a Fourth of July beer, on the date rather than for the date.  I decided on a Fruit Wit beer for the summer heat.  The recipe is as follows:

• 3.75 lbs Red Wheat Malt
• 6 lbs Pale 2-Row
• 2 oz Saaz
• 1 tbsp Bitter Orange Peel
• 2 tsp Whole Coriander
• WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale Yeast
• 4 lbs fresh Illinois Peaches

During the brew day I ran into issues with my thermometers malfunctioning as well as a boil over for the 5 minutes I wasn't watching the beer.  The OG of the beer was  1.042, which is lower than I would have liked, I think due to my thermometers. Unfortunately, about 3 days into fermentation the beer exploded, due to a clogged airlock.  After closing the lid and cleaning the airlock, I added the peaches to the primary, to ferment for another week before I will rack to secondary.  The beer tasted all right, lacking flavor but I am hoping that the peaches fill that void.

So with the fruit wit on the way, I will begin to ponder my next recipe.  As always thanks for reading, see you soon.

Massive update

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I have been keeping myself very busy.  But onwards we go. Lets start with some recent beer tastings. Over this weekend I discovered the amazing West Lakeview Liqours store.  Not only was it a rare beer paradise, but they had so many whiskeys I will have to go back and grab a few.  I was able to grab a few beers, the first of which is the Mikkeller Nelson Sauvin IPA.  To be honest, I bought this beer due to Nelson in the name but I was very pleasantly surprised.  Nelson Sauvin hops are native to New Zealand and very different from your typical hop.  The beer had a very fruity, full flavor with a slight bitterness.  I hesitate to say it tastes like wine, but the flavor was very rich and not too bitter.  I would highly recommend it.

Next up, and update on the Seal Ale.  After bottling and conditioning for 2 weeks, I tried a Seal ale.  It is very light, about 3%, but still refreshing and has a nice crisp taste.  Perfect for these hot, humid days coming up.  I also made a label for the beer. Check it out above.

Finally, I brewed an IPA yesterday for the start of wedding season. Name has yet to be determined, but I will post the recipe and a summary of the brewing in the next few days.  It uses 3 different hops and should be a great summer beer with a hoppy profile.

Quick Beer Review: Stiegl Paracelus Zwickl

To kick off craft beer week I figured I would do a beer review for you to digest.  The other night I wandered over the Laschett's Inn on Irving Park Rd in Chicago to get some German beer and food.  The bartender informed me of the draft selection, and specifically mentioned the Stiegl as a German unfiltered summer lager.  He also mentioned it is quite rare on draft in the states, which I confirmed upon further research.  I decided to try one.

The beer came in a 0.5 L mug with about 2 inches of thick, foamy head.  The beer was a golden/yellow color and very cloudy.  I would say similar to your typical German Hefeweizen.  That is not where the similarities stop, either.  The beer has a similar mouth feel to a wheat beer, and a ever so slight sweetness to it.  It goes down smooth and finishes clean and dry.  This really is the perfect session summer beer.  Just enough body and taste to  but still highly drinkable and refreshing.  I have included a link to Beer Advocate for you to read more about this lager.

Brewing and Baseball, a History: Part 1 - The Chicago Cubs

I would like to begin a journey through the the annals of baseball history to discover the origins of beer and America's national past-time. There is hope for this to be a series chronicling every MLB team and their history of beer and brewery sponsorships.  While information can be scarce, I will try and cobble together history as well as important events or anecdotes relating to each teams relationship to everyone's favorite alcoholic beverage.  It seems ever so fitting to choose my home team, the Chicago Cubs, to being our journey.

The Chicago Cubs were founded in 1870 as the White Stockings, whilst adopting the names Orphans and Colts before becoming the Cubs in 1903.  Wrigley Field was built in 1916, right before prohibition.  I will admit, I was unable to find anything about Cubs sponsorships until 1948 (I even sent an email to the wonderful Cubs Ambassadors, which did some research for me but were unable to find anything dating before then).  What is remarkable about 1948 is that was the first year of Old Style beer as the official sponsors of the Cubs.  And guess what, they still are today.  Old Style is considered a local Chicago beer, although it was from Wisconsin.  In my opinion, there is nothing better than a cold Old Style at a Cubs game.

While Old Style has been an official sponsor since 1948, there have been other sponsors as well. In the 1950's and 1960's, according to the Ambassadors, Hamm's brewery from Minneapolis was a sponsor.  Hamm's featured a bear and woodland creatures as their mascots, and the bear fit very well with the Cubs.

Hamms Beer

From what I can tell, Hamm's was eventually replaced with Budweiser as the main beer sponsor from the late 60's until present.  I find it ironic that Bud has been the Cubs sponsor, since A) the Cardinals are owned by Budweiser and B) Chicago is primarily a Miller town due to its proximity to Milwaukee. At the stadium currently you can find an assortment of beers including Bud, Bud Lite, Old Style and its Lite brother, PBR, Heineken, and even some Goose Island.

While Wrigley Field is known for having few advertisements or billboards, there are a few significant areas to note.  The first is the famous Bud building across the street.  Although currently it is not endorsing Budweiser, it had the logo on the roof for a very long time.

The bleachers were also renamed the Bud Light Bleachers in 2007, with the Bud Light logo visible from outside the stadium.

Wrigley Field, and specifically the bleachers, have been known as a beer drinkers paradise for years.  This notion was reinforced during the "bleacher bum" era as well as the Cubs most notorious drinker, Harry Caray.  Harry was known for his extra-circulars as much as his broadcasting.  Rumour has it that he once slept with Adolphus Busch's daughter.  He also always had a beverage during his broadcast, sometimes saluting the bleacher bums.

To sum up each part, I would like to offer recommendations of beer to buy if you are ever near the ballpark, or seeing a game. In the field you have to get an Old Style or 3, while outside the stadium stop by Goose Island for some Chicago brewed beer.  Coming soon, Part 2: Chicago White Sox.

Osama is dead or Friday Links

So I hope to post some relevant links to interesting stuff on Fridays.  Hopefully it will be a mixture of baseball, beer, brewing and bourbon. So here we go!

• Patrick Michael has a great preview of the Cubs upcoming home-stand.
• Aleheads have a great list of Mexican beers in honor of Cinco de Mayo
• Take a minute to read about the legislation going on in Illinois related to craft brewing. 
• Check out the Unitied Countries of Baseball.
• Great Tribune article on Small Batch Bourbon

Happy Friday everyone.

Seal Ale update

Tuesday night I transferred the Seal Ale from the fermenting bucket to a 5 gallon carboy.  Transferring it to the secondary fermenter should help the beer clear up and give it a nice clean appearance.  I took a gravity reading and it was at 1.008 which should yield a beer at 2.75%.  This is pretty low, but should yield a great session beer for the hot summer days.  Here is the ale in the carboy.

Be on the lookout for Friday links and a history of the Cubs and beer.

Dark Lord Day or rather Dark Line Day

This year I had the opportunity to attend Dark Lord Day at 3 Floyds Brewery in Munster, IN.  For those of you who don't know, Dark Lord is a Russian Imperial Stout brewed by 3 Floyds, and is only sold once a year.  As craft beer as exploded so has Dark Lord Day.  This event, while considered a festival with beer sales, guest draughts and food, is almost more of a tailgate.  People set up both inside and outside the event with coolers and chairs while discussing the finer points of beer, trading rare brews with others, or touting their nano or pico-brewery.

This years event was touted as more organized, with less time spent in line and more time enjoying the atmosphere.  For comparison, last year I waited in line for over 5 hours to be able to purchase my Dark Lord  with my golden ticket.  There was no rhyme or reason to the line, and near the beginning of it many people would just hop in and get their beer. For yesterday's event, tickets were sold in groups of A, B, or C with different time slots to buy the beer.  Initially there was only one line of  beer buyers in group A, and people just wanting into the festival.  This was caused by the gates opening at the same time as beer sales were to start. Eventually, however, they split the lines effectively making both run smoother and faster.

I would say overall I spent about 2 hours waiting in line for my beer.  Not too bad compared to last year.  But I didn't attempt to even enter the guest draught line due to its hour wait, which is a shame when looking at the list of brewers and beers. Some lessons to be learned for the brewery, in my opinion:

• Create two separate lines for people buying DL vs. people wanting into the premises
• Open the gates an hour before the DL sales begin.
• Add more guest taps or another location with guest beers
• Organize with the neighboring businesses to aid in parking

Now onto the beer.  This year they did not offer samples of the 2011 Dark Lord like last year, so I wasn't able to try it. I am going to let it age at least 6 months before I even consider drinking one.  Here is a picture of one of the bottles.

I was also able to buy and try the Evil Power Imperial Pilsner. This pilsner was quite a bit darker than your average pilsner, with a maltier flavor and a bit more hope bite.  It was still delicious.

Finally, the Cubs are on a 2 game win streak.  Who would have thought? I am loving the production of Castro and Barney, and Zambrano and Matt Garza have been great. Look for posts this week for a mini-keg update as well as (hopefully) the first post about the history of beer and baseball.  Also an update on the Seal Ale and recipe ideas for some wedding beers.