An abbreviated list of breweries in the city include: Miller Brewing, Lakefront Brewery, Water Street Brewery, Stonefly Brewing Company.

Water Street brewery produces beer that is sold throughout the city. I had the chance to try their Water Street Weiss, Water Street Pale, and Maibock; all great beers that I would recommend. Water street offers tours of their small-scale brewery during Monday through Friday. Though I missed the opportunity to take the tour, I understand the brewmaster personally gives the tour and takes you through the whole process, all up close and personal.

A patron of the historic Astor bar and Grill highly recommended the Lakefront brewery tasting tour. The tour offers tasting sessions that include bottomless samples from their entire offering and end with an optional fish fry.

Miller brewing also gives a tour, a tour tailored for the beer drinker, not the homebrewer. The tour focuses on the bottling, packaging, and shipping stages of production. A brewhouse tour is available but seems to have been added as an afterthought–it only lasts about 10 minutes including the time to walk up the 56 steps to their mash and lauter tuns. Miller only educates their brewhouse tour guides with the most cursory information about their brewing process. They didn’t know which hop varieties were used, the mash temperature, or even how many pounds of grain are used to fill the mash tun. All they knew for sure was the Miller yeast is top secret and is used in the brewing of all Miller beers. The guide didn’t have a clue what specific gravity was but that didn’t stop him from using the term incorrectly throughout his presentation. For a homebrewer, there are more interesting ways to spend two hours.

If you visit the city, be sure to stop by Louise’s after dark for a bite to eat. Their Stromboli, accompanied by a tall glass of Water Street Weiss, was just fantastic. I had to actually put down my fork and just appreciate a dish that just hit the spot so well.

During my weekend visit, there was so much going on in the city, that I was never in want. Every Thursday night from June through September, there is live jazz music in Cathedral Park. I managed to also catch an air show at Veteran’s Park on the shore of Lake Michigan; it was amazing to hear the roar and rumble of jets flying overhead throughout the city. To top off the weekend, the city held its annual German fest. What a visit!

Target Gravity: 1.054
IBU: 32.4
BU/GU: 0.6

Grain Bill

8.0639 lbs American Pale Malt
2.298 lbs Brown Malt
0.5 lbs Chocolate Malt
0.5 lbs Special B

Hops

2 oz Perle Leaf Hops ( 7.5 % ) @ 60 minutes

Yeast

US-50 SafAle

Schedule

Mash this beer at 151 for 90 minutes. Boil for 90 minutes. Ferment at optimal yeast temperature, approx 68F.

1.    Preheat the mash tun. This will reduce temperature loss by the mash tun vessel .

2.    Fill the mashtun with the appropriate amount of strike water before adding any of the grain. This will afford you the opportunity to double check the strike water temperature before having to deal with the grains. I generally overheat my strike water by a few degrees to account for temperature loss incurred while measuring out the water. If the temperature loss is less than expected, I just wait a few minutes until the water in the mash tun has dropped to the appropriate level.

3.    Keep the mash tun off of cold tile floors. This is one that I overlooked for nearly a dozen all-grain batches. During the winter months, tile floors act as a significant heat sink. By simply setting the mash tun on your countertop, you might be able to save yourself a degree or two of temperature loss.

4.    Drape some old blankets or some kitchen drying towels over the mash tun to add a little extra insulation. Most insulated coolers are engineered to keep things cold, not warm. Insulation is typically quite lacking in the lids of most igloo coolers.

Expected Original Gravity: 1.047 – 1.051
Expected Final Gravity: 1.010 – 1.014
IBUs: 22-26
Alchohol by Volume: 4.5-5.0%
Boil duration: 60 mintues

Grain Bill

10 lbs Wheat Malt
0.5 lbs Caravienne

Mash Schedule
Protein rest ~ 20 minutes
Sacrification rest @ 153 ~ 60 minutes

Hop Schedule
1 oz * Cluster Hops ( bittering ) @ 60 min
1 oz Willamette Hops ( finishing ) @ 5 min

Notes

* I am going to substitute the Cluster hops with Amarillo–it is the variety that I have on hand.

You will need to adjust the quantity of bittering hops depending on the alpha acid content of your variety; shoot for 23 IBUs.

Ferment this beer around 65F to reduce the fruity esters. In the past, I followed the 1-2-3 rule, but this time, I think that I am going to ferment in glass and primary this beer for 3 weeks and then rack to a keg for secondary fermentation until its time to tap the keg.

Initially, the website feature set is going to focus on brewing recipes, searching for,  sharing,  and rating recipes submitted by the community.  The recipe builder options will perform many of the common brewing calculations (IBU, OG, etc) for you as you go.

In the long run, I hope to add quite a number of recipe analysis operations that will let you compare your recipe to a style, other recipes, etc.  For the recognition of the ambitious homebrewer, I will also be adding fun “achievements,” honors that will be awarded members who accomplish certain feats,  like brewing x number of gallons in a year, or brewing x different styles, or having x number of top rates recipes, etc).

Of course, if you have been looking for a particular brewing tool or  have some suggestions, please let me know while things are in their early state.

Happy Homebrewing!

Grain Bill

12 lbs    2-row
0.5 lbs    Crystal  20L
The Mash

Single Infusion Mash  @ 151F

Hop Schedule
90 minute boil
1 oz Willamette @ 60 minutes.
Yeast
White Labs California Ale Yeast
 Notes:
Create a yeast start at least a day ahead of time or pitch two vials of yeast. Fement this beer at 67F; mine took about nine days to complete.  For such a simple grain bill, the fermentation temperature must be well controlled. Off flavors will not be hidden!

I will leave the old wordpress blog up for the time being, but all new content will be posted here.

Also, with luck, I will have http://www.brewerscache.com up and running with some new features. You should expect to someday find some interesting recipe and style analysis tools, resource locators, forum, etc. The development of the website, like brewing, is a hobby and will take some time to perfect and populate. I will be rolling out the new features as soon as they are developed.

Thanks,

Brewbaron of Brewerscache.com

At this point in my brewing hobby, I have brewed 60 gallons of beer, a meager number compared to some in the same time frame, and have attempted a dozen or so styles.  Before I started homebrewing, I really only took the time to enjoy a small subset of the many, many varieties of beer.  Now, I always have two examples of good beer on tap!

If you are just starting out, stick with it, try new things, and RDWHAHB.

If you attempt this one, be sure to keg it and forget about it; come back to it in six months and I bet that you will be pleased.