Redbud brand to continue after departure of brewmaster
The news making social-media rounds that Redbud Brewing Co. brewmaster Chase Healey is leaving the Oklahoma City area is indeed true. Healey is moving to Texas within the next couple months. I think we can safely say that Healey’s contribution to the Oklahoma beer scene — both during his time with COOP Ale Works and with Redbud — will be missed. Simply put, the guy had a knack for producing a good beer.
I plan to have more information on Healey’s future beer plans on the blog at a later time.
So where does Redbud go from here? I’ve confirmed that Redbud will continue production out of the OKCity Brewing beer cooperative, and that Redbud’s leadership is in the process of seeking out a new brewmaster.
Much like how COOP maintained its recipes when Healey parted ways with them, the recipes for Redbud’s beers will remain property of Redbud, so I’d expect brews like Redbud Wheat and Redbud Pale Ale to continue to be available.
OKCity Brewing owner Sibyl Kang said “Redbud will continue to produce a great product along with continually developing new and innovative brews.”
What the future holds for the Cuvee line remains to be seen. To me, creative/one-off beers like that would seem to fall into the category of a brewmaster’s labor of love. It’s hard to predict if a new brewmaster would embrace the same vision/direction.
Of course, there’s no telling what new, exciting things a new brewmaster could bring to the table, either.
However it shakes out, good luck to Redbud as they find their next brewmaster, and to Healey as he heads to the other side of the Red River.
Thirsty Beagle Podcast, Episode 5: Choctaw Oktoberfest
Choctaw Oktoberfest head honcho Mike Turek joined me this week in the podcast studio to talk about the 22nd annual edition of the festival, which begins tomorrow.
We discussed the beers on tap, the food available and the reason a festival called Oktoberfest will begin on Aug. 31 this year. Take a listen:
Tonight! Marshall Oktoberfest release party!
Thursday, Thursday, THURSDAY!!! That’s Thursday as in today at 4 p.m., and the occasion is the 2012 release of Marshall Oktoberfest. You can learn more by reading this advertisement:
Thirsty Beagle Podcast: Episode 4 — Boulevard Brewing Co.
I was joined over the phone recently by Boulevard Brewing Co. brewer Jeremy Danner for Episode 4 of The Thirsty Beagle Podcast.
We discussed Boulevard’s brewing philosophy, talked about 80-Acre Hoppy Wheat Beer and Reverb Imperial Pilsner, touched on what might be Boulevard’s next brew and compared the Kansas City and Oklahoma City craft beer scenes.
Check out the video below:
All-grain brew-in-a-bag tutorial
Big happenings at the Northwest Oklahoma County Memorial Sports Coliseum/Thirsty Beagle Brewing and Bottling Co. over the weekend: I officially joined the ranks of those who have brewed all-grain!
Since I started brewing in January, I’ve knocked off seven extract/kit recipes: American brown ale, witbier, pale ale with raspberries, dry-hopped red ale, dunkelweizen, witbier #2, and summer ale with peaches I grew in my backyard. They all were fairly successful, in that all resulted in beer that tasted good.
All along, however, I’ve known I wanted to eventually graduate from extract/kit to all-grain. Two things have been slowing me down: Owning the correct equipment to do it, and grasping the terminology/process to accomplish it. Eventually, I’ll overcome both of these hurdles, but in the meantime, a suggestion from a homebrewer friend caught my eye. He mentioned something about the brew-in-a-bag method.
It’s an all-grain method that requires less equipment and time than standard all-grain brewing. If you have a big pot (you can do it with a seven- or eight-gallon pot, but a 10-gallon pot is probably best) and you’ve already been brewing extract, you pretty much have everything you need to go all-grain. The only thing I added to my equipment repertoire was this nylon bag:
Internet research reveals the brew-in-a-bag (BIAB) method is predominantly favored in Australia and is not best for stronger beers that require a tremendous amount of grain. But for the Oktoberfest I wanted to brew, which should end up at 5.4 percent strength, I figured it could work.
Gail at the Brew Shop (big props to Gail for her help!!!) helped me pick out an Oktoberfest recipe and milled the grain — 12 pounds in all. (Let me just detour here to say that you don’t really realize how much a lot of grain is until you try your first all-grain batch. That’s a lot of grain!)
For my five-gallon batch, I decided to start with 6.5 gallons of water to allow for boil-off and absorption. That’s when I came to my first hurdle — my pot is not quite big enough. When I got to six gallons of water, I realized there wouldn’t be room for all the grain. I had to skim off half a gallon. At that point, I clamped by bag on, brought the water to 155 degrees and added the grain:
As you can see, with 5.5 gallons of water and 12 pounds of grain, the pot is pretty much topped-off. Most BIAB guides say to avoid having your bag touch the bottom of the pot in case the bag were to burn/melt, so I used the clamps to hold the bag up a bit. You can also use some sort of trivet or cookie-cooling rack-type apparatus in the bottom of the pot as well.
After steeping at 155 for an hour, it was time to remove the bag and drain off the wort. Here’s another one of those things you don’t quite think about until it’s too late: 12 pounds of grain soaked in water is heavy, and I didn’t think to rig up some sort of device to suspend the bag. So I was left with the static-bicep-curl technique:
Once the bag drained as much as it would, I set it aside and returned the pot/wort to the stove-top to start the boil:
After that, it’s business as usual. One hour boil, add the assigned hops at the assigned time, use a little Irish moss near the end for clarity, chill wort, rack to fermenter, pitch yeast and cap fermenter. At the end of the boil, I was down to four gallons of wort — down 1.5 gallons from the outset — so I had to top it off by a gallon. I’m not the biggest fan of doing that, but I really had no choice due to the size of my pot. (It did show that my original estimate of 6.5 gallons probably would have worked out pretty well.)
Total brew time from set-up to clean-up was a little shy of four hours. I’m under the impression the standard all-grain method takes about five hours. I would have liked to have shaved off more time, but working with five-plus gallons of water on the stove, it just takes a long time to bring the water up to the correct heat.
So, now the beer has been in the fermenter since Saturday night. I used an ale yeast since my version of temperature control involves determining which room in my house is the coolest, so I should by looking at another 10 days or so of fermenting before bottling day. The airlock starting bubbling pretty well after about 16 hours, then kept up a pretty vigorous pace through this morning — it appears all systems are go.
They only thing I didn’t do properly was take an OG reading. Rookie mistake. I had the hydrometer out on the counter and just totally forgot to use it. Oh well. One word of warning, all material I could find suggests you don’t try BIAB without a wort chiller. I have one and used it; I can’t imagine you could chill that volume of beer fast enough without one.
I’ll report back in a few weeks with the end result of my BIAB experiment. In the end, it’s not really that hard. Hopefully I’ll end up with a very drinkable Oktoberfest.
Thirsty Beagle beer news report: Aug. 24
A lot going on in the beer universe these days…
-We are officially only one week away from Choctaw Oktoberfest!
-We are officially only six days away from Marshall Brewing’s Oktoberfest launch party. It’s set for 4 p.m. Thursday at Fassler Hall, 304 S Elgin, Tulsa.
-We are also officially only six days away from college football season!
-In Choc Beer Co. news, the brewery is hosting a tour on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. You can call (918) 423-2042 to book a spot. Also, Choc’s 2012 Gose should hit store shelves within a couple weeks.
-COOP Ale Works is adding a barleywine to its Territorial Reserve lineup. I’ll have more on this later on the blog.
-McNellie’s OKC is holding a Sam Adams Stein Hoisting Contest on Sept. 7. Email emily.white@mcnellies.com to sign up and prove your strength.
-Someone passed this article my way. I love it when the mainstream media “discovers” there are actually styles of beer other than B/M/C.
-Some homebrewers are trying to crack the top-secret code to President Obama’s White House brews. You can learn about the president’s beer by clicking on this informative TTB blog post.
-Thirsty Beagle will be brewing his first all-grain batch — an Oktoberfest — this weekend. Wish me luck!
Olympian breaks U.S. Beer Mile record
You’ve heard of the McNellie’s Pub Run — it’s a fine event. No offense, but this story pretty much blows that away.
American runner Nick Symmonds, who just finished fifth in the 800-meter final at the London Olympics, recently set the U.S. beer mile record, though he fell short of the world record.
What is a beer mile? As the article explains, a beer mile consists of “drinking a beer, then running a lap, four times, with the clock running the whole time. Each beer has to be finished before starting to run the next lap. … North American rules… specify details such as a minimum alcohol content of 5.0%, no shotgunning or other methods of drinking other than from the beer can, and a penalty fifth lap for vomiting.”
Symmonds finished in a time of 5 minutes, 19 seconds; it was 10 seconds off the world record pace set by a Canadian runner in 2007. (Canada!!!)
Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the article for an awesome video — Symmonds “trains” by downing a beer in less than nine seconds.
Mustang schedules series of beer dinners
Mustang Brewing will celebrate the 2012 release of its Harvest Lager seasonal beer with a series of three beer dinners. Check it out:
You can read more details by clicking on this link.
Marshall Brewing has big night in store
If you’re a Marshall Brewing fan in the Tulsa or Wichita areas, tonight is a big night, my friends. Here’s a rundown of the Marshall activity scheduled for today:
-5 p.m. at McNellie’s Tulsa: A pin of bourbon-oaked Big Jamoke will be tapped.
-5:15 p.m. at Mort’s Martini Lounge, Wichita: A pin of Sundown Wheat dry-hopped with Motueka (New Zealand aroma hop offering lemon/lime and tropical fruit aroma) will be tapped.
-7 p.m. at Rock Island Live, Wichita: The first pin of cask-conditioned Oktoberfest Lager will be tapped.
Hard to believe it’s already Oktoberfest time — my, how the year is flying by!
Mustang schedules benefit concert for wildfire victims
Mustang Brewing is collaborating with local businesses to organize a benefit concert this Sunday (Aug. 19) to raise funds to support local firefighters and victims of the recent outbreak of wildfires across the state.
The concert is set for 5 p.m. Sunday at Route 66 Roadhouse, 4328 NW 39th Expressway, in Oklahoma City.
One-hundred percent of the door proceeds as well as 100 percent of all Mustang beer sales that night will be collected for and distributed directly to those in need. The entry fee is $10, or $5 with a case of water.
Musical acts on the docket include Drankmore, Red Dirt Rangers, Chad Sullins, Ryan Reid, Daniel Walcher, Chase Kerby and members of the Turnpike Troubadours.
For more information, read this press release from Mustang.
