The Sinamar Saga - Part I

As mentioned in a previous blog update, one of my upcoming brews will be of an experimental nature.  I would like to create a black lager, and am modifying a known recipe by adding a liquid malt extract that is designed to darken the beer without changing its taste or any of it's outward chemical properties - alcohol content, bitterness, and color.

The product in question is Sinamar which is made in Germany and is only sold through a very small number of retailers here in the US.  From the manufacturer's website:

"SINAMAR is perfectly suited for coloring foods such as: baked goods, beer, non-alcoholic drinks, spirits, pharmaceutical products and tea etc. Use 1.25 fl.oz. to darken 1bbl of beer or wort by 1° Lovibond. [Note, "bbl" here means "beer barrel", which in the US is 31 gallons]. Unopened containers have a 18 month shelf-life. Once opened, contents should be used immediately and stored cool."

It is sold domestically in 4 oz sealed containers, and one such container is enough Sinamar to for 99.2 gallon-SRMs worth of darkness.  In other words, if I dumped the whole container in 99.2 gallons of beer, it would darken it 1 SRM.  If I dumped it in 1 gallon, it would darken it 99.2 SRM.  For my 2-gallon fermenter, the whole bottle would yield 49.6 SRM - or 12.4 SRM for every ounce.

Okay, I'll knock off the math now.

Anyway, my package arrived today.  But when I opened it, I found that the product had leaked out of the bottle.  I lost about 1/4 of the liquid, which from the photo above you can see made a mess of things.  Worst yet, the reason it leaked was because the bottle wasn't sealed.  So here I have a food additive, unsealed, and likely contaminated.  The manufacturer says it should be stored cool once opened, but the shipping box sat on my 80-degree porch all day while waiting for me to return home.

I've contacted the seller for help, but this particular bottle of Sinamar will not be touching any of my beer.

Watch for Part II when I get a response.  I've never dealt with this seller before, but they do a LOT of home brewing mailorder business - I am certain they'll make it right if given the opportunity.

First Pour of Shaved Amadeus Vienna Lager

Rock Me (again) Amadeus!

The fourth Buzzard's Brew has made its world debut tonight. "Shaved Amadeus" is a light and tasty butterscotch-amber colored Vienna Lager. It makes a nice counter-point to the darker and more dour Irish Stout that popped out of the cavernous Man Cave cellars last week.

This has an alcohol content of only 3.7% and it's color is a 9 using the Standard Reference Method (SRM) which makes it just a little lighter than a Bass Pale Ale.  However, on the International Bitterness Units (IBU) scale it weighs in at a hefty 23, making this the second-most bitter beer I've brewed thus far.  Altogether, this is a Class 4 Lager.

Just to see whether I could do it or not, I snapped a video of the first pour this evening and have just posted it to YouTube.  If I can't figure out how to cross-post it to the blog, here's a direct link:

First Pour of Shaved Amadeus Vienna Lager

On a related note, bottling of BB-VI Farty Monk Belgian Dubbel took place last night.  All 8 quarts are in the conditioning cabinet sitting next to 8 quarts of BB-V New World Czech Pilsner and the 2nd half of the Shaved Amadeus batch.  I'd like to say that I've set back those 4 Pilsner quarts to give them extra conditioning to enhance the flavors by allowing the hops to come forward and generate exciting esters that will, uhh, increase the manifest destiny of the beer enjoyment quotient.... Well, that'd just be a pile of BS, the real reason I kept 4 quarts of BB-IV back is that there wasn't enough room in the cold conditioning unit for the entire batch plus 6 or 7 quarts of Irish Stout.  Extra conditioning won't hurt the beer at all, so if there's no room in the mini-fridge, it can stay in the conditioning cabinet an extra week or two.

Logo Update

The original "company" logo I created a couple of weeks ago was based on an image I found on the Interwebs for the Buzzards Roost Seafood Restaurant and Grill in Key West, FL.  I cleaned up their artwork a little, and using the simplest editing tool I had available to me (MS Paint) I added a couple of text elements to update it.

Now that I've had a few minutes with a much more proper photo editing tool (MS PhotoDraw) I have done even more cleanup to the original image and have modified the text elements to make them look a little more "snappy".

This is the result. Hope you like it.

For the present, I am going to stick with this logo and use it in conjunction with my byline.... "A family tradition since February, our beers are brewed using only the easiest to find mail-order ingredients and fresh Bloomington tap water."

And On Deck....

As soon as I clear out some of the backlog - which does not means after I go on my next drinking binge - it will be time to get the beer pipeline up and running again.

Right now, I'm drinking an Irish Stout and have a Vienna Lager that will be ready to drink by this time next week.  Then the Czech Pilsner, and after that is the Belgian Dubbel.  Not counting the empty I created on the Stout's debut night, that's ONE THOUSAND OUNCES OF BEER!

Well... 31 quarts is 992 actually ounces, but ONE THOUSAND OUNCES sounds so much more impressive!

At the rate of a pint a night, it will take me two months to burn through everything.  And since it takes a month from start to finish to brew up a drinkable batch, I'm about a month away from needing to get anything started.  So most of what follows is really quite unnecessary, but I just can help it.

The next beer that I'll be making will be a Blonde Ale I'm calling Nimblejack.  Nothing special here, just a standard Mr. Beer Blonde Ale kit.  But while making more complicated dark beers, I like to mix things up so that I've got a decent variety of brewskis to drink or share. I try to avoid brewing consecutive similar beers, and since the previous beer (Farty Monk) was a Class 5 Belgian Dubbel, brewing something from the other end of the spectrum should work fine. Stat-wise, it will measure 3.7% ABV, 3 SRM, and 18 IBU, which makes this a Class 1 beer - light and nimble.  Hence the name.

Following that will be the Browncoat Ale.  It is based on a stock MRB Pale Ale recipe but will also include the Pale Export UME.  This will add color depth and kick the alcohol up slightly, and will result in a Class 3 Ale - 4.6% ABV, 5 SRM, 22 IBU.  I'm kinda eager to get to this one - I really dig the label.

And to round-out the next three, I will be going off into uncharted territory to try an experimental beer.  I have recently been enjoying Guinness Black Lager and want to see if I can brew something similar.  Based on the success I've had with the Irish Stout, I am more than confident enough to give this a shot.

The recipe starts with the MRB High Country Canadian Draft HME, then adds the Creamy Brown UME and US Goldings hops to create a Class 5 Lager with 5.9% ABV, 28 SRM and 22 IBU.  But what I really want is a 40 SRM Class 6 Lager, so during fermentation I will be adding a liquid malt extract that should darken the beer without affecting flavor, body or clarity.  Essentially, food coloring for beer.

The name of this tenth beer will be "Ten If By Giant Robot", which makes sense only if you didn't sleep through your Revolutionary American History class - the part about the Old North Church in Boston and Paul Revere's ride and how very differently the War For Independence would have gone if the Tories had successfully fielded their giant, church-smashing robots.

Fetch The Comfy Chair!

Happiness is a glass full of tasty beer.

Sadness is an empty bottle.

Thus ends the run of the Comfy Chair.  From the first bottle to the last, this Nut Brown Ale did nothing but get better as more cold conditioning time was invested.  There are a lot of other beers in the queue, but this one is guaranteed to be my first repeat brew.  Look for Comfy Chair 2 to be ready sometime in August - just in time for tailgating!

Embrace The Dark Side

Thought about the Dark Epiphany debut all day.

Worked late.

Made a side trip after work that required I drive around a whole lot of construction.

Stopped at the grocery store.

Walked the dog.

Fed the dog.

Updated my blog about the side trip after work.  :)

Fixed dinner.

Ate dinner.

Cleaned up the kitchen.

Pulled BB-III #1 out of the back of the primary refrigeration unit, grabbed one of my favorite pint glasses, and took a deep breath while I flipped open the lid.

"Ka-phwump!"

Okay, I probably should have expected a pretty powerful blast of pressure as the bottle lid was released.  After all, this was the first recipe I had carbonated in Grolsch glass bottles, and they're not exactly designed to let stuff out accidentally.  But when I cracked the seal and the lid was fairly forcefully shoved out of the way while all the gasses shot out, I was a little worried that I was moments away from having a beer gusher on my hands.  So while I immediately moved to the sink with the bottle, I completely neglected to enjoy the wonderful beer/yeast aroma that had just filled my kitchen.  Oh no, that won't happen again!

First pour (see photo).  Well, it certainly looks good!

Tasting....  <takei> Oh My! </takei>

Fantastic!  Wow. I mean..... Wow! If not for the absence of a waterfall just after pouring and a slightly "softer" aftertaste than the commercial product, I would not be able to tell you that I was not drinking a Guinness. And I've got TWO GALLONS!!!!

Good thing it's a work night. I'd hate to have to count my servings in "dog beers" this evening.