the grades are in

So. The Drinking Goat Brewing Co. graduated from college. Bummer. It's very sad. But you're probably not interested in that. You're interested in the brews. Well. Here's what we thought.

Straight Up Mead
-magna cum laude (B+)

comments included:

"A spritz of your mead went well with sweetened ice tea."

"You know, chilled this isn't half bad."

"This is way better than the last time we drank it."

We intend to keep Straight Up Mead recipe whilst giving it some minor twists and adjustments. We like this drink and it likes us.

Cyser
-no laudes (C- -)

comments included:

"This tastes weak."

"This tastes weak."

"This tastes weak."

So our cyser tasted weak. But you can truly taste the potential in it, if only the fake-Frenchman and the real-Frenchman hadn't watered the wort down to modify our initial SG. But oh well. We'll take a second crack at this one come apple season and this time we won't eff it up.

Ultra Dry Red Wine
-no laudes (F +)

comments included:

"This tastes like shit."

"Oh shit."

"You know. It's not half bad. I kind of like it."

"What happened? This was so much better when we racked to secondary. I'm pouring the rest of it out."

So. For the record. I hated this one. And I'm pretty sad because we worked extra hard on it. The consensus was pretty much that somewhere somehow this one got seriously messed up. However, some people liked it despite its obvious failures. Not me. This one is a drink to forget about and never write home about. The only reason I've given it a "+" next to its "F" is because a couple crazos could stand the taste and actually asked for another bottle (which they received).

Basic Braggot
-no laudes (incomplete)

comments included:

"Hmm..."

This one needs a couple more weeks in the bottle before it gets its real grade and evaluation. Carbonation and conditioning have not occurred yet.

Pumpkin Braggot
-no laudes (incomplete with honors)

comments included:

"This shows promise."

"Wow. This smells really good."

"At least it's not the ultra dry red wine."

Our pumpkin braggot DOES show the most promise. It also is an ENTIRELY original concoction, so that is kind of fun. The pumpkin and pumpkin spices are very present in the smell and the taste, in a good way. But the honey is a little overpowering too, giving it a pretty powerful mead flavor/smell instead of a beer flavor/smell. This one will be rated again after another few days of bottle carbonation and maybe after a week of cold conditioning. Look out people. The pumpkin braggot is in town.


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The sad news is that the DGBC crew has scattered to the far corners of the earth. Many are still in Chicago, some in Boston, some moving to Colorado, some in Missouri, Kentucky, etc. But we'll stay friends and brewing/drinking buddies as long as there are grains to be had and brews to be consumed.

Tune in frequently as the fake-Frenchman and the auburn Appalachian attempt to tweak past recipes and embark on all new and all grain brewing adventures.

Many thanks to the injured intellectual for making this wonderful sketch of a rather drinky-goat. We'll be including it in future label designs. Hooray for art!



Remember, for updates, questions, comments, concerns, recipes, pictures, etc, you can always e-mail the DGBC at: drinkinggoat (at) gmail (dot) com

Injury < Pumpkin Braggot

above: the rugged German (rugged = sexy) has an incredibly candid moment stirring the wort while we're determining specific gravity

Oh boy did we have a good crowd last night! Many people were in and out (or touch and go) for various reasons, but at the end of the night we succeeded in kicking off 2 gallons of a basic "nutbrown" braggot and 4 gallons of a more complex "pumpkin" braggot.

A braggot is an old fashioned drink that is essentially a beer/mead combo. Our basic braggot is half hopped english malt extract + half local honey + ?half? brown sugar. Our complex pumpkin braggot is half unhopped malt extract + half organic buckwheat honey + ?half? brown sugar + one can of pumpkin + assorted spices and eventually + Chinook hop pellets (we'll dry hop in secondary).

Note: There is a pumpkin shortage and many grocery stores are out of canned pumpkin. Our brewing evening was only made possible by the mature and responsible planning of a good friend of ours who had THREE cans of pumpkin chillin' in her pantry. One could call her a wise squirrel weathering out a pumpkin winter (with flying colors).
The event was...eventful. See below for an extensive photo montage:

above: the fake-Arab (the fArab, left) assists the fake-Frenchman (right) in catching the wort of our basic braggot

above: the rugged German (right) hits the fake-Frenchman (center) on the butt (with a ?sanitized? spatula); an obvious sign of affection and encouragement

above: first) the injured intellectual scoops pumpkin into the Ale Pail

above: second) in a stunning turn of events the can of pumpkin bites back hard, providing the injured intellectual with her namesake

above: third) luckily the beautiful Swiss lady was on hand for all of our First Aid needs, and during the surgery the injured intellectual found a way to cooperate with the mending and show off her pirate tattoo,"Write Hard [skull n' bones] Die Free"

(look, italics went apeshit-crazy in the HTML and i couldn't get it to turn off. thank you for being patient while we experience some technical difficulties)

Stay tuned as we dry hop our complex pumpkin braggot, get a label design (just for funsies), and bottle our cyser + braggots just in time for commencement.

Mission Accomplished

above: bottles have been de-labeled and await sanitation

The Drinking Goat Brewing Co. closed March by bottling our ultra dry red wine. First we had to determine the acidity levels in our wine to decide whether or not we were going to have to treat it to raise the pH. Remember when you were in chemistry class in high school or college and you complained that what you were learning was entirely useless? Well get ready to stick your foot in your mouth. To determine the unknown acid content of our wine we turned to our old friend titration.

Materials:

- 3 drops of phenolphthalein (your indicator)

- 10 milliliters of wine grade sodium hydroxide (your reagent)

- Lab grade syringe with at least a 15 milliliter capacity and milliliter hash marks

- 15 milliliter sample of your wine (your unknown)

- small glass cup or beaker

Directions:

1. Put your indicator and wine in the glass beaker or cup

2. Add 1/2 a milliliter of your reagent

3. Swirl cup to mix reagent, indicator, and wine

4. If your red wine momentarily turns gray but stays red then repeat step #2 and #3, however if your red wine turns gray and stays gray you’re done and you should add up the number of milliliters of reagent to determine your titratable acidity in step #5

5. 1 milliliter of reagent = 0.1% titratable acidity

above: sodium hydroxide is added to our ultra dry red wine and phenolphthalein solution during titration

For a dry red wine you’re hoping for a titratable acidity of 0.6% to 0.7%. Our ultra dry red wine had a titratable acidity of 0.6%. We are relieved that we didn’t have to add any calcium carbonate (by way of smashing calcite and skeletal limestone with our rockhammers!).

Next, we soaked two dozen wine bottles we’d been collecting for the past several weeks in buckets of warm soapy water. After they soaked for about 24 hours all it took was a little scraping, hot water, and in some sticky cases some Goo Gone, to de-label the bottles. Then they were sanitized with a B-Brite solution and left to dry.

above: the fake-Frenchman fills a bottle with wine

For easier bottling, we racked our wine off of the French oak chips and into an Ale Pail with a stopcock spigot at the bottom. Then we filled each wine bottle, leaving about two inches of air at the top, and afterward we corked with agglomerated corks and our hand corker. The color is still a little on the weak side, but it has greatly improved from day one. The smell had improved since our last racking (thanks to the oak chips) and we noticed that as the wine trailed down the side of the carboy it seemed to have pretty nice legs. We ended with 19 bottles of our ultra dry red wine. Considering the low wine quality of the grapes that were available to us (Concord) and that this is our first time using an entirely fresh grape must, I’d say that the DGBC can be proud of their efforts.

On call throughout this final stage we had the real-Frenchman, the fake-Frenchman, the avid Archeologist, the auburn Appalachian, the beautiful Swiss lady, and a newbie who we’ve come to call the aboriginal Anthropologist.

Stay tuned as we finish the semester bottling our cyser and brewing our oatmeal stout (among other beer adventures).

above: the aboriginal Anthropologist (left) and the auburn Appalachian (right) use the hand corker on one of the wine bottles

above: the aboriginal Anthropologist (left) and the auburn Appalachian (right) admire the finished project, 19 bottles of ultra dry red wine

Yup. We brewed that.

above: the rugged German (left) looms over as the fake-Frenchman (center) and the real-Frenchman (ground) rack the cyser

You can’t always get what you want (i.e. a perfect cyser on your first try) but sometimes you get what you mead. Ha. In the latest edition of the Drinking Goat Brewing Co. (DGBC), we had the largest brew-crew on record, with three regulars and two newbies. Sadly, the beautiful Swiss lady couldn’t join us, however the DGBC men were joined by the avid Archeologist and the auburn Appalachian (both women, how fun!). We also learned three valuable lessons:

1) Champagne yeast may not be the best route to go when shooting for a final alcohol content by volume (ABV) of 5.5% (because champagne yeast targets an ABV of 12%).

2) When trying to tweak the specific gravity of your must, THINK before adding water willynilly.

3) Don’t stick your face in the primary fermentation container just after you open it, as the concentrated alcohol vapors will make your eyes, nose, and mouth hurt for hours (and in the real-Frenchman’s case...days)

above: after primary fermentation, the apple parts, lees, and vanilla beans are caught by a filter; thus we rack our cyser

Our community covenant approved taste tester (curious...) thought our cyser lacked body and tasted a little weak. This was disheartening. To the DGBC crew, it smelled like a common European cloudy cider. We hope that with another few months of aging and bottle priming (carbonating) with honey we can fix our mistake, but we make no promises. We’re still looking forward to it though, because we made it!

The rugged German and the fake-Frenchman picked up some French oak chips for treating and rounding out our ultra dry red wine during a trip to Chicagoland Winemakers Inc. After treating our dark brown oaky delicious sexy...oak...in a warm water bath with crushed Campden tablets, they were added to our re-racked wine. The oak chips will be removed in a month when our wine is ready to be bottled.

above: the French oak chips soak in a warm sulfur bath

Upcoming brewing events involve oatmeal + rye stout, bottling wine (we’d love to use your empty red wine bottles), and titrating to determine our ultra dry red wine’s acidity (which we may or may not have to treat with limestone).

above: the rugged German (left) and the fake-Frenchman (right) sort grapes for the ultra dry red wine (this photo is from the archives)

Apple Crumbler Cyser (yes, you read that right)

The first victory for the French since Napoleon: the fake-Frenchman and the real-Frenchman of the Drinking Goat Brewing Co. (DGBC) concocted and executed their original recipe for a hard cider.

above: the real-Frenchman stirs and simmers the must

Ingredients included (but were not limited to):

-“gala” apples, frozen and pulped
-sprig of fresh vanilla bean
-flaked brewing oats, baked
-local honey, courtesy of a Wheaton apiarist
-ground cinnamon
-WE CAN’T SAY MORE

In truth, an apple cider made with honey as the primary sugar source for the yeast is called a “cyser.” It sounds like a sci-fi weapon, so you run the risk of sounding like a Battlestar Galactica geek, but if you explain it to people then you’ll sound like a legit alcohol connoisseur. Our cyser will take the next two weeks to ferment, then it will be filtered and left to age and settle in our NEW ONE GALLON GLASS CARBOYS. The DGBC crew is very excited about these because it allows us to try more recipes in smaller quantities.

above: the fake-Frenchman slices the vanilla bean

Upcoming brewing events, with the rugged German, involve “oak treating” our ultra dry red wine, bottling our ultra dry red wine, and beginning our stout. And if you'd like to help, we could sure use any empty red wine bottles you have lying around; we're trying to recycle --> reduce --> reuse. You know, to lower our carbon footprint...and bottles are expensive.

The Drinking Goat’s first beverage: mostly straight up mead

Vikings are under appreciated. If you’re honest, when you think of a viking you think of a giant smelly oaf with an undersized brain and an oversized sword. However, vikings were clever. For example, they switched the names of Greenland and Iceland to trick other folk into avoiding the better island. Apparently they wanted the tectonically active island all to themselves!

In addition to being clever the old Norsemen also had quite the palate. That is to say, anthropologists credit them with the invention of the oldest alcoholic beverage on record. Smelly and oafish? Maybe. But only because they were the first guys to get a buzz. Their invention is now commonly referred to as “mead” or “honey wine.”

On December 19th, the Drinking Goat crew bottled and corked 22 bottles of our mead.

“Must” recipe:

10 lbs of local (wheaton, il) honey
1 can of riesling concentrated grape juice
5 gallons of fresh water (non-chlorinated!)
1 packet of Red Star’s Côte des Blancs Wine Yeast
5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient

This mead’s primary fermentation began somewhere around the end of February last year (2009). After 3 separate rackings that took close to 9 months total, to get our mead off of its lees, it will age in bottle until the beginning of May. Just in time for graduation.

Hydrometer readings show our mead to be around 14% alcohol by volume.

Vocabulary:

must (n.): the liquid (or juice, if you’re into that sort of thing) that is formed when you first mix all of your ingredients together. basically, it’s the unfermented and therefore non-alcoholic form of your mead, beer, wine, cider, etc.

yeast nutrient (n.): a powder of diammonium phosphate and...this is actually gross...urea (apparently it’s “food-grade,” but come on, that aint foolin’ anyone). this is added to nourish the yeast and ensure they stay healthy and able to complete their very important mission (turning sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide).

primary fermentation (umm...adjective?): when the yeast is added (or “pitched”) into the must and allowed to eat as much sugar as it can before the alcohol it creates kills it. vicious, we know.

lees (n.): the nasty residue left at the bottom of your must after it has been allowed to sit and settle out. in our mead the lees consist mostly of random bee parts, wax, pollen, and dead yeast.

racking (a sweet verb.): the process of siphoning the clear liquid of the must from one container to another, where it is given more time to sit, settle, and clear.

hydrometer (n.): a handy tool that measures the specific gravity of your beverage before and after fermentation, which allows one to determine the final beverage’s alcohol content. neat huh? we thought so too. that’s why we bought one.


above: the fake-Frenchman and the real-Frenchman siphon the mead from its carboy into the bottles


above: the fake-Frenchman and the beautiful Swiss lady use a very fancy hand corker to seal up the bottles


above: the fake-Frenchman samples the final product straight from the carboy

The Drinking Goat would like to thank the folks at Chicagoland Winemakers Inc., our go to homebrewing supplier.

Stay tuned to the Drinking Goat as we wait out the winter developing two new mead recipes, brewing a stout, and bottling our ultra dry red wine.