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Episode 12 - Breakfast Beers and Making Hard Cider
129 Plays6 years ago
On this episode we discuss some beers we thought would be perfect for drinking in the early A.M. as well as a step-by-step instruction on how to make your own hard cider!
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Transcript
Introduction and Availability
00:00:02
Speaker
You're listening to the 212 Round Table Podcast. You can find us on SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Play, and Google Podcast, as well as Apple Podcast. Be sure to leave a review and subscribe. You can also find the Brew Club at 212.beer. That's the number 2, the word 12, .beer. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching 212 Brew Club. Now on to the show.
Super Bowl Round Table Introduction
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Super Bowl Round Table. I'm Tony Golic and I'm Brandon Wanger. And this week we are talking about two subjects that have nothing to do with each other. Because why not? Yeah, why not? It's my name backwards and why not? It's Sunday morning at 10 o'clock. We're going to be talking about breakfast beers. Beers you can drink for breakfast.
00:01:02
Speaker
You can pretty much drink any beer for breakfast. True, but these beers in particular we chose because we thought they would be good.
Breakfast Beers and Cider Making
00:01:08
Speaker
Hopefully. The other subject is making cider from scratch. Make your own hard cider. Something I've done in the past and Brandon will be doing today. We're going to do it, as you said, live, but not live. Live recording.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yes, it's going to be a live recording. And then, yeah, so I guess we could just jump right into it. Yeah, perfect. So you took care of the beers for this. Thank you. I picked up a six pack, and then I had some beer. So the first beer that we're actually trying, I've never had this before. It's Lakefront Brewery out in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or Milia Wauke. Milia Wauke.
00:01:49
Speaker
It is the Fuel Cafe. Never had it, but it is a stout brewed with coffee. I think I've had this before. Okay. I don't remember it though. I feel like I've had a lot of beers from Lakefront and this has to be one of them, right? It's certified organic. Ooh, the coffee or the beer? I don't know. It says at the bottom, certified organic by Oregon Tilt.
00:02:17
Speaker
Well, smelling it, I didn't get a whole lot of coffee. No. A little bit. Tasting it. You get some coffee in that, man. That's good. Oh, yeah. Mm. It tastes a lot better than it smells. It's not that it smells bad, but you wouldn't expect it to be a coffee beer. I don't know if someone put that up to me and said, hey, this is a coffee beer. Oh, it's the same thing I just said. It's roasty. It's kind of bitter.
00:02:43
Speaker
It reminds me almost the same bitterness that Guinness has. A little bit. You know, if Guinness was a bit more carbonated, I feel like that's what we'd get here. So I don't know how much coffee they put in this. I'm sorry, and it did say what kind of coffee they used? It does not. It just says brewed with coffee. I'm sure we could look it up, but... Yeah, we didn't do our research.
Beer for Breakfast Experiences
00:03:03
Speaker
It's alright. It's a pleasure, me too. 6.4% alcohol.
00:03:06
Speaker
That's how you start your day six and a half percent beer. Well, it's got to be I guess the whole beer is organic because it's got the USDA organic Oh, yeah, that would make the whole product service. Even the bottle is organic. Oh, we can eat that we can break that down breakfast Yeah, I guess I'm trying to think of times that I've had beer for breakfast and the only time really really comes in my mind Well a couple times one st. Patrick's Day and doing festivities with
00:03:33
Speaker
You know, friends of ours used to do kegs and eggs, which is a lot of fun. You drink a whole bunch of Jameson and Irish beers, and then you eat a whole bunch of food, and then there was the parade, or going to a whole bunch of bars. It's a great shit show. I barely survived the ones that I was a part of. The other time I would see cracking open a beer for breakfast would be camping, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And coffee. That would be the days of Miller Lite and Covert's Lite. Yeah. But if you really wanted to, if you really wanted to just start your weekend,
00:04:04
Speaker
in a good way. Don't start your weekday or work day like this. You really want to start your weekend. Say you had something fun to do or you woke up late and you're ready to get the day going and you want to have a beer. This is such a terrible way to present to all this. Hey, you want to start drinking first thing in the morning. Grab a fuel cafe, right? Fuel cafe is what it's called. That should be there for you. That's the slogan.
00:04:29
Speaker
Hey, you drunk. Do you want to start a day with some coffee and your beer? Do you like coffee? Do you like vomiting early in the morning? We'll drink a shit ton of this and call us in the morning. Not that this beer induces vomiting. It's a very tasty beer. I really like this. Yeah, I agree. That's it. Coffee beers in general, I like. Yeah. It's a little light in the body. Yes. Like a quarter almost. Yeah. And it's 6.4. I mean, I'm not expecting it to be a heavy,
00:04:57
Speaker
you know beer but it's I feel like I would enjoy it a lot more if it was like that but I also at the same time would not be able to drink as much of it if it was thick true true well maybe this that's why this beer was made this beer was made so you actually could have it for breakfast hmm as you're camping or you know are there any times that you've had beer for breakfast are there times yeah of course anyone's in particular uh they're called mondays
00:05:26
Speaker
No, like the camping thing, I've done that. I think that's really the only time. Beer for breakfast, it's a turn off. I feel like when we've brewed in like early morning brews. That's true. And actually some of the beers that we've had then have been like those pastry styles, which
00:05:48
Speaker
Thought about trying to get some of those type of beers for this, but it makes more sense to save that for an actual episode on pastry stouts. We'd have to get, unfortunately, the pastry boys back in for that, and we gotta get Ron back in, or Ron in, for something like that, I think. Oh, yeah, totally.
00:06:06
Speaker
But yeah, there's plenty of beers now that are based off of breakfast. We did one, we did toast, which was, we actually used cinnamon toast crunch cereal. And Brandon and I also did our other cereal beers. We did the Count Chocolate beer. And then we did the, you don't have to edit that out. And then we did the... The Frankenberries? Yeah, the Frankenweiss, which both beers ended up on Basic Brewing Podcast, which were we doing the podcast yet when that came out?
00:06:34
Speaker
No, I think we had just started talking about it. I think you're right. When the episode came out though, I think we had done a couple test runs. We hadn't actually launched the show yet. The two beers I just mentioned, the Count Chocula Cereal Stout, the Count Stout, and the Frankenberry Wheat Frankenweiss beer, we sent to James Spencer
Pastry Stouts and Brewing Creativity
00:06:54
Speaker
at Basic Brewing Radio and got that on there. And there was two other beers that
00:06:59
Speaker
those guys did. I know James Spencer did one and I'm a jerk for blanking on the other guy's name, but he's a local guy. He's been on their show a whole bunch of times. He did another, he did a beer as well. And I think they both used blueberry. Yes. No blueberry was used. And his, the guy's name who I'm forgetting. Is that what we got the idea to do? It was
00:07:19
Speaker
Yes, we got the idea from, I was listening to, I don't know if I was listening to basic brewing or watching one of the YouTube videos, but he had done the Count Chocula beer. And when they did the blueberry ones, it started off green for them. Whereas our Frankenwise one looked like brains when it was sitting before it was waiting to be fermented.
00:07:39
Speaker
But the guy's name. I can't remember. I believe he did a like a kettle sour of a blueberry maybe. I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong. I thought one of them did. Sounds like it would be good. Yeah and whatever they did it was supposed to be really good. But those cereals, those beers ended up
00:08:00
Speaker
All of our beers that we've used cereal with has turned out pretty good. The Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs Porter, which was pretty good. Had to add all these beers, by the way, we added more adjuncts to it to make those better. We could talk about that another way, but those are breakfast. I consider those breakfast beers because we've used cerealism. But now there's also, what is it? Coffee and Cakes from
Innovation in Brewing Flavors
00:08:22
Speaker
Hubbard's Cave. They also have a French Toast beer. That's the one I was kind of hoping to grab for today.
00:08:26
Speaker
but those can be on the pastry. Those guys just make diabetes in a can. It's so delicious. You really gotta drink that stuff with other people. And that's not a bad thing. Yeah, that is not a knock at them at all. They make some... I love that. I love all those. I feel like we literally had this exact same conversation in the last podcast. Talking about... No, it was about Hubbard's king. I think you literally said it was like diabetes in a can. You're right. Oh, God. I need your food.
00:08:56
Speaker
I don't want to give up the wrong impression. Where are we going? Anyways, with all those types of beers, I feel like those would be good. A Pop-Tart beer. You know, why hasn't anybody done that yet? We'll do a Pop-Tart. We do Pop-Tarts in the mash. That'd be a breakfast beer. I wonder how that would turn out though, like with the weird gel and the frosting and...
00:09:14
Speaker
Well, I feel like if you, same thing with like the cereal, you're breaking down stuff in the mash. It's the, what would. Oh yeah, if it's in there. It's the same thing. You know, Emil wants to want to do the Oreo cookie beer, which Mabel Wood has, has done that. Have you tried, have you had that? I have. It's really good. Oh really? Yeah, it's awesome. It's really, really good. They did a peanut butter, a cup of, or a cup of peanut butter, whatever they call it. They had a cup of s'mores as well. All those are really, really good beers. Same thing. It's like diabetes in a glass.
00:09:44
Speaker
Good to know. Well, let's try those sometimes. Yeah. Okay, so those are some examples of what I think breakfast beer would be.
00:09:55
Speaker
And maybe, we're framing this incorrectly, that maybe you shouldn't be drinking beer in the morning.
Coffee-Infused Beer Styles
00:10:01
Speaker
But if you want a beer that reminds you of breakfast, there's plenty of options out here. Coffee seems to be the most obvious one. There's so many beers that have coffee in it. That seems like the go-to in the two beers that we have. Most of the stats. Yeah, exactly. And there's coffee IPAs, which I still want to try and do. And I've had some good coffee IPAs. I've had a coffee cider that was very good. I believe Aeris had it.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't had a good coffee IP in a while, and I enjoy those. That would be a good one to try to tackle. I'd like to do a small batch of that at first. Well, yeah. Because then I want to do a big old batch of a coffee IPA and regret the day I lived.
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah, well, does the coffee go in the mash or how do they? It's almost like you dry bean it. You what? You dry bean it. No, it goes, you're using coffee beans as like hops, so you're dry hopping. So you're dry beaming the beer. Oh, okay. So just imagine using, treating the beans as hops.
00:10:59
Speaker
So you could essentially do, could do like a five gallon batch and pull off a gallon. Sure. Yeah. You want to try and test it out. Although I guess you just dry hopping, it's not really going to matter. I would assume that you'd want to do something a little more piney as opposed to citrusy when it comes to a coffee IPA. I would see the citrusy maybe not being that great. For my taste, I don't...
00:11:23
Speaker
The acidity from the coffee with the citrus, I know the dry hopping with the beans is probably not gonna add too much flavor that would be considered like acidic, but I just feel like the citrus would kind of just put me off with the coffee. Yeah. Are they putting whole beans in there, like not ground?
00:11:45
Speaker
like crushed up like you know the french press kind of just broken up finely yeah and then yeah and i think it's like that or maybe people use whole beans i don't know i haven't done it yet that wasn't those are my understanding you would get anything out of whole beans not enough it has to be i don't think so either i don't know why i said that let's not like you can take it i'm gonna dump my bag of starbucks in here good probably you probably would get something i would assume the oils and that's the other thing the oils and they would probably kill the head oil always killing head worst
00:12:14
Speaker
How do they get around that then? Not sure. There are some beans that aren't oily. That's something that exists. You got the non-oily variety. I remember watching another podcast, The Beerus. They had a video where the host was
00:12:38
Speaker
In a video, he was showing how to French press with coffee beans. And you can take any of your favorite beers and just pour a little bit over these beans. And he recommended getting some artisan coffee that isn't like the store-bought stuff that looks waxy and shiny, because all those are coated with the oil and everything. And that's in these other smaller places, you can actually get beans. And you can see the beans that are
00:13:06
Speaker
Basically, they'll dry. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. So there's no oil sand. There'll be some oil, but there's not enough on there to kill any of the head when you're drinking the beer. That'd be good. Plus the head, you know, in the head you'll get a lot of the aroma, so it makes sense why you'd want to have that. Yeah, I wonder like if any of the local places...
00:13:22
Speaker
you know, um, like dark matter or something like that would have, you know, probably get them fresh from there. Where's Stivers? Hey Stivers. Yeah. Where's that place at? It's outside. Really? Yeah. I'm not sure we're on the south side. It's down there somewhere. Oh yeah, Stephanie. She knows.
00:13:40
Speaker
But yeah, back to this beer as I'm almost done with this pour. By the way, we're not drinking like a full beer. We did just split 12 ounces. Don't you guys think we're going too crazy? It's not like we're going to drink anything barrel aged today. It is 10.30 in the morning. Hey, we're almost halfway through the episode. So we're good. We are having breakfast beers for breakfast.
00:14:05
Speaker
fishing that off that it really tastes more coffee the more you drink it. And that bitterness has kind of gone to the wayside and I'm tasting just kind of coffee. That'd be a good, I think one of the other times that I have breakfast for, Jesus, other times I've had beer for breakfast is when I'm on vacation, just vacation in general. When I've gone to, when my family goes to a beach house in North Carolina, we've done that many times.
00:14:30
Speaker
We would start the day with breakfast and then... Most people start their day with breakfast. Yeah, well... Start the day with some breakfast and it's like 9 or 10 o'clock and we're already grabbing beers to go to the beach. So that's, I mean...
00:14:46
Speaker
It's about the right time. It's vacation then. Hey, 4th of July, well it's past for this episode, but 4th of July is right around the corner for us so I might as well get into the mode of wine drinking in the morning very soon. I don't go out. You're going to call in sick all week just so I can start drinking in the morning. Money through Wednesday. Sorry boss, I can't come in. I'm lubing up my intestines for the weekend. I didn't know where you were going with that.
00:15:12
Speaker
So yeah, that was the Fuel Cafe. So we can kind of go about this any other way if we want to jump into the other beer, or we want to kind of transition to the cider talk. Where are we at right now, time-wise? 15 minutes.
00:15:26
Speaker
Why don't we knock out the second
Tasting Founder's KBS
00:15:27
Speaker
beer? We'll spend the whole second half of the episode talking about cider. That works. All right. Look at us, planning ahead. Not really planning ahead, but planning on the fly. That's how we do it. This beer, this next beer that Brandon's so generously opening up. That would suck. Yeah. We've done a vertical of before, but by a vertical, I mean we drink and drink. We've drank eight years of this beer and it's a Founder's KBS.
00:15:55
Speaker
Yeah, we blended eight years of it and it was awesome and if I remember my memory serves me correctly it was me you Mike and Ron and it was the first time Mike and I had met Ron and I fell in love with Ron right away, but it
00:16:15
Speaker
the best year that we all, well, we all agreed that our favorite year was the 2014. And this was two years ago, so it had already been three years old. No, I'm not sure what year, what year were we drinking it, Brad? 2014. Hey, look at that. The year we liked. I'm going back to it. Thanks, sir. Now,
00:16:36
Speaker
If you don't know, Founders KBS is the Verilay's version of their ever popular breakfast out, which is a pretty, I guess, do you know what the alcohol is on regular breakfast out?
00:16:52
Speaker
It's around seven and a half, eight percent, something like that. That's pretty good. That's pretty high. And that is brewed with coffee and chocolate. That is a tasty, tasty beer. I love that beer when that comes out. And KBS, as I said, is their bourbon barrel aged version of it. When KBS first came out, it was a big to do. I would say
00:17:13
Speaker
When I got into craft beer, there were two big barrel-aged beers that I sought after and it was Bourbon County and Founder's KBS. Now, some people have said that this beer has kind of
00:17:27
Speaker
fell off, to put it bluntly. I disagree. Question, have you had this years? I have had this years. I don't think I have. I loved it. It was really, really good. I think I text you, I go, hey, Jewel has it for like 19 bucks for the four pack.
00:17:46
Speaker
This is a beer that you have to have fresh in my opinion. Everything will, stuff will fade. You could age it and you'll have a decent bourbon barrel aged beer, but you'll lose a lot of the chocolate and you'll definitely lose the coffee. That's going to be interesting about us trying this five year old version of the beer.
00:18:03
Speaker
Because when we had it when it was three years, about three years old, we all agreed that we could still taste all those characteristics. So two years telling that. It'll be interesting to see where this stands. But KBS to me is still a solid go to, barely to be able to look forward to when it comes out every April. If you can't get it in your area,
00:18:24
Speaker
I hope you trade it with somebody to at least try it fresh. Definitely try it fresh first. Yeah, while I didn't buy it this year, I feel like I saw it a lot more. Yeah. Like stacks of it at grocery stores. Yeah, I think it's more readily available.
00:18:39
Speaker
And because of the way that the climate has changed for bourbon-barreled beers, I think some people, just the guys that were originally chasing this beer down, are now chasing the next Moby Dick. Was the whales named Moby Dick? I think so. No. No, it was the guys Moby Dick. You guys can't tell, I never read Moby Dick.
00:19:05
Speaker
I should have just left that analogy alone and just said chasing the whale. Chasing the white dragon, that's something different. So yeah, I think a lot of people just kind of moved on to their next big beer, the next one you really had to, everyone was going crazy over. Right now, the big one is Toppling Goliath's KBBS. That's the big to-do beer these days.
00:19:30
Speaker
Never had it. I never have had it. I'm not gonna get into that. I think again, I think I may have, we did. What was we doing last week's episode? It's a recap. We're recapping our recap episode. So let's get into this. This is KBS. I can smell coffee on that. Oh yeah. I can smell coffee. Get a little booze. Oh man.
00:19:57
Speaker
You don't taste as much coffee. Well, no, there's coffee in that. I can still taste coffee in that. Yep. I can taste coffee, barrel and some chocolate. That's delicious. Yeah. And it's not like, um, some of the older coffee beers that we had, I think on one of the episodes that I don't know if it was an after the final pour or something, but I think I did. We did one of the coffee stouts that I had the, it was just bitter.
00:20:20
Speaker
like green pepper. It was during the second part of the bourbon county blowout, which we did. There were two different coffee bourbon counties that we drank. One
00:20:39
Speaker
half of us thought was like green pepper. The other one, the other half of us thought it was like green pepper. So it's kind of a mix. It was a mixed crowd of what we could perceive. And it's funny how much the green pepper does come through on some of those beers. And it's gross. It is gross. It is not drinkable. It's so weird. It's so weird that that flavor comes out. Yeah, I don't get it. But this does not have it. Which is good. I would cry if I did.
00:21:10
Speaker
Man, I keep doing this for breakfast. I feel like I've had this for breakfast before. Well, and the carbonation is still really good on it, too. Yeah, I do for five years. I mean, that's 2014 must have been a really good blend.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, whatever they did, they knocked it out of the park in that year. In another beer, I mean, Brad and I still have stuff to do today, but another beer that along the same lines is CVS. CVS, you, the original run of CVS, you brought over to me and Mike one day when I think we were brewing your woo clone? Probably. I think that's what it was. You brought over CVS. I lost my mind over that.
Founder's Canadian Breakfast Stout Reflection
00:21:47
Speaker
I was so excited because I never thought I was going to try it. And that is the Canadian Breakfast Stout, which is
00:21:53
Speaker
basically this and with maple syrup. Yeah, I think it's the aged bourbon barrels that also aged maple syrup. Yeah. And then.
00:22:04
Speaker
Right, yeah. Were they maple? Bourbon barrels, then maple, and then the beer. Yeah, something like that. It was a podcast, no big fact. That one is also very good. The fresh one we had was super good. Two years ago when I got it, I had a bottle of it and I cracked it open and I thought it just kind of tasted like KBS, but then you shared a bottle again with me and Mike.
00:22:30
Speaker
I tasted the maple and I thought it was great. I know that some of the other guys have said that they didn't get a whole lot of maple from it this year, the last years that I had.
00:22:41
Speaker
I feel like they were compensating maybe for some of the complaints. Way more maple. There was way more maple. So I bought a bottle. I still haven't opened it. I don't know if I've tried it. It's real. I like it. I like it a lot. In fact, I know Ron has some CBS left that he's not a huge fan of because he thought it was just not that great. And I was telling him, don't get rid of it. Let's do something with it. Let's do something with it. It's a bourbon barely etched out. And why don't we try and not French press, but
00:23:09
Speaker
Mix in some actual like when we were doing the French press with the Berber County stuff. Yeah, add some maple syrup to it and blend it and Get yourself a maple bourbon barely beer
00:23:21
Speaker
Or was it taken? Well, it's not a bad style, so it doesn't make sense. But we were talking about making barbecue sauce out of like. Yeah, of the infected Bourbon County, which I definitely want to do still with Emil. Emil has a whole bunch of infections. Emil's got a whole bunch of infections. Sorry, Emil.
00:23:44
Speaker
So yeah, here you go. That's two beers you can have for breakfast. They both have coffee in it. One's a little heavier than the other. This is 11.2%. Yeah, I'm surprised I'm not feeling it as much as I should be this early in the morning. But I would say for these two beers, they're both a good choice. You know, vacation. Actually, they'd be really good.
00:24:05
Speaker
I'm trying to think of Thanksgiving break. Let me get a little Christmas break action. You know, rather than you want to start Christmas morning as the alcoholic. I thought of another example of like drinking beer for breakfast in St. Patrick's Day. I already said that. Oh. What is it? Like going to the parade. But that's like an example of when I... Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, when you go to the Southside Irish Parade. Oh yeah. Last time you were down on that, Andy.
00:24:31
Speaker
I stopped getting the invites because I didn't go. I haven't gone to any of them, so I stopped getting the invites. I asked him last year, or this year, about it, and he's like, I stopped sending invites because everyone knows where to go. I'm like, okay. He's right. I put all that effort into it. Everybody knows what's happening. That Facebook event that goes up is terrible.
00:24:50
Speaker
All that work. Face Newport. All right. Let's take a break. I'm going to hit the head. We're going to discuss making your own hard cider after drinking some breakfast beers. It's a great combo. Yeah. It's the best time to do it. It's going to be great. Get tanked. Make cider.
00:26:01
Speaker
And we're back! Yes, I've got the Beatles in my head. So let's get into breakfast with the Beatles this morning.
00:26:08
Speaker
All right. So we discussed the breakfast beers, what you can drink for breakfast. And the theme was coffee. That was the only thing. Just coffee beers is what we were drinking for breakfast. All right. It was, it was a little fluff thing to get to this part, right? We couldn't spend a whole episode on cider cause I've only made a hard cider once. Well, and it's also fairly simple, at least the method we're going about. Yes. And the method that we were using is a method I learned
00:26:33
Speaker
from the guys over at BrewLossophy. If you are a homebrewer who also listens to podcasts, there's a good chance that you already are aware of BrewLossophy. But if you are not familiar with BrewLossophy and you are interested in homebrewing,
00:26:50
Speaker
I would definitely recommend going to check out their web page, which is BrewLossophy.com. They do a lot of what they call experiments, which are experiments with beers. A lot of it has to do with
00:27:10
Speaker
going against, not going against, but testing out things that we have perceived to become common knowledge of beer making or trying out different ways of using grains and just a whole bunch of experiments. A lot of cool stuff, very informative.
00:27:27
Speaker
Definitely recommend checking out their podcast, too. Even if you're just someone who's into beer, it's kind of cool to hear their experiments. There's a lot of nerdy terminology in there if you're not a home brewer, but it's still entertaining to listen to. Anyway, I remember listening to an episode that had to do with making hard cider, and Marshall Schott, the host of Bruulosophy and the creator of Bruulosophy, he had mentioned that you can go and use
00:27:57
Speaker
Cheap, and by cheap I mean inexpensive, cheap simple 100% apple juice. And by that I mean there are no preservatives in it because if you have any preservatives in the juice it will kill the yeast and you will need yeast for this because you are fermenting it. So really all you need
00:28:15
Speaker
is about, if you're doing a five gallon batch, which is kind of standard for home brewing, five gallons of 100% apple juice with no preservatives, a bucket, some yeast, and some sanitizer. And that's pretty much it. There's some other things you can do to help treat it, like there's camping and tablets that people use.
00:28:39
Speaker
in it. It's like a sulfur based thing that helps fight bacteria and do some other stuff that my knowledge is showing. I do some other things with it.
Guide to Making Hard Cider
00:28:49
Speaker
I also use that in wine when finishing after fermentation. I did not use that. I had a bad experience with
00:28:56
Speaker
Campman tablets with a beer because I wanted to get rid of the chlorine so I didn't have a filter in place. And I ended up with what I called fart beer. It was a good fart beer. It was a good fart beer. It was not a good fart beer. The beer smelled terrible. It was appropriate for Halloween. Yeah, it was. It was my werewolf pale ale or something like that.
00:29:15
Speaker
It was, uh, stinky. I did a coach like that, too, also just stinky. So I stopped using it. I didn't use it. Took yourself. No more Camden heads. Yeah. I ended up just using the filter that we have. So it's super simple. So Brandon is going to do this today. And he's actually going to do it here now. So what Brandon has here are what is it? How many bottles is that there? 10. 10. How many? Half gallon bottles. 10. That makes sense. Math is hard for me. 10 half gallon.
00:29:45
Speaker
Jugs of, this is the label, Kroger brand? Kroger brand, 100% juice unfiltered apple. That's the way they put that. Why would they not just put 100% apple juice unfiltered or unfiltered apple juice? It just seems like a wrong, my OCD, sorry.
00:30:01
Speaker
So Brandon, Brandon has already sanitized his bucket. He's got a five gallon bucket here, and he's going to now pour in. What are you doing? Oh, he's squeezing it back. It's a little warped. Brandon is now going to dump the five gallons in. Listen closely. Maybe don't listen closely. It sounds like he's whizzing into a bucket.
00:30:29
Speaker
It almost looks like it, too. Yeah, it almost looks like it, too. So really, I mean, it's super simple. I almost feel like I should have put the yeast in first and then just pour this all over it. Hmm, you could have done that. Yeah, I'm sure you might as well. And tell them what yeast are using for this. We're using the...
00:30:50
Speaker
uh... belle saison uh... it's a belle jean saison style beer yeast uh... oh dan star so where was it you the recipe that you were following for the thing you had you actually looked up the update or looked up the article before we started recording correct and they actually recommend using that yeah the the original
00:31:16
Speaker
Article which I'm actually going to have the link if you look Wherever you're listening to this. I did add the link to this a philosophy Experiment on the update he put I now use Dan star Bell Cezanne yeast almost exclusively it does it seems to require a little longer to fully finish fermenting, but I really like the character it adds I
00:31:38
Speaker
With this yeast, I start fermentation around 68 degrees Fahrenheit, leave there a couple days, then let it ramp up naturally to anywhere between 75 to 78 degrees. With using a Saison yeast, that makes sense, helps brings out some of those other characteristics that you would, familiar flavors that you'd get in a Saison.
00:31:57
Speaker
So what I did this, I used, jeez, it is a champagne yeast, something 1137, maybe C1137, something like that. I'll have a link to that too in there. I'm just going to link things from now on. Champagne yeast is, people can't hear me, but that's pretty standard. Yeah, champagne yeast is
00:32:20
Speaker
I like the way that it turned out it was nice and dry. The other, so one thing Brandon is doing that some other people that I didn't do and a lot of other people do depending on how you like
00:32:33
Speaker
your cider, a hard cider, is you can back sweeten it, which is what it says to do in the original Bruulosophy, oh, there he goes again. What the original Bruulosophy article says, by back sweetening, once everything was, let's see, once it was done fermenting, he ended up adding the potassium sorbate and the metabisulphite
00:32:58
Speaker
to it and then back sweeten and package it. By back sweetening it adds sweetness to it so we use two bottles of 100% apple juice concentrate that were totally thawed. Just pour them into the sanitized keg and rack the finish cider on top of it. So if you like a dry cider, which dry being not sweet, you don't have to do that. And the reason why I don't back sweeten it is because my wife Laura, who isn't a huge fan of beers these days, this really just sounds like you're peeing.
00:33:27
Speaker
It's not the only trouble being now. Oh, he's done. You just, oh, nope, still gotta go. This is the weirdest bit of podcasting we've ever done.
00:33:41
Speaker
I don't back sweeten it because my wife, Laura, the reason why I made the cider in the first place was for my wife. She likes cider. She's not a huge fan of beer. So I made this hard cider for her and she likes dry ciders and I didn't back sweeten it at all with the Apley's concentrate. But if you like your cider sweeter, that's another way to do it is to add the concentrate when you're packaging. If you're doing it in a keg, obviously add the two cans of the concentrate to the keg. If you're going to bottle,
00:34:08
Speaker
add it to your bottling bucket and and go so that'll be good but Brandon is doing what I did which was just adding the juice pitching the yeast sit on the top and letting it ride I waited a month for mine which seems to be a good amount of time
00:34:25
Speaker
It will, and I don't know if Brandon knows this, but it will start smelling like farts in your basement for a little bit. That is from the fermentation. The cider just kind of gives off that smell during fermentation. So that's just, that just comes with the territory.
00:34:44
Speaker
and really once he's now so now he's dumped all those into the bucket i would still give you still give it a good stir good man you know what's up um he put the yeast in already and now he's gonna go ahead and stir it on up get some oxygen in there because yeast loves oxygen um get that and sugar that's that's what they love
00:35:03
Speaker
and that will help the fermentation process start. We'll then put the top on, and I'd say let it sit for about three weeks, maybe even a month. Check it in about three weeks, see where you're at. See the, you'll check the gravity.
00:35:19
Speaker
You can actually, you probably want to do a starting gravity too. So you might want to grab that. Do you have something to grab gravity with reading? Yeah. Perfect. So we'll find out what the gravity reading is on that and then it'll drop down to I think 1.000 is when it'll be done.
00:35:38
Speaker
Okay, so the gravity reading is 1.050 that should drop down to about 1.000 which is what mine did the only difference between yours Cider my cider was that I did four gallons of apple juice and then one gallon of tart cherry juice Which added a nice tart cherry flavor to it. Yeah, I was looking to do I was thinking about doing that but I figured I
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, that was, I mean, go straight, uh, juice. And if it's a juice that you like, you can think, um, Kroger. Cause I know originally you were looking at actual Apple cider. Yeah. And I think the cider thing is what is like, that's why they had the. Yes. The, um, potassium or something, whatever. Yes. Potassium sorbate, which is a preservative.
00:36:29
Speaker
Now Mike has done a cider in the past where he went to a farmer's market and got five gallons of it.
00:36:35
Speaker
And it was a great cider. It was really good. You could, there is a difference between two ciders. His cider was really, it was rich. It was kind of like just rich and full of flavor. Is that the one that we brought to the brew fest? Yeah, the only problem with that was that we fermented it, we fermented it in a keg, grabbed a keg to bring it to the fest. It's something for us to drink, but forgot that all the true was sitting at the bottom. Oh yeah.
00:37:01
Speaker
So fun. Yeah The first couple pours were pretty gross. It looked like orange juice and then it would pour delicious clear cider So now Brandon's got the top and the airlock on and he is Officially set for his very first cider. Do you get a name for your cider yet? Nope. Cool Could name it after my son or something like that. There you go. That's a good idea It's the first thing you're brewing since he's been born
00:37:28
Speaker
Yes, to first brew. Yes it is. Baby's first brew. I wish I had him down here for this. Great, he missed out. Yeah, so I would say check this in about two weeks. See where you're at. And maybe let it go for another week or two. See where you're at there. And then keg this bad boy
Experimenting with Cider Flavors
00:37:47
Speaker
up. You got cider, man. The other thing that you want to do when it comes to cider, well, you don't have to.
00:37:53
Speaker
But a true hard cider, it's kind of sparkling. So you can, by sparkling I mean the carbonation. So if you're putting it in a keg, you want to set your PSI to like 30 for about two days and then decrease the pressure to about 13 PSI or wherever your normal serving is and you should be good.
00:38:15
Speaker
That's it. It's one of the easiest things to make when it comes to homebrewing. It's so funny. I don't know why I waited so long to actually do this. I've thought about it for ever. It's ridiculously simple. Yeah, I don't know why I haven't done another batch of it yet. I'm actually going to the store when I'm done here and I might go grab juice to do another batch of it. You gotta go to Mariano's, dude. They still got those two-for-one steaks.
00:38:40
Speaker
I think that's something I'm doing tonight. Yeah, so I hope that was pretty clear and concise. I was kind of rambling on there. I got scared for a second because that was the only one you could hear, except for Brandon's apple juice pee.
00:38:55
Speaker
But yeah, if anyone has any questions about it, feel free to shoot us an email, 212brewclubatgmail.com. We're happy to, or go to our Facebook page and shoot a message there, ask questions. It's really super, super, super, super easy. And I was telling Brandon. Even if you've never brewed before, you can do this. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's honestly, especially for people who don't like beer and you like hard ciders, I mean,
00:39:21
Speaker
A bucket, jeez, a bucket of top and an airlock is what, 15 bucks altogether? Probably. Maybe 20 at the most depending on where you're going. And then you just buy the apple juice and some yeast and you can get the iodine star sand. I mean you're looking for your very first batch.
00:39:39
Speaker
You're looking at spending maybe 45, 50 bucks because you're buying equipment and then after that you're probably looking at about 34 bucks for 5 gallons. And 5 gallons is 640 ounces. 640 ounces comes out to about 48 to 50 12 ounce bottles of hard cider. Cider six pack is about 10 bucks.
00:40:03
Speaker
So, do the math. You're saving some money there. Saving a lot of money. Well, you're saving some money. Plus, you can say it's something that you made. You can also experiment by adding other juices. Like I said, I substituted one gallon of apple cider. I'm sorry, one gallon of the apple juice with one gallon of 100% organic
00:40:24
Speaker
Tarte cherry juice was the most expensive part of this when I did mine because those half-gallon bottles were Expensive. $8 a piece. So it was $16 in my cider alone for that juice.
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, because I was thinking cherry at first. And the only reason I forgot that you had done cherry, but I was thinking about cherry just because of Mike's beer. So I had cherry on the brain, and I was like, oh. So I was looking up, there was places, I think Mariano's might even have had it, like organic cherry juice, like concentrate. I was like, ooh, that'd be pretty good.
00:41:05
Speaker
Like I said I don't want me to go simple on this one but then for some reason I have this morbid curiosity in my brain of like if I do this if and when I do this again, which is more of a when instead of an if Like I don't know why I keep thinking like what if we put like brown sugar in there or something like that Yeah, well and that you can use for back sweetening. Yeah now also I could be wrong. Sorry. Let me
00:41:30
Speaker
Don't quote me on it. I don't know if it's a bad story. I know it will raise alcohol. It will raise alcohol and dry it out if you add brown sugar. Because my thought on that was actually boiling.
00:41:41
Speaker
the cider, not boiling it, but bringing the temperature up to break down that sugar and the molasses in there. You could probably take just some of the apple juice put into a pot, break down that sugar and pour it in. You don't have to boil it in there. Again, I'm not a cider making X word here. I think there are people who have said there are negatives to boiling this or raising the temperature. I don't know why, but I'm almost positive that the sugar, the brown sugar, adding brown sugar, how many times am I going to say sugar,
00:42:12
Speaker
is to raise alcohol. And he'll dry it out more because he's just eating more sugar. Again, I said sugar. But another one Laura wanted me to do was cinnamon, cinnamon one. We've had our experiments with cinnamon beer. Thinking about doing that. I'm going to try another cider for the summer here. I know we're almost in July, but I think while I'm out today, I'm going to go buy all the juice. And I think I'm going to try a pineapple one. And what I've been told about pineapple juice ciders or a pineapple cider,
00:42:40
Speaker
pineapple juice cannot be added or should not be added until the end of fermentation and maybe when you're packaging because you will the acid in the
00:42:51
Speaker
Yes, the acid, some enzyme in pineapple juice will actually kill the yeast and the yeast will not eat the sugars and create the alcohol which we are looking for in this hard cider. So you can use other juices, any other 100% juice. If you want to mix in some type of berry juice or anything like that, by all means, go ahead, knock yourself out. The cranberry cider, you can do a cranberry cinnamon cider for Thanksgiving. You can do a blueberry cider. The possibilities are endless.
00:43:21
Speaker
Well, the same thought process goes around. I was reading an article about taking Welch's grape juice and turning that into wine. Yeah. I think Mike did that when he was a kid. That's impressive. High school. Pretty sure he just fermented some Welch's grape juice. Mike, you're going to have to confirm that with me. I know that you listened to this. We know you have issues. Just confirm what they are. Yeah. Well, think about those guys that we met at the Great Lakes Brewfest who just fermented pineapple juice.
00:43:51
Speaker
See, now that I think about it. I don't know if we've gotten into detail about that, but so these guys had...
00:44:02
Speaker
It was like the moonshine of like a pineapple cider or something. I don't know. It was ridiculously good. How much alcohol did he say was in that thing? It was almost like 20%. Tony was chugging it basically. I had too much of it. I got so not good at the Great Lakes Brew Fest last year. It was bad. Brandon had to drive the van.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah. Tony was drunk before the event really even started. So that is kind of true actually. Yeah. I was, I was feeling pretty good, but it was. Well, cause those guys busted that thing out like right at the beginning. Hey, try this stuff. Okay. Uh, so I would be curious to figure out how they actually did that.
00:44:44
Speaker
Maybe we gotta ask those guys. I think we gotta reach out to them and see if they'd be interested in talking about some homebrew and stuff. Do you remember who they are? Power outage. Yeah. I remember those guys. And I got some other contacts recently about some other people want to be on the podcast. So we'll have some stuff. We also have to still do the follow-up to Fishman. We know we didn't get a chance to do it this week.
00:45:03
Speaker
And we got some, the summer's starting to... We got to spread it out, kind of have some anticipation for this
Episode Recap and Feedback
00:45:08
Speaker
man. And the summer's... Just blow our load right at the beginning of the summer. Oh geez. Now listen to us talk about ourselves. Hey, at least we're not kissing on this episode.
00:45:24
Speaker
But yeah, the summer is filling up fast, so we apologize if it doesn't seem like we're doing much. But we are. We had breakfast beers and cider today. Cider making. But again, I still think this is as simple as it is. If anybody's interested in making a cider, knowing how stupid simple it is is a great way to just be like, hey, I'm going to go buy this and do it. The first time I ever
00:45:48
Speaker
thought about making cider, kind of the route Mike went was going to the farmer's market and getting the fresh pressed cider. The article I had read years ago was get it, you know, get the container, open it up, put a cover on top of it, like to just let air flow through and just let it naturally ferment for like a while, a week. Cap it, put it in your fridge, let it sit in there for like whatever to kill, I think to kill the east.
00:46:15
Speaker
Or at least make them dormant, and then it's like you have cider. I'm like that seems ridiculously simple. Yeah, well I think the same thing is not with kombucha, right? You can just call me kombucha. Can't you just like let it sit and ferment? Pull it out of your toilet and put it in a jar. I'll put it in a jar. I've had I just had kombucha for the first time yesterday. Really? Yeah, it was a it was over at Mike's. It was a ginger kombucha. It was pretty good.
00:46:40
Speaker
This is like ginger ale. That's all it tasted like. Did Mike have it? Yeah, Mike had it. Ew. Really, Brandon's not a fan of kombucha. No, I mean, I don't mind it. It was funny when I was in Denver last week for work.
00:46:56
Speaker
our office can manually install tap handles. So there's like four tap handles, nothing on tap yet. So that they're trying to figure out how to do it. Yeah. And one of the guys that I worked with, I was like, my first thing was like, Oh, you totally put like cold brew on one of these. If you're not, you know, wanting to fill in. And he's like, yeah, we're kombucha. And I'm like,
00:47:16
Speaker
How many people in this office do you think would actually drink a keg of kombucha? I was like, not a good idea. Yeah, cold brew coffee is a great idea. It would be awesome. And you can even get wine on tap and like... I mean, don't use all the taps up before you get beer in there. Wait to find out what the beer is gonna be.
00:47:35
Speaker
Um, so yeah, so that was the, uh, as I'm calling it, as the episode, as the episode, we talked about some breakfast beers, which are basically just some coffee stouts that were real tasty. And we got to hear Brandon pee into a bucket and make a hard cider. Yeah. If anybody has any questions, feel free to reach out to us. Uh, you know how to get all of us on our, and we're on Facebook to talk brew club number two, word 12 brew club. Um, that's the same thing for everybody else, which is Twitter.
00:48:01
Speaker
Instagram, we have our own webpage, which has been updated in a long time. 212.beer. Yeah, sorry about that. And then here on the podcast. So yeah, if you have any questions, suggestions, feedback, let us know. Send us a message. Thank you all for listening. Brandon. Tony. I love you, man. I love you, man. Bye, guys. Bye.