Beer N Bikes - Durango, Colorado » Homebrew

Ska Brewing Beer Blogger Collabeeration: The Release Party

Jeff — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:56:40 +0000

I got to Ska Brewing about 30 minutes before we had planned on tapping the kegs (in true BeernBikes fashion myself, Kinsee and two friends rode our bikes to the brewery, we set them on top of the three feet of snow where we think the bike rack is buried). Thomas and I put them on tap and he checked to see how they poured. Unfortunately they were both over carbonated and very foamy. We tried to wait a bit to let them settle but that didn’t help. The bartenders started filling pitchers to let the foam recede a bit.

When we had a decent amount poured, Thomas, Chuck and myself toasted and we finally got to taste the final results. The Rochefort yeast made my beer very fruity, in a good way. There was a good amount of bitterness from hops to help balance the fruitiness from the yeast. I am very pleased with how it turned out.

Chuck liked his beer as well, I only got a small taste of it, and it was delicious. Not too malty and not too hoppy, a great Imperial Red in my opinion.

The turn out was great, I’d guess at the height of the party there were about 40 or 50 people there, most were there for our beer. I knew a lot of the people there, but not everyone, many of Chuck’s friends came as well, but at least a few people I talked to didn’t know either of us, they had just heard of the project and decided to come down to try it. Unfortunately because it wasn’t pouring so well some beer was wasted as we had to pour off some foam. We went through five gallons of each beer and some people didn’t even get any. I felt bad for them, but felt like that meant the release party was a success!

I want to thank Dave Thibodeau for making this all happen, as well as Thomas Larsen for all his help and involvement. This is by far the best batch of beer I’ve ever made, I know his influence is what did that. But I did learn a lot so I’m looking forward to more homebrewing in the future.

There’s a possibility that a small amount will be on tap at Ska Brewing Co.’s Taproom this week. If that is the case I’ll update this post.

Check out the video below of the toast and Thomas, Chuck and myself taking our first tastes. Head on over to Flickr for more pictures from the night.

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Ska Brewing Beer Blogger Collabeeration: The Release Party

Ska Brewing – Beer Blogger Article in the Durango Telegraph

Jeff — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:37:30 +0000

Just a quick post to point out that The Durango Telegraph, our local alt-weekly, has a story about the Ska Brewing Co. – Beer Blogger collaboration beers.

Beer Blogger by Kinsee Morlan

Ska Brewing Co. head brewer Thomas Larsen is showing Chuck Slothower the ropes – or the tubes as the case may be.

“We need to shut that filter bed so everything runs nice and easily and doesn’t get stuck and doesn’t compact,” explains Larsen. He goes on in a language that can only be understood by fellow brewers and beer geeks.

Good thing Slothower, a tall, thin man who makes his way through life as a journalist by day and a beer blogger by night, falls into the second category. He’s an admitted beer addict who shares his love of craft brews online at beerat6512.blogspot.com. The “6,512” number, by the way, is the approximate elevation of Durango, which is indicative of his blog’s goal – “Local but not provincial, so I try to cover all the local beers that come out, but I’ll also write about beers in the Front Range, Oregon, California and whatever else is interesting,” he says.

Click on over to The Durango Telegraph to read the full story.

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Ska Brewing – Beer Blogger Article in the Durango Telegraph

Ska Brewing Co. Beer Blogger Collabeeration Tapping Party

Jeff — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:26:14 +0000

This Saturday, Febrary 13th at 5pm we’ll be tapping the Ska Brewing Co. Beer Blogger CollaBEERation brews at the Ska Brewing Co. tap room.

If you haven’t been following along, Ska Brewing Co. invited myself and the Soggy Coaster of Beer at 6512 to each brew a beer on their 10 gallon pilot system. We both worked with Thomas Larsen, head brewer at Ska to formulate a recipe, brew the beer, dry hop it, and transfer to kegs and carbonate it. Every step of the beer making process.

I chose to make a Belgian-American IPA, we’re calling it BeernBikes Belgian-American IPA. Soggy Coaster made a Double/Imperial Red, Soggy Coaster Imperial Red Ale. I got to taste my beer 3 weeks ago before we added the hops for dry hopping, when we transferred it from the primary fermenter into carboys for secondary fermentation. It was still early in the process but the signs were looking good that it would turn out well. I got to taste Soggy Coaster’s beer this past weekend, it was further along in the process and tasted good.

We didn’t get exact measurements on my beer, but it should come in between 6-7% ABV and around 65 IBU. It’s a hoppy American IPA, with a Belgian yeast.

Here are some links to my past blog entries about this collaboration:

Check out Beer at 6512 for the Soggy Coaster’s take on brewing at Ska Brewing Co. as well.

So come on out this Saturday, Febraury 13th at 5pm to the Ska Brewing tasting room (225 Girard St, Durango CO) to taste our beer.

The Ska brewers have been hard at work experimenting with the 10 gallon pilot system as well. They have a handful of batches of 10 gallon beers they’ve brewed just waiting to go on tap. After these two beers run out they’ll be tapping unique beers made by their brewers on the 10 gallon pilot system every Tuesday. They have a Belgian IPA, a Black Trippel, and a Weizenbock just waiting to go on tap.

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Ska Brewing Co. Beer Blogger Collabeeration Tapping Party

2nd Annual Ska Brewing Snowdown Homebrew Competition

Jeff — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:33:22 +0000

The second annual Ska Brewing Snowdown Homebrew Competition took place this past Saturday at Ska Brewing.

71 home brewed beers were entered and Clancy Calhoun of Aztec, NM walked away with Best in Show for “Clancy’s Black Beer” a dark lager. Clancy will brew a full batch of “Clancy’s Black Beer” at Ska Brewing Co. which will be available around August of this year. That batch will also be entered into the Great American Beer Festival’s Pro-Am competition.

My friend and Durango local Chris Oxford took home a gold and two silver medals at the competition. Bill Downs President of the Mesa Verde Mashers Home Brew Club took home a bronze medal.

Post from: Beer N Bikes

2nd Annual Ska Brewing Snowdown Homebrew Competition

Snowdown 2010

Jeff — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:26:52 +0000

I’ve written a bit about Snowdown (Carver Beard Growing Contest and Ska Brewing Co’s Hyper Fierce Gnar Gnar Hefe), and now that it’s upon us I thought I’d post some of the beer and bike related events. As expected there are more beer related events than bike related events. In fact I’m not sure there are any bike events (although I just browsed the schedule quickly, I may have missed something).

There were supposed to be Roller Races at the Smiley Building tonight (Wednesday January 27th) but according to Spencer Compton of the Durango Wheel Club those have been canceled. So don’t go down to the Smiley building with your bike tonight looking to race.

As for beer events, below is a list of some of the beer related (most taking place at a bar) events. Feel free to add anything in the comments.

Wednesday Jan. 27th, 2010

2nd Annual Snowdown Burp-Off Contest at Ska Brewing Co. at 6pm
6th Annual Polar Beer Plunge at Carver Brewing Co. at 8pm
Guinness Games, Snakes and Ladders at The Irish Embassy Pub at 8pm

Thursday Jan. 28th, 2010

Beer Pong Tournament at Pongas at 6pm
Beard Growing Contest at Carver Brewing Co. at 8pm
Guinness Games, Operation at The Irish Embassy Pub at 8pm

Friday Jan. 29th, 2010

Snowdown Waiter/Waitress Race at Steamworks Brewing Co. at 2pm
Snowdown Bed Race at Steamworks Brewing Co. at 3pm

Saturday Jan. 30th, 2010

2nd Annual Homebrew Competition at Ska Brewing Co., all day

Snowdown Hash House Run meets at Best Western Mountain Shadows (3255 Main Ave) at 10:30am
Guinness Games, Yahtzee! at The Irish Embassy Pub at 8pm
3rd Annual High Five Contest at Carver Brewing Co. at 8pm
Kings of Air Guitar at Steamworks Brewing Co. at 9pm

Sunday Jan. 31st, 2010

Hash House Run meets at Santa Rita Park at 11am

You can see the full list of events on the Snowdown website.

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Snowdown 2010

Ska Brewing Collabeeration: Belgian-American IPA Is In The Fermenter

Jeff — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:19:26 +0000

Ska's 10 Gallon Pilot System

A little over a week ago I went to Ska Brewing early on a Saturday morning and met head brewer Thomas Larsen and we got to work brewing our beer. You can read the recipe here, and in that blog post I forgot to mention the yeast we were to use, which is the Belgian Rochefort yeast.

We started out cleaning the equipment we would need for Ska’s 10 gallon pilot system. This system is a very nice setup, with a hot liquor tank, a mash tun and a brew kettle, all connected via gravity or a pump. After everything was cleaned we started boiling some water. While waiting for the water to boil we went up stairs to mill the grain. Once the grain was milled and the water heated we started our mash. Since I’ve only brewed from extract in the past this part was all new to me, I had read about the process but never actually done it. It wasn’t some much complicated as it was time consuming. I forget the total amount of time the grains were in the mash, but it was about 75 minutes I think.

After that we gravity fed the wort to the brew kettle, from here on out it was familiar territory for me (although with much nicer equipment). We took a reading of our gravity and it came up short from what Beer Smith told us it would be. Rather than have a smaller beer we decided to add 3lbs of amber malt extract. This got us up closer to where we wanted to be. We added hops and boiled for 90 minutes and then got ready to cool it, transfer to the fermenter and add the yeast.

Brew Kettle - Waiting to Boil

This is the part of the brew that most impressed me. When I homebrew I take my brew kettle stick it in a the sink filled with ice cubes and stir, and stir, and stir. It usually takes about 20 minutes of this to get it down to about 80 degrees. At Ska we used a counterflow (I believe this is the correct name) wort chiller. It was a set of copper coils where the wort went in one end and cold water went in another set of coils from the opposite end and chilled it. I was amazed with how well it worked. We had to adjust the flow of wort and cold water because it was cooling it too far below 70 degrees (our desired temperature). From there it went into some sort of contraption (I’m not sure of the name) that was hooked up to compressed air which aerated it (when I home brew I shake/stir the carboy to do this). From there it went right into the fermenter. When all the wort was in we pitched the yeast, set the temperature control to 70 degrees and closed it up. We had a few things to clean and that was it, time for a beer.

The whole process went smoothly and I learned a lot. Not only from our brew, but also just hanging out and watching Thomas do his regular routine in the brew house. It was nearly a full day of brewing, we started around 9:30am and finished right around 5pm.

We let it sit in primary fermentation for about 8 days (7 and a half really) and then bled off some of the yeast and transferred it to two carboys. At this point we tasted it and it was pretty good. The yeast gave it some sweet and fruity flavors. It wasn’t as dry as I’m hoping it will get, it tasted like the yeast still had some more work to do. We dry hopped with 3 oz of Chinook hops in each five gallon carboy. The beer will now sit in carboys for another week or so before getting a fining agent added and chilled to let it settle out. We’ll let it sit a bit longer and then transfer to kegs and carbonate it.

I think the plan is to have it go on tap at the tasting room sometime around February 14th.

The Soggy Coaster just went in to do his brew yesterday. It sounds good and I can’t wait to try it.

One of the Many "Behind the Scenes" Things I saw at Ska. Spent Grain on It's Way to Becoming Elk Food

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Ska Brewing Collabeeration: Belgian-American IPA Is In The Fermenter

Ska Brewing Collaboration Tomorrow, Belgian-American IPA Recipe

Jeff — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:25:45 +0000

Thomas Larsen, headbrewer at Ska Brewing Co. and I met up a few days ago to come up with a recipe for our Belgian-American IPA.

I don’t have much experience crafting beer recipes, but I told Thomas what I was hoping the beer would look, taste and smell like, as well as looked at some descriptions of malt and hops and this is what we came up with.

24.5 lb Pale Malt (2 row) US
3.0 lb Munich Matl – 20L
2.0 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine
2.0 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 80L
.75 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) Hops (90 min)
1.75 oz Chinook Hops (30 min)
1.75 oz Simcoe Hops (5 min)
1.75 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) Hops (5 min)

According to BeerSmith, the program we used to craft the recipe this should give us about 56 IBU and 7.16% ABV. Thomas tells me we might not see quite that high ABV, but anywhere in the 6.5-7.5% range is fine by me.

We didn’t get to see all of the aspects of the program, but as far as I can tell Beer Smith seems like a good program for brewers looking to come up with recipes and gives quite a bit of information. I’ll likely look into it more when I start coming up with my own recipes for homebrewing.

I’m excited for the brew day tomorrow. I’ll be taking as many pictures and maybe even video and tweeting throughout the process, so follow BeerNBikes on twitter tomorrow for live updates. I’m sure to have a full plug post up afterwards about the brewing as well.

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Ska Brewing Collaboration Tomorrow, Belgian-American IPA Recipe

Ska Brewing Collaboration: Formulating a Belgian-American IPA Recipe

Jeff — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:44:24 +0000

As I previously mentioned, Ska Brewing Co. has invited myself and Beer at 6512 blogger Soggy Coaster to each brew a 10 gallon batch of beer on their pilot system at Ska.

A couple weeks ago I met with Soggy Coaster, Ska President and Co-Founder Dave Thibodeau and Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen to set a brew schedule and talk beer. Soggy Coaster will be brewing an Imperial Red, based on Ska’s popular Pinstripe Red Ale.

Thomas and Dave Showing the Chart of Yeast Used Over Time

For my beer, I’ll be brewing a Belgian-American IPA as a I mentioned before. This will be my first time brewing all grain, as well as formulating a recipe (rather than brewing from a kit). This recipe part has me thinking about all the variables in a batch of beer. The four main ingredients in beer are water, malted barley, hops and yeast.

Yeast: Yeast is one of the easier decisions as I’ll be going with a Belgian yeast strain. I took a look at White Labs website and found quite a few different strains. I want this to be a hoppy, Belgian beer, but I want it to be balanced, I don’t want the Belgian yeast stealing the show and imparting too much fruity distinctly Belgian flavors. Based on the descriptions these two strains seem like they might be what I’m looking for: WLP540 Abbey IV Ale Yeast or WLP575 Belgian Style Ale Yeast Blend. I’m not sure if we’ll be using White Labs Yeast or not (but they have a great website with a ton of info) but I’m hoping Thomas can help me find a yeast strain that will accomplish the flavors that I’m hoping to achieve.

Hops: I want the hops to stand out in this beer, but not overwhelm the Belgian yeast. Unfortunately I don’t pay too much attention to the hop varieties used in some of my favorite beers, so looking through the hop descriptions in the book How To Brew by John J. Palmer I’ve noted Chinook and Simcoe as having the piney characteristics that I like. I’m also looking at Cascade hops.

Malt: Here’s where I get a bit lost. If I thought I didn’t pay attention to hops, I really don’t pay attention to malted barley. I know I want the beer to be pale, a dark yellow, gold or light amber. While looking at some recipes I think I want to go with some combination of pale ale malt and maybe some Pilsener malt, although I know nothing about the different varieties of these malts.

I’m relying on Thomas to impart a lot of his beer knowledge on this recipe (which I’m sure he will, the guy makes great beers). But if you’re a homebrewer, beer lover or know something about beer and the Belgian-American IPA type of beer I’m trying to brew, leave a comment with any tips you might have.

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Ska Brewing Collaboration: Formulating a Belgian-American IPA Recipe

Collabeeration: Ska Brewing Co. To Team up With Beer N Bikes and Beer at 6512

Jeff — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:45:09 +0000

That’s right, Ska Brewing Co. President Dave Thibodeau recently reached out to myself and Soggy Coaster of Beer at 6512 and asked if we’d each like to brew a batch of beer with Ska Head Brewer Thomas Larsen.

Both the Soggy Coaster and myself will work independently with Larsen to pick a style, formulate a recipe and brew our beer which will be on tap at at the Ska taproom when ready.

Like the Soggy Coaster I too want to brew a style that’s not widely available in Durango, which is tough with the amount and variety of beers brewed by the four breweries here. According to his blog post, he’s thinking about brewing a Imperial Red Ale, which sounds good. As for me, I’m thinking of a Belgian-American IPA, probably not a full on Imperial/Double IPA, but something on the stronger side, hopefully around 7% ABV. I’ve only had a few beers that could be qualified as Belgian-American IPA’s, Green Flash’s Le Freak and Stone Brewing Co.’s Cali-Belgique are two favorites of mine but taste pretty different from each other. I’m not trying to clone either beer, but rather make something nice and hoppy with some Belgian characteristics.

In addition to being excited about brewing beer with the Head Brewer of one of my favorite breweries, I’m also looking forward to learning more about the brewing process. I’d consider myself a fairly novice homebrewer, I’ve brewed a handful of beers, most have turned out pretty well, but all have been from extract with steeping grains, which is a far cry from “the real thing”, brewing an all grain batch of beer, and most have been from pre-assembled ingredient kits, so I don’t have much experience formulating my own recipes. I’ll get to work with an amazing brewer to create the recipe and then brew the beer, and I’ll learn a ton about brewing in the process.

Not all of the details are worked out yet, at this point anything is subject to change. And I’ll add a similar to disclaimer as the Soggy Coaster. Ska’s paying for the ingredients, Larsen’s time and we’re using their equipment and I won’t be making any money on this. And as cool as this opportunity is it won’t bias my blogging towards Ska, or against other breweries in any way. And again as Soggy Coaster mentioned in his blog post, this could be a first, we’re not aware of any other craft breweries inviting their local beer bloggers in to collaborate on a beer and creating a further sense of community.

Every beer needs a name, and because this is SKA Brewing and my teenage years were spent mostly at Aquabat’s concerts, I’m leaning towards Captain Hampton’s Belgian-American IPA or maybe Super-Rad! Belgian-American IPA. Sadly I don’t think much beer would sell if it were named after my favorite Aquabat’s song, something about Playdough Belgian-American IPA just isn’t so appetizing.

So check back often for more blog posts, pictures and maybe even video of the brewing process.

You can read Soggy Coaster’s post on the collaboration here and check out his blog Beer at 6512 for updates along the way as well.

And if you’re not already following me on Twitter, there’s sure to be updates there as well: BeerNBikes on Twitter.

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Collabeeration: Ska Brewing Co. To Team up With Beer N Bikes and Beer at 6512

Saturday November 7th – Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day

Jeff — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:17:54 +0000

This Saturday, November 7th is the American Homebrewers Association’s 11th Annual Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day. Homebrewing can be intimidating at first, so sometimes it helps to have an experienced homebrewer to learn from and that’s what Teach a Friend to Homebrew day is all about.

There are two Teach a Friend to Homebrew events I know of in the Four Corners area this saturday.

HOPS (Homebrewers of Pagosa Springs) will be at Pagosa Brewing Company homebrewing in the awesome beer garden they have there. They’ll be starting at 10am and brewing for about 4 or 5 hours. Contact Randy Schnose or Jason Cox for more info. randy@speeddirect.com or 303.204.3033

In Durango homebrewer Chris Oxford is holding a little homebrew party starting around 4pm. He has a Belgian Dubbel in the fermentor right now, which they’ll start by bottling, then they’ll brew up a Red Ale from an extract recipe. This will be a great way for beginners to see the whole (begging) brewing process. Email Chris at bigfatsnowboarder@yahoo.com to RSVP and get directions.

If you’re reading this from somewhere other than the Four Corners area and want to participate, click here to find a homebrew party in your area.

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Saturday November 7th – Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day