When Budweisers Go Wrong

The plan was simple, to try all three of the beers which lay claim to the Budweiser name. having found a shop in Columbia, South Carolina which had not just Czechvar but also B.B. Bürgerbräu I thought that this was going to be one of the most fun blind test tastings I had done in a while. Mrs Velkyal was in charge of bring out the three Budweisers, and the first two went swimmingly - I have drunk enough Budvar to know the difference between that and the American version. Then she brought out the third glass.

I was looking forward to the B.B. Bürgerbräu because I couldn't remember trying any of the products from Budějovický měšťanský pivovar while I was in Prague. When it came though it looked like this:

Oh dear! What was going on there then? But I wasn't too worried as I had bought a six pack so I decided to just get another bottle and ditch the blind tasting. The first bottle I picked up looked like this:

Oh dear, oh dear! Every bottle had this foul scum floating in the bottle, an entire six pack rendered undrinkable - I had taken a couple of sips of the original glass and it was simply awful.

What was going on? Surely they filter the beer, so where did this stuff come from? Any thoughts?

Next time Mrs Velkyal and I go to visit the in-laws I will pick up some more Budvar (still haven't seen it in Virginia) and a pre-checked case of B.B. Bürgerbräu in order to do a proper blind tasting.

Copper Head Cask

At some point this week I will be preparing Copper Head Pale Ale for its assembled delivery systems, when they arrive that is. One of the things I wanted to do with my beer once I got here was to get into cask conditioning my beer as well as the bottle conditioning I have been doing up to now.

When I went to buy my brewing kit in Columbia, I noticed that the shop had small wooden casks, just what I wanted! At $120 a pop for a 5 gallon cask, I decided that cask conditioning could wait until I had a job and had finished eating into my savings. I still wanted to try something different though, and then I remembered reading somewhere that you could use a polypin as a form of "cask". Finding information about polypin conditioning was a piece of cake, especially as Boak and Bailey's blog is right up there in a Google search for "using a polypin as a cask", several emails later and I am fairly confident about my upcoming Copper Head Cask.

There was only one problem, I couldn't find a polypin supplier on any of the American homebrew websites. Somehow though I stumbled upon the fact that a "polypin" in the States is a "cubitainer" and thus ordered the necessaries from Northern Brewer. Not wanting to risk all my brew exploding over the storage space, I got just a 1 US gallon cubitainer and will bottle the rest in 12oz bottles, that's 375ml for the metric guys.

Apparently the cubitainer stuff takes about a week to condition, so it should be ready for when my good friend Jay comes down from Philadelphia for the Labor Day weekend. Some of the bottles will make it down to Richmond when I finally meet E.S. Delia of Relentless Thirst fame, and if you haven't already read his excellent blog, get over there as soon as you finish reading this. Around about now for example.

Drinking Song Videos and a touch of Sentimentality

Just for a laugh!

You can't beat a bit of Monty Python really can you?

Same goes with The Dubliners in my world.

Like most people who like a pint and a dram or three, late in the night I tend to get soppy and sentimental. When this happens, I think of home and this song:

Beers to be Cloned or Bettered!

Last week I picked up the current edition of Brew Your Own magazine as something to read while chilling out by the pool and enjoying the Virginia evening sunshine. On a side note, we have had fantastic weather here since arriving from South Carolina, temperatures in the mid 80s (high 20s for my European readers), and almost wall to wall sunshine. Ideal for sitting by the pool and reading.

Anyway, back to beer, this edition has a selection of clone brews for both the all grain and extract with grains brewer, which got me thinking about the beers in this world I would love to eventually learn to "clone". So far in my homebrewing ventures I have mainly messed around with established styles, such as the smoked chocolate porter I did last time round.

Even so, here are a few of the beers I would love to clone - on that basis that I can't buy the original here in Virginia:

• Wrassler's XXXX from the Porterhouse in Dublin, a simply magnificent stout which I could happily spend a rainy afternoon pouring down my throat, while watching the rugby.
• Samurai IPA from Kocour back in the Czech Republic - what a flavourful and drinkable beer that was, and a great beer to drink almost daily in my last month in Prague.
• Kout na Šumavě's entire range, in particular the 10˚.
• Schumacher Alt - had it in Berlin at an arts festival, love at first sip.

One beer I either want to emulate or better is the English Pale Ale from Primátor, which was Mrs Velkyal's favourite beer when back in Prague, so to have something of that merit would be a cap in the feather!

Back to Brewing - Happy Days

As planned a while back, Saturday was my first day of brewing here in the US.

Even before we moved over I had staked a claim on the storage room in our new flat as being my fermenting room and of course sorted out where to get my new brew kit - these very helpful guys in Columbia, South Carolina, as well as locating an ingredient supplier near Charlottesville.

My original intention was to brew a Red IPA, using Caramel 40 malt to add some colour and amarillo hops for those lovely citrusy flavours which I have really started to enjoy, not forgetting the East Kent Goldings hops for the flavour and aroma additions.

Back in November when Mrs Velkyal and I had the great pleasure of meeting the Beer Nut and Adeptus at the Bull and Castle in Dublin, they made me aware of Beertools.com, a handy little site for calculating recipes, which I use to get a general idea of what to expect from my ingredients.

Beertools told me to expect an OG of 1.057, however I ended up with only 1.045 - any thoughts on what caused the lack in OG would be much appreciated. Anyway, here is the recipe I used:

• 6lbs Muntons Extra Light DME
• 1lb American Caramel 40
• 2oz Amarillo hops, boiled 60 minutes
• 1oz East Kent Golding hops, 15 minutes
• 1oz East Kent Golding hops, 5 minutes

My yeast was from White Labs, the WLP023 Burton Ale, which was in a very nice vial and apparently didn't need a starter to cope with 5 gallons worth of wort. Sure enough this afternoon my wort has the beginnings of a lovely krausen on it and will hopefully produce a very nice American Pale Ale. Judging from the sample taken for the OG, it will be a copper coloured ale, so fingers crossed.

As I said I was planning to make a Red IPA, but the colour and gravity are slightly off hence the "re-branding" to an APA. Next time I will up the caramel malt to an 80 and use some C-hops for the Red IPA, but that has left me with a little problem regarding what to call my beer. Some thoughts bouncing around my head at the moment are:

• Copper Head Pale Ale
• Commonwealth Ale
• Ploughman's Delight

It is great to be brewing again.

Praise for My Favourite Breweries

Last year Primator won Best Lager in the World in the World Beer Awards, in this year's edition of the awards the guys from Nachod get more praise for their range of beers.

First is the World's Best Oatmeal Stout for the new Primator Stout, which Evan, Pivni Filosof and myself have enjoyed many a fine pint of (note however that the brewery themselves class it as a dry stout!).

They also won World's Best Marzen/Oktoberfest for their very quaffable 13 degree amber lager.

Fuller's weigh in with a World's Best Special Pale Ale, namely their wonderful 1845 - a rich delight of a beer which belies its strength.

Also given a "World's Best" is the fantastic Gold Reserve from Lovibonds - well done Jeff!

Good to see brewers like Lovibonds and Primator getting the recognition they deserve beyond their core markets, and of course seeing the likes of Fuller's keeping up their reputation.

The Good, the Bland and the Uninspired

Sorry for the lack of posts of late, still in the process of getting essentials sorted out here in Charlottesville - which is a lovely place from what we have seen so far, very happy to be here. So here are a few pictures of some beer I have had of late:

The Good - Dundee Pale Bock Lager, very nice, not overly sweet and eminently drinkable.

The Bland - Dundee Honey Brown, not much honey, not overly brown, ho-hum.

The Uninspired - Brooklyn Pilsner, pilsner? really? Hmmmm