Fermental

Red Rye Brew
John Rehm, one of our Philadelphia Brewing Co brewers, joined me at the Porterhouse yesterday. We brewed up a French Farmhouse style ale which will be the basis for one our our new Philadelphia Brewing Co mainstays. It's always fun having another brewer join me at the Porterhouse - even though it makes for cramped quarters in the brewhouse.

This brew included loads of exotic malts and about 10% malted rye. We first wort hopped using Willamette hops and added continental hops in two further additions for a noble aroma. The result was a beautiful red-hued and spicy wort with an original gravity weighing in at 12 Plato on the nose.

While we were appreciating the fresh-cut-grass aroma of the Willamette, before dumping them into the run off; John told me something I hadn't known about Willamette hops. According to John, Willamette is one of the primary hops used in Budweiser. It took me a few minutes to realize the irony of the fact that the world's biggest lawnmower "beer" is brewed using hops with an aroma that reminds me of fresh cut grass. Whether the evil empire uses them or not - I still love fresh Willamette hops.

In addition to fermenting this one at the Porterhouse using my house Belgian strain (Fermentis T-58); we are using this brew to figure what Belgian strains we want to use at Philadelphia Brewing. John and I loaded up four homebrew fermentors (actually, 5 gallon wine juice buckets) with Red Rye wort and pitched four different yeast strains. The yeast sample were provided for us by Brewing Science. David Bryant of The Brewing Science Institute is extremely helpful and knowledgeable about his yeast - and BSI has a HUGE variety of different strains.

We decided to evaluate the following four strains from BSI for Philadelphia Brewing Co:

• Celis - B-44
• La Chouffe - ABS3
• Forbidden Fruit - B-63
• Westmalle - B-87

This is the third round of test brews that we run for Philadelphia Brewing Co. We did the first two batches with Barry Mulherin of Barry's Homebrew Outlet. the fact that we are running these test brews has me biting at the bit to get back into our brewery. Everyone and Philadelphia Brewing CANNOT WAIT to get back into our brewery, CLEAN the place, and start brewing beer. It won't be long now.