Kenzinger is in the Tanks!
What a weekend! After so much hard work and seemingly endless delays, we've got the first Philadelphia Brewing Co. beer in the fermenter.
Name: Kenzinger
Sex: Why Not?
Birth Weight: 10 Plato
Birth Length: 30 Barrels
Mother and father are pleased as punch and all three brewers are doing fine. John and Josh will be posting pictures to their blog shortly. Walt Wit is up next; we plan to brew up a small (30 bbl) batch of each of the four initial Philadelphia Brewing styles before swinging the yeast into full production.
There was definitely a palpable sense of relief and contentment in the brewery and on everyone's faces yesterday. Every PBC employee in the house had a hand in pulling the first batch of spent grain from the mash tun.
What a day!
Showing posts with label Philadelphia Brewing Co. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philadelphia Brewing Co. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2008
Friday, January 04, 2008
Wee Yeasty Buggers
I'm finally getting around to posting an update about our yeast trials. It's been a fun experiment and well worth while - even though we ended up selecting the strain that we (John, Josh, and I) felt would be most suitable from the start. There is a load of good information out there about the fermentation characteristics of different yeast stains. What we ultimately proved to ourselves was that you can trust the descriptions provided by the yeast lab folks - we're using BSI.
To re-cap; we brewed up a recipe that will be the basis for Rowhouse Ale using my brewhouse up at Porterhouse Pub. (that was a lot of 'houses' for one sentence eh?) BSI kindly provided us with 5 gallon pitchable samples of four different Belgian yeasts: Westmalle, La Chouffe, Celis wit, and the Forbidden Fruit strain from Hoegaarden. We fermented each yeast in 5 gallons of Rowhouse, kegged them up and ran blind taste tastes with our extended PBC family. Forbidden Fruit and La Chouffe overwelmingly garnered the most praise from our PBC menagerie.
Forbidden Fruit actually got most of the votes for flavor and aroma but this yeast likes to work long and steady. A fact that may present problems for us in the initial phases of getting our brews up and running. In the end we may go with a blend of the two.
We still have more trials to run, but we hope to have beer ready for sale in February!
I'm finally getting around to posting an update about our yeast trials. It's been a fun experiment and well worth while - even though we ended up selecting the strain that we (John, Josh, and I) felt would be most suitable from the start. There is a load of good information out there about the fermentation characteristics of different yeast stains. What we ultimately proved to ourselves was that you can trust the descriptions provided by the yeast lab folks - we're using BSI.
To re-cap; we brewed up a recipe that will be the basis for Rowhouse Ale using my brewhouse up at Porterhouse Pub. (that was a lot of 'houses' for one sentence eh?) BSI kindly provided us with 5 gallon pitchable samples of four different Belgian yeasts: Westmalle, La Chouffe, Celis wit, and the Forbidden Fruit strain from Hoegaarden. We fermented each yeast in 5 gallons of Rowhouse, kegged them up and ran blind taste tastes with our extended PBC family. Forbidden Fruit and La Chouffe overwelmingly garnered the most praise from our PBC menagerie.
Forbidden Fruit actually got most of the votes for flavor and aroma but this yeast likes to work long and steady. A fact that may present problems for us in the initial phases of getting our brews up and running. In the end we may go with a blend of the two.
We still have more trials to run, but we hope to have beer ready for sale in February!
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Welcome 2008!!
Well, it's 2008 and that means that we've got our brewery back! We're in the very final throws of our licensing process and our recipes are coming together nicely.
2007 was a long, often difficult and tedious year; I guess that's to be expected. After all, we traded away a brand that we all put our hearts and backs into and spent over eight years out of our lives building. On the other hand; now we get a fresh start - no baggage and no history to fight. The only real legacy that we need to deal with is the equipment design which is a hangover from the previous brand. We've made good beer on this setup before, in spite of the design; we'll do it again until we are able to rectify its faults.
A bunch of us greeted 2008 from the roof of our newly reclaimed Kensington brewery building. As we entered the building, we were greeted by a lingering odor of mold and what can only be described as stale, sweaty socks. This odor had become resident during the transition time during which we had been locked out of the brewery. It may seem strange but to me this was the smell of a new day. This would be the last time that our brewery would smell this way.
We all climbed up onto the roof of our brewhouse to watch the fireworks; champange and beer in hand. It seemed almost affirming that the individual neighborhood fireworks going off all around us dwarfed the city's display out over the Delaware river.
Cheers to you and yours; it's going to be a good year.
Well, it's 2008 and that means that we've got our brewery back! We're in the very final throws of our licensing process and our recipes are coming together nicely.
2007 was a long, often difficult and tedious year; I guess that's to be expected. After all, we traded away a brand that we all put our hearts and backs into and spent over eight years out of our lives building. On the other hand; now we get a fresh start - no baggage and no history to fight. The only real legacy that we need to deal with is the equipment design which is a hangover from the previous brand. We've made good beer on this setup before, in spite of the design; we'll do it again until we are able to rectify its faults.
A bunch of us greeted 2008 from the roof of our newly reclaimed Kensington brewery building. As we entered the building, we were greeted by a lingering odor of mold and what can only be described as stale, sweaty socks. This odor had become resident during the transition time during which we had been locked out of the brewery. It may seem strange but to me this was the smell of a new day. This would be the last time that our brewery would smell this way.
We all climbed up onto the roof of our brewhouse to watch the fireworks; champange and beer in hand. It seemed almost affirming that the individual neighborhood fireworks going off all around us dwarfed the city's display out over the Delaware river.
Cheers to you and yours; it's going to be a good year.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
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:
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.
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:
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.
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