Tsiangkun's awesome beer

[mc]

I recently received a package from California that was the PERFECT match of Art and Leisure. Cameron Kennedy commissioned a half-hour long guitar jam by me in trade for a sampler of his basement brews. They took a little longer to get to me than we anticipated, but it was worth the wait!

He sent me 2 Brown Robustos, 2 Christmas Ales, 1 Cali Crisp, and 1 deuce of Thundering Warrior Barleywine.

I started out with a Christmas Ale. It was a spicy, bitey, flavorful Christmas brew. The spices tasted kind of similar to those that you'd taste in egg nog. A pleasure to drink...

Next came a Brown Robusto, which incited many cries of, "now THAT's a hoppy brown!" We weren't kidding! It reminded me of a darker, more flavorful IPA, it had so much chomp to it! So robust that it practically begs for a big, thick burger to go with it.

The Cali Crisp was lighter in flavor, but still quite bitey and tasty... I have the fewest memories of this beer, to tell the truth. Such is the problem with sampling a few different beers at a time

The next night, I drank my remaining Robusto and Christmas (again delightful), and started in on the Barleywine. Chris and Paul gave me a little assistance in draining it as we had a post-session session at my house. We chipped away at it as we watched shred videos and got coached. Super strong, flavorful, big. It's hard to compare it to anything because it was so very much itself. Picture a top-shelf beer with a cork in the top with more personality than Richard Simmons. Everything you'd want from a nice brew. I wish I'd taken notes so I'd have more to say about it... We had a great time watching footbag vids and drinking footbag beers...

I don't think Cameron is selling his beers commercially, but if you ever get a chance to stop by his house, see if you can scam a few drinks off him.They're awesome! Thanks Cam! I hope you liked the recording. Thanks for such a satisfying barter.

[Jdigges]

ooh man your making me drool

[Tsiangkun]

thanks, I'm touched by your review, and I do indeed like the recording.

Super strong, flavorful, big. It's hard to compare it to anything because it was so very much itself. Picture a top-shelf beer with a cork in the top with more personality than Richard Simmons.

I love that description.

[the Executioner]

The Thundering Warrior is a masterpiece.
Cameron is a beer artist.

[Torch]

They aint lying. Some good shit. Me and Nate L. sampled these last month. But I only had three of them. I'm not sure about the fourth one.

[flash]

I'm very intrigued. I've homebrewed something like 10-15 batches last fall with my roommate. Almost always all grain batches. I have a bunch of questions I'd like to ask of Tsiangkun.

Batch size?
All grain or extract?
Do you oxygenate with an aquarium stone?
Do you double or triple mash for the barleywine?
Use the sparge water after the barleywine for a lower gravity brew?

There are probably more questions, but that's what pops into my head at first. If Cameron doesn't want to bore everyone with the answers, my email is a hotmail account and I am flashgsb.

Those sound like some good beers and some pretty difficult styles to homebrew.

[Jdigges]

If Cameron doesn't want to bore everyone with the answers

pleease bore us in this thread my brother and i wanna start brewing and i would love some advice from an expert

[Tsiangkun]

Batch size? I can boil 8 gallons, and generally 5.8 gallons go into the 6.5 gallon glass primary at the end of the procedure. By the time it reaches the packaging, I have about 5 gallons even.

All grain or extract? I do all grain brewing, although I think extract is what a lot of brewpubs use to save time, space, and hassle. I'm interested in making the best beer possible from the rawest available ingredients. Ancient techniques meet modern sterile procedures if you will.

Do you oxygenate with an aquarium stone? No, soak my kettle in a tub of ice to cool the wort, and then dump it through stacked mesh screens into funnel that leads into a carboy. I soak that carboy in an icewater bath to precipate additional cold break. When I transfer the wort off of the cold break, I do additional boatloads of splashing and shaking for aeration. I wish I had an oxygenation system, but I"m old school.

Do you double or triple mash for the barleywine? I used a little bit more than a double mash, somewhere around 22-23lbs of two row, plus about 4 lbs of honey for additional alcohol without flavor contribution.

Use the sparge water after the barleywine for a lower gravity brew? Yes, the Cali crisp was made from the same mash as the barleywine, and subjected to a different yeast strain for a lighter crisper beer.

[Tsiangkun]

Here is a recipe for the batch I made myself for my 30th birthday next month.
The low mash temperature will keep the grains out of the way of my favorite hops, which are the real superstars of this brew.

Code: Select all

Grain Bill
------------------------
10.5 lbs Belgian pale 
1.5   lbs rolled oats
1.5   lbs wheat
1.5   lbs Crystal 60L

Mash
----------------------------
108F      15min
122F      15min
134F      15min
151F      90min
158F      10min

Sparge 9 gallons @ 168F

HOPS, time is from start of boil
--------------------------------
1oz simcoe       30min
2oz centenial    30min

1oz simcoe        75min
1oz centennial   80min

1oz simcoe @flameout (90min)
1oz centenial @flameout (90min)

2oz simcoe and 1oz centennial in secondary for 2 weeks

[Tsiangkun]

Here are some other bits of knowledge I have collected.

I mash and sparge in a 10 gallon igloo gatorade cooler, modified with a spigot for a garden hose.

I have an eight gallon pot I can use for additional mash space when needed, or for full mashing schedule where I need to hit temperatures.

I batch sparge because it's easy and I don't have the money for a three tier setup.

I cook outdoors over the industrial version of the whisper lite camp stove, aka the turkey fryer.

I use a MSR water filter pump to start my siphons to avoid contaminating the tubes.

I fill my bottles on my dish washer door so there is no cleanup other than closing the dish washer door. The dish washer is a very effective bottle sterilizer, and as long as you rinse out the bottles as you drink them, all it takes is a quick run to get ready to bottle.

Whole hops float, but not if you pulverize them into a powder with a sterile blender.

[Muffinman]

I don't like beer, but you guys make this sound so good!!

[flash]

Thanks for sharing that knowledge Tsiangkun.

You've got some really cool ideas, especially the bottling setup and the water pump for your siphons. I just got a CO2 tank and a five gal. keg with a hatch on loan for a little while. That's one batch a month I don't have to bottle, and it will be carbonated in about one day.

Your birthday brew recipe is pretty interesting as well. It seems like the oats and the wheat will counteract each other in the mouthfeel, but maybe you have other reasons for using both? Happy birthday, I'm sure you'll have some mighty tasty beer to ring in your 30th.

[Skippy!]

You guys are nuts.

[mc]

this is an awesome thread. please keep talking particulars about great footbagger beers good beer with footbaggers is one of my favorite parts of any footbag tournament.

[Guest_2]

Do you do beer for bag trades ?

[Tsiangkun]

It seems like the oats and the wheat will counteract each other in the mouthfeel, but maybe you have other reasons for using both?

I tried it out last night to make sure it was going to be ready.

Both the oats and wheat are there purely for presentation value when served in a glass. I like the creamy , silky texture the oats contribute to the foam, and the wheat seems to aid in keeping it in the glass a little longer.

This beer looks like a master piece, with a half inch of head that stuck around for about 40 minutes, which just happened to be about as long as the bottle of beer lasted. The color was, in my opinion, absolutely gorgeous. I need to get myself a digital camera, this one is a real looker.

The taste was a full blown assault on the taste buds that lingered around for hours after the beer was gone. I really enjoyed it, tastes of pine, citrus, woody. Strong, raw, and agressive.

I think it will be a good birthday this year.

I also scored a fridge and freezer over the weekend, so I hope to start kegging soon enough.
Kegging is something I have wanted to start doing for a long time.

[Tsiangkun]

I started out with a Christmas Ale. It was a spicy, bitey, flavorful Christmas brew. The spices tasted kind of similar to those that you'd taste in egg nog. A pleasure to drink...

The only hops in this brew were added at the beginning of the boil for bitterness to balance the sweetness of the malt, and provide antibacterial properties. All the flavor for this beer came from the spices, a mixture of white pepper, black pepper, red pepper, cardomon seed, cariander seed , paradise seed, anise seed, orange rinds and nutmeg. I can't recall anything else, but there might have been some other stuff too. I put all the goods into the mortar and beat it with the pestle to a powder. Orange peel was the largest ingredient by volume. I added this mixture when I shut the flame off.

I put a bunch of these away tonight, and I'm not entirely convinced the beer isn't mildly psychotropic.

This beer has no head on it. I think the orange peels had some oil in them or something that is preventing a nice head. Oh well, it's pretty damn tasty, and keeps getting better.

[flash]

Good stuff,

How did you come up with that assortment of spices? Some are obvious, but I don't know a thing about cardomon or anise or paradise.

Do you always use whole-flower hops? I always use pellets, but always thought I would want to use whole-flowers.

Also, if you don't mind telling, the gravity readings of that birthday batch of yours?

I killed the last 90 min. IPA from Dogfish Head case I bought 2-3 months ago. It was delicious and actually had a little lees in the bottom.

[Tsiangkun]

I just started putting together stuff from my spice rack.

paradise seeds are like a spicy pepper with character of pine and citrus

Anise, and I also used fennel seeds, taste like black licorice

Cardamon seed was used for it's antibacterial properties, pleasant aroma, and adds a sort of spicey plum type of flavor, if I had to describe it. It's part of the ginger family.

I always use whole flower hops in my boil, but the conventional wisdom is pellets give more robust flavor, are more efficient and keep better. Pellets clog my filters so I use whole hops. I generally pick the style of beer I make by what hops are in season, and get the freshest available. A lot of time they don't have pellets in the newest varieties of hops, so I'll use whole flowers then too. I prefer pellets for the dry hopping when available.


I don't really take gravity readings anymore. I just kinda guestimate my %ABV based on the number of bubbles per minute of the fermentation, and the duration. I broke my hydrometer about 7 years ago and never replaced it.

I started brewing in the winter of 97. If I could name one thing that improved the quality of my beer more than anything else: Using iodophor for sanitizing and straight-A for cleansing and keeping bleach away from all my brewing stuff. Just the tiniest amount of bleach will have a dramatic affect on the taste of the beer, and never for the better. I use bleach about once every six months on my hoses, racking canes, and bottle filler to remove the iodine stains, and also to clean equipment that is going to sit for a long time.

[flash]

Beer lovers,

I kegged off a batch of maple porter a few days ago. It was ready after only one day, although I had the head pressure a little higher than suggested (20 psi as opposed to ~15). It's so convenient. I'm keeping it at room temp. and drinking it that way.

I also have a batch fermenting now. It consists of about 9# optic pale, 1.5#crystal 30L, 1# oats, and a handful of kiln amber. It wasn't exactly what my malt bill was calling for, and so I ended up adding 1# honey late in the boil. This is what you get when you send someone else on your errands. It was hopped once for bittering with N. Brewer and once for flavor with EKG.

I plan on drinking all the porter in time to free up the keg for the above batch. I think it will be good, but a lot of the fun is waiting to see how it turns out.