Otium Brewery

When I started this blog, my 'dream' was to open a brew pub.  A series of brainstorms, reality checks, and other such events has changed the vision.  The new dream?: a standalone nano-brewery, Otium Brewery, to be precise.

What is Otium Brewery? When will it open? How big is it?  Where is it?  Why the name 'Otium', and more importantly, what the heck does 'Otium' even mean?

Those are all good questions that I will attempt to answer now.  So go grab a beer, sit back, relax, and listen to the story of how Otium came to be...

Those of you who know me already knew, some of you discovered when I started writing this blog, and the rest of you will learn by the end of this sentence, that I have been homebrewing with my brew partner Chris for 4 years now and have made well over 50 batches of beer (all of which you can read about in previous posts).  This is not a story of Chris and me or the homebrewing, however, this is a story of Otium Brewery.

The Idea
Chris and I decided 2 summers ago that we wanted to brew for a living.  A thought that almost every homebrewer has at least once in their life.  Being the financially responsible man that I am, I knew that the best way to accomplish that goal while making enough money to get by would be to open our own establishment.   At about the same time, a phenomenal show by the name of 'Bar Rescue' aired.  Watching the show, I had the obvious thought that "Clearly, if these people with apparently no knowledge of the bar business, or any common sense at all, can open a bar (albeit a failing bar) and turn it around, then I undoubtedly would be successful." The plan was to open a brewpub.

We set out on the research and discovered that opening a brew pub is a costly endeavor (I know, I was as surprised as you are).  $250-500K would get you on your way, but considering I had just started my first job out of college and Chris had just departed to CA to pursue a writing/directing career, we didn't have close to that amount of money (and still don't, but let's use the newly employed excuse anyway).  With that, we knew we had to take a more practical approach.  What could we do that would require the least amount of money, but still accomplish the lifelong (6 months long, same difference) goal of brewing for a living.  The answer, open a small scale nano-brewery!!

The Plan
After some more researching, we decided that the ideal size for what we were trying to accomplish with the least amount of risk/seed money involved, would be a 7bbl system.  A 7bbl system will produce 14 kegs of beer for each batch.  Your standard micro-brewery usually runs a 15 - 50 bbl system, and larger scale breweries can have 120bbl systems or larger. The small size of the system is part of the reason the brewery is called a nano-brewery, but in actuality it is the total annual production that classifies a brewery's size for federal/state regulation purposes.  That is why we won't have to pay the same license fees that Anheuser-Busch pays.

A nano-brewery comes with its pitfalls.  The amount of time/labor that goes into a batch of beer is relatively equal no matter how large the batch, so it's going to be a lot of work for a relatively small amount of beer.  Considering the fact you can only sell as much beer as you make profits will not be huge in its early goings.  Because of this, the plan will be to 'not quit my day job' and brew late at night.  My roommates have already pointed out: "so that will be exactly like what you do now then."  This point alone is the reason I am not terribly worried about the fact that I will have to spend a couple (or several) late nights a week making a little money doing what I would otherwise be doing in my leisure time anyway.  Which is a good segue into what the name 'Otium' means/represents.

The Origins of 'Otium'
The first thing we needed to do to make the brewery real was to name it.  I mean, once it has a name it's half way to being real, right?  True or not, that is what we set out to do, name the brewery.

Brewery naming is a difficult process.  A lot of ideas were thrown around.  A lot of themes were considered.  Chris' girlfriend, Ila, produced a laundry list of possible names that I think she just had lying around in case someone ever asked her for brewery name suggestions.  Near the bottom of that list, amongst several random latin words, was 'Otium'.  I liked the word, no clue what it meant, but it sounded cool, was short and sweet, and just felt right.  So I googled it and came across the wikipedia page on 'Otium'.  The thing that stood out was a phrase "otium cum dignitate," literally 'leisure with dignity,' which is the idea that leisure time should be spent productively: reading, studying, spending time with family, and bettering yourself and the world. It was perfect because that is exactly what brewing is for me.  I spend my time brewing because I enjoy creating something that everyone can enjoy, that's how I spend my leisure with dignity.

Who is Otium?
At its current stages, Otium has a core braintrust: myself (the brewer), Chris (the idea man), and my sister Stephanie (the accountant).  We are very excited for what the future holds.

What next?
If having a name, a recipe list pages long, a box of tasting glasses, an executive board, a twitter account, a facebook page, a website, and a company e-mail address make you a working brewery, well then we are a working brewery.  If it doesn't, and I have a feeling it might not, then there is a lot more work to be done. A lot more work that we are excited to get to do.

The timeline for opening is in the order of years, but I will continue to give monthly updates on the progress of the brewery, no matter how large or small.

If you have finished reading this you are probably done with that beer, so go grab another one.  You earned it!


"Drink Otium - Because leisure is a choice."

It's been a while...

So it turns out keeping up a regular posting schedule is harder than it seems.  Although I haven't posted in well over a year, that is not to say I stopped brewing.  Quite the opposite is true, in fact.

Since my last post in April of 2012, I have brewed 31 batches of beer:

Blonde*

IPA2

Double IPA*

Raspberry Wheat*

Brown Ale*

Pineapple Wheat*

IPA3*

Clam Stout*

Chai-P-A*

Clam Stout

Pumpkin

Pumpkin 2

Blonde

Chocolate Vanilla Stout

Pumpkin 3

Espresso Porter

Maple Christmas Ale

Chocolate Peppermint Stout

Crimson Imperial IPA

Otium150

Maple Bock

Pineapple Wheat

Blonde

Black IPA

IPA4

Rye Pale Ale

Chai-P-A

Mango Imperial IPA

Belgian Citrus IPA

Clam Stout

Black IPA

* served at the Otium tasting in August 2013 (What's Otium? I'll explain in my next post)

That's about a beer every two weeks, but it's more like 6 straight weeks and then a month off, then 4 in a row, then 6 weeks, ... you get the idea.

I also started kegging, almost exactly a year ago.  I have a dual-tap kegerator and 4 kegs that are all full 90% of the time.  There are, pretty regularly, two beers on tap at any one time, making my apartment my primary source of beer for consumption.

In short, I am still brewing, more frequently than when I last posted, and I have big plans for the future that I will explain in future posts.  It is incredibly difficult to post every time I brew, or even close to as frequently.   But I promise you this, I will do my best to post at least once a month with updates.  On (or close to) the 1st, to be precise.  So stay tuned.

Wheat Beer: One for the ladies

  Generally speaking my test for whether or not I have made a good beer is to give it to my female friends.  When the look on their face is utter distaste, I know I have a winner.  Unfortunately that is not necessarily a good thing when you are trying to create a beer list for a brew pub (remember that is the main inspiration for brewing. That, and because beer is delicious).  In order to appeal to the fairer sex I decided to make a wheat beer. The concept is a mix between an american wheat and a belgian witbier.

Ingredients:
Grains:
Wheat Malt
2-row
Flaked Wheat
Flaked Oats

Hops:
Hallertauer
Saaz

Yeast:

Wyeast Belgian Witbier 

Misc:

Orange Peel

Irish  Moss

Mashed at 156 for a sweeter, maltier taste.  

The color after mashing was opaque and very light.

5 minutes before the end of the boil I added the rind of 6 oranges.

The color after the boils is a darker, opaque white.

After a week of fermentation I bottled 1/4 of the batch (~12 bottles).  The beer tastes a lot like a blue moon AFTER you already added the orange.

Why only 12 bottles you ask? Well, that's when things got crazy.  I decided to split the batch a total of 4 ways.  I am not a huge fan of wheat beers (even delicious ones that this one obviously will be), so I figured if there were only 12 bottles of each kind then I could conceivably drink it all.  To each batch I added something different.  To one: raspberries, to the second: pineapple, and the third I dry hopped with centennial hops.

After a week the beers took on the characteristics of the fruit that was added.  In the case of the raspberry, the beer literally sucked the color right out of the fruit, leaving the beer pink and the berries white.

Bottling the separate batches was a little more tedious than I realized. Well, than I realized before it was too late. About three days after added the fruit, when I was planning the bottling, I came to understand the added work I had created for myself.  Because the beer was coming from three separate vessels I had to re-clean and re-santize everything between each batch. That includes the bottling bucket, the siphoning tube, and the bottling tubes.  Not to mention re-starting a siphon every time.  To add to the work the fruit kept getting stuck in the tubing.  That being said, the final result was 12 bottles of 4 different wheat beers, not bad for a days work.

1. Standard wheat (orangey)
2. Raspberry wheat
3. Pineapple wheat
4. Dry hopped wheat

In the future I will not split a batch of beer so many ways.  The added work is not exactly worth it.  Splitting a batch 2 (maybe 3) ways is more than enough.


In bottles: coffee porter, ipa, brown ale, wheat (all 4)
Fermenting: blonde ale (behind on the posting)
On deck: IPA take 2 with some improvements

 

Bottling 101

Bottling is far and away the most labor intensive part of the homebrewing process.  As with every aspect of the brewing, sanitation is the key to success when bottling.  The same environment that yeast thrive in happens to be the same environment that every other organism that could ruin your beer thrives in.  The hard part of bottling is sanitizing every bottle.  If you are re-using bottles and find one with mold, I recommend throwing it out. Although you can feasibly clean and sanitize the bottle, is it really worth the risk? You need to wash and then sanitize every bottle (these days I use star-san rinse free sanitizer).  Although it is rinse free, I rinse each bottle right before I fill it with beer to make sure that the bottle is clean. In addition to sanitizing the bottles you need to boil the bottle caps for at least 15 minutes.

Once the bottles are all sanitized you must boil the priming sugar for 10-15 minutes.  I use a cup of priming sugar and a cup of water.  The yeast convert the priming sugar into carbon dioxide and the pressure inside the bottle that is created carbonates the beer. It's science.

In order to bottle, you need to siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket.  This is the point in which the priming sugar mixture is added to the beer.  The force of the siphoning beer is sufficient enough to mix the two.

Two necessary tools for the job include a bottling attachment and a bottle capper (big red thing).  The bottling attachment is a spring loaded tip that attaches to the bottling hose.  It only dispenses beer when the tip is pressed to the bottom of the bottle. When the bottle is filled you pull out the tube and a perfect amount of head space is left in the bottle.

Once you fill a bottle it is best to immediately place a cap loosely on the top of the bottle and continue filling all of the bottles.  Only after all the bottles are filled should you seal the bottles tight with the capper.  The purpose of this step is to allow the yeast to create enough CO2 to push the oxygen out of the top of the bottle.  Oxygen in beer can contribute off flavors, so this is one extra step to help improve the taste of your beer.  When the bottles are filled seal them all with capper and you're done! (well sort of)   It takes 2-4 weeks for the beer to condition.  After 3 weeks you can finally drink.  I have read that you should put the beer in the fridge for 2-3 days before drinking for best results, but let's be honest, after waiting 5 weeks, I pop one in the freezer and drink it 30 minutes later.

Brown Ale

I have been very busy over the last month, both in life, and with brewing. So busy, in fact, that I have fallen way behind on writing these posts.  This begins the first of a few rapid fire posts re-capping the last month (in which I brewed three beers).

A week after the IPA I brewed a brown ale.  Shout out to Clemente for doing the brunt work on the recipe.  As you probably noticed the majority of the beers I have made up until the now are leaning more towards the 'extreme' side.  Double IPAs, coffee porters, and jalapeno chocolate stouts, while delicious, are not exactly beers for newcomers to the craft beer world.  With that I wanted to make a beer that could be enjoyed by even the newest member of the craft beer club (a first time customer to my theoretical brew pub perhaps?).  This brown ale is meant to be a good session ale.  BeerAdvocate defines a session beer:

session beer (noun)

Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of a session beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication. (Yes, you can drink and enjoy beer without getting drunk.) 


Brewing Details:


Ingredients:
Grains:
2-row malt
Crystal malt
Amber malt
Chocolate malt

Hops:
East Kent Goldings
Hallertau
Willamette

Yeast:
American Ale

Misc:
Brown Sugar

OG: 1.050
FG: 1.016
ABV: 4.5%


After the coffee porter coming in too light in terms of mouth feel I wanted to make sure this brown ale was a little fuller bodied and that the malt character would shine through.  In order to make that happen I mashed at a higher temperature (155-156).  

Here is a photo of the wort during lautering/sparging.  Lautering is the process of removing the wort form the spent grains.  Sparging is the act of pouring hot water (~180 degrees) over the spent grains to rinse the remaining sugars from the grains.

I boiled for the usual 1 hr. I used whole Kent Goldings hops (because I had them leftover from a previous beer) for bittering, Hallertau (pellet hops) for finishing, and Willamette (pellet as well) for aroma.  A pound of brown sugar was also added to enhance the flavor. After boiling the wort was cooled and the yeast was pitched.  The brown ale then joined the IPA in the closet to ferment.

To my surprise this was the first time that I had two fermenters full with beer at the same time.  I actually had to postpone brewing the brown ale in order to go buy a second air lock.

The brown ale was bottled in the same weekend as the IPA (there will be a separate post for that), and today I had the first taste.

This is a delicious beer!  It fits all the requirements laid out for a session ale:  malty, well balanced, low alcohol, clean finish, and easy to drink.   The color is a very nice dark brown. The aroma is malty and subtle.  You can taste the maltiness, the brown sugar,  and there is a nice coffee note that compliments the overall flavor. The finish leaves you reaching for another sip before you even put down the glass.  I am very pleased with this beer. When I brew it again I won't change a thing.

first all-grain IPA

Last Thursday I brewed an original recipe all-grain IPA.  After two days of heated back and forth between myself and now west coast living brew partner Clemente we finally decided upon a recipe.

Ingredients:

2 row malt
Crystal 60L malt
Flaked Barley

Centennial Hops
Amarillo Hops
Cascade Hops

Safale 05 yeast

Irish moss

The grains are simple. A little crystal for color and flaked barley for head retention.  In my opinion IPA's should be about the hops.  Deciding which hops, how many, and when to add them to the boil was a tedious task and the center of discussion.  Hopefully we got it right.

This time around I wasn't distracted by making a wort chiller, so I did a much better job at maintaining the mash temperature that I wanted.

The color coming out of the mash tun was a nice light golden color.  After the boil it darkened a bit to golden/copper.

Another process improvement: I made an attachment for the wort chiller so that I do not have to hold the hose to the faucet for 45 minutes.  This was fantastic and I wish I had done it last time.  The added water pressure being hooked up to the sink as opposed to being shot through with the bottle washer cut the cooling time in half.

The IPA is now in the glass carboy for secondary fermentation.  I had a taste of it before I put it in the secondary and I have high hopes for this one.   The aroma is a little weak, so next time I will definitely increase the last bit of cascade hops a little.  Other than that it promises to be very delicious!

OG: 1.048*
FG: 1.017
ABV: ??%

In order to take the initial gravity you need to take a sample of the wort.  My method for doing this was to collect some in a cup as it poured out of the kettle and into the fermentor.  I did this because I felt it was slightly more sanitary than sticking a tube into the fermentor and extracting some of the wort (although I don't know why I was concerned considering that's how I did it 20 times before and never had a problem).  I think the issue with this is that the wort was not mixed completely when I took the sample, and I got a gravity reading far below what it should have been.  There are three possible causes for this low reading: 1. I did something horrible wrong and the actual gravity is 1.048. 2. The hydrometer is broken. 3. The reason stated above, that the wort was not mixed.  I checked the hydrometer and it is not broken, and the final gravity of 1.017 suggests that the starting gravity was actually closer to 1.063.  So I am leaning towards believing that the reading was wrong and the actual starting gravity was 1.060+.  That brings the ABV to somewhere around 6.0%.

As I am writing this I am brewing a Brown Ale and an all-grain version of the Double IPA is in progress and will be brewed next weekend.  Bottling for the IPA and the Brown will both take place next weekend as well.

Coffee Porter Tasting Notes

After 4 weeks conditioning the Coffee Porter is ready to drink!  That being said, I think this one is going to age very well, so I may lose a couple in the bottom of my closet for a while for a nice surprise when I'm looking for bottles in a month or two.

ABV: 5.1% (the original 6% didn't account for the coffee, beer math is hard)
Color: Deep, rich brown
Aroma: Coffee. Delicious, delicious coffee.
Mouth feel: Medium to light.  The color is deceiving, this is not heavy at all. You can definitely drink more than one of these if you are so inclined.
Taste: It is a nice blend of coffee and the caramel, malty flavor you expect from a porter.
Finish: Dry and crisp with lingering coffee notes.

It is not quite as full bodied as I had planned, but that has been received by many as less of a bad thing and more of a good thing (who doesn't like a beer you can drink a lot of?).   Next time around I think I will shoot for a little fuller body and malty sweetness, with an addition of a little more hops to balance the extra sweetness.  All in all I'm happy with it!


Up next: First all-grain attempt at an IPA. Hopefully brewing on Thursday.