First Brewery Tour - Cricket Hill in Fairfield, NJ

Last Friday, the club visited Cricket Hill Brewery in Fairfield, NJ. It was a little difficult getting to, considering the brewery is in the back of a non-descript warehouse and their signage is so small. But once you find it, you are embraced with some live electric guitar music and the smells of beer. Friday nights, they have a beer "tour," where, for $4, you get a pint ($3) and donate ($1) to the guitarist. When you get your plastic pint and a ticket, go to the back where the bar is and tell the bar-man that you're "new" and you want to get a little tasting of what they have; that's the "tour." That night, they had 5 varieties on tap: Hopnotic IPA, American Ale, East Coast Lager, a Smokey Rye, and the Fall Festivus Ale. Of what they had, my favorite was the Hopnotic IPA and the Smokey Rye was nasty. I am not a big fan of strong IPAs, but the Hopnotic was quite pleasant. It's bitter, but the sweetness of it helps balance it out; sort of sucking on the pit of a sweet grapefruit. All of the others were different in their own way, but in the end still have some bitterness. So I wouldn't say that their selection is all that diverse. 

The head brewer is somewhat of a nut-job. He gets up on a platform, smoking a cigar, and gives his shpiel about how CH is a brewery and not a bar, and yadda yadda yadda. Wasn't paying all to much attention to him. They have a whiskey barrel beer that is currently fermenting and will probably be ready in a month in a half. 

Here's a little more info if you're interested:

Webpage: http://crickethillbrewery.com/

Address: 24 Kulick Rd, Fairfield, NJ 

Wine Making for Beer Guys

So as we finished bottling the last few drops of our brew, we were off to another fermentation project. Not of the hops variety, but of the grape variety. Yes, yes, yes...it's not beer, but wine. Hey, it's still fermentation and it's got alcohol too, so why not!

We decided to make the Chilean Malbec.

Malbec Leaf

Here's a little more info about this grape variety for you (from Wiki):

Malbec Grapes

The Malbec grape is a thin-skinned grape and needs more sun and heat than either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot to mature. It ripens mid-season and can bring very deep color, ample tannin, and a particular plum-like flavor component to add complexity to blends. Sometimes, especially in its traditional growing regions, it is not trellised and cultivated as bush vines (the goblet system). Here it is sometimes kept to a relatively low yield of about 6 tons per hectare. The wines are rich, dark and juicy.

So, at Cask and Kettle, we got a box of concentrated malbec juice, which we first diluted with crisp, clean water. Here are a few pictures of people taking turns mixing and adding yeast:

 

Here the wine is checked for the correct specific gravity before it is stored for fermenting.

The wine sits in the fermenter for 3 weeks before the next step, which is the clarification step. The wine was transferred to a glass carboy. The specific gravity was rechecked at 0.994 (normal is < 0.996). At the same time, the alcohol was checked at 13%.

At this point for clarification, potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite are diluted in water before they are mixed into the wine for a few minutes.

Potassium sorbate is added to wine to prevent the yeast from reproducing. So any existing yeast can still continue to ferment any residual sugars. Once they die, there will be no new yeast. The potassium metabifulfite, when added, produces sulfur dioxide gas that prevents most microorganisms from growing and acts as an antioxidant to protect the color and the delicate flavors of the wine. The last part is mixing in the chitosan, which is used to precipitate out any solids in the wine. 

After mixing in all of the chemicals, the airlock is replaced and the wine is allowed to sit in the carboy for another 3 weeks to clarify before the bottling phase.

Stay tuned next time for wine bottling.

Beer Making, Part Deux

Three weeks later on Aug 23, the crew went back to Cask and Kettle to bottle their brews. If you remember, we made a Creamy Stout and a Belgian Ale. During the time before, we were in development of some labels for our brew. For the Belgian Ale that Steve, Joe, and Tinyee made, we called it "Joe's Breath Belgian Ale" by "Three Heads Brewing Co." Granted we didn't know this was actually a real brewing company name, but oh well, it's just for fun. The Creamy Stout by Simman, Frank and Craig, was so named "La Brea Cream Stout" by "The Mad Scientists."

Take a look at our brew before we bottled it. The yeast definitely did its work, bubbling and toiling.

Now comes the fun part: draining the brew into a separate bucket; preparing our priming sugar by dissolving a couple of ounces of sugar into boiling water and mixing with the brew; cleaning bottles and filling them with our brew and "bust" a cap! See these slaves do the work! (jk).

 

In the end, we managed to bottle close to 50 bottles per batch. Special thanks go to Joycelyn for helping us put on our bottle labels. 

And here are our babies...that we'll let sit at room temperature for a few weeks to develop the carbonation.

Yeah, it's hard to see the labels. Note to self: don't use clear labels. Stay tuned until next time as we taste what our babies have become.