Building a Brewery: Week 2

We've received a lot of great feedback on this new series so far with last week's first installment. Please keep the comments coming, and we'll make sure to add anything you'd like to know about our brewery building process.

Look at all of those color options! Collect the whole set!

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of this week, I want to remind all of you reading this post to DROP EVERYTHING AND GO BUY A T-SHIRT RIGHT NOW BEFORE THE SALE IS OVER!!! You have less than a week to grab your "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me!!" New Main Brewing t-shirt before they start printing and shipping. This is a limited edition shirt, never to be printed again, and once the sale is over, it's over. We don't have an unlimited supply of this shirt; Booster.com will only print the shirts y'all order. The ONLY way you can get this shirt is to order it NOW! Sale ends June 19, and shirts begin shipping the first week of July.

Click HERE to get your shirt while you still can!!!

Our merchandise from here on out will focus more on our brand and identity rather than our startup, so we'll be dropping elements like "Coming Soon" in favor of more New-Main-y stuff. We will have other designs available in the coming months, so keep an eye out on social media for further info. But seriously, folks. Get your t-shirts now. We'll wait.

Okay, got your order in? Great! And thank you so much for supporting us!

Now for our progress...

Location

We found a new intriguing option for our brewery location this week after walking to our favorite local restaurant to celebrate 6 years of marriage. We love this restaurant not only for the AMAZING wild mushroom risotto, but also for their excellent selection of craft beer and fine wine. While asking about their current craft beer selection (which at the time of this article features Audacity's Evil Cream Soda, 7% ABV, excellent for dessert), our waiter explained that he too was a craft beer lover. We casually mentioned our plans, and the owner of the restaurant recommended checking availability on the space next door.

This is still very preliminary, but we really liked the space. Without giving too much away, this would place the brewery in essentially the same neighborhood we've been looking into, would be incredibly close to home for us, and would be near a great retail and restaurant area. Some of y'all may have figured out this puzzle, but we're hoping a few more pieces fall into place soon so we can officially announce it. We still have a couple options we are considering, so missing out on this location wouldn't be the end of the world. But it sure would be pretty cool if we land this spot!

Future Tastings

I caught a brief reprieve from the hectic office this week, so I took the day off to get some important business stuff done. We set up our official bank account, spoke with an events venue, and filmed a little more footage of Arlington for our upcoming videos. We are also planning another tasting event with Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab in Pantego for this Friday evening. This time around, we have our original wit recipe (without the rosemary, sage, and basil), an all-Centennial pale ale, a tiny bit more stout left, a good measure of the American IPA, and maybe even a bottle or two of bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. We will also be taking last minute orders for our "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me!!" shirts before the sale ends FOREVER! If you haven't gotten your shirts yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?!??

I've also been mentioning a special event coming up sometime soon. We're talking free beer tasting, catered food, maybe a guest tap or two, and some great local live musicians. This is going to be one hell of a summer party, so stay tuned for more details as we have them. We should also have some cool new shirts and other merchandise for sale there as well for those of y'all building up your New Main Brewing collection.

Upcoming Beer

Kyle and I have both been busy brewing beer for you all to try. Kyle brewed up a batch of his award-winning Saison to share with y'all, and we have pulled our award-winning porter recipe back out as well this week. In a few short weeks, we will be sharing fresh batches of the beers that have received outstanding critic feedback, and we can't wait to hear what y'all say about them. Through competitions like Deep Ellum's Labor of Love and Shannon's Op. Bravo (w/ Homebrew for Heroes), we've been able to share the beer we're most proud of with people just as passionate as we are. The homebrewing community is such a rich and diverse group of people, and we can't wait to host our own homebrew competition at the New Main brewery.

Thank you all for your continued support. We enjoy every chance we get to share our beer and our passion with you all. Family, friends, acquaintances; Thank you all for helping New Main Brewing Co. take its first steps. See y'all next week!

Building a Brewery: Week 1

As promised, we will be updating all of you weekly with our plans and progress as we bring New Main Brewing Company to life. The first week has been an eye opener in various ways...

Social Media

I thought I already used social media pretty extensively, but I was on a completely different level compared to what is required of startup companies getting off the ground. I'm sure most of you who haven't already filtered our posts out of your feed are growing weary of our relentless linking and sharing and calls to action. All we can say is thank you for your continued support! I know this can come off a bit spammy, but there is literally no other way to connect with people we've never met short of taking a sabbatical from work and personally visiting each of the 6 million residents of DFW. We have to eat, so we will continue working and Facebooking, and I hope we can count on all of you sharing at least one of our posts each day to grow NMBC one social circle at a time.

Tasting Events

HUGE shoutout and thanks to Dr. Jeckyll's Beer Lab and Kool Keg for allowing us to hold our tasting events at their venues. Seriously, folks: if you don't know about these places or haven't given them a try yet, these are the lighthouses of craft beer in Arlington calling wayward craft beer fans out of the sea of the big three into the sweet embrace of great beer. All poetry aside, these places rock not only for their unwavering support of local craft and their outstanding selection, but also for the knowledgeable staff and excellent prices for delicious craft beer by the pint and/or growler. 

We were very happy to see some new faces at each of these events as we poured tasters of our spiced wit, American IPA, Belgian rye IPA, tropical stout, and porter. All of your feedback was much appreciated, so keep it coming. Tell us what you really think about the beer. We want to make the beer you want to drink!

Videos

We've also been working diligently on producing a couple videos to share our story and what sets us apart from the myriad other brewers in this great nation. There is a sneak peek of our "Brewer Shaming" video (a spoof of the "Pet Shaming" phenomenon that has swept across the internet) on our Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram feeds. Make sure you check those out, and keep an eye out for the full YouTube video coming soon. 

We are also in the process of producing a traditional introductory video that you can share with all of your friends and family that don't know about us but would like to. We have been traveling all across Arlington, Dalworthington Gardens, and Pantego to capture what this community means to us and what we hope to add to it in return. We hope you enjoy it!

T-shirts

We are immensely grateful for those of you who have contributed to our opening fundraiser by making a donation and/or buying one of our "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me" t-shirts from our booster.com campaign. We've recently added a few different color options, so if heather gray wasn't your thing, you can now choose from green, red, blue, and black as well. Hell, if you want a couple different colors to choose from, go back to booster.com/new-main-brewing-company and get you some! The campaign will be over June 19th, so make sure you're telling everyone about the great new brewery they could help build! Once the campaign ends, the shirts will be printed and shipped out, arriving by the first week of July. Those of you in the Arlington area can save $10 on shipping if you select to pick up your shirts directly from us, so let us know if you'd like to do that!

Upcoming Events

With the success of the first few events, we are dreaming big for the next few. We are still hammering out some details, but we hope to have a few parties catered by local businesses and perhaps even a few musical guests to serenade you while you try our beer for free. Our goal is to entertain you this summer while sharing who we are and what we love to do with you and your friends. We hope to see all of you and make new friends along our brewery building journey.

Last but not least, our official LLC paperwork arrived in the mail, bound in a handsome maroon leather booklet, no less. This was one of those sinking-in moments where the realization of what we're doing hit me. This whole process is very exciting, but it is NOT for the faint of heart. Before all is said and done, several people's livelihoods will depend on decisions I make daily. We are staking our entire reputation both personally and financially on our passion for this endeavor. I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I know I've already let a few "HOLY $#!+" moments affect the people close to me. Part of this process will be a personal growth for me and Amanda as we learn how to effectively and efficiently run a business, and I hope we have the opportunity to make it up to those people as we go along.

I want to express a sincere thanks to each of you playing your part in this story. We CANNOT do this without each of you, and please know that your continued support is the ONLY thing keeping us going. We hope to see y'all at the next tasting! Details soon!

Why the Nautilus shell?

It has been a few years since we began this homebrewing blog. I thought now would be an appropriate time to look back at one of our original posts that still encapsulates our passion for and connection to brewing. Let's take a look down memory lane...

~ Tuesday, August 19 2014 ~

Inspiration is a strange thing. We commonly find ourselves settling into habits and rituals that make the more difficult things in life like time management, expenses, and responsibilities just a little easier. That’s just good planning. However, once in a while something strikes us in such a way that we question everything we do, think, and say. Something that reaches us on a deep level and forces us to examine exactly why it is we act the way we do. 

So how was I inspired by a creature straight out of ancient history? Commonly referred to as a “living fossil,” the Nautilus has changed very little over the last several million years. Its simple life under the ocean is nothing particularly amazing; it’s not the most deadly predator under the sea, it’s not the most pleasing creature to the human eye, it’s not even at the top of the food chain in its ecosystem. However, its shell is a work of art that nature crafted hundreds of millions of years ago that has persevered and allowed this interesting organism to thrive through countless generations.

The shell of the nautilus is arranged in a type of mathematical spiral. Without getting too nerdy, I’ll explain what this means to the organism that lives within this geometric enclosure. As a hatchling, a nautilus occupies three to four small chambers arranged in a tightly wound spiral of a sort of mother-of-pearl material. As the nautilus grows, it creates new, larger chambers in a prescribed pattern around its older chambers, sealing off the previous one except for a small duct. In this fashion, the nautilus continues its growth around its center creating proportionally similar but larger enclosures until the end of its life.

It is this constant prescribed growth in a clear and direct pattern that caught my eye and that continues to inspire my own personal growth. Even as a young creature, it knows that it must create a new space that it will grow into and subsequently, eventually outgrow. The constant drive of time is ever present in the mind of the nautilus, and it embraces this drive as it embraces its own former chambers. Constantly improving by creating new pieces of itself, yet tied to its origin by building upon itself, it never loses its tie to the beginning of its life. It even uses the small duct left connecting each previous chamber to control its buoyancy, allowing it to navigate its environment by using its abandoned past as a tool.

In many ways, the nature of this ancient creature defines the way we brew beer. Though we are constantly moving into newer and bigger environments, we realize the need to end the previous chapters while never forgetting the structure and utility of these past experiences. We as brewers constantly use what we learn and where we came from to guide us on a known path outward from our origin to the end of our journeys. Though we hopefully have many years and many new experiences ahead of us, the nature of our progress should always be defined by what we have learned and assimilated throughout our experiences.

It’s no coincidence that this shape has inspired us. After all, spirals are all around us (no pun intended). Though circles and spheres may be the most perfect omni-directional object, spirals are nature’s reaction to this omnipresence, in response to gradients of influence. Just look at the shape of galaxies, whirlpools and maelstroms, even weather phenomena like tornadoes and hurricanes.

So when people ask me why I chose the nautilus shell to be the symbol of New Main Brewing, that is the long answer. The short answer is I’m a huge nerd, and geometry is kind of my thing. However, nothing in life is worth doing unless you are passionate about it, and I believe that this symbol perfectly describes the nature of this brewing endeavor. Though we must constantly grow into the new, we must also build upon our main core of traditions.

~

We want to thank Melissa Brimer once again for helping us with our logo design. 

We get by with a little help from our friends!

Make sure to get your very own New Main Brewing Company 
"Coming Soon" shirt!
booster.com/new-main-brewing-company

Thanks again for reading. Stay tuned for more!

The rumors are true!

After months and months of research, after countless brewdays and hours spent talking with friends, after days, weeks, months of "what if," we have finally decided...

New Main Brewing is going pro.

Amanda and I are pleased to announce that we are planning to open New Main Brewing Company in the Mid-Cities region of DFW. We have not arrived at this decision lightly, and we are not messing around. We have been working with some local brewers for background information, local business owners for legal info, and our network of friends in the brewing industry and community for general planning advice. We are committed to opening and running an exceptional brewing business that produces great beer and provides our community with an outstanding place to share a pint with each other.

While we were investigating if this was going to work or not, a lot of things fell into place to convince us that the time is now. We were very fortunate to stumble upon Empire Commercial Real Estate while scoping out potential locations. They are just as excited as we are at the prospect of our community having its own brewery and taproom, and they are helping us find our brewery's location. We can't wait to start planning our site and building!

We were also lucky to have such a great network of friends both through the blog and through other homebrewing competitions. We will be bringing on our friend and award-winning homebrewer Kyle Nelson of Steel Rain Beer as our Head Brewer as well as his wife Erin to help us on the financial and marketing side of the business. Take a moment to go read through Steel Rain Beer's blog to learn about these amazing people. We are excited to bring them along with us on this crazy journey, and we can't wait for all of you to meet them!

We call ourselves New Main Brewing for a few reasons. First, it is a callback to a family story of mine wherein a couple of brothers (my grandfather and great uncle) spent some quality time planting trees on New Main Drive at Texas A&M College. Those trees shaded my sister, my brothers, and me on our way to our classes serving as a reminder of the value of hard work and the importance of focus. Secondly, we wanted to describe the type of craft beer experience we wanted to share with all of you.

Our beer will follow a simple layout of 6 "Main" beers with a few specific "New" treatments for each style. Over the next few months we will have several tasting parties to get your feedback on each beer and its variants, so you will have the opportunity to have a hand in determining our tap lineup! We are planning on some favorite styles like Stout and Porter, but we will also offer some exciting Belgian styles like Saison and Witbier.

We will also feature a VIP club for the taproom. For a monthly membership fee, you will have first access to new beer releases, discounts on pint and growler purchases, swag, and exclusive raffle drawings. We will also hold a VIP-only party before our grand opening to thank all of you with your very own celebration. More on that later.

We are still at the very beginning of this journey, and we thank all of you for your continued support of our homebrew team as well as our blog. Thus far, interacting with you all has been a tremendously helpful and rewarding part of our homebrewing hobby, and I can't overstate how grateful we are for that. We can't wait to meet even more of you at our several upcoming tasting parties and fundraising events over the next few months.

Now here's the part where y'all come in.

Starting a brewery is going to take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and A LOT of capital. We are going to have several opportunities for y'all to help us make this dream a reality. First, we are accepting donations through our new company Facebook page for a variety of levels. Your generous donation will go directly into funding our brewery, but there are several perks of donating at this stage available as well. For example, a donation of $5-$25 will earn you a New Main Brewing Company sticker and a thank you card. A $100 donation will  not only earn you a snazzy sticker, but you'll also be immortalized by a plaque on our wall of supporters, which will be prominently displayed in the brewery taproom. A $150 donation will secure your very own personalized bar stool in the taproom, as well as the aforementioned sticker. Seriously, we like the stickers.

We also have opportunities for y'all to spend some quality time with us at the brewery. A donation of $500 will earn you a party at the brewery for you and up to 100 of your friends. If you have a larger group of friends, coworkers, or colleagues, a donation of $1,000 will secure a party for up to 200 at the brewery. Think rehearsal dinners, retirement gifts, company party, or just pool some funds together with your friends! For those of you more interested in the brewing process, a donation of $2,500 will give you the chance to brew a recipe with New Main Brewing Company as a brewer-for-the-day on our commercial system and a party to share your beer with all your friends and family. 

If none of that is really your style, we'll have several opportunities for you to come volunteer at the brewery as well, once it's built of course. We will have several beers that will require ingredient preparation, and we'd be happy to exchange your help for some beer. We'll also have volunteer opportunities for kegging, cleaning, special event staff, and taproom activities. Make sure to keep an eye on our social media for these opportunities as they will be first come, first serve.

We will kick it all off with a t-shirt sale through booster.com featuring our logo on the front and "Coming Soon, Thanks to Me!" on the back so you can brag to your friends about the brewery you're helping to build. In the mean time, make sure to like and follow us on all of our social media so you can keep up with our ongoing process. We plan to share all the ups, downs, and sidewayses we encounter, and we welcome your feedback every step of the way. This is our dream, but we want this to be our community's brewery. 

We believe beer is about people, and we're excited to share this experience with all of you. Please follow us on our journey!

Facebook - New Main Brewing Co.

Twitter - @TheNewMainBrew

Instagram - newmainbrewing

Snapchat - TheNewMainBrew

Martin House Riverside Shootout 2016

It's homebrew competition season!

We decided to run our newly assembled brew stand through a brew day Saturday before competition Sunday so that we wouldn't have a mess on our hands in front of the DFW homebrewing community. We brewed a slightly varied version of our Pale Ale that we originally fleshed out last summer for our friend's bachelor party (still haven't settled on a name for it!). I mainly wanted to make sure our new pump and hoses operated correctly, but the addition of a separate vessel for mashing was also on trial that day. 

So we went ahead and set up our folding blue awning in the driveway to invite any neighbors passing by to come try some beer and talk about brewing. Unbeknownst to our own damn selves, everyone thought we were participating in the neighborhood garage sale event that was happening on nearly every street in our neighborhood. People kept slowing down and stopping to come check out what we had, and here we thought, "Wow, look at all these people that want to see what we're brewing!"

While we weren't really prepared for an all out garage sale, we did have a few things we wanted to get rid of, so we slapped a few hasty signs on some bulky items we no longer had space for. We did still get a few people to come over and ask about brewing, so I still consider it a success: we managed to have a successful brew day. All systems go for Sunday! We celebrated like any good southerner should, with a massive crawfish boil at our friend Jeff's house. (Happy birthday Jeff!)

Sunday came soon enough, and we packed our car and Jeff's truck with all of our equipment needed to brew on site at Martin House. We arrived, got set up, and began mashing in with mercifully pre-heated strike water provided by the brewery. This cut a good hour or so off brew day and made cleanup a snap. The brewery also provided a good amount of the ingredients needed for brew day, including 2-row malt, several varieties of hops, and a nice fresh pitch of yeast to take home with us. The idea there is that whichever beer wins the competition should be as close as possible to the beer that will be brewed in the Pro-Am session at Martin House.

We had a relatively uneventful and efficient mash thanks to our new system, and began transferring wort over to the boil kettle to heat up to 212F. Now here is where we got a little wonky (technical term). We planned to use  Chinook hops (13% A.A.) provided by Martin House for First Wort Hopping to allow a smoother bitterness to come through in the tropical stout we were brewing. We collected our first running of wort in the brew kettle and threw our hops in at about 175F. The problem was that the wind blowing across the parking lot was playing hell with our burner flame. 

We didn't reach a boil until just over an hour later, which is an abysmally long time to have to wait for the familiar churn of 212F. Because our hops spent such a long time in the hot wort, we probably got 10-20 more IBUs than we intended, which was not ideal for the sweet stout base we needed. I adjusted the hopping schedule by pushing all of the aroma/flavor hops into the whirlpool phase, which occurs after the boil is complete.

With our nice fresh pitch of Martin House's house ale yeast, we brought our wort home to ferment. Apparently, the yeastie boys fought for their right to party, and we had ourselves a good ol' fashioned airlock blowout the next day. This is by far the most vigorous fermentation I've ever seen. The beer was LITERALLY churning with activity, pushing more and more krausen out through the clogged airlock every second. We evaded disaster by transferring some of the over-active beer into the smaller carboy (which had plenty of room) and replaced the airlock with a blowoff hose. Problem solved.

Fast forwarding to today, we've finished 2.5 weeks of primary fermentation and have split the batch into a 4-5 gallon batch for cold conditioning prior to pineappling, and the remainder is sitting in our wonderfully flavored and conditioned whiskey barrel. Once those condition for a few weeks, we'll bottle them and let them sit for a few months for competition and/or consumption in the cold weather months.

Our pre-competition pale ale turned out well, if not slightly more bitter than we'd like. We decided to dry hop this batch with Simcoe and Centennial for a nice floral and spicy aroma. We have a few ideas to up the mouthfeel and balance out the bitterness with a little more malt presence to make this one a staple beer once again. No diacetyl this time though, so I'll take it!

This weekend we'll be submitting 24 bottles of our rosemary, sage, and basil wit to Backcountry Brewing's Homebrewer Competition. We bottled a couple extras to make sure what we were submitting was the best possible version of our beer, and it definitely stands up to the fresh-out-the-keg offering! Hopefully we'll hear back on that one soon, and we just might have another Pro-Am on our hands!

As always, thanks for reading. If you or someone you know is getting into homebrewing, make sure to share us on Facebook and Instagram. Cheers!

Martin House Riverside Shootout Preview

This Sunday, Amanda and I will be traveling to Fort Worth to compete in Martin House's on-site homebrew competition, Riverside Shootout. Think of it like Chopped but for beer. We will be given some of the main ingredients that Martin House uses every day for their own beer and we are allowed to bring any extra ingredients we need to fashion an outstanding homebrew batch. The winner gets a cash prize of $500, and they get to brew their recipe with Martin House on their big boy system.

Our epic Division bottle share, and
Derek from Dirty Job Brewing, Arlington's
next craft brewery! Check out our interview
with Dirty Job on Atypical DFW Podcast here.

As we mentioned last week, we are going to explore the Tropical Stout category new to the 2015 BJCP guidelines. While this competition is not strictly judged according to guidelines, we think this category is just weird enough to produce a gem. We finished the stout with pineapple for a nice dose of tropical flavor to balance against the roast. We received some good feedback from some other folks when we brought the beer to a bottle share at Division Brewing last week. Hopefully the batch we brew this weekend will live up to the pilot!

Meanwhile the New Main brewing setup has really been coming together lately. Thanks to our gift card from our Operation Bravo win at Shannon and a few well-timed homebrew supply store sales, we have been able to acquire a few pieces of equipment that should make brew day run smoother and more predictably. We have added a whole second vessel and burner, a high temp pump, all of the fittings and hoses the pump needs, as well as a nice heavy duty cart/stand on which the whole shebang is mounted. 

We're going to pump - *clap* - YOU up!

Sure, we could have just dished out an assload of money for a standard single-tier, 2-pump, 3-vessel system and just brew like the majority of people do at this stage, but the idea of doing what everyone else does just for the sake of simplicity isn't really our thing. We are going to brew a test batch Saturday so that we are fully acquainted with the system come Sunday, but I have faith that our ducks will be in a row for competition.

I don't have a whole lot else to say this week, sadly. However, I think it's high time we share a homebrew recipe with you fine people. This beer lends well to spicing and/or dry hopping, so get crazy with it!

Palo Alto Wit

Brew Method: BIAB
Style Name: Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer (Belgian Witbier base)
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 10 gallons (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 11 gallons
Boil Gravity: 1.048
Efficiency: 60% (brew house)

STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.052
Final Gravity: 1.014
ABV (standard): 5%
IBU (tinseth): 15.91
SRM (morey): 6.1

FERMENTABLES:
10 lb - American - Pale 2-Row (42.6%)
10 lb - American - Wheat (42.6%)
2 lb - Flaked Oats (8.5%)
1.5 lb - Canadian - Honey Malt (6.4%)

HOPS:
2 oz - Mandarina Bavaria, Type: Pellet, AA: 4, Use: Boil for 15 min, IBU: 7.71
2 oz - Saphir, Type: Pellet, AA: 4.25, Use: Boil for 15 min, IBU: 8.19

MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Sparge, Temp: 155 F, Time: 60 min, Amount: 33 qt, Ladle Rinse, mash out

OTHER INGREDIENTS:
2 each - Orange Zest, Time: 5 min, Type: Flavor, Use: Boil
2 each - Lemon Zest, Time: 5 min, Type: Flavor, Use: Boil
1 sprig - Rosemary, Type: Spice, Use: Boil
1 oz - Sage, Type: Herb, Use: Boil

YEAST:
Wyeast - Belgian Witbier 3944
Starter: No
Form: Liquid
Attenuation (avg): 74%
Flocculation: Med-Low
Optimum Temp: 62 - 75 F
Fermentation Temp: 65 F for 4-5 days, then ramp to 70 F for 1-2 and cold crash prior to kegging
3 volumes CO2 (plenty of protein in this beer for a nice fluffy head)

Mixing up some rosemary, sage, and basil tea

We've brewed this recipe a couple different ways before, and we think the best method for adding the spices is to just brew the base witbier and let it ferment through primary. Then once you've cold crashed the beer, rack to secondary with a tea made from your spices. The reason for doing it this way is that you can pull a sample of the fermented, uncarbonated beer and measure it out equally into 3-5 sample glasses so you can dose varying amounts of the tea into the beer. Taste each one and compare them to each other and to the base beer in order to decide the appropriate amount of spice tea to add to your fermenter. Then all you do is scale it up to your batch size, pitch the tea, then let it sit in secondary for a few days before kegging or packaging.

Make sure to accurately measure out your
tasting samples so your dosage rates are right

That may seem like a lot of work, but it gives you steady, standard, and easily repeatable results every time. You never know how potent your herbs will be, and if you're using things like fresh rosemary, it's easy to overdo it. Likewise, if you prefer to dry hop the beer rather than spice it, you can simply pitch your desired aroma hops when you rack to secondary. 

If any of y'all brew this or any of our other recipes, please drop us a line and let us know how they turned out! If you're in the Arlington area, we'd love to meet up and swap some homebrew, too. You can reach us at:

 newmainbrewing@gmail.com 

or you can leave us a comment below. Also, don't forget to like and share our posts on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram at newmainbrewing. 

Cheers!

Semi-lazy Update

I feel I need to explain why the quality and quantity of my posts have dropped off lately. I may or may not have mentioned before, but I am a Civil Engineer by trade. I mainly design residential and commercial developments (think neighborhoods and businesses) and I also work with floodplain remapping. I know you're all riveted and can't wait to hear more about storm drainage and sewer lines, but unfortunately that's not really what this blog is about.

I said all that to say that while I can legally refer to myself as an engineer, I am only certified by the state of Texas as an Engineer-In-Training, or EIT. There is one more certification that is much more legitimate and much harder for an engineer to obtain: Professional Engineer, or PE. There are all kinds of documentation and hoops to jump through in order to become licensed as a PE, but the final determination comes in the form of an 8-hour long, comprehensive, big, hairy, ugly, and quite frankly rude-ass exam.

I will be taking this test in a couple weeks, so in between home and work I have been devoting "every" unoccupied moment to preparing for the exam. I put "every" in quotes because, let's face it, I'm no machine. I require study breaks filled with internet memes, podcasting with my friends, the occasional novel or two, and other such respites from equations and proofs. Hell, I didn't even have enough time to mow the back yard, allowing it to resemble a dark, mysterious rainforest-like setting that threatened to swallow our poor, unsuspecting dogs whole!

"Don't go into the long grass!" (Lost World, Jurassic Park)

This all means that the time I would normally spend typing away about how great beer is and how good we are at doing beer is now spent buried under a small traveling library of reference manuals, an arsenal of number two pencils in various stages of sharpness, a previously-small-and-charming-forest-worth of graph paper etched with the frantic scribblings of a mad man, all covered in a fresh dusting of eraser rubbings, pencil shavings, and coffee stains. (can you tell I need a creative outlet?)

All embellishment aside, I have managed to keep my brewing pipeline stocked with the third incarnation of our rosemary and sage belgian wheat ale, Palo Alto Wit. This time around we brewed a little more than 8 gallons with a smaller amount of spices so that we could "dry-hop" the beer with the spices after fermentation and get a much more dialed-in flavor profile. After primary, the samples tasted pleasant and showed that we were at about 5.5% ABV. We will make a tea with some sage and perhaps even some basil to dose into the beer for just the right aroma to complement the flavor.

We have also accidentally created an excellent stout recipe while preparing for Martin House's Riverside Shootout Homebrew Competition happening the weekend after my PE exam. I teased last post about a new style category that was recently added to the BJCP Style Guidelines. I now realize I have no control over other people's recipes or fermentation, so secrecy is kind of a moot point. The best brewer will execute the best beer he or she can, and that's really what competition is about. We are attempting to create a Tropical Stout, category 16C, to be named Parrot Metal after my pathetic effort to imitate a metal singer's growl on our podcast at Dr. Jeckyll's several months ago (check the 30:00 mark).

Various weird tropical fruits soaked in vodka to bring out
the "essence" of tropicality

The base recipe (before adding anything to make it "tropical") is actually everything we love about stout. It has excellent roast flavor, bitterness is balanced but present, alcohol is a manageable 7%, and it looks great in the glass. The style guideline actually calls for a much sweeter stout with low bitterness, but I think once we add some tropical fruit tinctures to the beer, the bitterness will balance out against the sugary juices. Regardless of how this performs at the competition, you can count on us brewing this one again.

We have also found a new homebrewing competition while out cruising the breweries in DFW. Backcountry Brewing from Colorado recently bought the recently-out-of-business Firewheel brewery as a satellite to brew and distribute to Texas, so we thought we'd go check them out. I was in a Belgian beer mood, so I sampled their Belgian Pale and a Red Saison, which were both pleasant and enjoyable. While tossing back these fine ales, I noticed a sign on the wall that urged homebrewers to inquire about a homebrewing competition.

Upon investigation, not only do the winners get to brew their beer Pro-Am style with Backcountry, but a portion of the pint sales come back to the hombrewer as a cash prize! I think our Palo Alto Wit will have the opportunity to shine bright in this type of competition that is not so heavily dependent on guideline interpretations. We shall see! (Sign up at the brewery, and deadline for submission of 24 bottles of your 1 entry is May 14)

So there. I've put off studying long enough, and I must return to the world of conversion factors and interpolation. If I don't survive, tell my wife and dogs I love them, and drink our homebrew at my funeral.