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Welcome to my site!  Epiphany Brewing™.

5/6/2008 Site update!  Epiphany Brewing™ wearables are now available here!  Get yours and be the coolest kid on your block!  If you don’t see something you like, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to add to the line-up. Currently these are promotional items, so you are paying cost.  I might increase the cost in the future and donate the proceeds to charity.

Epiphany (Greek: επιφάνεια, “appearance” or “manifestation”) is a Christian feast intended to celebrate the “shining forth” or revelation of God to mankind in human form, in the person of Jesus.

It was an epiphany when I learned that “you can actually brew your own beer!?” It immediately made sense and I knew I had to brew.  The hobby is creative and artistic and has brought me peace of mind.

Whats on tap?

• Keg BORP! – Brew day: 2/16/2009. Northern Brewers Bourbon Oak Robust Porter with smoked malts. An all time favorite. The recipe calls for 16 ounces of yummy bourbon added to the secondary. I didn’t have quite that much, so I just poured what I had in. This is a complex beer… smoke from the scottish yeast, oak, bourbon, roast. It gets better every day.
• Keg American Amarillo Pale Ale
  Brewed for the World Brewers Forum at the GABF (http://www.kroc.org) – Ryan provided 15g of dry Boddingtons dry yeast and I used other supplies on hand, so it was a very cost effective brew. 15g of yeast in a 5gallon batch will kick off a fermentation fast!!
• Keg Bitter American Brewed for the 2010 World Brewers Forum – our annual KROC tradition. Okay, I’m in a rut, but I figure people need a good session beer after the GABF! This one weighs in at 6.5% ABV (FG 1.012). It has a good hop flavor and a slight buttery taste that hopefully will disappear in time for tapping on Thursday 09/16/2010!
• Keg empty

What’s brewing?

• Oktoberfest
• Helles

Kegs gone dry…

• Lent-n-L8r Dopplebock currently in the fermenter. OG 1.088. Brew day 3/14/2009. FG 1.015. This beer was a disaster! I kegged it without checking the final gravity. That was a huge mistake! It tasted like sweet tea! Apparently I was too agressive taking it down to lagering temp and my starter was too small. Sooo I took it out of the keg and back into the fermenter, pitched a packet of dry yeast. A few days later I pitched another packet of dry yeast. Then I pitched two liters of liquid starter. Then I threw in some beano. A month later it was down to 1.020. I’m sure it’s been aerated to heck, but it’s back in the keg under carbonation. Time will tell. Drinkable or drain pour!?
• Roggenbier
  – Brew day: 1/18/2009. JC’s roggenbier as listed in Jamils column in Brew Your Own magazine. Kegged 2/3/2009. Sweet with a nice peppery character. Very little head retention, but an easy drinker.
• Rauchbier – Brew day: 12/13/2008. Northern Brewers Rauchbier with additional doses of cold beechwood smoke. Moved to secondary and lagered. Kegged 1/18/2008. This has a strong diacetyl character that I’m hoping goes away.  It only took 9 months to empty this keg.  Simply awful.
• Ricks ESB – 6/15/2009. Wow! 3 months since I brewed last. That’s sad! Busy times with HS graduations and my dopplebock. This is a very simple recipe – 8.5 lbs Thomas Fawcet Maris Otter from a group bulk buy, 1 lb Biscuit malt, 1 lb 20L crystal. 2 Oz East Kent Golding (5.5% AA). WLP005 yeast. What’s interesting about this brewday is I changed my method for making a starter based on information provided at our homebrew club from Bob Z’s method – basically he recommends using a 3°P starter (I went with 1.020) to keep the yeast in their aerobic state – yeast grows at a rate of 10 to 1 when kept in it’s aerobic cell division state. Too high of a gravity will send it into anaerobic state and reduce the amount of yeast you are pitching. He also recommends not aerating your wort if you have a sufficient pitch. I can vouch about the lower gravity producing a lot more yeast!!! It’s amazing how much I have set to pitch right now.
• Amarillo Pale Ale – Brew day: 8/23/2008. I based this off of Linus Halls Yazoo Pale Ale (http://www.yazoobrew.com/yazoopaleale.html), which is a fantastic showcase of the Amarillo Hop. It has an English Pale Malt backbone (e.g. Maris Otter) with Munich and Vienna Malts to add biscuity goodness. Then a little sweetness and color from 10L crystal malt. 1.25 oz for 60 minutes, 1.0 ounce at 10 minutes, and .75 oz at flame out. Another ounce will be added for dry hopping. 1.060 OG. Est IBU’s 56. Est SRM 6.2. WLP051 CAL ALE V yeast.
• Denny Conns Rye IPA – Bottled 1/2 keg on 2/1/2009. This is the second batch of this beer I made. It’s really exceptional, just like Zaccman from BeerTribe.com said it would be. Highly recommended.
• Jamils Belgian Strong Ale – Bottled 1/2 keg on 2/1/2009. This beer is aging tertiary carboy where it will remain for the better part of a year. It is going to be a great beer. The amount of yeast at the bottom of the carboy was astounding. It is a light redish brown. The final gravity on this bad boy was too low for me to measure (my sample wasn’t large enough.) The hydrometer bottomed out and sat on the bottom of the test tube. It’s below 1.015, which is very dry. I was looking for a 1.022 FG. The alcohol vapors just poured out of the hydrometer test tube!
• Smokey Wee Heavy – this is a strong Scottish style ale.  Perhaps too sweet due to the low amounts of hops used and the addition of dry malt extract to boost the original gravity.  This is aging quite nicely.
• Jamils Strong Bitter – I was looking for a quick beer that I could finish in two weeks, and the recent Brew Your Own magazine (March-April 2008, Vol. 14, No. 2) had an ESB all grain recipe in it.  I did an old school sparge,  so it took a long time to collect the wort.  Very strong fermentation at 68F with 1968 Wyeast London ESB Ale.  I used gelatin as a fining, then used my new plate filter on this beer.  Waiting for it to carbonate.  It was quite tasty when it was flat.  It finished a little over 1.010.  Update 4/11/08 – the beer has been on tap for about 2 weeks.  It’s a fantastic beverage.  I’m letting it age a bit so the sharp edges fall off.  It was biting at first, with a low amount of diacetyl.  It reminds me very much of the pints I had in London, so it must be a good recipe!
• Jamils Barleywine – I’ve taken Jamil Zainasheff’s barleywine recipe and added a few additional bittering hops to adjust it for altitude. This beer is aging tertiary carboy where it will remain for the better part of a year.
• Raspberry Wheat Beer. I did my first “brew-in” (much different from a “love-in” from the 60′s…) with some members of KROC. 5 of us brewed beer for a fellow homebrewer, Barry, who is recuperating from a major skiing accident. That being said, this wasn’t my recipe. It wasn’t Barry’s recipe either as I had to substitute most of the ingredients. His recipe called for Hallertauer, I used Mt. Hood generously donated by the guys at Rock Bottom Brewery in Broomfield. His recipe called for Wyeast 3942 (Belgian Wheat), I accidently used Wyeast 3944 (Belgian Witbier). His recipe called for a specific Muntons wheat malt I wasn’t able to find so I used generic LHBS wheat malt (2 pounds liquid and 1 pound DME). I also used grain for the base malt instead of malt extract. What else, oh yeah, I doubled the batch size. Sorry if the beer is not what you’d hoped for. I sampled it and it’s very easy to drink. There is a light tartness from the berries and a strong yeast character. It’s nice for the summer time. This was one ugly beer when it was fermenting. The krausen never really dropped. I had a solid bed of yeast on the bottom, but there was a persistent foam on top. I don’t know if that’s normal for this strain of yeast. OG: 1.048, FG: 1.010.

Drain Pours

Beer Blessing
from the Rituale Romanum ( no 58 )

Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Béne + dic, Dómine, creatúram istam cerevísæ, quam ex ádipe fruménti prodúcere dignátus es: ut sit remédium salutáre humáno géneri: et præsta per invocatiónem nóminis tui sancti, ut, quicúmque ex ea bíberint, sanitátem córporis, et ánimæ tutélam percípiant. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen

(Translation by Fr. Ephraem Chifley, O.P.)

“From man’s sweat and God’s love, beer came into the world.” St. Arnold, Bishop of Metz 612 AD.

Interesting Links

Intro to kegging

Stones 10th Anniversary Party – fun with Dude Night and The Beer Report guys!