Just Firkin Around

One of the joys of the New Old Lompoc is that I often have the chance to play around with different processes that my brethren at 5Q don't have the time for. Over the last few months I've become increasingly interested in cask conditioning and have filled a few firkins with varying degrees of success.( Some of you may have seen the beer shower that drenched me while tapping a firkin at our 15th Anniversary party in August)

Surprisingly there seems to be very little information out there on cask beer production. I ordered a copy of Patrick O'Neil's "Cellarmanship" but unfortunately it deals mostly with cask beer once it leaves the brewery. After talking with a bunch of different local brewers on the topic (as any brewer's spouse can tell you, we really do talk about beer all the time) I found that there are really two basic methods; racking still fermenting beer into the firkin or priming brite beer with some sugar source and additional yeast. To this point I've opted for the first option, attempting to capture the beer at its sweet spot. As you might suspect, this method, though more traditional, is by nature kind of hit and miss.

Why do I bring this up now? Twice a year the Master Brewers Association of the Americas, Northwest District, holds a 2 day conference that feature lectures, sensory panels, and overall discussion on a particular topic. Recent conferences have focused on topics as varied as barrel aging, water, the history and variety of porter and belgian yeasts. The upcoming fall conference next weekend in Seattle focuses entirely on cask beer. Brewers are encouraged to bring cask beer for a Friday night tasting and as a result we volunteered to bring a firkin. After much discussion between Head Brewer Dave Fleming and myself we decided to offer up 2 firkins, each using a different cask conditioning method.

Yesterday I filled the first of the two firkins with the base porter for our Holiday Cheer direct from the primary fermenter. My task for today, along with brewing another batch of C-Sons Greetings, is to fill and prime the second firkin. For this I'll be using LSD from one of our conditioning tanks and about 100 grams of corn sugar as the priming sugar. Both firkins will sit until Monday at around 60 degrees before being moved to our cellar where a slightly lower temperature will hopefully help with CO2 uptake. It should be an interesting (and delicious) experiment and with the knowledge I hope to gain from the experience, coupled with the content of next weekends conference should result in more regular firkin tappings at our various pubs with a much higher degree of success and consistency. I'll post some pictures following the conference and look for more posts in the future on our continuing cask beer adventures. Until next time, Cheers!

-Zach

The coming of the holiday C-Son

Although the sun may be out today, the fact remains that summer has come and gone and the slow march towards winter has begun. With Halloween still two weeks away I've already seen Christmas displays pop up around town and along with them, the requisite holiday seasonals from various local breweries. We all recognize that season creep is becoming absurd, but at the same time is the arrival of all these winter beers a bad thing?

Loyal Lompoc followers may recognize that we find every excuse to brew "seasonal" beers throughout the year but that we really take it to extremes when it comes to the Holiday season, releasing 7 Holiday seasonals on the same day. In order to pull off such a feat, both breweries juggle the logistical challenges of maintaining our year round beers while finding the tank space to squeeze in the Holiday beers. Well this week the juggling act has begun at New Old Lompoc as I'm brewing both C-Sons Greetings and Holiday Cheer. As a special treat I've scaled down the Holiday Cheer recipe for all-grain homebrewers:

New Old Lompoc Holiday Cheer Vanilla Porter 5 gallons

10 lbs NW Pale Malt

1 lbs Crystal 120L

.75 lb Chocolate Malt

.5 lb Brown Malt

.5 lb Dextrin Malt

.25 Caraffa II

.25 Special B

60 min boil

.5 oz Chinook Pellets :0 min

1 oz Willamette Whole Leaf :40 min

1 oz Willamette Whole Leaf :60 min

American Ale yeast

Add 1-2 whole vanilla beans to secondary fermenter

I should also mention that we are not immune to the pressures of season creep, and as a result have decided to release C-Sons Greetings a few weeks earlier than the other Holiday beers this year. The C-Sons Greetings release party is set for November 11th at Sidebar. C-Sons will be available in bottles the same day and on tap at all our pubs as well as better beer bars around town.

Local Beer, Local Soccer

Chances are that you've noticed bottles of our Kick Axe Pale Ale at your local beer store or enjoyed a pint at one of our pubs or Jeld Wen Field throughout the inaugural season of the Portland Timbers, but if not you better act fast. With the end of the season drawing near, save for a long playoff run for the upstart Timbers, Kick Axe will head to the bench for the offseason within the next few weeks. Fret not though, for our hairless leader and outspoken soccer enthusiast, Jerry Fechter, has commissioned an additional pair of soccer themed beers for the coming months.

In late August Lompoc Sidebar hosted the judging for the annual Timbers Army homebrew competition. The top three beers earned their brewer the oppurtunity to have their winning entry brewed at a local brewery. The second and third place beers will be brewed by McMenamins Crystal Ballroom and Hopworks, while the Best of Show winner's beer was brewed at New Old Lompoc in mid September. Homebrewer Eric Ganter's Sounder Slayer Dortmunder Lager was the big winner and as his prize, a full day of back breaking labor in a steamy and humid brewery! Eric had the forethought to bring a bottle of Sounder Slayer for us to sample on brew day and I can only hope our version holds up to the original. Sounder Slayer is built on a base of Belgian pilsner malt with vienna and munich malts adding some color and malt complexity then hopped with Saaz and Tettnang and fermented cold with Bohemian lager yeast. The primary fermentation has just finished up and I'll be transferring the beer to a conditioning tank next week where it will be lagered for at least 6 weeks.

The second soccer themed beer is a collaboration beer with 4-4-2 Soccer Bar on SE Hawthorne. Jerry is a regular at 4-4-2 and conceptualized a beer for them using 4 malts and 4 hop varieties then dry hopped with 2 more hop varieties, representing the typical alignment of a soccer team. Jerry and I decided on a hybrid between a pilsner and an american pale ale using our house yeast fermented at a lower temperature (similar to the process we used for PilzIPA last summer). I brewed the beer on Monday using NW pale, vienna, munich and light crystal malt and Perle, Saaz, Tettnang, and Cascade hops in the boil. The goal is to have a crisp and quaffable beer with spicy hop character and a big American hop aroma.

Look for Sounder Slayer sometime in December and 4-4-2 in mid November. Cheers!

-Zach

Welcome

Well here we go. I'd like to welcome everyone to the official Lompoc Brewing Blog. After trolling around the various Oregon beer blogs out there I finally decided it was time we jump into the fray. The goal of this blog is to give our loyal Lompoc followers a peak behind the pint. I hope to bring readers into the brewery and preview our upcoming beers from grain to glass, as well as pull back the curtain on some of the Northwest's premier beer events. Check out the left side of the blog for a list of current seasonals on tap and for a peak on what's currently fermenting. Cheers!

-Zach