French Broad Brewery

Posted on 10:50 AM, under


We took a tour of the French Broad Brewery on Saturday around 1pm local time. This brewery is really great. From their equipment to their beers to the attitude the employees have, just amazing. I'm posting out of order here because I didn't feel my little 300kp camera on my cell phone would do the beautiful fermenters in this place justice; so I had to break out my wife's 4.1mp camera and take a few shots. This place has live music every night from about 6 till 8 with great performers. The musicians/bands play right there in the brewery amongst the fermenters and brite tanks. It kind of makes me wonder if that doesn't help the beers a little. I've heard of homebrewers putting headphones on their little bucket fermenters and playing certain types of music, much like an expecting mother will do for their unborn child. Remember, those little yeasties are living creatures as well and it's a known fact that certain types of music has an effect on other animals as well.

This is a really cool brewery and brewing company and it's going to be interesting watching it grow.

PROST!


Click below for larger pics: http://homebrewing.mattburks.com/images/FrenchBroad/1.JPG
http://homebrewing.mattburks.com/images/FrenchBroad/2.JPG

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Biltmore winery cellar 2

Posted on 5:06 PM, under


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Biltmore Winery Fermenters 3

Posted on 5:04 PM, under


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Biltmore Winery Fermenters 2

Posted on 5:01 PM, under


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Biltmore Winery Fermenters 1

Posted on 4:58 PM, under



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Biltmore Winery Wine Cellar

Posted on 4:55 PM, under


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Biltmore Winery Bottling Room

Posted on 4:51 PM, under


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Well, this was a true micro-brewery. Their 30 bbl brewery consisted of two large rooms located in the basement of Barley's Taproom & Pizzeria. The first half was the brew house including the equipment shown above. Just about all of their equipment was used dairy equipment. In the second half was their fermentation room which consisted of several ice cream tanks that they had converted to fermentation tanks.

It took us a while to find the place, especially since apparently the city of Asheville doesn't believe in road signs. By the time we found the place I was a little ticked off. We walked right in the back of the brewery and met up with the UNCA students who were going to be touring with. They were handing around samples of their beer as I walked in and one of the students turned to me and asked if I wanted him to pass me one back. I said sure and he handed me, what I think was their Oatmeal Porter. So, my "ticked off" mood quickly faded. The beer was pretty good. After touring we went upstairs to Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria, where they have 40 ~ 50 beers on tap and several more in bottles. The first beer I tried was the "Rogue John's Locker Stock #18 Harvest Ale". I believe they said this was an IPA, and I would believe it. It had a HUGE hop flavor. The description on their beer menu was this:

"This release is the 4th vintage of Rogue Ales' Harvest Ale using wet hops. John Maier arranged to pick up 1000 pounds of Newport hops which were being picked as he arived... 11 Burlap Sacks were transported to the brewery where Chris Spollen (#2 brewer at Rogue) and John "more hops" Maier pitched 150 pounds of wet, freshly picked Newport Hops into the kettle... the rest is history... four batches were brewed in total."

The second beer I had was a "Thomas Creek Dopplebock". This was a good beer as well. It's the first Dopplebock I've ever tasted so I don't know how much to style it was. It tasted a little like a wine to be perfectly honest. It was still a good beer.


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Homebrewed Oatmeal Stout

Posted on 9:37 AM, under


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Grain Stock

Posted on 5:50 AM, under

Well, I've made the jump to buying stock grain. I first had a friend of mine pick up a bag of American 2-Row base malt to have on hand (Thanks Rich!). Then went to my local homebrew shop (http://www.brewerscorner.com) and picked up a few 1lb bags of of specialty malts like Crystal, Victory and Aromatic. I would like to start keeping a good stock of grain on hand, that way when I decide to do a brew I'll have everything I need.

Fifty pounds of grain.


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The Dogwood Brewery

Posted on 4:21 AM, under

This is my little 5 gallon brewery. It is an all-grain setup using two turkey fryers and a cube type cooler. The hot liquor tank is an aluminum 7.5 gallon pot with a ball valve at the bottom that allows me to pour directly into the cooler/mash tun. The Mash tun is a 48 quart cooler with a stainless steel braided hose attached to another ball valve that allows me to lauter the grain and drain the wort directly into my boil kettle which is another 7.5 gallon aluminum pot. In the future I'll be adding a sight glass to the hot liquor tank and maybe a ball valve to the boil kettle so that I can drain into a cooling device into the fermenters. It's not much to look at, but it makes some of my favorite beers :)

~Matt


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