Sonoma County Home Brewers Competition

We will be pouring at the annual Sonoma County Home Brewers Competition for the third year in a row. Thanks to Taps for inviting us back. Come sample our new Angry Bikes New England IPA with us! Cheers - Dave

Fermentation Festival 2017

Don't forget that you can find us on Facebook and Instagram, and come visit us at the Sonoma County Fermentation Festival in the Libations Lounge. We will bring a few different tasty treats. Cheers!

Brewing Better Beer, Part I

I recently had a member of my homebrew club ask me to help him brew better beer, and after thinking about it, I put these words down. I'd like to share them with everyone on the Internet.

1. Brewing is a combination of art and science. I lean more towards the art, but with some understanding of the science. I've seen engineers I work with, or even people in our club, worry too much about the science and forget about the art. I've also seen people try not to think about the science (measuring gravity with a hydrometer), and not have consistency, and have no way to troubleshoot what went wrong, and never learn from mistakes. I make occasional bad beers, but they are good lessons.  I've seen too many people worry about the science and their beer comes out awful. They followed all the science, and they are engineers, worrying about how many yeast cells to pitch and other things, and their beer sucks. Don't get too absorbed by the science. Find the balance.

2. Fast fermentation is important. This is two-fold. I would be sure that you have a good wort chiller to cool right away. I also would make sure that you have a good oxygenation system. I use a small o2 tank and my beer takes off within 12 hours. If it doesn't, I know there is more risk of contamination and other issues. These two things have improved my beer.

3. Water. When I moved to RP, my friends kept saying my beer was awful and not like when I lived in downtown Petaluma. I checked the reports and the water was supposed to be the same. Lately, since I know better, I can smell how much chlorine has been put into the water. I use a carbon filter now, and have not had that problem.

Just a few ideas. I can elaborate, but I would recommend those few things before anything else.

I look forward to helping you brew better beer. I have a friend that leans heavily on science and being too specific on things, and I feel you need to balance it with art at some point. I just like to be more artistic with my beers rather than worry so much about the science.

I hope this helps. These 3 things are key to brewing good beer.

Cheers!

Tweet

Keep an eye out over here -->
It's where our recent tweets are.
They are also posted on our Facebook page.

Cider Cider Cider Beer Cider

We have lots of ciders. We have Stony Point Pilsner. We have Imperial Oatmeal Stout. We have Peanut Butter Porter, We have Brandon's Fresh Hop coming up Friday. Oh, did I mention that we have ciders?

Ciders are fermenting

Perfect brew of New Putnam Pale Ale. 1.051og. Giants win. Great day!

A link to the past. Our first real brew, 11 years ago! http://web.archive.org/web/20000604090549/http://www.rohling.com/

Current Brews

Blueberry Pale Ale - on tap
Cider - fermenting
Fresh Hop Harvest Ale - fermenting
Hefeweizen - fermenting

coming soon:
Blackberry Pale Ale
Pale Ale Harvest

HOPS!

HOPS!

It's almost cider time!

IPA

Success!

It's been a while.

The fresh hop beers were... Interesting. It's almost that time again. In the meantime we made a Peanut Butter Porter and our Coffee Chocolate Stout this winter. We've been growing more and more hops. Our latest beer is New Putnam Pale Ale, a refreshing lager type ale. We also had our first successful East Cotati brew of One Track IPA, which is on tap now. We will be attempting some a new fresh hop ale late Summer. Stay tuned!

Tsunami Wet Hop IPA

Made from these.

It's been awhile...

2 keggle brews from Petaluma are done. Tasted good at first but really were mediocre. Then we brewed a new IPA and discovered it was very close to the original Earthquake IPA of 2006, the 100th anniversary of The 1906 SF earthquake. So now we have a new Earthquake (or Aftershock) IPA. A later version will be brewed with wet hops from our local farms. Here's a Cascade hop that was recently grown at our Petaluma farm.



We also tried a pale ale brew from a new supplier, but done our way. It will be kegged this weekend, but probably only made once (limited release). We also made some Old Man Crandall's Apple Cider, and we're awaiting pear harvest to see if we have enough for a pear cider this year.

Update

It's been a while since an update. 2 beers brewed in the new keggle, but using Petaluma "free" tap water. Not totally impressed. Tasted ok but as it aged not as great. Decided to create a new simplified recipe and modify that with fresh wet hops later this year. The first creation with dry hops is in the fermenter now. Of course - it's an IPA. Also we have 4 hops growing at the taproom now. Cider being made soon!

Word of the day: Happoshu

"Fake beer"

Fruit trees a plenty / ciders this year

The pear tree has been totally pruned back but now is starting to bloom. I doubt we will see many pears or much cider this year. There's plums, apples, peaches and apricots too. Hopefully our Petaluma hop garden will give us some better apples for this year's cider.

Re-engineering Tecova Brewing

Due to some uncharacteristically inadequate brews since the move, we've decided to work really hard to get our recipes accurate.

The first two brews to be refined are both IPAs, "Dominus Ominus" and "Hops Gone Wild" (the former Four Track IPA, a variation of One Track Ale).

I've personally refined the recipes and put them in digital form so that I can modify them as needed and keep them consistent.

I've ordered the ingredients for the first Dominus Ominus brew in about a year and a half. Rumor is that it will be brewed in Petaluma using Petaluma tap water, hopefully in one of our hop gardens for good karma.

The latest Hops Gone Wild is more complex and will be brewed later this year. Upon researching the last brew, I found many inconsistencies from the previous versions, perhaps contributing to the wild taste. We do have the rum barrel aged firkin from this batch, still available at the taproom.

Later this year we may work on completely new recipes for Haystack Landing Hefeweizen, RobotsOnFire Red Ale, and Professor Booty's Stormwater Stout.

Apple Cider!