IPA10k

More fun at the IPA10k last weekend, with Cotati Home Brewer's Collective, Woodfour Brewing, and Sonoma Taps!

Battle of the Brews

Come join us at Battle of the Brews on April 1 in Santa Rosa! We'll be at the Cotati Home Brewer's Collective table, serving our beer.

Beer City Santa Rosa

We had lots of fun at Beer City Santa Rosa on February 25th. Stay tuned for our next event.

Beerfest, The Good One

Come see us and drink our Grapefruit IPA! 

beerfest the good one

Mendocino Home Brewer's Competition

 Come see us Saturday the 21st at Mendocino Home Brewer's Competition!

Battle of the Brews

On April 9th, 2022 we will be back at the Battle of the Brews. Come see us!

Beer City

On Sunday March 20th, we participated in the inaugural Beer City Half Marathon by pouring a rum-barrel aged Brown Ale with Cotati Home Brewer's Collective. We hope to be back next year for the full brewfest and homebrew competition!

Hey we are going to be back at the Battle of the Brews this year and at Beerfest, The Good One, among other locations. Keep watching for more news!

-- Postponed

Battle of the Brews 2019

Come see us at the Battle of the Brews on April 6, 2019 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds!

Winter Beers

Today we are kegging this amazing Oatmeal Milk Stout and brewing the Tecova Pils! Cheers!

5th Annual NorCal Beer Geeks Beer Festival

Come join us on November 3rd for some tasty food and beer at the 5th Annual NorCal Beer Geeks Beer Festival.

The 5th Annual NorCal Beer Geeks Festival will take place on Saturday, November 3rd from 1pm to 4pm at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building, located at 1351 Maple Ave. in Santa Rosa. GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS include unlimited beer tastings from 25+ breweries/cider companies, a souvenir glass and an automatic entry into a raffle. Food will be provided for an additiional fee and and live music will add to the festivities. VIP TICKETS include all general admission perks plus entry one hour earlier (12pm). Proceeds will be donated to Sonoma County Vet Connect, a Veterans helping Veterans 501c organization assisting Veterans in locating the services they earned during their military service. Nobody under the age of 21 will be allowed entry. Sorry, that means no children. NO ID=NO ENTRY. No animals other than service dogs will be allowed entry. We reserve the right to a security check upon entry and encourage everyone to designate a driver, take public transportation, Uber, Lyft or call a taxi to get home safely.

Beerfest - The Good One

We will be pouring "Exile" a Mexican Vienna Lager at Sonoma County Beerfest - The Good One this Saturday. Come see us at the Sonoma Beerocrats booth.

Sonoma County Fire Relief Beer Event

Come see us at the Sonoma County Fire Relief Beer Event Saturday April 7th. We will be pouring Grapefruit Pilsner at the Knights of the Tap Handle booth. Cheers!

Brewing Better Beer, Part II

In an effort to help homebrewers as I move towards more advanced brewing, I'm continuing my series "Brewing Better Beer". Here's a few more recomendations. I only get into the basics and not in-depth on the topics. Feel free to ask me if you'd like to know more.

1. Late addition or flameout hops add more flavor and less bitterness. New England IPAs usually have very small amounts of bittering or early addition hops and more at the end.

2. Whirlpool your kettle. This allows all the hops and and particles to gather in the center of the kettle. When using a valve at the side of the kettle, you can avoid getting them into your fermenter. The cleaner the wort goes into the fermenter, the better! Use a hop screen or bags for your hops. You don't want a lot of trub in the fermenter.

3. Cool your wort quickly and pitch the yeast early. Lots of people really like the new Imperial canned liquid yeast, and I've seen homebrewers that have won awards recently, using it. Or you can use Wyeast or make a yeast starter. This will definitely help fermentation for a cleaner beer.

4. Throw out your plastic buckets! You don't have to, really, but I've found that switching to glass and especially stainless fermenters really makes your beer taste less "homebrewy."

5. Temperature: maintain a consistent temperature throughout fermentation.  Start off a few degrees cooler than your ideal fermentation temperature and let the fermentaton bring the temperature up itself and then maintain that temperature. Use a chest freezer and a temperature controller or another method. Once fermentation completes in about a week or less, raise the temp with a heat wrap, brew belt. heating pad, fermentation wrap, etc. and do a diacetyl rest, then start crashing it down to  about 32 degrees.

6. Purge any oxygen in secondary fermentation (conditioning) with co2. Keep it under a few pounds of pressure if possible, but make sure that primary fermentation is complete or you will blow your fermenter.

I hope this helps you out.
Dave

Mendocino Homebrew Festival

Yesterday we had the pleasure of pouring The Opposer Belgian and Get With The Times Red IPA at the Mendocino Homebrew Festival. Thanks to everyone for coming out and trying our beer.

Mac n' Cheese Challenge

Please join us on Sunday Oct 8, 2017 at the Mac n' Cheese Challenge in Petaluma. Try our beer, vote for Mac n' Cheese, and help the animals!

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!

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