14: Wayne's Weekly Update

Hello everyone! This weeks focus so far has been on the floors and the drains. We have finally decided on a concrete contractor and a plumbing contractor. The floors will have to be removed in the packaging area and the brewing area and repoured with a three eighths inch per foot slope to the drain. The slopes will feed into a trench drain the is sloped to flow one way. All drain will have to be connected and sent to a main exhaust. We found out that we are going to have to tie into the drain outside since the plumbing in the building is old and most likely not large enough to be able to meet our demands. Tomorrow(5/08/08) we will be working towards trying to acquire the work permits in order to get this whole floor business going forward. "Just when I thought I was out...they pulled me back in". Another catch in this whole start up situation.
 
      Earlier this week we packaged the Imperial Stout and the Double Nut Brown. Both were tasty and gave me some insight on which strains of yeast will be our house strains. The Imperial was pitched with London Ale and American Ale. Out of these two I preferred the American because it allowed the malt and hops to stand out with minimal yeast byproducts. The London tasted a little muddled to me and the overall expression wasn't near as bright as the American strain. See tasting notes for this beer in previous posts on this site.
 
      The Double Nut Brown was split and pitched with two different yeast strains as well. We used American and Thames Valley for this beer. The Thames was my choice out of these two. It retained the caramel expression of the center of this beer and just overall tasted more English without the diacetyl or excessive esters. The tasting notes for this beer are also posted in earlier posts if you are interested.
 
       My conclusion for our standard house yeast strain is Thames Valley. I was considering American Ale but looked at all three strains and felt that the Thames would be more striking and best suit our needs. I think that it will still have the versatility of the American Ale strain for the most part and, with temperature controlled fermentations based on the style we are trying to create, should work just fine for us.
 
       The Guava Wheat was finished fermenting in two days. I fermented it at 72 F and came in to work on Monday to see very little activity. Big bubblegum notes in the aroma with some interesting phenols as well. We were able to hit a grocery that carries guava juice with no preservatives and we added about 33 oz to 4.5 gallons of beer. I imagine it will go through a secondary fermentation and then if we aren't happy with the guava character we will just add more juice until we reach the desired level. Looking forward to tasting it tomorrow.
 
        Last but not least, we have been discussing the cedar aged beer idea that will be one of our core beers. Production time will be extended on this beer due to the lengthy wood contact in order to get the cedar character. It will probably only see production 6 times out of the year. We are planning on calling this the Humidor Series and instead of doing just one base style we will rotate through as many as six. Note that this is apt to change based upon demand. If one stands out then it might slow down the rotation a little. Stay tuned for this limited edition core beer series. If all goes well you might see the first bottle on the shelf by November.
 
        That wraps up this week. Hope you are all well and sipping your favorite beer in your local pub or on the backporch.

Cheers and take care,

          Wayne Wambles
           Head Brewer
           Cigar City Brewing

Posted by Cigar City Brewing at 5/8/2008 11:26 AM
Categories: Test batches bottled.
 

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