Bullock's Brewing Blog

Harvest 2009

2009-09-14T23:22:00.001-07:00

Saturday was harvest day at Huevos Caballos. This year, I bought grapes from Golden Oaks Vineyards in Paso Robles. I'm making a Syrah and a Syrah Port, which are currently fermenting. I'll try to keep updating the progress as I go. Meanwhile, look at these photos.

The syrah portion of the vineyard.

These stupid grapes don't even know they're about to be picked. What a bunch of idiots.

I paid a local orphan boy two bits and a stale loaf of bread to give me a hand. I forget his name.

50 pounds of grapes, one bucket.

Horsetrait. You can't spell Huevos Caballos with "Caballo."

Rusty, the vineyard dog.

Back in Los Angeles, the grapes await their smashing.

Before and after. Lauren wisely requested that I do the crushing outside. She is smarter than me. Next year, I'm going to get some kind of machine or something.

The finished grape must, waiting to be inoculated with yeast.

A Carboy of Amontillado

2009-09-04T18:07:00.000-07:00

It was brew day, and probably the most experimental one yet. I had set out to brew a sherry/port-style beer from Radical Brewing, a great book by Randy Mosher. For those of you who aren't Victorian aristocrats, which I am assuming is at least 5% of my readership, sherry is a kind of oxidized, fortified dessert wine. The recipe was fairly complicated, and involved a specialized mashing schedule, using cooked sugar, sherry yeast, and aging for up to a year in a warm/hot place. I guess the attic won't just be for weeping quietly to myself anymore.

Brew days are normally a lot of sitting around, punctuated by moments of doing slight work. It's pretty relaxing, to be honest, but the last thirty minutes of the mash turned out to be the most hectic half-hour of my brewing career. Hell, with the exception of my photo assistant days, maybe my life.

Everything started normally enough. I mashed the grains as suggested, which filled me with hope. The recipe called for cooked sugar, which promptly set that hope on fire and filled the kitchen with smoke.

Closely following directions, I mixed sugar and water, and put the whole thing over medium heat. I kept a close eye on the situation, and everything seemed to go as it should have. Once the desired color was reached, I turned off the heat. As soon as the wort got to a boil, it would go straight into the kettle. A few minutes later, the gardener showed up.

The dogs that Lady Bullock and I harbor HATE the gardeners. And before you ask, NO, I do not think they're racist. It was actually a little racist of YOU to assume that the gardeners are Hispanic. They are, but still.

Anyway, one of the dudes shows up, and the dogs just lose it. Maybe the gardener looks like a few dozen squirrels in a trenchcoat to them. Maybe the gardener is a few dozen squirrels in a trenchcoat. I don't feel too bad about the harassment since they cut down all my beautiful hops in their prime. At any rate, bark bark bark bark.

The guy is unflappable by this point, and just ignores them. I, however, cannot. I'm trying to get them calmed down when my phone rings. This was an important call about a freelance thing that I had to take. Fifteen minutes left on the boil. I'm talking on the phone with the sound of a weed eater in one ear, and three dogs yelping in the other. The phone call went about 15 minutes, and after awhile the dogs calmed down a little, and everything seemed fine.

After I hung up, I went downstairs to find the kitchen and hallway inundated with smoke. I could barely see through to the stove, but I could tell the sugar had continued cookng, and was now a crystallized mound of smoking carbon.

This was bad.

I lifted my shirt over my mouth and ran into the kitchen, opening every window I could along the way. The smoke hurt my eyes and made me cough, which is as far as I can tell after all these wildfires around LA, is smoke's modus operandi. I couldn't open the door leading from the kitchen to the backyard, as this would have enabled the dogs to eat the gardener Ving Rhames style, and that's the last thing I need.

After a few minutes, the smoke wafted away, but the house still smelled like flaming marshmallows, and not in a wholesome, campfire way. More like a horror movie, oh no, all the teenagers are dead at the hands of a psychopath, they left their smores on the fire kind of burning marshmallow. The kind of smell that never leaves a man.

I disposed of the carbon candy and the ruined pan, but the recipe still called for cooked sugar. I ended up using half a pound of the dark belgian candy sugar I had, along with half a pound of Indian jaggery sugar (which you'll remember from the Sikander the Great IPA), and just a little bit of muscovado. I ended up hitting gravity, so we'll see if it worked.

In a year.

Yes, folks, it's my second in a row that will take a whole year to be ready. This beer should also be a good candidate for aging, so I think I'll make it every year and always save a few for posterity.

As they say, out of adversity comes triumph (or something), so hopefully this beer/sherry will be the most triumphant Bullock's creation yet.

Like a Phoenix rising from Arizona

2009-08-17T11:58:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile, but after some summer traveling and general lie-aboutery, I'm back in the brewhouse (aka the backyard) and I have a couple of batches on the make right now. Read about them, why don't you?

Stupid Sexy Flanders is my Flanders Red Ale, an old Belgian style that relies on a variety of bacteria and yeasts to make the signature sour flavor. Duchesse de Bourgogne is the most famous commercial example, along with Rodenbach Grand Cru. They're really complex interesting beers, and take a little while to get used to. They're also great to cook with, which I'm looking forward to.

Stupid Sexy Flanders
Flanders-style Red Ale
Batch Size - 5 Gallons
OG - 1.055
FG - 1.016
abv - 5.2%
Color - 14.0 SRM

Grain Bill
Belgian Vienna Malt
4lb 0oz
Belgian Pilsen Malt
3lb 0oz
German Munich Malt
2lb 0oz
Belgian Aromatic Malt
8.00 oz
CaraMunich Malt 60
8.00 oz
Belgian Special B
8.00 oz
German Wheat Malt
8.00 oz

60 minute boil

Hops
EK Golding - 5.0% AA - 1.0 oz - 60 mins
Bagged Whole Leaf

Mash Grains at 154°F for 60 mins

Pitch WLP001 California Ale Yeast, Ferment at 70°F. Rack to secondary when SG is in 1.020s, add oak cubes and Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Belgian Blend. Age for 12-18 months, bottle condition.

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On a recent trip to BevMo, I saw a bottle of Traquair House Ale for $5.49. I had to see what a $0.46/ounce beer tasted like.

I wasn't disappointed. Rich, caramelly, malty taste. Drinks really easy for a 7.2% beer. I imagine this is what Groundskeeper Willie drinks in his hovel on special occasions. This should be quite the winter ale.

This recipe is based on the BYO magazine clone recipe, with a couple of slight tweaks. I cold-steeped the roasted barley instead of mashing, as I was going for a smoother flavor without the harsh coffee/chocolate flavor. Cold-steeping is the process of setting apart darker specialty grains and soaking them in room temperature water overnight before brewing. This extracts the sugars and color without the overpowering edge. The other secret to this beer is the drawing off of the first gallon of the first runnings, then caramelizing that gallon for 30 mins before adding it back to the boil kettle. This does a bunch of boring science stuff that even I find too uninteresting to repeat. Suffice to say, boiling make beer taste prettier.

Traquair House Ale Clone
Scotch Wee Heavy Style
OG - 1.076
FG - 1.022
abv - 7.2%
Color - 16.2 SRM

Grain Bill
Golden Promise
16lb 8oz
Roasted Barley
8oz - Cold Steeped

120 minute boil

Hops
EK Golding - 5.0% AA - 1.5 oz - 90 mins
Loose Whole Leaf

EK Golding - 5.0% AA - 1.0 oz - 30 mins
Loose Whole Leaf

Mash Grains at 153°F for 60 mins

Cold-steep Roasted Barley in 1 qt room temperature water overnight, add back to 1st runnings

Remove one gallon of first runnings and Caramelize it (boil down for 30 mis & add back to boil).
Collect another 7 gallons and begin boil. With 90 minutes left in the boil, add the caramelized wort and first hop addition.

Primary 8-10 Days, 2 weeks in secondary, 8-10 weeks conditioned in bottle

Oak in secondary

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With all this beer activity, don't think I've been slacking off over at Huevos Caballos, kids. I just bottled Jerry Reed Cherry Mead in a few different iterations. There's the regular flat cherry mead, two bottles that have been fortified with honey liqueur to make a dessert mead, and three bottles of what I hope will become sparkling mead. It could explode, it could be flat, or it could be perfect. Or some combination of all three...only time will tell.

Also there's a gallon of garlic cooking wine fermenting away. I really have no idea what to expect from this, but I had a bunch of garlic and even more free time.

What's next, you rhetorically ask? I have plans for a Smoked Altbier, a 14.5% abv Russian Imperial Stout, a TOP SECRET dessert beer, the 2009 edition of Trappist John MD, and Carbon Nation is gonna keep on rockin'. If you're lucky, you might even be invited to the Oktoberfest party...

If you can't make good beer...

2009-06-15T13:09:00.001-07:00

At least make good labels. My Aztec Ale label won Editor's Choice in the 2009 Brew Your Own Magazine Homebrew Label Contest...

Spring Awakening

2009-05-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you that thought I went out for a pack of smokes, never to return, I am here to soothe your frazzled nerves. I did all sorts of crazy things like lose my job (which seems to be really weighing heavily on Richard Branson), switch to all-grain brewing, and start Carbon Nation Homebrewing with some friends. It's been an interesting couple of months, so I'll catch you up with what I've been making.

First, I bottled the 2008 Riesling, which was chronicled extensively in this space. I won't get into the difficulties of getting the raw materials, but I will say that it was worth the effort. I haven't tried the Gran Reserva version of this wine...saving that for a special occasion where I need a wildcard that could either send everything over the edge into sublime perfection or crash the plane into the mountain.

2008 Riesling has some nice fruity character, light body, slightly spicy. It's a perfect summer wine, and Lady Bullock and I sampled some this weekend. I am actually not ashamed to give this to people

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Ctrl-Alt-Delete was the first batch of 2009. Altbier is a German-style, malty ale that's lightly hopped. I like this quite a bit, but some bottles came out undercarbonated. Nice deep copper color, good flavor with a little tinge on hop at the end.

This beer was devoid of drama in all stages of brewing, which makes for good beer, but poor blogging.

Let's just say that I had to fight off a gang of undead shaolin monk grave robbers while I brewed to make it more interesting. It was difficult, but I did it.

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Ol' Murderin' Prospector is my attempt at the California Common beer style, of which Anchor Steam is the prime example. This was the first batch that I screwed up royally, only to find that the beer kept evolving after fermentation and is now my favorite.

When I racked it out of secondary, I was sure that the beer was ruined. It was still sweet as all hell, but I accidentally added priming sugar before I checked, so the only thing I could do was bottle and hope for the best.

At first tasting, the beer was still very sweet, but drinkable. It was after a month in the bottle that it really came alive. Still has a little sweetness, but it's not overpowering any more. This has turned into a really nicely balanced beer. Too bad I'm down to only 8 bottles left.

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Aztec Ale was my first big experiment. I'd been reading about non-barley grains to use in beer in Radical Brewing, and thought I'd give it a try. The Aztecs didn't have beer, per se, but if they did, it might go a little something like this.

My base recipe is an American Amber Ale, but I replaced about 10% of the base grain with amaranth and quinoa, two ancient grains that the Aztecs used like they were going out of style. I also added a healthy dose of honey, agave nectar, blood orange rind, and vanilla beans.

I tried this beer out properly for the first time last night, and it came out pretty well. Good amber color, highly carbonated with a good head and nice aroma. It's smooth with a hint of bitterness, which I think comes from the quinoa...definitely not the hops.

I also used some crazy New Zealand hops like Pacific Jade, Nelson Sauvin, and Pacific Sunrise. I will spare you a discussion of their properties.

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I will spare you a lengthy discussion on these two beers. The short version? They suck. They were to be my first two on-tap beers, but alas, it was not to be.

Tobias Funke's Cream Ale became Light Cream Ale when my wort chiller broke mid-chill, sending about 2 gallons of water into the beer after the boil. Ruined.

Pilkington's Pub Ale was a recipe I got out of a book called Beer Captured. I will not brew anything from that book again.

Behold Mr. Roper, the Kegerator. Soon he will be dispensing Sikander the Great IPA, Brother Seamus Irish Red, and Baby Got Bock. It will indeed be a proud day.

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For those of you who haven't had DeuS, you're missing out. It's brewed in Belgium, then shipped to France to be carbonated in the Champagne method. The end result is pretty amazing, with a nice dry beer that has the fine carbonation of a sparkling wine. It's worth shelling out the $30 for a bottle, believe me.

Naturally Pat, Brian and I decided to make some of our own. We had some good times and some bad times along the way, but we ended up with some awesome beer.

The brewing and fermentation went just fine. Since this is a huge beer in terms of alcohol, it took almost a month for fermentation to be completed, then another month in secondary to clear. We bottled it in March, using champagne bottles with regular beer caps. The idea is that you store the bottles upside down and use a process called riddling to move all the yeast to the neck of the bottles. It would have worked had the caps actually fit the top of the bottles. They didn't, though, and we had to cork prematurely, but that happens to everyone, am I right?

So everything went just magically until the day we were to remove the corks and yeast plugs. On the advice of some jerk on the internet, we used acetone and dry ice to freeze the bottles. This turned out to be a poor decision. I will let the video speak for itself.

Needless to say, we quit trying to do that, and are very happy with our yeast in the bottle, thank you very much. But you can look forward to a new ongoing segment we like to call "What horribly dangerous thing will we do next."

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Here's what's fermenting and bottle conditioning:

Sikander the Great IPA is a traditional English IPA. It seems like every craft brewery in the world makes it their purpose in life to make the hoppiest, biggest IPAs under the sun. I'm not down with that. This does have quite a bit of hops in it, but after drinking it, the inside of your mouth doesn't feel like you just acted as the grass clipping bag on a riding lawnmower.

This also has two pounds of jaggery sugar from India, just to see what it's like. It's a little mapley, but smooth.

The Beast of Gevaudan is a big English Barleywine, and the first brew from Carbon Nation, a group of friends who get together once a month to brew.

It looks great and the bottles are awesome. No idea how it tastes or even what it will taste like. Should be ready to drink in 2-3 weeks.

Stairway to Hefeweizen is the second Carbon Nation brew. It's an American-style Hef. Hopefully it tastes like one. Should be ready in 2-4 weeks.

Being made next: Brother Seamus Irish Red, A Rochefort 10 Clone, and many, many more...Don't you go a'changin'.

Hydrometer, used to measure specific gravity, dies at 22 months

2009-01-15T14:31:00.000-08:00

Hydrometer, a well-liked member of the Huevos Caballos Vineyards/Bullock's Brewing Company team, passed away last night after being dropped on the kitchen counter by an unknown party.

Mr. Meter was born in rural China in March of 2007, and promptly shipped to the EC Kraus Wine Making Supplies company of Independence, Missouri. In August of that year, Mr. Meter was sent to Chas. Fonville of Huevos Caballos Vineyards along with a kit to make rancid Pinot Noir wine.

Co-workers called Mr. Meter a joy to be around, and noted that his 60 degree Fahrenheit calibration temperature was ideal and easily converted to an ambient temperature reading. He never complained about being dropped into any liquid, be it beer wort, grape must, or unfermented mead. Close friends say that his favorite starting gravity for beer was 1.056.

EC Kraus issued the following statement:

"(HY110) Our most popular hydrometer. Used for both wine and beer. Allows you to keep track of your fermentation`s progress and determine the finished product`s alcohol content by taking readings before and after fermentation and comparing them. Also, allows you to verify when your batch is ready to bottle. Shows Specific Gravity scale from .990 to 1.170, Balling degrees scale from -3 to +35 and Potential Alcohol scale -2 to +22%. Comes with complete instructions."

Services were held this morning at the blue Los Angeles Sanitation department recycling bin. HCV/BBC representatives purchased a replacement for $8 at Culver City Homebrew Supply.

Hydrometer is survived by his life partner, 6 gallon food grade plastic bucket, and over a dozen batches of wine, beer, and mead.

Bullocks 2008 - A Year in Review

2008-12-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

Well, old man 2008 has but a fortnight left in his belly before he falls, breaks his hip, and expires. We, on the other hand, only have one more year until those stupid "Happy New Year 200x" where the zeroes are the eye holes go away, unless some asshole decides to cram the "1" in 2010 between your eyes. I'm trying to stay optimistic that it won't come to that.

We're only a couple of days away from the Bullocks's Brewing Co. Company Christmas Party as well. All six BBC styles will be available for tasting. I sampled a little of each this weekend, and here's a brief rundown.

Tobias Funke's Cream Ale
By far the lightest of the 2008 batch. It is, as the name implies, creamy. It's a little hoppier than Bud or Miller and their ilk, but overall a very enjoyable beer.

Frank Shirley's Christmas Ale
Shirley's is a little darker than Funke's, and has just a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace, mostly because I put cinnamon, nutmeg, and mace in the beer.

"Hey. If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, fore-fleshing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where's the Tylenol?"

Hopped Up on Goofballs I.P.A.
The very first beer I made from my own recipe, which consisted of me grabbing a bunch of grains and malts and hops and hoping for the best. In retrospect, it's a little hoppy for my taste, but I did use three different kinds and dry hopped for the first time. I'm not sure it's technically an I.P.A., but whatever.

Trappist John, M.D.
This is the crown jewel as far as I'm concerned. It received rave notices at the Thanksgiven party I went to a couple weeks ago, and I have to say it's my favorite. Brian Palatucci, a prominent beer drinker, said "I might describe TJ, MD as 'exceptionally smooth.'"

T'ej Dancin'
Named by esteemed punnist Jeremy Lott, T'ej Dancin is a take on the Ethiopian Honey Wine t'ej, made with orange blossom honey, light malt extract, and some sticks that cost $10. This was the most suspect, as it was almost undrinkable after secondary fermentation, but after chilling and carbonation, it actually tastes pretty good. It will be interesting to compare it to the Huevos Caballos Wait til they Get a Load of Mead.

Mississippi Barry Phlegm's Vanilla Porter
This beer is as interesting as the author who inspired it. This is from a fairly robust porter recipe I got from the Home Beer Wine & Cheese shop up in Woodland Hills. The "experts" said to add two vanilla beans to the secondary, but I've never been one to read instructions or listen to people. I used six. And I still have over 120 left. That's right, everyone. I'm a vanilla magnate.

See you Saturday.

Fall 2008 Wines - They Actually Taste Like Wine

2008-11-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

So much has happened at Huevos Caballos and Bullock's since we last corresponded, dear readers.

I took my 08 wines, the Ruby Cabernet and the Riesling, to the Home Beer Wine & Cheese Shop up in picturesque Woodland Hills, California for their free post-harvest wine clinic. Vinters from all over the area were buzzing around a room that reminded me of the Henrietta, Texas Church of Christ rec center. The main differences were that all the men had beards, and there was not a drop of punch to be had. Related? I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Both wines are within nominal pH ranges, meaning something good, apparently. The Ruby Cab is a beautiful ruby color, proving that whoever named it wasn't an idiot. It's also developing a rich flavor that I would describe as "wine-like," something to which I'm unaccustomed. I would use other foods to describe what it tastes like, but I've found that making wine doesn't make one better at doing that. If pressed into a corner, I would say it tastes like carnitas and buffalo wings. Happy?

Wines change tastes throughout their aging, and I don't think I'll know exactly what they taste like for a few years. The woman we bought the grapes from gave us some of their 2005 vintage from the same vines, but the country elected an intelligent person and pirates have taken over the coast of Somalia since then, so who knows what dazzling flavor characteristics have weaseled their way into the grapes?

You've read all about the Riesling saga, but I'm happy to report that primary fermentation is completed in both the main 5 gallon batch and in the one gallon Gran Reserva batch. They're so new it's hardly describing what they taste like, as sediment is still dropping out and the pH hasn't settled down, but it tastes good. Like spicy white wine. Um, I'm gonna go with cayenne pepper and apple fritters for this one.

I haven't tried the GR, but I'm dying to see the difference. For starters, I used native yeast in the GR, and the White Labs Steinberg-Geisenheim strain for the regular batch. The GR was fermented a little hotter than the regular, and I added yeast nutrient to it as well. Bored yet?

I also bottled the 2008 Wait til They Get a Load of Mead, a sweet honey mead I started on the day The Dark Knight came out. It's a handsome looking mead, a nice golden color that might be mistaken for Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay by someone who is unwilling or unable to read the label. The case is currently sitting on the floor in the kitchen, waiting for its moment in the sun...December 13, 2008.

In our semi-regular trips up to the central coast, we've joined a little winery called Sort This Out Cellars, a fairly new but very cool little joint in Buellton. It's run by two guys who used to work together at Club 33 in Disneyland, and has a Rat Pack/Swingers theme to it. We've thoroughly enjoyed every wine we've bought from there and Lauren joined the Wine Club a couple months back.

I've been talking to the owners about my own winemaking for a couple months now, and last time they suggested I bring up some of the mead next time and I can give a little mini-tasting to whoever wants to try it. So if you're not busy on December 13th, come to Buellton, California and drink some mead.

Riesling the Body Electric, Part the Second

2008-11-10T22:30:00.000-08:00

It's been almost four weeks since I ordered my pail of Johannisberg Riesling juice from Delta Packing of Lodi, California. My previous shipping attempts failed in grand fashion. FedEx spilled 5 of the first six gallons, but I decided to make wine out of sour grape juice. From this orphaned juice, Huevos Caballos plans to produce five bottles of wild yeast fermented Riesling Gran Reserva, perhaps the most reserva wine ever.

UPS "damaged" the next attempt. There were no survivors.

UPS was again dispatched on Monday of this week, with my shipment to arrive on Wednesday. Wednesday came and went, and Condescending A-Hole #3 at UPS said I would have to wait another day before I could put a tracer on the package.

Thursday morning, I did just that, and, surprise surprise, UPS NEVER EVEN PICKED UP THE PACKAGE. I spoke with the supervisor at the station in Lodi, who also passed UPS condescension school with flying colors, and she told me that Delta didn't put it out. I called Delta back. The guy I spoke with told me that it had been sitting on the dock, but the driver didn't pick it up. She informed me that they would not overnight it to me for no charge. I delicately told her that I found this to be disagreeable, and hung up.

The next call to UPS landed me an elderly sounding C student from UPS Condescension School who told me very nicely that it wasn't their fault and that they would indeed not overnight it to me. I asked her to cancel the order, then sighed heavily.

And then I went crawling back to FedEx. Sure, they're a hair more expensive, but I don't hate them with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Then something amazing happened. I went to their website, scheduled the pickup, sent Delta the packing slip, and FedEx picked up the package. Then Saturday morning, they brought it to my house. In one piece.

Sure, the box was a little wet, and maybe a little less than half a gallon of juice had leaked out, but with all the drama that accompanied this juice, I would have settled for two gallons and a kick in the jumblies from Pauly Shore.

Thankfully, that didn't happen.

All the juice's numbers seemed to be correct according to my half-assed measurements. The homebrew store in Woodland Hills is testing your wines this weekends for free, so I'll be taking the Riesling and Ruby Cabernet up there for their mid-terms. If they don't pass, no PS3 for a week.

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The 2008 Wait til They Get a Load of Mead is bottled. It's a nice color, the little sip I had of it tasted pretty good, so I'm excited to see what a little bottle aging will do. Only 12 bottles were produced, so this should be in pretty high demand in fantasy town.

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In Bullock's Brewing Co. news, I've bottled Frank Shirley's Christmas Ale and Tobias Funke's Cream Ale, and will be bottling the Belgian Dubbel this weekend. I also started an Ethiopian T'ej, which is a cross between mead and beer. I made a trip to the Ethiopian district on Fairfax to buy a $10 bag of sticks that I need to make it, so good times there.

I also started a Kitchen Sink IPA, the first beer I've ever made using my own recipe. Of course I lost the grain bill and only vaguely remember what I put in there, but I can tell you that it will be a heady, citrusy IPA. I used a liquid and a dry malt extract, and agave syrup as an adjunct. Three different kinds of hops are in there, and I'm dry-hopping some Cascade for good measure. Thus the name. That and, well, it's made in the kitchen sink.

Keep an eye out for your Bullock's Brewing Company Christmas Party invitation...

The Bootlegger's Grandson

2008-10-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

Ben dozed off in the ratty old green chair in the corner of the bedroom, something he hadn't done in quite some time. The kids were all safely asleep, and his wife Mary Agnes was reading an old leatherbound copy of "The Prince" by the light of a small kerosene lamp on the nightstand. His snoring made her smile as she kept reading.

He jolted awake, just an instant before the grandfather clock leaning against the far wall sounded 1:00 a.m.

"Go back to sleep, Ben. You're exhausted." Mary said, not looking up from page 136.

"Can't," he said as he stood up and rubbed his face. "The cattle need attention."

Ben threw on his thick canvas coat and his ever-present grey fedora, something he was never seen without when he was out of doors.

"They're fine," she said, her nose still buried.

"It'll only be a little while." He kissed the top of her head and gingerly walked into the hallway on the creaky old hardwood floor. She never did look up.

Outside, amongst the corn and sorghum, Ben walked briskly toward the ravine.

'Let's get this over with,' he thought. 'I can see my own breath. This is ridiculous. '

Click.

"Why," he thought, "is a gun pointed at me every time I step out of the house. Am I in the right line of work, even considering these challenging economic times?" Grandpa was excellent at both hooch-running and the foreshadowing of events decades in the future.

"Turn around," a deep voice said. Ben recognized it and did as directed.

Staring him right in the face was Ernst Schroeder, his rival for both Mary Agnes' heart and the vast, deep rivers that ran brown with moonshine.

"Evening, Ben," Ernst said, a smirk on his face and his World War I rifle in his hands.

"Ernst," he said, with more sarcasm than one might expect. "Are we going to do this every night?"

"Until I get some of your territory or all of Mary, yes."

"We both know you don't have a big enough operation to handle even one of my customers."

"That's a good point. I guess I'll be needing a few of your men and stills."

"Then I guess I'd better fetch Mary." It was a hilarious rejoinder, but neither laughed.

"You won't be able to control your empire on one leg, Schneider," Ernst said as he leveled his rifle at Ben's knee.

Ben honestly didn't know what was going to happen until it did. Ernst pulled the trigger, but the bolt was so rusty that it sparked when the action pushed down on the chamber, the bullet exploded in the barrel*. Ernst was startled and tripped backwards onto his fat German ass, but he wasn't otherwise hurt.

Until, that is, Ben clocked him in the jaw, knocking out a tooth and giving him a permanent clicking noise that would rear its head every time he ate sausage. In Windthorst, Texas, that meant every meal of his life would sound like a metronome inside his puffy head.

"If I see you here again, you'll end up with the hogs," Ben said as he continued down to the ravine.

Ernst could only rub his jaw and pound the dirt with his fist like Yosemite Sam.

Ben shoved his hands in his pockets and stood next to Armando.

"How are we doing tonight, Armando?"

TO BE CONTINUED

* If it isn't obvious, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

An Alternate Take on Winemaking

2008-10-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

Alice Feiring, a very well-respected wine critic, recently decided to make her own wine after a long career in writing about and drinking the good stuff. You can follow her adventures here.

She also runs a personal site where she recommends actual wine made by people outside of their kitchens and pantries. You can check it out here: http://www.alicefeiring.com/

Just so you won't be disappointed, she doesn't drift off into meaningless nonsense very often. It's mostly factual and about the experience, blah blah blah.

Riesling the Body Electric

2008-10-28T22:11:00.000-07:00

After going around and around with a grape juice supplier, FedEx, UPS, the grape juice supplier again, a priest, a rabbi, and the ghost of a grizzled old prospector, I now know how Rosa Parks felt when she couldn't just get her six goddamn gallons of Riesling juice.

A couple weeks back, I found a supplier online in Northern California who was willing to send your humble diarist six gallons of premium Johannisberg Riesling juice from a reputable vineyard for only $35. I would have to send a nationally recognized transport company out to get the juice who would then use their well-established shipping channels to get it to me, but that was a mere trifle. I ordered a Steinberg Geisenheim yeast, did a little research and idly waited.

The Federal Express Company of Memphis, Tennessee was to pick up my juice on Thursday and deliver it to me on Saturday. As I watched Texas beat the pants off of Missouri that Saturday evening, I watched with great eagerness for gleam of the FedEx truck's headlights against the gray mailbox planted in our front yard.

Sadly, for reasons that I still don't quite have the capacity to understand, that gleam would not shimmer that day.

Tuesday, I drove home expectantly after the Internet had notified me that my sweet, sweet juice would be resting comfortably on the porch, and indeed it was. I knew it would be heavy, probably upwards of 60 pounds.

But the box couldn't have weighed more than 20. Something was amiss.

It was packed especially well. Two pieces of half inch thick plywood sandwiched a six gallon sealed pail, held down tightly by metal bands. This shit wasn't going anywhere.

After considerable effort, I liberated the pail from the metal and plywood, and pried open the sealed pail. Inside, maybe two gallons of white juice that was bubbling like crazy. I was confused. Did the team member I spoke with on the phone send me five liters? Did a roving band of street toughs abscond with my precious juice? As it was well past 6:00 PDT, there would be no way to know until the morning.

FedEx was nice enough. They said that no notes about juice flying all over the fuck had been placed on the shipment. I said thank you to the chap and bid him good day. Then I called the juice monger with that information.

Also very, very accomodating. The guy who packed my order called and assured me that he had indeed packed SIX gallons of pure Johannisberg Riesling. He admitted that they didn't ship a ton of juice, and that most customers came to their warehouse to pick up their orders. It was then that I notified him, in my mind at least, that I was not most customers.

After a few minutes of discussion, he said he'd be happy to send me a new pail for no cost. I thanked him and bid him good day as well, and dispatched a courier from the United Parcel Service of Atlanta, Georgia to him post haste.

After a couple of missed connections, the new pail was picked up on Monday the 27th of October and is currently scheduled to arrive here tomorrow. It is then that we will see if the fates smile upon the Huevos Caballos 2008 Riesling, or if they demand more sacrifice.

---

As a brief post script, I should inform you that I'm not going to dispose of the orphaned two gallons of juice like some kid of jerk. It was already well into fermentation by the time I got it, nearly to dryness. Since I hadn't yeasted it up yet, that means that the wild yeasts who summer in the grapes had started their dirty business and had eaten most of the sugar already. If I'm careful, it may produce half a case of Huevos Caballos 2008 Riesling Reserva, an ultra-exclusive wine.

---

As another brief post script, I shall now update you on the status of the fruit wines. I racked them all this evening, and they all smell and taste terrible, except the strawberry, which tastes somewhat like something that a human not in prison might wish to drink.

A Slow Descent into Madness

2008-10-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I've gone totally mental.

Right now, I have SIX different wines and a beer fermenting, with the ingredients for another wine in the fridge and yet another on a truck on its way here from Lodi. Oh, and Lauren got me a gift certificate for Culver City Home Brewing Supply, so I'm headed out there later today to pick up more beer kits, with an eye on a beer tasting party for the holidays. Seriously, you guys.

It's not like I even drink that much to begin with. Lauren and I rarely have wine with dinner, and even less often have ambassadors over for fancy dinner parties. "What's that you say, Count Du Rainier? Of course you can have another glass of Pinot. Why yes, that is a hint of burned ammonia on the nose."

I took a couple of days off last week to celebrate my 31st annual gestation cessation celebration, and devoted a goodly amount of time to the creation of some new wines. The kitchen counter tops ran red with the juice of blueberries, strawberries, pumpkin, and blood orange. I'll be posting more when I press the fruit this weekend, for those of you awaiting news with baited breath.

But that's not the point. One year ago, I had ONE wine, the little Pinot that could, sitting in a plastic bucket. How then, I query, did Huevos Caballos have a 700% increase in wine production in one year?

It all started in 1929, when my grandfather, Bernard Schneider, made moonshine. At least that's what he told me when I was younger. My mom claims that he bought it at the state fair, but I choose to believe he was a bootlegger criminal mastermind, secretly running Windthorst Texas during prohibition.

As he snuck off into the cold North Texas night air, Ben scanned the fields around the family farm carefully for anyone watching. Once he felt secure in his solitude, he checked again.

His was an operation with no room for error. Elliot Ness was after him, and the slightest misstep could spell doom for him and his men.

As he crept down the rows of corn and sorghum he grew as a cover (Grandpa hated sorghum passionately. "Goddamn sorghum," I often heard him muttering around the hearth) he felt at peace. He had fooled everyone, including his own beloved family, into thinking that he was a simple dairy farmer. He smiled to himself confidently as he saw the first glimmer of light from his massive distilling operation.

As he crested the hillock down into the ravine that hosted his "little operation" as he called it, he heard the unmistakable click of a revolver.

"Freeze!" he heard someone say in a voice barely above a whisper.

He turned around slowly to see the surprised face of Armando, one of his trusted guards.

"Oh, Mister Ben, I am so sorry. I did not realize-"

"It's all right, old friend. How are we doing tonight?"

"Good, good. Esteban has stabilized the bourbon. I think you will find it most excellent."

"Very well," he said, as they descended into the hub of the production.

Copper tanks lined the banks of the ravine, spewing out an obsidian smoke. (Most bootleggers in those days operated with coal-powered stills) A small one-armed boy ran up and handed Ben a blue speckled granite cup, brimming with a corn whiskey that doubled as an engine de-greaser and hobo poison. Ben took a small sip.

Most men buckled at even a whiff of the undiluted product, but he was no ordinary man. At his funeral, a family friend told me in confidence that he once drank a bottle of Drano and chased it with a jug of 230 proof horse whiskey, and still made it to church in time to play the procession on the organ. The Knights of Columbus of Windthorst still regard that day as the finest procession ever played in their small town.

"Good work, son." The boy, whose name no one was sure of, smiled meekly. Someone had left him at the door of Ben and Mary Agnes, and Ben told her that he'd shipped the boy off to the service back in '22. The boy rarely spoke, and did little but make spirits. His blood alcohol level, tests would later reveal, had a standard baseline of 0.30.

Ben and Armando continued their walking tour of the operation, watching as the hooch was filtered, bottled, and boxed up for shipping all over the country. They smiled in contentment, their empire humming along like the mythical perpetual motion machine.

They heard a cry coming from the back of camp, and rushed over. Luke, the night foreman, had a worker by the shirt collar. He was red in the face with anger.

"What's the matter here?" grandpa said, in his stern, managerial tone.

"I found this man stealing a slice of corn pone from one of the others. He must be punished," Lucas hissed.

Ben took Lucas' hand off of the man, and comforted the shaking worker. Ben gingerly checked inside the man's lower lip.

"This man has a tapeworm," Ben said, patting him on the back. "No wonder he's still hungry."

Grandpa laughed and smacked Lucas on the back playfully. The laugh grew and grew, crescendoing until Lucas couldn't do anything but laugh himself.

WHAP. The back of Ben's hand caught Lucas' unexpectant cheek.

"Don't ever treat one of the men like that again, no matter their transgression."

"Y...yes, Mr. Schneider. I'm sorry, sir."

"Now see this man fed and mix up a cup of the rye and two of the malted corn. That'll take care of the worm and any other critters that might've taken residence in his lowers."

"Yes sir."

"You take care, friend. You're a good man, and we need you healthy," Ben said to the afflicted man. A caring look washed away the sternness Ben had exhibited to Lucas. The man smiled.

"Thank you, Mister Schneider. I will not let you down."

"There's a bright future for you in our little operation, son."

The man smiled as Ben walked away, but then felt uneasy as he noticed the glare Lucas directed at Ben.

TO BE CONTINUED.

So you can see how I got into home wine and beer making.

Aykroyd done me right.

2008-10-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

Ray Stantz and the Kingdom of the Expensive Vodka

2008-10-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the modern wonder that is John Hodgman, I discovered CRYSTAL HEAD VODKA, a distilled spirit hauked by none other than Elwood Blues. It is, in short, most likely middling quality vodka in a bottle SHAPED LIKE A HUMAN SKULL. Dan Aykroyd explains that Bruni glass of Milan spent over two years developing the skull bottles based on a design by noted artist John Alexander.

I ask you: how am I not supposed to order some?

Distilled? Piss off. Double distilled? Get the eff outta here. TRIPLE distilled? Sir, I demand you leave my parlor at ONCE!

Crystal Head Vodka is quadruple distilled.*

How am I not supposed to order some?

Through Herkimer Diamonds, no less. Until now, I was not aware that jewels of any ilk are important in the distillation process. From now on, I shall put rubies in my wine and emeralds in my beer. Suck it, Mondavi/Jose Cuervo.

I found some at Napacabs.com and placed my order post-haste. I can't imagine what the bottles cost, but at $39.99, I figure the vodka is just a bonus.

A month or so from now, dear readers, you might find yourself smack dab in the middle of a telephonic conversation with your humble diarist similar to the one below.

"Hi Charlie. What's going on?"

"I'm just reclining on a chez lounge, eating a whole roasted chicken."

"That sounds fun."

"Oh, I forgot. I'm also drinking homebrew out of a CRYSTAL SKULL."

* Is this somehow important?

Operation Grape Expectations: A Prologue

2008-10-02T16:57:00.000-07:00

The detour to Sonic had been a disaster. Lauren said "DisneyLand" and all I could think was "Sonic is near DisneyLand. I love Sonic. We have time!" Instead of the quick jaunt off the freeway I was expecting, it turned into a 45 minute cluster-eff which saw both my blood pressure and Baja Fresh levels rise. When we finally hopped back onto the freeway, I knew we weren't gonna make it. I had to call the woman I was buying the grapes from to ask if showing up 45 minutes or so late would be all right.

"I'm sticking around the vineyard all afternoon for you guys to buy 60 pounds of grapes," I expected her to say, with a curtness that I wasn't looking forward to. "Fine, just hurry up." I was wasting this woman's time and felt awful, but there wasn't a lot I could do.

I dialed her number and put on my customer service voice.

"Hi, is that Mary?"

"Yes."

"Hi Mary, it's Charlie Fonville, coming out for the grapes this afternoon."

"Of course. Hello."

"I was hoping that it'd be okay to show up around 4:45 or so. We're running a little late."

"Okay, no problem. See you then."

"Great. Thank you." Click.

"Phew," thought I. I'm sure they're busy, with it being harvest time. Probably a lot of work to do around the old vineyard. No problem.

The address was on Grape Street, which lead me think that they themselves had named the dirt road leading to their sprawling, picturesque acreage.

Nope. Two bedroom house at the end of a cul-de-sac with Norteno music blaring from all different directions.

An old pickup parked next to an even older van held the driveway down, and a varitable maze of succulents, pomegranates, and other landscaping made it clear that some serious greenery had gone down here.

"This can't be right," I said to Lauren.

"No, it can't," she replied. "Are you sure this is the right address?"

"Not at all."

I checked my e-mail, and sure enough, it was the right address. The numbers were the same, there was an "N" before the word "Grape," and the zip code matched.

"Ooooooookay," I said, with a specific gravity of skepticism well over 1.100. (If you knew what specific gravity was, as well as normal SG levels, you would find this hilarious). Actually, probably not.

So we rang the doorbell, half expecting to find a kindly woman to take us to the real vineyard, and the other half expecting to get shot in the face.

May answered the door, a kindly woman indeed, but she did not offer to drive us to the real vineyard. Nor did she shoot us in the face.

"Nice to meet you. Come around to the side gate and I'll let you in."

We grabbed our buckets, with a look of confusion still etched on our faces. An old wooden gate swung open, and May beckoned us to come through.

And there it was. A fully-functioning, mini-vineyard.

This delightful couple produced 1,000 pounds of grapes anually. Just for themselves. May's husband, who was in Hungary setting up their retirement vineyard, decided not to make wine this year, leading them to sell the grapes for only fifty cents a pound. Ruby Cabernet grapes aren't the most sought after, mainly due to consistency problems, but I figured that it would be no huge loss if there was a catastrophic incident in the winemaking process, which there almost undoubtedly will be.

Lauren and I dutifully picked grapes, filling up three large buckets amongst the vines and bees. After we were finished and weighed up (70 pounds of fresh grapes, $35), May invited us in to clean up (grape picking puts a gunk on your hands that is damn near indescribable, but I will try - it's gross) in the house and have some of the 2005 Ruby Cabernet that they'd made.

When we stepped back outside, May had laid out a jug of wine along with a plate of brie and crackers. After shrugging off my normal "this woman poisoned this wine and is going to eat us while we're still alive...oh my god why isn't she having any? 'Lauren, head for the car. I'll take care of this.' Wham wham whap. Gunshot. 'You must* have messed with the wrong people, lady.' Walk off into the sunset to the sight of cops pulling up and digging out countless bodies" delusion, which I think we've all had while picking grapes in a stranger's backyard, I had some wine and cheese. And both were excellent.

A glass of wine later, May told Lauren and I how they landed, of all places, in Escondido, California, selling grapes to a weirdo and her boyfriend. She and her husband owned garnet mines in Alaska that they had just sold to buy a retirement estate in Hungary. After he got laid off from his job as an industrial photographer, he and May drove from the northernmost part of Canada they could get to all the way to the Panama canal. Oh yeah, and he escaped a concentration camp.

We asked her about how she found her way over here, and I have to say, her answer was not what I was expecting. It turns out that when May was 18 or 19 or so, she moved from Ireland to London, and through some girlfriends found out about the bars where the American sailors hung out. Nearly every night, she said, she and her friends would go down there to "meet" some "nice" sailors. Please note that she was not doing air quotes as she spoke.

Ladies and gentlemen, we bought grapes from the most interesting people I'd ever met.

*Must (from the Latin vinum mustum, “young wine”) is freshly pressed fruit juice (usually grape juice) that contains the skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit.

What a load of Bullock's

2008-09-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

Friday night not only marked the first presidential debate, but a much more historic moment in the grand context of our nation's history. While the first African-American presidential nominee debated the oldest mother-effer since Methuselah, I bottled my first batch of homebrew. It'll be another 2 weeks before it's carbonated and ready to drink, but still, a huge day.

Here's my marketing slogan: Bullock's Red Ale is a dark, hoppy brew that features notes of lemon, honey, wheat, and plastic bucket.

You learn something every day in homebrewing, and that day I learned that beer (at least this beer) is carbonated by putting sugar into the beer just before bottling. The yeasts, now close to death, drunk, and abusive, set their sights on this new sugar and start gobbling it up, producing C02 and just a touch of sediment. The result is the familiar and comforting "pssssch" sound of a beer cap being popped off, signaling that the trapped carbon dioxide has escaped the gulag of the bottle.

---

In other Huevos Caballos Noticias, I should be receiving my wine press today or tomorrow, after which I'll squeeze all the juice from the Ruby Cabernet must, and secondary fermentation will start.

I just started malolactic fermentation, in which some bacteria who love malic acid eat the stuff by the bucket-full and turn it into much nicer tasting lactic acid. According to Wikipedia, this process often leads to "nicer mouthfeel," which is something I think we can all get behind.

Man Cannot Make Wine Alone

2008-09-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Much can be said for making wine, but instant gratification isn't at the top of the upside list. You're looking at a minimum of four to six months from fermentation bottle, then another six months, if not a year, to be able to drink the stuff. Sure, it's rewarding just making something, but it's also rewarding to have a drink.

Beer offers both the chance to make something yourself and a relatively short gestation process. I started my Riwaka Red from Austin Homebrew on September 12th. I'll bottle this weekend, and it'll be as ready as it ever will be in three weeks.

The process of making beer up front is marginally more complicated than making wine. It requires boiling the ingredients and babysitting the whole operation...all in all, it took about four and a half hours from when I started up the process to the time I put the wort (the must of the beer world) in the primary fermentor and added the yeast.

Despite the fermentation taking almost 36 hours to start up, the process has been a good one. At first racking, the beer threw off a good inch of really smelly sludge, and its currently sitting on half an inch more. I'm very interested to see how it tastes...hopefully you'll all be enjoying the ale at my birthday next month, at least to my face.

Like wines, beer needs a good label. I found a site with a lot of really nicely designed pre-made labels, and decided to pony up. At myownlabels.com, you customize what you want the template to say, they print and send, and wham, nice custom labels.

Naming the beer was just as important. Huevos Caballos is the name of the wine making operation, so I wouldn't feel right naming the beer the same thing. I wanted something that said "Horse Balls" without being too "on-the-nose," and from thence Bullock's was born. Named equally after Seth Bullock from Deadwood and "Bollocks," I think we hit the sweet spot.

More to come on Bullock's Red Ale and whatever beer I make next...leaning toward an IPA or lager.

"If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose."

-Jack Handy

Operation Grape Expectations, Part the Second

2008-09-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

Day Three of the wine from scratch experiment is almost over, and it's been a good one. The fermentation seems to be moving along quite nicely.

You can tell from the before and after picture that things have picked up considerably over in the yeast department in the last 24 hours. The carbon dioxide that's constantly being produced is pushing the skins, pulp, and seeds, (or "cap," as we call it in the business) to the top of the must, and I have to stir and push the cap back down into the wine several times a day.

The cap is now sticking over the top of the fermentor, held together by what I can only believe is a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar and sheer willpower.

The grand mess that I made in the kitchen yesterday has been cleaned up for the most part, although it looks sort of like a good-natured dullard murdered someone and tried to clean it up with a bloody towel. Were this CSI: Franklin Hills, David Caruso would undoubtedly walk in and say "Sometimes...(long pause, removes sunglasses) grapes aren't the only things that get stomped."

But it's not, and I got grape juice everywhere and it's totally sticky.

Operation Grape Expectations, Part the First

2008-09-21T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to report that Operation Grape Expectations is now fully underway. Lauren, who is a saint for putting up with all of this nonsense, and I went to Escondido yesterday and bought 70 pounds of Ruby Cabernet grapes from a very nice woman and her husband. More on that later.

We destemmed and crushed the grapes last night, and I analyzed the brix (or sugar content), the acidity level, and the pH of the must this morning. I'm happy to report all were nominal after the tiniest bit of tweaking. I added the yeast this afternoon, and fermentation should begin in the next couple of days.

In an attempt to make this blog more legit, I'll post some boring technical stuff along with the story of the grapes themselves and their eclectic international origins.

To tide you over, here's the apocryphal warning on the primary fermenter.

Try explaining THAT at your homebrew club.

Nice to Mead You, Part the First

2008-09-21T17:30:00.000-07:00

Man, do I love Vikings. What's not to love? Dudes plundering whatever they saw, taking what they pleased, their only concern in life dying in battle so they'd get to live in a mead hall for all of eternity. By some accounts, there's a possibilty that they hunted down and wiped out the Neanderthals. I realize this is highly doubtful, but COME ON. To top it all off, there's an epic battle at the end of days, in which the earth is consumed by fire and almost all the gods die, and it's already decided and public knowledge.

These dudes were not effing around.

And they drank mead.

---

Jeremy and I wrote a script a couple of years ago, which we love to no end, called ROBOT ROBOT STRIKE ZONE (which I will gleefully send to you if you'd like to read it). It prominently features a crew of berserker Vikings. It's probably my favorite thing I've ever been a part of, and more importantly, it got me thinking about mead.

Mead is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks, with the first mentions of it coming in Vedic texts, an ancient precusor to Hinduism dating around 1700 B.C.. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder drank it, presumably without sharing with Pliny the Mrs. or Pliny the Brother.

Somewhere along the way, however, we lost our taste for the drink of Leif Ericsson and Hagar the Horrible. Beer and wine supplanted mead as the preferred drinks. I blame the Germans and the French. They apparently blamed each other for some stuff as well.

After having some commercial mead, I thought 'why buy one bottle for $12 when I can MAKE 24 bottles for less than $100. That's a savings of over $8 a bottle!

I read up on mead making, which goes like this. Get some honey, get some water, get some yeast, put them all together, heat them up, let the yeast eat the sugar, wait six months, then drink the stuff. Seems easy, right?

At this point in my winemaking career, I didn't yet have a good six gallon stockpot to make my concoctions, only a tiny two gallon one. In addition to making everything take three times as long as it should, it also looks dorky. As we all know, there's no place for looking like a dork in wine making.

Anyhoo. So instead of heating up 6 gallons of water and adding my 15 pounds of clover honey all at once, I had to rinse and repeat three times, doling out the honey in highly unscientific increments. Honey, as you may know, is not known for its non-stickyness. You can imagine the countertop/pants situation that quickly developed and escalated beyond control.

I was seeing Dark Knight that evening, and I was worried that I might be attacked by bears on the way to the theater that night. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

So it took a little while, but I finally got all the honey boiled and poured into the bucket. It would have to cool down for awhile, so I happily drove to the Hughes Center with Lauren to meet Jeremy for some chile con queso and some Batman. Both went extraordinarily well, and we raced home to check on the mead.

When I arrived home, the carboy containing the mead was still hot. Not warm, hot. It would be well over 24 hours before it was cool enough to add the yeast.

I'm happy to report everything has gone normally to date. The mead has been racked off and is clarifying nicely on its own. It's currently sitting the coat closet, anxiously awaiting November, where it begins the next stage of its journey.

Wine Cellar Plans

2008-09-18T16:53:00.001-07:00

I finally finished my wine cellar and fire pit plans. Assisted by Atelier Christian de Portzamparc of Paris.

Announcing the Huevos Caballos 2008 Ruby Cabernet

2008-09-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

Faithful blogateers, your two and a half days of religiously checking this blog have finally paid off. You are officially the first to know that late next year, Huevos Caballos Vineyards will be unveiling its very first direct from grape wine - no concentrate, no kits, no effing around.

If you're not busy on Saturday and want to get in on the ground floor of this truly historic happening, come with Lauren and me to Escondido for the grape picking.

It is a proud day, dear readers.

2008 Port - The Sweet-ret of my Success

2008-09-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

Cans of grape juice concentrate had taken me as far as I could go. I had given Charon (EC Kraus) my coins (money), and he took me across the river Styx (bad wine) on his ferry (experience). I landed on the far shore (using better ingredients) and continued my journey into hell (shoving wine bottles into every crevice in our tiny house). I needed to take it to the next level.

I love a good dessert wine. Port, which used to smell to me like grape jelly wrapped in gasoline, now makes me wish I could have it with every meal. Most people find port too rich or too sweet, two things that rarely are a concern for me. Changing hearts and minds is why I got in this business, and I decided to bring people around to port, even if it meant making enemies in the ultra-secretive dry wine cabals of California.

I ordered the KenRidge Classic Port kit this time, a self-contained kit that required no extra ingredients. The directions were easy to follow, with only eight or so steps, and to top it all off, in English. I was riding high.

"Oh shit," I thought to myself. "Did that say 'add water to bring to three gallons' or 'five?'"

It said three, and I was already most likely over four. Bollocks.

I went to enough masses growing up to realize that. Never once did the priest pour the water into the sacramental wine, then say "Oh shit oh shit oh shit! I have overly diluted our saviour!" as it transubstantiated. Never even a little bit.

Well, if Fathers Brophy, Edwards, and Stakowski didn't do it, I damn sure wasn't going to, either. I looked over my shoulder and saw no one. My secret was safe. I fitted the airlock over the carboy and backed out of the room on my tiptoes.

The first and second racking came and went without any problem. The must threw off sediment and smelled awful and I was happy for it. I added the port essence and clearing agent, and waited a couple more days. In less than a month from screwing up the easiest thing in the world, I had bottled port.

What happened next was utterly shocking.

The goddamn wine was good.

I called to Lauren, who was skeptical of my enthusiasm. It had, after all, burned her before.

She had some, sipping in her usual manner. Then she had some more, not saying a word.

"This is actually good."

"I know."

"What happened?"

"I'm a goddamn genius is what happened."

2008 Zinfandel - A Triumph in French Oak

2008-09-16T10:12:00.001-07:00

Fresh off my first vinting experience, I was hungry for more. I went back to EC Kraus, the home of the finest canned grape juice concentrates in all the land. Convinced that the SunCal brand was to blame for my Pinot's burny nose, I compared their other two brands, Alexander's Sun Country and Country Fair. I worked hard to leave Jolly, Texas, folks. Alexander's Sun Country it was.

The other thing about the '07 Pinot is that it was very light. I'm a fan of robust wines, and I wanted to make sure that whatever disgusting aroma my new wine emitted would knock my dogs out from across the room. I ordered two cans of ASC's Zinfandel glop, along with some toasted French oak chips for that 'oak barrel taste.' After acquiring fancy sugar, I got started.

The primary fermentation went off without a hitch. I invested in a glass carboy for the secondary, determined for the new batch to not smell or taste like surgical gloves. Since I had doubled the amount of juice in this recipe, it'd be four to six months before I knew if I'd made any improvement. Good thing I love doing nothing.

The months passed quickly, with me working on scripts, playing PS3, hanging with Lauren and the dogs, and having general merriment. I checked the wine every so often, racking it carefully, measuring the specific gravity, and generally fretting over it like an expectant father over his babymama's enlarging babypouch. (I'm not very good with science words).

Finally, bottlin' time came. I had decided to bottle in actual dark green wine bottles, as opposed to the blue bottles I used on the pinot. The inelegant color was supposed to be a joke, but no one laughed. I decided to go classy. Black heat shrinks. Actual labels. It was a new day at Huevos Caballos, and woe be to anyone who stood in the way.

The bottling went better this time around. The floor stayed sober, and Hoover personally sniffed every bottle for quality control. Say what you will about that dog, but she is as fastidious as she is adorable. With two cases of Zin now bottled and ready, I allowed myself a glass. As I smelled it in the most pretentious way I could summon, I noted a conspicuous absence of that ol' paint can smell. My carboy had worked! I almost became dizzy at the notion of how amazing this wine was going to taste.

Right off the bat, it was different. A darker color. It coated the edges of the glass like actual wine, not Bolero-tinted water. Lauren rolled her eyes, which in her body language means "I am so proud of you and I can't wait to have some of your new wine." (Trust me, that's what she means.)

As I swished the wine around and savored it, I nodded my head.

"This actually isn't too bad." I said.

"Uh huh," said Lauren, enthusiastic as always. I poured her a fresh glass and handed it over.

She tried the tiniest sip possible, drinking so little wine that it barely qualified. A Mormon walking by looked through the window and said "Is that all you're gonna have?"

"Eugh!" she said, in her usual manner.

"What? I think it's pretty good."

"Oh, honey," she said, like she found a kid crying in the kitchen after being unable to make breakfast for his mom.

It was clear - I was the kid, and Huevos Caballos' 2008 Zinfandel was a burnt piece of toast.

"I'm sure it'll get better," she said.

---

A month or so ago, Paris and Marissa had another wine tasting, this time at Paris and Marquis' westside apartment. I brought all three varietals of Huevos Caballos this time, hoping against hope that the months had been kind to the wines and that I would once again be hailed as the victor. (I'll be filling you in on the Port's short yet glorious life next.)

Lauren's friend from childhood got married that night, and we attended the very tasteful ceremony in Pacific Palisades before heading off to the tasting. We were in our proper duds this time, partly because of the wedding and partly because I felt that, as proprietor, I needed to represent Huevos Caballos properly.

There were a lot of people there most of whom I didn't know. They had just finished tasting all the wines, and were mostly in an appropriate state. Like fish in a barrel, I thought to myself.

Jeremy helped me open up the bottles, and I began dropping subtle hints that my wine was available. As people slowly tried the Pinot, it became clear that the alcohol already coursing through their systems was doing what it do, and the HC was receiving warm notices from all inbimbing.

It was the first test drive for the Zin in a wide setting, and I was understandably nervous. Aside from the Huevos Inner Sanctum, nary a human soul had tried it. Sure, I'd given some to Lily, but she's a thirty pound keyeshound mix with a thyroid condition, and therefore not in possession of the most qualified palate.

The familiar sounds were all around. Idle chit-chat, glasses clinking, The Olympics. Then, nothing. Relative quiet.

"This is actually pretty good," one partygoer said.

"Yeah, I like this," said another.

And then, I got the blurb for the label.

"This tastes like alcoholic Sweet Tarts."

I knew that voice. It was Jeremy.

Once again, he'd come to the rescue.

---

By the way, all these wines are available. Just let me know what you want, and I will get with our shipping department.

2007 Pinot Noir - Painted into a Corner

2008-09-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

The thing about making wine at home is that it takes a looooooong time before you know if you've made a lovely bottle of elegant, sophisticated wine, or bottled what can only be described as vile grape juice with a hint of latex paint.

Six months after ordering a starter's kit, I poured my first fully aged, ruby red glass of Sherwin-Williams #7600, known to the layperson as "Bolero."

"This isn't bad!" I said to Lauren, coughing and trying not to get throat cancer.

"Eugh!" she said, sticking her tongue out as the wine covered her mouth in a taste reminiscent of licking a new shower curtain. She coughed, and I noticed her eyebrows were singed. They must have had the misfortune, I opined, of coming in contact with the fumes my beloved Pinot was emitting, and it was a decision they will never forget.

---

Five and a half months before The Eyebrow Noir Incident, as we've come to call it, I arrived home to find two giant boxes waiting for me on the front porch. This pair of monoliths had traveled halfway across the country eager to become more than the sum of their parts - they would metamorphasize from simple grape juice concentrate and packages of chemicals to something special. They would be imbibed with great merriment and frivolity, used to make wine reduction sauces for haute cuisine dishes I would dream up. They would lower inhibitions and make weak men tremble. They would change the world.

After thoroughly reading the directions, an activity to which I was unaccustomed, I began. The good people at EC Kraus sent "First Steps in Winemaking" by C.J.J. Berry, who apparently lived in an English cottage surrounded by only glass carboys, rotting fruit, and his moustache. I read it quickly, glossing over recipes for elderberry wines and other assorted things that didn't seem germane to the task at hand. I learned about musts and hydrometers and sugar and how evil fruit flies are and how easy this was going to be. My days of Two Buck Chuck and crying myself to sleep would soon be halfway over.

I elected for the SunCal Pinot Noir Necessities Pack, mainly because Sideways had me convinced that making Pinot Noir was the best way to sleep with Virginia Madsen, who I've had a crush on since Highlander 2.

After buying five pounds of sugar (four white and one brown - already pushing the envelope), I started up. I cleaned the equipment fastidiously, making sure to keep the dogs mostly out of the bucket and concentrate. The recipe called for one can of concentrate to thirteen cans of water. Looking back, I should have bought some distilled water from my local food library, but I was young and uninformed back then, and also I don't think water poured from the Holy Grail could have helped this dime store disgrace of a concentrate. After I mixed up the purple haze of ingredients, I added yeast nutrient, acid blend, and tannins, each with the utmost care and diligence I could muster.

There are as many kinds of yeast as one would expect, and wine is finicky about which yeast she allows into her matrimonial chamber. But the can of SunCal concentrate spoke a name, and that name was Montrachet.

In somewhat unromantic terms, Homebrewheaven.com has this to say about The 'Chet.

"Red Star® Montrachet (Davis 522), a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has been derived from the collection of the University of California. This strain has been widely used in the U.S. since 1963. It is a strong fermenter with good ethanol tolerance, and will readily ferment grape musts and fruit juices to dryness. This strain also has good tolerance to free sulfur dioxide. This strain is recommended for full bodied reds and whites. It is not recommended for grapes that have recently been dusted with sulfur, because of a tendency to produce hydrogen sulfide in the presence of higher concentrations of sulfur compounds. Montrachet is noted for low volatile acidity, good flavor complexity, and intense color. Certified kosher."

It was meant to be, as I was noted for my tendency to produce hydrogen sulfide in high school, and was in fact voted "Most Likely Not to Fight Acid" senior year. Go Bearcats!

So I dumped the yeast into the must (as we in the business call it), fitted the lid and airlock on, and awaited my soon to be homemade Chateau Latour.

The next day, the whole house smelled like vinegar, to Lauren's utter delight.

"Could you please make more wine? If only this smell would last forever!" I noted the sarcasm in her voice, but I paid it no mind. To me, that smell that reminded me of my grandmother washing her windows and of the stop bath I dunked countless black and white prints into during college. Now, and forever, that smell would remind me of hard work and something that I created myself and could torture my friends and family with.

A week later, after the violent discharge of carbon dioxide slowed, it was time to "rack" the wine off the sediment. As the yeast eats the sugar and converts it into alcohol, it throws off sediment and CO2, which I suppose is a nice way of saying that it poops out grit and farts out carbon dioxide. It's good work if you can get it.

The bucket that came with my hundred dollar kit included a very handy spigot at the bottom, which made racking easy and fun! All I had to do was hook the spigot to a tube, then lead that tube into a secondary fermentor, which in this case was a bladder-like plastic jug that I added to my order for only $12.00. After I had rinsed out all the gunk from the bottom of the bucket, I poured the wine back in, and sealed 'er back up so the yeast could finish its dirty business.

Three weeks later, my blue bordeaux bottles and gold heatshrink seals had arrived, and I was ready to bottle. I'll spare you the particulars of my clumsiness, but let's just say that the countertop and floor around where I was bottling were slurring their speech and they both had to crash on the couch for the night. I still didn't quite have the hang of the heat shrinks, which involves rubber banding one of those fancy foil things over the cork and dipping it into boiling water. That also did not go well, leading to some boiling water on my trousers, a couple of snapped rubber bands, and some really crappy looking bottles.

But I was finished.

I poured myself a glass, with the sensation of heat running up the back of my neck, like I was about to some public speaking. I was actually, really, physically, nervous.

As I tasted it, I realized two things: one, I was not blind, and every hillbilly movie I ever saw learned me that if you don't go blind after drinking, then the stuff is fine. Secondly, the wine tasted terrible.

"It says two to four months of aging, Lauren. That must be it. It's just not ready yet," I said. The full impact of those words didn't sink in for a few minutes. "Is it that the wine isn't ready for us," I thought. "Or are we not ready for the wine?" It turns out that we are mutually unready for each other.

"This tastes like Manishevitz," Lauren said, unaware of the psychic gashes her crazy Yiddish words were inflicting on my mind.

"I don't know what that is," I replied, in my usual manner.

"It's wine. We have it at Passover."

With me being a good Catholic boy, all these words just turn into a jumble.

"Thanks?"

"I'm sure it'll be better after it's aged."

Famous Last Words.

About two months later, our friends Jeremy and Marissa had their wine tasting party, which I've come to look forward to eagerly each year, not only for their company, but for these amazing little sandwiches that Marissa makes.

Seriously, the sandwiches are awesome. I cannot overstate this. Awesome.

The theme that night was "The Wines of Italy," as Jeremy and Marissa had just returned from Italy, and doubtlessly wanted to fix the results of the tasting in their favor. It was a dastardly plot, but a kid from Jolly, Texas, with only the shirt on his back and a dream of some day making a drinkable wine, had other plans. (Talking about me here)

I brought a Chianti that had been in the cupboard for quite awhile as my fake-out entry, designed somewhat cunningly as a diversion. By introducing a wine made by actual people who actually knew what they were doing, I hoped to confuse and disorient the party, splitting the vote and handing the Huevos Caballos '07 Pinot the crown. It was a Rove-ian gambit, I admit, but one I assured myself would pay off in the long run, earning me that door prize.

I snuck the Huevos Caballos in next to the Chianti, which was already generating a fair amount of buzz (in my mind). Marissa and Paris, another friend, covered the wines in brown paper, along with the wines the others brought, so as to make the blind tasting as fair as possible. I snickered as they walked past, my confidence growing like yeast in a stable, 77 degree, high sugar environment.

Like the yeast, I needed to be taken down a peg.

I could tell by the feeling in the room (and the top of the bottle, and the way that it made the whole apartment smell like paint) that it was Huevos time. as Marissa poured everyone their tasting glass, I leaned back in my chair.

"This smells like paint," Brian said. He was an actor, and at that moment, I vowed never to hire him again.

"What are you talking about?" I said nervously. "This smells great."

I took a sip, careful not to betray the wine corroding my larynx.

"You know what this tastes like?" Jeremy said, as he looked at me. "It tastes like love. This tastes like someone slaved over it and nurtured it, and that every drop of that emotion is in this glass of wine."

"That's a very good observation," said I, trying to hide the tears welling up in my eyes, which were caused partly by the wine's odor, partly because my friend had sommaliered the shit out of everyone there.

"No, this tastes like paint."

My ringer Chianti didn't fare well, scoring (much deservedly) toward the middle of the pack. No wine stood out, at least in terms of traditional "quality," that night. I hoped that Jeremy's rousing speech would be enough to send me and my paint juice over the line.

"And the winner is...number three!" Paris said. I whipped my head around. Marissa was cutting off the brown paper covering the label of the winner. A thin sheet of recycled pulp was all that stood between us and our destiny. As she tore, I saw a white label corner peek through.

Then an "H."

Then a "U."

---

An hour or so later, Paris' soon-to-be husband Marquis arrived at party, after most of us were in various stages of inebriation. There was plenty of HC left, and Marissa poured him a glass.

"This was the winner," she told him. "It's Charlie's. He made it."

He drank it, then thought on it for a moment.

"Need to work on the finish a little bit."

And I still am to this day.

Scholium

2008-09-15T16:16:00.001-07:00

Read this article today in the NY Times...my kind of vineyard.

A Thinking Man’s Wines

By ERIC ASIMOV

No winery in California is more unconventional, experimental or even radical than Scholium Project.

Visit The Scholium Project

Welcome

2008-09-15T15:42:00.001-07:00

Some people collect stamps or play guitar. I put various juices in buckets and wait for them to turn into alcohol.

It started a few years ago when She Who Crinkles Her Nose at Me (or Lauren, as she's known to others) visited a few vineyards on the central coast. That place where Sandra Oh worked in Sideways, etc etc etc.

I got back to Los Angeles and got on the Google, looking up wines and wine making, finally ordering a kit from EC Kraus and starting a Pinot Noir last summer. As with my other preferred activities (photography and filmmaking) wine making requires buying a lot of really awesome gear, and is both technical and artistic. Also, the hobby basically consists of long stretches of doing nothing, punctuated by bursts of doing slightly more than nothing.

I'll work this week to recap the creation of my first three wines, as well as a mead sitting in the parlour closet and the beer sitting on the kitchen countertop.