Spring Awakening

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'.

Operation Grape Expectations: A Prologue

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.

Announcing the Huevos Caballos 2008 Ruby Cabernet

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.