Bridging the Gap: Cleveland to Berkeley

In this post I will cover my last batch brewed in Cleveland and my first batch brewed in Berkeley. They are both repeats so I don't feel like they deserve they own posts, and even though they are repeat brews they still stand on their own uniqueness with lessons learned during the brewing. I had hoped to brew one more batch before leaving cleveland, but that was untenable, and my first batch in Berkeley was a few months in the making and turned out great.


Since my long-awaited White Russian Imperial Milk Stout w/ Coffee, The Dude Abides, turned out so well I gave much of it away and wanted to rebrew it so I would have more for myself and more to share! This was my last batch brewed in Cleveland. In formulating the imperial nature of the stout I wanted plenty of base malt and dextrin malt to give the final product a full body, but to kick up the ABV toward 10% I added Belgian Candi Sugar, as well. For my first brewing of this beer I used the remaining candi I bought for the first time I brewed the Spicy Jalapeno Saison. But that stuff is kind of pricey, so I researched how it's made: it's just an inverted sugar! I also found a fairly easy recipe for it and the only equipment purchase I had to make was a $4 candy thermometer I found at the grocery store. So for this second brewing of The Dude Abides I started my morning by making candi sugar, and while it cooled I started the brewing process since the candi isn't needed until the end of the boil.

Table sugar dissolved in water over heat with a light acid -->  inverted sugar.

While I wanted to rebrew this beer because I enjoyed it so much the first time, I thought of ways to tweak it, so this second The Dude Abides differed from its predecessor in a few ways. First, my aim for the beer was to hit 10% ABV or higher, and the first version was only 8.7%. So for v2.0 I increased the base malt amount by 10%, left the other grain amounts the same, and kept the candi sugar amount the same. I felt the first version wasn't quite creamy enough and could use more coffee, so I increased the lactose used by 50% (which also conveniently used up the rest of the lactose I originally bought), as well as increased the mass of whole coffee beans by 50%. I also continued to refine my water calculations for this batch and ended up over estimating the amount needed for the sparge. Thus, at the end of the planned 90-minute boil I had too much wort and boiled for another 30 minutes to bring it down to a manageable amount.

The final product from the inversion was cooled before breaking into smaller pieces for storage and usage.

I put homemade candi sugar in my homemade beer!

This brew called for more lactose than the previous one.

I also increased the whole coffee beans by 50%.

"Condition us long enough and we will be oh so tasty!"

Because of the larger-than-necessary sparge I ended up with exactly 20 bottles. And even though the recipe isn't too different from the first version of this beer I present it for you here:

The Dude Abides (v2.0)

Grain Bill:

5.50 lb Marris Otter Malt

0.50 lb Roasted Barley

0.50 lb Crystal 40L Malt

0.15 lb Munich Malt

0.15 lb Carapils Malt (body)

0.25 lb flaked wheat (head formation)

Strike 10.6 qt H2O to 165°F. Mash in oven for 90 minutes at 155°F. Sparge with 8 qt H2O at 170°F.

120-min Boil:

1.50 oz Willamette hops 5.3 AA% @ 120 min

1.50 oz UK Fuggle hops 5.3 AA% @ 120 min

9.6 oz lactose @ 75 min

1/4 tsp irish  moss @ 75 min

9.6 oz homemade clear Belgian candi sugar @ flameout

Fully dissolve the candi into the wort and then cool to 62°F in an ice bath. Hydrate and pitch 1 packet Safale S-04 yeast. Dry hop for two weeks with 1.46 oz whole Breakfast Coffee beans one week after pitching. Bottle with 1.5 gm priming sugar.

You can find the full gallery of photos here.

And that was the last beer I brewed in Cleveland before moving to Berkeley, CA. It took a few months of settling into our new city and finding a good, local brewing supply store before I brewed another batch of beer, the first in Berkeley. The store I found is called Oak Barrel Winecraft. It's quite good and is within walking distance of my apartment here, which is a huge plus over the 30-min drive I had to make out to The Brew Mentor back in Ohio. My favorite part of shopping at Oak Barrel is that you can buy liquid malt extract in any amount you want! I don't use LME in my brewing, but I do use it in my spent grain bars recipe, and not having to by a 1.5-kg can of the stuff is much nicer.

As detailed elsewhere, I wanted to brew the Spicy Jalapeno Saison again this year, and plan to do so every year. This was my first California brew. My work takes me out of town for 2-3 weeks at a time, so I brewed right before I left for my first trip this summer and bottled the week after I returned. The following images show the major steps in brewing this, but I won't detail the brew day here. The major difference from previous brewing, aside from scaling to 2-gal volumes, is that I increased the proportion of jalapeño by 50% and used the Belgian Candi sugar I made for the second batch of The Dude Abides, described above.

Everything needed to brew this delicious beer.

Boil additions laid out and ready for their turn.

I used Belle Saison yeast for the first time in this brew.

Wort chilled, yeast pitched, blow-off tube set. Ready to ferment!

OG reading 1.054

FG reading 1.001

21 equivalent bottles going on to condition.

This brew went well, and even though I was a few months out of practice, my brewing skills had not faded. The original recipe projects an ABV of 6.2%, and this one came to 6.9%. I use the more correct, "alternate" ABV calculation, but I don't think that caused the higher final ABV since I used it for 2013's Spicy Jalapeño Saison. Maybe my homemade candy sugar is more potent than store bought… I may never know what caused the greater ABV for this batch, but I do know that this brew is amazing. It's easily my favorite beer I homebrew and has been so consistently for three batches now, especially now that I am more familiar with this beer style and allowing my beers enough time to age into their own.

A full gallery of photos from this brew can be found here.

So that's it! As I finish this post weeks after I started it I now have two more batches under my belt in Berkeley, and they'll have their own posts up here in time. I'm thinking about my next batch which I might brew next weekend while my wife as an all-day seminary class. No idea what I'll be brewing, though. Might be something for New Years as that batch would be ready just in time for the holiday, or I might rebrew something from last year, one of my two IPAs.

I don't have a clever post-related question here, so just say what you want in the comments!

Until next time friends, happy brewing!