Franklin's Brewery

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Belgium comes to Hyattsville, The Black Stuff and Bee Stings

I'm happy to announce that we've tapped Golden Opportunity and its pouring quite nicely. It checks in at 6.5%, though unfiltered is clarifying nicely via time and cold temps. Its successor, and soon to be metaphorical big brother the Belgian Dubbel has finished fermenting. At 6.8% its a much richer,fully bodied family member with a toasted malt profile.Its going to need some lagering time rounding out some of its flavors but expect to see it in early March.

The horizon here at the brewery is also showing signs of Irish cheer and warmer spring days to come. In the fermenter this week is an Irish-style dry stout, expect it to be dark with lots of roasted malt goodness and very sessionable. For anyone who has not been around a mash tun with lots of roasted barley in it, its much like a big pot of coffee...yet different. I don't drink coffee, but sipping first runnings from the mash is a similar experience of drinking roasty goodness except I still have $5 in my pocket and I'm not wired on caffeine.

The delivery guy stopped by this week and dropped off a 5 gallon/60 pound pail of Orange Blossom Honey for me. What do I have in store for it you ask? Well I'm going to add it to a beer of course. Some hints, think about Southern Florida,wheat and Crockett & Tubbs.

Thats all for now, more to come soon.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Winter of My Discontent


My friend Andrew brought to attention to me tonight that I might have jinxed myself.Upon arriving in Maryland back in January, I sent out this text message via my cell phone, "No snow on the ground,home sweet home." Flash forward a month and we are in the middle of yet another blizzard. Hyattsville is starting resemble Hoth and I think my Tauntaun has frozen.

Thankfully though things are warming up at Franklin's as last night the neighborhood came down to introduce themselves and try our two newest offerings,Hop Zen and Porter.From all accounts everyone seemed to enjoy the beers,myself included. There's a lot of positive energy buzzing around the pub and I'm really digging it. I think its going to offer a really great environment to be creative in and I trust I will get sincere feedback from our people.

Prior to the meet and greet last night I was able to fill a fermenter with "Please name me soon" Belgian Dubbel. It was fun to brew, so many nice toasted Belgian malts and its fun dumping sugar into 300+ gallons of boiling liquid.I tasted it today(Wednesday), and even though its only 24 hours old, its beginning to take shape quite nicely.

Stay warm and keep you beer cold.

Thanks for Noah Giebel for emailing the photo above,as its a great way to conserve energy by turning off your beer fridge and allowing nature to be your walk-in cooler.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Snow,liter flip tops and Rubber Chickens



I'm not quite sure how long I've been fond of Rubber Chickens, and frankly some things are best left a mystery. That said I've always found them to be timeless,humorous and one of life's great constants. If its possible to be an animated inanimate object then the RC is it. Apparently 30 foot tall RC's are hard to come by, thus why Franklin's has a beer called Rubber Chicken Red and not a giant RC perched on its rooftop overlooking Baltimore Avenue. This week I got to brew again(life is good) and the RC Red was my task. While transferring the wort(unfermented beer) from the kettle to fermenter I saw it, the beautiful fried egg of a beer or as I like to call it, the "trub cookie". Now don't let your digestive juices start flowing just yet,the trub cookie isn't really a cookie, besides what the heck is "trub" anyway? Well simply put its the material leftover in the kettle when the wort is transferred out. When it first starts to appear in the kettle as the wort volume lowers it makes its birth looking like cookie dough(hey its steamy in there and my imagination not to mention low blood sugar can get the best of me), hence where the term "cookie" derived.So check out the pic and take a look at a Rubber Chicken Fried Egg or trub cookie as I like to call it.

Well a little fun update to report,on Friday while the area was being threatened with a down comforter layer of snow, we received a drop shipment courtesy of the fine people up at Duclaw Brewing.We were able to get our hands on their former single head bottle filler and just under 2000 liter flip top bottles. So be on the lookout for some small specialty bottles available in our general store.