Ferment the World is a homebrewers meetup, similar to a club but less formal. Our sole purpose is to share and connect with other homebrewers. Whether you are curious, new, or a pro at homebrewing, join us to meet up with, learn from, share tips with, and in general hang out with other brewers in the area! We usually meet the first Monday of each month at the second floor of Harvest Moon in New Brunswick, NJ 08901. As always, we thank Harvest Moon for providing us this space for our meeting at no cost! If you’d like to help us show our appreciation, you can grab an appetizer, dinner, dessert, or drinks from the wait staff.

• Everyone should bottle and submit 5 gallons of single hopped beer to the project. If you ended up with less, no worries, not much we can do about it! If you brewed more than that, feel free to keep the rest.
• You can label as you want, but please also write your batch # in marker on top of your caps. This will greatly expedite the sorting process. I am going to post a list of #s below, should be here soon.
• There are currently 38 batches listed. As long as everyone turns in at least 38 bottles, everyone will get 1 bottle of each single hopped beer.
• Extra sets will be used for group tastings, for example on June 4 we’ll need to use at least 3 sets if we get a turnout of 24+ people. FYI we probably won’t sample all 38 beers in the same meeting We also want to give at least 1 set or 2 to Harvest Moon to thank them for their continued support!
• You are welcome to drop off your bottles to Love2Brew any time between May 7th (this coming Monday) and May 27th (Sunday).
• Sorting will take place between May 28th and June 1st. We’ll be looking for around 8 volunteers to help out. Hopefully it will take no more than 2 hours total.
• Pick up will take place June 2-June 3 at Love2Brew.
• Please bring as many empty 6-pack boxes as you have lying around to the May 7th meeting, or alternatively when you drop off your bottles. We’ll need extras to get sorting started.
• If you have any extra cardboard cases that can fit ~4 6-packs, please drop those off at Love2Brew as well. This will help us keep everyone’s sets separate.

ASSIGNED BATCH NUMBERS

Please label your bottle caps with this number.

1. Michael Blackwell, 1 German Tradition
2. Steve Dovidas, 1 Styrian Goldings
3. Jon Morales, 1 German Tettnang
4. Travis Coatney, 1 Other
5. Jared Berger, 1 * Spalt
6. Gary Kaplan, 1 UK Challenger
7. Michael Donofrio, 1 Other
8. Frank Weichmann, 1 US Tettnang
9. Jeff Hemenway, 1 * Liberty
10. Joe Jannuzzi, 1 Magnum
11. Ryan Krier, 1 Mt. Hood
12. jeffrey lewis, 1 Sterling
13. Brian Marquis, 1 Columbus
14. Andrew Klein, 1 Glacier
15. Keith Bodziak, 1 Brewer’s Gold
16. Larry Chonoles, 1 Ahtanum
17. Mike Moreken, 1 Willamette
18. Chris Kelly, 1 * Chinook
19. Ila Merick, 1 Other
20. Michael Koucky, 1 Other
21. Michael Koucky, 1 * Czech Saaz
22. Dave Rawlins, 1 Citra
23. Ben Bakelaar, 1 Kent Goldings
24. David Allara, 1 * Crystal
25. William Hulbert, 1 * US Northern Brewer
26. Jim Pullaro, 1 * UK Fuggles
27. William Strachan, 1 * Hallertau Hersbrucker
28. JD Haesloop, 1 Summit
29. JD Haesloop, 1 Nugget
30. Vincent Burzi, 1 * Cluster
31. Ron Witkowski, 1 * US Golding
32. ryan hansen, 1 Simcoe
33. ryan hansen, 1 Amarillo
34. Brian Yasutis, 1 * Warrior
35. David Rawlins, 1 * Galena
36. Stephen Rauf, 1 * Cascade
37. Bobby Barrett, 1 Palisade
38. Ted Donnelly, 1 U.S. Perle

In anticipation of a repeat blockbuster meeting next month, we’re going to put 1 or 2 things in place to help us be more prepared next time. First off, we’ll have an EventBrite registration page, just like the Single Hop Project. It will be a HUGE help for Harvest Moon to know in advance how many of us are coming, so Kyle can plan to reserve as many tables as necessary for our group. Also, on the registration page I’ll include fields for you to fill out the style and details of your beer. That will help me compile the flight list IN ADVANCE… imagine that!

On that note, to those brewers whose beers I missed earlier in the flight, sorry about that. I am looking for someone to VOLUNTEER to take over flight list duties – somebody step up! It’s a great learning experience trying to order the beers from lightest (in flavor) to heaviest (in flavor) so that your palate is able to experience the subtleties of each beer as we go through 15-20 samples. Email me if interested, and see you all next time!

Purchase a free ticket of the single hop you will brew with at http://ftwsinglehop.eventbrite.com. First come first serve! If you want to brew two 5 gallon batches, feel free!

The hops that can be provided by Harvest Moon have a * next to them.

DETAILS

We’ve finally got this thing off the ground! The planning meeting was attended by Ben B., Kyle, Dave R., Ryan H., Ted, Mike and Ila. By the time a few rounds of tasty Harvest Moon brews were finished, the details were finalized. Here’s the nitty gritty:

WHO All members of Ferment the World, PALE ALES, and WHALES are invited to participate. We can accept up to 45 brewers / batches. FTW members will receive FREE grains, hops, and yeast from Harvest Moon (how sweet is that!). Everyone else will receive free hops and yeast from Harvest Moon, but will have to purchase their own grains or DME.

WHAT Every participant will brew 5 gallons of a standardized recipe, using a single hop for flavor and aroma additions. This will yield roughly 45 bottles per batch. Imagining that we get 20 brewers to participate, everyone will exchange bottles so that each brewer gets 2 bottles of all 20 single-hopped beers (i.e. 2 sets of about three 6-packs)! Extras will go to clubs, homebrew stores, local breweries, etc. At the very least, everyone is guaranteed 1 bottle of everything. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity! Don’t pass it by, call today…

WHERE Harvest Moon and Love2Brew will be central locations for various parts of the project, and as we finalize who is participating, we may draw in other central locations like Princeton Homebrew, JJ Bittings, etc. To be determined.

WHEN We would like to finalize participation by the end of February. Then, during March, recipes will be ordered and distributed. Brewing will start in April, and follow a 1-2-3 process – 1 week in primary, 2 weeks in secondary (or an additional 2 in primary), and 3 weeks carbonation. The final two weeks in May, everyone will drop off their beers at central locations so they can be organized into sampler packs for everyone. And, at the June meeting of Ferment the World, we’ll have the first official sampling of the entire lineup!

WHY Inspired by the Mikkeler single hop series, the goal of this project is to educate all the participants about the flavor and aroma of a wide variety of hops. Typically it would take years of brewing to be exposed to all of these hops and grow your palate to discern each of them!

HOW

1. Each brewer will sign up and self-select the hop they want to brew on a first come, first serve basis.
2. The standardized recipe was designed with maximum simplicity in mind. We want anyone to be able to participate, whether its your first brew or 100th! So, the all-grain bill will simply be 10 lbs of 2-row pale malt. For extract brewers, we recommend using DME, which would be 6 lbs. We are leaving out all specialty grains in order to fully feature the hop flavor and aroma.
3. Each brew will get 1 oz of flavor hops and 1 oz of aroma hops. The bittering hop will be varied to maintain a consistent range of IBU from 40-60.
4. The yeast used will be White Labs “Cali 1″ (WLP001) or Safale US-05 (dry).
5. Detailed guidelines for brewing will be created and posted, outlining the recommended boil time, timing of hop additions, and calculations for the bittering hop addition.
6. After brewing, everyone will label their bottles with a standard mailing label including brewer’s name, OG, FG, and IBUs so we can keep track of what is what!
7. See the WHEN section above for more details regarding timing.

UPDATE #1 – March 7th, 2012

To all, I am still finalizing the details of the project, so hold tight for a few more days. I have a big spreadsheet that has all the info needed to calculate hop amounts, alpha acids, etc. Remember no one needs to get started yet. The plan was to brew around the beginning of April, give people 6 weeks of fermentation/aging/carbonation, and then do the first official tasting in June. We have brewers signed up for a total of 37 batches! About 17 from Ferment the World, 5 or so from PALE ALES, and about 10 from WHALES, including a bunch of brewers who participate in multiple clubs. We also have a few homebrewers from a recently formed club in Lawrenceville! Welcome guys.

What’s coming in the next few days:

- The brewing spreadsheet, which will primarily be about the hop additions and which ingredients you are responsible for vs. which ingredients are being provided to you by Harvest Moon!
- Detailed brewing instructions for the newer brewers. Experienced brewers, please feel free to use your own processes, keeping in mind that the more we standardize, the better the result.
- Information about when to pick your ingredients up from Love2Brew, and possibly other distribution points like Princeton Homebrew.
- Discussion about a bottle collection for those brewers who might want some free bottles. For example, we might be able to get a ton from the George St. Ale House, where one of the FTW members works.

Remember that in brewing a 5 gallon recipe, you ideally brew more than 5 gallons so that by the time of bottling you actually have 5 full gallons to bottle. 5 gallons equals 640 fluid ounces, divided by 12 ounce bottles = 53.3 bottles with no spillage or accidents. There are 37 batches of beer in this project, so everyone will definitely get 37 bottles back = 6 six packs + 1 bottle, one of each single-hopped beer. We’ll figure out what to do with the remaining sets once we find out how many extra sets we have. As I mentioned in the original post, we want extra sets to go to the homebrew clubs, homebrew stores, brewpubs, brewers, etc. that we are all affiliated with. Also if you do the math, that’s 37 batches x ~50 bottles = 1850 bottles that need to be re-sorted from all of one batch to each of 37 batches! When the time comes, we’ll definitely be looking for A LOT of help with that. And we’ll be taking A LOT of pictures to document this whole crazy project.

That’s all for now,

Ben Bakelaar

UPDATE #2 – March 18th, 2012

Hi all, here’s the latest update. Sorry it is so long, this is turning out to be a complicated project!

GRAINS AND HOPS
Grains and hops have been picked up from Harvest Moon and organized. 20 brewers are receiving 10 lbs each of grains, and 13 of those brewers are receiving their “single hop” allotment of 2 ounces. Love2Brew has a sheet with your name and ingredients – PLEASE PICK UP during normal business hours within the next week if possible. If you cannot pick them up by next Sunday (3/25), please email Ron at ron@love2brew.com to let him know when you’ll be able to pick up.

The brewers who need to pick up items (grains and/or hops) from Love2Brew are listed below:
Michael Koucky
David Allara
Bill Hulbert
Jim Pullaro
William Strachan
Vincent Burzi
Brian Yasutis
Stephen Rauf
Jeff Hemenway
Keith Bodziak
Ila Merick
Ryan Hansen
Bobby Barrett
Ted Donnelly
Stephen Dovidas
Joe Jannuzzi
Jon Morales

IBUS
We’ve modified the original instructions slightly. The new target is 40 IBUs, to keep it in the pale ale range. Previously it was 40-60 IBUs. Keeping it down to ~40 IBUs ensures that no brewer will have to use more than 3 ounces of hops. We also decided to use Chinook (12% alpha acid) as the 60 minute addition for bittering. The 60 minute addition is not expected to contribute any flavor to the brew, and so by using a higher AA hop we were able to keep the total hop bill under 3 ounces. In the example case of a low AA hop, Czech Saaz comes in at 3.0% AA, and adding 2 ounces only contributes 6 IBUs, so the remaining 34 IBUs are achieved by adding 0.8 ounces of Chinook 12% AA at 60 minutes.

BREW GUIDELINES
- 10 lbs of 2-row grain yields an estimated original gravity of 1.051.
- If you are not brewing all-grain, we recommend 6 lbs of dry malt extract for an estimated original gravity of 1.052.
- 1 ounce of flavoring hops is added at 15 minutes (or 20 minutes for noble hops).
- 1 ounce of aroma hops is added at 1 minute (or 5 minutes for noble hops).
- A variable amount of bittering hops (Chinook 12% AA or equivalent 12% AA hop if you can’t find Chinook) is added at 60 minutes to total the targeted 40 IBUs. I have created a spreadsheet to calculate the exact amount needed – please email Ben at benbakelaar@gmail.com if you have your hop, know the AA, and need help calculating how many ounces you’ll need at 60 minutes to hit your target 40 IBUs. You should be able to calculate this yourself if you have BeerSmith.

YEAST
Harvest Moon will provide yeast to anyone who wants it. However, it will not be ready until ~3/30, so that Kyle can get a fresh batch of yeast, brew a light beer with it, and provide us with the 1st generation. We spoke to Al Buck from East Coast Yeast regarding how best to distribute, and he recommended sanitized mason jars. I have purchased 19 of them for starters, at a cost of $2 per. If you want to wait for Harvest Moon yeast, stay tuned in to the Facebook page where we will announce when the yeast is ready for pickup. In this case, you will pick up directly from Harvest Moon and drop of $2 for the mason jar. FYI you’ll be getting about 1/2 pint of fresh yeast, which is more than enough for several batches of homebrew! Everyone signed up for the project is able to get free yeast. If you prefer to get started without waiting for Harvest Moon yeast, please try to use WL001 California Yeast or Safale US-05 dry yeast.

CONSISTENCY
It is logistically impossible for all brewers involved in this project to stick to the exact same guidelines and hit the same target OG, ABV, IBU, SRM, etc. That being said, the closer you stick to the guidelines, the better the result will be. If you have any questions about the guidelines, please email Ben at benbakelaar@gmail.com.

BREWING SCHEDULE
Advanced brewers are welcome to commence with brewing whenever is convenient. Overall, we are still on track for the project goal of brewing in the beginning of April, following a 1 week primary, 2 week secondary, 3 weeks carbonation (for bottles) schedule. The final two weeks in May will be bottle drop-offs and shuffling of the beers into full sets for each brewer. The FTW meeting in June will be the first “official” tasting!

Thanks everyone!
Ben Bakelaar, Ferment the World

UPDATE #3 – March 28th, 2012

Hi everyone, we are just about ready to get started! Some of you may have already gotten started in fact, which is no problem. For those who are waiting on free yeast from Harvest Moon, you should email Kyle McDonald at ropey7@hotmail.com to arrange for picking up your mason jar of yeast between Monday 4/2 and Friday 4/7 between 10AM and 8PM. Please make sure to email Kyle and set up a pre-arranged time so Kyle can plan his brewing day accordingly, or arrange for someone else to have the yeast ready for you when you arrive. If those dates/times don’t work, email Kyle and Ben and we’ll work something out.

ALSO remember to bring $2 cash to cover the cost of the mason jars. I bought 19 so far, and that is about how many people I expect will want yeast. I can always hop over to Michaels and buy more if they are running out. The reason we are purchasing them in advance is to make Kyle’s life easier. And let’s all give a big THANK YOU to Harvest Moon and Kyle for going out of their way to support this project!

Any other questions, email me at benbakelaar@gmail.com. Also I encourage everyone to post up the details and pictures of your brew day on the FTW page at http://www.facebook.com/fermenttheworld! It might be a good way to store and share brewday data that otherwise might get lost or forgotten, like your original gravity, mash temperature, etc. And guys, just to be clear, there is no way we are getting through this project with everyone yielding all 5 gallons of beer So don’t feel bad if you have an accident or come up short…  I’m sure you will not be alone!

Event: Single Hop Pale Ale Big Brew

Date: Brewing the first week in April is the target start. + or – is fine as long as you feel comfortable having your beer ready to be dropped off to Love2Brew by mid-May, possibly the weekend of 5/19-5/20.

Location:
love2brew
1583 Livingston Avenue
North Brunswick Township, NJ 08902

1. Dave R., 1776 Porter
2. Ron W., Blonde Ale
3. Stephen D., American Triple, Porter, and IPA
4. Bill S., Rogenbier (WLP300) and Rogenbier (WLP350)
5. Ben B., Pumpkin Stout
6. Robert W., Porter and IPA
7. Russell A., Cherry Stout and Bourbon Vanilla Porter
8. Bobby and Jay, Double IPA
9. Steve R., Mango Wheat and Horsehead Pumpkin Ale (Commercial)
10. Jon M., Belgian Dubbel
11. Bill H., Horseradish Beer and Sour Barleywine

We are on the lookout for our first annual Homebrewer Of The Year (HBOY) award! For the first year, we’ll keep it simple – whoever brewed the most times from Jan 1 – Dec 31 wins! And at the January 2nd meeting we will discuss what HBOY in 2012 will be – most creative brews? most volume of beer produced? Bring your ideas!

For 2011, it doesn’t matter what size your batch was, because in the end it still takes roughly the same amount of time, and you have to follow the brewing process through from beginning to end whether its 1 gallon, 5 gallons, or 10 gallons. Also, most of us don’t keep meticulous records of our brews for the entire year, so just think back, check your emails, BeerSmith, BrewPal, Notepad, etc. and reply to this post with your best estimate. You can reply via Facebook (if you are logged in to FB you should see an area at the bottom of the post, once you click in to it) or by registering as a user.

Hint: there will be prizes for both first place and runner-up, so get your info posted ASAP!