Maifest 2011 - May 7th

The weather is warming and the days are getting longer, which means that it is time to celebrate the coming of summer with the second annual Maifest. For all of you who attended last year, we thank you. For those of you whom have never heard of Maifest get ready for an awesome beercentric festival filled with friends, family, food, and of course a plethora of homebrew! If you are in doubt and don’t know if this is for you, check out how last year’s Maifest went. At Maifest 2010 we drank 18 different beers, ate 214 sausages and 100 burgers. Over 300 friends and family attended and we are expecting plenty more this year. 400? 500? 600? We’ll see. Don’t worry my friends; there will be plenty of beer.

The festival will kick off at 12PM and the beer will flow until 6:00PM. This year’s lineup will cover even more beer styles including favorites from last year: Belgian Ales, German Session Beers and of course HOPOCALYPSE! We have also added a 55 gallon American Oak Barrel to our arsenal so get ready for a couple specialty beers with excellent oak flavor.

PLEASE HAVE A DESIGNATED DRIVER!

As a special treat, we will have Gregory Kolsto with us. Gregory started the nano coffee roaster Oddly Correct which produces, in my humble opinion, the best fresh roasted coffee in town. We’re not sure what all Gregory will be bringing to the table, but we’re sure it will be good. Think Hop Hammer with fewer hops and more beans. The coffee club! Good thing we’ll have our local blackcoffeesmith to run that puppy. 

Food will be provided in the form of Bichelmeyer sausages and locally raised beef burgers with some sides to fill in the gaps. The beer and food are free so bring your beer loving friends, just make sure that they are 21 or older and bring an I.D.  

T-Shirt Info

We will be coming out with more information as the day approaches so stay tuned. For now, here is the current beer menu to wet your appetite!

This Year’s Beer List
Note: Italicized beers are the favorites from last year, retooled and even better!

Brewer: Kyle FitzGerald
10 G. Bavarian Wheat
10 G. Belgian Wit
15 G. Maibock
10 G. Hefeweizen
15 G. Pilsner
10 G. Extra Special Bitter (ESB)

Brewer: Thomas Sanford
10 G. Imperial IPA (with optional Hop Hammer)
10 G. Amber Ale
10 G. Brown Ale
10 G. Porter (with optional Coffee Club)
10 G. American Strong Ale
10 G. Belgian Golden Strong Ale
10 G. Black IPA

Brewer: Ashley Strube
10 G. Belgian Trippel
10 G. Belgian Blonde
10 G. Saison
10 G. Patersbier
10 G. Rye Pale Ale
10 G. Irish Red Rye
10 G. Dusseldorf Altbier
10 G. Dortmunder Export
5 G. Smoked Porter

Guest Brewer: Chris Thowe
10 G. American Wheat

Barrel Beers – aged in an American Oak Barrel
5 G. Oak Aged Russian Imperial Stout
5 G. Oak Aged Russian Imperial Stout with Chocolate and Orange
5 G. Virgin Russian Imperial Stout
10 G. Oak Aged Wee Heavy
10 G. Virgin Wee Heavy

Location:
The Pavilion at City Park, Kansas City, Kansas

It is the huge shelter at the very top of City Park, just keep driving up and you cannot miss it.

Link to Map

For any additional information, please RSVP to maifest2010@gmail.com.

Oak Barrel Aging for Homebrewers (Part 3)

The day of transferring our Russian Imperial Stout to our new 55 gallon American Oak (heavy charred) barrel was finally upon us.  With the winter's first blanket of snow outside we finally were ready to take the 12 fermentation vessels of beer and get them into an oaky new home!  We brewed this beer on October 30th and wanted to give it time to really finish out before introducing it to the barrel.  We transferred it from bucket to barrel on December 12th which gave it about 43 days to completely ferment and settle out.

We followed our prescribed steps to preparing the barrel found HERE.  Unfortunately, after letting the barrel fully soak up the water and expand, and filling the barrel with a water/barrolkleen mixture, we discovered a tiny leak in the end of the barrel.  To fix this problem, a small wedge of natural cork was cut and hammered into the hole.

After soaking up liquid, the cork followed the oak's lead and expanded, thus stopping the leak!  After fixing the leak and cleaning away the barrolkleen, we moved on to the next step.  We dissolved 1 Oz. of citric acid and 2 Ozs. of sodium metabisulfite into 2 gallons of warm water, and used this mixture to rinse the inside of the barrel for about 10-15 minutes.  This was done to kill any wild bacteria/yeasts.

We rinsed the barrel out until the water was running clear, and put it on it's stand where it will rest
until the beer is ready.

We moved all of the buckets to the garage so that they were ready to transfer.  My HERM's system has a March pump attached to the body, and we wanted to use this to move all of the beer instead of the tedious task of siphoning it all.  We set this all up and then took a set of Final Gravities which averaged about 10 Brix. After adjusting for the alcohol, we came up with a calculated ABV of around 9-9.25%.

It tasted pretty good and will definitely benefit from the added complexities of the oak barrel.  We made 60 gallons of the beer originally.  We put 55 gallons in the barrel and kept 5 gallons in a carboy to age as a control.  This will give us an idea of what the stout tasted like sans oak flavor.  Because this is a new barrel we will probably start testing the flavor fairly soon as to make sure and get the beer off of the oak before it becomes to flavor dominant.  Overall the process went smoothly and we are excited to taste the results!  Cheers and we look forward to letting everyone know how this turns out!

All photos courtesy of Libby Connell