It
All Started with a Book from Papa
Cedar Creek Brewing Company originated as the Bardenwerper
Bier Company in 1987. It began with an (un-signed) first-edition
copy of Charlie (Papa) Papazian's book: The Complete
Joy of Homebrewing, a 20qt pot (plus a few other kitchen pots!),
a trusty Corona grain mill, a Zapap double-bucket mash
tun, and a 20' homemade copper immersion wort chiller and has slowly
evolved into what it has become today.
The pictures
below were taken from June, 2005 through October 2007 while brewing
a variety of different beers including my favorite "house
brew" - Red November Ale.
Red November
is a deep redish-amber colored ale brewed with premium English
Maris Otter, cara munich, and two varieties of crystal malts,
plus whole Czech Saaz and Fuggle hops. Fermented with a traditional Irish top-fermenting
ale yeast. It's deep in body, rich in flavor, complex in layers
and has a rocky, tan head that clings to the glass. Murky to
crystaline, depenfing upon age and conditioning, November Red
is malty by style, yet balanced to hoppy by preference. Quite
simply: It's my favorite. ...Yet Red November continues
to evolve... .
Why Homebrewing?
What attracts
me most to brewing is the sense of nostalgia, followed closely
by the challenge of brewing beers in infinite variety,
followed closely by the fact that brewing can be a life-long
pursuit of deeper and deeper beer and brewing
knowledge. Brewing is one of the very oldest of crafts. It
has been theorized that the transition of man from
hunter/gatherer to agriculturally based was due to the need
for growing grain - for making beer! Throughout history, brewing
has influenced more societal and technological advancements than
perhaps almost any other single man-made item prior to about 1900.
Brewing's
rich history is present, sometimes dominant, in every known past
and present culture on Earth. Like
many Milwaukee-ans, I have deep German roots, in my case literally
tracing back to the twelfth century! For me, brewing gives me the
feeling of a unique connection to my ancestors who were wine makers
(and undoubtedly homebrewers) in Bingen on the Rhine, Germany.
Brewing is a
balance of art and science, perfecting
the craft to the best of one's abilities through process and technology.
I thoroughly enjoy perfecting my brewing processes, all the while
building, tweaking and improving my home brewery. Lastly, I homebrew
because I love to brew! I love the process of brewing and getting
great beer in return for my labor is a bonus. I enjoy seeing the
reactions when I share my beer with family, friends and acquaintances
who enjoy a hand-crafted beer and their enjoyment is my (priceless)
reward!
Poison-Wine at
9, Fired Still at 15
Even as
a young child I experimented with making "wine." I
used berries I knew were poisonous and never drank the noxious
stuff I made. I just liked "playing winemaker," going
through the process of crushing the berries I found in our yard,
adding sugar and water and boiling them, then fermenting them
(with bread yeast) in a cider jug with tin-foil cap, then finally
bottling and labeling the finished poison-wine.
Early on in high-school,
I once made a gallon of rather crude apple wine from the lone
apple tree (still) in my parents front yard. Thanks to inspiration
from chemistry class, I then made a fully-functioning, alcohol-lamp
fired, circulating water-cooled still in my parents basement.
I proceeded to make apple brandy - much to my father's dismay!
He took one whiff of my highly-aromatic, distilled concoction
and said, with a slight smirk of amusement, wonderment, and perhaps
even a bit of pride in his son's ingenuity, "You're
going to either blow-up the house, make wood alcohol and go blind,
or get good and drunk. Any way, nothing good can come form
it." That
was his way of telling me to shut it down. He was right of course.
I got good and drunk! OK,
no I didn't. I was too chicken to try more than a sip of
what I was otherwise sure was a VERY strong apple brandy. In
reality, I made about four ounces of the fire water. I took one
sip and, well, some taste buds don't ever grow back! I promptly
tossed the rest down the basement sink. I would start homebrewing
only eight years later. What can I say, making wine and beer
is just something that I've always held a fascination for.
All
Grain Brewing - A Beginning with No End
I began all-grain brewing after my third batch of liquid and dried malt extract
brews in 1987. The first beer was cidery and alcoholic from 50% sugar. The next
two batches I used only dry malt extract and no sugar, they were much better,
but still kinda thin and moreover, the whole process felt lacking. I wanted to
learn how to really brew beer, the authentic way - grinding grains,
mashing, sparging - everything a real brewery does! Not much more equipment is
needed and I'd be able to brew the traditional, authentic way and make virtually
any beer I wanted. Plus, it's less expensive and looked like lots more fun (it
is).
My first couple
batches tasted wonderful, full bodied and smooth, but with very low
alcohol due to poor conversion and extraction efficiency. After a
little bit of studying and some tweaks to my homemade equipment,
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I
quickly solved that problem and ever since I've been crafting
brews like: Alder Wood Smoked Porter using home-smoked grains;
Vanilla-Bean Porter using fresh, imported vanilla beans; authentic
ca.1800 London Porter using specially home-roasted and smoked
grains (following weeks of research); Belgian Cherry Wit using
20lbs of whole, frozen Michigan tart and sweet cherries; plus
countless other beers including: English Bitter, English, American
and India Pale Ale, Scottish Amber Ale, U. K. Brown Ale, and
of course my Irish Red Ale. I even brew a traditional German
lager from time to time.
All
grain brewing gives the brewer total control over every aspect
of the finished beer and has allowed me to be more creative in
formulating recipes while attempting to create or duplicate anything
I want! There is literally no end to the variety of beers one
can create homebrewing. It's becoming accepted that many
of the best beers in the world are not sold, but homebrewed.
Indeed, homebrew often surpasses
expensive microbrewed and imported beers! It's easy to get
spoiled with great-tasting, fresh, hand-crafted, homebrew of
your own creation - and it only gets better as one becomes more
knowledgeable and skilled as a homebrewer!
Secret
of My Success
Over the years I've brewed countless batches and made many mistakes in the process.
In spite of my mistakes, I've always managed to brew good beer. Usually VERY
good beer. Homebrewing is incredibly forgiving and often, mistakes result in
improved beer!
If I had
only one piece of advice for new homebrewers, it would be: practice
great sanitation and you'll make great beer. Sanitation
is the key to good beer. While some batches I've brewed
have been better than others, I've never had to toss a batch
of homebrew. I credit that success to always practicing good
sanitation.
Guard
Your Wallet - aka Brewery Upgrades
Building a brewery is half the fun of being
a homebrewer. It seems most brewers enjoy making their
own equipment, myself included. Do-it-yourself
projects abound in homebrewing and range from astonishing
complexity suited for engineers and PhD's, to very
simple projects that almost anyone can do. See
a couple of my DIY how-to brewing equipment tutorials below that
fall somewhere in-between in complexity.
My brewery
has slowly but steadily been upgraded over the last
20 years and I've been particularly active since 2001.
In the spring of 2005 I acquired a partially completed,
homemade 15 gallon conical fermentor. That fermentor
is now completed and includes a dump-valve, rotating racking
port, R15 foil insulation, and digitally controlled thermo-electric
cooling to ale fermentation temps.
In
August of 2006 I added a 10 gallon Igloo cooler for my new mash
tun so I can now brew 10 gallon batches to better fill my 15
gallon fermentor. I also added a March 809 pump to fill the brew
kettle from the grant and to pump hot wort through the wort
chiller and fill the conical. The March pump replaced a
hand drill-powered water pump that was a bit awkward to use,
and eliminated having to lift any heavy kettles of dangerously
hot wort.
Recently,
I added a magnetic stir plate and Erlenmeyer flask for making
yeast starters, a refractometer for measuring wort gravity,
a digital pH meter for checking strike liquor, hot liquor and
mash pH, and a digital thermometer - I was tired of how inaccurate
my dial and floating thermometers were.
Looking
into the Brew Kettle
What's next
for the brewery? Hard to say exactly. Until I move my brewery
outside and build an actual brewing stand, hence a full-blown rig,
I feel I have built my system out about as much as I can. (Yea,
right.)
Someday,
if I ever won the lottery (I guess I better start playing), I'd
like to add a binocular microscope so I could check yeast culture
purity and viability, and wort for bacteria levels. More realistically,
I'm working on (actually, just thinking about at this point) a
plan for vorlaufing more easily with the pump - perhaps some sort
of built-in vorlauf valve and non-HSA-ing nozzle in the mash tun.
I've also been toying with the idea of making an in-line hopback
from a stainless kitchen canister.
...And What of Papa's Book?
Well, it's the only piece of original "equipment" I still use.
It's worn and tattered, some of its pages are falling out
as I often refer to some of it's timeless info to this day,
and yes, it still needs signing... .
If
you have any questions, comments or suggestions, or just want
to say HEY!, feel free to e-mail me at: werper@cedarcreeknetworks.com
Prosit from
Milwaukee!
Tom Bardenwerper
H.B.
Owner/Proprietor/Chief
Pee-On and BrewMaster
Cedar Creek
Brewing Company
Thiensville, WI. U.S.A. |
