Wedding Bells at C'est Bon Biere

Hey everybody! I know you haven't heard from us much since Hattiesburg, but we have had a busy couple of months at C'est Bon Biere. As many of you probably noticed on our Facebook page, we got great feedback at the Hattiesburg Craft Beer Festival, and gained a few followers as well. We hope to keep all of our fans (Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Colorado, and everywhere else) informed on our plans for brewing and growing.

The last two months we have been brewing entirely for our wedding. That's right, your two favorite home brewers are getting married! What would a wedding between the founders of C'est Bon Biere be without some original good beer from CBB? We will be serving 4 beers on tap, for a total of 25 gallons of good beer.

Belgian Missile Crisis - Our Belgian wit brewed with fresh orange zest and coriander.

Guilty Pleasure - Our chocolate stout brewed with 2 pounds of unsweetened cocoa.

Cat's Out the Bag - Our cream ale blended with a hibiscus and mixed berry tea.

Something Old/Something New - This is our original black IPA recipe (the second batch of beer we ever brewed), aged in a whiskey barrel!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

After the wedding festivities are over, we will go back to the beer festival tour. Our first stop is at NOLA on Tap, September 26 in New Orleans. We will have at least two beers served there.

The next festival of the year is our favorite, Bayou Beer Festival in Houma, Louisiana on November 14. This will be the third annual event, and our third year handing out homebrew. This year we will be serving two very popular beers, the Belgian Missile Crisis and the Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine.

We can't wait to see you all there. Until then: drink local, good beer!

New Year, New Beer

Happy New Year to the great fans and followers of C'est Bon Biere! We enjoyed a great evening with friends, both old and new. Many of them got to enjoy our homebrewed beer, where we served Frostbite Winter Warmer, and Hakuna Mahopa Black IPA. I know many of you want to sample some of our delicious home brewed concoctions, so just get in touch with us. We will be more than willing to have people over to enjoy some brews.

At C'est Bon Biere, we decided to start the year off with a brew day. January 1st began with the brewing of our first attempt at a lager. We decided to brew a California Common, also known as a Steam Beer. It is very similar to Anchor Steam, from the oldest craft brewery in America (they claim since 1896)! We are calling this one Common Sense, because everyone can use a little common sense in 2015.

In order to brew a lager, we needed two vital pieces of equipment: a refrigerator and the equipment to make a yeast starter. There are two broad categories of beer, ale and lager. Ales are top fermented and ferment at warmer temperatures, while lagers are bottom fermented at colder temperatures. We are currently using our kegerator to ferment the lager, and keep a constant temperature.

Even after three days, you can already see the result of fermentation in the glass carboy

Another oddity about lagers, is that they require more active yeast cells to fully convert the sugars to alcohol. It seemed like the best time to get some equipment to make a yeast starter.

A 2L Erlenmeyer flask with a magnetic stir plate. The chemical engineer in me is excited!

Usually, we buy packages of yeast from the homebrew supply shop, and pitch those packages directly into the wort. These packages, on the manufactured date, contain 100 million yeast cells. As the package gets older, the number of active yeast cells decrease. A yeast starter is essentially a small batch of beer that is made a day or more before the scheduled brew day in order to activate the package of yeast.

After a day of refrigeration, the yeast cells rest at the bottom of the flask, ready to be pitched into our brew.

The yeast will become active and multiply in the sugary wort. After refrigeration, the yeast cells will settle to the bottom of the flask, ready to be pitched. For Common Sense, we pitched 65 million yeast cells into the starter, and two days later pitched 200 million yeast cells! The number of cells can be controlled based on the amount of starter wort made.

C'est Bon Biere is going to have a busy year, and we look forward to keeping you updated on our brews and educated on beer science and the growth of craft beer in the Louisiana. One of these days, we look forward to moving out of the garage, and become the first microbrewery in Gonzales, LA!

Coming up next, we plan on collaborating with a homebrewing friend of ours to make two beers for the upcoming homebrew competitions, a blonde ale and a saison. Our black IPA will also be entered in the competitions. More information to come when we get these recipes written, creative names are thought of, and the brew day starts.

Until then, drink local. Drink good beer. Cheers!

Officially "Home"brewers!

I'm sure many of you have noticed that we have not posted to the blog in a while. There has been a lot going on for Sam and I in the past two months. I guess it's time to get you all up to speed. We have not had much time to brew since the Chai Dark Ale in the last blog post.

Since February, we have been tirelessly studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam. For most of those who have not heard of the FE, it is a 6-hour exam that engineers take after graduating with an engineering degree.

 

We both took the Chemical Engineering specific exam. Both of us passed! It would have been awkward if one of us passed and the other did not. I'm glad all of that studying paid off. For the next four years we are Engineering Interns, working under Professional Engineers. After the four years of interning, we can take the Professional Engineering exam (PE).

We also bought a house in Gonzales, LA, removed 1200 square feet of tile flooring, replaced it with hardwood, painted the walls, and moved our belongings to our new house. Now that all of the hard work is done, the place turned out great.

We even have space for our beer tap and pint glasses.

As for our brewing adventures, we will soon brew the Second Line Black IPA. A slightly bitter, dark ale with coffee flavors and a hint of chocolate.

This will be on tap at our home along with the Blarney Stone Irish Red Ale. Let us know if you want to try one of our homebrew.

On May 10th, C'est Bon Biere will attend Mellow Brewfest in Covington, LA. We have three beers entered in the competition, and one beer in the People's Choice competition. Once those results are in, you will be the first to find out. Hopefully we can come home with another medal. If not, at least we can spread the word about Gonzales's newest homebrewers.