Going German this Summer (Also, What's Going On at C'est Bon Biere)

EDITED: Gulf Brew will be on July 30th, 2016.

Hello fellow craft beer lovers. I know it's been a while, but if you have kept up with our Facebook updates, you know we have been busy this spring. This weekend, we are shipping bottles of Night Shift Baltic Porter to Baltimore, Maryland for the National Homebrew Competition finals! We are pretty excited to have advanced to finals. Over 7,900 beers were entered this year, and it is an honor to have received a 1st place award in Round 1 (Not to mention both a gold and silver certificate for both beers entered).

Another notch in the C'est Bon Biere belt!

As many of you know, C'est Bon Biere is a "his and hers" brewery. All of the beer styles we brew are decided on by the husband and his better half. That's what the small. 'his' or 'hers' means on the top of every beer label. Many of the 'his' beers are Belgian styles, which are Taylor's preferred, and many of the 'hers' beers are stouts and porters, which are Sam's preferred. We have brewed styles from France, Belgium, and England often, but what about Germany? They have influenced beer styles all over the world for centuries. It is time for C'est Bon Biere to attempt some German style beers. So that's what we are doing this summer.

We will have three great offerings, honoring traditional German styles, adhering strictly to the German Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot) which states that beer shall only be brewed with water, barley, hops, and yeast. Before you start questioning my history, you are right, yeast was not technically part of the Reinheitsgebot in 1516. They didn't know what yeast was. It just magically fermented if you left an open container in the cellar for a few months... And before you question my history again, yes the Reinheitsgebot was updated in the mid 1500s to include barley and wheat. How else do you think beers like weisbier, hefeweissen, and weisenbock became so popular?

So, this summer we will be offering a helles bock, weisbier, and altbier. I See the Light Helles Bock inspired by the the light color and high alcohol content, is our first lager of the year. Add this one to our many Disney inspired beer names (Thank my wife for that one).

Second we have a German wheat beer, weisbier, with strong banana and clove aromas. This may be the first beer where we came up with the name before the recipe.

Sorry Vanilla, but we didn't copy you at all... Ours is different....

Finally, a hoppier German style beer, altbier. It's not as hoppy as many British or American styles many of us are familiar with, but it is much more bitter than the typical malty German beers. This one is named after the Hop Pig, a mascot known in many hop-growing regions in Germany, Belgium, and the Czech Republic. We picture the hop pig as a classy, upstanding individual who enjoys a pint of good craft beer.

Enough about our new beers, let's talk about what you came here for. Where can you try our beers? There are four beer festivals in south Louisiana that we will attend this year. We want to give you plenty of advance notice of when and where we will be, and of course give you a tentative beer list. This may change, of course, but you will be in for a treat regardless of what we are serving.

TOAST UNDER THE OAKS: June 18th at Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, LA
Serving: Weis Weis Baby Weisbier, Chateau Tripel, Night Shift Baltic Porter, Hawaiian Roller Coaster Belgian Pale Ale

GULF BREW: July 30 at Blackham Coliseum in Lafayette, LA
Serving: Belgian Missile Crisis Witbier, I See the Light Helles Bock, and Operation Fortitude Biere de Garde

NOLA ON TAP: September 24 at City Park in New Orleans, LA
Serving: Hakuna Mahopa India Porter, Barley Dog Dubbel, Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine, and Belgian Missile Crisis Wittier
BAYOU BEER FEST: November 12, at Southdown Plantation in Houma, LA. This will be our 4th year serving at the 4th annual Bayou Beer Fest. No other homebrewer can make that claim.
Serving: Die Hopfensau Altbier, Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Milk Stout, and Hawaiian Roller Coaster Belgian Pale Ale.

We hope to see you guys at one of these festivals. Be sure to spread the word about us to your friends and family. Give us a like on Facebook too. We love making good beer that people love to drink. Until next time, drink local, drink cart beer. Cheers!

The Thing About Sour Beer...

I know it's been a while since my last post, I apologize in advance. Let's chalk it up to I've been doing a lot of brewing, and very little writing. This year is going to be a year of experimentation and fine tuning old recipes. More info to come on results from National Homebrew Competition, other local competitions, and everyone's favorite homebrew festivals.

I was thinking of making this a Facebook post, but my ideas kept getting longer than a paragraph and a picture (That seems to be the social media limit for attention span). This weekend we brewed 10 gallons of Cat's Out the Bag Cream Ale with the intention of making two separate batches of beer, by pitching different yeast strains.

The first batch is the usual cream ale, which we will add mangos to in the keg. Our cream ale has always been a way to experiment with fruit and spices, because it is a light, crisp, and fruity beer to begin with, a blank canvas for experimentation. Other adjuncts added to our cream ale include peaches, vanilla and lactose, and a combination of lemon, basil, and thyme.

The second half of the batch is where things get interesting. We will be making a sour ale, and pitching fresh apples into the secondary fermentation. Now before I go any farther, let me give some background on the topic of sour beer. Sour ales have a long history in the brewing world, with as wide-ranging of style as IPAs, stouts, and bocks. When you hear sour beer, it could be Lambic, Berliner Weisse, Flanders Red, Oud Bruin, Gose, or any other wild ale.

I'd encourage you to try different styles of sours, IPAs, stouts, etc. before making a blanket about not liking sours, IPAs, stouts, etc. That's a conversation for another post. Feel free to contact me at itsgoodbeer@gmail.com if you ever have questions about beer styles, are looking for recommendations, or any other beer related information.

Quick crash course in microbiology... Typical beer yeast is "saccharomyces cerevisiae". Sour bacteria in beer is "brettanomyces", "lactobacillus", "pediococcus", "acetobacter", or others but I have run out of Latin gibberish.

Now for the fun stuff. What we are brewing is considered a Lambic, a Belgian beer historically fermented in open vats, allowing any bacteria floating around in the air to end up in the beer. It is this unusual process which gives the beer its distinctive flavor: dry, vinous, and cidery, usually with a sour aftertaste.
During fermentation, instead of producing foamy Krausen, sour bacteria produce pellicles, or a thin film, which traps the CO2 gas. Below is a picture of the pellicles formed on our lambic after 24 hours of fermentation.

I know it looks gross, but it's science!

There are many different types of Lambic ales. "Gueze" means to blend aged Lambic (typically dry) with younger Lambic (typically sweet from unfermented sugars), and is usually designated as such on the label. Fruit additions are common, and can include:

Cherry – Kriek
Raspberry – Framboise
Peach – Peche
Blackcurrant – Cassis
Grape – Druif
Strawberry – Aardbei
Apple – Pomme
Banana – Banane
Pineapple – Ananas
Apricot – Abricotier
Plum – Prunier
Cloudberry – Plaquebiere
Lemon – Citroon
Blueberry – Bleuet

Our Pomme Lambic will hopefully be the first of many fruit Lambic. One down, fourteen to go!

If you want to learn more about sour beers, or any other style for that matter, give us a shout. We are always glad to talk beer with people who love good beer.

PS. Spell check hates me after this article...

Beer and Bread: A Merry Christmas from C'est Bon Biere

First of all, we at C'est Bon Biere would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy new year.

We had a wonderful year brewing beer while learning about new beer styles and recipes. It has always been a mission of ours to create "his and her" beers, a friendly competition between beer recipes created by husband and wife. By a 3-1 decision "her" beers were the fan favorite at festivals.

Some of the "hers" fan favorites this year included Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Milk Stout, Just Peachy Sour Peach Ale, and Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine. Some of the "his" fan favorites included the Belgian Missile Crisis Belgian Wit, Night Shift Porter aged in a whiskey barrel, and Hakuna Mahopa Black IPA aged in a whiskey barrel.

Overall this year, we brewed about 15 different styles of beer, and have refined some of our favorite recipes. We love going to beer festivals and getting all of the positive feedback from our fans and beer enthusiasts alike.

This weekend marked the last brew of the season. We capped off a great year by brewing the Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Milk Stout and a new Pilsner-style Saison we are calling Jolie Blonde.

SPENT GRAINS

One question we have been asked at many brew days is what do we do with our spent grain? Many commercial breweries produce enough spent grain to create a partnership with local farms where the grains are used to supplement cattle feed. This is a great idea, not entirely practical for home brewers who only produce 10-20 pounds of grain with each 5 gallon batch of beer.

Spent grains from the stout.

We finally decided to do something with our spent grains (granted a small portion of them). We made our very first batch of  Pain Ordinary, or French bread. After all, beer is still referred to as "liquid bread". We added some spent grains from our chocolate stout into the dough to give the bread a touch of roasted flavor.

Two of our delicious rolls of home-made bread

Our home-made bread is delicious, and it pairs well with any of our beers on tap. Making bread from scratch is pretty time consuming, but the results are so rewarding. Beer brewing and bread making are more alike than we thought. Maybe we will start calling bread "solid beer"!

What's in a Beer Label?

Call me an engineer, call me a nerd, call me a geek, but I love beer labels and packaging produced by craft breweries. My fondness of the packaging is only second the contents of the bottle (or can). Many of them have clever names and eye catching artwork to the point where we may be running out of names for different craft beers (warning: exaggeration ahead). Part of the reason for this is creativity that is possible when producing beer at a much smaller quantity. Another reason is small breweries jockeying for a limited customer base. When more and more craft breweries begin to produce beer, that means more beers vying for very limited shelf space. It is becoming increasingly difficult to get enough beers on the shelves, and ultimately into your fridge. But I digress...

Much more colorful than the typical big Brewery's silver, white, and blue cans.

Labeling requirements vary by state, but generally what you will find on most beer labels are the name of the beer, style of beer, name of the brewery, city it was brewed in, alcohol content, and a government warning. I love creating my own labels, and you can see many of them in previous posts. I make mine in Microsoft Paint. All of the labels must get approved by the state agency, and from what I've heard, it is a difficult task.

Other items that I've seen on craft beer cans are OG, FG, IBU, and ABV. I've seen OG much more than FG, and they stand for original gravity and final gravity.

Science time (I can't help it, I'm an engineer):
The OG and FG are measurements of specific gravity of the beer before and after fermentation. Alcohol content is calculated based off of the difference between the OG and FG. Specific gravity is a measurement of density relative to liquid water. Water has a specific gravity of 1.000.  This means that a strong barleywine will have an OG of 1.120, and a light lager will have an OG of 1.028. That same barleywine may have an FG around 1.080, while the light lager will have an FG of 1.008.




Specific gravity is measured with a hydrometer

I know... too many numbers. I bore myself sometimes... What I'm getting at is you can determine how much alcohol will be in a beer based off of the OG and FG. Here is a cool chart showing OG and FG ranges for beer styles.

ABV is an easy one, alcohol by volume (that's usually how you decide between "one more" and "I should not drink a 12% English Barleywine after drinking a six pack of Natty Ice"). IBU is international battering unit, and it describes the hop bitterness in a beer. IPAs have 60-100+ IBUs while light lagers have 10-15 IBUs. Pretty straightforward, especially compared to specific gravity. Now go surprise your friends with some newfound beer knowledge. Beware, you may get called a beer nerd.

Next time you get the latest craft beer in the bar or restaurant, ask to keep the bottle, and take a look at it. The breweries put a lot of effort and creativity into them. It's worth taking a look at. In my unbiased opinion, you can get so much more flavor out of a beer when you understand what you are drinking. With a little help from the beer label, I think you can enjoy your craft beer that much more.

Now what you all came here for: to hear about where you can taste some delicious homebrew from C'est Bon Biere. Our next beer festival will be at the 3rd Annual Bayou Beer Fest in Houma, Louisiana on November 14. C'est Bon Biere is proud to be the only home brewers to be represented at all three years of the festival. Come visit us, and try one of our three beers to sample: Belgian Missile Crisis Belgian Wit, Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine, and Chaos Theory Vienna Lager. Since this post was about labels, here is the label for our newest beer:

Be on the lookout for some new equipment upgrades from C'est Bon Biere. Until next time, drink local, drink good beer.



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!

Hattiesburg Here We Come

We have been keeping pretty busy over at C'est Bon Biere. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us at Mellow Brewfest in Covington. We had a great time handing out homebrew, meeting new beer enthusiasts, and making new friends. We even took 2nd place in the People's Choice Contest with our Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine! We have the giant crawfish trophy to prove it. Shout Out to our friends in the Swamp Rat Homebrew Club. Beer festivals are always more fun in the club.

Everyone knows that the summer months mean festival season. Our next stop on the wonderful beer festival tour is the Hattiesburg Craft Beer Festival. There are many new breweries and many up and coming breweries in the state of Mississippi that make a great product worth trying. If you ever make the trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, you can check out Lazy Magnolia, Crooked Letter, and Mississippi Brewing Company, among others.

In Hattiesburg we will be serving three different brews including everyone's favorite Belgian Missile Crisis, a Belgian Wit brewed with coriander and orange zest. We also will début two new recipes. First, a Baltic Porter aged for three weeks in a whiskey barrel from King's County Distillery. This beer is dark, strong, with a nice whiskey aroma without the bite. The oak flavor from the barrel pairs well with the roasted flavors in the beer.

 

The second new recipe has been in the works for over a year now. We call it Operation Fortitude. It is an amber Biere de Garde, a French-style ale that is similar to the Belgian Saison style. It has a sweet malt flavor with a strong aroma of banana and clove. This beer is much different than the typical amber lagers that most are used to drinking.



 



If you are up for the road trip, you should come visit us in Hattiesburg next weekend, June 13th. We will be sure to keep you posted on how the event goes. It will be great to meet the brewers of the new Mississippi breweries that will be at the festival. We will keep you posted on brew days, so you can stop by to learn about home brewing and enjoy some good beer.

What's Happening at C'est Bon Biere (April 2015)

Hello to all of our fans and craft beer lovers. We have a lot to go over, so bear with me. There are plenty of opportunities to try some homebrewed beer from your favorite Gonzales homebrewers. There is always beer on tap at the C'est Bon Biere headquarters, and we are always welcome to entertaining guests.

If you have any questions, comments, or just want to talk beer with us, we now have a email address just for that. You can reach us at itsgoodbeer@gmail.com. Pretty simple, I know. I'm trying to keep it simple for you guys. Especially after being at a beer festival for 5 hours, you might not have the best short term memory.

MAY 9- MELLOW BREWFEST
Come and visit us at our next homebrew festival in Covington, LA at Mellow Mushroom. The event is on May 9th from 4-9pm. The theme of this year's competition is Louisiana food and ingredients. We will be serving our soon-to-be-famous Blueberry Bread Pudding Barleywine. We will also be serving our Cream Ale brewed with fresh lemon zest, basil, and lemon thyme grown in our backyard garden. Yes, I know your mouth is watering!



His and Her brews will be in a head-to-head battle again at this competition. At Bayou Beer Fest in Houma, the Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Stout was the fan favorite over the I Can't Believe It's Not Butterbeer Cream Ale. Whose brews will you choose at Mellow Brewfest this year? Come and taste for yourself.

 

BARREL AGED BEERS

As many of you are aware, we now have a 5-gallon whiskey barrel for aging beer in. The first experiment begins tomorrow, when we brew a Baltic Porter, then age it for one month in the whiskey barrel. You will be the first to hear about the flavor and aroma that we get from the barrel.

 

Thank the distillers from our neighbor to the west, King's County Distillery

 

BEER FESTIVALS IN MISSISSIPPI

More details to come soon on this front. C'est Bon Biere might be traveling to Hattiesburg in early June for a local beer festival. Beers served there will be our barrel-aged porter and a long-awaited French Saison! Stay tuned on this front.

 

All in all, it's been a great start to the year. Brewing is still a great hobby, and a ton of fun. Everyone wants friends that homebrew. If you are ever interested in learning about home brewing or want to get started, just send us an email at itsgoodbeer@gmail.com. We will be happy to talk about it. Until then, drink local... drink good beer!

Two Blondes and a Belgian Walk into a Bar...

TWO BLONDES:

Since the new year, we have kept pretty busy over at C'est Bon Biere. We collaborated with a friend, Kiel Jenkin, to brew 10 gallons of a blonde ale, which we call "The Blonde Side".

Sorry for the obvious knockoff of The Blind Side movie poster... I wasted all of my creativity on the name.

We wanted to ferment the 10-gallon batch in two 5-gallon batches each pitched with different yeast strains, American ale and Kolsch. The idea was to test the effects two yeast strains can have on the flavor of the beer. The brews have been a smash hit among us and our fellow homebrew enthusiasts.

A BELGIAN:

Call me crazy, but I decided not to brew the seasonal Irish Red Ale this year. Maybe I'm just not Irish enough...
One of our flagship beers, the Belgian Missile Crisis, has been loved by all, so I wanted to give other Belgian style ales a try. The group of Belgian style ales will be known as "Barley's Series" in honor of our golden retriever and brewing mascot, Barley. The first of the series is a Belgian Dubbel

Cute puppy pictures! You know you want to try this brew.

The beer is dark amber in color and has a rich malty sweetness to it. The specialty grains used give it a moderate dark fruit flavor including raisin, plum, and dried cherry. We will see which flavors will be noticeable in our brew.

I have been trying other Belgian Dubbels that are commercially available to do some "research". I want to recognize these different flavors that are usually found in these brews. I recommend New Belgium Abbey as a good example of the style.

I'm excited to try this beer, and I know many of you probably are too. If you want to give any of our beers a try, just let us know. We are always happy to give people a beer they can enjoy. Until then, keep drinking local! Cheers!

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!

All I Want for Christmas is a Pint of Winter Wamer

It's Christmas time over at C'est Bon Biere. We have made sure to decorate the beer room accordingly (Yes, we have a room called the beer room). Can you guess my favorite Christmas movie based on the decorations?

Fragile`... Must be Italian!

In honor of the Christmas season, we have decided to brew up a new batch of beer. Some of you might remember tasting our award-winning Christmas ale last year, Wreck the Halls. We brewed it with a big group of friends who were interested in learning how to homebrew beer. Instead of brewing the same great beer (which will happen in the future), we decided to create a Winter Warmer, a dark Scottish ale with an elevated alcohol content. So cozy up next to a fireplace/significant other/bonfire/dog/cat/space heater/leg lamp and enjoy a cold pint of  C'est Bon Biere's Frostbite Winter Warmer.
 

 

This beer was very exciting to make. After enjoying Maple Nut Brown Ale from Tommyknocker Brewing in Idaho Springs, CO (Just a short drive through Clear Creek Canyon from Golden), we decided to try and construct a brown ale similar to Tommyknocker's. From the original attempts at making a brown ale recipe, the maple syrup changed to Steen's cane syrup, American ale yeast turned into Scottish ale yeast, and the grain bill was increased to increase the alcohol content. Frostbite is considered a Scottish Wee Heavy with a modest alcohol content of 7.4%! 

I know next year we will definitely brew both winter ales, so everybody has a brew they can enjoy. Maybe next Christmas you can be the judge, and decide which beer you enjoy more, Wreck the Halls or Frostbite. What you will find out is that you can't go wrong regardless of which one you choose.

We hope everybody has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Oktoberfest- 'Tis the Season

As I write this blog post, I am enjoying the wonderful transition to the fall season with St. Arnold Brewery's Oktoberfest. It is amber in color, with an up-front maltinees and little hop aroma. Most people will not know how to describe a true Oktoberfest beer. This is what many think of when they hear Oktoberfest:

Biggest thirst in Germany

 It is traditionally served during the months of September through November, parallel to the German Oktoberfest season. Traditionally, an Oktoberfest beer is amber in color, low hop flavor and aroma, and some spicy or herbal character to it. The malt flavor gives the beer a slight sweetness. In my opinion, the flavor and mouthfeel of a well done Oktoberfest exemplify what a true beer should taste like.

There are a few local breweries that are rolling out new beers for the fall season. Abita Brewing has a seasonal Oktoberfest. It is a good example of a seasonal amber lager. Covington Brewhouse also released a seasonal Fest Biere, their version of a seasonal amber beer. It has a great drinkability, which is especially good on these mild autumn days in south Louisiana. Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of sampling this beer with the owner of Covington Brewhouse. He and his staff are contemplating changing this beer into a regular year-long beer instead of a seasonal. I was all in favor of that change. Currently, Covington does not have a staple beer in with the maltinees, or the amber color of their Fest Biere.

At C'est Bon Biere, we are currently brewing up an Oktoberfest to last us through the short, yet pleasant fall season in south Louisiana. It will be a German style amber ale with up-front maltiness, and a slight spicy hop aroma.

Coming this Fall!

Also on the list of new beers is our easy-drinking Cream Ale. This is no regular cream ale. It has honey malt and vanilla beans added for sweetness. The style is typically a light-bodied, light-colored ale; typical to a blonde ale or light lager. This beer was modeled off of Cali Creaming' from Mother Earth Brewing in San Diego, California. The idea is to create a taste similar to cream soda. My I present to you: I Can't Believe It's Not Butterbeer!

If either of these sound enticing to your palate, feel free to stop by and visit us any time. We will be serving our beers at Bayou Beer Fest in Houma, LA this November 15. It has been a good few months for C'est Bon Biere in creating new brews and recreating some award-winning brews.

Thanks to everyone for keeping up with us on our blog and on Facebook. This is going to be a long road to starting our own micro-brewery, and every day, we inch closer to that success. Keep up with us for the latest news about the future of the Gonzales' future first brewery!

Don't Drink and Drive, Bike and Brew!

So its been a while since our last blog post. I hope everybody is enjoying their summer so far. We finally got the chance to spend some time with the homebrew club on a weekend bike ride. Check out the St. Tammany Trail to see all of the areas you can ride. It was a great time getting to meet other fellow homebrewers, and drink some beer in the process.

So the group met in downtown Mandeville on a Saturday morning. Half of the people brought bikes, and the other half of us rented bikes from the Shiver Shack, a great place to get everything from bicycles to snowballs. There was one tandem bike for rent there. Can you imagine riding one of these things!

Kermit makes it look so easy!

Thankfully, we all had separate bikes, and began the ten mile ride to Abita Brewing Company. Everyone there had been on the tour before, so it was nice to enjoy their beers on tap again. From Abita, we made our way back towards Mandeville, stopping at Chafunkta Brewing Co. We got a private tour from the owner, and got to grill him with questions about opening up his own brewery. He still has a full time job, and brews part time on nights and weekends. A huge time commitment!

It was also interesting to learn that the brewing equipment used at Chafunkta was handed down from Parish Brewing. The owner at Chafunkta has plans to upgrade his brewery to brew at a larger capacity, and pass down the old brewing equipment to the next up-and-coming brewery in Louisiana. Then it will be considered "third generation" brewing equipment for start-up breweries in the state. The tour of Chafunkta was great, because we got to spend time with a professional brewer and hear his story of starting up a brewery (Something that you know Sam and I are passionate about).

Finally, we finished with beer and lunch at Old Rail brewpub, recently named one of the top new bars in the New Orleans area! [Insert article from old rail FB] We were lucky enough to meet the head brewer at Old Rail, who gave us a tour of their brewery. The layout of the restaurant is interesting, because the brewery is visible from anywhere in the building. Old Rail recently received a silver medal in the US Open of Beer for their Extra Special Bitter (ESB) called Echo Sierra Bravo.

We had a great time riding bikes with fellow homebrewers, and meeting some professional brewers in the area. It's great to see the craft beer industry growing in south Louisiana. Remember to keep drinking local, support local craft brewers.

As for C'est Bon Biere, we have the Belgian Missile Crisis bottled (let me know if you would like to try some), and brewing our award winning milk stout Guilty Pleasure within the coming weeks. That will be ready by the end of summer, when the weather starts getting cooler. Thanks for reading, and keeping up with us here at C'est Bon Biere. Who knows, maybe someday we will inherit the same brewing equipment used by Parish Brewing, Chafunkta Brewing, and whoever else is lucky enough to begin their own brewery.

Mellow Brewfest Results

It's a good time of the year. The weather is getting warmer, vacations are on the horizon, and craft beer is gaining momentum across the state of Louisiana. Sam and I would like to say happy graduation to all of our friends at CSM, LSU, ULL, and all schools in between. Best of luck to all of you in searching for jobs, grad school, or whatever you choose to do next.

A couple of weeks ago, C'est Bon Biere showed up at Mellow Brewfest in Covington, LA with nothing more than an ice chest of beer and the shirts on our back. We must have looked ragged because they gave us some good looking festival t-shirts.

Now we look like professionals!

Plenty of homebrew clubs were there in full force, each with 6-10 beers of their own on tap. Not being a part of these groups was intimidating when we first got there, but everyone there was very friendly and willing to go out of their way and talk to us. Since then, we have made it to our first homebrew club meeting with the club Brasseurs a la Maison.

We made many friends at the festival, including a group from Metairie who served a delicious Lemongrass wheat beer. Surprisingly, our Chai dark ale actually mixed well with the lemongrass (All of the beers in the competition had some sort of spice or herb incorporated into the brewing process).

I know what many of you are thinking right now...

Don't worry, there were no "Bratwurst beers" or "Secret ingredient beers" there. The vast majority of the beers were very creative and delicious too. Who would have thought that out of 50 entries, C'est Bon Biere would come in 2nd place in the "Best of Show"!

Look who made it on the big stage!

We had a great time at the festival, made some new friends, and tried some unique beers that will only be brewed by homebrewers. As for what we have on tap the rest of the summer: the Belgian Missile Crisis will be ready in time for the summer months. The Guilty Pleasure Milk Stout will be brewed soon (it takes a while to condition and get its full flavor), and a new recipe for a Cream Ale is in the works.

Thanks to everyone who has been following our blog. It's a lot of fun to write about our hobby, and add some creativity to the mix. All you engineers out there, know that creativity is not our forte! I hope everyone enjoys their summer. Buy local beers, and try out some homebrewed beer too if you get the chance. 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.

Brewing Beer Like the Pros (Shiva Blast Spiced Ale)

There are many ways to brew beer. Most homebrewers begin by purchasing brewing kits, then making beer on the stove. These kits have either dry or liquid sugar extract which had been removed from the grains and condensed.

Sam and I brewed all of our batches up to this point by steeping some grains for color and flavor, then getting most of the sugars from sugar extract. Since we were actually using less grains, less water was needed when boiling the worth. This process is called partial-mash brewing.

After finally upgrading our equipment, we have finally converted to all-grain brewing. No more sugar extract for C'est Bon Biere! Our new system has the capacity to brew up to 10 gallon batches. It includes a 10-gallon hot liquor tank, a 10-gallon mash/lauter tun, and a 15-gallon stainless steel brew kettle. Here is a picture of the entire setup.

Looks like a real brewery now.

It was exciting to brew our first all-grain batch of beer. Once we got all of the valves and hoses leak-free, it was a breeze. It was much different brewing with 14 pounds of grain and 8 gallons of water.



A full mash. This is where the magic happens.

Another interesting thing about this batch of beer was the way we designed the recipe. A very easy to use computer program called BeerSmith allowed us to fine tune the recipe to specific color, alcohol content, color, and bitterness.

This beer was brewed specifically for an upcoming homebrew competition. The only beer category allowed is "Spiced, Herb, and Vegetable Beer". The recipe that we designed is a strong, bitter, German ale infused with freshly brewed chai tea, or as we like to call it, the Shiva Blast! To all of my friends who enjoy watching The League, you're welcome.



We wanted to have some fun creating this beer. It will have a wonderful aroma, mixing chai tea with the hop bitterness. Alcohol will be present in the flavor, with somewhere between 6-9% alcohol by volume.

In the end, I hope our first all-grain batch of beer will be as good as some of our previous batches. With this upcoming completion, the Shiva Blast will be competing head-to-head against the Belgian Missile Crisis. Fingers crossed for some positive feedback from there. Until then, cheers!

Shaping America's Youth, One Beer at a Time (Blarney Stone Irish Red Ale)

In preparation for St. Patrick's Day, Sam made a recipe for an Irish Red Ale. The goal was to create a red ale that was out of the ordinary. It still has the amber color found in most red ales, but with a little twist. It will be more hoppy than a traditional Irish beer. Irish ales are normally very crisp with very little bitterness. It also will have a hint of honey. Honey malt is used to flavor the beer, and honey is used to increase the alcohol content of the beer.

Naturally, we had a name picked out and a label designed before brewing this batch. The idea for this brew is to have our second rotating seasonal beer (after Wreck the Halls Christmas Ale). I present to you the Blarney Stone Irish Red Ale:

Last week, a student worker at the company where Sam and I work asked a favor of us. Her Process Design class at LSU had to write a report on an industrial process. Of all the processes to chose, what are the odds they chose beer? We were more than happy to invite them over while we brewed. They took notes, asked questions, and sampled some great homebrew. Along with the report, they produced a video documenting the beer making process. With their permission, here is the video:

Click our logo to view the video

They had a great time spending the afternoon brewing with us, even if we had a few hiccups (like running out of propane and boiling on the stove). We had some other friends spending the weekend with us who got to see the brewing process in action. They have enjoyed our beers for sometime, and they were glad to get the chance to brew with us.

Personally, these guys are the smartest in their class for choosing a fun process to write their report on. If I was grading their report, I would probably give them an A+. If you are ever in the Baton Rouge area, stop by and visit us. We always have beer on tap, and who knows, we might even be brewing a beer that weekend.

If you want to talk beer recipes, or stop by and learn about homebrewing. Give us a call or leave a comment. Cheers!

Don't Criticize me Bro! (Guilty Pleasure Milk Stout)

There is no right way to drink a beer. Some people chug their beer, some people nurse their beer. Others spill it on ping pong tables while listening to the newest music from Mumford & Sons. That is the true definition of alcohol abuse!


I used an eCard in the blog.. All time low!

When people are trying our homebrew for the first time, I like to be there to walk that person step by step of how they "should" drink the beer. It's almost like my baby that I don't want to be mistreated. Sam and I have referred to our beer as "our baby" while it ferments in the closet. I don't want to dictate how to drink our beer, I just want people to get a full appreciation for it. I am sorry to anyone who I have annoyed for doing this to you.

Here is what I look like when someone tries our beer for the first time, and likes it:



A "Friends" GIF... this is going downhill fast

Sam and I recently submitted our Guilty Pleasure Milk Stout to a homebrewing competition in Lafayette, LA. This means that our beer will be critiqued and criticized (constructively, of course). Here is what I look like waiting for the homebrew competition results:


SpongeBob is a little better...

  Hopefully we get some positive reviews, but the best part is that we will get a some great tips on improving this brew. It turned out to be a huge hit this winter, so improving it will be an exciting project. I will say that I did not expect people to be open to such a dark, thick beer. It turns out, people were more intrigued by the complex flavors of chocolate and coffee in a drink that was still considered beer. Whether it is chocolate, beer, or both, everyone has a Guilty Pleasure.

Keg Stands are for Poor College Kids

I love talking to people about my hobby of homebrewing. Usually the first question is "Is it any good?" or "How much does it cost?" To these I always say that it is easy to make beer, but it takes some effort to make good beer. The cost is much cheaper than your average night at the bar. On average, a 5 gallon batch costs just under $1 per 12 oz. beer. One time I was even asked "Can you make _____ Lite?" To respond, I turned to the water faucet and filled an empty pint glass. I handed it to that former friend and said "Here you go". I say 'former' in the nicest way possible.

 



Won't see this in our hallway

Sam and I finally took the plunge and dug deeper into our homebrewing hobby. Part of me was tired of manually capping 50 bottles of beer at a time, and part of me was tired waiting 2 weeks for the beer to carbonate. So instead of bottling, now it's time to start kegging. Now I know what some of you are thinking...

But you won't find any red Solo cups in this house. Sam and I recently purchased a three tap keezer with three 5 gallon kegs. Keezer is how us beer people lazily say "keg freezer". It's essentially an old box freezer with an external temperature control attached, to regulate the temperature. It can hold all three kegs at once.

 

And we still call this room "the office"

With this kegging system, we carbonate the beer inside of the kegs using a CO2 tank. The process is called "forced carbonation" The CO2 is pumped into the keg to pressurize it. Using this method, the beer can be carbonated and ready to pour anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. This means the process can be much faster than carbonating in individual bottles.



It has been fun making labels for all of the beer bottles, but we plan on still designing labels. It gives us something to do in our spare time, and gives me something to post other than pictures of ourselves. (Although I don't hear anyone complaining about that).

 

Sam and I have two homebrew competitions coming up in January/February. We will be entering two beers in these competitions. First is Guilty Pleasure, our milk stout, or sweet stout. It is flavored with unsweetened cocoa, and fermented lactose sugar. Second, is Double Fault, an American Pale Ale. You can see the label for this beer on our last post. This will probably be the lightest beer in color we have brewed to date, but by far the hoppiest.

 

With most of our beer being kegged now, I guess that means more people will have to come to visit us in Baton Rouge to drink our beer. Be sure to leave a comment if you want to try some of our brews, exchange recipes, or just have something important to say. Next scheduled brew will be an Irish Red Ale. We will keep brewing, so I hope you keep following.

Cheers!

Authors Note: To any college kids, keg stand lovers, or the easily offended: Please do not be offended by the title of this post. If you are, just relax and enjoy a homebrew. Don't have any homebrew? Enjoy a local craft beer.