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!

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!