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!

When Did We Start Measuring Beer in Gallons?!

It seems like just yesterday we were handing out a 12-pack of our flagship beer, Belgian Missile Crisis" at the 1st Annual Bayou Beer Festival in Houma, Louisiana. At that time, it was the only homebrew we had available. We had a great time, and got great feedback about our beer. There was no question that we would be back!

Since that first Bayou Beer Fest, we have announced our branding as C'est Bon Biere, started kegging our beer, and have gained brewing experience and homebrew competition awards. That's right, C'est Bon Biere brews award winning beers.

This is my horn, I am tooting it because my beer is awesome.

This year was the second annual Bayou Beer Festival. There was an increase from 3 homebrewers last year to 21 homebrewers this year handing out 40+ beers. The turnout was great, and the feedback was even better. The Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Stout came in 4th place overall in the homebrew competition. What was more exciting was how quickly we ran out of beer at the festival.

In less than 3 hours, we handed out 15 gallons of beer. These included 5 gallons of Guilty Pleasure Chocolate Stout, 5 gallons of I Can't Believe It's Not Butterbeer Cream Ale, and 5 gallons of Oktoberfest. One group of festival-goers even remembered us from the previous year. I guess next year we will be bringing more beer!

Looks like our garage before Bayou Beer Fest next year.

For the first time in over a year, our home is beer free. Last Sunday was dedicated to brewing, so we could re-stock our kegs and keep those taps flowing. A batch of Belgian Missile Crisis was brewed, since it is considered our flagship beer. An easy to drink Belgian Wit brewed with coriander and fresh orange peel. A new Christmas seasonal beer was also brewed. It is a Winter Warmer, roughly 8-9% alcohol by volume (I mean 6% alcohol by volume) and brewed with Steen Cane Syrup. Take a look at the new label.

Give us a couple weeks, and we will have some beer back on tap. If you are interested in sampling some homebrewed beer, give us a shout. C'est Bon Biere is always willing to help people try different types of beer. Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

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!