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!

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!