Posts Tagged ‘Hot Monkey Love’
The Friday Question
Friday, May 14th, 2010
Sorry about the late posting but, as we were brewing the Monkey today, I didn’t have the answer to last weeks question until the end of our arduous brew day! The first part of the question was how many pounds of grain are used in this brew, the answer is 590lbs. The second part of the question was what is the original gravity of batch #2. The answer is 1.099. By my reckoning that makes Ray Dudeck the overall winner with his guess of 1.092 and 588 lbs, congratulations sir you get either a pair of tickets to the BAM Springfest in Frederick or a growler of Oliver Ale and a t-shirt.
Isn’t this a beautiful sight … the Hot Monkey Love wort on route to fermenting vessel #1?
On to this week’s question. Firstly the prize … thanks to our friend Nick (who recently visited Kentucky) I’ve got my hands on a few nice bottles of beer from Founders, Three Floyds and BBC which we’ll add to our stash which includes a few Brewdogs (5am Saint). The winner gets to come in and pull a couple of bottles out lucky dip style from the box but be warned I may throw a few Miller’s and Buds in just to make things interesting. The question is this, how many firkins have we filled this year so far ?… remember firkins, don’t include kilderkins (which we use in house for Best bitter and ESB) or pins! Have at it and you might get lucky. Have a great weekend.
Steve
Hot Monkey Love Batch #2
Friday, May 14th, 2010
The day is upon us! Batch #2 of Hot Monkey Love is in the works today. As you already know the Monkey is a big boy, typically about 10% abv and requires a LOT of grain, hops and honey and a little brown sugar.
Grain loaded into the hopper for milling
It’s going to be a long day but at least we had a healthy breakfast!! …..
secret ingredient or breakfast?
the hop percolator is loaded with finishing hop (Kent Goldings and Bramling Cross) …
and wort run-off to the kettle has commenced ….
wort transfer
Tonight! Live …. without a net!
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Join us tonight as we juggle post brew day exhaustion with the elation of spending time with the fine folks of Victoria Gastro Pub (http://www.victoriagastropub.com/) who will be offering 8 of our beers on draft including some old favorites and some newcomers. We’ll be sharing the Love …. the Hot Monkey Love …. which will be making it’s debut appearance tonight (seriously, I haven’t even tried the draft version yet!). Also on tap will be the newly released Cherry Blossom Ale and the new smooth pour 3 Spires Ale. Come early, snag a souvenir pint glass and say hello to your local overworked brewers!
My Monkey’s Got Wood
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
The new My Monkey’s Got Wood t-shirt design is progressing nicely so I think they’ll be ready next month sometime (touch wood, ha ha!). When they’re ready we’ll be releasing a cask of My Monkey’s Got Wood (batch #1) and brewing batch #2 which as usual will see some subtle changes in recipe. Batch #1 weighed in at 9.81 % abv and 43 IBU. For batch #2 I’ll sacrifice a little volume for an increased Original Gravity with a view to hitting 11% abv and I’ll be switching out some of the First Gold for Target for bittering. I’ve also taken delivery of 2 beautiful hand made, custom toasted, 10 gallon American White Oak barrels for aging My Monkey’s Got Wood, oh yeah!
Future home of My Monkey's Got Wood!
The Monkey is dead, long live The Monkey
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
In a spectacular example of coincidental timing the last two Hot Monkey Loves shuffled off this mortal coil within minutes of each other some 40 miles apart last night. Although separated at birth the bond was obviously strong between these two. The cask of My Monkey’s Got Wood kicked at The Ale House last night just as we were sampling the remaining sixtel of Hot Monkey Love at The Strong Beer Tasting at The Brickskeller in Washington D.C. That’s some coincidence considering their journey started in April of 2009!
But as the Phoenix rises from the ashes, the Monkey shall be reborn! A cask of Hot Monkey Love will be previewed at The Real Ale Festival at The Ale House on March 20th. The Hot Monkey Love will then be returning to the taps to celebrate Opening Day 2010 at which time we will be brewing batch# 2 for release in November. There is of course a cask of My Monkey’s Got Wood hidden away for future release and one cask will be released to Frisco Grille to celebrate their move/expansion.
The Friday Question
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Before I get on to the business of The Friday Question I would like to encourage you all to check out the new Oliver Ales facebook page that I set up recently and if you feel inclined please become a fan www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/oliver-ales/288496506028?ref=ts. I’ll be posting regular updates of brewery activities, releases etc so if you want to keep abreast of what’s new and where it’ll be pouring, join us. By way of some gentle encouragement there’s going to be a “prize” draw for fans only which may be of interest to some of you. Some time in the near future I’ll be receiving a bottle of the World’s Strongest Beer (at least for now), the 41% BrewDog “Sink The Bismarck” along with their 0.5% “Nanny State”. An interesting contrast I think you’ll agree! I’ll be getting together with avid local beer bloggers www.beerinbaltimore.blogspot.com , www.beerinbaltimore.com and www.baltimorebeer.blogspot.com to taste test and review these beers and I’ll be inviting one Oliver Ales fan, chosen at random, to join us and review the beers for my blog and facebook page. Check out the facebook page for details.
So, onto last weeks question. There are several sources of published data. For example online @ http://www.nickelinstitute.org/index.cfm/ci_id/12606.htm which gives the empty and full weights for a stainless steel kilderkin as being 51lb and 236lb respectively. The book “Cellarmanship” by Ivor Clissold gives the weights as 46lb and 226 lb for stainless steel and 32lb and 212lb for aluminium. Now, as you know, we here at Oliver’s don’t take these things lightly (ha,ha!), especially when there’s one of our cool new Hot Monkey Love t-shirts at stake so we weighed one and the result is ….. drum roll …..
The weight of a full Kilderkin is 220lb
Yep, 220lb so that makes Dan the winner and, for the first time ever the answer was spot on, congratulations Dan, let me buy you a beer as well when you come in to collect your prize. By-the-way, the empty weight of our kilderkins is 37lb if you’re interested.
So, this week’s question (sticking to a theme here) is how much would a Pin of Hot Monkey Love weigh? Said pin will be featured at our Cask Ale Festival to be held at The Pratt Street Ale House on March 20th (full details will be posted next week). The festival is going to be limited to 110 tickets but you can attend as our guest if you can answer the above question correctly. As usual please post your answer via the comment section below. In the event of tied winning entries, an overall winner will be made by a random draw from the correct entries. Good luck.
Please join us at Victoria Gastro pub on Monday evening for their beer club night where you can get a sneak preview of our Biere de Garde in cask. They’ll also be pouring The Bishop’s Indulgence, Strongman Pale Ale and Coventry Cream Ale. We’ll be there and if we’re feeling generous we might just buy you a beer!
Have a great weekend.
Cheers
Steve
The Friday Question
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Before I get on to the Friday Question I’ll just remind you that My Monkey’s Got Wood, the cask of Hot Monkey Love aged with American Oak since 4/30/09 will be on the beer engine on Valentine’s Day. Nothing says “I Love You” like a Monkey with Wood! The cask is vented, tapped and sampled and absolutely bursts with Oak flavors, more Oak than you could shake a big stick at! Despite it’s 10% a.b.v. the beer has a “soft” quality, with the underlying sweetness and oak flavors combining wonderfully and a gentle warm finish.
So on to the Friday Question. There was a good spread of answers given but, as I explained, I don’t know what the answer is myself yet. The test kit should be arriving today so we’ll send the samples off to the lab on Monday. Hopefully the turnaround time will be minimal. As soon as the analysis is back I’ll post the answer/winner.
This weeks question is a fairly simple one. As many of you know as well as distributing firkins of our ales we use kilderkins in house. A kilderkin is a cask with a volume of 18 Imperial Gallons (21.6 U.S. gallons). Despite the fact that I filled kilderkins every week when I brewed in the U.K., when I finally got some here it had been some 9 years since I’d handled one and I was shocked by how heavy they were. So, the question is this, how heavy is a full kilderkin of beer? For those of you who want to calculate the weight of beer we’ll assume that it’s Best Bitter with a specific gravity of 1.010. Obviously you’ll have to guess what the kil is made of ie stainless steel or aluminium to get an estimate of empty weight. Usual rules apply, one answer only via the comment section below, judges decision is final. In the event of a tie the first correct answer posted wins. Good luck. The winner gets one of the new Hot Monkey Love t-shirts (back print shown above) and the satisfaction that you know a piece of useless information that you’ll never get to use again!
Monkeying Around
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
It’s 47F in the brewery office right now so what better way to warm things up than brew a Hot Monkey Love. Yeah, you can’t accuse us of not thinking ahead …. this beer won’t even be released until next October so it’s going to have ample time to condition. It’s a long and arduous day but with a 2 hour boil time it should warm things up nicely down here. I’ve just finished mashing in. I managed to squeeze just shy of 600lbs of grain into this one and I’ll also be using 120lbs of honey so it’s going to be a little bigger than last year’s vintage.
I survived mashing-in the Monkey!!!
Although I survived mashing-in this behemoth of a brew it has already claimed it’s first victim …. Chef Freddie pulled a muscle bringing the honey down to the basement for us!
I believe that Frisco Grille has the very last keg of Hot Monkey Love on tap right now (I know where I’m going after finishing the brew day) so if you haven’t tried it yet get out there while you can, I’m sure it won’t be around for long!
Thanks to everyone who came out to Victoria Gastro Pub for the cask night last night, it was a lot of fun. It’s great to see Victoria serving brewery fresh cask conditioned ales and hopefully it won’t be too long until they get a beer engine installed so that cask ale will be a permanent feature of this already wonderful establishment.
Cask night @ Victoria Gastro Pub
cask update
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
New on cask today ….. drum roll …. Hot Monkey Love, oh yeah. Come try one and then compare it to the regular tap version. The malt flavors explode out of the cask version, exquisite!
Also coming soon will be William’s Winter Warmer
I see a Winter Warmer in your future!
Two of the firkins are on Oak, the first of which will be released in mid December.
the monkey is out of the cage
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
Oh yeah, the Hot Monkey Love is on tap NOW!!!! It seems fitting that our strongest beer (10% a.b.v.) goes on tap on the same day that I’m brewing one of my all time favorite lower alcohol beers, the Dark Horse dark mild (4% a.b.v.). I think that it bares testament to the diversity of styles that you can brew with a single yeast strain in a somewhat limited facility such as this. I’ve just tried the first pour of the Monkey and I think it turned out exceptionally well, full of malt flavors but well balanced and deceptively drinkable for a beer of its strength. I’ll leave all of the “hints of raisins” etc judgments to you guys but I hope that you enjoy it … beers like this really are a labor of love!
Love the monkey and he'll love you back!
The Monkey is available in 10 ounce pours (in a 11 1/2 oz snifter) for $4.50. Growler fills are available for $22 (plus growler).
Here’s the tap handle
Hot Monkey Love tap
and here’s the beer …
Hot Monkey Love