Tonight my wife and I will be our first beer and cheese paring party. It should be a good turnout with anywhere from 15 to 30 people showing up. The plan with this party was a "BYOC" where people supplied the cheese and we supplied the beer to pare with it.
This week I spent some time beer shopping to fill in some style gaps in my home inventory and had a pretty good time doing it. This is what the lineup looks like:
Once I get home and get to look at what cheeses we matched up with what beers, I'll make some adjustments to this post to reflect the changes. The plan is to set up a tasting table with the cheese and the beers and break out the beers as people move through their tasting. Who knows how it will go, but it sounds like it could be a good time!
Brewing this weekend wound up getting canceled because it was Nick's brew-girlfriend's birthday. Keeping the brew-significant others appeased is ALWAYS a worthy reason to delay a brew weekend. God knows they put up with enough craziness.
With my new found extra time, I decided to take care of a few odds and ends.
With the $20 gift certificate that I got for valentines day, there were a lot of opinions on how the money should be spent. It seemed that the funnel was prone to clogging so that was a "no-go", but the stainless steel spoon and the carboy carrier were both winners. So as you can see in the picture below, I got one of each and used the leftover money to get 1lb of extra light DME for my starters.
Even though Nick couldn't dedicate the necessary 5hrs to a brew day on Sunday, he was able to come over and give me a hand racking over my Samuel Jackson. I need a hand lifting things for the next few weeks since my surgery so Nick came over and did a little (much appreciated) heavy lifting for me. He also came baring the gift of home-made pasta that ended up being our delicious dinner.
The Samuel Jackson is going to be a heck of a beer. We dry hopped it in the secondary with a 1/2 oz of Amarillo leaf hops which really gave this a great finish. It tastes a lot like Samuel Adams, but I will wait to give a verdict after I do a little head-to-head. Nonetheless, it's going to be a great beer.
CO2 Stuff
So finally I had to make a run to Lowes to do some "home-owner" duties and on my way, I go right past Harbor Freight so I figured two birds with one stone. Since I made a trade with my brother in law (1 case of cream ale for his 5lb CO2 tank) I needed a regulator for my new tank in order to start using it with the jockey box. I had been eyeing up a dual gage gas regulator that they have there for $34 (such a good price), but wasn't sure if it was too good to be true. Well Saturday I broke down and got it.
As you can see from the picture below, once I figured out that it would work, I decided to put the new regulator on my 25lb CO2 tank instead of the new 5lb one because I use the 25lb tank all the time.
Now with the 5lb tank, since I use the air compressor release fittings, I picked up the necessary parts to have my small tank work with the other parts of my system. With my normal system I used these fittings and had an extra gas ball lock with a hose connected to a air compressor release fitting (male) and my large tank connects to the 4way manifold via a release fitting (female). The manifold has gas shutoffs so I can disconnect the CO2 and reconnect it to the single line.
With my new setup, there are 3 quick releases that will go to 3 gas ball locks and I will be able to power the two tap jockey box plus one other keg. I am officially king of the tailgate.
Even though we didn't brew, I still got a lot done. No complaints here.
Well the weekend is upon us and it's time to brew. We're currently looking for an extra set of hands because the doc says I can't lift anything greater than 20lbs. If you're in the area and want to come by to join us, shoot me an email so I can give you directions.
This weekend we're going to be brewing a clone of the Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale for one of my brother-in-laws friends. We worked out a deal with him where we supply some Celebration Ale and he gives us enough wine bottles and caps for us to do the batch of wine we have been talking about. This is a big batch because once we got a gander at the recipe, we knew we were each going to want some too.
On a side note, thanks to a tip from a good friend, I was able to track down a pound of cascade hops for $28. It was locally grown by a guy whose family has roots in the old NY hops growing and has done it his whole life. I'm not going to lie, I was giddy as a school girl when he told me he had a pound of Cascade. That stuff has been impossible to track down.
Anyway, on to the beer:
BeerSmith Recipe Printout - www.beersmith.com Recipe: Celebration Ale Brewer: Travis & Nick Asst Brewer: Style: American IPA TYPE: All Grain Taste: (35.0)
Ingredients: ------------ Amount Item Type % or IBU 32.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.05 % 2.60 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 6.67 % 2.60 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 6.67 % 0.90 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain 2.31 % 0.90 lb Munich Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 2.31 % 4.00 oz Target [8.00 %] (60 min) Hops 40.0 IBU 2.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] (Dry Hop 6 days) Hops - 4.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] (30 min) Hops 32.6 IBU 2.00 oz Target [8.50 %] (15 min) Hops 10.5 IBU 2.50 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] (5 min) Hops 5.3 IBU
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body Total Grain Weight: 39.00 lb ---------------------------- Single Infusion, Light Body Step Time Name Description Step Temp 75 min Mash In Add 12.19 gal of water at 161.4 F 150.0 F 10 min Mash Out Add 7.80 gal of water at 200.2 F 168.0 F
Now here is where things get a little wacky. This recipe is on the assumption that we are not going to get the Cascade in time. If we are, replace all the Amarillo with the Cascade my father is going to bring us. If he doesn't make it, I think we will be fine with what we have.
So for Valentines Day, my brew wife got me an AWESOME gift certificate for my LHBS! This is $20 that HAS to be spent on brew supplies. While it's tempting to put it towards a brew session, I decided that I am going to spend it on a few odds and ends items I have been eying there at Ed's.
Since it's $20, I am looking for a little feedback on things that I am considering getting. Here are the contenders:
First up is this 12" funnel with a screen for my buckets (yea I am not rolling in a pre-civil war cotton fortune like the guys at MNB and I still use the modest bucket) - My thought on this is that I have not been crazy about the method that we use for our hops which is steeping them in the brew. With this I would like to filter the wort as it comes out to catch as much of the hops as possible and we could just dump the hops directly into the kettle.
Yea, I know, everyone has carboy handles. Well not me. Since I now have three 5 gallon glass carboys and one 3 gallon glass carboy, I was thinking about not tempting fate anymore and getting some decent handles for them.
The ever important brew spoon. My current brew spoon is plastic and I have been using is for a good 4 years and I think it may be time to retire it. Now on his website Ed only has plastic spoons, but I know he has stainless steal ones at the shop so I was thinking about a 18" stainless steal spoon as another option.
In the end, I am probably going to get all this stuff and just using the gift certificate towards it, why? Why not? I am still interested in hearing some arguments for or against any of the items listed.
Well this weekend was not a brewing weekend for me because of some medical stuff that I had to deal with. It's all good though, I should be back up and brewing next weekend.
For Valentines Day, my wife got me a six pack of beer and a gift certificate to my local homebrew shop. There is not much else I could ask for (yet another tribute to the brew wife).
The brew that she got me was from her trip to Philadelphia while I was in Colorado. It was a brewery called Yards Brewing Company. There is a restaurant there that has a long history and all the waiting staff dress in traditional garb. While the restaurant was built on the location of a famous political hangout for our founding fathers, the recipes they brew claim to be authentic to the era.
The six pack that my wife got me was a porter. It was a pretty sweet porter that poured a dark mahogany to almost red color. The head was cream color and hung out for a long time. The brew had the taste that really reminded me more of a sweet brown ale and finished with the porter bite that you expect. It was a pretty drinkable beer because of it's sweetness, not like a lot of the bigger beers that the porter is often associated with.
Over all I would say this is a pretty good beer. I can't wait for the website to launch so I can learn a little more about the recipes, but I have to say I am a fan of mixing politics and beer.
Contrary to popular belief, I was not in Georgia lacing beer bottles with the bird flu. I was in Colorado on a ski/beer trip visiting my long time friend Poopie.
We started the trip out with a stop at New Belgium Brewing Company (I wrote about this on A Good Beer Blog) and had ourselves a great time. I picked up a teeshirt and a ton of respect for this brewery. They're doing all the right things over there and happen to be making beer in the process.
Friday night we headed over the mountains to Pug Ryan's Brewery where I had Thai Mahi-mahi and tried a few of their brews. I enjoyed the Doppelbock, the Scottish Ale and the Pale Ale while I was there. All great brews.
Saturday we headed up to Vail where we hit the mountain hard and took full advantage of the 12in of fresh snow. It was awesome. Below is a picture from on top of the 7th bowl at Vail. The glades there were CRAZY!!!
After a full day of cutting up the slopes, we stopped by Backcoutry Brewery to pickup a case of bombers help us relax. We grabbed their IPA, the pils, the porter, the amber and the wheat beer they had. My favorite was the IPA. Really hoppy all the way through, nose, taste and punch.
Sunday we got up early and headed up to Copper Mountain. Though we didn't have the fresh snow like we did on Saturday, we took a CAT ride and hiked up Tucker Mountain for some CRAZY fresh back country riding. It was AWESOME!!! I made a short video from on top of Tucker before we were about to drop down. (Beware of a little cursing)
We ended the trip into the mountains with a stop at Tommyknocker Brewery where we enjoyed a 5oz tasting of all the brews they had on tap. We also got a sampling of the anniversary brew they have which is an imperial version of their Maple Brown Ale. Good stuff.
I had a great trip. I got to ride more verticle feet in two days than in the past two years and I got to try a lot of amazing beer. Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Poop for having me over, it's always a lot of fun.
There has been a lot of talk on the brew blogs about Canadian artists and I figured I would chime in. Now I'm personally a die-hard T-Hip fan and would agree that there is no question that there are a lot of great Canadian comedians and bands. With that said, the chatter about Canadians drummed up memories for me of The Kids In The Hall and they have always been a favorite of mine.
Allen from A Good Beer Blog has pointed out a lot of classic Canadians of note, I would offer that The Kids in the Hall need to be in any conversation about notable Canadians. Unlike MNB's unnatural love of Bryan Adams, this is completely respect for, as Don Cherry would say:
"A bunch of good Canadian boys have good clean Canadian fun"
Yea it's a pretty lame title, but I'm sick and not in the mood to be overly creative.
This weekend I did some of the necessary upkeep to my brews to keep things moving along. In order to do this, I had to stop off get two more 5 gallon carboys for secondary because everything I have now needs to sit for at least a month in a secondary container.
This was brewed on 1/20/08 and was racked over last weekend so that we could use the yeast cake for the kaffir lime imperial lager (KLIL). This brew would up with quite a bit of traub and I had to top it off in the secondary with some water. It has been sitting in the fridge at 41f for the last week. This weekend I gave it a second racking because of all the traub that was built up and I dry hopped with with a half oz of Amarillo hops (8% AAU). I also added some of my gelatin to hopefully give it a nice clear finish.
The KLIL was brewed last weekend and in spite of the high gravity, made quick business of the 1.072 OG. When I racked it over it was reading 1.009 for a FG making this a 8.2% ABV lager that is dangerously smooth.
For the kaffir lime part of this brew, per Nick's instructions, I took 10 fresh kaffir lime leaves that had been in the freezer for the past week and diced them into thin slices. The freezing was to allow the glands that hold the lime smell and flavor to burst and cutting them was to get off of the stuff in the glands exposed. From here, I boiled the thin slices in 4qts of water for an hour. I added a little gelatin into the mix at the end for clarity as well.
I added the liquid into the secondary with the pieces of kaffir lime leaf in the mix. This will sit in 41f for secondary for at least one month.
Finally I have the tripel that I brewed. It's been sitting patiently for the past two weeks in secondary on my bench (a nice even 61f) and I am not going to move it until I bottle it. I am looking at waiting a month on that one as well, but I might consider bottling in another 2 weeks depending on what my brewing storage vessel needs are.
Finally, next weekend I am headed to Colorado for some snowboarding and sampling of great brews. I am a fan of New Belgium'sFat Tire which I had for the first time while I was at A-Basin last time I was out there a few years back.
Without going into a lot of detail, I have seen a lot of political ads. While most of the good ones qualify as "good" only do so because "in the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king", this ad is the exception.
This is hands down the best political ad ever and may be one of the best ads ever.
In yet another exclusive piece of undercover reporting from CNYBrew.com, I have blown the cover on Monday Night Brewery's publicity stunt. No more will they be able to destroy the lives of children by the ridicule for having a wacky name.
ajc.com with it's list of Georgia names allowed me to search and discover yet another shocking revelation about Monday Night Brewery. They have named a girl Monday in an attempt to build free publicity and drive their southern countrymen to drink their beer.
As crazy as this sounds, please think about the evidence and ask yourself, could this be a coincidence? I think not.
To make matters worse, in an attempt to head off the controversial attention this move would create for MNB other breweries have jumped on board as well:
Genesy - 1 girl (poor masking of Genesee brand beer)
Brewing is a hobby of humility, patience and pleasure. The guys of MNB have taken that to a whole new low with their shameless marketing and exploitation of children. When will it stop guys? When will it ever be enough?
Today was our reiterated mashing day for our "Sissy" Kaffir Lime Imperial Lager. For all of the details on the story behind the reiterated mashing technique, please check out my previous post, I don't feel like going over it again.
This morning I started heating 10 gallons of water up at 6:30am. As planned, we split the grain bill up into two batches. The first was 15.2 lbs and the second was 16.8 lbs. There was 5lbs of brown rice that was cooked the night before and added to each of the mashes.
We struck the first mash and the temp was at 145, lower than the 150 we had targeted for this mash. We ran off two gallons into the second mash and added 2 gallons of water at 162 to get us up to the desired 150f. We held that mash at that temp for 20 min.
After the 20 min, we ran our first mash off into the second mash. For this we used a cooler that was the same size as the mash tun. After running off, we were well below the desired 145, so we pulled off about 1/3 of the mash and heated it to a boil on a separate burner (this is a decoction of sorts). After adding this back to the second mash, we had a temp that was little higher than we wanted, 151, but we were good with that as it was going to loose some temp over the hour hold. In the end, the first runnings were 13 brix or about 1.056 for the first mash.
Now in a slight deviation from the original reiterated mashing technique, we decided that we were going to try to utilize as much of the sugars on the grain as possible. The plan was to sparge the first mashing and keep that runoff for sparging the second mash. This second running on the first mash was 5 gallons at 168 and yielded 7.25 brix (1.028G).
While we waited for the first mash to finish it's 60min hold, we cleaned the grains out of the mash tun in preparation for the second mash.
Once the hold was done on the second mash, we moved the grains from the cooler into the mash tun where we were added boiling water to acheve 168f for mashout. Once at mashout, we setup for a fly sparge using the sparge runoff from the first mash. The first running from the second mash yeilded 18.25 brix (1.074G).
We wound up with a bit more volume than we had planned on so we seporated the wort into two brew pots for increased evaporation. After about an hour of boiling, we added them to the same brew pot and started a normal brew adding our bittering hops of 2 oz UK Goldings for 45min. The aroma hops were UK Goldings as well of 1 oz for 25min.
Once the wort was cool, we decided to use Beano pills as a way of getting rid of some of residual sugars by turning them into fermetable sugars The decision to do this was in light of a BA post that I did and a BYO article here. According to what we had seen, adding 4 pills per 5 gal would turn the residual sugars into fermentables, giving you a beer that has a lower carbohydrate level and, in our case, a crisp dry finish like you get in a Japanese Lager.
We crushed up 8 Beano pills and added them to the 10 gal cooled wort.
In preparation for a big beer, we did aerated the beer thoroughly and made a mini yeast culture for future introduction into the beer. We will use this if the fermentation slows down as a way to kick start the process.
Ah, well I think that's it. In this end this brew weighed in at 1.072 which was less than the 1.073 the recipe should have given us. I need to sleep on this whole "reiterated mashing" before I have a definitive conclusion on it's application. While we did deviate from the path in some ways, we also did something that would hopefully have led to a greater utilization of our grains. I am not sure if we got any more out of our grains than we would of doing anything else, but it was an interesting process and fun to try something new.
So in December of this past year when my BYO came, I saw an article by Chris Colby about this new technique for brewing high gravity beers. While I was not able to find an online version of the article, you can order it from BYO here or you can hear a really informative interview with James from Basic Brewing Radio here (November 22, 2007) on it.
Reading the article really gave me a lot to think about. Three things come to mind:
1) Is this worth all the work? 2) what's the benefit? 3) If this is some magic way to maximize your grain bill, why not do it all the time?
Well after listening to James' interview and reading a bunch of forum threads on it (here, here and here), I came up with some answers to these questions:
1) Making a big beer is always one of several things, work, time or money. 2) The benefit is being able to make a big beer with a normal mash tun and with out having to boil down 20 gallons of wort 3) No magic, just a way to deal with a 40lb grain bill on a 12 gallon mash tun and a 15gal brew kettle
So after some reading and a meeting with Nick, we decided to take the plunge and we are going to brew a Kaffir Lime Imperial Lager. Here is the recipe:
Ingredients: ------------ Amount Item Type % or IBU 30.00 lb Pilsner (2 Row) UK (1.0 SRM) Grain 75.0 % 8.00 lb Rice, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 20.0 % 2.00 lb Pale Malt (6 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 % 3.00 oz Saaz [4.00%] (45 min) Hops 15.7 IBU Munich Lager #2308 (reused from Samuel Jackson)
Now there are a few things going on here that I need to explain. First off the rice. While flaked rice (rice that is pregelatinized) is the recommended method of using rice as an adjunct, we are going to be using plain white rice because of the lack of availability of flaked rice. So there will be a 1/2 hr rice prep that will either take place the night before or the day of brewing.
With that said, we are going to make our variation on a "reiterated mash":
Reiterated Mashing (our take)
20lbs added to mash tun
Strike 10 gal of water at 162 for a grain bed temp of 150
Let sit for 20 min
Heat up additional 5 gallons water to sparge first 20lbs of grain
Runoff into brew kettle - Heat wort up (if necessary)
Strike wort from kettle to second 20lbs of grain (in second cooler)with 140-145f grain bed target temp - Rest for 1hr stiring every 10min
(in the meantime) Batch sparge 5 gallons of sparge water that was heated up, runoff into second brew pot - Heat up to 140f and hold
Empty first 20lbs of grain from mash tun
After the hour is up, dump the second 20lbs of grain from second cooler into mash tun along with 2.5 gal of water at 192f for mash out temp - let stand for 10 min.
Runoff into brew kettle
Use the 5 gallons that was sparged from the first 20lbs to fly sparge the second 20lbs in the mash tun
Brew!
From all the reading and listening I did, this process should be about 3hrs on it's own. There are some basic "all grain brewing" aspects of this that are assumed such as recirculation. With that said, there will be minimal to no recirculation before the last runoff because the wort is going into more grain.
After the wort is in the kettle (we are shooting for 11.7gal preboil volume) we will commence with a normal brew day only with a 45min boil to ensure the lightness of the brew.
The kaffir lime is going to be introduced in the secondary. The preparation is for the leaves only. Nick is in charge of this and he is freezing the leaves (20 for a 10.5 gallon batch) and then chopping them up and boiling them. This will make a kaffir lime leaf concentrate and that is what we will introduce to the secondary. It's a pretty interesting idea.
So that's the plan. We are open to feed back as it sounds like there have not been a lot of people out there that have used this approach. I hope that I was able to articulate the technique in a way that makes sense (to those of us above the Mason Dixon line anyway, MNB I am mostly concerned for you as this is pretty confusing).
Cheers!
PS - I am going to take plenty of pictures and try to make a really comprehensive overview of how we are doing this.
Sunday was back to brewing for Nick and I in the face of REALLY cold conditions. A few weeks back I did a post about our attempt at making a Samuel Adams Lager clone but due to some unforeseen circumstances, that brew went on hold and I brewed my Tripel Nipple. Well this past Sunday we got back on track.
This brew came out really well and due to an increased efficiency (and the resulting increase in potency of this brew) we decided to change the name to Samuel L. Jackson Beer because this stuff will get ya drunk! I also made some adjustments to the recipe, this is what we ended up brewing:
Samuel L. Jackson Beer
Ingredients: ------------ Amount Item Type % or IBU 21.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.5 % 2.32 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 8.9 % 2.25 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 8.6 % 3.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (60 min) Hops 24.3 IBU 1.25 oz Tettnang [4.50%] (30 min) Hops 7.3 IBU 1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (Dry Hop 4 days) Hops - 0.53 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc 1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body Total Grain Weight: 26.07 lb ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Mash In Add 8.08 gal of water at 162.6 F151.0 F 75 min Mash Out Add 5.21 gal of water at 198.2 F168.0 F 10 min
Brew Notes
Despite some snow up Nick's way, we were still able to get started with a striking at 7:30am. We struck with about 155f as the temp. I was going for 151f to give this a little lighter body, but not a bog deal. Because this was a big recipe and we were working at the capacity of the mash tun, we ran off three gallons of the wort into a pot so that we could add it to the sparge water (this was Nick's idea and may have contributed to the name of the brew).
We hit our mash out temp of 168f on the nose and let it sit for 10 min. After this we added the sparge water and let the sparge happen for about 30 to 45 min. In the end our pre-boil gravity was 14.75brix or 1.058 gravity, a little more than a point above the projected 1.047.
Our yield was about 1/2 gallon lower than it should have been when things were all said and done and our gravity was 1.060, four above where we were aiming giving us the new name - Samuel Jackson Lager - due to the increase in potency.
In the end our efficiency was about 70% and we need to figure out if it was the recirculation of the wort or hitting the mash out temp that caused the spike.
In other news
I had a little stall in the fermentation of my Tripel Nipple that was solved by taking the bucket upstairs into the bathroom where it could sit at 72f. I have since racked it over and have the 5 gallon carboy on my bench where it's a consistent 68f. Contrary to rumors on the Internets, I don't think that a Tripel is equal portions Bud Lite, Miller Lite and Coors.
On that note, Southern Culture on the Skidz has decided to take some pot shots at my over carbonated (and very over oaked) stout. I didn't get a chance to respond because I was watching the NEW YORK Giants make it to the Super Bowl and I was basking in the light of an all north eastern Super Bowl. While I do sometimes have hiccups in my brewing operation, at least what I do to my beer is legal in all 50 states, unlike the boys at MNB:
So last night on my way home I figured I would make a few stops, one by the redemption center to get some Chimay bottles for my Tripel Nipple and second by Harbor Freight for a wire brush to clean my burner.
I couldn't find the redemption center, so still on a mission, I stopped by my old faithful. Now for the sake of the place, in case their distributors give them a hard time about this, they will remain nameless. Anyway, I go to my super secret location and ask about Chimay bottles, but they have none. However, they do have a "ton of Grolsch flip top bottles" so I ask to have a look. It turns out they also have a ton of Schwelmer flip top bottles as well (amber glass and 11.5oz each as opposed to the larger green Grolsch bottles), 35 to be exact.
I of course volunteered to take all those bottles as well as a Budweiser Brewmaster's Select flip top bottle (you will suffer no more my poor innocent awesome bottle) for the awesome price of $7.50! (To make things better, I get them home and they are CLEAN!!! Nothing inside any of them. All I did was de-label them and they were ready!)
In a good mood, I continued onward to Harbor Freight to get my wire brushes for cleaning my burner. While there, I stumbled on an awesome pack of "pipe cleaning" brushed for $4. I can now lean every crack and crevasse of my beer stuff with a whole variety of tools (yes, it was not an accident to link the word tools to it's definition).
Now as if things could get any better, I got home to find that my brand new refractometer had arrived!!! WOOO-FREAKING-HOOO!!!(my wife thinks I am crazy about being fired up about this, but I don't care, it's bad ass)
So I spent last night de-labeling my clean bottles, playing with my refractometer (contrary to belief, playing with your refractometer too much will not cause hairy palms or blindness, however it will cause awesomeness) and cleaning my burner. For all the stuff I did, it was a pretty easy night.
In other news...
As noted in the picture below, I have some over pressurization on my stout bottles. I don't think that bottle conditioning in growlers is going to work. It's just not been a very good experience to date. I will see how the others turnout, but I think it's a failed plan.
This weekend we are going to be back on schedule and brewing our Sam Adams Boston Lager clone. If anyone knows of a recipe for this one, we are all ears. While there are a lot of clones out there, none of them are alike. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Well doe to an unfortunate situation, Nick was not available this weekend to brew. With that said, I still need to get 'my brew on' so I am going to do a solo batch for my brain.
For this brew I am going to do a Belgium Tripel I am calling Tripel Nipple. When I went to get my supplies for the brew day at my LHBS, a kid Ed has working there mistakenly started to ground 2-row pale malt for me instead of pilsener. Ed offered to give me to two row for free and start it all over again, but I told him it was all good and made this with 9.8lbs european 2 row and 5.2lbs pilsener. No need to waste. I am not sure if that takes in out of the "Tripel" category or not though. Oh well, not like I care...
Ingredients: ------------ Amount Item Type % or IBU 9.80 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 48.40 % 5.20 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain 25.68 % 2.00 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 9.88 % 2.00 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 9.88 % 0.25 lb Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 1.23 % 1.00 oz Cluster [8.50 %] (60 min) Hops 20.9 IBU 1.00 oz Mt. Hood [6.00 %] (15 min) Hops 7.3 IBU 1.00 lb Candi Sugar, Clear (0.5 SRM) Sugar 4.94 % 5.50 gal Syracuse, New York Water 1 Pkgs Trappist High Gravity (Wyeast Labs #3787) Yeast-Wheat
Mash Schedule: Double Infusion, Full Body Total Grain Weight: 19.25 lb ---------------------------- Double Infusion, Full Body Step Time Name Description Step Temp 30 min Protein Rest Add 4.33 gal of water at 134.5 F 122.0 F 30 min Saccrification Add 3.85 gal of water at 206.7 F 158.0 F 10 min Mash Out Add 2.89 gal of water at 199.4 F 168.0 F
I got started this morning at about 6:30am (thanks Meatball for making sure I was up early on a Saturday) and finished at 11:30am. Pretty smooth brew day for the most part. I hit all of my temps and made some pH adjustments to the mash to get a 5.5pH. Everything went VERY smoothly up until the end.
I discovered that Beer Smith was giving me about 4 gallons more than I needed for the volume I was looking for. I am not exactally sure how it happened, but I can only assume that the quart of water to pound of grain volume is set too high. I am trying to figure out how to fix this for the future.
All was not lost though. I wound up with an extra gallon of brew and it still came in at a hefty 1.070 OG. I can live with that. I was dead on balls accurate with everything else so I am pleased with the day as a whole. Plus at a sunny 40f it was like brewing in Georgia only without being married to my cousin.
In other news...
First off, Ted from Ted's Homebrew Journal and I exchanged some brews over the holidays. Last night I tasted his Simcoe 100 and here are my notes:
Aroma - It's like opening a bag of hops and taking a whiff. There is a little malt tucked away in the background, but the hops are really the star of the show and you can get a complete hops aroma on this.
Appearance - Dark copper with a light brown finish. Depending on what light you hold it in, it can be very dark. The head was a cream color reminiscent of French vanilla. The head build up quickly and stuck around for a long time.
Flavor - Leads in with a hint of bitterness before you are hit with a strong grapefruit flavor. Its not an overly tart grapefruit, but just the citrus tang. Just like the nose, the hops is all over this one. It's a very complete hops flavor and the grapefruit plays very nicely with it.
Overall - My comments verbatim; "Wow - I love this beer!" It's a hell of a brew. My only regret is that I had but one to drink...
Second I racked over my Hairy Porter, very smooth and very sweet. It's actually a lot less harsh than I anticipated. I let it sit in secondary in the fridge for three weeks so its nicely mellowed. It was time well spent. The Anise has an interesting blend in this brew. More to come on this.
Finally it seems as though my "bottling for champs" el cheepo method might not be working. I need to do one of two things; break down and get a beer gun or prime every keg and bottle off of that. We will see...
After some investigation, I discovered the dark secret behind Monday Night Brewery and why they brew on Mondays when the rest of the free world brews on the weekend.
It all started while I was researching the phenomenon known as "Civil War Reenactment" that is a regular fixture in the south. While much of the north does participate in local civil war reenactment, the enigma of the south, reenacting a war that they lost has always been fascinating to me and I have been on a mission to understand why.
During my research I came across the picture above. At first I thought nothing of it, but upon closer inspection, I discovered that the guys of MNB and all of their MNB buddies (I can only assume) took the day off from brewing and "cornholing" to reenact the civil war!
Suddenly it all because very clear; this was why they could not brew on the weekend, they were busy replaying a war that was lost by the south! It all came full circle, the nonsense about Syracuse and upstate New York, they were trying to win the war!
Well my tooth deprived brew buddies from the south, let the brew war begin!
In the last issue of BYO there was an article about an in-line dry hops filter and I want to figure out how to make it. The guys from Aussie Home Brewer were the feature and the in-line hop filter consisted of some kind of in-line boat gas filter and some garden hose.
The gist of the article was that this was a $10 solution to dry hopping. What I was not able to figure out was how it worked. The article made it sound like it was something like this hop-back I found, but according to these guys, the in-line hop filter could just be dropped in a keg or in a fermentor.
If you saw this or have any information, I would appreciate some feedback and I will gladly post how I do with making one of these.
It's not been an easy past week. I am ready to do some brewing to take my mind off of everything.
This weekend we will be brewing a Hopped Bohemian Lager in the spirit of Boston Brewing Company's Samuel Adams Lager. If you don't know about this brew, I tell ya what. If you don't know about Sam Adams, just raise your hand and I'll have Tommy Boy here come back there and hit you in the head with a tack hammer because you're a RETARD.
I am calling this "Bogan's Bohemian Lager" after my professional mentor and close friend Ed Bogan. Ed's wisdom is the reason I am where I am today and I cannot thank him enough. I am going to miss you Ed.
The brew is going to be lagered at 48-50f (depending on how the weather cooperates) and should finish at about 4.5% ABV. Some of the recipes I saw used a decoction so we are going to be decocting this one. I think that it brings a lot of nice flavors and smells out of the malt so I am going to be pushing for us to do that.
Bogan's Bohemian Lager Brewer: Travis & Nick Asst Brewer: Meatball Style: Hopped Bohemian Lager TYPE: All Grain Taste: (35.0)
Ingredients: ------------ Amount 16.75 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 74.2 % 5.32 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) Grain 23.6 % 0.50 lb Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 2.2 % 3.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (60 min) Hops 26.6 IBU 1.25 oz Tettnang [4.50%] (30 min) Hops 8.0 IBU 1.00 oz Hallertauer [4.80%] (Dry Hop 4 days) Hops - 1 Pkgs Munich Lager (Wyeast Labs #2308) Yeast-Lager
Mash Schedule: Decoction Mash, Single Total Grain Weight: 22.57 lb ---------------------------- Name Description Step Temp Step Time Protein Rest Add 11.29 gal of water at 126.6 122.0 F 35 min Saccharification Decoct 4.78 gal of mash and boil155.0 F 45 min Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min 168.0 F 10 min
Initially the plan was to take advantage of the cold weather for lagerning, but since it's been a heat wave here in Syracuse, I am not sure that's going to workout for us. Hopefully things cool down this weekend and we can shut that damn Al Gore up.
Happenings on the Internets
Freak Brothers were nice enough to include me in on a beer exchange that they are proposing through out the beer blogs. The bros have one of the best homebrew setups I have ever seen.
Finally, congratulations to the fellas from Monday Night Brewery, they have found the bond that connects them is more than beer, it's a game called "Cornhole". God only knows what those guys are up to with their "cornholes".
No brewing for the last two weekends and I am again not going to be brewing this coming weekend as I will be in New Hampshire campaigning for...well a presidential candidate (If you know me, you know who it is, otherwise I want to follow the rules of "no talking religion or politics on your brew blog"...well except when it's complaining about piss poor legislation as they had to do on MNB, that's always fair game).
That being the case, Nick, Meatball and I will be brewing the two weekends after. We are going to do some lagers so that we can take advantage of the weather. I was thinking about either a German Pils or a Maibock for 10 gallon batches on one weekend. We might do another IPA by request on that weekend as well, we will see. The weekend after we are going to plan a long brew day so that we can try the recirculation that was reading about in last month's BYO. The long and short of the technique is that you mash in two stages for 20 min each running all the water off. Now this should provide a very strong lager and we might be able to user the second runnings for another 10 gallon batch. This one is going to take some planning though.
Just a quick update, I brought the cream ale over to my in-laws house for Christmas Eve and it was a hit. Plus my brother-in-law took a case I bottled up for him home.
In my opinion, Oktoberfest is still the best gateway beer, but the cream ale is a close second. It's a nice session brew that's easy to make and it can be a little sneaky as well. My brother-in-law emailed and said he thought it was 8% ABV. I wouldn't go that far, but it ain't no Genny Cream Ale.
Happy New Years!
PS- New Years resolution for MNB - Cut the mullet and limit yourselves to 8 tattoos this year (one for each kid you're going to father, that's it).
