Double brew day!
Posted by | Uncategorized | Posted on June 24th, 2006
Clint (my partner in beer) and I have decided to do a DOUBLE BREW DAY the weekend just before July 4th. His planned recipe is another variation on an IPA (or maybe a whit?), while I’m planning a nut brown ale. I think the plan is to have a sort of beer party… several folks (including my dad!) are supposed to be coming over to help us brew up 20 gallons of beer. 20 gallons! Dang!
Here’s the planned recipe for the brown I want to try… sortof a combination of a recipe I found online and my own fevered imagination:
- 22 lbs 2-row pale malt
- 4.5 lbs victory malt
- .5 lb crystal 60L
- .5 lb chocolate malt
- 2 lbs Munich malt
- 2 lbs wheat malt
- 2 oz Northern Brewer hops (whole) (7.3%, 60 minutes)
- 3 oz Kent Goldings hops (whole) (6.3%)
2 oz 30 minutes
1 oz 15 minutes
- 2 tubes WLP001 (California Ale yeast)
Promises to be a busy beer weekend… my cherry wheat will be ready to keg, too. Woohoo beer!
I think one of the improvements to our process that we plan on implementing is to culture our yeast. I really like the White Labs stuff we’ve been using for the last several batches… but the yeast alone was almost 25% of the cost of the rye IPA. It will also be nice not to have to worry about the yeast getting damaged/cooked/etc in shipment, since a bunch of our stuff comes from CA or MN.
Rye IPA
Posted by | Uncategorized | Posted on June 18th, 2006
We also brewed a batch of this one this weekend (recipe posted
earlier)… ended up with a little over 11 gallons. We used an
immersion mash at 152 degrees for 1 hour, then mashed out with water at
196 (which dropped quite a bit as the mashout process went on… we
need a better flow rate on our sparge arm.)
At any rate, the beer looks good and is fermenting happily. O.G. reading is 1.070.
Quick update (6/26/06):
Before I left for Indiana, I transferred the IPA to secondary fermentation. I got a gravity reading of 1.016… for an ABV of just over 7%.
Cherry Wheat Ale
Posted by | Uncategorized | Posted on June 18th, 2006
Well, I finally got around to brewing again last weekend. We
picked a little over 10 pounds of cherries from the tree in our back
yard, so of course I immediately set some aside for use in a
beer. Here’s the recipe I used… I haven’t tried any yet, so no
idea what it’ll be like. Fermentation was very active (had to use
a blow-off tube) with an O.G. of 1.050.
- 6.6 lbs Munton’s Wheat extract (syrup)
- 1 lb extra light malt extract (dry)
- 1 lb flaked oats
- 1 oz Hallertau hops (pellet, 60 min)
- 1 tsp Irish moss
- 3 – 4 lbs pie cherries (added in secondary fermentation)
I steeped the flaked oats while bringing 2 gallons of water to 150
degrees, then held the temperature for 30 minutes. Pulled the
oats out (which look REALLY interesting after soaking for 40
minutes…) and brought it to a boil, then added the extracts and
hops. Boil time of 60 minutes. I should be transferring
this beer to secondary fermentation today… so we’ll see what it
tastes like.
UPDATE: Tastes… wheaty! F.G. 1.018, or about 4.1% alcohol
by volume. I ended up using around 2 lbs of cherries.