It's Brewing Season

After a long time with no updates, I've got lots of brewing news. We're hosting a party on July 11 so I've been trying to brew like a madman. I've also scored a new 7 cubic foot chest freezer (thank you Craigslist!) so I need to get 5 or 6 beers kegged to fill it. Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll be purchasing a temp controller, 5 or 6 Perlick taps, a few more kegs, and a couple of CO2 distributors. I've got a double distributor so the plan is to run my beers off one 5 way distributor and then run a 3 way distributor off the other regulator so I can have a line for a higher carbed beer, a soda, and one for utility cleaning and purging.

Right now I've got a Saison from the AHA Big Brew that I split with my friend Ryan from the RAZE homebrew club. I think I posted the Saison recipe already. I fermented this with WLP565, but had to finish it with US-05 because I couldn't get it below 1.016. After pitching the US-05 it dropped to 1.012. I was worried that it would finish too sweet but it still tastes fairly dry. It's been in the keg a couple of weeks now and it's coming around. Appearance wise it's straw colored, a little cloudy, and has a nice fluffy white head that sticks around for a while and leaves nice lacing. Aroma is yeast and mild pepper and fruit. It has a nice light body, despite the almost 6% ABV, nicely balanced bitterness, and a good mix of fruit and spice. Overall, pretty tasty, but I like Ryan's version a little better that he fermented with the French Saison strain from Wyeast.

I also kegged half of the 10 gallon batch of Hoppin Mad IPA that I brewed on Memorial Day. This beer is fresh, hoppy, and awesome! Here's the recipe for a 10 gallon batch:

• 1 lb C60
• .5 lb C120
• .5 lb Vienna
• 13 lbs Briess Golden Light DME
• 1 lb sugar
• 1.5 oz Warror at 60
• .5 oz Warrior/1 oz Simcoe/1 oz Amarillo at 15
• 1.5 oz Simcoe/1.5 oz Amarillo at 5
• 1.5 oz Simcoe/1.5 oz Amarillo at flameout
• .5 oz Simcoe/.5 oz Amarillo keghop

I brewed 10 gallons of Patersbier on Thursday morning that is now bubbling over thanks to the healthy repitch of Wyeast 3787 that I harvested from the cake of the first version of this beer. That brings my 2009 total to 70 gallons so far, which will hit 80 when I brew 10 gallons of APA with a mix of Centennial and Cascade sometime next week.

I also got the chance on Tuesday to help Tod Fyten of Mantorville Brewing Company brew a batch of Stagecoach Amber Ale. I met Tod when RAZE toured his brewery a couple of months ago. He mentioned increasing production over the summer and I volunteered to help, which I'm hoping to do once a week for the rest of the summer if we can get our schedules to match. Tod's a cool guy with many years of experience in the craft brewing industry and tons of connections, so listening to his stories was a good time, and it was really interesting to see the differences and similarities between the commercial and the homebrew process. There's definitely some homebrewer's ingenuity happening there. Plus, seeing 7 or 8 sacks of malt in a mash tun that wasn't even half full, 128(?) gallons of beer in the kettle, and giant bags of hops in the freezer was a pretty cool experience and definitely gave me the itch. Ten gallons just doesn't seem big enough now!

Man Down

Where did the last 2 weekends go and why did I not brew?  Kristen went to plant the big garden in Red Wing today and declared my Saaz and Horizon rhizomes dead, but she harvested a Cascade and a Centennial rhizome to put in the extra 2 mounds, so it would be nice to get a little extra production.  My new hop count is 2 Cascade, 2 Centennial and 1 Zeus.  The original 3 plants are all around 4 feet and growing strong.  While she was there, I finally knocked out a 10 gallon batch of IPA.  I went off of the grain bill for last summer's short lived Simcoe IPA (which only lasted 13 days in the keg) which was based on Tasty McDole's IPA on the Jamil Show.  The hop schedule was inspired by Surly Furious.  Here's the recipe:

• 1 lb Caramel 60
• .5 lb Caramel 120
• .5 lb Vienna
• 13 lbs DME
• 1 lb cane sugar
• 1.5 oz Warrior (60 min)
• .5 oz Warrior (15 min)
• 1 oz Simcoe (15 min)
• 1 oz Amarillo (15 min)
• 1.5 oz Simcoe (5 min)
• 1.5 oz Amarillo (5 min)
• 1.5 oz Simcoe (flameout)
• 1.5 oz Amarillo (flameout)
• 1 oz Simcoe (dryhop)
• 1 oz Amarillo (dryhop)

I definitely put a dent in last weekend's birthday present to myself of a 50 pound bag of Briess Golden Light DME and 2 pounds of Simcoe, Summit, Amarillo and Centennial.  I've used the Simcoe and Amarillo combo before so I'm super excited about this one.  I'm going to dry hop with a half ounce of Simcoe and a half ounce of Amarillo, but I may do it differently when the time comes.  The OG was 1.066 and comes in at 79 IBUs.

On deck for next weekend (hopefully) is a 10 gallon batch of Patersbier for the summer.  That will make a great lawnmower beer.  Anybody else get some brewing done this weekend?

What a Weekend!

I had Friday and Monday off so I decided to get some brewing chores done.

• On Friday I cleaned and sanitized 2 kegs, kegged my Patersbier, harvested the yeast from the Patersbier for a tripel I'll brew sometime, and built a 50 foot immersion chiller for less than 50 bucks.  Copper has gotten really cheap!
• I spent Saturday and Sunday putting up the new hop towers, transplanting my Cascade, Centennial, and Zeus, and planting my new Saaz and Horizon rhizomes.  I used PVC for the towers, one tower per plant.  I sank a 5 foot section of 2 inch PVC into the ground, then put a 10 foot 1.5 inch pipe inside the 2 incher.  That gave me 7 feet above ground, so I added another 5 feet to get a total of 12.  Not super high, but good enough.  It does sway a little, but hopefully they'll stay standing in the wind.  I went with the individual towers because I thought this would be the easiest way to keep the different varieties separate.
• On Monday morning I brewed my first 10 gallon batch, an APA.  Getting 12 gallons of wort to boil didn't take as long as anticipated, and I chilled to 52 in 25 minutes with my new ugly chiller (a little too cold!), but siphoning was a pain.  My burner stand isn't high enough to get a good siphon going so the large amount of pellet and whole hops kept stopping the siphon.  I'm going to get some concrete blocks to elevate my rig a little for next time.  I'm also looking into installing a ball valve, pickup tube, and thermometer.  Ten gallons took me about 4 and a half hours from dragging out my gear to putting everything away, but the siphoning and racking to primary took a half hour!
  

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Is It Spring Yet?

Since I haven't posted in awhile, here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to beerwise.

• Kicked the Oatmeal Stout keg.  Overall this was a nice beer.  Good roasted barley character, a little toasted flavor, and a nice and smooth mouthfeel.  May have been just a bit too bitter, so I'll probably use a little less at 60 minutes.  While I enjoyed drinking this beer, I got a little sick of it by the end.  Not a real session beer.
• Brewed the Double IPA with almost 2 ounces of Warrior at 60 to bitter.  I split 2 ounces of Simcoe and 2 ounces of Summit into three piles and added each pile at 15, 5, and flameout.  I was going to use the yeast cake from the VSS Imperial Blend but the starter beer I brewed and attempted to FWH for the first time, did it wrong, and mistreated the yeast somehow so it tasted too estery.  I just pitched 2 packets of US05 instead.  This beer did finish too sweet, so next time I'll use more sugar instead of malt to get it dryer, but it tasted drier than it measured.  At 10% ABV and 125 IBUs, this beer is really deceiving and dangerously drinkable.
• Brewed a Patersbier with Wyeast 3787 and all Saaz hops.  I'm hoping to use the yeast cake for a tripel in a month or so.
• I have converted my keg into a kettle, but I still need to clean it up and do a test run.  I'm not real confident in how fast I'll be able to boil with my current burner.  I think that I'll also probably need to build a new immersion chiller for 10 gallon batches, which reminds me that I need to do that soon since I'm having a Big Brew Day club event and was going to split a batch of Saison with a friend.  I'm thinking about giving the Brew in a Bag all grain method a try this summer once I finish the upgrade.
• Last Saturday the RAZE club toured the Mantorville Brewing Company.  The owner, Tod Fyten, started as a homebrewer and gave us the full on beer geek version of the tour.  It was awesome!  He really had a lot of insight into the history of beer and brewing, especially in Minnesota, and also gave us a detailed talk of his brewing process.  We finished it off with some samples of his Maple Ale, Blonde, and Smoked Porter.  I got a growler of the Smoked Porter and had no problem finishing it. 

This weekend the club is meeting at a member's house to get rhizomes, but it's been pretty cold here lately so I think we might get frozen out.  I'd like to get the keggle cleaned up and do a test boil at some point too.  At some point I need to brew again too, probably an APA.

Time to try a bitter

I just got done making a starter for Sunday's brewday. I'll be brewing Jamil's Best Bitter (minus the aromatic malt since I'm mini-mashing with Maris Otter) and smoking a pork shoulder at the same time. Should be a good time. It's been a long time since I made a starter! I've been using US05 so much that I actually had to look back at an old blog post that I made about starters and check the Mr. Malty site. I ended up using Wyeast 1028 London Ale instead of the 1968 ESB that Jamil recommends but the LHBS doesn't stock it. Oh well.

RAZE meeting tomorrow night, woot! Lots to talk about too, upcoming brewery tours of Mantorville Brewing Company and Pearl Street Brewery, plan for the hopgrowing season, and figure out what we're doing for Big Brew Day. We've got more members trickling in, which is awesome since it's always good to talk to other brewers and beer geeks like myself. I must admit I'm also stoked that I'll be able to drink Hopslam on tap! I'm still trying to decide if it's worth dropping 16 bucks on a 6er, when I can just about brew 5 gallons for that, not a fine DIPA of course, but still, 5 gallons.

The Hopsicle IPA is tasting mighty fine right now. I just tapped the Oatmeal Stout and am drinking my first pint right now. It's a little young, but it's got a nice roasty chocolatey flavor with a little hop bitterness in the mix too. I'm happy! Here's the Hopsicle recipe (partial mash)if you're interested:

• 3 lbs Golden Promise
• .5 lbs C60
• .25 lbs C120
• .25 Vienna
• 6 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
  
• 1 oz Nugget @ 60 minutes
• 1 oz Simcoe @ 15
• 1 oz Centennial @ 10
• 1 oz homegrown Cascade/Centennial/Zeus mix at 5
• 1 oz homegrown mix at flameout
• 1 oz Columbus dry hop

1.070 OG, 1.017 FG (a little high, but the bitterness balances it out), 77 IBUS, 6.9 ABV.

A Trip to the Brewshop

It was a busy brew related weekend for me! I hosted the RAZE brewclub meeting at my house Friday night. Not everybody could make it but I sampled some awesome beers, saw a cool oxygen free beer transfer gadget, and talked a lot about brewing. On Saturday I took the fam to the zoo and then made a stop at Midwest Supplies. I grabbed a bunch of Warrior hops, some Summit and Strisselspalt hops, a bunch of o-rings, a good supply of US-05, a smackpack of one of the new Wyeast VSS releases (Imperial Ale - here), and a new book: Farmhouse Ales. Today was brewday, so I did a partial mash Oatmeal Stout. This was my first time brewing an Oatmeal Stout so I used Jamil's recipe from Brewing Classic Styles, although I did make a few minor changes based on what I had on hand. I also managed to rack my Hopsicle IPA into secondary on top of an ounce of Columbus hops. Now I'm relaxing with a homebrew.

I'm thinking I'm going to brew an Imperial IPA again pretty soon. I've got pounds of hops in the freezer and a fresh smackpack of the Imperial Ale yeast, so it is officially on deck. Rather than screw with a starter though, I think I'm just going to brew an APA with it and save the cake. I'll probably brew that next weekend and try out my new Warrior hops and possibly first wort hopping too. Three weeks after that I should be ready to brew the Imperial and have it ready for Kristen's birthday.

So for Christmas I got a 365 days of beer page-a-day calendar. Saturday's beer was Saison Dupont. Reading that got me fired up about saisons like Ommegang's Hennepin so I adopted another resolution for the year: learn how to brew a good saison. So far it's a pretty good read. I'm thinking about brewing my first one after the APA. EDIT: Monday I picked up a 4 pack of Ommegang Hennepin, a 750 of Saison Dupont, and Surly Cynic for research.

In other brew news, Kristen actually suggested that I get a propane hot water on demand system and build a small shed of some sort with a sink and stuff so that I can have everything I need on the brew patio and not have to make so many trips in an out of the house and back and forth to the garage/basement. I love that woman. I'm thinking an inline filter might be a good idea too. Any suggestions on what I should do?

Brew Year's Resolutions

It's hard to believe it's almost been a month since I last blogged! Despite the craziness of the holiday season, I did manage to keep brewing. Since my last post, I blew the Ahtnanum APA keg, blew the Red Hook Harvest clone experiment keg, brewed my version of Jamil's Evil Twin red ale, brewed Jamil's Irish red ale, brewed an IPA, and put off brewing an Oatmeal Stout so that I can recuperate today. Details about my brews:

• Ahtanum APA: Bittered this with some Nugget then added 3 ounces late in the boil (1 oz each at 10, 5, and flameout). I used the same malt profile as usual for my APA (6 pounds Pilsen DME, .5 lb Caramel 60, .5 lb Carapils), but this beer was pretty blah. The Nugget did provide a nice clean bitterness, but the Ahtanum didn't provide nearly the citrus that I expected from reading the description. It tasted and smelled more flowery to me. It was still a good beer, but didn't really do it for me. I think I'll stick to Cascade and Centennial for my APA.
• Red Hook clone: This beer turned out to not be real close to the original because there was too much roasted barley. However, I really liked this beer alot. It wasn't really a session beer, but it was a great fall or winter brew. This was probably one of the most balanced beers I've brewed so far. There was a nice roasty and smoky backbone to this one with just enough hops to balance it out. Style wise, I'm not really sure what this would be. I read the BJCP descriptions and it is really a toss up between a brown, red , or porter. I'm having a really tough time deciding whether I should brew this again next fall the same way or decrease the roasted barley presence a little.
• Jamil's Evil Twin: I am not calling this Jamil's Evil Twin anymore since it wasn't hopbursted and I didn't use the same hops, so it is more inspired by his recipe. I am calling it Big Red because that's what it is, a big, malty, hoppy red ale. I used .25 oz of Nugget to bitter and then an ounce of Simcoe and Amarillo at 10 minutes and then again at flameout. This beer is GOOD! Nice deep red in color, awesome hop flavor and aroma, and good malt flavor to back it up without being too sweet. When I brewed this I was drinking and inspired by Widmer Brrr and Lagunitas Imperial Red, and I think I hit the mark on this one. It will be brewed again.
• Hopsicle IPA: Named this one because I froze brewing it. This was a minimash with 3 pounds of Golden Promise just to see what would happen. Bittered this one with Nugget, then threw in some Simcoe, Centennial, and then the last of my hop harvest (a mix of Cascade, Centennial, and Zeus). This one will probably get dryhopped with Columbus.
• Jamil's Irish Red: Kegging this one today, haven't tried it yet. I've got high hopes though!

After increasing my brewing skills and volumes over the last year, now I'm looking forward to 2009. Here are my brew year's resolutions in no particular order:

• Brew more. I would like to be able to not buy beer anymore except for when I'm working on a recipe. I brewed over 100 gallons in 2008, hoping to do even more in 2009.
• Move up to 10 gallon batches. I'm having a tough time keeping the kegerator full and I think this will help, especially now that I am brewing tried and true recipes that I know I will like.
• Upgrade the kegerator. Hopefully by the summer I will have a chest freezer with a collar that will be capable of dispensing 4-6 different beers. Variety is good, but this might also make it easier for me to keep the kegerator full without brewing every other weekend.

Any of my huge volume of loyal readers out there have any resolutions, beer related or not?