Brewing News

Well, it's been awhile since I've blogged about the brewing news. Since the last post, I've blown through the Columbus APA keg. The latest of my single hop APA/IPA series of the summer, I was pretty happy with the results, but I think Columbus, for my taste anyway, needs to be blended with other American hops. Just a little too rough around the edges for beers following the Bush Doctrine of go it alone.

I also buckled down and made my first wine, a Chilean Pinot Noir, that is in secondary right now. Wine kits are a little pricey, but they are ridiculously simple. It took about a half hour to make the thing! From what I hear, they are pretty hard to mess up, so I'm hoping that around Christmas time I'll be sipping some good wine that cost about 4 bucks a bottle.

Right now I'm drinking my Big Bill's Brown ale and will be kegging Jamil's Mild sometime tomorrow. The brown is a little on the young side, only 2.5 weeks since brewing, but it's nice and clear and has a nice sweet chocolate malt backbone with a good hop punch to balance things out.

I picked up ingredients to brew another blonde ale this weekend, as well as the 50 pound sack of DME I ordered. For the blonde I'll be using my hop harvest as well as a bunch of huge Cascade cones that I harvested from the hop yard of a guy in my homebrew club. Last Sunday another club member and I went to his house to help him get rid of his crop. When I saw the trellis I almost cried. It was like a wall of hops reaching to the heavens. After 3 or 4 hours of picking, I got about 3 pounds of Cascade and about a pound each of Saaz and Fuggles. Some of the Saaz will be going into a Czech Pilsner that will be dumbed down with ale yeast since I can't lager yet and the Fuggles will be going into a Stout or Porter of some sort. Seeing this hopyard really got me thinking hard about making a major expansion to my yard next year.

Finally, I picked up all the parts for a partial mash tun so that I can start experimenting with some different base malts like Golden Promise and Maris Otter, but I don't have any solid plans for what I'm going to brew for my first partial mash brew. I'm leaning towards an Oatmeal Stout or maybe a Smoked Porter, but that may change. Any suggestions?

Union Brew - Big Bill's Brown Ale

With my last weekend of the summer I decided to spend Labor Day brewing and drinking homebrew and decided a big American style brown ale was in order. Being Labor Day and a union man, I just had to name it after Big Bill Haywood, labor organizer and one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. This batch is a second shot at the Bourbon Barrel Brown, but without the bourbon or oak. I envisioned this as having a little more chocolate but also some more residual sweetness than the first attempt, so I added a little more caramel malts in 3 different lovibonds for complexity, more chocolate for flavor and color, and some pale chocolate for a little toastiness. I kept the hop varieties (Galena for bittering, Ahtanum for flavor/aroma) and schedule the same, but IBUs decreased just a little. Just like I did with the Columbus APA, I brewed with 6 gallons of unsoftened and untreated tap water from outside that I treated with a campden tablet to remove chlorine and chloramine. Big Bill's Brown came in at 1.066 OG and 52 IBUs. I'll leave this in the primary for 3 or 4 weeks and then it's going straight to keg.

While I was brewing this I poured the last pint of my Raspberry Wheat. It's pretty depressing to have a kegging setup with no beer to put in it :( For the first time since June (aside from beer for camping, which doesn't count) I had to buy beer that somebody else made. Bummer. This brew shortage got me motivated so I'm brewing again Saturday morning. On deck I've got Jamil Zainasheff's Mild ale from his book "Brewing Classic Styles." If you don't have this book already, go get it. Now. 80 award winning recipes (1 or 2 for each BJCP category) that have all won ribbons for one of the best homebrewers in the country. So far I've done the IPA and American Amber and they've been 2 of my best beers, so I've got high hopes for this one. It's a very small beer - the OG is only 1.036 - so it will be kind of weird to brew this, but I've heard good things about the recipe and it should be done fast so I'll be able to go right to keg quickly and start drinking a nice session beer for football season.

In other homebrew news, I picked up some more hops (Simcoe and Argentina Cascade) and a spare keg on a recent trip to Midwest Supplies. I just saw today that Freshops has some of the 08 hop crop in and they've got some varieties for pretty cheap, so I'm deciding if I should pull the trigger or not. One thing that complicates the decision is I just dropped a big chunk of change on a 50 pound bag of dry malt extract. I'm a little concerned about how I'm going to store it without it getting chunky, but buying in bulk will save me about 8 bucks a batch for a standard 1.056 beer with 6 pounds of DME in it, so if it works out I figure it's worth it.

Hop Harvest

Well, I just got back from the hopyard and picked about half of the cones I had that felt papery, started to brown at the tips, or where lupulin was obvious. I wasn't expecting much, and for once I fulfilled my expectations....I didn't get much. See that picture over there-->? I got about twice that, weighing a measly 2 ounces. Wet. Even after picking the rest, I'm guessing I'm only going to get an ounce dry, if that. I'm a little disappointed that I need to scale down my "Homegrown IPA" into a "Homegrown Blonde". C'est la vie. Kristen really liked the AHA's "Fill in the Hop Blonde" that I brewed, so I'll probably brew that again, grains and bittering hop the same but just add whatever homegrowns I get at 10 minutes or flameout or whatever.

Last Saturday I brewed up an all Columbus APA:

• 7 ounces Caramel 40
• 8 ounces Carapils
• 6 pounds Briess Pilsen DME
• .5 oz Columbus - 60 minutes
• 1 oz Columbus - 10 minutes
• 1.5 oz Columbus - flameout
• OG: 1.056, 41 IBU, 5.4% ABV
• US-05 yeast pitched at 65, held at 65

This batch I decided to experiment with water a little since I had been tasting a little harsh bitterness and hop flavor until my hoppier beers aged for a couple of weeks, with the exception being the Simcoe IPA I just blew through, which might be simply because that beer was bitter but also had tons of hop flavor and aroma which might have masked it. Since I already had a busted carbon filter, I decided to try to just use hard city water from my outdoor faucet (not through a hose). For no particular reason, I decided to use 4.5 gallons of hard water (including a half gallon for steeping my grains), then 1.5 gallons of softened tap water. I crushed one campden tablet, stirred to dissolve, then let sit in my brewpot for 15 minutes before I started to boil water. I did not treat the steep water unfortunately, so we’ll see if there’s anything from the chloramine or chlorine. Hopefully not.

I'm planning on getting this in the keg fast, probably 2 weeks in primary and then straight to the keg, since we blew through the Simcoe IPA in less than 2 weeks so now I've just got a Raspberry Wheat on tap. That Simcoe IPA (recipe in the previous post), was probably the best beer I've brewed so far. Clean, bitter, dry, malty, HUGE hop aroma, super fresh. If you haven't used Simcoe yet, I strongly suggest you pick some up. I think Surly Furious has Simcoe in it, so if you can find that try it. Actually, I think this beer did turn out to be similar to Furious, which is what I was hoping for. Nice malt backbone, almost amber color, higher gravity but still sessionable, and big hop aroma and flavor. Did I mention the aroma? When I got the recipe from the Jamil Show podcast (American IPA show, Mike McDole's recipe) they suggested after 2 weeks in primary, transfer to secondary, dry hop, and then rouse the hops every day to keep the aromatics in suspension. I don't know how much of an effect this had, but 2 ounces for 10 days left tons of aroma, totally sniffable from a few feet away. I'm not trying to brag, but this beer was so awesome I went to the brewshop and picked up enough Simcoe for 2 more batches and will brew it the same way both times without changing anything, a first for me.

While I'm waiting for the Columbus APA to get drinkable I'm drinking my Raspberry Wheat. If we didn't have tons of raspberries in the garden this year I don't think I would have brewed this because I don't even really like fruit or wheat beers all that much, but it sounded good at the time. I am pleasantly surprised by this beer. It's nice because it's got that graininess of the wheat and refreshing since it's lightly hopped and fairly dry, with a little tartness from the raspberries, but it still has a small amount of an interesting hop flavor from the Argentina Cascades. I'm pretty happy that this turned out to be so balanced, I was really afraid of making a too-fruity beer.

Ahhh, Summer

Woke up early this morning and brewed myself an all Simcoe IPA. I used Mike McDole's IPA recipe from the Jamil Show, changing only the Munich malt to Vienna (I have a bunch on hand), and the hop variety but not the schedule. Here's what it looks like:

• 7 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
• .5 lbs Crystal 60
• .5 lbs CaraPils
• .25 Crystal 120
• .25 Vienna
  
• .75 oz Simcoe (60 minutes)
• 1.5 oz Simcoe (15 minutes)
• 2 oz Simcoe (5 minutes)
• 2 oz Simcoe (dryhop)

You math whizzes might have noticed that the hop amounts came to 6.25 oz, and you're probably thinking, "hey, where did that extra quarter ounce come from?" Fat sack, dude. A very nice surprise at 6 am in the morning. A quarter ounce isn't much, but I'll take it in these desperate times we live in. McDole's recipe calls for dryhopping with something crazy like 6 ounces of hops, but I can't afford that, so I'm going with the 2 ounces but I will shake the fermenter every day to keep extracting those aromatics like he suggests. I'm looking very forward to drinking this one.

I've got both kegs filled and carbed. Why the heck did I wait this long to start kegging? The Amber is awesome, although I wish I would have dryhopped with 2 ounces of Centennial instead of just one, and the Blonde is quite good also. The blonde is on the high side of the guidelines for gravity in the style, so it's a tad heavy for a summer beer, but it tastes pretty good nonetheless. It's pretty weird to be drinking a beer with only 25 ibus though; everything else I've been drinking and brewing lately is at least twice that. I think I'll brew another blonde this summer but with Argentina Cascades instead of Northern Brewer.

As far as my hopyard goes, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that they're all growing, but there's quite a bit of bad news. I don't have enough sun where I planted them so none of them are taller than chest high right now. Unfortunately I broke the tip off the tallest bine on my Cascade, and the tallest bine on my Centennial was broken off at the ground. The Zeus is pretty small, but still growing. Hopefully the other bines start shooting up to compensate!

Aside from homebrew, I've also had the opportunity to sample some brews I've been waiting to try for a very long time. Brian hooked me up with 2 bottles of Stone Ruination (I owe you bigtime!) and I was impressed. On the way home from Milwaukee I also picked up Bear Republic's XP Pale Ale, Racer 5 IPA, Red Rocket, and Hop Rod Rye. The XP was a very nice APA with an awesome Cascade/Centennial aroma. Racer 5 was also very good, just a hair under Ruination on my top 5 list. One of these days I'll do a side by side with Red Rocket and my Amber. I picked up the rye for research. If I like that will push me faster into partial mash. My battery is dying and my glass is empty, I'm out.

Summer Brew Session

I'm back. The pic above is my Centennial 2 weeks ago. Not much to look at yet, but they're growing! I went to the garden a few days ago and the Cascade had shot up to knee high, the Centennial was about 8 inches, and the Zeus was about 4. The Cascade and Centennial both got trained up the pole, but the Zeus isn't quite big enough yet, I think it gets a little too much shade from the bumper crop of raspberries I have coming in. Still crossing my fingers for a harvest, but I'm not keeping my hopes up.

In other homebrew news, the Wee Heavy is finally carbed and tasting good, but I've stashed half the batch for next winter to wait for improvement. Unfortunately, I'm down to just a handful of Bourbon Barrel Browns (drinking one right now), and it just keeps getting better. The double IPA is still a little undercarbed after 3 weeks, but it is tasting excellent. I'm having a hard time waiting for them to condition - it's going to be so nice to not have to worry about that once I start kegging. I dryhopped the Red Rocket clone on Father's Day and really enjoyed the sample, I'm hoping to keg that sometime next week.

Now that things have settled down after bringing my new son home, I was able to sneak away for an early morning brew session this morning. I finally brewed the American Homebrewers Association Big Brew recipe for Fill in the Hop Blonde Ale with Northern Brewer hops, I'm hoping I like them so maybe next year I can get a rhizome. I overshot the gravity (intentionally) because I didn't feel like messing around with measuring out 7/8 of a pound of DME and I also accidentally added the whole ounce at 10 minutes instead of a half ounce - that's what homebrew at 7am will do to you. Now I need to decide if I'm going to dryhop like the recipe suggests or just let it be. Either way I should get a nice summer brew.

Just for fun, here's some pics of the rig, especially the 8 dollar windscreen. I bought 2 pieces of 8 inch furnace pipe metal from Menards, joined them together, and on brew day I wrap it around the burner stand. I don't know if it is because of the windscreen or what, but I get 7 batches per tank. The last pic is of the tag if you want to go to Menards to grab one for yourself.

Big News!

I am now kegging! Here's the setup I got:

My current setup will be to toss these guys in a wine fridge I got from HomeDespot a few years ago, it's about the size of the infamous 4912. I went with the double regulator though because down the road I'm thinking I'll go the chest freezer route and put a keg of soda on for the kids which will require a different serving pressure (I think), and this was the same price as a single regulator with a splitter/manifold, so I figured it was worth it. For now I'll be able to serve one and force carb the other without having to mess around too much, important because the CO2 is going to be stuck behind the kegs without a whole lot of room to maneuver.

The first batch that I'll keg is currently fermenting. Last Saturday night I got all my stuff together, put grains into bags, filled the brewpot with filtered water, and got everything to go for an early morning brew session on Sunday. I woke up at 5:30 and my boil was going by 6:30. The recipe was Jamil's American Amber/Red Rocket clone. Here's the specs:

• 6.75 lbs Briess Pilsen DME
• 1 lb Briess Amber DME
• 1 lb American Crystal 40
• .5 lb American Crystal 120
• .5 lb American Victory
• 3 oz British Pale Chocolate
• 1 oz Columbus - 60 minutes
• 1 oz Cascade - 10 minutes
• 1 oz Centennial - 10 minutes
• 1 oz Cascade - flameout
• 1 oz Centennial - flameout

I came up with an OG of 1.070 and 60 IBUs. I'm really hoping this one turns out, since I am growing all of these hops, so if I like the hop combo I can keep making this beer for cheap. I tried to do a mini mash on the stove of the grains, but it was sort of hard to keep them at the right temp and I ended up undershooting the estimated OG. I might have added a little too much water or something since my 32 quart pot isn't quite enough to do a full 6 gallon boil once I start adding DME. I'm thinking after I get my kegging system running I might rig up a mini mashtun out of a 2 or 3 gallon cooler with a valve and a stainless braid. If it works I might be able to get rid of some of my DME costs by making some of my own fermentables out of much cheaper grains. We'll see though.

While I was at Midwest Homebrewing Supplies picking up my kegging system I also scored some Simcoe, Columbus, and Amarillo for cheap (although they limit you to 3 ounces of a variety), so now I've got over a pound of hops in the freezer. I think my next batch is going the be the AHA Big Brew's Fill in the Hop Blonde (maybe with Willamette?) to have a gateway beer for people who come over after the new baby comes that might not dig hopmonsters, and then I'll brew up my American Brown ale and after that it will be all APAs and IPAs for a while. I think I'll try to do single hop batches this summer so I can get a really good feel for bittering, flavor, and aroma qualities.

My Wee Heavy is finally carbed and tastes pretty good. It's a nice dark brown with ruby highlights and a nice malty sweet aroma. Not much hop presence obviously, but it's a big chewy beer, just a little alcohol warming (not fusels though). This one tastes a little young, so I'm looking forward to how it tastes in the fall and winter.

The Cascarillo is carbed too and super tasty. This one just had an ounce of Cascade and half ounce of Amarillo at 10 minutes and then the same at flameout, bittered with an ounce of Cascade, and it is awesome. Nice pale gold color, good citrus and flowery hop aroma, and a nice grapefruit hop flavor. I'll be brewing this later this summer with more Amarillo to see what happens. After tasting this I wish I would have put more Amarillo late in the boil on my Hopslam clone.

Bourbon Barrel Brown

So, here's the recipe for the Bourbon Barrel Brown. I've still got a little more than a 6er left and it keeps changing and improving. The Maker's Mark soaked oak chips really added some interesting flavors. I would not add more bourbon and be very careful about how long you leave the chips in otherwise it could get overwhelming. Definitely pull a sample after a few days to see how you like it. An alternative would be to use cubes or something with less surface area, then you could leave the beer on wood longer. This beer has some really interesting vanilla notes to it, explained by a homebrew club member who tasted it as the bourbon coming out (in?) of suspension. Anyhoo, let me know if you try it. I will be brewing the same one soon but probably won't oak it.

• 6 lbs light liquid ME
• 2 lbs light dry ME
• 8 oz caramel/crystal 60
• 6 oz chocolate malt
• 5 oz special roast malt
• 2 oz caramel/crystal 90
• 1 oz Galena hops at 60 minutes
• 1 oz Ahtanum hops at 10 minutes
• 1 oz American oak chips, steamed for 10 minutes and soaked in 5 oz Maker's Mark bourbon for about a month (added to secondary for 6 days)

OG 1.062, FG 1.014, 57 IBUs. As I brewed it, it seemed a little too light in color and not quite enough sweetness and chocolate, so I think if I brew this again I'll make a few changes to the grain bill but keep the hop schedule the same, though. Making a yeast starter to get the gravity to drop nice and low will help to dry it out nicely too. Something like this maybe:

• 7 lbs light DME (easier to get at my lhbs)
• 4 oz crystal 60
• 4 oz crystal 90
• 8 oz chocolate malt
• 4 oz special roast malt

The OG would be about the same, but dropping the crystal 60 and bumping up the crystal 90 will keep the same sweetness but a little more color, and then bumping up the chocolate malt will give me a little more of that chocolatey goodness and color. I like the special roast too, it was the first time I used it and it's a pretty tasty grain, so I might bump that up some more too. Have any of you guys used it?

UPDATE (11:00 pm): Kristen and I planted the garden today, and aside from a tiny (1/4 inch) shoot on my Cascade mound, no shoots. Upon closer examination however, the ground was about as hard as concrete, so with a superhuman feat of strength I broke up each mound, carefully found the rhizome, then put loose soil back on top and gave them a good drink of water. All 3 rhizomes had some good underground budding going on, so I'm happy. I might not have much of yield since it's so late, but hey, they're not dead right?

Also, when I got home today I had a box filled with 4 oz of Centennial and a bunch of specialty grains, so I might be brewing on Monday if my lhbs is open tomorrow. I'm thinking Jamil's Amber (clone of Bear Republic's Red Rocket: http://www.beerdujour.com/Recipes/Jamil/JamilsAmericanAmberAle.htm). BTW, I ordered from Williams Brewing, and although you have to buy an equal dollar value of other stuff when you buy hops, they do send you beer coasters, which I thought was pretty frickin cool.