Following up to the question over at Monday Night Brewing. My first beer I ever had was a Luke warm miller lite. It sucked. You note that I so disrespected that beer that I refuse to even capitalize it. I am a cold blooded man, do not cross me.
Quick side question, if your child asked for a drink of your beer be it brewed at home or commercial would you give them a taste? I have a few thoughts on this just curious what others think.
There are a Couple beers that need to be brewed before rolling into the summer.
Watermelon Wit - Brewed two weeks ago. This is a cross between my Wader Patch Wit and the Watermelon Wheat. I think I am going to name it Watermelon Patch.
Tasty’s APA (Recipe here)- Hoping it is similar to the NEW Lord of Dogtown from Lagunitas, which is a pale ale with VERY crisp hopping. Probably ferment this in the low 60s to try and keep it as clean as possible.
Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye - Simply love this beer. Rye forward, smooth, hoppy.
Additionally there is a good discussion from Nathan Smith over at the brewing network with some notes on his take on water profiles for IPA’s should be.
In addition to Jon Palmer’s book this is a great resource for adjusting your water chemistry. VERY simple to use.
On my project list for the summer are:
I recently bought a 10 gallon corny keg to use as a fermenter. It is perfect to ferment lagers in because it is as tall as a standard corny so it fits nicely in my kegerator. In order to use it as a fermenter I simply connect a piece of tubing to a gas ball valve, connect that to gas in, and run that into a growler of sanitizer. It worked perfectly when I fermented my Yellow Sally Pilsner.
On Sunday I used it as my fermenter for my Wader Patch Wit. I sanitized it, racked into it, connected the gas valve to the beverage out post….wha wha what!…The next morning when I walked into the fermentation chamber (basement bathroom), the active fermentation had pumped four of the five gallons onto the floor and carpet.
Quite a mess.
Quite a big mistake.
Not one I will be making anytime soon again.
This past Sunday my brewing buddy, his dad, and I brewed up thirty gallons (three ten gallon batches) of summer beers. Whats a summer beer? Well for me Summer beers are light in color, typically have wheat in the grist, and are refreshing in nature. Every year I brew my Wader Patch Wit so that we definatly in the plan. Last year I brewed up an Oberon Clone - cleverly named Oberkey Wheat. My lovely wife did a side by side blind tasting of it and chose it over the real deal so that is in the cards as well. The third batch was kind of a toss up. I love me some hops, and I love trying new things so I figured I would make a run at a Black IPA as well. I named it the Black Beta IPA.
As typical Jon was late getting to the house and had some lame excuse about having to clean up dog vomit. I say if you are going come bearing excuses next time make it something original. I mean dog vomit, that is weak.
It was a long ass day lasting over 12 hours. Longer than usual but fun none the less. I think the problem was that we were very inefficient in getting our recipes ready for the next batch. Instead of having batches ready to boil immediately following the cleaning of the boiler, there was a lot of downtime. I think honestly that it may be my last day of doing 3 batches in a single day.
I modified my standard wit recipe adding 1 oz of organic lavendar from whole foods @ 5 minutes.
The black beta is more of a brown beta at this point. I am going to try and take the color darker by doing a very quick steep of probably a lb of dark grains, doing a 10 minute boil, cooling and adding to the exsiting fermentation. It should work, I will keep you posted.
The beer finished at 1020 which puts it at about 9.3%. I kegged it with 1.6 oz corn sugar and pitched some Nottingham as a bottling strain. The original yeast was pretty much tapped out I believe.
The beer is very alcohol hot right now. Its going to have to sit until mid summer before I crack it out to sample it. It will probably get another dose of dryhops before serving.
I will say that wyeast 1318 really clears a beer nicely. Two weeks after fermentation started and the beer is very clear. Clear enough to serve. A month of cold conditioning should really clear it up. Another really nice thing about the yeast is that it is VERY easy to crop top. I probably have a solid pint of gen 2 yeast from an earlier batch of it. The only thing I am still trying to get a grip on is that it produces a touch of Diacetyl. Not a bad thing just alittle different.
I don’t claim to have anywhere near the talent that musicians have however I think that the analogy holds. When listening to music I think its the small subtleties that make a song what it is. Its not always the hard driving guitar that makes the music but rather what it is you hear in the background. Or the combination of all the instruments being played together at the right times. Or sometimes it is just that guitar hitting you in the face. Man sometimes that it.
Beer is similar. Sometimes its about laying flavors, the crystals, munich’s, the base malts. Its about that that subtle hit of coriander in the background of the wit. It about the balance between the hops and malt. And yes sometimes it about getting smacked in the face with the hops.
In both cases making music and beer isnt hard. Making good Music and Beer is difficult.
This past Friday I brewed my house rye beer. The beer is named harry knuckle in honor of the lost hair on the knuckles of my harry friend Mitch’s. The first time we brewed he didnt have the common sense brewing experience to know that you should not have your hand in the burner when you light it. Needless to say the hair was the first thing to go.
The recipe is basically:
| 5.00 lb | Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) | Grain | 30.7 % |
| 5.00 lb | Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM) | Grain | 30.7 % |
| 2.00 lb | Rye Malt (4.7 SRM) | Grain | 12.3 % |
| 0.75 lb | Crystal Rye - 80L (90.0 SRM) | Grain | 4.6 % |
| 0.65 lb | Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) | Grain | 4.0 % |
| 0.50 lb | Melanoiden Malt (20.0 SRM) | Grain | 3.1 % |
| 0.50 lb | Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) | Grain | 3.1 % |
| 0.50 lb | Simpsons Medium Crystal (55.0 SRM) | Grain | 3.1 % |
| 0.12 lb | Black (Patent) Malt (500.0 SRM) | Grain | 0.7 % |
| 1.25 lb | Palm Sugar (4.0 SRM) | Sugar | 7.7 % |
It should yield about 6 gallons of 1074 (based upon 75% efficiency) wort after the boil.
In order to save time when doing a work day session, I have been doing all day mashes. I will prep the grain, water, and mash tun the night before, then the next morning before work I mash in, then run off when I return home. I have done this once before for a pilsner and did see an increase in efficiency to about 80%, but that was nothing compared to what happened with this beer. I ran off and sparged and collected just shy of 8 gallons. I took the preboil graving and it was 1033 @ 210. I went inside to do the temperature correction and was quite surprised to find the corrected reading was 1074. That was my target post boil number! When I did the calculations it showed that I was 97% efficient.
Now I still cant believe that number. There is just no way that the beer came in with that high an efficiency, but I thankfully whatever the cause, I caught it before I started adding hops. I added an ounce of Magnum bittering hops (75 min) bringing the total IBUs’ up to 115 and a SG of 1093. So given the high gravity and the high IBU’s I now give you The Very Harry Knuckle, my first Double Rye IPA.
I pitched the yeast cake of Wyeast 1318 and it is currently fermenting @ 68 degrees. By Sunday it was already down to 1030. I suspect the long mash will result in low finishing gravity in the 1013-1017 range which would yield a ABV of around 10%.
It should be an interesting beer and I am looking forward trying it sometime in early May.
I have had some bad brew days before. Things like stuck mashes or extended days of being covered in boiling mash, but I can honestly say Ive never done it with 6 bbls of hot mess.