I really need a good Rye Recipe, I have the Harry Knuckle Rye in my stable, which is a great beer but not exactly what I am looking for. I have been drinking the Hop Rod Rye from Bear Republic, which is simply amazing. Its got a great hoppy/malty balance, really a good beer. There are couple clones on that I have found on the internet which are worth pursuing. One from Ruthless Brewing (those guys need to get those images fixed hosted, its really cool to see others on their brew days….(Open offer to provide the image hosting)) looks great, I just may need to back the juice off a bit, id be curious to see how that one really turned out. Another from the boards over at Home Brew Talk called Humboldt Hop Rod looks really good as well. Im thinking the next beer beyond my wet hop will be a hoppy rye, I will say however that I need to brew a keg of something my wife will drink, perhaps another Wader Patch Wit is in order.

Since the debacle with the rye stuck mash I have brewed two more batches. One was a 10 gallon batch of Amber (really English bitter, but I am doubtful that my target audience wants to drink a beer I call ‘bitter’) and the other was five gallons of a Hoppy Wheat beer. Both batches went amazing. Efficiency was high. Runoff was smooth. I believe the reason for the smooth brewing sessions are directly related to my batch sparging manifold improvements.

I currently use the stainless steel water supply braid to filter my wort out of the mash tun. What I saw was that on most batches, when I cleaned the grain out of the tun, the 50% or more of the braid would have become crushed. This could have been as a result of the grain weight or also from some too vigorous stirring. I went to the hardware store and purchased about a 5 inch section of 3/8^th inch copper pipe. I then drilled about 25 large holes in this pipe. When I was done with it, the pipe looked like Swiss cheese, there was literally more holes than there was solid copper. I then inserted this section of copper into the manifold. The end result was I could literally stand on this thing without it getting crushed. Now I’m not a huge guy, but I weigh in at 180. I am doubtful that I will ever have that much grain in this system.

Additionally, this also let me do was crank the Barley Crusher down to about .033 which yielded efficiency of 79% and 87% in those sessions. The next step will be a version of Denny Conn’s
Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter. This should be a good test for the system because this will be the first big (1.086) beer brewed on the system.

So Saturday night I brewed a new recipe, a Rye IPA with 20% rye malt and 10% crystal Rye.  Throw in a pound of wheat you have about 35% of the mash coming from grains with no husks.  A definate potential for a stuck mash.  But that sort of thing never happens to me. Nah.  It couldnt.

It did.

I mashed in at 155.  Let it sit for an hour.  Mashed out with two gallons.  Stirred well.  Opened the valve and a trickle greeted me.  A trickle continued.  I closed the valve. Stirred and scraped and Opened it up again.  A trickle.  I tried to push the fluid out the drain manually.  Nada.  It was really freaking stuck.  I ended up putting on kitchen gloves and cutting off the braid.  Even then, nothing but a trickle.  I ended up manually straining the grain with a colander and mesh bag.  I did the same for the sparge.  The boil ended up with massive amounts of grain in it.

I will off up this advice.

1. Keep a couple pounds of rice hulls in the house at all times.
2. If you are forced to manually mash, Use two strainer bags.  Over over the colander and one over the container you are draining into.  If I had done this I wouldn’t have had the grain problem.
3. I can and probably will happen to you one day.

I proceeded with the batch as planned.  It definitely has some additional bite. I have a good feeling I will end up serving it to people when they are too drunk to know any better.

I just completed the brewing of the Wader Patch Wit. I’d like to say that it was smooth sailing and my family was not pushed to the wayside to make it happen, but then I’d be a liar. This was my first adjunct mash. A normal mash looks like this:

1. Crush Grain and put in cooler(Mash Tun)
2. Put 165 degree water on grain
3. Close Mash Tun wait 60 minutes (Conversion)
4. Drain Mash Tun
5. Rinse grains with hot water (Sparge) (repeat if necessary)

It really a pretty simple process and the end result a sugary wort, which when boiled with hops yields the product that will become beer.

Yesterday I brewed using grains that had not been malted. Malting in nutshell is taking raw grain(typically barley) letting it germinate, then dried it to stop the germination process. Basically its about making the starches available for conversion to sugar during the mashing process. I was using raw wheat and rolled oats to get a strong wheat flavor and creamy mouthfeel for the wit. In order to extract sugars from the wheat and oats this is the process (American Adjunct Mash) that had to be followed:

1. Crush Raw Wheat and Oats very finely. Wheat is MUCH harder than standard barley. So hard in fact that I had to enlist my family to help me crank it after I burnt out two drill batteries and one arm.
2. Heat Oats and Wheat with water to 122 degrees. Hold for 15 minutes.
3. Heat to 150. Hold for 15 minutes
4. Boil for 15 minutes.
5. Add to main mash (at 122 degrees)

The second list really isn’t a whole lot longer in steps, but the fact that I had another mash(the top list) going at the same time made it complicated. I did the adjunct mash using a five gallon stock pot which was filled almost to the top. Once I got the gruel to a specified temperature I used the oven preheated to warm then turned off to keep the grains at that temp. That worked pretty well, I only lost less than a degree with each temperature rest. Thank God I actually did the boiling portion outside on the propane burner or I would still be scraping off the ceiling. When that mess started bubbling I was really thankful that I had my trusty mash paddle. There is no way it could have come off without it.

I ended up with an average efficiency of 65%, I attribute this lower number to not crushing the oats and wheat fine enough. They should be grits consistency; mine were definitely coarser than that. The upside was I did not have any issues with my run off. I collected 10.5 gallons at 1.045, this should yield about 4.5% abv. It has nice straw like color and is happily fermenting away at 69 degrees in right now. I am targeting the first week of May for bottling.

On April 3rd my brother and I went down to the Chicago Ale House for Two Brothers Brewing 10 year anniversary party. It was also a release party for thier Kreik Lambic “10″. The brewers and some of their employees were there as well. Matt and I talked for about an hour to Jim Ebel as well as a salesman from Windy City Distributing. As things would have it I cant remember the sales guys name(he gave me his card and I need to find it).  He was a really cool guy and he ended up hang for a while talking beer. Now one may blame my poor memory on not being able to remember it but I think it was actually the 4 Cane and Ebels and 2 lambics.  Bottom line was we had a ton of fun and Matt even says I held my own in talking brewing with the guys, but me…Im not so clear on that part

The brett batch was fermenting away when I got home from work last night.  It has a much different smell than other beers I have brewed.  Less sweet more earthy.  You can smell it in the basement, but not upstairs.  I closed the door and turned on the fan so it should be ok.

I messed up a bit in splitting out the batches.  I measured out how much I put in the brett batch last night. They are new buckets and I neglected to figure out how much volume they held, i guessed 3.  They are 5.  So, I now have 4 gallons of brett beer and 8.5 gallons of the Saison.  Im not sure how the brett is going to turn out but right now I cant see adding more than .5 - 1 gallon to 5 gallons of Saison.  That would leave me with about 4 gallons of Saison and 3 gallons of Brett.  That second batch may be mixed 50/50 and I can bottle the rest I suppose.  Bottom line is that second batch may be supa funky.  I guess thats what experimental beers are all about.

Here is the label I have been working on for it. Still needs a bit of tweaking, but I like it.

Roughly translated the beers name means trout season. To me trout season is about nature and friends. I hope that this beer reflects that. This is a first for me. A two part beer.

The first beer is ment to be drank in late June. It is a dry, slighly earthy. Very drinkable. Designed to welcome summer and all that it has to offer.

The second beer, is targeted to be consumed in late summer. It reflects a year of learning. Of consuming. A complex flavorful beer.

Read the rest of this entry »

I just ordered three more rhizomes for the back forty (feet) this brings the total of plants I will have active to five. What does this mean?, I am hoping to do several batches of single variety hop IPA’s using wet hops. This will be the second year for the Cascade and Centennial plants so the growth should be really good this year. Every thing I have read is the first year the hops put down roots and the second they put on fruit. The other varieties I bought for this year are Nugget, Chinook, and Willamette. Perhaps this year we can do a hop harvest festival at the old family homestead.

Had a group over on Friday night for a pre-St. Patrick’s day gathering. I served my home brew, including a keg of Harry Knuckle, silk stout, and a lot of chocolate stout. We had a great time and everyone genuinely seemed to enjoy the beer, but the night really illustrated for the need for session beers for parties. The chocolate stout was a big hit but it weighs in at around 9% alcohol. By the time it late we were all feeling very little pain. The stout is great for sipping one in the evening, but I’m not really sure it is made for drinking all night. Its not that you cant drink them all night, its that you shouldn’t.
I think the following is a good guideline:

“A session beer should be low enough in alcohol to encourage conversation but not tangle your tongue.”

Not unreasonable. The amber (English bitter) I brewed for the family party earlier this year almost met that bill, but may still have been a bit strong. I’m thinking of working that recipe a bit to create great session beer, something along the lines of a Honkers Ale from Goose Island. A clean refreshing beer that is easy drinking. I will post the recipe as soon as I come up with it.

On a related note, there seemed to be some interest in brewing up some beer for the annual St. Pat’s party that we attend. I have a pretty good idea a session beer may be just what the doctor ordered.  Something along the lines of an Irish Red Ale, cheap to make and easy to drink.

I am working on the recipe for a saison for this summer. Saisons are spicy dry ales that are really crisp and refreshing. A great pair to a warm summer evening. The recipes are really quite simple in composition the most popular example of the style’s grain bill consists of only Belgian Pilsner malt. The yeast here is the key. With that in mind I am going try something new as well. I am going ferment the batch with two different types of yeast. Five (maybe 7) gallons is going to get a standard saison yeast, the remaining will be fermented with Brettanomyces claussenii (brett). Additionally I am planning on adding some lactobacillus to the brett batch to give it some additional food to produce flavors with. The hope here is to create a complex beer with a slight sour twang that is a great summer drinker. You can follow the recipes development in the recipes section of the site.