Brewday: IPA

I brewed the American IPA this afternoon. From start to finish, including cleanup, it took four and a half hours. Not too bad for all grain. I was able to use the mash downtime to watch the Baseball Hall of Fame induction speeches. Good times.

The beer came out a bit weaker than I was hoping as it looks like my extraction from the grains was lower than normal. Not really sure what the issue was this time, though I think I may have drained that mash too quickly. I need to brew more often so my technique stays consistent.... hmmm, maybe I should brew again sometime this upcoming week. :)

Starting gravity is 1.064, where I was aiming for closer to 1.070. Hmph. Oh well.

New Beer Recipe: American IPA (Updated)

It's been a while since I brewed a batch of beer, and I just realized I've only brewed 5 times this year. Wow, homebrew fail. Looking through my brewing records (I keep records of all my batches in a paper binder and on my computer) I brewed: 21 times in 2006, 7 times in 2007, 3 times in 2008, and 5 times so far in 2009. That's a most unfortunate trend. To be fair, though, the brews in 2007 and 2008 were all 10 gallon batches, so they could really count as twice as many brews. The change in frequency is pretty easy to explain (though there's no good excuse, I know...), I quit grad school and went looking for a job. I moved to Rochester in February 2007 and didn't brew again until I had my all-grain setup put together. It's tough finding the time to brew, especially when I have to brew alone, with a full time job schedule, and lots of travel on weekends because Rochester sucks.

Well, I have 5 months left to get my brewing back on track. I'm going to start this weekend with an American IPA. For reasons that elude me, I've never brewed an IPA of any sort. My tastes tend to keep me more focused on Belgian and English styles, and typically maltier styles. I've always brewed a lot of English Bitters, as that's my favorite session beer style. Various types of stouts are also frequently in my queue. Now it's time for some good American hop action.

My first cut at the recipe is below. I don't know the exact alpha acid content of the hops, but I'll recalculate once I buy them and find out the numbers. The alpha acid contents I'm using below are my best guesses.

American IPA:
Malt
- 1.00 lbs Light Dry Malt Extract
-10.00 lbs U.S. 2-row Malt
- 1.50 lbs Vienna Malt
- 0.50 lbs Crystal 20L
- 0.25 lbs Wheat Malt

Hops
-1.00 oz Amarillo (8%AA, 60 minutes)
-0.75 oz Simcoe (13%AA, 30 minutes)
-0.50 oz Amarillo (8%AA, 30 minutes)
-0.75 oz Simcoe (13%AA, 5 minutes)
-0.50 oz Amarillo (8%AA, 0 minutes)

Yeast
Not sure yet. Depends what they've got. Probably Wyeast #1272 American Ale II

Mash
152 degrees for 60 minutes, most likely. Might go 150, not sure yet.

[Update]
After going to Beers of the World to buy ingredients, the recipe has been forced to change slightly:
-They had no light crystal malt, so the Crystal 20L will now be replaced by Crystal 40L
-Simcoe hops were sold out. This will now be an all Amarillo IPA with the following hop schedule:
-1.50 oz Amarillo (60 minutes)
-1.00 oz Amarillo (30 minutes)
-0.50 oz Amarillo (5 minutes)
-1.00 oz Amarillo (0 minutes)
-This batch of Amarillo is all at 8% Alpha Acid content.
-Yeast selection was extremely thin this time (which is rare for these guys). No Wyeast 1056 or 1272, so I picked up the only American yeast they had: Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale.

Homebrew Updates

First, let me say that I am sad. I kicked the keg of ESB last week. That was a sad day. Fortunately, I had another full keg in there to make up for it. Back on 23 March I kegged the mocha porter I had brewed in early February.

The Mocha Porter turned out awesome. It ended with a final gravity of 1.018 giving it around 7.3% ABV. It's a dark, murky brown color that lets pretty much no light through. It has a nice roasted malt aroma with some coffee notes. The body is thick and silky smooth from the flaked oats I used in the mash. There is a solid porter foundation with lots of dark malt flavor and a touch of crystal sweetness. The coffee and chocolate flavors meld nicely, neither one being too obvious above the rest of the beer. This was easily the best coffee/chocolate-based beer I'm brewed yet. This recipe will definitely be brewed again with tweaks to hone it. If I ever manage to open a brewery like I want, this'll be a nice Winter seasonal (maybe with a bit more alcohol, though). :)

On the same day I kegged the Mocha Porter, I also racked the Belgian Dubbel into a secondary fermenter. The gravity was 1.022 at the time and fermentation had pretty much ceased. After racking, I put it closer to the heater and let it go. The fermentation kicked back up fairly strongly for a few days, so I'm hoping I got a lot closer to my attenuation target. I should probably check the gravity of it soon and get it into one of the empty kegs. There is one open slot in the chest freezer for another keg to get tapped.... :)

Update: Mocha Porter

Tonight was the night I finally around to kegging the Mocha Porter that was brewed on 8 February. The gravity wound up at a respectable 1.018, putting it in the middle of the 7% range which works for me. The important thing is that it's full of awesome. It smells dark, rich and full of coffee with a somewhat subdued chocolate nose. The body is think and silky, with the roasted grains taking a nice back seat to the coffee and chocolate. I can't wait until this one is chilled and carbonated. This is going to turn out well, and will probably be gone really quickly. :( Which just means I need to make another batch. :)

Update: Belgian Dubbel

The dubbel I brewed on 14 March got itself racked to secondary tonight. The airlock looked done, but I roused the yeast and am hoping that gets things going again. The gravity is currently at 1.022, giving it 68% attenuation so far. I'm aiming for more like 75%+, so I'm gonna keep an eye on it over the next few weeks. As expected, it currently tastes sweet, but the Belgian character I was looking for is there. This one just needs a fair amount of time. I can handle that.

Brew Day: Belgian Dubbel

Today was brew day. Hurray! It's a been a few weeks. As the winter is beginning to wind down, I decided to take the opportunity to brew one last darker beer. This is a Belgian Dubbel which, while still dark in color, isn't really a "heavy" beer. If I didn't screw anything up, it should be pretty drinkable, especially in the crazy Rochester spring weather.

Jeff and Angela came over and helped, so it was more interesting than normal.

Belgian Dubbel

Malt:
-11 lbs British Pale Malt
-1 lb CaraAroma
-1lb Light Munich Malt

Sugars:
-1 bottle (~1.5 lbs) Dark Belgian Candi Syrup (beet sugar)

Hops:
-1oz East Kent Golding hop pellets (5.5% AA, 60 minutes)
-1oz Saaz hop pellets (4% AA, 15 minutes)
-1oz Saaz hop pellets (4% AA, 5 minutes)

Mash:
-4 gallons of water at 162F for the mash
-Mash temp stabilized at 148F (where I wanted it)
-Mashed for 90 minutes
-Sparged with 4.75 Gallons at 168F

The gravity wound up at 1.070 (temperature corrected). The yeast was Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Ale. I was really happy that the mash temp came in where I wanted it, as I did not want this being too unfermentable. It's supposed to be a fairly light (in body) style, so I didn't want the temp to be too high in the mash. It came in at the temperature I was aiming for. The gravity also came out where I was hoping it would. I haven't brewed a Belgian in a long time, so I'm hoping this comes out well. The brew day was pretty much free of screwups, so I'm hopeful.

Brewing Series

I really liked doing a series of brews using the same yeast cake. The fermentations were excellent and quick, so I'm already planning on my next series. I haven't brewed anything Belgian in a long time, and they really like to have lots of yeast pitched into them, so I think it's about time.

I'm thinking something along the lines of doing a relatively weaker beer, then a mid-strength beer, then something uber. Maybe do: Belgian brown (5%-ish), a dubbel (7%-ish), and finish with a quad or a dark strong or something similar (9-12%-ish). Style, yeast and recipe suggestions are always welcome. Obviously I'm going for a series of dark beers, but I could just as easily go light (pale - blonde - tripel?).

Update: Chocolate Porter

I'm going to refer to this one as just a chocolate porter until I taste it and see how well the coffee came through.

So, the fermentation was really vigorous on this beer starting about an hour after pitching and lasting two solid days. It was tailing off on Tuesday and looked to be pretty minimal this morning. If I don't have to work really late, I intend to take a gravity sample tonight to see where it stands. Here's hoping nothing got seriously messed up (i.e. infected) along the way. Also hoping that it attenuates enough to get under 1.020.

Brew Day: Chocolate-Coffee Porter

Today was brew day for my porter. I wanted to reuse the yeast cake from the previous Brown Porter, so I figured that some sort of porter or stout would be a good idea. The yeast cake is Wyeast #1098 British Ale Yeast. It does a pretty good job, leaving a bit of sweetness behind. The decision was made to brew a chocolate stout like I've done a couple times in the past, but leaving the door open for adding coffee as well.

The decision was made this afternoon to make it a chocolate-coffee porter.

Chocolate-Coffee Porter

Ingredients:
Malt
-2.00 lbs X-Light DME
-7.00 lbs British 2-row
-2.00 lbs Flaked Oats
-0.50 lbs Crystal 60L
-0.50 lbs Crystal 120L
-0.50 lbs Chocolate Malt
-0.50 lbs Roasted Barley

Hops
-1.00 oz Northern Brewer (7.7% AA, 60 minutes)
-1.00 oz Fuggles (4% AA, 60 minutes)
-1.00 oz Mt Hood (3.8% AA, 2 minutes)

Misc
-10 oz Ghirardelli Unsweetened Baker's Cocoa
-12 cup pot of Kona Blend coffee from Wegmans
-1 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrients

Procedure:
-Filled mash tun with all grains except the roasted ones
-Used 3.5 gallons of strike water at ~170F
-Mash settled to 150F, which was a couple degrees cooler than I had intended
-Added the roasted grains with 15 minutes left in the mash to avoid astringency they can produce (based on advice from some homebrewing forums)
-Sparged with 4 gallons of 170F water
-Added the DME then brought to a boil
-Added the Northern Brewer and Fuggles hops
-Boiled for 45 minutes, then added the yeast nutrient
-With 2 minutes left in the boil, added the Mt Hood hops.
-Once the burners were off and the chiller was ready, the coffee and cocoa powder were added
-Chilled, took hydrometer sample, transferred to fermenter, aerated-pitched-aerated, slapped the airlock on

Starting gravity at 70F is 1.074 (adjusted). This is going to be solid.

UPDATE: It's only an hour after pitching the yeast cake, and the airlock is bubbling pretty steadily. This should bode well for some healthy fermentation.

Update and Big Day Coming Up

The ESB now sits at 1.019 and is still bubbling ever so slightly. I'm leaving it until Thursday to keg, just to make sure it's done. It tastes delicious, even without carbonation or proper chilling. The hop bitterness nicely balances the toasted maltiness, with the balance leaning mildly to the hoppy side. There's a nice lightly sweet and nicely toasty malt flavor up front, with a solid, but muted hop bitterness at the back of the tongue. It has a mild earthy and toasty aroma to it. The color is a brown-ish orange and is really clear. This isn't the best bitter I've made so far, but it's making a serious challenge for that title. I have a few ideas for how to make the recipe better in the future, so that may be another brew I make down the road.

Now to talk about the big day. No, I'm not talking about the inauguration tomorrow, I'm talking about the three year anniversary of the first batch of beer I brewed! Next Thursday (the 29th) is the exactly three years after Dave and I brewed that first brown ale with all my equipment that I had pilfer... um, borrowed from my dad's lab at Cornell. Since I don't work on Fridays, that Thursday is a perfect time to brew a batch in celebration. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to brew for that, but it's going to be awesome (possibly a chocolate stout recipe based on our original recipe with some tweaks).

Upcoming Recipe: Brown Porter

I've come to a decision on the recipe for the brown porter I plan on making this weekend.

6.00lb British pale malt
1.00lb Brown malt*
0.50lb Crystal 40L
0.25lb Chocolate malt

0.75oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 60 minutes
0.25oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 15 minutes
Wyeast 1098 British Ale yeast

* The 'brown malt' is going to be something made in my kitchen based loosely on instructions from a book on Mild Ale that I have. There's no commercial brown ale malt available around here, so I have to make it. This will consist of one pound of pale malt going into my oven at 350F.
0.40lb for 10 minutes
0.30lb for 20 minutes
0.30lb for 35 minutes
This will develop the different flavors that brown malt typically have, or at least it will come reasonably close, I guess. Either way, it'll be an interesting experiment.

Try Try Again

Having found a number of likely causes of the weird flavors in my previous batches of beer, and with the recent success of my most recent one, I have decided to brew another this weekend to make sure my system is alright before moving onto the bigger beers I'm looking at doing soon. I'm looking to make a batch that is fairly light on cost, so it will need to be lower in gravity and lower in hops, but I'm looking for another winter style. That leads me to a style I've never tried making before: Brown Porter. It just sounds like an interesting style to try if I'm going to stay light on the gravity while aiming to have a good amount of flavor. I'll try my hand at constructing a recipe tonight or tomorrow and post it.

Brewday: After Action

Yesterday I brewed an ESB I had been planning. The plan was to reuse the yeast cake from the amber that was in one of my fermenters. As the ESB was boiling in the kettle, I took a gravity reading on the amber. I don't exactly know how to describe the flavor of the amber, but it definitely has some peculiarity to it. It definitely tastes like there was too much hoppiness in the boil, which is true considering the gravity of the beer was 2/3 of what I was hoping so the hops in the boil were over-utilized. I racked it to a secondary to sit for a few weeks to see if this flavor will condition out. It still tastes weird on top of the over-hoppiness, but I don't know how to describe it. I'm just trying to worry too much about it right now.

The problem with this is that I kinda got worried during the boil yesterday that the using the yeast cake from that amber might not be the best idea for the ESB. So, at the last second I dumped the yeast cake and cleaned and sanitized the fermenter and got the ESB wort transferred to it and capped. When I made the decision to dump the yeast cake I had to look through my fridge to see what yeast packs I had left. My yeast stock, according to my memory, was a Belgian saison yeast and an Irish Ale yeast. Turns out that I also had a Wyeast pack of British Ale yeast, which was perfect and seemed like a fucking miracle. I sat that next to the heater that was warming the fermenters in the kitchen, popped the nutrient pack when it was warm enough, then pitched the yeast a couple hours later when the package was bulging.

To avoid this type of trouble again, I will be checking the gravity on the American Pale Ale I have fermenting so I can know whether or not to get new yeast for the American IPA I'm brewing soon.

And for the record, the gory details of the yesterday's ESB:
-9.00lbs British pale malt
-1.00lbs mild malt
-0.50lbs toasted malt
-0.25lbs Crystal 120L
-0.25lbs wheat malt

-1.00oz Challenger pellet hops (7%AA) 60 min
-0.50oz Liberty pellet hops (4.1%AA) 30 min
-0.50oz Liberty pellet hops (4.1%AA) 0 min

-Wyeast (#1098) British Ale Yeast

Mash was 3.5G of water with a mash temp of 155F for 75 minutes.
Sparged with 4G of water at 170F.
Two more gallons were added to the kettle for the boil. I probably would have had slightly better extraction by using those two gallons for the sparge, but I don't have a large enough pot to heat six gallons of sparge water. Oh well, I'm running at a solid 70% extraction efficiency, which is respectable.

New Year's Week Brewing

I couldn't actually keep myself awake yesterday, for some reason I was just thoroughly exhausted, so I didn't wind up brewing anything. The amber is still bubbling very slowly and the APA is bubbling along nice and fast. I figure I will rack these beers and brew the next two batches sometime later this week and into the weekend. The next few batches will be using the yeast cakes from these two batches, so I have to rack the same day as I brew. The London ESB yeast will be used for an ESB, while the US-56 yeast will ferment an American IPA.

I will most likely be going with the recipe I already posted for the ESB. I'm still looking around to see if my hop selection is good or not, but it most likely won't get changed. The next time I sit down to compile some code I will post my tentative recipe for the American IPA.

And yes, I do have to work New Year's week, except for the 1st. Don't know yet if I'll burn one of my vacation days immediately to get Friday off. I kinda like it around here when there's only a hundred people in the building.

English Bitter

This is my first run at a recipe for an English Bitter using the yeast cake in the Amber's fermenter. I'll play around with it more tonight, then finalize it before bed so I can start brewing after grocery shopping tomorrow.

English Strong Bitter/ESB:
-9lbs British Pale Malt
-1lb Mild Ale Malt
-1/2lb Toasted Malt
-1/4lb Crystal 60L
-1/4lb Crystal 120L

-1oz Challenger Hops (7%AA) 60 Minutes
-1/2oz Liberty Hops (4.1%AA) 30 Minutes
-1/2oz Liberty Hops (4.1%AA) 0 Minutes

Mash in 3.5 gallons of water at 152F for 75 minutes.

Brew Day

My long hiatus from brewing is over and I'm right back into it the way I used to be. All it took was getting through that first brew day in my new place. Currently waiting for the mash to finish on my current batch. I'm making an American Pale Ale.

American Pale Ale:
-8lbs British 2-row (I know, it should be American 2-row, but I want to use ingredients I already have)
-2lbs Vienna Malt
-1/2lb Wheat Malt
-1/2oz Amarillo hope pellets (8% AA) 60 minutes
-1/2oz Amarillo 40 minutes
-1/2oz Amarillo 20 minutes
-1/2oz Amarillo 0 minutes
-Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast

Mashing with 3 gallons of water at 150F for 75 minutes.

Now I need to figure out what I'm going to brew next weekend. :p I want to reuse the British Ale yeast that the Amber is using, so I want to make an English style, but I'm not sure exactly what I want to do. Maybe a barleywine.

Amber Update

The amber took about 5 days to get the fermentation started. That's what I get for using yeast that was months old and not using a starter. Oh well. I also boiled up 2 pounds of light dry malt extract and poured it (after cooling) into the fermenter to boost the gravity. Adding that volume and DME leaves me with 5.75 gallons of beer with a starting gravity of 1.056. That's close enough to what I was looking for.

God damn it!

Stupid mash temperatures. I actually went through with my brewing, finally. The recipe was the amber that I posted a few days ago. The initial gravity came in at 1.040, which points to me sucking at hitting my mash temperatures. Instead of the mid-150s I was hitting the mid-140s, which is an important difference. Guess I should have extended the mash for another 30-60 minutes to let the starches convert. Oh well. I need to modify my technique to hit those temps more consistently. I may wind up brewing again this weekend to try to improve my technique. We'll see.

Brewing

It has been entirely too long since I brewed beer. I'm thinking that because of my lack of going to work on Fridays, I might spend Thursday night this week brewing a batch. Not entirely sure what kind of recipe I want to make, but I'll list out the ingredients I have on hand here so I can access the list at work tomorrow when I'm bored:

Malts:
34lbs Belgian 2-row
1lb Crystal 120L
5lbs Mild Malt
1lb Munich 9L
1lb Flaked Oats
1lb Roasted Barley
1lb Toasted Malt
1lb Vienna Malt
3lbs Wheat Malt

Hops: (all are pellets unless otherwise noted)
4oz Fuggles 4%AA
4oz East Kent Goldings 5.5%AA
2oz Hallertau (leaf) 4.8%AA
1oz Northern Brewer 6.7%AA
3oz Czech Saaz 4%AA
1oz Willamette 5.8%AA

Yeast: (all Wyeast liquid packs)
1056 American Ale
3724 Belgian Saison
1098 British Ale
1084 Irish Ale
1068 London ESB

I really need to get brewing again considering the chest freezer makes my tap system almost complete. Man, I need to keep kicking myself in the ass this week to make sure I maintain the motivation I have right now.

First Post

So, this is the first post. Yay. I guess the first thing I'll do is describe what sort of crap will be going into this blog. Those that know me know that I love the following things:

• Baseball
• The New York Mets
• Brewing beer
• Drinking beer
• Playing video games
• Watching anime

This blog will primarily be filled with my rantings on these topics, with some other topics making appearances from time to time.

So, yeah, that's it for now. I'm in the middle of doing laundry.