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.

Fermentation Update

The brief Christmas break I get is over so now I'm back in Rochester getting things done around the apartment. When I left for Ithaca a few days ago, the American Pale Ale I had in the fermenter had not started fermenting yet, while the English Amber was fermenting vigorously. Currently, the amber appears to be done and the pale ale is fermenting like crazy, we're talking about 4 inches of bubbly crap on top of the beer. I will probably take a gravity reading on the amber tonight to figure out what I want to do with it tomorrow. If it looks like it's done fermenting entirely, I will rack it to a keg tomorrow and begin carbonating it. If it's not finished entirely, I will rack it to a secondary tomorrow. Either way it's getting racked tomorrow so I can brew a beer with the yeast cake in that fermenter. I will be planning out a recipe for tomorrow shortly that uses the London ESB yeast in the amber's fermenter. I'm thinking of making a bitter, but I'm not entirely sure yet. I want to see if any of the new hop varieties, like Glacier, are at Beers of the World and maybe see if I can try out one or two of those to see how they work. Glacier apparently has some Fuggles-like qualities that make it sound interesting for an English beer.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good holiday break. And screw all of you that don't have to work on New Year's Eve. Ugh.

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.

Bailout, anyone?

Here's a great article on the bailouts and how things could be made better for the long run with some simple changes to the banking system.

A chronicle of how GM got to where it is today. The company basically shot itself in the gut and has been internally bleeding to death for a long time. I really hope they sell the Saturn brand to someone that actually runs their company well as I like those cars. I was torn between Subaru, Honda, and Saturn when I was looking at cars last year.