Recent Concoctions

I mentioned that I broke my brew ban and made a rye pale ale with my friend.  It was definitely worth it.  We hadn't brewed together in a year.  He also helped me with the brew system so really it just balanced out to my normal procrastination.  We got the base recipe from homebrewtalk.com then made some tweaks based on availability and personal preference.  The recipe is as follows:

Rye Pale Ale (Name TBD)
7.5 lb Pale 2 Row
2.25 lb Rye Malt
1 lb Munich Malt
0.5 lb Victory Malt
0.5 oz Magnum (13.8% AA) - 60 min
1 oz Willamette (4.8% AA) - 30 min
0.5 oz Goldings (4.9% AA) - 20 min
0.5 oz Goldings (4.9% AA) - 10 min
1 oz Cascade (6.8% AA) - 0 min
Wyeast 1968 London ESB

The brew day went smoothly although we ended up overshooting our target gravity by 5 points.  It is probably the last brew on my old equipment because I'll be selling my current mash tun and kettle to help pay for other brewing stuff.  This beer is ready for the keg.  I just need to take another gravity reading and clean a keg.  Hopefully it will all happen this week, but there is no spot for it on the keezer so there is no huge rush in moving it.

The other thing I have bubbling away is a cyser.  A cyser is a mead fermented with apple juice and honey.  This beverage came out of Club Night at the National Homebrewers Conference.  One of my club members was pouring it and it was delicious.  He told me the recipe and this is my best recreation of it given the state I was in when he told me the recipe.  I am just making a small batch of this as that is the fermenter I won't need for awhile.

Apple Jack
2 gal apple juice
4 lb honey
3 cloves
1 allspice berry
2 lb raisins
1 brick of wet bakers yeast
1 lb agave syrup

Everything but the agave syrup is mixed and fermented.  When the raisins all (or mostly) float then I will move it to secondary and sweeten it with the agave syrup.  The syrup will kick off another fermentation but leave behind some residual sweetness.  What you are left with is a very dangerous drink.  It tastes delicious and is very high alcohol (his version was 20% as measured by his vinmeter).

IPA Recipe Creation

I've started to create my own IPA recipe. I am doing this to create a good beer on my own and to learn more about what flavors the different ingredients impart in the beer. However, I got off to a bad start with this beer by accidentally getting crystal 60 instead of crystal 40. So my IPA is a little darker than it should be, but I don't know enough to understand how that will change the flavor.

The brew was very smooth and I didn't have any issues except with a new hop bag I was trying out. The bag is over a foot long and maybe 2-3 inches wide. It is made of very fine mesh and I thought it would work well for the pellet hops I use. However the bag is not wide enough. The hops just soaked up water and were stuck in the end of the bag. I ended up only putting my bittering hops in the bag and the rest went straight in the boil kettle. I am a little worried that I did not get full utilization of the hops, but I won't know for sure until I drink the finished beer. The gravity sample had a nice bittering to it though so I could be alright.

The first version of my recipe is below. I will be tweaking it as I go forward to try to make a better beer. My LHBS did not have an alpha acid percentage for the Amarillo hops.

8 lb Gold LME

1 lb Crystal 40 60

1 oz Columbus (14.4%) - 60 min

1 oz Amarillo - 45 min

0.5 oz Amarillo - 20 min

0.5 oz Amarillo - 5 min

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Big Brew Day

Before

Today was a first. The first time I've done a double brew day. I needed to kick start the pipeline to get me through the winter. The day started with a trip to the brew store to pick up a box of supplies.

First up was EdWort's Haus Pale Ale. I've made this beer before so it was supposed to be the easy warm up for the day. However, I messed up when writing my list of things to get at the store and I came home with 1 oz too few of hops. Thankfully, I had a half ounce each of Fuggles and Kent Goldings in the fridge that needed a home. I subbed these in to help with the bittering in order to try to keep the aroma coming from the Cascade hops.

After a quick cleaning turnaround I had the water heating up in the brew kettle to steep the grains for my next beer. I am branching out into a new style and doing a holiday spiced beer. I got the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. Jamil's Ol' Yule Loggy recipe is by far the biggest beer I've brewed with an expected original gravity of 1.090.

I had a little boil over with this beer. I looked away for a second before I heard the sound of wort hitting the stove. Thankfully I caught it before it got too bad. Only had a minor clean up to do. It was my first boil over in almost a year. I guess I got a little cocky with that part of my process. The only other thing that could be a problem with this beer is the amount of spice added to the beer. The wort smelled like it had a good amount of spice in it when it was going into the fermentor. It will be interesting to see how that translates into the finished beer.

After

The one issue I still need to figure out is my hydrometer. Both of these beers had an original gravity reading of about 20 points too low. After staring at the fermentors for awhile I am beginning to wonder if i am not getting the wort and additional water mixed together well enough. I think it might be a case of the water sitting on top of the wort. This is something I need to pay attention to in my next brew.

Brew Day - 1/9/10

I had my first brew day of the new year on Saturday. Everything went well except I forgot to take the original gravity measurement. This brew was my first original recipe. I am trying to make a special bitter. The recipe I created is very simple to start. I wanted to have a base that I would be able to specialize. I already have a couple ideas on how to improve it after reading more about the style. The recipe is for a 2.5 gallon batch.

Special Bitter Variation #1
3 lb Gold LME
.75 oz Kent Goldings (4.6%) - 60 min
.25 oz Kent Goldings (4.6%) - 15 min
Wyeast 1098 British Ale Yeast

I also had a friend over and taught him how to homebrew. It went really well and he was really excited about the process. I may have found a brew partner!

Recipe Scaling

I am going to make a vanilla stout that I found on HomebrewTalk.com. The recipe is for a 5 gallon batch, but I am going to make a 2.5 gallon batch. I don't have any software to help scale the batch down. I have done some reading and I think I can just divide everything by 2 and come pretty close.

Anyone have suggestions for a better method of scaling this down?

I will have more tomorrow from my brew day!