Author: stoutmaker

A National Homebrew Day scorcher

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May 7th 2016 is National Homebrew Day! So I guess I gotta brew something.
I have bits of grain stashed everywhere from over the winter. Plus some of the bulk hops I have are getting to be a year old in the freezer. Time for a clean out brew.
After collecting all the loose ends and getting them weighed up, this is what the final recipe was.
Loose End Basement Brew 2016 – 3 gallon Double Rye IPA?
6 lbs 2 row
.5 lb 80L
2 lbs rye malt. (not flaked rye)
1.5 lbs Flaked barley
1 oz Magnum @ 60
2 oz Willamette @ 10
1 oz Chinook @ flameout 10 minute stand
1 oz Centennial @flameout 10 minute stand
Nottingham yeast mashed at 150
I was briefly worried about a stuck sparge with all the rye and flaked. But I took the batch sparge a bit slower than usual and didnt have any problems. 
Beersmith has been calculating my temps and volumes a bit low on the 3 gallon batches, so I upped them slightly. This helped get everything right on the numbers.
With an OG of 1.082 I was a bit worried that the one pack of Nottingham might not be enough. But holy crap did it take off. Almost like the Notty of old. 
But we did have one problem. But I’m not even sure it is a problem yet. 

I didnt run it dry. I tasted the beer and no signs of burnt taste or smells. 
I would assume this is caramelized sugars,, but never had anything even remotely like this before, even with bigger beers than this.
Maybe all the rye and flaked barley? Gonna keep eye on this one.
How do I clean this? Maybe just replace them. 

Vacation brews

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Haven’t had 3 fermenters going at the same time in a while. But being on vacation, having empty kegs and perfect weather made brewing almost necessary.

First brew was just a warm up. A little 3 gallon pale ale using the 7Cs hops that I won at the club Xmas party.  Nothing spectacular about this one just getting the rythem down.

Mini Pale- 3 gallon OG:1.048  IBU 38
4 lbs- Pale Malt
1 Pilsner
8 oz crystal 40
1 oz Willamette @ 60
1 oz 7Cs @ 1 min
151 mash and US05 yeast

I would have just used all 2 row but I only had 4 lbs so I threw in the 1 extra lb of pils I had sitting there. Otherwise, just an everyday pale ale.

Now the next beer had a little more thought to it. Needed to brew a session beer for our upcoming homebrew contest. Must be 1.040 or less. Not being sure if I needed to stay within style or not I figured I better just to be safe.
I’m kinda guessing there will be quite a few blondes and common bitters entered, so I decided to get on the absolute low end of an English brown ale.
I dug thru all my recipes and came up with a combination of a few.

Hand of Doom – Brown ale- 5 gallon  OG: 1.040  IBU 25
6 lbs Maris Otter
12 oz crystal 80
4 oz chocolate malt
1 oz black patent
.5 oz Willamette @ 60
.5 oz EKG @ 60
.5 oz EKG @ 10
154 mash and Nottingham yeast.

(I would say that looking at this mash I might consider dropping the black patent. as it quite dark, most likely too dark.)

Have been having trouble with Beersmith lately not calculating water right. And it was quite off again. Not sure why its been off as I have not changed anything in the years that I have been using it,, it just suddenly went off.

Volume way under. I added almost a gallon. And then on top of that, I was watching the gravity and had to stop at 45 minutes so I didn’t go over my 1.040. But I think with the raging boil I had it will be good.

And since I am writing this 5 days after the fact, I can comment on the ferment of this one. The Nottingham of today always scares me at first. It took over 24 hours to show any signs of taking off. And then it made just a small 1/4 inch of krausen, for 1 day and that was that.
Not sure why all this stuff decided to go all wrong with this beer,, but hence, the name.

And lastly,, yesterday I brewed the Woot!zenbock. First time doing a full all grain of it.
Woot! is a big ol’ Weiseenbock. 1.090 big. So taking using the yeast cake from the Vienna Lager of a few weeks ago for it. Didn’t change anything other than subbing in all wheat malt for the wheat extract.

Woot!zenbock – 5 gallon  OG:1.090 IBU32
5 lbs Munich malt
8 lbs Wheat malt
3 lbs pilsner
8 oz Special B
8 oz chocolate malt
1 oz perle @ 60
1 oz hallertau @ 15
154 mash  on a S-23 yeast cake

Had to break out the big mash tun for this one.

This beer always smells awesome in the boil. And as expected, it took off almost instantly getting poured on to that full yeast cake. I just wish the weather would have stayed a bit cooler for one more week,, but this yeast strain is pretty good with being in the higher 50 range.

It was a good week brewing. I’ll be back in a few weeks with updates,, including the now bottled Vienna Lager..