Author: stoutmaker

Leonardo

stoutmaker1 Comment

Finally got around to brewing the second of the Ninja Turtles beers. Leonardo. The first, Michelangelo the blonde ale was a success and I have been babying the last of the keg for a while now. 


Leonardo is an APA using centennial and chinooks. 
8 lbs 2 row
1/2 lb 20L
1/2 lb aromatic
1oz centennial @12
1 oz chinook @12
Mangrove Jack West Coast ale yeast 
Mashed at 148 for 80 min. 

Everything during mash and boil was great.  Beautiful day. 

Ended up .052. With 40 IBU.
Still like this Hopburst style.  Everything went in at 12 minutes. Even going into fermenter it was hoppy. 

But the yeast. Hrrmm. I was reading about it the day before I was brewed and there was quite a bit of talk of how long this yeast takes to crank it up. 
And lemme say, were they ever right. I pitched on Friday morning. As I write this it’s Monday morning and there are just now signs of life in there. 

Both Saturday and Sunday there was absolutely nothing going on.  I don’t know if I like that or not. I guessing it’s gonna take a long time to clean itself up. 
I hope not. I want this ready in 4 weeks

We will see


Lost post from 2010

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(This post was still in que an never posted.  Must have been a decent beer because I remade this recipe in 2012)

Its over 100 in the garage today, so might as well brew. Have a SNPA clone in the works.
-8 lbs 2row
-1/2 lb dextrine
-1/2 lb 60L
1 oz perle 60
.5 oz cascade 15
.5 cascade 10
.5 cascade 5
.5 cascade 0
with 05 yeast

forgot to click my lid down so I started mash at 155 but by the time I noticed we crept down to 151 but shouldn’t be that big of a thing.
Is there a wierder smelling hop than these perle? Like a Grapefruit rolled up in fresh cut grass.

What is this!

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With the Titletown Open about a month away, its time to start deciding what beers and what categories.

Seems like it should be easy to do. If I brewed a Pale ale, put it in pale ale. Well of course it dont work like that. One of the most important decisions in a homebrew contest is to get the right category and sub category. And even that has little tricks, or nuances. You need to play to the judges. You need to see a judging first hand to get the full meaning of that.

My Betazoid stout for example. I brewed this to be a dry stout. And I think it would fit perfectly here, except its 7.5%. Thats extremely high for a dry. So this might fall into the Foreign extra slot. The only reason I am considering Foreign is because of the alc. I'm gonna need some feed back on this one for sure before I decide.
 
My strong ale is another. I originally brewed as a barley wine, and I think it still could pass as that, but its nearly two years old now, and is really making a case for old ale. I only have 4 bottles left of this and its been 8 months or so since I had one. Even then the Hops were starting to drop out and the beers was really hitting its stride. I really do hope this one scores well. I like this beer alot. Dont wanna see those last 4 go.
 
And the I have some tougher ones to place. The porter, is it really a porter? The Valhelsing, American brown, amber? Are these ESBs really ESBs?
 
Plus I gotta decide which of the 20p beers I wanna use. Our special category this year for the 20th anniversary. My have a starting OG of 20p or more. I made a brown last April just for this and it is fantastic, but I got that Double Alt that sure wants to be in it if it can clean it self up a little in a month. 
 
This year I dont feel I have any clear winners. Sad to say,, but thats the way it is. I do have some good solid beers going in, just nothing that stand out so to say.