Category: Homebrew

Beers, ciders, meads

stoutmakerLeave a comment

Been busy brewing and stuff the last few weeks. Brewed twice at the local Homebrew shop for club demos and to replenish the sample stocks there. I even took the Mash and boil on a road trip brew.

Oh road trip brewing with this Mash and boil is soooo much less hassle. This is gonna make for some summer traveling. I will have to make a little checklist post for this. 

Also I have really been exploring the cider and mead side of things. I just kegged up a lower gravity (7%) Saison mead. And bottled a higher gravity (9%) Blueberry cider! Oh,, almost forgot the Farmers Market cider. Each week at the local market I bought “something” and froze them for the end of season cider. This year it was apple/red currant/strawberry/sour cherry/raspberry/beet ciderIMG_20181114_143905_687.jpg

As good as these new forays turned out, I may have to split time being a brewery and a cider mill. I think its fun for a lot of reasons. First being,, there is more involvement it feels like. With beer you do your 4 hour thing and you dont look at it for a month.  With these quick ciders, I can piddle around with the whole fruit/veg prepping, staggered nutrients, degassing, bottling… things like that. Might be a turn off for some,, but its puts me back in touch with my products, like the old days!

Take a look at this Blueberry cider!

  • 3 gallons apple juice, fresh pressed or cheap stuff. They both work 
  • 2- containers frozen concentrate blueberry/pomegranate mix
  • 2 lbs sugar
  • 3 tsp nutrient (split)
  • US-04 or any English strain yeast
  • Mix everything and 2 tsp of the nutrient. shake it up hard to oxygenate. A day after fermenting add the other 1 tsp of nutrient.
  • After 3 weeks bottle or keg @ 3 volumes

 

A National Homebrew Day scorcher

stoutmakerLeave a comment
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. 

Brit IPA 2015 hops

stoutmakerLeave a comment

Not as good as last years, but this years hops were ready to go.

I was going to brewing anyway so why do a wet hop IPA. 
11 lbs- 2 row
1 lb- Victory Malt
3/4 lb- 80L
1 oz Galena @60
1 oz Cascade @10
Fresh picked Mt Hoods steeped 10 min at flame out. About 3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket. 
Mashed at 154 and used 04 yeast 
I have used my own hops before. But they were dried. These were right off the vine. 
I made a slight miscalculation and did not factor that in. The dried ones soak up tons of water. These do not. In fact they lowered my OG. I was sitting at 16.5 brix, but ended up at 15 after steeping. 

I did learn one thing. I was planning on sun drying the hops as much as I could before I had to use them. But everytime I walked by them while the sun was baking the water out, I could smell them getting stronger.

Since I am using them for aroma, so why bake those smells out of them. I brought them in out of the sun to try and preserve as much of that as I could. 
I think it turned out pretty good. We will see in a few short weeks