Category: Uncategorized

Finally up to date. Mead

stoutmakerLeave a comment

5-13-11 mead day

Mead 3 gallons batch
6 lbs honey
1 orange
about 2 inches of ginger
½ box rasins small lunch size
1 pkt of 04 yeast

Started 3.5 gallons water to boil. Cut up the orange into chunks. fine cut up the ginger. threw this and the rasins in to water while heating. boil for 10 min then flame out and add honey to pasturize. cool with chiller and rack to fermenter.
Am expecting to secondary this.
whoops. gonna havfta do the loose lid trick. got not airlock
oh shit does this taste good right off the boil!
OG 1.064

5-12-11 stout, Steam

stoutmakerLeave a comment
Took this week off in order to do some brewing and actuially did quite a bit.

5-10-11
BREW DAY
Fogger stout-Dry stout

6 lbs maris otter
2 lbs flaked barley
1 lbs roasted barley
1.5 oz cluster hops @ 60 min
windsor yeast

First time brewing with a program. gonna use brew pal for the IPOD. but still dont trust these things so will use my better judgement when in doubt.

its 68 in the garage. prog says 2.8 gallons at 165 of water to mash at 152. thats seems high to me, I will use 3 gallons at 162. with my preheated tun it would have over shot. But I will keep some hot water ready just in case.

I win! Mashed in with 162 water and settled out at 153 about 1 min stir to get to 152.
Mash is pretty thick.
gonna sparge with 4.5 gallons 168 prog says 5.25.
I gonna get somehwere in the rangle of 2.25 to 2.5 gallons from first running and almost all of the 4.5 gallons back so thats almost 7 gallons to boil.
seems like I’m forgetting something.
full conversion
came up a little short on the first running. 2 gallons. can only fit about 4 gallons of water for second sparge. might have to top off with the rest of the hot sparge water.
She is black as night already.
wow, only got 3 gallons on second sparge. gonna need that last 1 gallon i kept ready.
I wonder if that flaked barley soaks up more?
ok starting boil at 6.5 gallon.
One of those days where its not getting much boil off

OG 1.046
Pretty tired of this Brewpal app. It crashes every 2 minutes. sucks. Just got the ibrewer app and so far it rocks.
5-12-11 – the Fogger Stout was really churning up yesterday, but looks like its pretty much done today.
Seems fairly odd for Windsor yeast. Doesnt look as black as i was expecting. But gotta let everything drop out first.

Got a Bonus today! a keg that I thought was StarSan was actually a ¼ keg of Old Republic Brown.

Today is also brew day again. We are going to try a new recipe this time. a California Steam beer.
Zerg Rush Steamroller-
8 ½ lbs 2 row
1 ½ lbs crystal 60L

1 oz northernbrewer @60
½ oz northernbrewer @15
½ oz northernbrewer @5
1 oz northernbrewer @ 0

s-23 yeast mash @ 150
well missed low again added a bit of boiling and the over shot to 154. but we are going to leave it.
getting 3 gallons first sparge.
Added 4 gallons of 170 water. and collected 3.5 more.
Boiled 60 and flollowed the above hops schedule.
pitched 1 pkt of safale S23 lager.


Had a couple of guest brewers from the Rackers show up to brew. Tim brought his system and brewed a Dos Equis clone. Bryan, and Al showed up to help and suck beers!

Apr 2011 Titletown Open

stoutmakerLeave a comment
4-7-11
MY HOPS ARE UP

cream ale is still bubbling. didnt think it would go this long being .040

4-18-11 quite a few things.
First. finally kegged the cream ale finished out at .006 is cleared pretty good but had a way to go. Has a slight slight taste reminesint to the cream of three. Must be the rice. good beer so far.

The Duck Creek Pale is finally coming around. Is just what I wanted. And not changing anything. and will call this recipe FINISHED. The entire keg is gone. have 3 bottle for the Open, and maybe the other ones left.

On to the English Brown. at first I thought it was thin. but after another week in the bottle I am changing my mind, maybe in another week it will be better yet.
I thought it was too light, but its is a nice nice brown in a glass.
but the taste is missing the points that i was looking for. needs more bready type flavor. its good as is, but not what I wanted. will try more busuit malt next time. maybe slightly more choc

4-30-11

Well the 2011 Titletown Open homebrew competition was this week end. of course at the Titletown brewing Co. It is put on by the Green Bay Rackers. I was steward for all three rounds. I love stewarding. You hear so much stuff about what beers should or shouldnt be, and what and what not to do to your beers.

This year I entered 3 beers. An American Pale Ale, an American Stout, and an English Mild.

The Pale ale didnt fair so well. Dont get me wrong here, its a great beer,, but not for the category. I made this one for me. I dont like bitter hopped beers so I moved most of the additions to the last 10 and 1 minutes. I got all kinds of flavors and aromas, just not bitter. Exactly the way I wanted it.

The American Stout was brewed specifically for this competition. I wanted something that I knew would be in style. I came up a bit short with this one took a second in the style. But fantastic because this is my first win of any kind!

The Mild, was actually not even going to go into the contest, because two people that tried it hated it. Albeit neither of them like beer in the first place… but I liked it so i put it in just to see what it would get since I had just made it, and the recipe was made on the fly as i was in the homebrew store. Well it ended up taking first in its category, and Best of Show!

It was the only Mild entered so I kinda knew it was mine the whole time. My god is it rough sitting there listening to the judges go thru there paces with the finals. Like someone mentioned, we should have videod (sp?) the table talk of the finals. so interesting how they bat everything back and forth trying to come to a decision. The good points, the bad points, their immpression of intent and interpretation on t he guidelines. just an amazing process.

All In all I am extremely happy with the results. Every brewer in the contest is a great brewer, and I’m glad I could compete with them.

Back to brewing. Summer beers are up next.


So, I need to name it…
**Officially named the mild… Old Republic Brown