The Dirty Yeast

stoutmaker

Took advantage of the weird winter warm up here in Green Bay. This time of year my basement is usually around 45F. Which is a bit too cold for a good lager ferment. But this winter it’s been sitting at 52. Perfect.

So, from a followers suggestion I brewed up a Kolsch. It was a good choice for a couple reasons. First was the temps. I could still brew while my heat box was full. Second because I am currently on a SmasH beer kick and third because I can use this beer for the Germanfest contest in Milwaukee.

Very simple recipe here.

  • 8lbs pilsner
  • 1oz Mt Hood
  • S-33 yeast

I have used the S-33 yeast before, but do not remember it being as “dirty” as this.

This is over week later after pitch. But I’m not worried about it at all. I’ve seen much much dirtier looking yeast. (Like the Kveik. That looked like I fermented a mud wrestling pit)

It will clear. You can tell from the second pic that it already is. Look at the bottom half compared to the top half. I will give it a 2 more weeks to drop and then get it moved to keg. Once in keg it’s easier to move to warm and back to the fridge to condition.

Next week I will be doing a some work on the wine side of things. And maybe another Mead?? I dunno.

Stay tuned.

Idaho 7 and it’s Aroma

stoutmaker

Was able to get a couple brews in this past week. Which was some good timing because we are getting low on beer around here, and we have a few events coming up.

The first brew was the first of a series of beers I have planned for the club. There are so many new hops coming out, I want to get some profiles for them. So a simple smash beer is perfect for this.

Idaho 7 was the first hop I chose. As you can see by the description it a fairly bitter hop, with piney, fruity, citrusy, floral aromas.

Went with 8lb of 2 row for the malt and Muntons premium Gold yeast with a standard 152F mash.

I don’t know who wrote the description with the citrusy floral fruity aromas.. because I got nothing like that in the boil. They reminded me of Saaz or Goldings. The inhabitants up stairs described the smell as carrots and feet.

But we will see what fermentation does to them. They could still very well be what is described. At least I hope so!

Either way it shouldn’t be over powering, as because of the high alpha I went with only a 1/2oz for bittering and the other 1/2oz at the last 5 minutes

The wort going into the fermenter was 1.040 and did not taste like feet.

This will be kegged next week, and be tasted the first week of February. So expect some feed back around then

Idaho 7 hop test

2019 year end.

stoutmaker

As usual, here is my year in review post. And we did more stuff than I thought we were going to.

The year started off as usual by getting  the contest brews going. The usual Stouts and Milds, nothing really new or unusual here.

One of those contest beers did pretty good and we got to ramp it up at CopperState Brewing. It was a great time. Got to see first hand that professional breweries and us homebrewers are very close in procedures and techniques other than volumes. I’m pretty sure any homebrewer could jump in and brew just fine on the big systems. But it also solidified my not wanting to do it for a living.

A lot of new things in the brewery this year. Like Kveik yeast. I had to try what I thought was just going to be a fad, but this yeast was everything I heard it was. Hot fermenting, but clean. This has to be the biggest surprise of the year down here. We already have plans to use this quite a bit more this summer, and get some hard sensory profiles for the different strains.

While we have never had any water problems before, and always did carbon filtering, we decided to give one of our German Alt beers a specific water profile. We picked out a more Germanic of water. The beer came out fantastic, and while I could certainly feel the difference different water chemistry did. I’m not sure it was “better”. But different for sure. We are gonna play around a bit more with different Styles of beer and localised water profiles.

We also realised that we have been ignoring one of our favorite styles, the American Wheat. We did make a couple this year, but they never stuck around too long because they were fantastic. I want to focus a bit more on the American Wheat again, just because I like them.

But if you havent noticed already from our last several brews, we have started to produce more SmasH beers. Beers that use a Single malt and single hop variety.These SmasH beers are the perfect way to find out what a grain or hop has to offer. And with there being so many new hops and grains out there now, the combinations are endless. There will be more of these coming out soon.

2019 was bit of everything it seems. Trying new things, going back to old beers. And it was quite a fun time, but sporadic.

Looking ahead to 2020, we already have some sort of plan forming. The SmasH brewing is high on the list of things we are going to focus on. And I plan to be posting more informational and editorial posts to try and keep the sites more active.
Stay tuned for more!