Punkin Ale

Pumpkin Season!

Let's keep the streak going. Fourth brewing weekend in a row. Today I brewed with my buddy Greg Robbins at his place. He brewed a complex Flying Dog Fear clone and I brewed this recipe I found on HomeBrewTalk that emulates the DFH Punkin' Ale. Started off with four pounds of pumpkin puree baked in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. Let it sit in the oven to cool slowly for the next 30 min. Came out a nice warm amber color. Also had to buy my second 50lb. sack of two-row today for this brew's grist. I feel like working your way through your first 50 lb. sack should earn you an intermediate brewer's badge. I'll ask the wife to make one.

Malt Contains no Dinosaurs

Watching Greg mash in a Rubbermaid cooler and sparge with stove top heated water looked so much simpler than the BIAB that I may heavily consider upgrading to a cooler based mash from the BIAB method. Especially for bigger winter beers like this that are a bit more unwieldy in a bag.

Brew Recipe

Brew Date: 8/24/2013
Style: Spice Ale
Batch Volume: 4.5 gal.
Type: All Grain
Color: 13 SRM
Target Bitterness: 20.2 IBU
Target OG: 1.067
Estimated FG: 1.017

Grist
8 lb. American Two-Row
1 lb. Crystal 60L
1 lb. Victory
4 lb. Baked Pumpkin Puree

1 oz. Hallertauer (60 min.)
1 lb. Brown Sugar (60 min)
1 oz. Hallertauer (5 min.)
2 tbsp. Pumkin Pie Spice (5 min.)
    - 1/2 cinnamon, 1/4 ginger, 1/8 nutmeg, 1/8 allspice

1 pkg. Safale US-05 Ale Yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 155 °F
Mash Time: 60 min.
Boil Time: 60 min.
Pre-Mash Volume: 5.5 gal.
Post-Boil Volume: 4.5 gal.
Mash Efficiency: ?
Measured OG: 1.067
Measured FG: ?
ABV: ?
Calories: ?

Marble Orange Hot Break

Dough in at 157 dropped the temperature way below target to about 145. After adding all 10 lb. of grain and 4 lb. of pumpkin the brew kettle started overflowing and was at its absolute limit. Heated the mash on the burner to reach a temp of 157. After a 72 minute mash I squeezed the hell out of the giant grain bag and collected 4.5 gal. of wort. Put the bag in a bucket and 'sparged' another 1/2 gallon through it to collect 5 gal. total for boil. Used the wort chiller to cool down to 90 degrees and immersed pot in water bath for a while to get down to 85. Poured beer into fermenter and will wait until temperature drops below 80 before pitching US-05 yeast. Measured gravity was 1.067 which is AMAZING. Even with so many variables I can't believe I've been hitting my target gravity this consistently.

After bringing all the equipment home and avoiding cleaning because I hate cleaning the living room has a little pumpkin and graham cracker smell. I can only hope this is echoed in the brew six weeks from today.

Update 8/30/13 - Gravity reading is 1.010. Finishing way lower than the recipe predicted. Maybe because dough in brought the temperature too low for a few minutes? Regardless it tasted fantastic. Very excited to move this one along and get it in my belly ASAP.

Update 9/21/13 - Bottled 4 gallons of the pumpkin ale today with 3.5 oz. of priming sugar yielding 40 bottles in total. Finishing gravity was 1.008. Somehow I liked the taste a little more three weeks ago. It tastes a little too spicey and just a bit hot out of the hydrometer tube. If this guy smooths out a little with age it'll be a winner.

Simcoe Select IPA

Chillin' out max. Relaxin' all cool.

Third brew weekend in a row! BOOM! Today I'll be brewing a kit from Midwest Brewing Supply called Simcoe Select IPA. I received this kit as a gift from Mike and Sheila Willey for being a part of their fantastic Tennessee wedding. Thanks guys! I've been meaning to do a Simcoe SMaSH for some time too but I think this kit is a better plan. I only had a 5 gallon fermenter available so I cut 10% of the grain bill and volume to do a 4.5 gallon batch to give it some fermentation room but kept the full hop additions. So what do I do with the extra 2lbs. of grain? Why munch on it throughout the brew day, of course.

Brew Recipe

Brew Date: 8/17/2013
Style: India Pale Ale
Batch Volume: 4.5 gal.
Type: All Grain
Color: 11 SRM
Target Bitterness: 67 IBU
Target OG: 1.063
Estimated FG: 1.014

Grist
9 lb. American Two-Row
.9 lb. Crystal 40-60L
.45 lb. Munich
.45 lb. CaraPils

1/2 oz. Simcoe 12.7% (60 min.)
1/2 oz. Simcoe 12.7% (40 min.)
1 oz. Simcoe 12.7% (20 min.)
1 oz. Simcoe 12.7% (2 min.)

1 pkg. Safale US-05 Ale Yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 155 °F
Mash Time: 60 min.
Boil Time: 60 min.
Pre-Mash Volume: 5.5 gal.
Post-Boil Volume: 4.5 gal.
Mash Efficiency: ?
Measured OG: 1.062
Measured FG: ?
ABV: ?
Calories: ?

Temperature was in the low 70s in the middle of August. What is this? My birthday? Anyway, executed a double brew day today with Mike and Beth Helle and their dog Oxford. Also had a meet and greet between Oxford and our two cats. They were not impressed. Mike brought over a 2nd copper coil so we put it in a cooler of ice water and ran a line from that to our wort chillers. We were finally able to bring wort temps down below 80 degrees in the summer with the help of this new contraption. FG was right on target again. Awesome.

I used four hop bags for the four hop additions but they were pellet hops so not a lot of hop material was held back. Should just reserve the hop bags for whole leaf hops. Not really worth it for pellets. Actually I've been reading about homebrewers using paint strainer bags and pouring the wort through the bags during aeration to collect hop and grain material. Sounds like a better plan than hop bags.

We now have 17 gallons of beer fermenting in the basement between my brews and Julie's so we're both very satisfied brewers now.

Update 8/30/13 - Pulled a gravity sample today and we're sitting at 1.022. Tastes good - bitter with some grapefruit or melon flavor on the back end. It's been stable at 1.022 for a few days now. Maybe when I separated the grain it wasn't mixed well and too much Crystal and Cara ended up in the mash? Whatever. I'll be racking this to secondary in a new Better Bottle I picked up from the local homebrew store. It was much cheaper than a new glass carboy and the mouth is bigger which makes me think removing a dry hop bag will be much easier in this guy.

Update 9/21/13 - Bottled 4 gallons today with 4 oz. of priming sugar. Got 42 bottles total. Final gravity was still 1.022. Julie and I are cursed with mono-Simcoe ales finishing very high. Oh, well. Some like 'em sweet.

All Day IPA

Who doesn't like a beer they can drink all day? This recipe is a Homebrewtalk.com work in progress to clone Founder's All Day IPA, a relatively low ABV pale ale with a great hop forward taste and aroma. I've wanted to brew this recipe for a while now but it's been hard to source Amarillo hops since there's apparently a nation wide shortage of this type. My local homebrew store was out and so were the online go-to's NorthernBrewer and MidwestBrewingSupply.

As fortune would have it today we decided to tour Three Stars Brewing company, a new brewery that opened last year in DC. It was a wonderful tour by one of the owners who was a really great guy from Cleveland (booo!). Before the tour began we browsed around their homebrew shop and what to my wondering eyes did appear but several ounces of Amarillo hops, all in a row. I snatched up 2 oz. after the tour along with the rest of the grist which they had on hand entirely. Despite the 4+ oz. of fairly expensive hops the whole recipe rang up to about $30 AND they helped me pick out bulk grains and crushed as I shopped. I was a fantastic experience and I would love to visit this brewery and their homebrew shop again soon. Great folks all around.

Brew Recipe

Brew Date: 8/10/2013
Style: India Pale Ale
Batch Volume: 5 gal.
Type: All Grain
Color: 5.8 SRM
Target Bitterness: 43 IBU
Target OG: 1.046
Estimated FG: 1.011

Grist
7 lb. American Two-Row
1 lb. Crystal 20L
12 oz. Flaked Oats
4 oz. Red Wheat

1/4 oz. Cascade 6.6% (60 min.)
1/2 oz. Amarillo 8.9% (20 min.)
1/2 oz. Cascade 6.6% (20 min.)
1/4 oz. Simcoe 14.1% (20 min.)

1/2 oz. Amarillo 8.9% (5 min.)
1/2 oz. Cascade 6.6% (5 min.)
1/2 oz. Simcoe 14.1% (5 min.)

1/2 oz. Amarillo 8.9% (dry hop)
1/2 oz. Crystal 3.8% (dry hop)
1/2 oz. Simcoe 14.1% (dry hop)

1 pkg. Safale US-05 Ale Yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 150 °F
Mash Time: 50 min.
Boil Time: 60 min.
Pre-Mash Volume: 5.5 gal.
Post-Boil Volume: 5 gal.
Measured OG: 1.048
Measured FG: 1.008
ABV: 5.3%
Calories: 157

Got a late start on this brew with dough in at 6:20pm to avoid the heat. Remembered it as 6:10 though so only mashed for 50 min. but that shouldn't matter. Tried sparging grains w/170 degree water over a collander but was more work than it was worth. It takes time for the grain to absorb the water and even more time to squeeze it back out again. Probably just top up with hot water instead to 5.5 gal. next time.

Update 8/17/13 - Dry hopped tonight with 1.5 oz. hop blend. Sprayed sanitizer on a hop bag, filled it up, and dropped it right in the fermentation bucket. The bag keeps floating to the top but hopefully will sink in after it absorbs some of the liquid. Gravity is 1.008. Tastes pretty good so far! Kind of a mellon and grapefruit combo kind of thing going on.

Update 8/23/13 - Too impatient to wait a single day longer I decided to bottle today and get these babies going. Used 4 oz. of priming sugar in the 4.5 gal of collected beer for bottling. Gravity remained 1.008. Squeezed the hop bag dry before removing to get every delicious drop. Dry hopping has added a strong and excellent aroma and just a little pucker around the edge of the tongue. Looking forward to that mellowing out just a bit as it bottle conditions. Got 44 bottles total.

The beer was very cloudy and looked a bit more like cider than beer. I wish now I had taken the time to rack to secondary and let it clear up a little bit but you have what you have. After racking the first gallon to the bottling bucket I rubber banded a hop bag around the siphon to keep unwanted hop material and trube out of the bottles. Worked pretty well but there's a lot of room left for clarifying in the bottle.

Also, the taste was fantastic. Definitely will be brewing this again. And I can say that two weeks in.

Belgian Blonde

So, do I suddenly have a thing for blondes? The power of summer compels me! Following on the heels of the Centennial Blonde we brewed in June is this tasty concoction inspired by the Belgian beer Leffe Blonde. I originally looked at doing a Trappist style ale but reading up on the brettanomyces refermentation and the 6-8 month secondary requirements I was understandably intimidated and impatient. So Leffe Blonde clone it is. For this recipe I'll be substituting American Two-Row for what is thought to be pilsner malt. The hops also came in at way lower alpha acid content than I predicted so the second hop addition was moved up from 30 to 40 minutes from the end of the boil to help account for the difference. This is also the biggest all-grain recipe I've done so far at 1.069 target OG.

Brew Recipe

Brew Date: 8/04/2013
Style: Belgian Blonde
Batch Volume: 4.5 gal.
Type: All Grain
Color: 5.8 SRM
Target Bitterness: 20.1 IBU
Target OG: 1.069
Estimated FG: 1.017

Grist
9 lb. American Two-Row
1 lb. Light Munich
10 oz. Cane Sugar (Added at 15 min. before flameout)
5 oz. Belgian Biscuit
4 oz. Melanoidin

1 oz. Styrian Golding 3.2%AA (60 min.)
1 oz. Saaz 3.0%AA (40 min.)

1 pkg. Safbrew T-58 Belgian Ale Yeast

Brew Notes

Mash Temp: 158 °F
Mash Time: 60 min.
Boil Time: 60 min.
Pre-Mash Volume: 5.5 gal.
Post-Boil Volume: 4.75 gal.
Mash Efficiency: ?
Measured OG: 1.070
Measured FG: ?
ABV: ?
Calories: ?

It was a lovely 78 degrees out today. After crushing my grain for this recipe I realized the gap setting for the mill was waaay too wide. Set it to 0.030" and re-crushed. With 5.5 gallons of 166 degree water, after adding the grist I was very close to the top of my 7 gallon boil kettle. A lot of grain in this one. Mash temp started at 160 and ended at 158. Added table sugar at 15 minutes left in the boil. Had problems cooling the wort again with the coil chiller. Only able to get down to 90 degrees. Took it inside and ice bathed it down to 84. OG reading was spot on which was good news.

Got impatient during the cooling pricess and transferred it to the carboy and pitched the T-58. I've heard Belgian yeast likes it hot but I think this was too hot. Awoke the next morning to a very vigerous fermentation. No off smells or anything. I'm excited to try this next weekend and see what the warm starting temp for fermentation produced.

Update 8/8/2013 - Couldn't resist pulling a sample today. After four days the gravity dropped down to 1.012 with little activity going on in the fermenter. Taste had a hint of the Belgian character I'm going for but had a pretty strong fusel alcohol taste which I'm sure is a side effect of the high fermentation temps. I'm not sure if this will mellow out over time but it's currently a little too harsh to be enjoyable. Maybe chalk this up as a brewing lesson learned and move on. Must devise a better method for chilling wort quickly to pitch temps in the summer.

Update 8/11/13 - Racked to secondary today. Detected a small hint of that belgian characteristic in the nose from the gravity sample but not quite 'belgian' yet. Very bready still. Gravity was standing strong at 1.011.