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December 6, 2011

American Pale Ale #1

by Chuck — Categories: 10A, All-grain, Recipes — Leave a comment

With New Year’s Eve approaching, I needed to get some beer ready to go before we could have folks over. After the Nut Brown Ale incident, the pipeline of lower gravity beers had run dry. Having two taps on the beer fridge we wanted a light side and a dark side. First up is an American Pale Ale that I based off of my Am. IPA recipe. It uses the same technique of first-wort hopping for the bittering addition without the normal 60 minute bittering addition. I was happy with this in the IPA as it gave a firm bitterness that wasn’t too harsh.

I also decided to go back to a hop that I hadn’t used in a while with the Mt. Hood. It has a very nice floral aroma that I thought would play well with the citrus of the Cascades. The Cascade pellets had been in the freezer for a little over a year, but still had a very nice flavor and aroma if a bit subdued. Overall, I was very pleased with the hop character of this beer.

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October 24, 2011

N. English Brown #1

by Chuck — Categories: 11C, All-grain, Equipment — Leave a comment

So, the first run with the new 20 gallon boil kettle from Stout Kettles and Tanks. I was really stoked to get to brew with it as I had an extended wait time due to some factory shutdown in China and then a couple month interruption with the birth of my son right before it arrived. Maybe even a little too stoked… Six months after the order, it was finally time.

Being that fall had arrived, I was in the mood for something a little more robust but not quite a stout or porter. I also needed something I could turn around in three weeks since I wanted to have it ready for my birthday. North English Brown was the final recipe choice. It wasn’t something I had brewed before and in hindsight I probably should have picked a recipe that I already had dialed in for an inaugural run on a new piece of gear. Yeah, that’s totally what I should have done…

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October 12, 2011

All Brett Primary – (Experimental)

by Chuck — Categories: 16E, All-grain, BJCP Style, Experiments, Recipes, Sour/Wild, Yeast — Leave a comment

One of the things I like to do from time to time is a side by side comparison of different brewing techniques. The goal, of course, is to perform the experiment while limiting the change to only one variable. In this case, I’ll be comparing primary fermentation results from three different Brettanomyces strains. The local shop only had the Wyeast varieties on hand and I didn’t want to wait for an order to arrive, so this will only showcase those three. Also, I was a bit worried that the pack of Brett Lambicus was from 2008 but decided to proceed since it would be a lower gravity beer and only a 1gallon wort

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September 4, 2011

Blonde Ale #5 – Football Beer

by Chuck — Categories: 06B, All-grain, Recipes — Leave a comment

It’s that time of year ago. Fall is in the air and the game is on. We’re talkin’ football season. A couple of years ago I started brewing a beer for the occasion. We wanted something light and sessionable with a good flavor profile. The first couple of incarnations were a SMASH (Single Malt and Single Hop) recipe using all Vienna malt, Hallertauer hops and White Labs Kolsch yeast. This is currently batch number five and the second run of the current recipe.

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August 21, 2011

American Amber #2 – Fiery Gizzard

by Chuck — Categories: 10B, All-grain, Recipes — Leave a comment

Well, the new baby has arrived and life is slowly getting into a routine. I’ve been on time off for the last two weeks for the birth and while it has been a crazy ride of sleep deprivation and poor nutrition, I did manage to use one afternoon to do another small batch to get the beer flowing again.

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July 3, 2011

Saison #3 – Funk a Trois

by Chuck — Categories: 16C, All-grain, BJCP Style, Experiments, Recipes, Sour/Wild — Leave a comment

Fourth of July weekend was the perfect time to get another brew done. My brother was in to visit from Kansas, so I let him pick the style du jour. We settled on another round of saisondue to the fact that the experimental batch was almost gone and my temperature controlled fermentation freezer was out of commission. Perfect also because I wanted to go another generation with the saison culture that I worked up last time.

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June 18, 2011

Oud Bruin #1 – Collaborative Brewday

by Chuck — Categories: 17C, All-grain, BJCP Style, Recipes — Leave a comment

Since my wife is pregnant, I’ve been working on more long term brewing projects lately. Of particular interest has been starting some sour beers. At the end of March, I got in on the last shipment of East Coast Yeast until the Fall. Since stock was limited, I got one vial of Al’s Flemish Ale blend.

Les and I had brewed a Lambic earlier in the spring and decided to get together again for an Oud Bruin. The culture had been sitting in the fridge for a few months, so I split the vial and did both an aerobic starter and an anaerobic starter. The aerobic starter was done as normal on the stirplate and stepped up for the initial pitch to 10 gallons. The anaerobic was started in a sealed jar to which I added oak cubes (boiled for 30 minutes to reduce oak flavor).

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June 5, 2011

Funkaliscious Tasting

by Chuck — Categories: 16C, Tasting Notes — Leave a comment

Good grief. Only one post for May and not a lot of brewing going on. Life is busy!

On the bad news side, my fermentation freezer has crapped out and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get it fixed. I may be doing a lot of Belgian work this summer. On the good news side, I opened a bottle of Saison Funkaliscious since I was sending it to the 2011 Bluegrass Cup so that I could take some tasting notes before I got the scoresheets back. Here’s what I found:

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May 10, 2011

American IPA #2

by Chuck — Categories: 14B, All-grain, BJCP Style, Recipes — Leave a comment

Well damn, it’s been almost a month since my last post. I had been on a pretty good roll too, but sometimes life takes over.

So to get everyone back up to speed, the last time we brewed was for Lambic #2 which was a split batch with a friend from Brewmasters of Alpharetta. Since we had enough gear, I also brewed another American IPA while the lambic was going on Les’s system.

This time around I decided to go with some hops that I had never used before as well as experiment with using First Wort Hopping instead of a 60 minute bittering addition. I also did additions every five minutes from 20 down to flameout. The plan also called for a decent amount of dry-hopping.

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April 18, 2011

Lambic #2 – Collaborative Brewday

by Chuck — Categories: 17D, All-grain, BJCP Style — Leave a comment

After spending some time talking Lambics with Les from Brewmasters of Alpharetta and discussing the various techniques used to produce them, we decided to get together and do a collaborative brew. Brewday was this past weekend and went fairly well. We decided to abort our planned turbid mash since the wind was fairly strong and we were having problems with the burners.

I had saved a half pint of wort with Bugfarm V from East Coast Yeast and prepared some starters. Half of what I had was pitched into the stirplate with fresh wort and stepped up to ~1.5L. The rest was carefully poured into two sanitized White Labs vials on top of oak cubes that I had boiled to remove the flavor. These vials and the oak would get pitched after primary fermentation to add the lacto, pedio and brett bugs that would be growing in the oak.

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