Fat Boy Deluxe

Thanks for all the recipe suggestions, ha. We decided last minute to throw together a regular old blended hop IPA recipe, based loosely on my last couple of SAC blend (Simcoe, Amarillo, Centennial) IPAs. The recipe, like the brew session was literally put together last minute. There were no measurements taken, no records kept, and hops were dolled out a handful of pellets at a time.

One thing is for sure, ingredients are a lot more expensive up here than they were back in VA at Derek’s joint. We’re talking over $30 for just two cans of pale malt extract and an additional $30 in hops and yeast! I’m pretty sure the only recipe that ended up being that expensive was my extract Russian Imperial Stout, which used 4 cans of extract, 4 pounds of grain, and a hell of a lot of hops.

Anyway, we fired up the turkey fryer around 4:30 PM and started to bring our 4 gallons of Princeton, MA water up to temperature in our 5 gallon pot. Added our pound of Crystal 40L and a pound of Honey Malt for about 20 minutes at 160 degrees and dropping. Brought the concoction to a boil and started adding our hops. 6 ounces in total would be used of the SAC blend. It should be in the range of 65-70 IBUs, with a 6.5-7% ABV. We managed to pull off a little over 3 gallons of sweet wort after we filtered out the hop sludge. Topped off to around 5 gallons with more Princeton water (hopefully it’s good water!) and pitched a tube of White Labs California Ale yeast. Being an off the cuff brew session, we didn’t make a starter or even a pint activator. As of today, there is no activity in the air lock. We’re going to give it 72 hours to see if we get anything, then I’m going to pick up a couple packs of dry yeast and let her rip. My first time using White Labs, let’s hope they don’t disappoint.

We also managed to get a Dark Munich Lager in a bucket for fermentation. This was super easy as it was a going away gift from Derek. The BrewHouse Kit is a brewing kit, much like the boxed extract recipes one can get at most homebrew shops, except instead of being extract you are given a box with a plastic bag filled with almost 4 gallons of all grain wort. So there is no boiling, the grain has already been mashed and boiled with the appropriate amount of hops. Then they package it up for you with a packet of dry yeast and some pH balancer. You simply dump the wort into a bucket, add your pH balancer powder, add a little extra water, and then pitch your yeast. We went ahead and rehydrated the yeast with a pint of warm water and it was bubbling and required an air lock cleaning within 12 hours. The site describes the Munich Dark Lager like this:

Colour: dark brown (Deg.Lovibond) - 25.0
Bitterness: 20 IBU
O.G.: 1.055
Malts: Munich malt, Crystal 120L, Wheat and Chocolate
Hops: Perle (bittering and aroma)

Let’s hope it’s an easy drinking and delicious brew! With a little luck, both of these brews will be bottled and ready to drink come mid-August. I’ll be sure to let you know how it all turns out.