Archive for the 'Brewing' Category

Double up the IPA

Published
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DT
on December 17, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

Last Saturday was a good brewing day. Mike came over after lunch and we decided to mash enough grain so we could end up with two 6 gallon batches. This would give both batches the same wort as a starting point for doing two single hopped beers. Mike would be using Palisade hops and I was going with Summit. For the most part, the recipes were exactly the same, with the exception that the Palisade hops were only 9.7% AA and the Summit were 18.1% AA. So Mike used two ounces instead of one at 45 minutes for bittering to get an IBU count closer to the Summit hopped beer.

We hit a speed bump as soon as we got underway. My drill is only 7.2V’s and it just doesn’t have the juice to power through and mill all the grain. About a third of the grain was milled before the drill just gave up the ghost, then we had to go in and do the rest by hand. Check done, 25 pounds of grain milled.

Then we proceeded to max out my 10 gallon mash tun. We spilled a little bit of grain on the floor, so instead of being 25 pounds, it probably ended up something like 24 pounds. It was filled to the brim and we had to simply lay the lid on top and hope for the best. While the grains mashed in, we headed back upstairs for some furniture installation…fun stuff, but at least our new giant cabinet in the dining room won’t be falling over anytime soon.

Back down to the mash, we drained, then batch sparged until we had 14 gallons of wort. 7 gallons went in Mike’s brew pot and 7 gallons went into mine. Brought the batches to a boil, added our 45 minute bittering hops, boiled, added out 15 minute flavor hops, boiled, cut the flame and added our zero minute aroma hops. Cooled the batches down and dumped them into the fermentation containers and added our yeast. Mike used a bucket and I used a big carboy. The batches are fermenting away as we speak and it took less than 12 hours to get underway. We’ll let these go for a few more days, then drop in the dry hops.

Here’s Mike telling us how it is after a good long brew session:

I use a pretty basic program for creating my recipes, QBrew. I like it for a few reasons, mainly because it’s free, they’ve built it for all your major platforms (win, mac, nix), and you can super easily edit the ingredient database. On top of all that, they have export functions and they actually update it, unlike ProMash. Check it out if you come up with your own recipes or you need a way to keep notes on batches. I’ll post up the two IPA recipes here in a bit.

BrewSession

Published
by
DT
on July 23, 2007
in Brewing
. 3 Comments

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:

Munich Dark Lager

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.

Next Recipe?

Published
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DT
on July 20, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

Ok, so here’s what I’ve got in the freezer for hops:

1 lb. Warrior, 1 lb. Amarillo, 3 oz. Palisade, 3 oz. Glacier, 2 oz. UK Fuggles, and a new variation of my SAC blend (Styrian Golding, Amarillo, Czech Saaz). All the hops are fair game, although I’ll probably hold off on the SAC blend for the Saison I’m planning.

Now I don’t have any extract or grains on hand, so that’s totally up in the air. I’m going to start making a couple of recipes up now, so I can swing by tomorrow (Saturday) morning to pick up the goods. If any of you readers get a chance to read this, leave a comment for the beer you’d like to see made tomorrow.

1) Single Hop Brew: Palisade
2) Single Hop Brew: Glacier
3) Rye Pale Ale
4) Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA Clone (which would use Warrior, Amarillo, Palisade, Glacier, and Simcoe)
5) Saison (Styrian Golding, Amarillo, Czech Saaz)
6) Munich Dunkle (which I actually already have the wort ready to go in a sealed bag)

Bueller, Bueller?

Clubbing

Published
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DT
on July 19, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

Tuesday night I met up with M&M at his place in Princeton for a quick pre-game Wachusett IPA. After he was done yelling at the Red Sox, we drove down to Shrewksbury (no idea how you pronounce that). There’s a cool little place called Deja Brew, a BOP much like Shenandoah Brewing only they don’t have a side brewery or bar/restaurant action going on. We weren’t there to brew anything, but they did have a nice 6 kettle copper clad system, buckets of grain and barrels of malt extract. The grounds were super clean and I wouldn’t hesitate to brew on their system.

No, we showed up to attend a homebrew club meeting for the WIZARDS (Worchester Incorporated Zymurgists Advancing Real Draughts). It’s not super close or convenient for me, but it is fairly close to Mike. I’ve always been a big proponent of homebrew clubs, so I felt it important to introduce Mike to the club atmosphere. Every club is different, but there’s almost always something you can learn and take away from the other members. The meeting had about 15 in attendance and there was a really great presentation by JoAnne who is the Sales and Marketing manager for White Labs. With only 15 people, there wasn’t a whole lot of homebrew around, but JoAnne brought several big boy bottles of Avery (Salvation, The Reverend, and Hog Heaven) and then another 4 bottles of Smuttynose Big A IPA…delicious. The homebrewers contributed a couple of milds, a brown ale, something I assume was a cider (but the guy was a little off and didn’t want to explain what it was), a Belgian Golden (good, but not as good as the Salvation, ha), and a really great fresh hop pale ale. I brought a bomber of my Imperial Stout, but I seriously have no idea which batch it was from or how old it is (it’s probably my second or third batch would make it less than a year old, but you never know).

Beers were consumed a couple ounces at a time and fun was had by all. Big bonus that the club has a shoe box full of small tasting glassware, no plastic cups! Anyway, they seemed like a pretty cool club and I don’t think Mike will mind going back for more of their meetings. At the very least, it got us both back on the brewing tip. It’s hard for me to brew since I don’t have a pot that can hold a gallon of liquid or more. Mike however has a full size pot and is going to borrow a turkey fryer from a friend so we can brew something up this weekend. I looked in the freezer and I’ve got 3 ounces of Palisade and 3 ounces of Glacier hops. Both are hops I’ve never used, so it might be fun to try and pull of a single hop beer. We’ll see…I gotta come up with a recipe before Saturday so we can still get the ingredients. Pale Ale, IPA, RyePA (all single hopped) or maybe go another route and do some continuous hopping with the Palisades, Glacier, and the pound of Warrior or Amarillo I have? Damn, I should set up a poll, ha.

You’re my boy Blue!

Published
by
DT
on April 16, 2007
in Beer and Brewing
. 4 Comments

We had company in town this weekend, so I didn’t get to attend the entire BURP meeting this month, but I did manage to get my entry in for the “Extract” competition. One year ago I entered my first brewing competition, the BURP Extract competition of 2006, and I took home the blue ribbon for my Hop Dog IPA. Since then, I’ve moved on to all grain brewing, but I still make a few extract beers here and there. I’m still a firm believer that you can make great beer either way. Maybe in a future post I’ll do a writeup on brewing extract beer tips. Anyway, when I found out the extract competition would again be held in April, I decided to brew another Fat Boy special IPA. The recipe I designed called for a lot of hops, 7.5 ounces and three varieties to be exact. It’s a hophead’s dream, except it also has a really nice balance, which I contribute to the use of some honey malt. Anyway, back to the meeting. I received the ribbon for my 3rd place Scottish 80 from the Feb. Scottish ales competition and to my surprise, won the Best of Show (BOS) for this year’s extract competition. Go me! So if you like a good IPA, this is one you probably don’t want to miss. It might be gone before we are!

Ribbons

DT

In the words of Snoop Dogg

Published
by
DT
on March 14, 2007
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

80 degrees
when I tell that bitch please
get up off these n-u-tz
cause you gets none of these
at ease
-Snoop Dogg

It’s a beautiful day in the DC area and I’m in a damn good mood. It was over 80 degrees on the beltway around 2:00 PM. That’s the beauty of having a project that is ending soon…there’s not a whole lot that needs to be done other than transitional stuff. I’m home now, sitting outside with the Busterman, enjoying an adult beverage. Probably head out for a ride in about an hour, but waiting to see if the rain ever comes (hoping it doesn’t). After riding, I’ll be attending the WortHogs homebrew club meeting and entering my milk stout and imperial stout since this month’s competition is stouts.
Ended up getting a nice little ride in last night. I had a report of some rogue trails at the park I’m a liaison for MORE. Found them pretty easy…Tip #1: if you’re going to build illegal trails, don’t mark them with neon pink flagging tape. The trails themselves weren’t that bad. It wasn’t a lot of distance, but more of a spider network on top of a ridge. Tip #2: don’t leave your broken rake on the side of illegal trail. If whoever made it had stuck to a couple of paths instead of branching off every 30 feet, the trail would be a lot better. There’s also a section on a hillside that would make the perfect “how not to build trail” photo in the next IMBA book, ha. Props for trying to build some trail, but if you’re going to build on a 30 degree angle hillside and you’re not going straight down (which you don’t want to do anyway), you need to cut that trail into the side of the hill. Otherwise you get the 12 foot wide trail that just continually slides down the hill.

Anyway, I checked them out. Wish they had been built a little better, at least then I could talk to the park rangers to see about keeping them. Who knows, maybe if we let it sit under the radar long enough, whoever built them will make them better. Aight, gotta get the bike and beer stuff together.

DT

One More To Go…

Published
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DT
on October 23, 2006
in Beer, Bikes, Brewing, Dirt and Life
. 0 Comments

So this has been a long wedding season this year.  We have one more to go this coming weekend and thankfully this one is local.  We’ll be playing host to much of the wedding party and it will be nice to see everyone again.  Got the house ready this past weekend to house everyone, just gotta cut the grass and we’re all set to go.  Fully expecting this coming weekend to go by at a furious pace.  I’m hoping we’ll be able to find the time to fit in a game of Drinking Kart on the N64, but it’s not looking good.  We actually decided to board the B-Man for the weekend since it’s just not fair to him to be alone for that much time.  Hopefully they give him a bath, ha.

Kristin spent most of the weekend just playing catch up as she just finished her first week at her new job.  A start-up being run by Steve Case…talk about stressful!  They have her already doing things outside her comfort zone, so there should be a nice learning curve in her position.  She’s going to have one hell of a skills toolbox when she’s done though…

Sunday morning I managed to rack the Damn Devil Double IPA into secondary.  Way too smooth for a 12-13% beer.  I used something like 8 ounces of hops in this batch and racked it onto another ounce of Crystal hops.  The hoppy flavor and aroma is going to kick some ass on this one!  After lunchtime I headed out to MD for October BURP homebrew club meeting.  This month was the Dark Beers competition, basically any beer over 20 SRM qualified.  This is different in that usually the competition is limited to a specific BJCP style, whereas there were multiple styles to compete against.  I entered my Russian Imperial Stout that I brewed back in April.  It’s had time to mature and mellow a bit since I last had it.  Ended up pulling a 2nd place, not bad out of 17 entries.  It was really good about 2 months after I brewed it, but I think some of the mellowing has actually made it more one dimensional and I wish it was a little more complex.  As one judge said, it’s doesn’t quite live up to the aroma…  After the meeting I racked my Imperial Porter into secondary on top of two vanilla beans…this beer smells amazing!  Hope it’s ready for the Bliss.

Speaking of the Bootleggers Bliss, check out Spearmint’s art…not quite enough time to come up with a brand new logo, but hey, Big MEATS…Bootleggers Bliss…it all works out!

Bootleggers Bliss by Spearmint

So we’re pretty much all set to go for the event.  Just finishing up a few last details.  Still time to get in touch and enter, but only a few spots left.

Been trying out a new experiment on the IF, took it 96er style.  Big 29″ wheel up front, with a nice meaty 26″ in the rear.  Rode some Frederick, MD trails and it handled really well.  Didn’t seem as weird as the first time I jumped on a Karate Monkey.  I’m much more comfortable doing logs and getting air with this setup than I was on the KM.  Also gave it a shot out at Wakefield for a quick ride the other day.  Managed to get in all of Wakefields trails in about 45 minutes.  No issues with the bike, so I think I’ll keep this setup for a while.  Might try and find a bigger 29″ meat for the front, but shy of that I think I’m set.  Have to get some pics of the setup soon.

DT

Bootleggers Bliss

Published
by
DT
on September 21, 2006
in Beer, Bikes, Brewing, Dirt and Races
. 2 Comments
Bootleggers Bliss

Here it is, the official announcement:

What: Bootleggers Bliss
When: Sunday, November 5, 2006
Where: Time and Place TBA

So here’s the deal, you might have seen the post on Steve’s blog, but here’s a little more detail. There’s a concept called “potlatch”, which Steve elegantly explains in his post. This comes down to a festival and an exchange of gifts (non-monetary) and that’s what this is, a festival celebrating bikes and beer in all their glory. In a sense, this is a lot like SSO’s Punk Bike Enduro, but with a couple of exceptions - the biggest being this is not a singlespeed only event. This is a celebration of all bikes, whether you like 30 gears or 1, whether you prefer big wheels or little wheels, whether you insist on coasting or pedaling the entire time…as long as it’s a bike and your legs are the power plant you can participate. The other big exception is there will be no prizes, no swag, and no monetary entry fees. Each participant however is required to bring something to the gift exchange and that should be a 6 pack (or growler) of your very own homebrewed beer.

The idea here is to celebrate bikes and bring more people into the homebrewing fold.

If you brew beer and don’t have a batch ready, well get to brewing! If you have never brewed before, but are interested, you’ve got three options:

  1. Get yourself to a local homebrew shop, get yourself setup for beggining brewing ($65 or so), pick a beer and brew it. Local shops: myLHBS in Falls Church, VA operated by Derek.  Out in the Fair Oaks area, you’ve got Jay’s Brewing (both Derek and Jay are mountain bikers) - as with most homebrew shops, be sure to check their websites for hours of operation. In MD, I’ve been to MDHB in Columbia, MD and there’s also The Flying Barrel in Frederick, MD…something to think about after you hit up the Watershed.
  2. Get yourself to a fellow homebrewers house to brew a batch. We have strategically placed homebrewers all over the area. If you want to give brewing a shot before purchasing any equipment, then this is your best bet.
  3. Get yourself to a Brew On Premise (BOP). This is a place where you brew a batch at an offsite location and when it’s all done you go back and pick it up. Shenandoah Brewing is a BOP. The good thing about a BOP is you are brewing under a watchful experienced eye and there is no need to purchase equipment, but the bad part is for the price you pay you could easily purchase all the equipment to do it yourself.
  4. Get yourself on the good side of a fellow homebrewer who is participating. This rare option of participating without brewing is available because each participating homebrewer is allowed one non-homebrewing guest.

If you take option 1 and either of those shops is out of your general vacinity, let me know and we’ll track down a homebrew shop for you. Also, let me know if you’d like to take advantage of option 2 and I’ll put you in touch with a fellow homebrewer. Option 4, well you’re on your own with that one…

So quick recap, Bootleggers Bliss is going down on Sunday, November 5, 2006, with a rain date of November 11. You can ride any bike you want, but a 6 pack (or growler) of your finest homebrew is required. Each homebrewing participant is allowed and encouraged to bring one non-homebrewing participant. We are trying to spread the love here folks, help us out!

For exact details (time and place) and any questions/information, contact me.

DT

Brewing

Published
by
DT
on July 20, 2006
in Brewing
. 0 Comments

I know it’s been awhile since I posted and as such, one might think I haven’t been doing anything…couldn’t be further from the truth. While I was off the bike I managed to brew up a number of things and all of them ended up going over well with the family. After our family reunion I quickly found that I was completely out of IPA with only a small amount of Raspberry Wheat and Belgian Wit left. Since I’m an IPA man, I needed to get cracking.

A couple of weeks ago I tried my first partial mash, which is basically all grain brewing on a much smaller scale. I tried out some Rye grain for the first time and ended up making a Rye IPA. The Rye tends to give a spicyness that you don’t get from hops, spicy, but not bitter. If I did the beer again I’d probably add a bunch more hops for aroma, but I really wanted to see what the Rye tasted like. So I’ve got it kegged and 3 liters of it hanging out in the main fridge.
Also, last weekend I had a few people over who wanted to see what the whole homebrew thing was about. Since one batch of Rye IPA isn’t enough IPA, we brewed up the “From Away IPA” and it should be ready for dry hopping on Saturday. I probably should brew another batch of this just to have around so I can see what it actually tastes like as it ages. The last batch was gone in under 2 weeks…thats one month from brewing to gone. I think everyone had a good time brewing, hopefully they learned something. I tried to get across that homebrewing is as easy or as hard as you make it. I generally take a lot of shortcuts, yet all my brews have come out pretty good. Maybe I’m lucky, or maybe I just can’t taste the difference yet.

Monday night I had my first go at solo all grain brewing. Built a mash tun for about $15 in parts I got from the local McLean Hardware store, which also sells the cooler I’ll eventually be moving into. The experience was mixed…it’s a lot of work and my cobbled together system isn’t the best. In between my first runnings and my second runnings the screen managed to unscrew…which means theres nothing but grain and liquid to get stuck in the ball valve. Luckily I got it back on pretty quick, but who knows how it will turn out. I did manage to come out with exactly 5 gallons though, so that was cool and I think I nailed my gravity. I just brewed the Mary Pale Ale so it would be a fairly easy recipe and it was a good thing.

I’ve also started using a program called QBrew, which is a free opensource software for building recipes. Now I guess I’ll have to start building a recipe database..

DT

Kegging

Published
by
DT
on June 9, 2006
in Bikes and Brewing
. 2 Comments

Don’t worry, biking to come.  This is the breakout weekend.  Shoulder is healed (I hope) and I’ll be putting it to the test to make sure I can lead the Wednesday night ride for the first time in a month.  Best of luck to all the racers at 24 Hours of Big Bear this weekend.  I raced last year, but I’m out of all these really big, high money entry fee races this season…$150 is too rich for my blood.

At least all this time off has had me brewing a lot.  The original Hop Dog IPA is done it’s secondary fermentation and dry hopping.  I went ahead and kegged it on Devil’s Day with a little help from the Busterman.

Busterman helping to keg Hop Dog IPA

I’ll be back at again this weekend.  I need to keg up my malty sweet version of Hop Dog IPA and then move the Raspberry Wheat Ale into the secondary.  Then I have to get in another brew session and try and brew up a Belgian White beer for the family reunion, something nice and crisp for that beach living.  I can also really feel the Imperial IPA calling my name.  It whispers ingredients to me in my sleep…it says to use some Belgian grains, lots of malt extract, a little wheat dry malt extract, and a hell of a lot of hops…hmm…like a 6 oz. dry hop…oh yea.  I’m talking over 10% abv. and over 100 IBUs.  That’s right, time to go big.

DT