Houblonmonstre Tripel IPA

My wife got me the Houblonmonstre Tripel IPA extract kit from Northern Brewer for my birthday and we finally brewed it on Sunday. It's described by them as a cross between a Tripel and and IPA, and since those are pretty much my two favorite styles, I'm pretty excited.

From what I can tell, the part that makes it a Tripel is really the yeast. They recommend Wyeast #3522 Belgian Ardennes Yeast. This was my first experience with a smack pack and it was really convenient. I've always used dry or liquid before. It took almost 48 hours to start bubbling, but when it did it took off like crazy!

The kit used 5 oz. of hops total. The smell coming out of the airlock is amazingly hoppy, mixed with the odor that you'd expect from a Belgian yeast. It also contains 12.15 lbs of malt extract and 2 lbs of corn sugar, which makes for a LOT of fermentables.

Northern Brewer packs their malt extract in plastic jugs and moves enough products that I'm expecting this extract is "fresh". Their recipe also calls for two thirds of the extract to be added in the last 15 minutes. I'm hoping that these factors, plus all of the hops and other flavors in this beer, will combat some of the "extract twang" that I'm trying to get away from.

They also provide a cute/stupid story about how this "mash-up" came to be:

"Once upon a time a poor homebrewer was lamenting the lack of time that the modern world allowed him for his hobby, and so he cried himself to sleep. While he slept, a collective of Ardennes Forest Beer Gnomes (Houblonmonstres, in Flemish) came into his house and took pity on the poor homebrewer. Unfortunately, the Gnomes were already three sheets when they broke into his home, and so they combined the ingredients for an IPA and a Belgian Tripel. This recipe is the result of their drunken meddling: an elegant and pale strong abbey ale carpet-bombed with American and continental hops. You're going to have to do the brewing yourself, though."

So far, I've been really impressed with this kit. We'll see if that feeling persists in 2 months when it's ready to drink.

Houblonmonstre Tripel IPA
from Northern Brewer

O.G: 1082 / Ready: 2 months

Fermentables

• 3.15 lbs. Pilsen Malt Syrup (boil for 60 min.)
• 6 lbs. Pilsen Malt Syrup (boil for 15 min.)

Boil Additions

• 1 oz. Yakima Magnum (60 min)
• 1 oz. Saaz (15 min)
• 1 oz. Cascade (15 min)
• 1 oz. Saaz (5 min)
• 1 oz. Cascade (5 min)

Special Ingredients

• Priming Sugar - 2 lbs. (Add at end of boil.)

Yeast

• Wyeast #3522 Belgian Ardennes Yeast. Optimum temperature: 65-85° F

UPDATE - 11/9/2009

Bottled this yesterday. The best way to describe it it that it tastes like a tripel that accidentally got hopped with an IPA hop schedule. It's different, but really good. I'm looking forward to when it's ready to drink. I think it's going to be great.

I've also finally gotten around to uploading some of my pictures.


The beer after moving ot the secondary. It looks a lot darker in this picture than it actually was.


This is a little bit that wouldn't fit into the zecondary, so I put it in a growler with an airlock rather than getting rid of it. This shows off the color a lot better than the growler.

Hard Lemonade & Limeade

I saw this post over on HomeBrewTalk.com about Hard Lemonade and was intrigued enough to try it out. On Saturday I started a 2 gallon batch of Limeade and a 1 gallon batch of lemonade. I was a went ahead and used table sugar for this recipe because it was what I had on hand. I estimated that it's going to be around 20-25% of fermentable sugars, so hopefully that won't be an issue.

One word of caution: I used extra light malt extract like the recipe calls for, but used light malt extract in my yeast starter. When I added that to the fermenters, it had a much greater effect on the color than I thought it would, darkening the liquid quite a bit. I'm sure the taste won't be changed too much, but if you're worried about how it looks, you might want to make sure to use extra light DME in your starter as well.

After I made my starter and let the yeast do it's thing in the wort alone, I added a little bit of the lemonade mixture every 5 minutes or so for about 30 minutes. This supposedly allows the yeast to slowly acclimate to the acidity of the lemonade that it will ultimately be living in. Then I used half of the starter in both the lemonade and limeade.

The limeade took off within hours, but the lemonade took a couple of days. I thought that was odd since the lemonade was what I used to "acclimate" the yeast, but it could just be that when splitting between the two I didn't do an even divide.

Recipe transcribed from HomeBrewTalk.com. This is for 5 gallons. I scaled mine down to 2 and 1 gallon batches.

Hard Lemonade

5 gallons of water
10 cans Lemonade Concentrate (Check label to make sure there is no potassium sorbate)
2 pounds Sugar
1 pound Ultra Light DME
1 pack Champagne Yeast

Ferment, add potassium sorbate when finished gravity is reached, enjoy.


UPDATE - 11/9/2009

Bottled about two weeks ago. Most was still, so we broke into it after a very short bottle conditioning period. Its nearly all gone now. If you like sour (and I do) this is for you. There's no sweetness left at all, so all of the sourness from the limes/lemons shine through. I was able to snap one picture of a glass of limeade. It has a hint of green, but they are both almost the same color:


I definitely will be making this again. Probably in the spring to be ready for the summer (if not before). This would be perfect to drink ice cold on our building's rooftop deck on a hot day.

Bottling Day and First Samples

Spent several hours this past Saturday bottling the Cherry Wheat Ale, Welch's Wine, and Hard Cider. We did the beer in the typical manner with corn sugar for carbonation. The Welch's Wine and Hard Cider we split between part carbonated and part still. Carbonation was done with Muntons Carb Tabs and all of the still was prepped with the addition of Potassium Sorbate. We also experimented with bottling some of the wine in growlers to save on bottles (still, as growlers are supposedly not suitable for carbonation).

I decided to pull a couple of bottles over the past few days to sample. I started with a bottle each of the cider and wine on Tuesday. It had only been 3 days since bottling, but because they are still, I wasn't waiting for carbonation to happen (really just aging and clarification).

Hard Cider: Very clear, looks very nice, tastes extremely dry. Slight sulphur taste & odor that could be off-putting to some people. That may have been addressable by allowing the cider to "breathe" longer after adding the crushed campden tablet, but I'm not exactly sure. Overall, it's drinkable. I'm thinking the next time I make a cider I'll use a heat pasteurization method and include some maltose for a bit of sweetness.

Welch's Wine: Not quite clear. You can tell that granulated sugar was used as a large part of the fermentables from the trademark "cidery" taste. Clarity will likely improve with aging, but the cidery taste probably isn't going away. Grape flavor is minimal. If I did this again, I would probably go for more of the grape concentrate and switch to corn sugar (not sure why I didn't use that initially).

I tried one of the bottles of the Cherry Wheat Ale last night, 4 days after bottling:

Cherry Wheat Ale: Mild haze. Good taste, but ends with an "extract twang". Cherry flavor would be hard to identify if I didn't know what it was. Carbonation was minimal, but expected after only 4 days. I expect this one to improve over the next couple of weeks.

I've been reading up on "extract twang" since last night, and most people seem to agree it has to do with the use of old extract or particular extract brands. What everyone appears to be all over the board on is how to avoid it. I've read about:

• Full boil
• Late malt extract addition (last 20 - 10 minutes of boil)
  
• Use of dry malt extract exclusively
• Use of "fresh" or "higher quality" liquid malt extracts from reputable manufacturers
• Use of LME in plastic bottles or jars, not metal cans
  
• Addition of yeast nutrient

I'm going to try some of these in my next batch, although probably not the full boil method since my kettle isn't big enough. The batch I just started last weekend used 9.9 lbs of LME, but the recipe called for 3.3 lbs at the start and 6.6 lbs at the end. It's also from Norther Brewer, who distributes in plastic "milk jugs" and moves a lot of product every week - both of which are supposed to contribute to freshness. We'll see. I can drink beers with this "extract twang" but I'd rather not have to if I can avoid it.

Project Update

Last night we racked the Welch's Wine and the cider into their respective "secondary" fermenters. I use quotes because rather than sourcing new containers to use as fermenters, we used a brew bucket (sanitized, of course) as a holding vessel while cleaning out the original container, re-sanitizing it, then racking the wine/cider back into the original container.

I also took the opportunity to taste both, but didn't have too much since there is still some yeast in suspension (drink too much of that and you'll regret it).

Here are some updates on our projects:

Welch's Wine: This tastes surprisingly good. It has a taste similar to a very dry white. If I bottle carbonate some of it, it could even pass for a cheap champagne. It also has a very strong (alcohol) taste.

Hard Cider: Still has a hint of that sulfur odor, but it's fading and I expect it to be gone soon. The flavor imparted by the champagne yeast is very strong. Not much apple taste left. I'm starting to wish I had used a cider or ale yeast instead of trying to use the champagne yeast. It'll still be very drinkable, but I think it's going to turn out more like a weak apple wine than a hard cider.

Cherry Wheat Ale: A small fermentation is still happening from the yeast eating the sugars in the puree. When I have a chance, I'm going to snap a picture to upload. I'm sure the way it looks is nothing out of the ordinary, but the appearance is interesting. It's likely the yeast proliferating then dying betwixt all of the cherry puree bits.

Orange Clove Mead: Primary fermentation is still going strong. Yeast cake is starting to form on the bottom of the jug.

I realized the other day that I intended to document the varieties of yeast I was using for each of these. I'll have to do that on another update.

Cherry Wheat Ale

We've decided to try a fruit beer using Oregon Fruit Purees. I've used extracts before and didn't really love the taste, so I'm hoping that the fruit taste here turns out to be a bit more natural.

The basis for this Cherry Wheat Ale is a Brewer's Best Weizenbier kit. We started that last Saturday and by Friday, it was ready to be moved to the secondary.


Starting Gravity: 1.049 (Look at that! I actually bothered to measure!)
Ending Gravity (after primary): 1.012
Alcohol By Volume: 4.8%
Primary Fermentation Start: 9/26/2009
Primary Fermentation End: 10/3/2009

Before racking into the secondary, we dumped two 3 lb cans of Oregon Fruit Products Sweet Cherry Puree into the bottom of the carboy. We used a funnel that just barely fit in the opening of the carboy, which regrettably allowed some of the fruit puree to adhere to the "ceiling" of the carboy. I'm hoping that doesn't end up being an issue. I'm not anticipating it to be, since everything is sanitized and oxygen-free.


We then racked the weizenbier directly on top of the puree.


12 hours later, a small fermentation has restarted from the yeast eating the sugar form the cherries, which will likely drive up the alcohol content a little bit. I'm planning on having this sit the secondary for at least two weeks, although longer may be required to get the stuff to clear. If it's not clearing by week 3, I'll probably rack into a tertiary on it's own to clear further.

Plan on bottling and carbonating with corn sugar.

Welch's Wine

Last Saturday I went a little crazy when it came to brewing. In addition to the hard cider and a batch of beer, I also started 2 gallons of Welch's wine fermenting. I'd stumbled across this recipe a few days before and was rather intrigued by what wine made from store-bought concentrate would be like.

Using the same type of 2.5 gallon spring water container that I used for the cider, we made a 2 gallon batch. I also borrowed the "balloon airlock" idea from the mead recipe, since I had run out of airlocks.

We followed the recipe at JackKeller.net. I've seen other recipes that mention the optional addition of tannin, but I didn't have any so we didn't do that.

If you buy concentrate for this recipe, be VERY careful to read the ingredients to make sure that what you're buying doesn't have and chemical preservatives. Welch's does make concentrate that is 100% juice, but also has preservatives. We found this out the hard way. When overcome with joy that we'd found a white-grape-and-raspberry 100% juice, we neglected to read the ingredients. I now have 4 containers of that in the freezer to drink at my leisure and NOT turn into wine.

We pitched a champagne yeast, so I expect this to be very dry. I may bottle carbonate some of it and stabilize the rest, just to see how the varieties turn out.

It's been a week and fermentation is still going strong.


Fermentation Start Date: 9/26/2009
Planned Fermentation End Date: 10/31/2009
Starting Gravity: ???
Projected Ending Gravity: 1.000

The recipe we used is reprinted here, originally found at JackKeller.net:

Welch's Frozen Grape Juice Wine

• 2 cans (11.5 oz) Welch's 100% frozen grape concentrate
• 1-1/4 lbs granulated sugar
• 2 tsp acid blend
• 1 tsp pectic enzyme
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• water to make 1 gallon
• wine yeast

Bring 1 quart water to boil and dissolve the sugar in the water. Remove from heat and add frozen concentrate. Add additional water to make one gallon and pour into secondary. Add remaining ingredients except yeast. Cover with napkin fastened with rubber band and set aside 12 hours. Add activated wine yeast and recover with napkin. When active fermentation slows down (about 5 days), fit airlock. When clear, rack, top up and refit airlock. After additional 30 days, stabilize, sweeten if desired and rack into bottles.

Hard Cider

I started a batch of hard cider last weekend. Inspired by the mead recipe which uses the jug that the spring water comes in as a fermentation vessel, I decided to use a 2.5 gallon spring water container as a vessel for 2 gallons of hard cider.



For this batch, I wanted to try to fit an airlock to the container somehow, but didn't have an appropriate bung handy. So, I just poked a hole in the brown dispenser cap (which has a very tight fit itself) and crammed the airlock in there. It actually worked out quite nicely.


Overall, using these water jugs for brewing small batches hasn't worked out too bad. They're cheap, sterile from the store (although that didn't stop me from sanitizing them again), and relative large. They're really not designed to be under internal pressure, as can be seen from the ballooning on the sides, but they don't seem to be close to failure. I'm not sure if I'd use a particular container more than one time, though.

The recipe I decided to use was a no-boil, sulfur-sanitized recipe from Mahalo.com. This was my first experience brewing with sulfur sanitised anything, so I was a little bit perplexed by the sulfur smell coming out of the airlock at first (not a rotten egg smell, though). It's since subsided, and apparently this is common with sulfur-sanitized ciders. I used a champagne yeast which should result in an interesting and super dry cider.

Primary fermentation seems to have died down after a week. Now it just sits for 3 more weeks. I'll rack into a secondary next week.

I plan on bottling and carbonating with corn sugar.

Fermentation Start Date: 9/26/2009
Planned Fermentation End Date: 10/24/2009
Starting Gravity: ???
Projected Ending Gravity: 1.000

Recipe reprinted here from Mahalo.com:

Sulfur-Sanitized Hard Cider

Ingredients

• 1 gallon unpasteurized, unfiltered apple juice—a mixture of several varieties of both tart and sweet apples is recommended
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon pectic enzyme—eliminates "haziness" in the cider.
• 1/2 teaspoon yeast energizer
• 1 Campden tablet
• 1 packet cider, brewers, champagne or wine yeast
• 1/4 teaspoon tannin (optional)
• 1 teaspoon acid blend (optional)

Procedure

1. Crush the Campden tablet and stir it into the fresh apple juice in your fermenting pail.
2. Stir in the pectic enzyme, yeast energizer, sugar, tannin and acid blend. Do not add the yeast yet.
3. Cover the fermenting pail and let sit for one or two days.
4. Uncover the pail and sprinkle the yeast over the juice.
5. Put the lid back on the pail and attach the airlock (or rubber hosing and water assembly).
6. Allow the cider to ferment. The airlock will bubble, indicating that the cider is indeed fermenting. Wait for the bubbles to subside to a rate of about one bubble per minute, then wait 7 more days before moving on to the next step.
7. Siphon the cider into a second fermentation pail. Try to avoid transferring the sediment from the bottom of the first container into the second. Cover the container and attach the airlock.
8. Allow the fermentation to finish. Leener's suggests tasting the cider after two weeks and adjusting the flavor before allowing the fermentation to continue. This will take at least a few weeks. When the cider becomes clear, it's ready for drinking, carbonation or bottling.

UPDATE - 11/9/09

This turned out pretty good. I bottled about 3 weeks ago and tried after the first week. It still had a hint of apple at that time, but the apple has since dissipated. It's now like an extremely dry apple wine. The carb drops didn't really work. The bottles that had them will sparkle a little bit if opened at room temperature, but not when chilled. If I wanted to have sparking cider next time I'll use corn sugar.

I bought more cider for the next batch. I'm thinking that I'll sanitize by heating to 170 degrees (to keep the pectins from setting) and mull this batch with cinnamon, allspice, and cloves then stabilize after fermentation and backsweeten with apple juice.

This is one of the last carbonated bottles, at room temperature. It actually sparkled a lot, which is what prompted me to take the picture.

Orange Clove Mead

I became intrigued with a recipe for mead that I saw at Storm The Castle. They outline a fermentation method using the jug that the spring water comes in and an ordinary balloon with holes punched in it as an airlock. I decided to try the recipe but invested in a 1 gallon glass jug, stopper, and a glass airlock. (The brew store near me, Brew and Grow, only had glass ones in stock the day I was there. I'd really prefer a plastic one, since I'm scared as hell of breaking the glass one. It is pretty cool though.) I knew that I'd likely end up using the 1 gallon jug for other brewing experiments, so I figured it would be a good investment.

The issue with making mead, like making wine, is that honey doesn't contain the nutrients needed for yeast to proliferate properly. From what I understand, the raisins and oranges take the place of the yeast nutrient and yeast energizer, respectively, that you find in typical mead recipes.

One thing that I love about this recipe is that you can find all of the ingredients at almost any grocery store. In fact, we got all of ours at Trader Joe's. For that reason, they all also happen to be organic (if that matters to you at all). I bought the clover honey, per the recipe, but Trader Joe's also has mesquite honey, which I'm thinking I might try out in my next batch of mead. The only thing that Trader Joe's didn't have was water in sufficient sizes, which we got at the local grocery store.

Preparation was as simple as sanitizing, mixing all of the ingredients, shaking, then fixing the airlock. Fermentation took off within a day and has been going strong since.

I'm reprinting the recipe here (same recipe, but from another section of the Storm the Castle site, with other mead recipes):

Orange Clove Mead

Interesting flavor and makes 1 gallon

• 1 gallon of Spring Water
• Yeast: Fleishcmanns (1 packet)
• 25 Raisins
• 1 Cinnamon stick
• 1 whole orange, sliced and peels included
• 1 pinch of allspice
• 1 pinch of nutmeg
• 3 1/2 pounds of clover honey

Simply mix all the ingredients then pitch your yeast. Caring for this mead? The beautiful thing about this mead is that you can rack it off of all the oranges and raisins any time you want to, or you can just leave it all in there. When the oranges sink to the bottom you are ready to drink it or bottle it.. Simple as that. I recommend you bottle it and let it age for a couple more months. This recipe is just simply delicious.

Be sure to check out their site for tons of great info on mead making. If you've never homebrewed or made mead before, make sure to look at the method outlined in the first page I posted for a super easy method that doesn't require a lot of upfront cost on equipment.

Fermentation Start: 9/19/2009
Estimated Fermentation End: 11/14/2009
Original Gravity: ???
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.000

My setup:

Once we're done with this batch, I think I'm going to try the sweet raspberry mead that they list in their recipe section as well.

UPDATE - 11/9/2009

Been almost two months on this one. Primary fermentation appeared to end about 3 weeks ago and it's cleared up nicely. The fruit still hasn't sank to the bottom, per the recipe, so I'm just waiting for that to happen, then it's bottling time.