We're Featured on a Real Blog!

When eating with some friends at a local establishment, Belly Shack, I had brought some of my American Red in a growler since it's a BYO. Belly Shack has communal seating, so being the friendly guy that I am, I shared some of my brew with our table-mates.

It turned out that one of our table mates was a famous local-Chicago food blogger, there to review the restaurant! She even mentioned my beer in her review! I quote:

"Sweet, spicy, addicting, it was a suggestion from our communal dining partners, who were also kind enough to offer us a sample of the house-brewed beer (a damn jug of it) they had BYOB’d. Their brew was a red ale (unnamed) and tasted to us like a darker, richer Leinenkugal’s Red. (I can’t recall the brewer’s name, but I won’t forget his beer blog name) Finally a communal seating situation that involves table sharing of home-brewed beer! The dark rich ale held up to the parade of flavors on our palate and happily filled us up. And as nice as it would be to hang at a communal table shared by home-brewers at Belly Shack again, I’ll be happy just to try the rest of the menu including the highly-acclaimed tostones with chimichurri sauce, the roasted squash and the belly hot dog with kimchi salsa and egg noodles. Communal beer or not, I’ll be back to belly up."

And the best thing is that she plugged the blog too! Do you know what that means? That means that now 3 people in total have looked at this site! Fun!

Check out Elizabites for all of the best eating around Chi-city.

Peanut Butter Ale

I knew that there would be a lot of sugars left in the grains after a big beer like the double IPA. I decided to borrow a page from the "party guile" book and threw in the crystallized malts that I had around, let it soak in 4 gallons of water for a little bit then ran it off.

I did a 60 minute boil with 1 ounce of Cascade (again, what I had on hand) for bittering. At 15 minutes I put in 6 ounces of Peter Pan Reduced Fat Creamy (guess what? - on hand) for the rest of the boil as well as 3/4 lb of lactose for a bit of sweetness.

When I racked to glass carboys (3 1-gallon) for fermentation I made sure to try to leave behind as much of the oils as possible. They mostly form at the top of the water. I also tried to leave the peanut particulate at the bottom. The idea here is that you want the taste, but the oils will destroy head retention, and still probably will.

I just tried one tonight after a week of aging and while not amazing, it's drinkable. I mixed a little bit with the sour raspberry for a PB&J type of beer as well. Good times. I'll report back on how it ends up with some more aging.

 

Peanut Butter Ale

Peanut Butter Ale and Sour Raspberry Blend (a.k.a. PB&J)

Double Valent-IPA

I made this recipe on Valentines day (no, I'm not a bad husband - at least not because of this - my wife was working that Sunday). I decided to make her this as a Valen-times present.

I'd had my eye on this recipe at HomeBrewTalk.com for a while:

Crosseyed PA (Double IPA)

Grains
14.75 lbs 2 Row (US)
1.00 lbs Munich
.25 lbs Crystal 20L

Adjuncts
1.00 lbs Corn Sugar added at boil start
Whirlfloc tablet added @ 15 min

Hops
2 oz Centennial (10% Alpha) @ 60 min
2 oz Chinook (13% Alpha) @ 60 min
1 oz Centennial (10% Alpha) @ 15 min
1 oz Galena (13% Alpha) @ 5 min
* 2 oz Galena (13% Alpha) Dry hopped for 7 days
All my hops were in pellet form

Yeast
1000mL starter of #WLP001 California Ale

I used 1 tbs of 5.2 Mash Stabilizer in my strike water

Mash in with 5 gallons of water at 167.1F and hold mash @ 155F for 90 minutes
Drain Mash Tun and sparge with 3.67 gallons of water @ 168F
Boil volume should be 6.50 gallons
Flame on and boil for 60 min to get a final volume of 5 gallons into primary.


I had a bunch of BMC drinkers, and "I don't like hoppy beer" drinkers destroy a keg of this in no time at a BBQ in my backyard. It destroyed them in return, with an ABV of about 9%

I had to sub Caramel 10L for the Crystal 20L because that's what I had. I also had to sub Nugget in place of the Galena in the 5 minute addition due to availability at the homebrew store.

I know that as grain bills get bigger, efficiency gets worse, but this was terrible. I got 4 gallons at 1.090, which is 80% of the 5 gallons at 1.090 that the recipe calls for. I'm assuming that's at an assumed 70% efficiency. I haven't done my own efficiency calculations yet, but that's only because I know it's going to be abysmal.

I changed some things up for this brew. I tried a fly sparge with a hot liquor tank and a cPVC manifold I built. I also built a cPVC manifold for the mash tun and this was the maiden voyage. Those all surely affected things - possibly for good and for bad.

This beer is in secondary as I write this post. It'll be in the keg (and a few bottles so I can hand it out to my hophead friends) in a few weeks. I'll update about the outcome.

In the secondary with the Galena.  This was a plug instead of pellets and, as you'd expect, the particulate is larger.  That should make racking that much easier later on.

Update: I kegged this the other day.  It finished out at 1.018, which should give it an ABV of about 9.5%.

Raspberry Hard Lemonade

The Hard Lemonade recipe from HomeBrewTalk.com was used again, but this time I tried using frozen raspberry lemonade for a two gallon batch.

The end result was good, but in the end the raspberry was pretty much imperceptible unless I told people about it. The value-add over regular lemonade was minimal.

I'm going to skip the raspberry next time around. In fact, I think I'm going to skip the lemonade all around. The limeade just works so much better in this. With spring around the corner, I'd love to have 5 gallons on hand for the nice weather.

Did this one in a 2 gallon water jug again.

Hard Cider (5 gallons)

After the first run of hard cider, I wanted to make more. I stocked up on 5 1-gallon jugs of cider of the same variety in October, when it was cider season. This stuff made a great product before.

This time, I wanted to try to stay away from the sulfur-sanitation method. Rather than try to heat sanitize, I opted to rely on the sanitation from the company that bottled it. This product was pure apples, sanitized and bottled to be shelf stable.

I also wanted to add a kick to the end product. I included some additional fermentables to the must to boost the alcohol. The only heating that happened to any of the cider was to bring 1 gallon up to 120 degrees to help facilitate the dissolving of sugars.

This was the recipe I concocted:

Ingredients:
5 gallons of cider
2 sticks of Cinnamon
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5 tsp yeast energiser
1 lb honey
2 lbs light brown sugar
2 lbs table sugar

Directions:
Warm 1 gallon of cider to 120 degrees with the cinnamon sticks. Dissolve the sugars. Mix with the rest of the cider and add the dry ingredients.

At 4 weeks, fermentation was totally done, but the cider was still cloudy. There were no bubbles coming from the airlock so with enough time I could be sure it wasn't yeast in suspension. The only culprit left was pectin.

I hadn't used pectic enzyme when I started, but at the same time I didn't heat it to the point that would set the pectins. I tried adding pectic enzyme three different times after fermentation but I saw little improvement in clarity.

I ended up stabilizing, kegging, force-carbonating, and back-sweetening the cider with3 cans of frozen apple juice. The end result tastes good - a hint of sweetness, a hit of champagne, some dryness from the carbonation, but looks just as cloudy with the same color as the day it started.

The cloudiness is really just a cosmetic problem, but I disliked it to the point that I didn't give any away. We just finished it and at 10% ABV without the taste, this stuff is dangerous. Hope I can get the next batch to clear out.

Joe's Ancient Orange Mead (5 gallons)

I've been looking around at mead recipes and it seems that the "Orange Clove" mead that I'd been making is more conventionally called "Joe's Ancient Orange", after the guy who formulated the recipe (recipe for 1 gallon batch at HomeBrewTalk.com).

After the first 1 gallon batch, we were hooked on this stuff. My wife wanted to make a 5 gallon batch, so we scaled up, bought a 6 gallon carboy, and started it off. It's been in there about 2 months now.

At larger scales the previous timelines seem to fall apart, though. The fruit hasn't really started to fall at all and some clearing is happening, but there is still plenty of cloud. Looks like this will need at least another month and one or more rackings.

After 2 months

Dry Mint Mead

My dad's garden was coming to the end of the season when I was visiting. He had a ton of mint growing in there that he wasn't going to use. So, I grabbed about a handful of it to try to brew with. I thought a mead would be interesting to infuse with the flavor.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided to try a dry mead with this one (also, I hadn't made a dry mead yet - but had definitely made a sweet and semi-sweet)

The recipe is an adaptation of the dry mead recipe at Storm the Castle:

Dry Mead

• 3 lbs. of Honey
• 1 gallon of water
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
• 1 teaspoon of yeast energizer
• 1 packet of champagne yeast

I made a tea by simmering the water and dropping in the mint for about 5 minutes. I then used that with the rest of the ingredients for the mead.

After one racking, I bottled. The taste of the champagne yeast is dominant. This is a yeast that naturally delivers a significant flavor and dryness and that is dominant here. My wife said she can taste the mint, but I really kept focusing on the flavor that the yeast imparts.

In working with champagne yeast I've found that it's intense at first but it will back off with aging, letting other flavors come to the front. I'm optimistic that with a few months of aging this will turn into something subtle and good.

Sweet Raspberry Mead

This stuff is great. After my wife and I enjoyed or gave away all of the Orange Clove mead, I decided to try another recipe from the same resource. I picked out the Sweet Raspberry Mead since I love fruit meads.

From Storm The Castle:

Sweet Raspberry Mead (Makes 1 Gallon)

• Yeast: EC-1118 (1 packet)
• 1 Gallon Spring Water
• 4.5 pounds wildflower honey
• 1.5 pounds red raspberries
• The juice from 1 lemon
• The juice from 1 lime
• 3 Tablespoons of strong english tea
• 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient

Pretty straight forward instructions for this mead. Was the food ingredients before using and crush the raspberries. I froze them for a day before using them so they would break down and release their flavor easier. I thawed them out for the morning, crushed them and added them when I made the mead in the afternoon. Simply add all the ingredients into your mixing carboy then pitch the yeast. Leave extra headroom at the top of the bottle because all the ingredients will cause extra bubbling.

This ran into some minor trouble with blowing raspberry seeds and guts out the air lock. I was using a two bubble lock, so it wasn't really an issue, but if you're using a 3 piece you might run into a problem. I used champagne yeast for fermentation, which (in me experience) can give a fast, violent ferment. That may have lent to the issue too. There are a LOT of fermentables in this recipe, not only from honey but from the fructose in the raspberries as well.

I racked once and when bottling time came I picked up an $8 hand corker (plunger type, which works great as long as you smack the plunger with a hammer).

At bottling the taste is amazing, if not very sweet. It's what I would consider a dessert wine right now. I gave away one bottle and am aging the other two (one gallon batch and there was a fair amount of loss to the sediment from the raspberries) are aging now.

No gravity readings on this. It's probably around 11% alcohol and VERY sweet. And good.

 

 In the primary.  The mass at the top is all seeds and pulp.  More pictures:

  

 

California Style Pale

I picked up an extract kit for pretty cheap a while back. It was a Brewer's Best California Style Pale kit. After some looking around on the internet, I found a description that it was supposed to be similar to Arrogant Bastard from Stone. That's not bad.

I kept it around for a while because I was mostly focusing on all-grain brewing. Then in December, we ended up having half-day Fridays at work. I invited my buddy AK over to make this with me, since he had been interested in checking out brewing with me. I thought this would be a good one as an intro for a beginner.

I'm not going to recreate who whole recipe sheet here, but I'll share the ingredients used:

Ingredients:
6.6 lbs Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 lbs Plain amber Dry Malt Extract
1 lb Crushed Crystal Malt 120L
2 oz Columbus Hops (Bittering)
1 oz Columbus Hops (Finishing)
1 oz Columbus Hops (Aroma)

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this kit included Nottingham dry yeast.

It turned out very hoppy and VERY dark, probably because of the 120L Crystal. It was really good and not unlike my recollection of Arrogant Bastard.

I'm personally really impressed that there's no "extract twang", which I hate. I've heard theories about steeping grains helping with that (something about free amino nitrogens - FAN).

I gave AK one of the cases and kept one for myself. I've given away a few to other folks and have received several compliments.

I would buy this kit again if I needed something to make quickly and easily.

Starting Gravity: 1.062
Ending Gravity: 1.018

I didn't remember to get a picture of this one myself, but I did find one image.  We were also drinking this when we met the Chicago food blogger.  She sampled the American Red and took a picture.  Off to the right, you can see a glass of the California Style Pale.  It's as dark as it looks in this picture.

Linked from Elizabites.

American Red

I asked my wife what she wanted me to make. We like a lot of the same beers (in particular hoppy beers) but we also differ in a lot of respects (she likes reds a lot, I can't say I do - I love Belgians, she doesn't). She wanted a red, so I found a recipe for a hop-forward red that we both might like.

When I was searching for a recipe, I kept thinking about Red Dwarf from the Detroit Brewing Company. We're from Detroit originally, so we've spent a fair amount of time there. Their red is probably one of the best that I've had, probably becasue it's the closest to an IPA that I've ever had.

I ended with not a recipe, but the ingredients of a kit that I adapted. The kit is the American Amber Ale All Grain Kit from Northern Brewer:

American Amber Ale All Grain Kit

O.G: 1047 / Ready: 6 weeks
It's not quite an alt; it's not quite a pale ale. Our American Amber borrows from German and British brewing traditions to make a beer that's uniquely American, perhaps similar to the ales our forefathers brewed in the colonial days. Hearty and smooth, this beer improves greatly with a little extra aging, if you're patient enough.

Kit Inventory
Fermentables	8 lbs. Rahr 2-Row Pale 1 lbs. Munich 1 lbs. Caramel 60
Boil Additions	2 oz. Cascade (60 min) 1 oz. Cascade (15 min)
If you choose dry yeast	Safale US-05. Optimum temperature: 59-75° F.
If you choose liquid yeast	Wyeast #1056 American Ale Yeast. Optimum temperature: 60-72° F.

Mash Schedule

153° F for 60 minutes
170° F for 10 minutes

This one was really interesting. It started off as being very malty (which I don't love) and as it aged in the keg while drinking, the hops came much farther forward (which I do). It turned out really well and I would definitely make it again, since it was something really different.  I would recommend picking this one up from Northern Brewer.

Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.004

UPDATE: This beer was the beer that I shared with the Chicago food-blogger.  She described it as "a darker, richer Leinenkugal’s Red".

The picture from her site is the only one I have of this beer.  Linked from Elizabites.

Cascade IPA

I've got a lot of posts to catch up on. Here we go...

I had to make my first batch of all-grain my favorite variety, an IPA! One of the best IPA's around is Bell's Two Hearted Ale. So, I went looking for a Two Hearted clone recipe.

I came across this recipe at Brew 365 that looked good for a beginner:

All Grain Recipe - Bells Two Hearted IPA ::: 1.064/1.012 (5.5 Gal)

Grain Bill (75% Efficiency assumed)

10 lbs. - 2 Row Pale Malt
2 lb. - Vienna Malt
1/2 lb. - Caramel/Crystal Malt (15L)
1/2 lb. - CaraPils

Hop Schedule (47 IBU)

1/2 oz. - Centennial (60 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (45 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (30 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (15 min.)
1/2 oz. - Centennial (flameout)
1 oz. - Centennial (Dry Hop)
*optional*
If you like a bit more hop, use 1/2 oz of Centennial as a First Wort Hop addition

Yeast

Wyeast American Ale II Yeast (#1272) - 1800 ml starter

Mash/Sparge/Boil

Mash at 153° for 60 min.
Sparge as usual
Cool and ferment at 65° to 68°

Notes

Let this one clear nicely, drink fresh.

When I went to pick up ingredients at my local homebrew shop, they were all out of Centennial. So, I had to substitute and decided to go for Cascade instead. I also had to use 10L Caramel instead of the 15L the recipe calls for.

Starting Gravity: 1.053
Ending Gravity: 1.006

In the end, this one turned out really good. It's not really that much like Two Hearted, but I wouldn't' expect it to be too close with a completely different hop. I would love to see some better efficiency from my equipment, but that's not the recipe's fault.

This was also the first batch to go into our new kegerator. Not having to bottle or prime is awesome. My best friend was here visiting from D.C. and described this as "near professional". I'm so proud.

Cascade IPA in the Primary...

...and in the Secondary