Blogroll

I don’t know what happened but I just realized that somehow all my links disappeared at some point. There back now and I updated my blogroll with all the beer blogs that I follow. Check them out, its good stuff.

LoneRider Brew It Forward

On August 1st, I went to the LoneRider Brew It Forward competition that they held at their brewery. It was a really fun day where they provided free beer and lunch for the participants and guests. Several of my friends showed up and we had fun talking about the equipment and trying the beer. Of course, the Shotgun Betty was terrific as always but I also got to try a Brown Ale and an ESB that are upcoming. They were both very tasty as well and I look forward to seeing them on tap soon. Thanks to everyone at LoneRider for the fun competition and good food/beer.

Now, on to the important stuff. I have officially been validated as a pretty decent brewer! The contest was set up with 4 flights of beers judged by teams of two people each. For each flight, there was a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awarded. Of the 12 that got an award, there was a Best In Show round with the winner of that getting to brew commercially at LoneRider. In the end, two of my beers, my ama/coe ipa (called Snake Bite IPA for their Western theme) and my American Stout (called Saloon Stout) won First Place in each of their respective flights. I was pretty stoked about this already but then they announced that my Saloon Stout had also won Third in the Best In Show round. The medals they gave are really nice, custom medals and my Best In Show one says it on the back. I need to get a good place to display them above the keezer and I also need to get both of these beers back on tap.

Barley wine update

Well, just a quick update on the barley wine. I officially kegged it today. I probaby went through half a tank of CO2 but I’m pretty sure I got a near oxygen free transfer. It’s carbing up as we speak in my fermentation fridge. Once that’s done, I will bottle it (also oxygen free) and let it age. I’m sure I’ll probably sneak a taste or two as well. It smells fantastic.

In other news, I haven’t been brewing too much but I have done another Rye IPA, this time with 3 lbs of Malted Rye, 1 lb of Flaked Rye, and its hopped throughout with Nugget, including First Wort Hopping and dry hopping. Hope its tasty!

I’ve also been entering a couple competitions lately. I submitted my Orange Kolsch and my Imperial Stout to the Samuel Adams Longshot competition and I’ve entered those two, plus my Summer Wheat and ama/coe IPA (named because of the hops used) into the Lonerider competition, a local brewery here in Raleigh. I’m not really expecting to win either but I am looking for some feedback. I suppose there’s a chance on the Lonerider one because they cap it at 200 entries and four of those will be mine!

I also recently aquired a MIG welder and am busy learning how to weld. I hope to be building myself a three tier (as well as many other things) in the near future with it once I get some skillz.

Anyway, how are things in your brewing world?

Just an update

Hey, it’s been awhile since I last blogged but that’s because I haven’t really done anything for awhile after finishing the epic Barleywine brewday. Mostly because of being on vacation for two weekends. The Barleywine is doing well. I transferred to secondary about a week ago after a month of primary, two weeks of which was at 76°. The transfer went well. For some reason, I was nervous about it like it was my first time or something. All my equipment was extra sanitized, I filled the secondary with CO2 for awhile before transferring and then I topped it off with CO2. I’m hoping all this extra work will pay off with a few extra years of drinkability on the far end of this. I definitely want this beer to have a five year anniversary. Checked the gravity again after about two weeks since the last time and its still at 1.022. I’m thinking this is the FG, which is pretty good for a Barleywine of this strength (11.5% ABV). I’m right at the top end of the scale for the style.

In other news, I brewed round two of my award winning Crystal 40 this past Saturday. This beer is easy to make, tastes delicious, and the ingredients are cheap. I’m really looking forward to it being on tap for more than a week this time. I ended up keeping the recipe the same, figuring that I didn’t get enough time to really evaluate it the last time I made it before it was all gone. This time around, it should last longer and I also plan on brewing it again in 6 weeks or so in order to keep a steady supply. I guess that’s it about for now.

Happy Brewing!

Hop Scheduling

Lately, I’ve been thinking alot about the effect of the timing on hop additions. We all know that the standard bittering addition is at 60 minutes. This maximizes the isomeration of the alpha acids to extract the most bittering potential of the hop. This makes perfect sense to me. The next addition is the flavor addition. These are usually added anywhere from 30 minutes to around 10 minutes. The first question is, when formulating a recipe, how do I determine whether I want 30, 10, or somewhere in between? For me the answer is usually half at 30, half at 10. Am I missing the 20 minute sweet spot of hop flavor extraction? And when do flavor additions morph into aroma additions? 10, 5, 0?

Because of my total lack of knowledge in the finer points of hopping (despite reading several entire articles/magazines/chapters in books devoted to specifically this subject), I usually find my homemade recipes just going something along the lines of a 20/10/0 schedule. The idea is that I maximize and balance flavor and aroma sorta at the same time. This last 30 minutes of hopping is something I fully intend to explore with my Crystal 40. It’s currently at 30/10/0 with an increasing amount of hops as it goes along. My thinking is it takes more hops to impart aroma than it does flavor which, of course, is a theory I totally pulled out of nowhere. It seems that Dogfish Head has the right idea. Rather than trying to analyze what times best contribute to what aspects of the hops, they just start throwing ‘em in, a little at a time, throughout the whole boil. They definitely took the RDWHAHB approach and I can attest that I have created a few beers using this method and they were excellent.

The one main gripe I have about this method is all the hops thrown in between 59.5 minutes and about 30 minutes. If everything I’ve read is correct (which I hope it is or why else am I reading it), flavor and aroma are totally destroyed after more than 30 minutes of boiling. So, the only thing we’re getting out of this is bittering, except at a much lower utilization than the ones thrown in at 60. They could extract the same bittering potential by adding all their hops at 60 with a lower overall usage.

After all this rambling, I’m finally getting around to my actual point. For my next round of Crystal 40, I think I am going to modify my hop schedule in the last 30 minutes. I’ll stick with the 0.5 ounce of Chinook at 60, but for the remaining hops (2 oz Cascade), I’m just going to continuous hop it from 30-0. I’m hoping it will provide a more well-rounded interpretation of the hop.

Stay tuned for part 2 when I intend to ramble on about First Wort Hopping and Dry-hopping.

Barleywine Update

I know I don’t normally post updates for every little thing but I’m so excited about this one that I had to. Just wanted to post because I took a gravity reading today, less than two weeks after brewing, and it’s currently sitting at 1.022. Before I brewed this, I had decided I was shooting for 1.018 but would be happy with anything under 1.025. Needless to say, I’m happy. I’m going to warm it up to about 75° for another week or two and hope to eek out another couple points. It could definitely drop below 1.020 before its said and done. Once I’m sure it’s done, I will do an oxygen free transfer to secondary and let it sit for a month or so. How does it taste? Pretty much like alcohol, although there is some definite barleywine flavors showing through. It has a slight hoppiness that will mellow over time and really nice crimson color. The next six months of waiting will be really tough!

Updated Recipes

Hey all,
I updated my recipe page with my three most recently completed recipes. Following my new policy where I don’t post the recipe until I know how it tastes, I still have three more recipes that I’ve brewed but haven’t yet posted. Those are my Barleywine, Summer Wheat, and another IPA. The Summer Wheat and IPA are getting kegged this week so I will be trying them soon. The Barleywine has several more months to go. The three new ones posted are:

American Stout

Crystal 40 Pale Ale

Orange Kolsch

Also, for a complete list of all my recipes, check out my Recipes page.

Barleywine Brewday

Brewed my very first >10%ABV beer on Saturday, our version of a Barleywine. I developed and brewed this recipe with a friend of mine, which is good because I needed all the help I could get. The brew started around 10:30 on Saturday mashing in a monstrous 43 pounds of grain! Lots of things went wrong at every step of the way. We had to split the mash into two tun’s, one mash was about 5 degrees low so we boiled some mash water for the other and it turned out about 5 degrees high… oh well. After the mash, we ended up sparging with a ton of water. We ended up with 17+ gallons of wort for what was to be a 9 gallon batch. We were boiling in my 15 gallon pot and his 8 gallon pot at the same time in order to boil off as much liquid as possible, as fast as possible. After about 2 hours of boiling, we were finally down to 12 gallons which meant it was time to consolidate to one pot and start the 90 minute boil timer. We threw in 4 ounces of Nugget at 90 minutes and another 4.5 ounces in the rest of the boil for about 88 IBU’s. Our original gravity came out at 1.109 so we are looking at somewhere between 10.5-12% alcohol.

No matter what happens, this is a BIG beer. I’m super excited to see what this is going to end up like but I guess I won’t know for many more months. If all goes well, I hope to age some for serveral years and see how it ages over time, we’ll see. In a couple weeks, I’ll probably take gravity reading to see how its coming along. Of course, I’ll also have to grab a quick sip although I’m not expecting much from it this early.

Brewing up a storm

The last few months I’ve been doing alot more drinking than brewing apparently because my stock had run down to only two homebrews and a cider… well, that I’ve been making up for the last few weeks. A couple weeks ago, I brewed my IPA that’s loaded with Simcoe and Amarillo hops. It smells fantastic and I will be dryhopping it probably this weekend. Last weekend, I brewed my American Wheat. I probably took the ‘American’ part a little too far as I ended up adding 2 ounces of hops (Cascade and Amarillo) over the last 20 minutes of the boil. I kinda wanted to throw out any notion of a ‘traditional’ wheat on this one… well see how it turns out I guess. Once these two get tapped in a few more weeks I will be back up to five active taps and all will be right with the world again. When that happens, my lineup from left to right will be: Kolsch, IPA, Apfelwein, Imperial Stout, American Wheat. It’s a good summer mix, with a little something for everyone (and a whole lot for me).

This upcoming weekend, however, will be the biggest, baddest beer I’ve ever done. Me and another brewer (Dave, who held the homebrew competition) are brewing a 9 gallon batch of 13% ABV Barleywine! This beer is gonna be HUGE! It has 43 pounds of grain (compared to 10 lbs average) and will test the abilities of ourselves and our equipment. Everything about it is big. The grain, the boil time, the sparge water, even the amount of yeast we’re using. We’re actually going to use the yeast cake from the IPA for this in order to get such a huge amount of yeast out of it. We’re targeting an OG of 1.128!! and hoping to get it down into the sub 1.020 range.

After the Barleywine, I’m torn as to what do next. The BW won’t be ready to drink for another 6-8 months so I’m not counting that in my figuring. Based on my list, I will have mostly light beers available so another dark beer may not hurt. Perhaps another porter that I’ll brew on my one year brewing anniversary… since a porter was the first beer I ever brewed. If you have any ideas of what I should do next, let me know in the comments.

First place in my first competition!

Well, this weekend was my friend Dave’s first annual homebrew competition/party. It was a ton of fun. There was good company, the weather was perfect and most importantly, lots of good beer. In the end, there were seven brewers. The beers ranged from a Blonde and Blue Blonde Ale (with honey and blueberries) to a Scottish Ale. I brought my House Pale, which for the competition, wore the name ‘Crystal 40 Pale Ale’. The name kinda grew on me, so I may permanently change it. I was proud of the way it turned out but the competition was tough. There were alot of good brewers there. In the end, I guess I bribed enough people because I got first place. I even got a medal! Needless to say, I was pretty excited about it. It was a fun night and I look forward to brewing again for the 2nd annual.

In other news, I’m finally back to brewing. It’s been a long time coming and I finally found the time today to put together a batch. I finally got to use my new Barley Crusher, which was awesome. I was a little disappointed because I expected my efficiency to improve but it basically stayed the same. Guess I can’t blame my crush anymore. I’m still averaging right at 70%. I brewed an IPA that should be about 6.5% ABV. It’s loaded with Simcoe and Amarillo throughout the boil. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m hoping to get my next batch up and running in a week or two.

My Kolsch is coming along quite nicely. It’s still lagering but I think it will have just the slightest hint of orange flavor when its done. Hopefully, some of the flavors mellow out a bit more. Well, that’s it. Happy brewing!