Happy New Beer

I can't believe I haven't posted in '11. Well here goes. My Black IPA didn't attentuate, it would've had like 2.5 percent ABV, which is just garbage. So I tossed it today. My belgian ale, By The Fire, is coming along really nicely. After a month and a half in the bottle it's still young but is delicious. The spice tincture I added has such a subtle undertone, it's just right. This one is, so far, the most to style beer I have brewed yet. It needs another month or so before it's ready and will only get better with age.

I brewed a Pale a week ago. Calling it Crazy Pale. It's a session beer for sure. Just 4.5% ABV. The sparge got stuck again. Even with a stuck sparge I got 68% efficiency. That bodes well for when Brewcraft actually crushes the grain right. My numbers will go up substantially. This one I transferred today and the hydrometer sample was really good. Not too dry and not too bitter. Seems like the balance is good on this one. I put a half ounce of Columbus hops into the secondary. We'll see, I may have just made it an IPA, but only time will tell.

I was having attentuation problems, meaning the final gravity was way too high which would have led to a beer way to sweet with not enough alcohol. I bought a brewbelt, which you wrap around the fermenter and plug in, and it puts out a warm 70 degree temperature so your beer ferments better. It worked great. I got 70% apparent attentuation ending up with a FG of 1.014.

Hooray Beer

Love thy beer

Right back into the swing of things. I have brewed only twice since my last post, but I have high hopes for both of the brews. The first one was the prize beer for my birthday beer tasting party. Both Mel and Andrew won by having the beer that received the most votes. I made, as per their joint request, a holiday spiced beer. It will be ready by Easter so it can still be considered a holiday beer, but the style I brewed it in is more appropriate for a winter warmer. It's a belgian spiced ale that had about 15 pounds of grain in a 5 gallon batch. If I got 100% efficiency we'd be talking about a beer with about 12% alcohol. I did not but I got about 70% which will produce about 8% ABV. Still a big beer which is why I need to keep it bottled up for about 3 months before it's anywhere near ready to drink. I'll let you know Andrew and Mel

The other one, brewed today, is modeled after one of my current favorite styles. Black IPA is a robust and malty IPA with chocolaty undertones. I tried a couple new techniques on this one. First wort hopping involves putting an ounce or so of your hops into the wort as the sparge is taking place. The idea is to have a more balanced beer in the end. We shall see. I may have overdone the hops on this one, but I liked the taste of sample I pulled for my hydrometer reading. Good backbone in this one. I got about 70% efficiency again. I would like to get higher numbers, but I still got 1.056 hydrometer reading which will get me about 6% ABV. Tasty all around

Long Pull v.3

So I have completed my brew day and am happy to say my efficiency went way up, 80% to be exact. I am happy, and will be happy, with that number if I hit for the rest of my life (brewing that is). The first runnings got me to 2 gallons. I then sparged with about 5 and got a 7 gallon pre boil volume. The middle stats are OG 1.050, 6 gallons in the fermenter. I am excited about this one and I think I have found my happy medium for the propane cooker. I ended up with more volume at the end of the boil than any previous batch. Can't wait to taste, but I have to

Shouldn't have left you...

Okay, I haven't brewed in some time and I have a day off work today so here goes nothing. It's been so long I feel like I'm going to forget to add the hops or something. Hopefully not, that would be a super sweet malty beer considering there is 10.25 # of malt in it. Here's the recipe

8 # Maris Otter
1 # English Brown
.5 # carapils
.5 # Aromatic
.25 # 60L Crystal

Mash at 152 for one hour

1 oz Kent Golding for 60 min
.5 oz Challenger for 30 min
.5 oz Challenger for 15 min

Safale S-04 yeast

Fermentation temp should be around 68 F for one week in primary
and then two or three in secondary

The goal is to hit about 75% efficiency in my mash which would put me at 1.058 OG
If the yeast does its job I will have a 6.5% ABV beer. I can't wait

IPA is bottled

It's been a week since I bottled my Downtown IPA and I have extremely high hopes for this one. I dry hopped an ounce of Cascade and upon first taste it seems to have worked. Very prominent hop aroma and the taste has a brilliant fruity and citrus hop character which then turns to malty sweetness on the back end. Another two weeks priming in the bottle and this IPA is gonna be a winner.

Transfer day

I transferred my IPA into secondary today. It's OG was 1.063 and the FG today was 1.012. It's going to be just under 7% ABV and I put an ounce of Cascade pellets into the secondary so the hop aroma should be pretty prominent. The hydrometer sample tells me that this has some kick to it. I put four ounces of hops in the boil so we should have a pretty standard IPA in about a month.

Tahoe blog

Well, I've been up a while and all I can think about is my IPA at home. I'm just kidding. I'm hanging with V bug quietly, she's been up since about 5. I think it's time to retire the porta crib. She touches both ends with her head and feet. She's playing quietly so as not to wake up the others in the house right now. What a good girl. But back to beer, I had the Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA, and I must say, that is as close to perfect as I have ever had. It got me thinking about my IPA at home. Once we get home, I'm going to transfer it and throw in the dry hops. I'm excited about this one. I just have a good feeling about it.
Until next time