Beer and Stuffsince I have blogged, brewed, or participated in brewing discussions. Such is the life of a po student. Rest assured this is a state of affairs that cannot possibly last, I need homebrew~!!
Upcoming planned beers include a GP/Cascade smash (my fav!), some sort of IPA, and a brown ale. See you soon!
Decided to try a new twist on an old recipe, new in a couple of ways. Petite saison smash – but with 100% Munich malt. Also in some ways similar to Citra-Bomb-From-Hell, but with less of a citra blast, and lower bitterness.
I added 10 grams of citra as the bittering addition. Please, no whinin’ over using citra for bittering, that’s a debate I don’t particularly care when you’re talking ten friggin’ grams. Then I dumped in the remainder of the pound of citra I bought a while ago, 72 grams, at flameout. Should leave plenty of citra flavor, but not quite be so over the top as the citra bomb.
The wild card is my choice of Danstar Belle Saison yeast. Haven’t tried this one yet, but chatter online seems positive. Actually, I picked this one on a whim, asking the guy in my LHBS “got any good saison yeast?” at which point he pulled out a box from the fridge, started digging, and came up with this. Screw it, I’ll try anything once!
In addition, I’m using 62F as the fermentation temperature, same as with my first petite saison yeast.
So we’ll see how it comes out. I suspect it will come out really good!
Ain’t been able to brew for over a month. Got two batches ready to bottle, doing it tomorrow.
I’m not screwing around with trying new stuff on these batches, I’m repeating two recipes I’ve already done (once, or multiple times) that came out great.
here’s the plan…
blonde ale:
One of them is getting nottingham, the other is getting US-05. Both will have an overall low bitterness and a dash of late hops. That’s it. Simple, easy, done.
4.5 lbs 2 Row Malt
4.5 lbs Wheat Malt
1 oz lemon peel at 5 min
3 g grains of paradise at 5 min
Mash temp 153°
I’ve wanted to try brewing with grains of paradise, so I’ve finally gotten my chance.
Now there was a bit of a mixup between this brew and my quadro-smash, and this may have been dry-hopped with the hops from that one! Oh well, we’ll find out when the time comes. Although I didn’t mean for this to be dry hopped, if ti was, it should merely be “extra tssty.” The quadro-smash will just be more like any other IPA that’s not dry hopped, so no biggie there. Can’t wait to taste them!
Well I’m going through my drafts folder and publishing everything that I had forgotten about. So this one is a bit out-dated but what the hey, let’s post it!
Results:
I just popped a test bottle of this one. it’s a bit odd, but it’s plenty drinkable and even qualifies as tasty beer.
I wanted to prove to myself that there’s nothing wrong with amber or dark or extra dark extracts, so I simply tried making beers using those extracts. I can’t see any reason NOT to use them (not that you’d need them all the time, of course). But if you just want some color and body, the amber and extra dark extracts (munton’s, FWIW) have not imparted excess sweetness, maltiness, or roasty/whatever flavors to these two beers, they seem to have provided more color than anything. So now that I’m not just regurgitating the old standard “use extra light extract, and add specialty grains for color and body” advice, well, what does that mean? Nothing, I suppose. There’s nothing wrong with the old standard advice, but it’s not the only way to make tasty beer. You can also use amber, dark, and even extra-dark extracts and still make fine beer. My new advice would be to consider what your goals are, and how to best accomplish those goals, and use the ingredients that best accomplish those goals.
The T-58 comes out quite a bit like 3711, but my impression is that 3711 comes out dryer. It’s hard to say exactly how much that’s true, because I haven’t brewed the same beer twice and varied only the yeast, but it’s fairly similar at least. Preliminary assessment of T-58 is that I’ll keep using it for these little two gallon extract batches that are brewed without temperature controls*.
*brewed in my room, temperature usually a bit higher than optimal for most yeasts, and fluctuations are higher than optimal for most yeasts too. The T-58 has handled these fluctutations well (admittedly they are fairly MILD fluctions, lol).
Edited to reflect reality! And again to reflect reality again!
UPDATE: fucked it all up. Forgot which bucket was which, put the dry hops 68g for this one into the Sam Adams summer ale clone. This one was quite a bit on the bitter side, but has mellowed as it aged, and is at least drinkable.
Now the other beer, the Sam Adams Summer Ale clone, it came out really nice! All that dry hop aroma somehow didn’t mess with the rather delicate and subtle aromas and flavors of the lemon peel and grains of paradise.
Well I never cared whether I mis-used words or butchered the English Language much, so I can name my beers whatever the heck I want!
Got the idea from a beeradvocate.com thread. Four base malts, equal portions, and four hops, equal portions, in a pale ale or IPA like beer with IBUs about 45-50.
3 lbs maris otter
3 lbs golden promise
3 lbs vienna
3 lbs munich
Hops will be a blend of Cascade, Citra, Willamette, and Bravo! I gotta check the AA% for the exact numbers,, but the schedule wound up like this:
Used Denny’s best yeast. Wound up being far more of an IPA than I had previously planned. Still – This one can’t help but be ginormously fantabulous!
Brewed a lager! Wasn’t really much to it, actually. 10.5 lbs of pilsner malt plus this hops schedule:
Other than that, just some yeast nutrient and whirlflock, and German lager yeast. The plan is to ferment at 52F for six weeks, then transfer to a carboy and lager for at least six, but up to ten weeks at 33F.
This beer has its own special fermentation freezer and controller setup.
The name almost says it all. The malt bill is quite simple:
The hops bill is also very simple:
2 gallon batch. American ale II yeast used.
The primary purpose of this beer is to test straight amber extract and see what it’s like on its own. This is part of my “not regurgitating standard advice when you haven’t actually tried it yourself” campaign.
I plan to keep brewing stuff with amber and dark and extra-dark extracts too, because I don’t believe that everything extract needs to be done with extra-light + steeping grains. It’s ok to get some of your color from extracts. However, we’re going to see real soon just how much other than color this particular extract added to the beer.\
I suppose this is a smash beer too. Can’t have too many smashes!
I may dry hop it, we’ll see.
EDIT and update: well first test bottle popped. Great carbonation, great amber color (the amber extract straight up gives the perfect color for an amber ale). Oddly, a strangely wine-like flavor and aroma, not the cascade-bomb amber I expected. Not sure what’s up with it, but hey, it’s still tasty beer! Definitely confused on the wine-like qualities tho. I’ll have to make another similar brew and see what happens.
Fifth time around for this one. This time no fancy dual yeasts, just Bavarian wheat yeast, which has proven to be the tastiest for this brew. Hops will likely be willamette, but I’ll see what’s in the freezer come brew day.
EDIT and update: fifth time around comes out great. Lesson:: Stick with what works. No need for mixing yeasts, use Bavarian wheat yeast. Recipe has proven true, so leave it. Don’t fit what ain’t broken.
Beer and Stuff 