Simplicity

I’m on a simplicity kick.  Nothing for a total of ten beers (only successfully completed and drank beers) can be in any way complicated.  My reasons for this are a few in a row of very so-so beers that were also too complicated to be able to accurately trouble shoot without doubt.  So it’s KISS only from here to a while from now.

My lager came out good, that’s one.  It was merely golden promise plus cascade, and it’s damn tasty.

I’ve got a couple Munich SMaSH beers going too.  One’s a petite saison smash with munich and citra, one’s a regular old
US-05 munich/cascade smash beer.  Also got a super simple stout planned with 90% 2-row, 10% roasted barley, and Irish ale yeast, for a super simple dry Irish stout.

Also got a blonde ale that came out fantastic (again!)  Reasonably simple beers that I’ve done before successfully are IN as far as my simplicity kick goes. Elderberry wheat may be repeated shortly too.

When you realize that your simplest beers are usually your best, then you should consider going on a simplicity kick.  Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Munich-Citra Petite Saison Smash

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!

Quadro-Smash! (WTF Al?)

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.

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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:

• 40g bravo
  100g cascade
  80g willamette
  60g citra
  280g hops total
  28g at 60
  54g at 5
  140g at FO
  68g dry hop

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!

Fresh Hops are in!!

Just picked up three bags of fresh hops, 8 oz each:

• cascade
• citra
• simcoe

Gonna make a fresh hop pale ale today!  No idea what the IBUs will be, not even sure what the OG is going to be either.  I’m going to use 17 lbs of Golden Promise as the grist, so basically it’s a smash (one grain, fresh hops, a loose definition, lol).  OG should be about 1.060, but I’m making seven gallons, not my usual five, so not sure what the exact efficiency is going to be.

All the fresh hops will be added at flameout and hopstand.  A tiny bittering charge of pellet hops will be added at 60 minutes to ensure enough bitterness.

I’ll dry hop with something.  Probably cascade, but I’ll decide when the time comes.

Can’t wait to see how it comes out!!

Citra / Munich SMaSH – Citra Bomb From Hell?

EDIT 2: After some discussion on beer advocate homebrew forum, I’m going to UP the citra to EVEN MOAR.  So this recipe will be different than when I first published it.  Slightly edited hops schedule again.  This is the final version that is actually in the fermenter right now.  Toned back just a touch on the extreme overkill so I could have reasonable quantities of my pound of citra leftover, and available for other beers.  I can probably get two more pretty citra beers from what’s left, or perhaps two pale-ale strength brews.    I’m not super crazed over citra, and this will probably be the largest citra addition I’ll use in a beer.  Beyond this one, I’ll probably choose a more balanced hop approach.  This one is intended to be off-balance tho, heavy on the hops, and heavy on the citra.  I just want to see what a super citra-bomb tastes like!   Anyway, enough of the edit, here’s the original post, modified to fit the actual recipe…

Gonna make a SMaSH with Munich malt again, this time with citra hops.  And yes, I’m going to hop the living hell out of it, knowing that I’ll probably create a citra bomb from hell!  Everybody has to over-do it at least once in their lifetime with citra hops, right?  So let’s just do it and see what happens!  I know I will drink every last one, no matter how citra it comes out.  It will technically not be a perfect smash beer, because I’ll use a tiny bit of Belma as the 60 minute bittering charge.  Also, I don’t really think this is over-doing it on the citra, but we shall find out just how wrong I am in a month or so.

• 12 lbs Munich
• S-04/US-05 yeast (50/50 mix)
• 0.5 oz Belma at 60
• 1 oz citra at 15
• 1 oz citra at 10
• 1 oz citra at 5
• 1.5 oz citra at FO, then cool to 170F and let stand 15 minutes
• 1.5 oz citra after 15 minute hop stand, while wort is still hot,  let stand another 15 minutes
• 2 oz citra DH

• 1.061 OG
• 47  IBU
• 12 SRM
• 6.4% ABV

Just wingin’ it CCC APA

An odd one here.  A couple weeks ago there was a small accident regarding a computer keyboard.  Well, it’s in the shop getting fixed ($46 installed, but it’ll take about a week to get the part).  Well, this is where I had the copy of beersmith that had today’s homebrew recipe on it.  Thus, today didn’t exactly start out with 100% efficiency on perfection.

But alas, if you’re gonna do something, do it right.  OR if you’re not gonna do something the right way, don’t skimp on it.  Go for broke!  Well that was today, go for broke!

The recipe at one point was clear and I had a specific plan (at least that was before I ordered the grain!).  That’s out the window, obviously.  All I had was a bag of grain of around 12 lbs that I wasn’t sure exactly what was in it, but there was approximately…

• A decent amount of 2-row
• some munich malt (or some other non-2-row base malt, I can’t remember what it was)
• some crystal malt (I am sure it was eight ounces of crystal malt total, there wasn’t a lot of crystal)
• 3 oz honey malt (I am positive there was 3 oz honey malt in there)

I am guessing 12 or so lbs total grains, OG in the 1.055-1.060 range.  I didn’t measure.  Why bother!

Might as well guess on the hops too (though I did use a scale to weight them)…

• 0.5 oz cascade FWH
• 0.5 oz each cascade/centennial/citra at 7 minutes
• 0.5 oz each cascade/centennial/citra at flameout

Dry hops (pre-weighed and bagged for when the time comes):

• 0.5 oz each centennial/citra dry hop
• 0.75 oz cascade dry hop

The yeast was a proper starter of NW ale yeast, WY1332.  That much we couldn’t possibly slack off on!

Then the thermometer took a dump during brewing.  We’re about a 60 mile round trip from anywhere that we could get a thermometer (or even a battery for the one that took a dump), so we used the one that came with the turkey fryer.  Prolly not as accurate, LOL, but it went from 50-300 and read just over 210 at boiling.  Good enough.  Mashed at 165-ish strike water (which probably left me at around 152-155 mash temp) and stirred once during the 1+ hour mash.  No point in using a timer either, eh?  Well I timed it on my phone to “close enough.”

So all during this brew-stravaganza, we continued work on the “man-cave” / brewhaus.  Today we framed the roof and added two of the skylights and some of the roof panels.  Then it started raining!  When it rains, it pours!!  It’s gonna be totally badass though, a big, nice sheddy kinda shed with plenty of room to brew, and several “add-ons” to the outside, including two built in, covered, insulated freezer/controller boxes (will eventually be enough for 30 gallons of fermenting beer in three different temperature controlled freezers with controllers, 5 gallons times 2 buckets per freezer).  Also the new 10+ gallon system (burners and all) will be on the outside, with a tiled sink and floor on the inside and storage for everything on the inside.  It’s gonna kick total ass man!  We’ll be on the man show for sure!  More on this in the future!

Well, when I get my other computer back, I can find out what exactly were the grains that were in there.  Will my hops schedule work?  I bet it will!

We shall find out soon!

Boulevard! Harvest Dance Wheatwine

Boulevard Brewing, from Kansas City, is some awesome stuff!  Today I’m having one of their smokestack series, Harvest Dance Wheatwine.  I love this stuff!  Wheatwine isn’t a very common style, and I think I’ve only actually ever had a few examples of the style.  But the ones I’ve had are delicious!  Especially this one!

http://www.boulevard.com/BoulevardBeers/harvest-dance-wheat-wine/

A very delicious beer indeed.

Wheatwine pours a beautiful orange-ish tan color, just a little hazy, with a wonderful white head that lasts forever and leaves great lacing.

Fruity and spicy on the nose and taste, with great citrus and floral components as well.  Hops aren’t real forward, nor should they be for this style, but they’re pleasantly accenting of the taste and aroma.  Honestly, the commercial description pretty much describes the beer perfectly:

John Barleycorn is memorialized in English folk tradition as the personification of the barley plant, sacrificed at harvest time and then reborn as beer or ale. Our Harvest Dance Wheat Wine is a celebration of John’s Midwestern cousin, wheat. Beginning with a large portion of wheat malt, we add an equally generous helping of Hallertau and Citra hops and age the ale on both French and American oak. The result is a big, warming burst of tropical fruit flavors, highlighted by subtle wine-like notes, and rounding slowly to a long, dry, oaky finish.

I am not one to take anyone at their word on what I should think of a beer without trying it myself, but this description is pretty accurate (and I’ve had this beer multiple times).  Boulevard isn’t blowing their own horn on this one, this beer actually is really good!

Citra hops, eh?  I just brewed with them for the first time today.  Haven’t tasted the results yet.  My next blog will chronicle the event (it was an odd brew day, fittingly for citra, which has so much myth and hype around it, lol).

Why not toss in a nice bit of music to listen to whilst enjoying this delicious beer?

If you like wheatwine, or if you’re just a fan of great beer, you should try this beer!