Tweaks

I spend a  lot of time tweaking recipes to produce what I feel is the best beer.  I've decided to extend that to this blog. I've decided to do a weekly commercial beer review along with my usual homebrew posts. This will hopefully keep my this blog rolling and give me something other than just homebrew to write about. Saturday's brew session went well, and in 2 weeks it will go into bottles at which time I will be doing a preliminary tasting.

Trying to stay on track...

The German style hefeweizen I brewed on the 28th of July is almost ready to bottle. I think I will take care of that Saturday. It has a great aroma. It seems heavy on the banana esters, but hopefully the clove phenols will come through when tasted.   My extraction efficiency is what has been killing the sugar content of my wort. As far as I can tell I'm getting conversion of starch to sugar in the grain. Due the coarse crushing of the grain, a lot of sugars are getting left behind instead of being rinsed away. I've talked to some other brewers and they have suggested that I get my grains crushed twice when I order them so I have a better chance at extracting more sugars from my mash.

 Then on Sunday, I will brew the American amber ale I've been planning. As usual here is the recipe I am planning.

Fermentables:

   1# Light DME
3.3# Light LME
   3# 2-Row Pale Malt
   1# Victory Malt
   1# Flaked Rye
  .5# Crystal Rye Malt
2 oz Chocolate Rye malt

Hops:

 1oz Cascade 6.2%AA pellets for 60 min.
 1oz Cascade 6.8%AA pellets for 20 min.
.5oz Crystal 4.1%AA pellets for 20 min.
 1oz Cascade 6.8%AA pellets at flame-out.
.5oz Crystal 4.1%AA pellets at flame-out.

Yeast:
Wyeast 1450 Denny's Favorite 50
SafAle US-05 American Ale (back up yeast)

This beer will hopefully have some good depth. I'm hoping for a nice malt backbone tempered with moderate bitterness and hop flavor and aroma. The rye malts are for an extra bready, spicy edge. I won't know how well it works until its finished though. In the mean time I will probably take a short break from brewing to drink what I have since I don't have enough space to keep more than a few cases on hand. That's what good beer loving friends are for.

I'll most likely update again in 2 or so weeks when its time to taste the wheat beer. Thanks for reading.

My Personal Evolution

After reading my first ever post on this blog, I've come to realize just how much my tastes have changed in the two-ish years since I started. I have become a certifiable hop-head. I love the fragrant citrusy American hops.  I love IPA now, and have even gotten a taste for Imperial/Double IPA. I've found out that I am just not that fond of beers heavy on roasted malts. Every now and then I do like a stout or porter but overall they are just not my cup of tea.  Due to the hop shortage I mentioned, I've been having a hard time with recipes since I like to use the American hops in most of them.  Without many other options I've been looking into using New Zealand hops. A lot of them seem to have some similar characteristics to some of the American hops I like.  In the near future I will probably use these unique new hops in a beer to see how they compare. The great thing about this hobby is that there is always some new stain of yeast, type of hops or malt coming out. Even though things don't always go as planned, I always seem to have options.

3 Months Later

Well here I go again neglecting my blog for months. Not that many ready this anyway. I think the problem is memory. Its not a blog I want to be updating every day so I figure once every couple of weeks will do. By the time I should be posting something new, I've forgotten that I even wanted to keep this going fairly regularly. Well enough excuses, it's time for the "meat" of my post.


My last brew, the American Wheat ale dubbed Simulated Love, turned out very well. The Falconer's Flight hops were very good they have great smooth citrus character. The Citra dry-hop added a nice layer of extra tropical fruit character. It turned out to be a light, crisp, and refreshingly fruity/hoppy beer. I would brew it again in a heart beat. As much as I'd like to have it on hand year around, the hop shortage has made finding Citra hops damn near impossible. I also like to brew a lot of different styles.


My next brew is going to be a German style Hefeweizen. It's a really simple and straight forward beer and recipe. I will be using 3.3 pounds of liquid wheat malt extract, 3 pounds of Pilsner malt, 2 pounds of wheat malt, 8 ounces of carapils malt, an ounce of imported German Tettnang hops, and Bavarian Wheat liquid yeast(Wyeast 3638) with a packet of Safbrew WB-06 as back up yeast. I have back up yeast because when I activated the yeast pack it took a very long time to swell. I think the heat from being shipped thrashed the yeast. I am planning on brewing this Saturday.


When I bought all of the ingredients for the wheat beer I bought ingredients for the next batch too.  It's for an American amber ale with rye to give it a spicy, bready edge. The the hops I originally planned on using are another type that due to shortage, are near impossible to find. I decided to go with what I could actually get my hands on which is a combination of Cascade and Crystal. Cascade provide citrus aroma and flavor and Crystal provide a spicy presence. I'll give more details on this beer a bit closer to when I will brew it. Probably about 3 weeks away.


Commercial beer recommendations:
Paulaner Hefeweizen
Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Founders Red's Rye PA

Resurrection?

Its been a long time(read over a year) since I've updated this. I have problems with motivation but I don't really want to get into that right now. I will try to start updating this every 3-4 weeks. Since my last post I have made at least six batches of beer. I made an Irish Red Ale, Belgian Pale Ale, Belgian Witbier, a Porter/American Brown Ale, American IPA, and American Wheat.

My brewing schedule was in no way regular even though it works out to brewing about every 2 months. I went a long time between the Witbier and the porter probably six months or so. Then I went a good 2 months after the porter and made the IPA and 3 weeks after that one I made the American Wheat.

I like to name all of my beers after Electric Six songs since they are my favorite band. The my last six beers were called Druid Fluid, Kukuxumushu, Formula 409, Gridlock!, Psychic Visions, and Simulated Love respectively.

As far as tasting I can really only comment on the porterish beer and the IPA. I really like both, even though they are very different beers. The porter/brown ale has a very strong chocolate malt flavor; it's bordering on too much and that's why it's almost a porter. If I brewed it again I would cut the chocolate malt by 2/3's and add more caramel malts to smooth it out. The IPA is an altered recipe of a kit called Dead Ringer IPA. The beer tastes similar to Bell's Two Hearted Ale. My version has Munich malt and more hops. Mine is a bit darker than the commercial beer and doesn't have quite the same hop character, but I still really like it. The American Wheat I just bottled, however, has only been in the bottle for a week so it's not quite time to crack one open. That beer was my own creation all of the way. I wanted a really hoppy beer that was low on bitterness.  I used two types of hops I've never used before one is called Falconer's Flight and the other is Citra. I've had beers with Citra in them and I was impressed by the tropical fruit and citrus notes it imparted. The Falconer's Flight, however are completely new to me. They are a very pungently aromatic blend with a lot of citrus character. It smelled incredible when I was bottling it and I can't wait to taste it.

Wrapping up here real quick I will throw out some recommendations from the small beer tasting my friends and I had a couple of weeks ago. I will always recommend Bell's Two Hearted Ale its an outstandingly well balanced and tasty IPA. Next would be Founder's Dirty Bastard  Scotch Ale, very taste and surpisingly clean and balanced. Flying Dog's In Heat Wheat Hefeweizen a German weizen with lots of clove flavors. Great Lakes'  Eliot Ness, a nice Amber Lager with a surprising amount of malt character. Anchor Liberty Ale a nice Amber Ale. Victory Prima Pils, a nice clean and refreshing German Pils. Hennepin, a true to the style fruity and spicy Saison. Last but definitely not least I have to recommend Stone's Arrogant Bastard Ale. It is the most bitter beer I have ever had. That said it's probably one of the best beer's I've ever had. It has a great malt backbone to keep it in check though. Not every type of beer suits everyone so I like to do a variety.

Thanks for reading and get out there and try something new.

4 Months Later...

So I figured my lack of posting would happen fast but I wasn't aware it had been this long with out an update.

I've pretty much moved completely over to partial mashing. I tried out a new system of bottling and didn't have the best results. It was, however, a learning experience. The beer turned out very well. I ended up drinking a large quantity of it the last night of my camping trip. I think I have the system figured out and it is a convenient way to dispense beer in the home. It's called Tap-A-Draft. It consists of 6 liter bottles with an apparatus that dispenses with small CO2 cartridges.

So the last beer I brewed was a Chocolate Cream/Milk/Sweet Stout. Sweet stouts are like normal stouts in appearance but they have a lot of residual sweetness and very heavy bodied. The recipe uses copious amounts of dark grains to achieve the desired sweet coffee and bitter chocolate flavors. At the end of the boil I added an entire can of Hershey's Unsweetened Cocoa Powder for a more pronounced chocolate flavor. Most books recommend letting the beer sit on the chocolate sludge for at least 10 days. Due the the extremely slowly attenuating yeast strain I used its been over a month on the chocolate. I expect a ridiculous amount of chocolate flavor. Sweet stout is usually reminiscent of an iced coffee. A bit sweet bit still roasty. It is also a heavy beer because it is brewed with a lot of sugars that yeast won't ferment. These left over sugars increase the body because they don't turn into alcohol which usually makes the solution thinner. I think I will hit the mark on this one I just wish it would have been done sooner. I like to name my beers after Electric Six songs and this one is aptly named Chocolate Pope.

My next beer is going to be a Belgian pale ale. Which I will probably brew Tuesday. They are usually spicy and fruity with lower hop bitterness and low hop character but still finishes dry enough to stay well balanced. I've named it Kukuxumushu. The next after that will be Formula 409, an American Wheat and my fourth wheat beer to date. The cider is still aging nicely and I have decided to dump the pumpkin spice ale. I am also planning a weekly or bi-weekly beer review/tasting.

Cider and Pumpkin Spice Ale

So I made a pumpkin spice ale as I had planned. Going into the fermentor/throughout fermentation it smelled wonderful. When I bottled it, the beer smelled fine not the original pumpkin crazy smell as it was before fermenting but it still smelled good. I decided to taste my hydrometer sample to see how the beer was coming along and I wasn't happy. I don't know if I just don't like it or if I made a bad tasting batch of beer. It has a really funky taste that I can't figure out the cause of. I think it could be a couple of things: 1) not balanced enough, or 2) spicing was wrong/out of proportion or something. I might not have used enough bittering hops making it cloyingly sweet. I don't know what the deal is but I am going to let it age for a couple more months tasting a bottle every couple of weeks to see if it gets any better if its not good by 6 months I'll just dump it.

The cider however is a different story. It tastes smells and tastes good. Not overwhelmingly appley but more like a dry white wine. I enjoy it, but it still needs time to carbonate more thoroughly. The yeast I used seems to attenuate well but it still needs time to get the carbonation up to where it should be. Meanwhile I will be drinking the remaining case and a half of Dunkelweizen so I can make room for another batch. I do not know however what I will be brewing. I think I'm going to go with a kit to keep it simple and not mess with tweaking recipes.