Costa del Sol b4

To say that Bonnie's batch of Costa del Sol hit it out of the park would be an understatement.  After few weeks on tap it hit a point of maturation that just made the hops sing!  From that point on people couldn't get enough of it.  It became on of those beers at a tasting that people would appear with a full glass of it in loo of a small taste.  I myself helped myself to plenty of weeknight pints based largely on it's low abv however the good times were not to last as just like all great beers that you only have 5 gallons it wasn't long till you poured air...  Fortunately we have the ability to make it again and set out to do just that over the weekend.

The only change in the recipe was changing the first wort hop (and primary bittering) from Centennial to Simcoe solely because I "thought" we still had enough however when I went through my bags of hop bits in the freezer Centennial was nowhere to be found.  I'm interested what effect, if any, this change will have.

We decided to run a double brewday with me brewing up Weiss the Hell Not.  So as with her the previous batch, I left her mostly on her own.  After I set everything up, I answered only a few questions here and there before heading to the gym.  I returned at the very start of her boil to see she still had things well at hand.  Since we only had one propane tank I transferred 34 to a keg (see the pictures in Weiss the Hell Not)  while I waited.

Now comes the hardest part, waiting the required 6-8 weeks till I can drink it again. For her next batch we bought the Petite Saison d'Ete kit along with some others during Northern Brewer's Buy 3 Ships Free promotion. We are thinking of taking the kit and tossing it on the yeast and bugs from Weiss the Hell Not along with some raspberry puree.  It should be fun.

Cheers

-SNB 

Weisse the Hell Not

Brew sheet and starter

It had been a couple of months since my last brewday.  For the most part I've been working on figuring out what I wanted to do for a brewstand and taking the opportunity to save some money in the process.   I've made somewhat decent use of my slightly extra time by keeping the "brewery" tidy and finally bottling both of my meads (Boysenberry Riff Mead and Amy's Backyard Honey Mead aka Trilobite). Still, I was feeling the itch to brew and seeing my beer reserves tumble, especially the not 10% plus beers.

While I love all grain brewing, helping and watching Bonnie brew up a couple of her own batches (Wee Bonnie Lass and Costa del Sol b3) reminded my of a lot of the benefits for extract brewing.  To be ultra clear here, there is not a noticeable difference in flavor between a well brewed extract and well brewed all grain beer.  The benefits of all grain relay more on cost and recipe freedom than quality of the finished product. Extract brewing (when using a quality product) benefits from a shorter and less complicated brewday, perfect for someone short on time and looking to fill a keg with a quality beer.  I guess what I'm trying to say is watching Bonnie brew opened me up to the possibility of brewing an extract beer here and there while remaining primarily an all grain brewer.

It was with this more open mindset that I came across a post in the homebrewing section of BeerTrading.org - Extract - Berliner Weisse, anyone got one? I've come to really enjoy Berliner Weisse over the last couple of years.  They are a wonderful summer beer with their tart crispness and low abv (generally 2.8% to 3.8%).  I'd had desire to brew a Berliner Weisse since coming a across a video presentation by Jess Caudill of Wyeast Laboratories during National Homebrewers Conference 2012 that Northern Brewer had documented and put on YouTube.  The presentation focuses a lot on the yeast driven components of the style more than the grist (grain).  I therefore felt that this would be the prefect time to brew up an extract version and started that taking notes on the presentation.

Getting ready to boil...
for all of 15 minutes

Boy did I end up taking a lot of notes, so many that I ended up putting up them into a PowerPoint presentation containing not only my notes from the presentation but my recipe and the history of the style.  I've put the presentation online and a PDF here.  I won't summarize here but will say that putting it together definitely helped, especially in the area of recipe development.  Originally I was going with a primarily wheat driven recipe till I learned that Berliner Weisse is usually made from roughly 25 – 30% pale malted wheat. I therefore bumped down my ratio to align with what I'd learned... until I shared the presentation with the Tao of Fermentation group where Daniel pointed out that Briess' Wheat DME is 65% wheat 35% barley. He suggested that I therefore adjust my recipe to 1.75lbs Extra Light DME and 2.00lbs Wheat DME which would give me a 47% Pils, 35% Wheat and 19% Pale recipe.

Talk about the easiest brewday I've had since I moved from Mr Beer to extract. With no steeping grains and a 15 minute boil the longest part of the day was bringing it to boil. From there is a almost a mad dash to find, put together and sanitize all the pieces of my chilling equipment.  It's almost funny as the chilling worked so well, cooling it down too low for my intended fermentation cycle, that I had to speed up the run off to warm it back up.  I still think I'm fermenting it a couple of degrees to cold.  At some point this week I'll put together an additional starter for clean yeast and pitch it this weekend.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about I suggest reading my notes or watching the video.

Cheers

-SNB

Scott's BIG IPL - Excelsior aka Bonnie's First Brew

Taking her First Hydrometer Reading

I mentioned in my last post that I had pulled a double brewday over my vacation brewing up two 5 gallon batches of Scott's BIG IPL two ways; Alchemy Guild (All Grain) and Excelsior (Extract).  This is the story of Excelsior.

After my slight disappointment Scott's BIG IPL w/Citra I decided I needed to go back to basics and brew a control extract version to compare the all grain version against. This was a simple matter of going back through my notes in BeerSmith to identify the correct version.   I was actually amazed at how little Amarillo was in it given the fact I had just bought a pound of it thinking it was a key ingredient up there with Simcoe.

The biggest surprise to be came when my wife Bonnie told me that she wanted to brew up the extract version.  It was a big help and relief to me as I didn't have to run back and forth between the garage where the all grain version was going and the kitchen where we steep the grains for the extract version.

Oh how I've missed the speed and efficiency of a extract batch.  Not only was it done in half the time but it nailed it's gravity, something that has driven me nuts over the last several all grains.  It also pared really well as the second half as I was able to utilize my old equipment and the kitchen to get it going.

Bonnie had a blast and wants to be even more involved (I had brought it to a boil and watched it) and do her own beer.  She just has to decide what she want it to be.

The next time I brew a BIG IPL will be in mid-February for the 2012 SCHF.  I haven't quite decided how I will serve it (beer engine, over mangos etc) but we have several months to decide.

Cheers

-SNB

Brewdemo and Scott's Session Series 4: DG's Mild

On Sunday I did a extracting brewing demo at Addison Homebrew Provisions.  I planned it with Eric several months before but it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to brew.

I toyed around with a bunch of ideas and tried to get some feedback on them. They included:

A Flemish red
A sour session over peaches
A viking porter
A session wheat (maybe open fermented)

A California Common over fruit (probably peaches)
An Old Man Winter

The biggest theme ended up being my desire to have some more session ales on the Crate.  

While flipping through the Stone book The Craft of Stone Brewing Co.: Liquid Lore, Epic Recipes, and Unabashed Arrogance that I got off of Amazon I came across the recipe for Lee's Mild and decided to give it a go.

Besides converting the recipe to extract the only change I made was to sub the Northern Brewer bittering hops with Columbus (which is a Northern Brewer Sub) and add some Cascade hops for flavor and aroma.  I still keep the IBUs very low.

Here is the recipe I ended up with

Scott's Session Series 4: DG's Mild
Mild
Type: Extract Date: 10/9/2011
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Brewer: Scott Bennett
Boil Size: 7.37 gal Asst Brewer: 
Boil Time: 60 min
End of Boil Volume 6.24 gal
Final Bottling Volume: 5.00 gal

Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.038 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.009 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 3.8 %
Bitterness: 29.2 IBUs
Est Color: 18.1 SRM

Ingredients

Extract and Steeping Grains
4 lbs 4.0 oz Light Dry Extract (8.0 SRM)
9.8 oz Brown Malt (65.0 SRM)
9.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt -150L (150.0 SRM)
3.2 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)

Hops
0.50 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.25 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 20.0 min
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 0.0 min

Other
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins)
1.00 tsp Yeast Nutrient (Boil 15.0 mins)

Yeast
1.0 pkg Dry English Ale (White Labs #WLP007)

Steep grains in 1 gallon per pound of grain at 160 for 30 minutes


While finalizing some equipment I wanted to borrow from Eric he mentioned that his brew kettle was 15 gallons.  A light went off in my head and I decided to scale the recipe to 10 gallons to split batch. I love the concept behind split batch recipes and I wanted to do one on my own for a while. I choose to do 5 gallons to the recipe and for the other I would do a starter of my WLP670 strain and pour the fresh wort over some frozen peaches from whole foods that I would pasteurized and cool during the demo.

I overshot the temp on the steeping water which wasn't a problem as I showed the crowd hot to remove a gallon of the 180 water and replace with additional filtered tap water.

After the 30 minute steep we filled the kettle with 10 gallons of water and added the 8.5 lbs of DME which I had a volunteer stir until dissolved while I turned on the heat to start bringing the temp up.

At the start of the boil it looked like we were easily around 14 gallons wort ready to go.

I then put 3 lbs of frozen peaches in a separate pot to pasteurize.  I needed the small burner for this so I simulated running out of propane mid brew and carefully with more audience participation moved the main pot onto Eric's brew stand.

In total we boiled a little over 60 minutes

The measured original gravity corrected for temperature ended up at 1.042 SG

Here's the pics I took.

Crowd Shots

Two grain bags steeping in 2.5 gallons of water

Propane and my DME/Peach pot

Getting ready to boil, now that's a lot of wort

Hops

60 minute addition

Hops moved to the brew stand

Boiling away

Cooling down

Collecting some of the hot run off to clean up with later

I used a cooler filled with Ice water to help get the beer cooled down the rest of the way

Trub Island after the whirlpool

The peach version with WLP670

Inside the fermenting cube with a blow off

4 hours later another shot of O2

The next morning - that's why I use blow offs