Hop Lust

Ska Sour

brent — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:29:55 +0000

I bought a few bottles of Ska Sour last year when I was in Durango. I drank one shortly after I got back and it was pretty tasty, but not really sour. It was more or less a Belgian Pale Ale with a very strong Brett character, but more of the barnyard/horse blanket character. When I went to grab a bottle a few weeks later I noticed a pellicle in the bottle and decided to wait before I drank any more. Tonight, about a year after I bought it, I decided to give this beer another shot. Yum. It still has that Brett-y Pale Ale-ness going but the flavor seems more complex than I remember. There’s a nice lactic tartness that accentuates the barnyard-floral-honey flavors. The beer has a nice medium body that surprises me given how dry it probably is and the bitterness comes up to provide a solid backbone holding the whole thing together. I’ve got one more bottle of this, I’m rally glad I sat on this one as it’s developed beautifully.

As a bonus, the beer even tried to pour my second glass for me!

Deliverance

brent — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 06:37:44 +0000

June Brewday – Green Flash IPA Clone

brent — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 17:24:43 +0000

Brewing a Green Flash IPA clone with my brother. It’s part of his Christmas present.

10:15 – Mashed In. 152F, 5.3pH.

11:52 – On the way to boiling …

12:20 – Boiling, added the 90 minute hop addition.

That’s a lot of hops….

16:30 – Done cleaning, wort is in the fermenter coming down to pitching temp. Hit the gravity right on at 1.069.

May Brewday – Stuck in Lodi Rye

brent — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:05:41 +0000

Finally brewing again after several busy months! I’m really excited to get this beer brewed in the new fermenter system, since it picked up my house off-flavor the last few times I’ve brewed it. This time I’m also using the White Labs Kolsch yeast, WLP029, to see how it works in the beer.

0945 – Mashed in, off to a nice early start. 149F and 5.4pH. Off to get propane.
1130 – Finally started the first runoff after a LONG trip to get propane. Ugh.
1151 – Second runoff and the kettle is heating up. I just realized that I forgot to sanitize my fermenter though, that’s a bummer. I think the trick will be to move the kettle to the table during the whirlpool and throw the fermenter on the burner then. This is definitely something I’ll have to think about for future brewdays, running out for propane during the mash like I used to do is not great with the new setup.

My rye malt had a lot of bugs in it, as if there wasn’t enough protein in the rye by itself:

1225 – Added my 60 minute boil hops and started the countdown.

1325 – Started the chiller, ran out to get ice and lunch.
Check out the break:

Alright, hit my OG just about right on: 1.042. Everything’s in the fermenter and coming down to pitching temp. A good day, except for the hour and fifteen minutes it took to get propane.

Ska Sour

brent — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:34:17 +0000

Life & limb

brent — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:59:59 +0000

Yummm

RyePA Kegging

brent — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:38:47 +0000

I just finished kegging the RyePA I brewed in November and I’ve got some mixed emotions. Everything was looking great, the fermenter system worked excellent this time around and racking to the kegs with co2 was really simple. I got just the right volume to fill two kegs, and the sample I took to test the gravity smelled great. Then I checked the gravity. It looks like my little mistake during mash-in cost me. The sample came in at around 1.017, giving the beer 6.9% ABV. That’s about 74% apparent attenuation for those that are keeping track. That’s not terrible, but it’s not what I really wanted with this beer. See, I like my IPA’s to be relatively dry, and the rye malt in the grist already adds a creamy viscosity to the brew. The combination is something that’s a little heavier on the tongue than I’d like, but it’s certainly not bad. The taste is spot-on, and I can only imagine that once the dry hops do their thing I won’t really care about this little mistake too much.

November Brewday – RyePA

brent — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:52:39 +0000

I’m taking this week off from work in order to use up some vacation hours that I’ve accrued. This gave me an opportunity to brew twice in a month for the first time since I went back to school. I really love an IPA when the nights are cool, but I was also considering brewing my Stuck in Lodi Rye recipe since the last two batches came up infected and I’ve really missed this beer. What to do? Combine the two: RyePA! I started off looking to brew Denny Conn’s classic RyePA recipe which I’ve brewed before. A couple of things happened: I wanted to use up some inventory, and the inventory in the Beer Alchemy software I use was a bit off. So I ended up with this recipe. I’m sure it will still be delicious.

10:14 - Mashed in, 153F, 5.2pH. I really need to make sure I get my coffee before I get to this point, I transferred the hot liquor to my mash tun but forgot to give it time to absorb some of the heat before adding my grains. I mashed in quite a bit warm, at around 158F, but I used some ice to get the temp down to 153 in only a few minutes. This required some vigorous stirring, which led to a little bit of a mess (nothing serious):

10:30 – Got the hot liquor for the sparge heating up and the fermenter on the burner getting sanitized.

11:20 – Started the first runoff and added the First Wort Hops.

11:44 – Started the second batch vorlauf and runoff into the kettle.

12:09 – Kettle is full and just a little over 200F. I better get back out there quick! I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but I’m really happy that lautering went ok. The last time I brewed a RyePA was one of my worst brewing experiences, I had a stuck mash and had to lauter the whole batch through kitchen strainers. Whew!

Update: Some day I’ll learn my lesson about walking away from 200 degree wort. Today is not that day.

13:18 – Killed the burner and added the knockout hops. Started the chiller.

13:52 – Wort at 100F, switched chiller over to ice water.

14:19 – Wort at approximately 70F, pulled chiller and started whirlpool.

14:47 – Wort racked into fermenter.

16:31 – Finished cleaning up. Not as good as last time, but still not too shabby.

The new chiller system I setup for my fermenter is working great. It’s pulled the wort from about 72F down to about 64F in about an hour. I’m confident it could go even faster if I just used more ice, but this is more than sufficient for right now. Here’s what it looks like:

I really took a lot of pictures today… Anyway, I missed my gravity a bit getting only about 74% mash efficiency. I ended up at 1.069, but I don’t think that’s going to matter much in the final beer.

Estate

brent — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:42:44 +0000

Cream Ale Kegging

brent — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:39:06 +0000

I just finished kegging the cream ale. It tastes fantastic, the hops may be a little too upfront for the style, but the citrus-y, earthy notes compliment the beer really well in my opinion. I couldn’t stop drinking the sample I pulled. It also attenuated really well, finishing at 1.006 (1.5 P). That puts the final ABV around 5.5. I’m really happy with the results of the batch, but I did have some problems with the new fermenter. I plan on detailing those once I’ve had a chance to really look at what happened.