Last Saturday I added 4lbs of Turbinado sugar to the fermenting barleywine. That really woke the yeast up and got them going again for a couple of days. I just got back from The Bruery’s Black Tuesday party and checked the gravity on the barleywine. It’s currently sitting between 1.018 and 1.020. After adding the sugar on Saturday the effective OG should be 1.107. That means that it’s currently sitting at somewhere around 11.8% ABV and it’s delicious. It’s still very yeasty and the hops added near the end of the boil are very upfront. It’s a blast of pine, orange and grapefruit, with a good dose of caramel thrown in for good measure. The hoppiness will fade as the beer ages and the caramel will come out more. This will be a really fun beer to try as it ages.
October 27th, 2009 | Tags: Brewing | Category: Brewing | Comments Off
I took the day off to brew today. I’m making a big American style barleywine that I’m hoping to drink at Christmas. I know this isn’t enough time to properly age a barleywine, but as long as the alcohol isn’t too overpowering I think it will be a nice beer after only a few months. I enjoy the way barleywine changes as it ages and think it’s great fresh as well.
10:10 – Mashed In @ 150F
12:10 – Started the first batch runoff.
You can see that I’m really maxing out my mash tun, this is right before the first batch runoff:
Starting the vorlauf, the color is perfect and it really smells wonderful!
13:20 – Added the 90 minute hop addition (the one on the top in this pic) and started the timer.
Finally wrapped everything up at about 17:30, which isn’t too bad considering the long mash and boil times. Here is the recipe. I haven’t added the Turbinado yet, that will come in a couple of days. I ended up at 1.092, which is higher than I expected without the Turbinado. This may even hit 12% if the yeast keep going like I expect them to. I’m pitching 4 packages of US-05 into the 10 gallons.
October 19th, 2009 | Tags: Brewing | Category: Brewing | Comments Off
October 14th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off
I do have to love a beer that can reasonably go from grain to glass in two weeks. It’s cloudy and there are a few floaties, but it is very nice for what it was meant to be.
October 4th, 2009 | Tags: brewing drinking | Category: Brewing, Drinking | Comments Off
September 26th, 2009 | Tags: beer | Category: Drinking | Comments Off
I’m back from China and have basically no school for the rest of September. I got a chance to brew yesterday and decided to go for a nice little session beer. I’m calling it Bitter American.
I managed to get things started fairly early for me. Using my new bucket heater to get the mash water heating while I was still sleeping and to let me heat both my “mash out” and batch sparge additions really helped too.
9:50 – Mashed in – 151F
10:56 – Started the first runoff
11:10 – Started the second runoff
11:45 – Reached a boil, added the 60 minute hops.
12:45 – Turned off the boil. Waited a few minutes while I did some cleanup before starting the chiller.
That’s where I stopped keeping track of time. As usual, I got pretty lazy around this point and didn’t finish my cleanup until around 4:00PM. That’s still quite a bit earlier than normal. I pretty much hit my target gravity, coming in around 1.036 (maybe a bit higher like 1.037). This was a nice brewday and most everything went really smoothly. The biggest problem came up when I went to rehydrate my yeast and only found 1 packet of US-05. I thought about splitting that packet between the 2 fermenters, but then I remembered I had a 500g brick of Windsor that’s been sitting in my fridge for a little over a year. I would normally never use Windsor, but if it would ever be appropriate in one of my beers, this is probably the one. I went ahead and measured about 11g of the brick into some boiled and cooled water to rehydrate and tossed the remaining 489g or so into the trash.
September 20th, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off
August 13th, 2009 | Tags: beer | Category: Drinking | Comments Off
August 5th, 2009 | Tags: beer | Category: Drinking | Comments Off
I just decided to pull a quick gravity sample from the hoppy amber and it’s tasting very nice. The finishing gravity was a little higher than I expected: 1.016, leaving about 6.7% ABV. No sign so far of the nasty off flavor that’s been plaguing me for about a year…I’ll have to write more about this later.
I’d like to get this kegged in the next day or two and get it on tap asap.
July 19th, 2009 | Tags: Brewing | Category: Brewing | Comments Off
I brewed my hoppy amber today, a beer I brewed twice last year around this time and really enjoyed. The only thing I changed from last year were some of the hop additions. I’m using new bittering hops because of what I’ve got on hand, and new finishing hops to see how it changes the beer. This is also my first brewday utilizing my new bucket heater to heat water when I don’t want to use the propane burner. This lets my wife start the water heating earlier than I normally would as well as letting me start heating the sparge water earlier.
11:13 – Mashed in at 151F. Forgot to take a pH reading today. This was about 30 minutes later than it should have been since I overshot the liquor temp significantly and had to cool it down with bottles of ice.
12:25 – Finished vorlauf and started the first runnings. This beer uses first wort hops which makes this step smell absolutely incredible. If you’re a brewer and have never used first wort hops, you MUST try it just to experience this sublime aroma. My favorite first wort hops for american style beers are Chinooks, but I’ve used several others and the aroma is never disappointing. This is a picture of the first wort hops between the 1st and 2nd runnings:
12:50 – Started second runnings. This seemed to be really quick after starting the first runnings. I’ll need to look back at some old notes to see how long this step used to take.
13:10 – Added the 60 minute hops and started the timer.
14:10 – Added knockout hops and killed the burner.
14:30 – Started the chiller but forgot to add the final hop addition. DOH!
14:36 – Added the final hops.
July 3rd, 2009 | Category: Brewing | Comments Off
