What's Brewing In March?

Today's the day! Brewing a somewhat experimental Belgian Dark strong Ale. 10 gal,
24# Maris Otter
8# Special B
2# flaked barley
4# raw buckwheat honey

Appropriately (imho) light on hops

Yeast heroics involved. Bought everything to do this batch in November, so both WLP550 and WLP650 that will be used are past shelf life, so lots of starter involved.

Anyway, very happy to get this one going. First outing for new 100qt (thought we were buying 80qt, but buddy thought otherwise) cooler converted into mash tun. Hang on tight!!!

 

That is a shit ton of Special B (~21% of grain bill). People frequently use terms like "assertive" to describe it. Have you used this much before?

 

I do not advocate for mandarina in ipas or pale ales. It really is a delicate hop, I am currently fermenting out a pilsner that utilizes the hop. While I don't know how this beer tastes, my pale with madarina was lackluster. Paired with Amarillo it came across as cascade lite.

 

Can you share more on the charred oak? Like what kind of wood did you buy, how did you char it, did you soak it in liquor or boil it, how long did you let the beer sit on it, and did it turn out differently than toasted oak?

I've been doing a lot of experiments with aging on oak cubes lately, but have only used toasted. I recently read about charred oak on Bertus Brewery's blog and might want to try that next.

 

I used 2oz of US medium plus oak and charred over my stove burner to get a light blackening on all sides of the cube. Boiled cubes for 5mins in water. Then placed cubes in 4.5oz of bourbon for about 10-14 days before adding into primary fermenter once hit FG for a few days until the oak hit the flavor I wanted before racking the beer into the keg.

End result was really good... I was happy with my technique and would do it again. That was a delicious beer with the vanilla beans (which I also did a tincture for 2 weeks before adding into the beer at the same time as the oak).

 

Haven't brewed in 6-8 weeks. Finally getting a chance today. Currently mashing a tripel. I plan on using some traditional European hops for bittering and later (Styrian Aurora and Saaz). I'm also planning a 5 minute addition of Jaryllo and I was going to DH with 2 oz of Jaryllo too. I haven't used it before but descriptors are apple and pear and I thought that would go well in a tripel, albeit a bit of an Americanized one. Anyone used Jaryllo before and what did it bring to the table?

 

I've used 1/4 as much in a different recipe, and didn't get nearly as much of it's own flavor coming through as I wanted. I figure if I like this one, WIN! if I like it and other folks don't, then it's my own peculiar preference.

 

Forgot to mention, also 2oz (when fresh) sage. Added at 5 minutes. In the hot wort, it's about even with, or maybe a little stronger than the hops aroma wise.

 

Picked up some Prickly Pear juice and syrup in Arizona...next up is probably a wheat beer with the juice and a IIIPA with the syrup.

 

Starting Conan and San Diego super yeast for an optic malt IPA. Going for dank this time so I'm using summit chinook and eureka. Haven't brewed in a month or more because of weather so I'm psyched for a Saturday brew day

 

Would you mind describing this beer taste?. I have 12 bottles of Straight lambic beer fermented with yeast captured from fruit rinds that taste very sour. Very nice funky flavor but too sour.I think it would be better to use this yeast-bugs in secondary.

 

So many good things brewing right now:
1. A coconut carrot wheat beer, aged on vanilla and cinnamon (just kegged)
2. A standard wheat beer with kolsch yeast on orange peel (just kegged)
3. A double dry hopped citra NE style IPA sitting on 1lb/gallon of blackberries going to the keg next weekend.

 

Mine was nearly a 100% spontaneous. I took the kettle from the burner into the garage brewhouse that had a cork top counter saturated with wild beer from being sloppy at times. Left it overnight with a sheer curtain draped over the top. Took a week to start fermenting. At that week point I added some yeast cultured from strawberries, slurry from a previous wild, and a starter from Boon Girardin. 52 months later it is quite tart, has a bitter wood funk (like a traditional Lambic), super dry, light tannic pull (no oak), and a rounded fruity note. It is much like a traditional Lambic.

 

Just dry hopped for the first time. 1oz of Cascade and 1oz of Galena will sit in my IPA until Saturday or Sunday, which ever is my bottling day.

 

Gravity check on my Imperial Stout tonight that I brewed last Friday. Already down to 1.016 from 1.096, or 10.5% ABV. Crazy how quickly that yeast munched the wort, but I did pitch a huge starter.

Taste was already awesome! Smooth and intense coffee and chocolate. Delicious stuff. Excited to see what it's like in a few months. Will keg in another week and a half or so.

This one also has 1.5# of flaked rye, along with pale chocolate and chocolate wheat as the main roast character malts. Carafa II cold brewed and added for additional color only. Not as dark as I had hoped (going for jet black), but it does have a really nice dark brown / light black hue with a red tint in there.

 

I was going to use my closed transfer setup to keg an IPA the other night, but when I looked in the tubing I saw that a silverfish had crawled in there and died.

Thankfully, I had a standard autosiphon (with its own tubing) that I could use instead, but ewwwwwwwwwww. Guess it's time to buy some new tubing.

 

I just looked up "silverfish." Not quite sure how that name stuck...

 

I think it's because of the way they move, they kind of look like they're swimming. So gross.

 

Here at the tail end of March, I brewed up a small 3 gallon batch of blonde ale. It's basically a GP/Comet SMASH fermented with London III, but I plan to add a couple ounces of light (home) roasted Kenyan coffee for the last 24 hours or so before bottling. I'm hoping the grapefruit flavors in the Comet will mesh well with the citrusy coffee. Fingers crossed.

I'll probably add the dry hop and coffee in secondary so that I can take my first attempt at harvesting yeast.

 

Whipped up a quick starter of West Yorkshire last night for an IPA this weekend, and crashed my Saison for kegging this weekend as well.