What's Brewing November Edition!

Looks like a outstanding time was had by all. Care to share perticulars on those beers?

 

Haha--well we did have help from 2 other guys, so that makes it a bit easier.

 

It was a ridiculous time. Just when you think someone can't open a better beer, boom there it is.

The favorite of the day for the other guys was the Cigar City Hunah. A delicious stout that does nothing wrong. Spices, chocolate, just overall delicious.

The treehouse beers I've had a few before. Hadn't had Haze and Dopple. Green was my favorite out of the 4. Haze tasted a bit bland but was about 2 months old.

My favorite was probably Veil's Dirt Dirt Nap Nap or 3F oude Geuze 2015.

 

Tremendous, happy brewing!

 

Adjusted my crush and did a modified fly sparge, got my efficiency up 6 points to 82%. Boil off was a little high too so I ended up with 11.5 gallons in the fermenter @ 1.056. Sitting at 83°F waiting to rock. Set up through cleaning 4.5 hours... all grain... #DamnGina!

 

A local brewery, Independent Brewing in Bel Air Maryland, is doing their 4th “wort challenge”. The brewery produces the wort and sells tickets with a ticket getting you 5 gallons. I picked up my wort yesterday. Everyone will get together at the brewery sometime in January and bring their finished beer for tasting and judging.
This time around they decided to present the homebrewers with a challenge. They deliberately made a very dextrinous wort with a combination of high mash temp and carafoam malt in the hopes that the brewers will get creative to avoid a FG that is too high or a sweet finished beer. I think they are expecting a lot of Brett beers.
The wort is local 6-row, Munich, and carafoam, bittered with Magnum and Tettnanger for aroma to about 30 IBU 1.064 is the OG.
My plan is T-58 yeast allowed to free rise into the 70s then some turbinado sugar and homemade #2 invert to make it a bigger beer so maybe the higher fg won’t be as noticeable. Maybe a dry hop maybe not depending on how it tastes.

 

• Weather was perfect last night for a spontaneous beer. 60% Pils, 40% torrified wheat. 2oz of aged strisselspalt hops @ 60. Opted to not go for the coolship method, so I just left outside overnight in the kettle to cool and soak up the local microflora. OG 1.045

• Bottling up my Xmas ale tomorrow. It's based on Denny's bourbon vanilla imperial porter.

 

Something I've been meaning to try. How does this work? I'm assuming you covered with a cheese cloth or something to keep unwanted bugs/crap out? Would you just close it up the next day and let it get on fermenting like a regular batch? Or do you harvest the (wild) yeast from the top the next day and propagate to get a higher cell count? Sorry, too many questions.

 

Racked a barrel aged Brett Brown ale onto some peaches and apricot puree. And racked my sour wee heavy into said barrel. That wee heavy was tasting damn good too, hope I don't ruin it by trying to sour.

 

I went back and forth about the cheesecloth but ultimately just left it completely open. I wanted to encourage all things to inoculate the wort so I opted out of the cheesecloth. This is how traditional lambic breweries do it, just in a coolship. I did some reading and the size of a kettle will give you cooling closest to what traditional lambic breweries get in a coolship. Homebrew coolships are often too shallow allowing the beer to cool too quickly. Thankfully there were no insects or critters or floaties in the beer this morning. Here's hoping for the best.

 

Last night I kegged off my 14.2% Bourbon Imperial Stout (has a whole bottle of Elijah Craig in 11 gallons). 4 gallons got Chocolate Habanero, 4 got Costa Rican coffee beans, and 3 stayed plain. Plan to force carb, then bottle off the bulk of it for the cellar (so I don't drink it all before January).

 

Brewed a De Ranke XX Bitter inspired beer last Sunday. XX Bitter is one of my favorite beers and I'd love to have something similar at a fraction of the cost and easy availability.

I used 2 types of pilsner malt, Wyeast 3522 Ardennes, bittered with Saaz (I have a bunch), Hallertau MIttlefruh late in boil/flameout. It's in the 55 IBU range per the software and should be around 6% when it's all said and done. I pitched at a slightly higher pitch rate than usual and fermented a little cool with the hopes ester production will be less prominent. I might do a small dry hop with Hallertau, and it will be bottle conditioned.

Fermentation was vigorous the first 3-4 days then quickly tapered down, with a dense krausen still. First time using this yeast.