What's Brewing? (January Edition)

Brewed English Barleywine Friday. Mash was only base grain, Maris Otter (MO); all specialty grains were cold steeped. Ran a little higher efficiency, so I pulled volume. But damn, miscalculated and FG went 10 points low. However, yesterday I short boil MO LME and added at high krausen. Could be kinda a good thing, yeast got going at lower gravity and then added more sugars. Also since base was all MO, adding extra still maintain recipe intent and gave me control. So FG with extra sugars spot on recipe at 1.122. Hold it turns out nice, Friday was my 40th birthday.

 

Belgian Pale Ale. Post-Fermentation-Xfer-Sample.

 

Underpitching was, very probably, not your problem. Sounds like your recipe was, as was oxygen ingress. Care to share the recipe?

100% Brett beers should have around double the pitch rate that "normal" sacch. only beers have. You just need more yeast to begin with because of Brett's slower growth rate.

 

That's an excellent yeast for a maibock, as is the WY 2206. As an alternative for future bockbiers, you two might also consider Mangrove Jack's dry Bavarian Lager yeast. I used it for 2 helles bocks that I brewed last fall and served to visiting family and friends over the holidays. Both beers were excellent, clean, & malty, and one keg was floated and the other is almost finished too. Just FYI.

 

My 2.5 year-old Ranco dual temp controller decided to crap out on me on New Year's Day, right after I pitched the yeast on an imperial stout. After a few improvisations, the beer is fermenting nicely. I have limited electrical skills and decided to buy an Inkbird 308 as a replacement. I just unpacked it, calibrated it and fired up my fermenter, and this thing is awesome (so far). For $35, a no-brainer. Just a PSA for anyone thinking about spending $$$ for a Ranco or Johnson Controls.

 

Cranked up the temp on my NEIPA to finish up the D-rest. Tasting great otherwise. Kegged my second carboy of Spiced Belgian Golden that aged 4-5 weeks longer than the first batch. See what kind of difference there is between the two as the wild yeast had more time warm on this one. Also kegged up a free beer that I had aging. Got the last runnings of a Quad from a buddy who did a 10 barrel batch. Added over a pound of purreed date and about the same amount of D180. No hops, pitched Good Belly, then 6 Brett strains 2 days later. Been aging for over 6 months.

 

@EvenMoreJesus
Looking back I definitely underpitched. While Yeast Bay doesn't list the cell count for the brett strain (TYB184), the amalgamation II is listed as 15 billion cells (what I just used) and their website says single strain brett and brett blends are usually ~2 billion cells per vial. I ran the numbers based on what I did and it was at most only .25 million cells per mL per degree plato. I didn't really think much about pitching rates when I brewed that beer.

Good news is I brewed the new batch Sunday and it had a very short lag time with a vigorous fermentation. This batch calculated out to around 1.25 million cells per ML per degree plato with a longer propagation period than the prior batch.

Bottled up another fruit beer yesterday. Blend of a couple of golden sour beers brewed in April/May with sacch/brett/lacto/pedio lab cultures plus cultured up dregs. Transferred/blended onto Oregon Fruit (Vintners Harvest) peach and apricot puree a couple months ago.

 

Working on a recipe for Monday, take advantage of the long weekend and refill my keezer as I kicked 4 kegs last week. Gonna do a West Coast Double & Session Black IPA split with Ahtanum, Amarillo, Centennial, and Chinook. 8.5 gallons at 1.076 / 77 IBUs onto a cake of S-04 from my NEIPA, then run off 3.25 gallons into a carboy and cut it with 2 gallons of water. Once fermentation completes I'll crash, fine, and dryhop with the same hops.

 

I suddenly have lots of free time, but I'm limited by ambient temp (brew in my garage, ferment in my basement) and equipment (only one glass carboy, one thermowell, one controller). In my queue are 1) American Wheat, 2) Vienna-based imperial amber and 3) A NEIPA (recipe TBD).

The basement is too warm for lagering and too cold for unmanaged ale fermentation.

I have a starter going with WLP320 (American Hefeweizen) and all the ingredients for the first two. The second is something I brewed last year and really enjoyed, this time I will be trying WLP090 (San Diego Super) in place of my usual US-05.

The third, I only have the yeast (London Ale III) - however, I have some leftover Citra and Mosaic in the freezer which will influence my direction.

I really try to support my local homebrew supply. After all, the more the local homebrewers are buying, the fresher the ingredients are likely to be. Sadly, they really have been falling short on liquid yeasts lately - both in terms of freshness and varieties. I'm falling into a pattern where my yeasts, hops and (some) specialty grains are mail-order while my base malts are local.

 

I just racked my RIS from primary (after 12 days) to a keg for secondary. It's probably at terminal gravity at 1.032 from an OG of 1.111, but we'll see. I'm very happy with using the 1450 so far, especially considering the accidental cooling to 35 degrees the day after pitching. The sample tastes great with lots of chocolate, roasty malt, and some char. I'm surprised how much I like it at this point. After some time in the keg, I'm planning on adding some bourbon soaked in oak cubes along with a bit of vanilla.

 

Was planning a brew day tomorrow evening, but seeing the sub-zero temps, I think I'll be putting it on hold.

I sampled a dark English Barleywine that I've had sitting on oak cubes for almost 3 months now. Oak flavor is nice, but the overall flavor is a bit....muddy. For shits, I cracked a bottle of a Brett Tripel that I brewed last spring and dumped in the dregs. Should be interesting....

 

Random experiment this evening. Wife has to work and I got nothing better to do then brew a beer with some wine yeast...

3 gallon batch
Pils
White Wheat
Flaked Spelt
20 @158
10 @162

90 min boil
magnum @ 60 for 15ibu
Waktu @ 20
Nelson @ FO
31 Theoretical

K1-V116 that I’m going to try to ferment at 60 ambient and see how low it goes then hopefully a HF dregs Brett secondary... should be interesting. Hopefully good, but not counting on it

 

I've mashed in my grains for a cream ale type of homebrew, 1.056 OG and 50ish theoretical IBUs. 80% two-row pale ale malt and 20% flaked corn. I'm going with two-row since I can't get six-row malt anymore. I will soon find out if it's up to the task. Hops will be Cluster pellets, a hop which I've wanted to use for quite some time now. I was surprised by how familiar they smelled when I opened the package to weigh them out, they more or less smell like the hop aroma coming off of an APA to me, I was expecting them to smell alot different. It will be interesting to try the finished beer and see if there's a stand out flavor from them.

 

I'm not familiar with K1-V116, but if it's a typical wine yeast, it will be poor at fermenting maltose and won't be able to use maltotriose at all, so the gravity isn't going to get very low before you add the Brett. (Maybe that's what you intend.)

 

If by "up to the task" you mean "has enough diastatic power to fully covert in the mash," then it will be up to the task. But the 2-row won't have as much protein as 6-row would, if that's important to you in this beer. That said, my guess is that most pro breweries making cream ales are using 2-row nowadays.

 

Yeah I was thinking about the diastatic power and although I had read some articles beforehand which made it sound like it wouldn't be an issue unless I went overboard with the corn I was still a bit concerned. It did work out just fine in the end however.

I guess for me the additional protein would simply add to the challenge of turning out a clear beer, my last attempt at a cream ale using six-row turned out really hazy and never really seemed to clear up even with time in the bottle.

 

It’s one of the only wine yeasts that will ferment Maltotriose.. it supposedly will ferment to .00 from what I’ve read... tried to give the Brett something to eat with the high and short mash??? Maybe?

 

Brewed my first Berliner yesterday... Well, half of it... Currently in the souring process.

60% Pils, 40% Wheat grist... Souring with Goodbelly Mango (1qt)... Pitched goodbelly at 90-95F and currently sitting at around 80F. After 12hrs, currently at 4.15 pH, so it's on it's way!

Once I get to about 3.4-3.5 pH, will complete it with the boil, 4 IBU's of Belma and 2-packs of US-05 rehydrated. Will add 2.5 lbs of red raspberries near FG. Excited for the end result!

 

Kegged a Session Black IPA this morning that was brewed with Equinox and Citra and then reused the Chico cake for a SMaSH IPA with white wheat and Mosaic (...anybody else load up on the $15/lb Mosaic sale that Yakima Valley had?) that I mashed overnight and finished this morning...nice to finish up the brew day and still have enough time for a couple mile hike and boulder session before noon

Cheers!

 

Just keg hopped a New England IPA with equinox citra and comet