What's Brewing - May '17 edition

Love Citra hops! Bought a pound when I did a double iPad and still need to use some more of it. Sounds like some brews I'd enjoy

 

Have 2 IPA's fermenting, same recipe but one has wit yeast for a try at a white IPA.

Bought ingredients for a GMC IPA that will have a mix of Trois and Chimay yeast as an experiment.

 

Brewed again today. Bought some Bullion when buying hops for the APESB, so made up something with the left over grains. Again frustrated at boil off rate as today it seemed that 1gal/hr is what it actually is for me because I ended up with 5.5gal (maybe wort was about one inch above the 5gal line on the bucket). Good news though was the OG is 1.063 predicted was 1.062 (for just 5gal in the bucket). Looks good from that angle.

This officially fills all the fermenting buckets in the house.

 

We just brewed a 10g batch of a Citra/mosaic hopped IPA....Will eventually be dry hopped with more of each.

Also took about 3g of extra wort and hopped that with a minimal amount of Mosaic and will be trying to do a wild fermentation....Fogured why the hell not see what kind of wild yeast we have around here in West Michigan.

 

Brewed a pale ale today at my LHBS Alecraft in Bel Air, MD as a BIAB demo/class. It went well. I had 7 people there and they all said they learned something. One guy told me that he got reinforcement on some of his processes and learned some of what he does is frivolous or pointless.
I was going to brew the Averagely Perfect ESB but chickened out on that for a class because I thought I would get too many questions on how to make invert sugar.
The beer is a basic lawnmower beer I make every summer.
5.5lbs 2-row
3.5lbs Vienna
.5lbs crystal 20L
.25lbs Carapils
1/2oz Columbus @ 60 minutes
1oz Ahtanum @ flameout
US-05 for the yeast

 

Picked up stuff for a pale ale. Inspired from Notch's "Land Speed Record". Golden Promise, white wheat malt, little bit of acid malt. Going real heavy on Citra with a healthy amount of Huell Melon and a dash of Simcoe (I need to use it up). Was staring at London 1318 for a while but decided to be "real crazy" and try Gigayeast's Vermont IPA for the heck of it. Hoping to get this around 4.5%. Plan on mashing higher to retain some body.

Then (for my first time) wash and reuse the yeast for a bigger IPA in a few weeks.

 

Brewed an American Wheat Ale with Amarillo and Cascade hops and fermenting with Wyeast 1007 German Ale to grow some yeast for a hoppy kolsch and maybe a Düsseldorf Alt. Happy brewing!

 

Keg cleaning, pale ale kegging, probably going to do a second dry-hopping in the keg.

 

Wanted to brew a Berliner weisse for an upcoming party but I'm nervous about getting a lacto infection so I brewed a 10 gallon 4.5 50 50 wheat 2row base with Ariana hops 15~ ibus. 5 got imperial Dryhop yeast and will be dryhopped with more Ariana and the other 5 will be au natural with Munich classic which I'm hoping is the same as lallemand munuch that I've used in the past. Should be two completely different beers either way. Anyone have any experience with Ariana hops. They smelled amazing like a hallertau Citra type thing.

 

Brewed a Pale-ish 1.044 Ale with Maris Otter, Wheat Malt, Rye Malt, Victory, and Flaked Barley. Bursted and hopstanded-ed with Amarillo. Wyeast 1968.

 

Hey all - I'm a new brewer with 4 batches under my belt. Right now I have a NEIPA in secondary and just put a hazy Pale Ale in primary. Really happy with how both brews are developing. I hope to post pics soon! Cheers!

 

Brewed again just yesterday. Twice in May! That's big for me, given that we have a 16-month old who recently started climbing on EVERYthing. Thanks to my wife for allowing my hobby. Ha ha!

This time around I brewed (what I hope is a reasonable) clone of a classic, Anchor Liberty Ale. Nearly a SMASH; Great Western Pale Malt, Cascade at 60, 45 and whirlpool. Dry-hop later with whole cascade. Pitched a 1.5l starter of wlp051. Nearly a SMASH in that I just couldn't resist adding a tad of crystal 60 for color. Should be a great beer to enjoy on the 4th of July.

I'm going to try something new with this one. Liberty Ale is apparently carbonated naturally using a technique called "bunging," where they trap CO2 near the end of primary fermentation. Since my fermenter is not made to handle anything more than a few PSI, I can't do it like Anchor. I'm going to try krausening, instead. I built a spunding valve for a corny keg, with an adjustable pressure relief valve (PRV). I reserved about 1.5 quarts of wort from the Liberty Ale batch, with which I'll make a starter with more wlp051. After primary I'll transfer to keg, pitch the starter when it reaches high krausen, and pop on the spunding valve. The PRV is set up to release at about 30 PSI, so that should get me about 2.5-ish volumes of CO2 at 65F. Should be a fun experiment.

 

Today, brewing a spruce tip ale. Half bottles as is, the other half aged on cherry wood.

 

Brewed up 5 gallons of barleywine as part of a Homebrew club project. 10 brewers did 5 gallons each and it is going into a buffalo trace bourbon barrel. OG was 1.097 FG is 1.010. Gonna be a beast!

 

More of a “doing” than “brewing” update… Cleaned all my lines yesterday, which I try to do bi-monthly… Will be tapping my new session pale today I have been posting about (Azacca, Mandarina Bavaria, Belma and Columbus), so I am excited to see how that came out.

Adjusted the temperature of my keezer from a nominal 40F to 38F… Mostly for a slightly better lagering/cold conditioning temp when I move my lagers from primary to the keg. Also, working my “tuning” settings on the controller to hit that average of 38F beer temp, balancing the whole set point vs. offset and such to reduce cycling on the compressor.

Otherwise not much going on… No brew plans for another two or three weeks, probably. Thinking of re-brewing my “international” bitter recipe again which was awesome and racking my dry hopped Pils into the keg for 4-5 weeks conditioning about the same time I brew that bitter. Following that, a super dank pale ale… Lots of Columbus, Simcoe, Nugget, Chinook and a touch of Galaxy/Citra in the dry hop… Chico ale strain… High IBU, dry (1.006-1.008 target), etc… Excited about doing that one.

Lastly, working on a porter/stout recipe utilizing fresh Vietnamese coffee (hella oily stuff!), vanilla beans, charred oak and cocoa nibs. Thinking of something in the 7-8% ABV range

 

Whipped this up with left overs...

2 row/MO/Wheat/Oats/Rye
Citra/Amarillo/Mand Bavaria
WY 1056

No clue how she'll taste. haha

 

Got some ingredients for a saison, and a hop filter!

 

Saw your post and thought it would be fun to try out Burlington. Only thing is I bought Burton while at the store. Oh well, should be interesting either way.

Brewing a DIPA with golden promise, wheat, and honey. It will be hopped with Galaxy and a little summit.

 

Got 3 Cantillon Brett strain isolates in the mail yesterday, as well as drei. Have a couple individual wild isolates of Brett c from @CASK1 a couple years ago I'm waking up too. I'm kegging up my 15 gals Belgian Saison this weekend. Bottling off 8 six packs once carbed with each 6 pack dosed with each of the strains, and a couple others I have.

 

I bought ingredients to try and make a sort of clone/interpretation of Petrus aged red.

Brewed a Sofie clone, I nailed the SRM and my OG. Real Sofie in the glass.