What's Brewing - June '17 edition

Stoked that I just won first place at a local brewery's (Birds Fly South) "Iron Brew" Homebrew competition with an all Galaxy Brett DIPA! We were all given the same pre-boil wort and it was up to us what hops and yeast to use. I'm going to be brewing the beer on their system to release in their taproom soon as well

 

Just brewed the brown I mentioned earlier. Brew day went OK ish. Still dialing in the water factors to stop being over target on "amount into the bucket". Am about .5 gal over again but this time I dialed back my boil off rate in brewcipher to start with less water.... Can't believe this is such a struggle...

Also learned that the anvil in kettle strainer is absolutely a waste of $45. Have tried to use it a few times now and it clogs faster then one can believe. Just sticking with my old "not filter or strainer and extra brew bag" method from here on out.

 

Brewed my IPA today... Brew day was flawless! OG was 1.056, one point above my expected. Expecting a FG of 1.008-1.009 with Chico.

My only debate... I have two dry hops planned. Debating if I want to add the first during active fermentation in 2-3 days or wait until it's at FG to add the first... Then I plan to let sit 2-3 days before adding bit charge #2 for only 1-2 days before crashing and kegging.

Lately the aroma on my beers have not as intense as I want, even at large amounts. Process has not changed... Only thing is lately I have been adding hops during fermentation at first and wondering if that is causing a muting effect on the pungency I am after. Never had issues before, and I think that is the only thing that I have changed. So I think I answered my own question...

 

Brewed a coffee porter Sunday morning. Texture is more like a milk stout since it has lactose and maltodextrin. Little bit of fuggles and plenty of roast bitterness from Carafa II and brown malt. The coffee doesn't come into the picture until kegging. It will get a quart of cold brew made with 4oz of coffee added to the keg.
Best part is my neighbor who is 1 batch into this crazy hobby hung out while I brewed and asked a ton of questions hoping to learn a little bit. I definitely think he has caught the brewing bug.

 

Just rebrewed the BYO's Fort Point clone recipe. It turned out really great last time I made it, so I'm hopeful this batch will be good too. Although, to be fair, I wasn't super on-point with my mash temp this time. But I absolutely nailed my FG!

 

Would be interested in hearing a recipe for them, if you don't mind terribly. Which brett species did you use?

 

I wish I knew...

For the 100% brett citra pale, I harvested brett from a bottle of Urban Artifact's Phrenology. Built it up on a stir plate for a few weeks before pitching. I haven't been able to find any concrete answers as to what species it is, but I believe it's Brett C.

Citra pale ale (for 11 gal)
18 lb 2-row
1.5 lb Crystal 40
1 lb carapils

Mash at 150F

.25 oz Columbus and 1 oz citra at 60
1 oz citra at 15
1 oz cascade at 15
2 oz citra and 1 oz cascade at flameout

Another 2 oz citra in each fermenter for dry hop

**I did an extended mash on this one (about 4 hours before collecting the wort) and it was super fermentable. I don't think I'll do that again because it left both pale ales at around 1.002-1.004. I like pale ales dry, but that's just crazy!

 

Looks like that beer has both brett and sacch. in it. From their website: Wild Cultures: Brettanomyces clausenii, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Not that you asked about this, but B. anomalus, which var. claussenii is a part of, are not very good attenuators because they, as a species, cannot ferment maltose. In other words, if your Brett C beer is getting good attenuation, you probably have something else in there as well. Important to consider, especially if your source of microbes is in question or it comes from a lab with a history of saccharomyces contamination, like White Labs (pre-pure pitch).

 

Interesting. I didn't look into it too much, just built up the culture and pitched. I really liked Phrenology and figured it'd work well in a hoppy pale ale.

I must say though that I've also pitched Brett. Claussenii from a white labs vial, and that fermented down a berliner weisse to around 1.002. There was no other strain pitched into that beer, and still attenuated well.

 

White Labs has issues with their non-sacch. microbes having sacch. in them. Both brett and LABs. Thus the confusion a while back about lactobacillus being able to fully ferment wort. It can't, but because the White Labs vial also had sacch. in it, it was apparently able to do so. The Pure Pitch format should solve these issues.

 

I've never had success fully attenuating a Bretton C only brew...only tried twice for my first 2 all brett beers and did mixed cultures after that.

 

From what I've heard, this is where the "myth" that lacto can create a pellicle came from as well.

 

So I managed to "work from home" on the Friday before father's day, and brewed the Tank 7 clone. Then brewed a different Biere de Garde on father's day, than I had originally intended. I went with the artisanal Biere de Garde recipe from the Farmhouse Ales book. As suggested, I used Fuggle for bittering, and strisselspalt for the 20 minute addition. I'd never used strisselspalt before, and I'm not sure that I love the aroma; at least, not at the point it went into the fermenter. It's got a long way to go, so we'll see how it is after fermentation and a couple of months of garde-ing.

 

Last night I transferred my Nugget Nectar "clone" into secondary for dry-hopping

 

Brewing up a Citra heavy Wheat Brett IPA right now...cheers!

 

Any reason you are transferring for the dry hop? The new school of thought is to keep it in primary and dry hop there for a couple of days. Saves on O2 exposure especially if you can't do a closed transfer. I found it made a huge difference in my hoppy beers. Just throwing that out there for consideration next time.

 

@marknu1 Would you share that Tank 7 clone? I've always wanted to try that one.

 

Moxee-Moron Imperial Session IPA (2016 Beer Camp) is one of my favorites

 

Certainly! I found it on the world wide webs, so I can definitely share how I approached it.

The recipe apparently comes from a guy who had a few e-mails back and forth with Boulevard. So the grain bill and hop schedule should be nearly spot on. The yeast, however, is not a guarantee, as Boulevard uses a house Belgian strain. Nobody seemed quite sure about which commercially available yeast to use. Wyeast 3711 was mentioned quite a bit, so I went with that. Here's what mine looked like:

11 lbs 7.6 oz Briess Pale 2-row (77.6%)
3 lbs flaked corn (20%)
5.7 oz Rahr white wheat (2.4%)

.20 oz Magnum (10.50% AA) at 208F (just pre-boil)
.20 oz Simcoe (12.70% AA) at 55 minutes
2.5 oz Amarillo (9.80% AA) at 5 minutes
1 oz Amarillo (9.80% AA) in whirlpool

Wyeast 3711

1 oz Amarillo dry hop

Mash at 151F 60 minutes
Mash Out at 170F 10 minutes

70-minute boil

Cool to just below 70F, and pitch yeast from 1.5l starter

Ferment at 70F

Target OG 1.071
Target FG 1.010

And this part will be new for me. I plan to filter the beer, and then bottle condition with champagne yeast in 750ml amber bottles, corked. My understanding is this is similar to what Boulevard does.

So the big IF here will be the yeast. I think it's going to taste great regardless, but if 3711 doesn't quite do it, it may take a few more iterations to find the closest strain.

 

So you can plug it in to your system, and since the AA of your hops may differ from mine, here are the IBUs to shoot for in each boil hop addition:

Magnum at 6.4 IBU
Simcoe at 7.1 IBU
Amarillo (5 minute) at 14.0 IBU
Amarillo (whirlpool) at 9.6 IBU