What's brewing July edition

July looks busy for me too:
Today: Brew date. American Maple Amber take two. Day went GREAT! Just pitched yeast OG: 1.062 80% efficiency with actually having the correct post boil volume!!! One qrt home made maple syrup in the boil, one will go in secondary for 3 to 5 days (as long as fermentation doesn't start back up, then a small amount will be used on bottling day. Will adjust my priming sugar to compensate.

Tomorrow: Bottle my Bramling Cross Brown before doing a Bangor Maine Pub crawl with my family visiting for a week vacation.

Monday: taste my Scottish Breakfast Stout again. Last sampling was a slight oak/scotch taste with the chocolate coffee coming through in the end. Want a little more scotch/oak. If good bottling then too.

Next week the unexpectedly popular Heffewiezen will get brewed again to keep the locals happy. All grain this time and actually going to increase the Dark Wheat used.

End of the month: Request for a British Styled IPA, have had a recipe kicking around using Pilgrim, Fuggles and EKG, so feel that it is a good time for it.

Just realized that is 20 gallons in a month.... Think that is a record for me.

 

Brewed a Saison today. My club has an October club-only competition for any Belgian style beer. Local breweries sponsor the style of their choice, and the winners of the sponsored styles get to scale up their recipe to brew on the pro system. This year we're up to sponsors from 9 local breweries! Some of the breweries get creative. One this year is an all-Brett beer of any Belgian base style, either fruited or dry hopped. Today's Saison, while not all Brett, is to test a possible hop combination. Going for spicy/herbal. Blended Goldings, Nugget, and Sorachi Ace for 10 minute, flameout, and dry hop additions.

 

Bottled small batch blonde, brewed with Bootleg Biology Saccharomyces "arlintonesis" and dry hopped pretty generously with Tahoma hops, added to the fermenter about a month back. Life got in the way and I forgot about the beer.

I found the Sacch A fermentation a bit bland; you might recall I said elsewhere that the aroma reminded me of Play Doh. I'm not getting that now. I am getting fruit, which I am attributing to the 1 oz of Tahoma in a 1.75 gallon or so batch of beer. The beer has a white wine character to it, white grapes and melon? Published Tahoma descriptions include citrus/lemon, green melon, green pepper, and cedar. I don't get citrus and cedar at all. There was a moment where I thought I was getting green pepper.

I still have ~ 3 oz of Tahoma on hand, so will probably do something similar.

 

Care to share that maple amber?

 

It might not be perfect yet. LHBS ran out of Victory so had to sub in some Biscuit and increased the Special Roast. Also according Brewcipher the maple syrup will darken it some. The trick for me will be if it is if it will be red/amber or if it will be brownish red like take 1 was:
64% 2 row (my quart of maple syrup weighed about 2lbs, hence why Brewcipher says 64% here)
6% Caramel 60l
5% Special Roast (was 4%)
3% Biscuit (was not in it originally)
1% Victory (Originally 5%)
2% Munich
1oz Glacier at 60min (was originally Challenger but trying to lighten up the spicy-ness)
1oz Cascade at 15min
Wyeast American Ale 1056

Mashed high at 158 for 60 min, so that the quart of maple syrup added won't dry it out too much. And probably in about 16 days or so will rack it onto the other quart. Not sure how much I will try to sneak in at bottling. Not sure what will give the smell of it. Calculators online say about 4oz for an Amber ale, but am not sure if just dropping the sugar all together would be safe and mixing priming sugars seems dangerous.

 

Bought some yeast from the LHBS today and getting a starter going for a brew day next week - either a DIPA or an imperial porter - will be the first time using Denny's Favorite (1450).

 

Brewing for first time in several months
Had to be an leftover IPA
Using som Chinook and Columbus from the freezer
and a fresh bag of Mosaic

13 Liter
OG: 1.068
~100 IBU

10% Wheat
5% Cara-hell

20 g Chinook, 60 min
20 g Columbus, 60 min
25 g Mosaic, 10 min
25 g Mosaic, 5 min
20 g Chinook, 1 min
20 g Columbus, 1 min
25 g Mosaic, 1 min

20 g Chinook, 20 g Columbus & 25 g Mosaic, dry

 

Took a gravity sample of my cherry grisette/Saison whatever. Been sitting at 1.008 for a few days so I think it's time to cold crash and keg. The funny part is with half a gallon of blendered cherries in it the sample looks like pink lemonade. I'm hoping the color stays that nice and pink. It will be fun to see friends faces when I hand them a glass of pink beer.

 

It's summer, so I just brewed my annual WLP644 smash IPA. Pilsner malt and a pound of Citra. I'm deliberately abusing the yeast this time, no starter and 76°. Last time I kept it under 70 and was a bit disappointed by the relatively clean profile.

I think I'm going to bottle 1/4 of the batch and keg the rest. The only IPAs I ever bottled that never had oxidation problems were with 644, and I enjoy drinking the previous year's batch on my birthday. Speaking of which, this is batch # 35 for me, which coincidentally with be my age as of Wednesday. I have a single bottle of last year's batch left and I'm looking forward to it.

 

Got some medusa hops which are new to me. Brewing a pale ale with them probably on the 4th. Was thinking simcoe and medusa. Any suggestions for hop combos or amounts from people familiar with medusa would be awesome. Got lots of other hops in the freezer. Base is 6 lb 2row 6 lb optic and 8 lb pilsner

 

Have a braggot in the primary but I brewed in june.
I have a gose in a cooler souring. I will brew it July 4th morning. This morning it smelled of sour plums, prunes and raisons. I'm using Kent goulding hops and Munich wheat yeast

 

Sounds delicious. A local brewer has a hibiscus saison that is pink. It is a little tart and refreshing summer beer

 

Racked 5 gallons of Session IPA onto 5# of Peaches last night. Will get Lactose and Vanilla in the keg for Peaches & Cream (hops are M Bavaria, Amarillo, Citra with Vermont yeast).

 

Bottled up a 5g batch of kettle soured saison. The beer was kettle soured with Goodbelly and pitched onto a cake of 3711 and Goose Island Sofie dregs(Brett C?). The flat sample was promising. It's the last beer I brewed in Michigan, I'm moving later this month to Corpus Christi, Tx

 

I do not believe that Sofie has any Brett. at all in its fermentation. Just a saison strain.

 

Finally gathered up the courage to try my hand at a Gruit style brew. Unfortunately the vast majority of traditional ingredients either aren't "Australian Climate Friendly" or are difficult/expensive to obtain, so I had to improvise. All ingredients were either dried spices/herbs that I had in the cupboard, or taken fresh from my garden. The smell when it was boiling was interesting and weird – it wasn’t unpleasant at all, but it was… confusing (for want of a better word). Once it had cooled down and in the fermenter overnight, the smell is much nicer and more "integrated".


Volume: 4L (1.06 Gal)
OG: 1.048
Estimated FG: 1.016
Estimated ABV: 4.4%
Estimated IBU: 10 (although in reality the perceived bitterness will be higher due to the contribution of the various herbs and spices)

Malts:
500g (1.1 lbs) Pale Malt
100g (3.5 oz) Honey
50g (1.8 oz) Chocolate Malt
50g (1.8 oz) Rolled Oats

Herbs/Spices (all added at 30 mins):
5g (0.18 oz) -
- Strawberry Leaves
- Lemon Leaves
- Artichoke Leaves
- Ginger (grated)
2g (0.07 oz) -
- Rosemary
- Fennel Seed
- Fennel Leaves
- Lavender Leaves
- Dandelion Flowers
1g (0.04 oz) -
- Cloves
- Allspice
- Sage

And because I chickened out:
2g (0.07 oz) Chinook @ 30 mins

Yeast:
Safwheat WB-06
(to get some subtle esters and phenols, but fermenting down at the bottom of its temp range to maximise clove and avoid banana)

 

That's interesting. I would love to know what strain it is. I enjoy that beer fresh but absolutely love it with about 2 years on. It ages beautifully.

 

Transferred my Fort Point clone to its keg last night. The transfer well, but I killed my utility sink in the process. I was filling the empty carboy up with water to soak and I dropped it when I tried to lift it out of the sink. It fell about 12 inches, opening up an existing crack in the bottom of the (plastic) sink. That's annoying, but I'm feeling pretty lucky that the carboy didn't break and that I still have all my fingers!

Maybe it's time to invest in a Better Bottle? What do folks use to clean the insides of those things? I figure my carboy brush would be a no-go because it would scratch it.