What's Brewing? (January Edition)

Well it has been a busy weekend for me:
Belongs in December, but hey:
-Transferred my belagian dark strong to secondary on saturday
-Brewed my Black IPA on Saturday
-Brewed an Imperial Red yesterday

And my official first brew of the year, was today. I brewed a Citra IPA extract kit my sister gave to me. First time using a proprietary hop, and it is the only one in it.

 

3 comp beers for Ark-La-Tex Brew-Off in April :

American Stout
Imperia Stout
Wee Heavy

 

Happy Brew Year!

I just brewed a SMaDH IPA with two hops I haven't used before: El Dorado and Azacca; plus Maris Otter and US-05. Unfortunately I was all out of whirlfloc. Maybe I'll try gelatin, this really shouldn't be a cloudy beer.

This was my first brew with the new kitchen stove with an 18.5k BTU burner, and it performed beautifully. Heating is almost 45% quicker, and my boil off rate is about double, from .5 to 1 gallon / hour. I actually had to use fermcap to stop an imminent boilover! My brew day was almost 1 hour shorter.

 

Finally bottled my Scottish Export today. Been out of commission with a bug the last week.

Smelled good but trub looked a bit like ground beef

Finished at 1.014 about 3 points lower than expected.

Happy New Year all!

 

Brewed up "Hoppy New Beer!" this morning...Sacc trois session IPA with Citra, Chinook, Simcoe and El Dorado hop hash. Smelled great going into the fermenter!

Cheers!

 

Gonna take another stab at another 100% brettanomyces fermented beer this week that will be fermented with Yeast Bay's Amalgamation II. Pale sub 6% beer hopped with Citra and Exp Stonefruit form Yakima Valley Hops. Going for a crisp easy drinking beer with subtle yet present yeast and hop character.

The first 100% brett beer I brewed was fermented with Wyeast Brett Clausenii season strain from Summer '16 (5151). The beer came out nice in only a 5 week fermentation, slight funk, some citrus and lightly tart and has held up well in the bottle a year later. Got lucky on that one.

The second was with brett brux TYB184 from yeast bay (isolated from a New England brewery). It turned out to be a dump, but probably way more due to process than recipe. Looking back, while I made a starter, I definitely did not have enough yeast for what I was trying to do. Way too phenolic and other obvious signs of yeast stress. It eventually became acetic after a few months of holding onto it probably due to more than usual oxygen pickup.

I'm trying to dial in a better pitching rate for these types of beers and am going to shoot for around 1.25 M cells per mL per degree plato as suggested by Chad Yakobson in @OldSock 's book American Sour Beers. Going to do a two step, 6 day starter before pitching.

 

This week, when it warms some, Irish stout, Columbus,cascade,chinook IPA and the return of the Belgian blueberry

 

That TYB184 has got to be from HF. Gonna try to sneak in a brew super early in the AM before a quick work trip to WY/MT that I hope to use that again in secondary.

Primary with 3522
Pils/Wheat
Saaz/Nelson in kettle
Pitch TYB184 + HF dregs in secondary

 

I kinda figured it was from Hill Farmstead or Allagash based on the description when I used it. Beer sounds like it will be delicious.

 

I believe TYB207 is Allagash. In American Sour beers you will see something about Allagash’s Brett being described as having a “sweet tart” flavor. Sweet Tarts is also in the description of 207, I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

 

Hoping to do a bitter soon but waiting for the outside temperature to get above 20 degrees F.

 

Well I got my yeast starters......started. Brett L and Chimay for a quad.

 

Took a final gravity reading of my all Strata IPA today before cold crashing. I’ve tried a lot of the new and experimental hops over the last year and a half and to me this one really really stands out. Gonna wait until it’s fully carbed for the final call but this might be the next IT Hop. Has the complexity and punch of the heavy hitters. Tons of fruit and subtle dank without the catty or armpit of Citra and Mosaic or the kinda weird notes the Ekuanot or I7 have.

Bummed I didn’t buy more as Farmhouse is out and according to Indie it’s all gone until next fall. Supposedly a much larger acreage is planned for next year. Sounds like Sierra Nevada bought a lot for their Fresh Hop Session IPA that was in the mix pack (that was phenomenal).

 

As soon as it warms up a little, I will FINALLY get around to Brewing the AP ESB. I have had my invert sugar ready to go for a couple months now.
I might also do another batch, but still deciding on that one- debating between Pilsner, Scottish ale, or some other lager.

 

Tomorrow will be brewing this years Maibock
5 gallons all grain, can lager in the cold room for a few months at 38Deg
Cheers all

 

Nothing truly brewing as Wisconsin is cold as balls right now. But I'm going to be playing around with some yeast experiments in the meantime. Really dive into the world of esters/phenols. Combining yeasts. Pitch counts. All sorts of good stuff planned.

 

Base of a blueberry stout I'm making today. Feel free to throw in critiques.

 

No critique on your recipe, should be fine. Just be prepared to use a shit ton of blueberries to get much flavor.

 

Got ten pds of the best blue berries in the world. I live in hammonton nj where most of the states blueberries come from. They beat the pants off Florida and Washington blueberries.