What's Brewing? (January Edition)

Tomorrow, bottling centennial lager. Racking big ipa and brewing a session pale with cascade and chinook.

 

Brewed a SMaSH-- 100% Vienna malt + Experimental Stone Fruit hop (from Yakimavalleyhops) last week. 1.060, ~65IBUs. These hops were 17% AA, so all my IBUs came from late additions. Dry hopping it today. These hops smell vibrant as hell, loads of lime tangerine and kiwi out of the bag... I don't get any stone fruit! I'm very excited to see how they taste/smell in beer.

 

Batch 001 of the year next week. Probably a cream ale, Kölsch, something along those lines. Going to split a 10 gal. batch and test 0 PSI vs 15 PSI and see which one I prefer.
Here’s my super simple 3-piece ‘spunding valve’.

 

I transferred my English strong ale to secondary and added a vial of WL Brett c. I had a pretty thick trub in the primary that I didn't want to transfer and ended up losing some volume. I don't want a big head space in the secondary fermenter so I whipped a 1060 ish wort with pale ale dme and molasses. When it cools, I'll use it as a top off. If I have any leftover, I'll use for starters

 

Just submitted 2 entries for the All American Homebrew competition, hosted in downtown Cincinnati during their annual winter beer fest. A sour dark saison and a hoppy rye saison. Both saisons, yet both completely different from one another

 

My first kettle sour, a Raspberry Berliner.

1.031 OG to 1.005 FG. Final pH post fermentation was 3.25.

Added 3.5lb Red Raspberry the other day. Color looks really nice after one day on the fruit! Plan to keg this upcoming weekend.

 

Enjoying a light 4.8% witbier brewed according to Brewing Classic Styles except used Belgian pilsner malt and a slight grains of paradise addition. Would shoot for more citrus flavor in the future but enjoying the wheatiness! Lots of great beers in this thread!

 

Busy brew day for me. Brewing 11 gallons of golden sour today. I got my hands on some ECY cultures, so I'm splitting the batch and pitching Senne Valley into one carboy and Bug County into the other. Grist is 40% pils, 40% german pale malt, 9% wheat, 9% spelt, 2% aromatic. Mash at 156.

Also kegging my breakfast stout and my house culture saison today.

 

Kegging citra centennial IPA. Will taste friday

 

Finalized my IPL recipe for this upcoming weekend, my first IPL so I'm quite excited!

Grist is 2-row, flaked wheat, carahell and light munich. Some sugar to dry it out a little.

OG ~ 1.049
FG ~ 1.008
5.3% ABV

Using all new hops I've personally never used yet in my recipes... Warrior for the bittering charge followed with Amarillo, Comet and Medusa for flavor/aroma.

Will be pitching a healthy dose of #2206 and fermenting at 48F. Will get a single dry hop near FG (when I raise the temp up to 55-60F for this one) and then a small keg hopping which will be added with the priming sugar to naturally carb/spund in the keg to finish. Crashing and lager for 2-weeks or so at freezing and hope for the best!

 

Second brew of the month will be a Vienna-based Imperial Amber. The recipe called for Palisade (which I could not find at the time) and Simcoe (which I forgot to buy). I'll be substituting Willamette and some leftover Citra. Should come in between 8 and 8.5%

 

I think I asked you this before but thoughts on carahell? I know you brewed a pils (I think) with it. Did you like it?

 

Already dropped my temps on the Black IIPA and Black ISA a few days ago. Adding the first charge of Dryhops in the fermenter tonight. Will keg on Saturday with final DH addition.

 

That Pilsner I used it in did finish recently and it turned out great! So I would say it was a success... Going to keep trying before making a final accessment. I have a Helles coming up that will be using it as well, so the malt should really shine on that.

 

Do you think it added to body and head retention like it says? What did you think of flavor contribution? How much did you use? Thanks!

 

Honestly, I don't know as this Pilsner was different than my "house" Pils, that would have been a better way to test it out. I mashed higher, higher FG and different carbonation method... I used about 5% and the rest Pils malt I believe, and it just has a nice bready, cereal grain like flavor. It's really pleasant, but hard to me to know what was new process/recipe and the carahell, especially at 5%. Head retention is about the same as my other Pils before it (that didn't spund, use carahell, etc...). So don't really have comment on that either. I usually always have really solid head retention regardless.

 

Just racked 5gal RIS to secondary onto French Oak, Buffalo trace bourbon, Coconut Extract, Vanilla extract and Cacao.

 

Inkbird 308 really a great one, good price and high quality.

 

Today bottleing the big ipa, racking to secondary and adding spice mix to mole beer. Sunday brewing another bad ass burton ale. Really like the way my goldings and fuggles are tasting in this brew

 

Awesome! I think my biggest question was around flavor impact. I'm using it in an IPA but was a little worried. It doesn't sound like it was overly impactful that way at 5% which is about what I'm using. Thanks!