What's Brewing? (July 2018)

Kegged Helles and Märzen for lagering. Both are turning out to be fantastic.

Märzen is somewhat my pride and joy. Only second time brewing and it may be a locked recipe. This time I replaced all the portion of Weyermann dark munich, with Weyermann light munich. Think I may next time do 1 lbs of dark, remainder light.

Helles, is great! Nice bready notes. Think I may want just a tad more hops, but we'll see once I start serving.

 

Culturing some Jolly Pumpkin yeast that was built up from a bottle of their Oro de Calabaza. Cold crashed, and decanted off the spent beer into a glass. It’s the best/most complex tasting ‘starter’ beer I’ve ever had - drank the entire glass

 

Belgian Golden Strong today. First opportunity to use a Cool Zone conical cooling jacket. We shall see.

 

Currently brewing a Belgian Pale Ale. Hit 84% which is a nice bump from my usual 75%. I used a little finer crush and different mash schedule. A
'Bout to boil dis bitch.

 

Kegged up all 20 gallons of IPAs on DH yesterday as well as cleaned my taps and kegs. Should be removing the hops tonight after work then crashing and fining. After fining I will add Passion Fruit puree and Ghost pepper to 1 keg of IPA. Hoping to be drinking by this weekend.

 

Today I'm kegging my Blueberry Basil Berliner. I added half a cup of torn basil leaves into secondary straight from my garden. Next time I'll add some in the boil. The basil character is not detectable at all.

Dry hopping my sacch trois blonde ale with centennial and mandarina bavaria.

 

Particular variety? Any rule of thumb for how much fresh & lightly compacted blossom as a starting point?
Reason I ask about the variety is I set out one this year that's new to me; African Blue . It's bolting now and I'm wondering if what's there is enough to consider using. It's prolific and supposedly perennial in warmer climates (doesn't survive frost). It's noticeably stronger than most any others I've planted. Although it bolts, it doesn't produce seed.

 

Just finished brewing my 2nd Kveik brew. I used Mandarina Bavaria in a pale ale with mostly Pils malt, hoping that the orange peel character from the Voss will add to the tangerine of Mandarina Bavaria. Norway is melting now. It's 86 F outside all day (hot for us) and I dont have temp control, so these bugs are prefect, since they dont mind high temps.

 

My wife is going to the Willamette Country Music Fest next month with a bunch of her family. Usually they just take coolers full of Keystone. They were talking about getting a keg of good beer and had some sticker shock. My wife asked me how much it would be to brew up my Bavarian Hefe that she loves so much. They want 15 gallons, and of course, I want some too dammit. Wrote it up for 20 gallons and they are buying all the ingredients. It always works out great when my Hefe gets in the mix... I can pretty much get an extra brewday in anytime I say Hefe. I'll brew that up either Friday or Saturday... and spend the next few weeks trying to figure out how to gather 4 kegs without killing all the beers I just put on tap...

 

Just "Dry Beaned" the porter

 

Looks great - what yeast did you use to maintain the murky color of the sour? Or is it because of the amount of fruit

 

The yeast is dregs I cultured up from a bottle of Plan Bee. The beer will actually clear up pretty well once its aged, but it still keeps the beautiful color. This is right after I racked it onto the fruit.

 

Thanks for the tip.
Andy of Porter's got back to me. Based on what he remembered he thinks he dry-hopped 4 oz. fresh basil buds and 1 oz. of Cascade, tied up in a mesh bag in the carboy.
He also concurred with your assessment by saying "the basil leaves had a much more mild aroma, which is preferable for cooking, but disappeared in the beer."
Since he was working from memory, I'll update when/if he does.

 

Brewing another gluten free pale ale. To this point I've been making small tweeks to my grist and seeing improvements. However, today I'm taking a totally different approach because I'm curious....just a 2.5g batch. This will be a Citra & Mosaic brew.

 

Had a nightmare brewday Tuesday. First Hefe and for numerous reasons that all make complete sense now it ended up taking 12 hours.

Skeptical on how it’ll taste but on a good note I transferred it to spund 48 hours after pitching, fermented at 68 slowly ramp to 70. Never had a ferment that fast. Nuts!

Brewing a FPPA clone right now. Used to try to brew this a lot a year ago. Lot has changed since, interested to see how it turns out.

 

Just bottled a saison fermented with white grape must and dry hopped with hallertau blanc. We shall see... the still samples have a bit of a medicinal aftertaste, but I’m trying not to jump to conclusions just yet. This is my 4th generation of yeast bay saison blend I, and it tends to work wonders after 5-6 months in the bottle.

 

Moved my oktoberfest to secondary and will start lowering to lager temps. Plan to make a Mango milkshake ipa tomorrow. Will be my 4th milkshake ipa and they have all been tasty so far. Also have my bottle ready to submit to the Minnesota state fair homebrew contest!. Will be just the second homebrew contest I've entered

 

Brewed a dark IPA yesterday with my old man showing him the process. I used some new Relax and Harmony hops that I got so I am excited to try it and see it turns out. I plan on adding some toasted coconut to the secondary and seeing how that goes.