What's Brewing - November Edition!

Its a beautiful autumn day here. Brewing a robust porter. My pre-chiller that I built is dropping the ground water temp from 67.5F to 59F, hoping that helps speed up chilling and gets me to pitch temp without having to use the chest freezer!

Cheers

 

The brew day went really well with the exception of getting lower than usual efficiency. I had a string of batches where I was getting 74% on the dot every time but the last two have been mid 60s%. Hoping that when I start milling my own grain (starting next batch) I will see an improvement and consistency.

 

Getting geared up to do a pawpaw cream ale. Tweaked my recipe considerably since starting the pawpaw beers a couple years ago. Then on to fixing a "broken" persimmon recipe and also brewing a winter warmer right after Thanksgiving.

 

Just brewed up an American brown ale today. Everything went super smooth and hit my SG perfectly. Now to decide what
lager to brew for my next batch (have some saved Bavarian lager yeast to use). Maybe a dark lager

 

I’ve got a smoked orange ale about to go into secondary. Named it Santa’s Pipe. 1/3 cherry smoked malt, the rest Maris Otter and a bit of crystal and black. Orange zest at knockout as well as spruce tips. I may add some more orange zest in secondary depending on taste and fragrance when I sample.

I have NO idea how this is going to turn out, and that’s pretty exciting.

 

Brewed a Tripel today. Took BAs advice and kept the grist simple with just Pils malt and sugar. Hit my target OG of 1.079. Looking forward to seeing 1214 work for the first time.

 

I only have one beer planned for this month. Sometime this week (or maybe next) I’ll do a 100% Brett pale ale. Using Brett C, WLP645, fermented in the 85F-90F range. Grain bill of Belgian Pils, flaked wheat, and carahell. Hopped with Crystal and a little Amarillo.

 

Got a full batch of a 1.082 stout going. It's a larger/imperial version of a stout/porter I've done before with a few different grain % changes. Fertmenting rather slowly with Imperial Darkness.

Gonna hit it with some cacao nibs in the fermenter for a week, then a day or 2 before cold crashing I'll add in some cracked coffee beans. Then the beer will be split between 2 2.5G kegs. Each keg will get cold brew concentrate and some cracked coffee beans (one more than the other) and then one will get a madagascar vanilla bean.

 

Winter Warmer today, based on a brown ale-ish base. Will (ultimately) have black treacle, cinnamon, vanilla, cherries, and hazelnut as spices/adjuncts. And more than a little Special B for raisin-y flavor. No beets.

 

should note that this was the first time i tried doing a "dunk sparge." I do single vessel BIAB in a 10.5G kettle and have found that doing 13lb+ grain bills for 5.5-5.75gallons of NEIPAs to fermenter (I lose maybe .25g to kettle) basically maxes me out with 8 gallons of RO water.

So I split it to about 6.5G in the kettle and 2.5G in a second kettle. Pulled out the bag - squeezed the hell out of it, poured some "sparge water" over it, then dunked it, squeezed it, dunked it, squeezed it, etc. in the second kettle and then combined. Seemed to have worked well as I hit my gravity target with about .5 extra gallons to fermenter. I'll continue doing this for larger beers such as DIPAs

 

Go @VikeMan, that sounds excellent. What does treacle add???

 

Black Treacle is basically unsulfured blackstrap molasses. In beer, I think the best descriptor is probably burnt caramel.

 

Currently on day 4 of fermentation of a Cali Common (ish?) beer - don’t love how this style category essentially only allows for an Anchor Steam clone, so I changed out the Northern Brewer hops for Chinook and Crystal with a big ole whirlpool addition, and maybe a dry hop ? This should add a bit of variation I suppose....fermented at 60 with WY2112...

So did I just make a pale ale ?

 

Out Of My Gourd pumkin ale aging on 6.5 lbs of carmalized pumpkin, cinamon and nutmeg. Got about a week to go then I'm gonna keg it for Thanksgiving!

Also brewed up a christmas stout about three weeks. Gonna let it sit for another two weeks or so and then rack to secondary on top of vanilla beans coffee and maybe try and possibly some immitation maple syrup..

 

Today I learnt a valuable lesson about what happens when you try to ferment a big RIS in a plastic bucket with limited headroom and a bubbler airlock.

Fortunately the bucket is pretty old and knackered, so the weak point after the airlock got bunged up turned out to be the lid deforming and coming loose, so I didn't lose more than a few oz of beer. It looked pretty spectacular to come home to, though!

The beer has been emergency-transferred to another fermenter with a load more headroom, and seems to be doing alright.

 

Brewing a Best Bitter today. 100% Maris Otter mashed at 156. LondonIII yeast, First Gold hops.

 

Just finished bottling a coffee stout, which gets me to the 50-gallon mark in my homebrewing affliction.

 

Brewed an brut ipa with hornindal kveik 60/40 oat malt/ pilsner
Hopped with azacca and denali.

 

Have a 1.5L starter spinning as I prepare to step it up to 3L for a Doppelbock this weekend! My first bock of any type, I look forward to seeing how it turns out. It will tap in the middle of winter (Feb), so having a nice rich lager on at that point will be welcome.

Immediately after the Doppelbock will be a Kolsch in a week or two (repeat of my previous which was phenomenal). Only plan to add a small percentage of carahell at 1-2% of the grist as the only real change (and using Barke vs. standard Pils). My Kolsch is one of my most “in demand” beers from my friends, so I finally want to rebrew it. Adding the carahell because I really like the flavor that grain offered to my Helles which was I think 92% Pils, 8% Carahell. So I’d like to put a little in the Kolsch recipe.

Currently on deck to be tapped include my Munich Dunkel and English Porter… Just waiting for a keg to kick at this point, which sadly will likely be my Helles ☹