Brewing Activities (2019)

Today I kegged "Raspberry Crème," a Blonde Ale with Raspberries, Vanilla Bean, and Lactose. This is for a small indoor festival next weekend.

 

Kegged the first hop experiment today that used random inexpensive hops on the hotside and the sexy high end stuff for DH. This one was mostly nugget/Galena hotside and all Citra with a bit of Nugget in the dry hop. Really stoked on the profile going into the keg... we’ll see.

Batch 13 of Kolsch
Barke Pils
14% Vienna
Acid
Magnum/Loral @ 90/30

Gonna use the new Lallemand Koln yeast. V12 needs another week of lagering but I must say it might be my favorite so far and it was wlp072 French Ale yeast. Actually I’ve now made three different styles of beer (Kolsch, IPA, Robust Porter) with it and I really like the yeast. Incredibly clean and almost malt forward but some great esters at higher temps.

 

Average Perfect Brown. The GP i had went bad and only ordered 6# new so i had to mix it with 2 row. Also used the full oz instead of .80. Very bready taste so far. I'm surprised how hazy the yeast was. I wonder if any brewery's use it for NEIPAs.

 

Amber sour blender. Heating the strike water, crushed the grains: 94% mild malt, 2% amber malt, 1.5% C60, 1.5% pale chocolate, 1% Carafa Special III. All malts Muntons, except, of course, the Carafa, No hops. Going to kettle sour with Lacto plantarum, then blend with half of Averagely Imperfect* American Brown, and add Suburban Brett to make a sour brown ale.

*As per previous posts, this came out quite raisiny, and I am convinced that the brown malt I was sent was in fact a roasted crystal malt along the lines of a C120, C150, Special B, etc. I'll keep about half the batch as is and use the rest to make this sour.

 

Bottling Saison Pêche, dry hopping Chinook/Simcoe IPA & adding cacao nibs to Stout.

 

brewed another big stout,,,,,,,,,,,,, cause a good friend left the brewing scene leaving me new fermenters and all the usual extras. Hate to see him go, but this batch is for him.
18 lb marris
1 lb bairds chocolate
1 lb black patent
1 lb flaked barley
.5 lb munich 50/60
3 oz willamett 60/10
1 habanyero @10
1 lb suger
notty slurry

secondary
1 lb flaked coco nut
4 oz nibs
4 oz each heavy toast oak and light toast oak
yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

 

Yet another IPA today
Rahr 2 Row
10% Carafoam
3% Carahell
1% Acidulated
Pahto 90/20
El Dorado, Mosaic Cryo WP
Galena Leaf in Hopback
Wlp030

El Dorado, Mosaic, Azacca DH

Ground up the leaf this time before adding it to the hop back. Gonna ferment a little warmer than usual. Really liking the esters from 030.

 

I have to say I always enjoy reading about the beers that you brew. But I must ask -- and I am completely serious -- who exactly drinks all of your beer? Cheers!

 

Did 10 gallon wort with 10lb 2 row, 12 pd Munich, 0.5 Crystal 40, 0.25 honey malt. Hopped with 2oz of 8%AA cluster at 60min. Split the batch with 5 gallons getting Bootleg Oslo and the other half getting WLP002. Don’t really know what I was going for but smelled good and I wanted to make ten gallons for my stockpile as I don’t want to brew when it’s cold out. Hoping to make a pseudo dark lager and some sort of English dark ale.We shall see.

 

Wet hop IPA yesterday

100% Vienna
1.5 kg centennial, mainly as flameout
us05
og 1.055

 

Tapped my Oktobefest collaboration that I brewed with some local breweries.

My recipe and my process.

Seems to be getting some good reviews.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/55638/440992/

 

The harvest is in, now it's time for a pumpkin/squash ale. Sunday.

 

V2 of a hoppy “Italian Style” Pils

Admiral Pils
20% Gallagher’s Best Pale
2% Caramunich
2% Acidulated

Magnum for 35 IBUs at 90
2oz Saphir, 2oz Calista at 2

TYB Hessian Pils

Much harder water profile than V1.

Gonna use this batch to krausen V1 for carbonation.

 

For anyone who wants a picture of the beer in a traditional mug with a decorative pretzel:
https://www.drasticmeasuresbrew.com/tasting-room

Kudos on the pro-collab. You said breweries (plural), and I see from Drastic Measures website that the other brewery is in Des Moines. Can you say more about the collaboration?

Also, your process, but another breweries equipment, presumably. Were they well equipped for your process, did they need to make changes to equipment, or were you able to adapt your process to fit their equipment? Sounds like a nice project. The DrasticMeasures website says "followed the German Purity Law." Does this mean no chemical anti-oxidant?

I thought it was interesting that the reviewer said he should have considered a second growler. I guess it all comes down to consumption rates, but wonder if the benefits of LODO are likely to be lost on growler sales.

 

Here it is out of a traditional fasser gravity poured.




Yes there were other breweries present that were not in the official collaboration, for the process, discussion, brewday. I have been brewery consulting for at least a solid year now, helping local (and some not to such so) on process and quality control. DM and Lua ( big grove, Forager) are some I have helped, and it was their idea to finally brew style worth a shit ( I kid.. sorta). So we picked a festbier, since DM was having an Oktobefest party and I was as well and it's about as German as you can get.

Yea my process, deoxygenated everything, slow gentle transfers, etc. NO most certainly it was not setup for anything like it. Typical single infusion non heated mash tun system. I went the night before the brew and reconfigured nearly everything to be as good as I could. I used the heat exchanger as a step mashing device, and added a bunch of stones for deoxygenation of water, grist and vessels. It was a PITA, zero attention is paid in american systems for any kind of gentle wort/process control. No chemicals, Sauergut for pH control, spunded, etc. The gas tank got a work out that day..

Brewing water


Recipe was 70% barke pils 30% barke Munich, 21 ibu Mittlefuh @ 50min ( 60 min boil)
pitched some healthy active yeast and fermented at 43f.

Lagered for 6 weeks in the FV where it was spunded, and then packed directly .

I mean a growler ( actually crowler in this case) will never be as fresh at the tap, which will not be as fresh as the lagering vessel. I have some crowlers here that I am aging to determine packaging and QA/QC, and while they are not as fresh as tap, they are still way more fresh than 99% of us craft beer, and pretty much all of imported beer. It's not perfect but it still is easy to distinguish the process used to make the beer.

At the end of the day, The beer and the party was a success.

 

looks like fun

 

Amazed the Andechs strain fermented that well that cold

 

OOF...sorry to hear that!

 

Brewed up the IPA I meant to last week. All went very smoothly. Tried some new things this time around. In a nutshell:

75% Distilled / 25% Tap Water to get a softer starting water profile. Added salts as needed to get my target water profile. Wanted to reduce the hardness of the starting water profile, usually I am just using tap.

Trying a dual-pitch of yeast at a temperature higher than I usually go for. Did a 90/10% pitch of US-04 and WB-06, pitched at 70F. Will reduce to 65F in a few hours. No oxygenation to wort.

Will be moved to a keg with a floating dip tube (with screen filter) in about two days, ideally 3-5 points from FG. The entire dry hop will be in the well purged keg and the beer racked into it. Will allow beer to spund/carbonate for two or three days, for the dry hop contact time, then cold-crash and move finished beer into a (well purged) serving keg. In the past, I have not moved the beer off the hops but the beer goes downhill quickly, IMO, when sitting on the hops full time. Tried it a few times, prefer the get the beer off them.

OG was 1.066... FG is expected to be 1.018. Hopped with CTZ, Galaxy and Nelson to about 60 IBU. Dry hop will be a single 5oz charge in the keg near FG. Will throw in 1.5oz of Galaxy as a ferm dry hop once fermentation is underway.