What's Brewing - June '17 edition

Just checked the gravity on my Pilsner, brewed 7 days ago. Only my 4th lager and the first one using 2206. Pitched a large starter at 56 degrees and started at that temp. Krausen in less than a day and it dropped yesterday. It's at 1.010 (81% AA) today, so I'm ramping up to the high 60s for a D-rest. Should I be surprised by this?

 

Currently mashing a Blonde Ale that I plan on bittering with Brewer's Gold, and then adding more with some Citra at flameout to get that spicy/fruity combo. Thinking I might have overshot my mash pH, so this may be the batch that I finally send off samples to Ward's to get my water profile truly put together.

 

The roasted barley is there for color more than anything else, there wasn't much flavor from it in the Irish red I based this on. I have used abbeye before on a Cascade hopped pale ale and it was quite good. I am more concerned about the hops not coming through with so much going on, or the whole thing being a muddled mess. But what's life without a little risk?

 

Technically this was brewed in May, but just added a half pound of blueberries to a 1 gal batch of blonde ale. What a mess pushing berries in a muslin bag in a tiny fermenter opening!

This beer is inspired by my wife and daughter who have blonde hair and blue eyes...so a blonde ale with blueberries!

 

Kegged a hazy IPA today: TFPearl, Flaked Oats, Columbus, Galaxy, El Dorado, WY1318

 

Tommorrow, brewing a stout with star anise, cinnamon sticks and vanilla.

 

Last night I started my funky kriek/brett/aged red/whatever.

12lbs pale 2 row
1lbs caramel 60
1/2lb pale chocolate

mashed @148F for 90 mins, sparged to 7g. Brought to a boil and chilled to 100F and racked into my sanitized igloo mash tun. Added a starter of WY Lacto and 2 shots of Goodbelly mango.

I'll be keeping it at 110 with a heating pad until Friday when I'll do an hour boil with 1oz of Saaz, then pitch a double stepped starter of WY Brett Lambicus. I have 2lbs of D-180 to add during the ferment. After the main ferment is done I'll add some toasted oak and possibly some tart cherry extract(if it's not cherry enough for me) and cocoa nib vodka tea, and then throw into a keg to secondary under pressure until possibly September.

 

This weekend I am brewing 15 gals of NW/NE Hybrid IPA. Pale Malt, Flaked Oats, Dark Wheat Malt, Carastan, Carapils, Sugar, Mandarina Bavaria, Simcoe, Citra, only CaCl, GigaYeast Vermont, heavy late editions, fermentation hopping, and dry hopping. Going to drop it bright. I am shooting for the fuller mouthfeel and explosive hops and esters of a NE with the dry finish, bright appearance, and light malt sweetness NW. One keg is definitely getting Habanero. Thinking another keg might get peach puree with Amarillo/Mandarina.

Also building up old dregs of 2 Cantillon Brett isolates. Tried numerous times in the past to no avail. I have some new yeast growth on this attempt and I'm going to rinse the yeast and then add to fresh starter.

On top of this I am isolating yeast I got from nectarine blossoms in my back yard. I am on the second plating and have a few good looking colonies. Will step them up in starters here soon, then run fermentation trials on them.

 

Last Sunday I kegged my recent Rye IPA (an APA IPA variant, of sorts) It's being dry hopped in the keg with a stainless-steel keg dry-hop mesh container thingy that I picked up on Saturday.

Today I got the first stage of a starter going for next Monday's brew, a Session APA/IPA. This beer started out as John Snow's Pale Ale, but I decided to cut the OG back to 1.042. I might tweak the crystal-malt bill a bit. Still ruminating on that.

Cheers!

 

We have a NEIPA coming this month hopefully....

We will be bottling 10g of a Citra/Mosaic UP A and 15g of a Belgian dubble with cherry rose blossom tea....5g of that is being aged on cherry wood and Sake.

 

Got my starter going of Imperial Organic A24 Dry Hop. Really excited to try this new to me yeast on another version of my IPA. Going with 2 row, flaked wheat, flaked barley, carafoam, red wheat and some rye on this one. Big use of galaxy hops, some simcoe, and experimental grapefruit from Yakima Valley.

 

Kegged the 2-row and 6-row cream ales.

 

Brewing a mostly pilsner pale ale with mosaic Amarillo and azacca. us5 in both halves. I will Dryhop both the same and sour one batch with lactic acid. I really enjoyed the comparison of the single hop Ariana pale I brewed last but one was dryhopped and used Dryhop yeast which made me even more certain that I don't like citrus yeast. The soured version with Munich yeast and no dryhops is a totally different beer. both yeasts from the last batch had a lot of character but I'm ready for a more neutral yeast. Citrus yeast seems to enhance the dryness of the beer making it seem too dry. might work better in a big beer ive never gone over 6% with citrus

 

Cream of three crops 10 gallon for a party and 5 gal strawberry blonde for my wife

 

Brewing 2 Saisons this month. One I did yesterday and is bubbling away nicely, and another on June 22 that I will be adding strawberries to!

Cheers

 

Brewed a hoppy saison with belgian pils, viena, and white wheat. I also got to try out my new keg king mk 2 pump, and my new hop screen.

 

Currently cold crashing a NE DIPA. I'll be kegging it in a few days then leaving it to carb while I'm on vacation.

 

Just kegged a Pils. Tasting the leftovers while finishing up the mash on a Azacca/Mosaic pale ale.

 

Woke up early and figured I would tick something off my homebrew list. Not enough time to brew but enough time to make invert sugar #2 to use in the averagely perfect esb recipe.

 

Brewed my IPA up over the weekend. Ended up being nearly 70% eff with the mash for no sparge. I had only been 62% my last 3 times so my OG crept up to 1.070. No biggie. Just end up going for a lighter double or bigger single. Regardless, I don't know if I'll sparge again anytime soon. The extra $ in grain is worth the time and effort saved for me. Flame on to yeast pitched in 5 gal in 4 hours helps a ton to brew more often.