Who's brewing this weekend?

15 gallons of Farmhouse Ale that will be added to a french wine barrel full of cherries and Brett. Gonna be good.

 

Congrats on your new-found obsession, and good luck!

 

We just brewed a honey porter and a brown ale with apple wood chips soaked in irish whiskey added in secondary.

 

I'm brewing my entry into a homebrew club competition tomorrow. My homebrewing club runs a competition that encourages people to push the envelope and get outside of their comfort zone. You are forced to pick special ingredients and yeast from a preselected list, then use a preselected grain bill. You are allowed to modify your malt by roasting/toasting/smoking it. Epic failures are applauded more so than playing it safe. The event is all about learning and growing as a brewer. So I'm going with something that is sure to be terrible

Apple Wood Smoked Cinnamon Pomegranate Ale

I smoked the malt 2 weeks ago (my first time smoking malt) and had to pick a minimum of 2 of the following special ingredients: Pomegranate, Cinnamon, Grains of Paradise, Chamomile, Heather, Saffron to go along with the malt bill provided. The "easy route" would have been to do a Pomegranate Chamomile Wheat Beer, but the grain bill didn't have enough wheat in it to make a wheat beer and going to easy route is against the entire spirit of this competition. I did select WLP380 (Hefeweizen IV) yeast because it gives clove and plum notes. Kind of took some inspiration from some Moroccan and Iraqi sauce reductions that use cinnamon, pomegranate, and clove. Then decided to do the apple wood smoking because I naively thought it would also add a small amount of apple flavor to the beer. I figured the smoke would add complexity and the apple and cinnamon pairing was a classic so why not. Now I'm finding out from lots of homebrewers that I'll probably just get some smoke in the profile but no apple. Oh well!

 

Making a Belgian Blonde. My first Belgian. Being the fanatic of these styles that I am I had to do it. Decided on a Blonde so it doesnt have to condition as long as a Tripel or whatever. Its still going to need to sit in primary for a good 4 weeks though. I wanted to use WLP550 but LHBS was all out. 3722 is the same thing so I went with that.

I saw a recipe for a Belgian Pale in Radical Brewing by Mosher, so I tweaked it to make it bigger and I will mash low maybe 148-9



5 lbs Brewers pale 2 row
3 lbs wheat
2 lbs munich 10
.5 lbs aromatic
.5 lbs flaked wheat
.5 lbs rice hulls(just in case, I havent used this much unhusked grain before)
1.5 lbs sucrose at 15

1.5 oz Styrian Celeia 60 (no goldings have been had by LHBS for months?!) 4%AA
1 oz Styrian Celeia 15
.5 oz 5
Wyeast 3722 3 Qt starter made last night

I have a keezer so I am going to start at 65 and ramp it into 70s over a few days after it gets going.

 

I will be brewing a scottish 60 tomorrow morning. I'm brewing an imperial pumpkin ale next weekend, I like using the edinburg ale yeast in it so the 60 is for yeast propagation. I hope to top crop enough yeast from the 60 so I can make a starter with enough yeast for the imperial pumpkin.

I also plan to bottle a flanders red tomorrow. Then on sunday helping a friend bottle 20 gallons of cider. (A friend of his has an orchard...and a press....he went a little crazy last fall....)

 

Mid week maybe, Hoppy Red ale with Fresh Chinook and Brewer's Gold, maybe some Cascade. Depends on when the harvest hits. Also need to brew a Flander's Red.

 

Brewing Koopa's attempt at a Heady Topper clone on Sunday. Made the changes he suggested and changed the hops because my LHBS didn't have all of the hops in the recipe. This will be the first double IPA I have ever brewed, so pretty excited.

 

I've got ingredients for three ready, gonna be gone next week so brewing will have to wait until he week after. I do get to test out my self made Son of a Fermentation Chiller, gonna load it up and see what the maximum effectiveness I can get out of it is.

 

Imperial Stout with molasses, nutmeg, carob, anise, honey and cinamon. Upon sniffing the airlock all I smell is nutmeg. Might have gone a bit to hard on that.

 

Brewed a Bière de Table today from a NB kit.

 

I never try to turn anything around this fast, but I am brewing a super hoppy german wheat beer with some rye. Hoping it will be ready by a labor day party next weekend.

 

Going to do a BiaB simcoe IPA tomorrow, experimenting with adding some Munich or Vienna for some malt character.

 

Brewed a Blonde ale with fresh wet Centennials today.
Grain to glass in 2 weeks or so.
1st of many Harvest ales this fall!

Also racked three gallons of my Brett B Belgian Saison on 5 pounds of white peaches from the farmers market.

 

Try the Munich. I do a single hop ipa all the time and use Munich and crystal with some 2 row as a base for them all.

 

If your setup permits it, try to cool your wort down to 120F before you add the flameout hop addition. It will boost the intensity of the nose tremendously! It's a technique I now use on my hoppy beers that I wasn't using back when I made my Heady Clone and it's really improved my most recent brews.

 

#10 batch in the primary: a robust porter with rosemary... We'll see.

 

Anyone have experience w/ ECY08?


A dark saison (based on one of oldstock's recipe's, hopefully I didn't kill it. I have a lot to learn w/malts)

8 lbs Dingemans Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (1.2 SRM) 62.7 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Weyermann Munich Malt (6.5 SRM) 11.8 %
1 lbs Bries Red Wheat, Torrified (1.2 SRM) 7.8 %
8.0 oz Dingemanns Caramunich Malt (45.0 SRM) 3.9 %
8.0 oz Weyermanns Carafa II (425.0 SRM) 3.9 %
4.0 oz Dingemanns Special B Malt (180.0 SRM) 2.0 %
1.50 oz Cascade [6.00 %] - First Wort 90.0 min 29.4 IBUs
1 lbs D-45 (45.0 SRM) 7.8 %
0.00 oz Raisins - two lbs blackened and deglazed w/runnings (Boil 0.0 mins)
0.00 oz Orange Zest - 2 oranges (Boil 0.0 mins)
1.0 pkg ECY08 (East Coast #)

Est Original Gravity: 1.059 SG
Bitterness: 29.4 IBUs
Est Color: 22.2 SRM
Mash: 152*F

 

Yes. Its incredibly fruity, medium pepper phenolics in the aroma but low in the taste, very dry, minimal funk, and ferments really, really fast (1.060 to 1.000 in 9 days). Edit, I pitched at 70 F and let rise to 85/86 F for duration of fermentation.

That beer has a lot going on in it; why the Cascade FWH (Harshness)?

 

Racking 2 beers to secondary, one a bw to bulk age, the other a Pliny Clone to second dh, but no brewing .