A Special Bitter

I know it's the middle of winter and there's a good bit of snow on the ground. A smooth, dark porter or sweet, crisp winter ale pours perfectly from the tap this time of the year.

Instead of following suit, I found myself formulating a recipe for a special bitter pale ale and got to brewing this past Sunday afternoon. The high pressure propane burner warmed my feet as it melted the ice and snow away from underneath the stand. This was my first wintry brewing experience, although I did enjoy a weather-ridden brew with Matt when the sky opened up during our Rainy Day IPA this past fall. In my opinion, a bit of chill in the air beats being soaked by a cool fall rain.

Using Designing Great Beers as my guide, I put together a rather simple recipe. Here are the details:

U.S. Pale 2-Row: 8 pound (85% gravity contribution)

U.S. Crystal 40L: 1 pound (10%)

Belgian Carapils: 0.5 pounds (5%)

Cascade Bitter hops (60 min boil): 1.5 ounces

Willamette Flavor hops (5 min): 0.5 ounces

Willamette Aroma hops (2 min): 0.5 ounces

White Labs London Ale (013), liquid yeast

IBU: ~40

Target gravity units: 41

Target conversion efficiency: 60%

Previous conversion rates had been pretty low with our all grains brews. I wanted to be on the safe side this time around so I calculated the weights using a 60% efficiency. This was also only the 2nd time attempting the batch sparging method (versus fly sparging in the past), and it was quite obvious that this time around I did something right...

OG: 1.046

Actual conversion efficiency: 68% - not too shabby

My liquid yeast starter wasn't fully active, and I had recently read a blog post by Ben's Homebrewer of Tarentum who described a time-saving method of pouring the wort into the carboy at around 160F and allowing it to cool overnight; so I decided to try this practice out. Proper sanitation combined with the pasteurizing temperature should leave the carboy in a bacteria-free state, and time is saved not worrying about driving the temperature down to a yeast-friendly 70-80 degrees F.

To bring the temp down from boiling to the low 160's, I took advantage of the snow in my backyard:

So far this method seems to have worked perfectly. I poured the starter into the carboy this morning and upon my arrival home at the end of the work day, I was greeted with a popping airlock and a foamy headed vessel of brew.

Here's hoping it's a tasty one!

Rainy Day IPA: Racked

The Rainy Day IPA has been moved to a secondary for clarification, and possibly further fermentation. The gravity read in at 1.006, which is pretty amazing being how it's only been about 5 days. That puts the current attenuation at 86%.

The brew smells amazing and really has great flavor. I can't wait till this one can be carbonated and consumed!

Rainy Day IPA

Using Matt's homegrown hops, we threw together an all grain IPA recipe this past week, and we pushed to get to brewin' this Thursday evening.

(Matt's Cascade homegrown hops)

Brent was unable to attend the brewing event this week, but contributed with a new piece of equipment for the mash tun to help with the sparging process:

Rain was expected, but up through the sparging process not much had really fallen. Just as the hops were added to the boiling wort, ready for 60 minutes of alpha acid extraction and saturation, the rain came. Matt and I never even considered giving up on the brew, and began taking turns holding an umbrella.

In search of a better brewing method, Matt recommended we fix a broken patio umbrella that was standing collapsed and useless only a few feet away. After a few short minutes of turmoil, we had prepared a more relaxing solution.

A few minutes later, a pizza was delivered from Bishops and we enjoyed a pepperoni and onion pie while being warmed by the steam from a sweet wort with beautiful boiling hops. Not a bad time.

Here are the stats on the beer:

We were shooting for a 1:1 GU to BU ration, and had decided this IPA would do well around a GU of 58. The OG turned out a bit lower than we hoped at 1.042, but not terrible. We used enough of Matt's cascade hops to in theory put us around 58 BU's. The brew should be plenty bitter, but I'm really excited to see how the homegrown hops contribute to the aroma and flavor.

A few more shots from the evening.

All grain German Alt Bier

Brent and I brewed up a German Alt Bier on Thursday afternoon, once again trying our hand at an all grain brew. The SG came out a bit lower than we were hoping at 1.034, but hopefully we still have a good brew on our hands.

Here is a video of the airlock ferociously bubbling as the alt bier fermented:

Fuggles IPA: All Grain Brew was a success!

For our first all grain brew, we couldn't have had a better result, in my opinion.

I've already completely emptied my keg of it (split between Matt and I - Brent graciously offered us his share), although I did have a higher volume of visitors in the last two weeks than usual and most of my friends enjoy a good brew. Still, it was hard to not go for a pour of the Fuggles over the Great Lakes Elliot Ness and dark hoppy extract brew that I also had on tap.

The taste was a very nice light, almost fruity flavor that even quenches the thirst. The color was a cloudy orange color. The head was perfect after the beer finished carbonating, mixing with the slightly cloudy consistency and sweat on the glass to form a visually fuzzy spectacle.

My rating: a delicious 4.75/5

And I've only left the last 0.25 in case we can top this one, in this style. I'm not sure it'll happen though.

I'll let Brent post about the dark hoppy brew we just completed. It was also very good, but I'll let Brent do it justice with a rating of his own.

All Grain Brew Event

Last Thursday we attempted our first all grain brew using my homemade mash/lauder tun and some new propane burners. So far, everything has gone extremely well.

Since it was a night of firsts, I also decided to try out a liquid yeast and put together a starter.

Here's a shot of the full setup:

Removing some steeped grains from the extract brew:

The new Bayou burner with propane tank:

Brent and Matt finishing up the extract brew:

And some nice hot break forming on the top of the Fuggles IPA:

The Fuggles IPA had an expected SG of 1.042 - 1.046. We ended up with 1.045! I couldn't have been happier.

The extract brew went just as well, coming in around 1.062 (with an expected 1.070 SG).

Today we transferred both brews to secondaries, dry hopping the extract brew; it should be a pretty dark IPA, and it tasted delicious. It had a gravity of 1.019 today (so far a 69% attenuation).

The Fuggles IPA had a gravity reading of 1.010 (78% attenuation!)

After the brews settle a bit in the secondaries, it'll be time to rack 'em in some corny kegs and get them ready for consumption.

Next Extract Brew Recipe

Our next extract brew will be a recipe pulled from my favorite source BeerRecipes.org. This site was responsible for Hell Gate Porter, Bah Humbug and Hop Hound Dog IPA.

The recipe is called Serious Black Ale, and it peaked my interest because of it's cross between my two favorite beers - hoppy IPAs and dark porters. This brew appears to have ample amounts of cascade hops, which incidentally is the same variety that we have left over from our HopsDirect.com purchase.

Description pulled from the recipe posting:

"This beer is a very dark Hybrid Ale/Porter, overtly hop forward and lasting until finish. However it has an nice toasty and chocolate flavor on the palate. Wonderful hop and coffee aromas as soon as the beer is opened and poured. As I said this beer is very dark. It is Brown almost black and has a head almost like Guiness. "

We'll see... I certainly hope so.

I'm hoping if the post-secondary taste test goes well, I may take on the effort of filling my second tank with a CO2 and Nitrogen mix, to get the true Guiness-style head.

Finally, the recipe:

• 7.5lbs Amber liquid malt extract.
• 2lbs Muntons dark dry malt extract.
• 12.5 ounces Chocolate malt cracked
• 12.5 ounces Crystal malt 60l cracked
• 7 ounces Victory malt cracked
• 2 ounces northern brewers hops
• 5 ounces cascade hops
• 5 gallons Spring water
• 2tsp yeast nutrient
• 2.5tsp yeast energizer
• 1 vial of White Labs California Ale V yeast WLP-051

OG: 1070 FG: 1021
Primary Ferment: 5 days
Secondary Ferment: 10 days