Just finishing up a blonde ale in the brewpot. Didn't have a chance to make it last week as planned but I've got this week off work. I ended up changing the recipe a little bit as I used plain light instead of extra light extract, and upped the hop bill a little (mostly by accident...), but it should be good. Hoping this will make a good 'house beer' that everyone can enjoy regardless of their tastes in beer.
Recipe:
6 pounds liquid light extract
1 pound carapils
0.5 oz Centennial @ 45 minutes
0.5 oz Centennial @ 20 min
.25 oz Cascade @ 10 min
.25 oz Cascade @ 5 min
White Labs California Ale Yeast
It's supposed to have only 0.5 oz TOTAL Centennial hops, but I'm a moron and used a full ounce...oh well. Good thing I like hops...
The darker extract should make it a little darker then normal, but it should still have a pretty light body. I used the late extract method to try and keep the color ligher. I added about 2 pounds or so (if that) right at the beginning of the boil as people who know more then I do say it's a good idea...then the rest just after adding the Cascade hops at 20 minutes. The idea is to stop the extract from scorching, so hopefully the end result will be better. Hopefully get the final gravity down a little more then usually too.
This will be a quick beer, so hopefully in two weeks this will be ready to drink ;)
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
It's been such a long time...
And I think I should be going...
And time doesn't wait for me it keeps on rollin'...
OK, enough Boston...
I kid, you can NEVER have enough Boston.
Yeah, it's been a while. Been tied up with work and losing power for a while (it gets a little cold when you don't have a furnace in 20* weather...) and other assorted BS.
But my first brew is finally done! Yes, that's right...I have five gallons of delicious homebrew sitting in a keg in my keezer (that's a freezer version of a kegerator, you know...) being drunk on a regular basis. So how did it come out? Well let me tell you...
To start, it didn't come out as expected. And the process itself ended up being pretty interesting. I'd like to have pics up, but my memory card is at work so I have to wait until Monday. Yeah, what a bummer.
The first issue that arose was a VERY slow fermentation, and a poor gravity reading before pitching the yeast. The recipe had an OG of 1.043, which ended up being incorrect. One of the great parts of using extracts when brewing is that you can almost exactly calculate the starting gravity unless you REALLY manage to screw things up. It was supposed to be right around 1.073, which is pretty high. There's an excellent program called 'Beer Smith' that allows you to get this sort of info...HIGHLY recommended. I'm still not using it to it's full potential and it's been invaluable.
So my gravity reading being low was probably from not mixing well enough after adding my top up water. Naturally the pure water will bring the gravity down closer to 1.000. It was pure coincidence that my false OG reading was so close to the printed reading. Now onto the second problem: it really didn't end up as a dunkleweizen.
For those that have had dunkels, you know they're usually a dark caramel/brown color and taste much like a typical hefe but with some darker notes. Not this one...mine is BLACK, even in my keg lines it looks a VERY dark brown. It also doesn't taste like a wheat...I think the roasted barley was way too much for this, as it really comes through and tends to overpower the lighter wheat flavors. It also doesn't have that traditional mile high wheat head, although getting good head is often hard to get (that's what she said). It's 'good enough' I guess in that my past brews back in the day had NO head at all most times.
Now, that's not to say I don't enjoy this. It actually came out tasting pretty good. Like a maltier Guinness. In fact, I bet if I put my dunkel next to a guinness, you couldn't tell the difference save for the caramel colored head on my dunkel. This is a good thing...because I LOVE Guinness. Lots of roasted flavors pushing through, but with a light body. Alcohol percentage came out to roughly 6.5%, which is apparent as a few pints of this is all you need to get going. Might even be higher, since I don't know my OG for sure I might be off a little. One thing's for sure - this'll get you drunk.
Onto kegging...this was my first time kegging, and it was AWESOME! It's really easy to do, and SOOOO much easier, faster and cleaner then bottling. No removing a million sticker and gross labels, no rinsing and sanitizing a ton of bottles...just a single vessle to hold the delicious nectar. Santizing them was easy, I just filled the hole thing with my sanitizing solution and through in all the little parts like the valves, poppits and seals and such. Let it soak for a while and air dry for a few minutes. Then just siphon into the keg in one fell swoop.
Another time saver I found was an auto-syphon. Simple contraption, basically a racking cane inside a larger diameter tube which it can move in and out of. It forms a seal and long story short it's a super easy and CLEAN way to start a siphon. No more using your mouth to start it like a redneck stealing diesel fuel. So into the keg it goes, then close the top lid and attach the CO2 tank. Put about 5 pounds of pressure in it to seal the keg and you're good. Without the pressure, the keg doesn't seal, so it's important!
There's a few different ways to carbonate...you can prime it just like bottle carbing just with less sugar, or you can force carb it. Which is basically cranking up the pressure and forcing the CO2 into the beer. I chose the latter...because it sounds awesome and forcing stuff into other stuff is fun. Once the beer had cooled I set the pressure to 30 pounds and shook the full keg for about two minutes. Then let it sit on the pressure for a day and backed off to serving pressure, 5 pounds or so.
It started out a little...rough. It was good but clearly the CO2 had not been fully dissolved in the beer right away. It takes time, which isn't a problem. Right now I've had it kegged and carbed for about a week and it tastes SOOO much better...so if you're force carbing your beer give it some time before it starts tasting better.
So that's that I guess. I'm going to (hopefully) start batch number 2 tomorrow. I've got a few more kegs ready to rock and roll and the dunkel is getting pretty lonely by itself...I'm thinking of doing a pretty basic pale ale or similar session beer. Something with 5% or less alcohol, and a lighter taste. Something to appeal to more people and that I can drink a lot of without getting toasted after three of them.
And time doesn't wait for me it keeps on rollin'...
OK, enough Boston...
I kid, you can NEVER have enough Boston.
Yeah, it's been a while. Been tied up with work and losing power for a while (it gets a little cold when you don't have a furnace in 20* weather...) and other assorted BS.
But my first brew is finally done! Yes, that's right...I have five gallons of delicious homebrew sitting in a keg in my keezer (that's a freezer version of a kegerator, you know...) being drunk on a regular basis. So how did it come out? Well let me tell you...
To start, it didn't come out as expected. And the process itself ended up being pretty interesting. I'd like to have pics up, but my memory card is at work so I have to wait until Monday. Yeah, what a bummer.
The first issue that arose was a VERY slow fermentation, and a poor gravity reading before pitching the yeast. The recipe had an OG of 1.043, which ended up being incorrect. One of the great parts of using extracts when brewing is that you can almost exactly calculate the starting gravity unless you REALLY manage to screw things up. It was supposed to be right around 1.073, which is pretty high. There's an excellent program called 'Beer Smith' that allows you to get this sort of info...HIGHLY recommended. I'm still not using it to it's full potential and it's been invaluable.
So my gravity reading being low was probably from not mixing well enough after adding my top up water. Naturally the pure water will bring the gravity down closer to 1.000. It was pure coincidence that my false OG reading was so close to the printed reading. Now onto the second problem: it really didn't end up as a dunkleweizen.
For those that have had dunkels, you know they're usually a dark caramel/brown color and taste much like a typical hefe but with some darker notes. Not this one...mine is BLACK, even in my keg lines it looks a VERY dark brown. It also doesn't taste like a wheat...I think the roasted barley was way too much for this, as it really comes through and tends to overpower the lighter wheat flavors. It also doesn't have that traditional mile high wheat head, although getting good head is often hard to get (that's what she said). It's 'good enough' I guess in that my past brews back in the day had NO head at all most times.
Now, that's not to say I don't enjoy this. It actually came out tasting pretty good. Like a maltier Guinness. In fact, I bet if I put my dunkel next to a guinness, you couldn't tell the difference save for the caramel colored head on my dunkel. This is a good thing...because I LOVE Guinness. Lots of roasted flavors pushing through, but with a light body. Alcohol percentage came out to roughly 6.5%, which is apparent as a few pints of this is all you need to get going. Might even be higher, since I don't know my OG for sure I might be off a little. One thing's for sure - this'll get you drunk.
Onto kegging...this was my first time kegging, and it was AWESOME! It's really easy to do, and SOOOO much easier, faster and cleaner then bottling. No removing a million sticker and gross labels, no rinsing and sanitizing a ton of bottles...just a single vessle to hold the delicious nectar. Santizing them was easy, I just filled the hole thing with my sanitizing solution and through in all the little parts like the valves, poppits and seals and such. Let it soak for a while and air dry for a few minutes. Then just siphon into the keg in one fell swoop.
Another time saver I found was an auto-syphon. Simple contraption, basically a racking cane inside a larger diameter tube which it can move in and out of. It forms a seal and long story short it's a super easy and CLEAN way to start a siphon. No more using your mouth to start it like a redneck stealing diesel fuel. So into the keg it goes, then close the top lid and attach the CO2 tank. Put about 5 pounds of pressure in it to seal the keg and you're good. Without the pressure, the keg doesn't seal, so it's important!
There's a few different ways to carbonate...you can prime it just like bottle carbing just with less sugar, or you can force carb it. Which is basically cranking up the pressure and forcing the CO2 into the beer. I chose the latter...because it sounds awesome and forcing stuff into other stuff is fun. Once the beer had cooled I set the pressure to 30 pounds and shook the full keg for about two minutes. Then let it sit on the pressure for a day and backed off to serving pressure, 5 pounds or so.
It started out a little...rough. It was good but clearly the CO2 had not been fully dissolved in the beer right away. It takes time, which isn't a problem. Right now I've had it kegged and carbed for about a week and it tastes SOOO much better...so if you're force carbing your beer give it some time before it starts tasting better.
So that's that I guess. I'm going to (hopefully) start batch number 2 tomorrow. I've got a few more kegs ready to rock and roll and the dunkel is getting pretty lonely by itself...I'm thinking of doing a pretty basic pale ale or similar session beer. Something with 5% or less alcohol, and a lighter taste. Something to appeal to more people and that I can drink a lot of without getting toasted after three of them.
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