TASTING PARTY #2

I'm having another tasting party tonight on St. Patrick's Day. It should be an awesome night. Chef Cindy has lined up a delicious selection of food that should pair perfectly with my beer. Obviously, I had some trepidation with a couple of my brews, specifically, the Witbier and the Belgian Blonde. I haven't used Belgian yeast before and was not prepared for the qualities that it lent to the ales. They had a strong phenolic aroma to it that did eventually subside. I'm used to drinking my beer without worry about 6 weeks after brewing but the Wit and especially the Belgian have taken more time to get up to snuff. I have a plan with the Witbier because it had a weird lake/hotdog aroma to it: I will cut up orange slices and add those to the glasses. Of course, I'm worrying too much but that is my shtick. Here are the pairings:

Scottish Export 80?

Well, sort of, it was intention to make a Scottish Export 80 but things got away from me. The OG for Ex 80 should be between 1.040 and 1.054. Mine turned out to be 1.062 which will probably end up being a 6% ABV. I expected a 1.050 because my efficiency has always been about 73%, now it's going to be about 84%.
There might have been a couple reasons for this (as well as I can deduce): 1. My new grain mill: the crush I am using is too fine for the amount of grain I'm using. 2. Maris Otter is a very clumpy grain, especially when it is finely ground so there is a lot more stirring than normal.
Regardless of all that, this beer turned out excellent even though I do not know what type of beer it is now. It's a little dark and a little strong for a Scottish 80 and doesn't fit the flavour profile of a wee heavy, but I might be able to fit it into an Irish Red category. I don't know. I'm going to take it to the beer club on Tuesday and see what they think it is.

PRICKLY THISTLE IRISH ALE
3.00KG Maris Otter
2.00KG Golden Promise
.260KG Brown Malt
.150KG Roasted Barley

39 Grams Fuggles 60 minutes

Wyeast 1728 Scottish
OG 1.062
FG 1.016

This beer was delicious, absolutely awesome. I feel kind of sad because I gave this beer away as a birthday gift.

YELLA: The Golden Ale

I have been slacking off with my blog lately. I've made quite a few beers since my November 28th post so I'm going to try and catch up with my past recipes. Part of my problem is that I discovered Hopville.com and have posted a lot of my recent recipes there. Here is the link for my brews.
Alright, I made an American Golden in December and it turned out very well. In fact, it won a silver medal at the Cowtown Homebrew Roundup in Calgary that was held in February. The coolest part of that win was the fact that I used Homegrown Hops for the flavour addition of the brew. Here is the recipe:

YELLA

4.55KG 2-Row Pale
1.00KG Vienna

28 Grams Brewer's Gold (5.5 AA) 60 minutes
28 Grams Brewer's Gold 30 minutes
15 Grams Golding 1 minute

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

154F Mash

Hopbursting a Lager

In the year since I started brewing, I have made 19 different ales. It was time to make my 20th beer a lager. It's a little tougher for me to make a lager because I don't have temperature control and that is quite important for that style of beer, but I decided to go forth and do my best.
At present, my lager is sitting in the laundry sink with 47F water. I have to regularly add ice to keep it at that temperature. My big concern is to get it to just above freezing for the long, 2 month lagering session. I haven't figured that one out yet. I might just maintain that in a secondary for a few weeks, then bottle. After it is done carbonating at room temperature, I will put the bottles in the fridge for a couple months.

Along with never making a Lager before, I decided to try hopbursting. That is the technique of putting all the hops in the last 20 minutes of the boil. This will omit the bitterness of a 60 minute hop addition and keep all the flavour and aroma. The downside is that you have to put a whole swack of hops to reach the requisite IBUs. I had to double the amount of Saaz in order to get to my IBU goal of 35.
I had planned on making a Bohemian Pilsner with Saaz hops, but unfortunately, the LHBS was out of Pilsner malt so I went with Vienna malt instead:

SUPER SAAZ ME
4.70 KG Vienna Malt
.280 KG Crystal 10L

65 Grams Saaz 20 min
65 Grams Saaz 15 min
28 Grams Saaz 10 min
28 Grams Saaz 5 min
13 Grams Saaz 1 Min
Saaz hops at 3.0 AA

saflager 189 Yeast

The Great Honey Brown Experiment

I have made a few honey beers in the past, one on purpose and the rest because I had a poor crush on the grains (not familiar with the LHBS grain mill). I know a low alcohol beer is not necessarily a bad beer and I rarely drink to get drunk but still, I like my ales to be at least 4.5% ABV or higher. No other reason than that's what I'm used to drinking.
I wanted to find out the different effects of honey during the boil phase and at the time of high krausen (peak fermentation). Online literature states that honey placed in the fermentor during high krausen will yield a sweeter, more honeyfied flavour whereas the beer with the honey placed in the boil will result in a dryer, and a possibly thinner brew with a higher alcohol level. But, of course, I want to find out for myself and also see what people actually prefer so I made two beers very similar to each other. Here are the recipes:

Honey Nut Brown 1
3.86 ^KG Pale 2 Row
.340^KGCrystal 120L
.40^KGBrown Malt
.06^KGChocolate Malt
.03^KGRoasted Malt
mash @ 156f

31 grams Cascade Hops @60 Minutes
29 grams Cascade Hops @30 Minutes
28 grams Fuggles Hops @5 Minutes

1 cup honey one day after primary (High Krausen)
2 Cinnamon sticks(Low Krausen)


Honey Nut Brown 2
3.86 ^KG Pale 2 Row
.340^KGCrystal 120L
.40^KGBiscuit Malt
.06^KGChocolate Malt
.03^KGRoasted Malt
mash @ 153f
31 grams Cascade Hops @60 Minutes
29 grams Cascade Hops @30 Minutes
28 grams Fuggles Hops @5 Minutes
1 cup honey at the end of boil
2 Cinnamon sticks(Low Krausen)

So, the differences between the two would be the honey placement time, slight mash temp difference and the substitution of Biscuit Malt for Brown Malt.
The OG for both beers was: 1.049
The FG of Honey 1: 1.013 = 4.8%ABV
The FG of Honey 2: 1.010 = 5.2%ABV

That would make Honey 1 a little sweeter than Honey 2, but I will not know the taste differences because it is still conditioning in the bottle. I usually wait about 2 weeks to taste the beer. Check back in a couple days and I should have the results.

UPDATE:
Well, the experiment, I believe, has turned out to be a little bit of a failure. Not that the beers were bad, they were both quite tasty; it was a variable that I didn't think was too big of a deal at the time: a hop sock. For the Sweet Brown, I used a hop sock and didn't use it for the Dry Brown. Apparently, you don't get as much hop flavour when you use the sock because there is little agitation when it is all balled up. Anyway, the Sweet Brown did not have much of a hop kick, and I could really taste the Brown Malt (which is a nice malt). It was a nice, smooth beer. The Dry Brown had a strong Cascade hop flavour. I believe that I read somewhere that drier beer brings out the hoppiness and this was quite the case. For 2 beers with almost exact same ingredients, it was amazing how different they tasted. This may have just been the case of the honey doing its job differently. The only way to know for sure is to redo the Sweet Brown again without the hop sock.
And, if you want a cinnamon flavour, 2 sticks did not do a damn thing. In the future, I would add at least 4 sticks to give it some sort of cinnamon kick.

RAMROD - Beer # 11

I was hoping to make an American Brown style beer with homegrown hops (thanks to Rod) but the LHBS did not have any Carafa Malt, so in a hasty decision, I went with Brown Malt. The beer turned more amber than brown due to the substitution and the taste will probably be considerably different. Definitely will not be as heavy or 'roasty' of a flavour profile but it should be reasonably biscuity/nutty due to the biscuit malt and my home toasted Oatmeal flakes that I added to the mash.
When coming up with this recipe, I thought about showcasing the hops that Rod gave me (Brewer's Gold and Willamette) but homegrown hops that haven't been tested can be fairly unpredictable and perhaps low in potency. That would be fine if I was making a summer session beer but winter is creeping up steadily so I figured I'd go the maltier way and produce a beer that would be more fitting for the Winnipeg Winter months.
My prediction for this beer: Low hop bitterness with a nice toastiness and a subtle nutty flavour. This should go very well with bacon and eggs.

RAMROD
4.65^KG / 10.25^LBS Domestic 2 row
.565^KG /1.25^LBSBiscuit Malt
.340^KG /12^OZBrown Malt
.260^KG /9^OZ Home Toasted Oats
60^Grams / 2^OzBrewers Gold Hops 60 mins
30^Grams / 1^OzBrewers Gold Hops 30 mins
8.5^Grams / .3^OzWillamette Hops 5 mins

(Rod's Willamette vine produced very little hop cones this year but his Brewers Gold was bountiful at about 9 ounces)

TASTING PARTY

Last week, I had a tasting party with 8 of my beers and 20 of my friends. All of the ales were paired with a delicious appy prepared by Chef Cindy of Peppercorn & Co. It was an awesome night with great feedback; Everybody loved the food and the beer and it was paced very nicely. There were a lot of people telling us that we should open a brewpub. That would be cool, but I need to perfect my craft a little more before I start considering that. Anyway, here are the beers used and their pairings.

The beers praised the most were: The Ginger Beer (A lot of people thought it would be a perfect Christmas beer), The Mango Wheat, and the Mint Porter.