Another Brewday!

I'll try a little live blogging today since we decided to brew our 10th beer. My folks surprised me with a gift certificate to the brew supply store up the street for my birthday, so we decided to take advantage and make our last beer for awhile since the rafting season is going to keep us busy.

We also just finished bottling our Imperial Pale Ale, and the sample tastes spectacular.

3:03pm - Okay, this post is not quite live since we technically started it about 20min ago, but the pre-boil with specialty grains is underway. This used a variety of light malts including Munich, Carapils, Wheat and Honey. The house already smells like a brewery.

3:25pm - Wort is now in the brew kettle. Once we get it up to ~180F we'll had the first extract addition and an ounce of hops (Simcoe and Columbus).

3:38pm - While waiting for the wort temperature to rise, Ryan Rowland-Smith struck out Garrett Anderson with the bases loaded to secure the win for the Mariners. Nice win boys!

4:02pm - Malt and hops added. We'll boil until we reach the hot break (after bubbles subside), and then start our timed hop additions. Coming up are Cascade, Amarillo and more Simcoe and Columbus.

4:15pm - Boil reached. Waiting for the hot break.

4:20pm - Happy 4/20!

4:26pm - Timing starts now. Added Columbus hops to boil for 60min.

4:56pm - Added Amarillo hops. This and the hops afterwards will mostly contribute to the aroma.

5:05pm – Added last dry malt extract (DME) addition.

5:11pm - Added Simcoe hops to boil for 15min. Also added 1 teaspoon of Irish Moss for clarity.

5:16pm – Added Columbus hops for 10min boil.

5:21pm – Added Cascade hops to boil for 5 minutes.

5:25pm – Added a full ounce of Cascade hops for the last minute of boil.

5:26pm - That's the end of the timed boil. We'll whirlpool the wort and let it rest for 15 minutes before cooling it in the ice bath.

5:41pm - The wort has been transferred to the ice bath. Rather than timing it, we'll wait until it cools to 75-80F.

6:55pm - Looks like it's time to buy a wort chiller, 75 minutes is probably a bit too long for this part of the process. Anyway, got it moved into the fermenter and aerated. We used some leftover yeast from our ESB that we still had stored in the fridge (Pacman strain). Kat boiled up a small batch of extract yesterday to add to the yeast as a starter. It seemed pretty feisty when we activated it before tossing it in so we're not too worried about it. It's sitting at a comfortable 69F in the cabinet. See you in a week when we rack and dryhop. I'll also have rafting stories from our trip on the White Salmon.

Back to posting

Been away for a little while, sorry about that. I've been thinking a lot about the blog, just not posting. I feel as if I've almost been hyping up each entry in my mind before it gets written, instead of just sitting down and sharing the recent news. I'm going to try this more personal approach and see if it can't lead to some more content.

First, an update on the brewing since early March. We've brewed two beers, an ESB and an Imperial Pale Ale. The most fascinating thing to report about this is we used the same yeast for both beers. When shopping for ingredients for the ESB (Grand Teton Brewing Bitch Creek ESB clone) we decided to try a special yeast that had come in. This was the Pacman yeast, formulated by Wyeast specifically for Rogue. It was a mutation of the strain that was called for in the recipe, so it was only a slight change. Anyway, when racking this beer the following week, Kat used directions she found online to reuse the dormant yeast for our Imperial IPA (I'll post them when I can find them). I think it took a little longer for the yeast to take off than the full package, but once it got going it was aggressive. We racked it just a few days ago and it smells great. Looking forward to that one.

We've also finally sampled many of our batches. Here's a rundown of all the drinkable brews we have so far, and our thoughts.

• Brown Ale (Bob's Homebrew) - Full flavored malt with mellow hops. We couldn't believe how great this was for our first attempt, and neither could many of our friends. Supposedly dark maltier beers like this age better than the hoppier pale ales, so this could be really amazing later on.
• IPA 1 (Dogfish Head 60min clone) - This one took longer than we expected (although now feel that 4 weeks in a bottle is required), but was a great blend of hop character. We actually compared this to a bottle bought from the brewery. The flavors were very different, most likely due to the yeast in the recipe not available. But as stand alone beers, we both agreed we'd prefer to drink our homebrew over the actual beer. We'll probably try our version of the recipe again, with a few modifications.
• Red Ale 1 (Red Tail Ale clone) - This beer is disappointing and turned out pretty bland. It's a drinkable beer, just not very exciting, with no real noticeable hop or malt character. We wouldn't brew this recipe again.
• Pliny the Elder clone - Originally we titled this as a double IPA, but I don't really think that applies to this beer. This thing is a hop sledgehammer, as the aroma and bitterness clobbers you in the face. We've only tried it a couple of times, and saving the majority of this batch for next weekend, my birthday. It probably will have have mellowed just enough by then.
• Porter 1 (Avery New World Porter clone) - Our second dark beer turned out just as good as the first, and maybe better. This thing is fantastic, subtle hints of chocolate and a nice hop aroma. Very smooth and drinkable. We'll use this recipe as a framework for future porters I'm sure.
• IPA 2 (Lagunitas IPA clone) - We had high expectations for this beer and they have held up. This has a very nice flavor with a bite of hops at the aftertaste. We held the IPA challenge last night between this beer and our first IPA, and this one was decided the champ.

We've got the Rye bottled as well, but it won't be ready for another two weeks. The ESB will get bottled this weekend, and the Imperial was dry-hopped on Wednesday. We probably won't do much more homebrewing until I can get working again. Yeah, that's right, I am officially unemployed as of April 1st. At least I don't have to worry about buying beer. We do have a surplus of left-over ingredients, so there might be a brewday or two still left this spring.

I'd also like to mention an awesome rafting trip we went on last weekend. We joined our friends Paul and Matt down on the Wind River, near Carson, WA. This is a serious class IV+ run with long stretches of continuous whitewater and some BIG drops. Definitely the toughest paddling trip of the year. We had great runs both days. Saturday was cold with snow in the morning, but a dozen determined rafters still went down. Both boats flipped at the same place on the run, but fortunately after the toughest stretch and we recovered in a reasonable time. Sunday's weather was surprisingly nice with the sun following us almost the entire trip. I managed to get thrown from the raft, but nobody else did. You know, I should talk to Matt about that.

The only problem with the Wind River is the camping. In years past, we've always camped out right at the take-out, which is nothing more than a muddy parking lot. It's always wet and cold, not to mention the lack of decent tent sites. I told Kat a few weeks before the trip, "I really want to raft this river, but I am not camping in that spot." We decided to get a motel in Stevenson Saturday night, which really made all the difference for the weekend. Our friends that were staying overnight also decided to join us, and we had a hilarious night hanging out in town. One of our favorite small breweries, Walking Man Brewery is in Stevenson, so we sampled many of their beers, and tall pints of the Homo Erectus, their Imperial IPA (such a tasty brew). I splurged and picked up a T-shirt as well.

I'll post more, I swear. Cheers!

Hop Rod Rye Clone

Our seventh attempt with the brewpot would be a rye ale recipe. I've always enjoyed Bear Republic's Hop Rod Rye, and we needed another ale that would feature the hops we loved, but a different style than IPA. This recipe fit the order; a beer with lots of hops but with some different ingredients.

The most unusual addition was the inclusion of both rye malt and flaked rye. While we did use several pounds of malted barley (not counting the extract), the rye has a distinct spiciness that is unique. The flaked rye (see picture above) looks just like rolled oats, but I wouldn't eat it for breakfast. After using over 4 pounds of grain for our pre-boil mash, the wort was thick like stew before straining the grains out. Afterwards, the wort ended up with a light muddy-brown color and a fantastic smell. We used a small amount of Columbus hops for bittering and a larger amount for aroma. We'll use Centennial and Amarillo for the dry-hop. Our sample taken for gravity reading had a significant amount of sediment at the bottom, which I can only assume came from the flaked rye. Looking forward to seeing how this one turns out.

We also bottled our Porter on Saturday, and, man is this going to be fantastic! We drank the test sample for our gravity reading and were very impressed with this recipe. I think three to four weeks in a bottle will make this beer outstanding.

Racking and Bottling

Sorry for the delayed post this week. This is likely due to the fact that we did not brew over the weekend.

We did bottle our Pliny the Elder clone. This was a bit difficult with all the hops left in the carboy. It was a bit nerve-racking (pun intended) getting a solid stream flowing through the siphon since it was wrapped in pantyhose to help filter out the hop trub. We ended up aerating the beer quite a bit during the process which hopefully won't impact the flavor too much. Maybe next time we'll try using the pantyhose at the exit end of the tube to see if that manages to work any better (but honestly, it'll be quite some time before we make a beer with this amount of dry-hops).

Not much else to report, other than our brown ale really tastes fantastic. Looking forward to giving our first IPA a true taste test this weekend. Kat picked out an ESB recipe that looks mighty tasty, so that is most likely what we'll be brewing on Saturday.

Lagunitas IPA Clone and Green River

We decided to go ahead and brew another IPA this past weekend. Our reasoning was that since IPA is usually our style of choice, we might as well go ahead and brew a bunch so we have a stash over the summer months when we won't be brewing as much (due to time and temperatures). I've been eyeing the Lagunitas IPA clone recipe for awhile now, as this is one of our favorite beers. The batch went off without a hitch, and included Horizon, Willamette and a ton of Cascade hops. We decided to alter the recipe a tab, and will dry-hop this with another ounce and a half of Cascade. We also bottled our Red Tail clone and racked our porter. Quite the manufacturing line we have in the kitchen the last few Saturdays.

On Sunday, we loaded up the boat and joined WRRR for a trip down the Green River Gorge. Although it was chilly in the morning, the weather was fantastic and we enjoyed sunny skies all day. Kat and I "R2ed" (just the two of us paddling) this trip, which is nice since we usually have additional paddlers along for the ride. The Green has some outstanding whitewater, including a IV+ section known as Mercury drop and the Nozzle. Mercury has some powerful hydraulics including a couple meaty holes that are necessary to navigate cleanly. Directly after Mercury is the Nozzle, a 5-6 foot wide gap between two large boulders which is the only runnable slot. If you have swimmers in Mercury, there's not much time to recover and make the Nozzle which makes this section generally pretty hairy. Everyone in the group had clean lines and we enjoyed an outstanding day on the river.

Not sure on the schedule for next weekend yet. We do have a bunch of things to catch up on, so we may delay our next brew for another week. Our Pliny clone will be bottled on Saturday, which will be an interesting task. Looking forward to smelling more of those hops - yum!

Avery Porter Clone

Our repeat performance of the full array of brewing tasks went much smoother than last week. We managed to get bottling started at eleven in the morning and were able to finish brewing just after 6pm. With efficiency in mind, we were a bit excited and almost got ahead of ourselves by bottling before we added priming sugar. Fortunately, Kat realized this after we had capped only one bottle so we were able to correct the mistake painlessly. The good news was that we had a large sample of our IPA to taste. Although the beer was flat, it was actually very good: slightly bitter with a big aroma, and had a fantastic color and clarity. I think this beer will get us a lot of "you made this?" from friends since it's more of the style our friends prefer (and it's tasty)!

After bottling, we started on both of the next tasks - brewing our porter and racking the Pliny clone. Tackling both at the same time was a great use of time since there is always down time during brewing. Our Avery Porter clone started with just under 4 lbs. of malted grains for our pre-boil mash. The featured grains included carapils, chocolate malt, and black patent malt to give it a rich dark chocolate smell and look. While those were steeping, we started added hops to our carboy which will dry-hop our Pliny clone. If you look at the photo we took, that's six ounces of hops just for dry hop. For comparison, we haven't yet brewed a beer outside the Pliny that used six ounce total, let alone for dry-hopping. Tasting showed that the beer's bitterness had mellowed out considerably, and left behind a large hoppy aftertaste. We expect this to be a big beer that leaves a mouthful to "chew" on when it's complete in 3-4 weeks.

The porter brewing went off without a hitch. One difference from previous batches was we added half of our malt extract late in the boil for this recipe. Bob mentioned that this helps hop efficiency, which should bring out more of the bitterness from the Columbus hops. Fuggles were used for aroma and again in a week for dry-hop (dry-hopping is unconventional for a porter). These are very aromatic and have a nice fruity and earthy balance. The wort was cooled and we pitched our London Ale yeast at 70F. It's been fermenting nicely since Saturday night. Now we have to decide whether or not to brew again this weekend. Can you believe that I'm leaning towards the 'yes' side?

Pliny the Elder Clone

Busy busy brew day for us on Saturday. We knew it would be, as our first bottling attempt was this weekend as well as racking our Red Tail clone from the previous week. We really weren't sure what we were going to brew. We had talked about a few different possibilities during the week, but didn't really have a solid decision. I had found a clone recipe of Russian River's Pliny the Elder IPA which was getting rave reviews, but I knew would be expensive based on the amount of hops in the recipe. Less than an hour before leaving for the brewstore, I came to the conclusion that this was the beer I really wanted to brew, and Kat agreed.

Before we could start on this ale of epic hop proportions, space was needed in the fermenter and therefore beer had to be bottled and racked. Our original brown ale was looking fantastic - it had cleared up nicely and a solid layer of sediment was sitting on the bottom of the carboy. Cleaning and sanitizing the bottles was the real work here, especially without a dishwasher to sanitize. We were able to make the best with what we had. I found some unused organizing racks worked perfectly for drying the bottles after sanitizing. After the cleaning, we added the priming sugar and moved the beer to our bottling bucket. Then it was a fun and easy trade off, as Kat would fill up the bottles, and I'd add the cap. We ended up with 23 12oz. bottles and 12 22oz. bottles, just shy of our expected yield. We did take a taste of the beer, prior to carbonation and it was much better than expected. In 2-3 weeks time, we'll have a fantastic beer to share with our friends!

Our Red Tail was racked to a carboy, and we added an ounce of Cascade hops for dry-hop. The beer did still have a bit of a foamy head at top, which was a small concern. It had been bubbling away for the first few days and slowly tapered off just as our previous attempts so the other behavior was as expected. The sample tasted fairly balanced, but also a very mild flavor. Kat said that adding the dry-hop was "the best thing we could have done" to this beer, and I think she's right.

Brewing the Pliny Clone was a real treat to a couple of hop heads like Kat and I. Even Bob (of Bob's Homebrew Supplies) was impressed by the sheer amount of hops used in this recipe:

Pliny the Elder
1 lb 2-row malt
0.28 lbs crystal malt (40L)
0.86 lbs Carapils malt
1 lb dextrose
6.15 lbs light DME

1.5 oz Chinook hops (mash)
2.75 oz Warrior hops (90min)
0.5 oz Chinook hops (90min)
1 oz Simcoe hops (45min)
1 oz Columbus hops (30min)
2.25 oz Centennial hops (0min)
1 oz Simcoe hops (0min)

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

3 oz Columbus hops (dry-hop)
1.75 oz Centennial hops (dry-hop)
1.75 oz Simcoe hops (dry-hop)

Mash at 150-152F for 45min.

This was a noticeably different recipe from the start as we added and ounce and a half of hops just to the pre-boil mash. The other major difference was the addition of a pound of corn sugar to the boil. This will give lots of fuel for the yeast as it turns the sugars into alcohol and CO2. Let's get back to the hops though. In case you didn't do the math, there is over a full pound of hops in this recipe. This was our first chance to use many of the listed hop varieties for the first time. We both absolutely loved the Columbus hops which had a slight fruity aroma. The Chinook was a nice bittering hop as well, and came through strongly in the tasting. Our only issue during brewing was forgetting about adding Irish Moss, but we added a tsp. with about 10min left in the boil anyway. The airlock has been bubbling like crazy since Sunday morning, and we both know this beer will be tempting to taste as early as possible. We'll do our best to see how long we can hold out, it won't be ready for sure until the end of March and will certainly improve after additional weeks. Good thing we'll have 3 brews to tide us over until then.