Out Of Key Brewing

I did a ten gallon split batch of Harry Knuckle Rye IPA.  Half is fermenting on US05 and the other on wyeast bavarian lager yeast at 50 degrees.  I am going to try and have the ale half ready for the holidays.

On Sunday I did a 5 gallon batch of Schwartz beer.  Not sure on the name.  The recipe broke down like this:

Pilsner (2.0 SRM) 60.5%
Munich Malt, Dark (15.5 SRM) 27.9%
Carafa III (525.0 SRM)  7.0%
Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L (60.0 SRM) 4.7%

Magnum [14.10%] (60 min) Hops 24.3 IBU
Spalter [4.10%] (20 min) Hops 3.0 IBU

Mash at 154 for 60 minutes.

Mill the the Carafa seperate from the other grains and do not mash it.  You want to cap the mash with these grains. I added them to the mash before the first vorlouf.

The Schwartz is for the St. Patricks day party.  It should have 2 solid months to lager. It is fermenting in the same water bath as the Harry Knuckle Rye Lager.  I used a 2 liter starter of Bohemian lager yeast.

The entire family came down with Swine Flu this past weekend.  My daughter was the first to go on Friday afternoon spiking a fever of over 103.  My wife was next Friday night at 1 am.  Her fever also hit over 103.  And last but not least my son succumbed to it at 3 am.  His fever was just shy of 103.  I spent the weekend taking care of them because I had swine flu this summer while they were all out of town.  All in all I would say that while the H1N1 sucks for for about 36 hours, it really is quite Mild.  Lots of fluids and asprin to manage the fever and you will make it though fine.  By Sunday everyone was feeling much better and I was able to brew what I am going to call my Swine Flu Mild:

4.00 lb        Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)       Grain        65.6 %
1.00 lb        Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L (60.0 SRM)  Grain        16.4 %
0.50 lb        Chocolate Malt (400.0 SRM)             Grain        6.6 %
0.25 lb        Brown Malt (65.0 SRM)                  Grain        4.1 %
0.20 lb        Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L (120.0 SRM) Grain        3.3 %
0.20 lb        Special B Malt (180.0 SRM)             Grain        3.3 %
0.40 oz        Simcoe [12.20%]  (60 min)              Hops         19.9 IBU
Wyeast 1318 London Ale III 2000ml starter

Again hops are a touch non traditional, but Simcoe provide such a smooth bitterness I dont think its going to be an issue.  My starting gravity was 1036, the above recipe should yield 1032 with 75% efficiency.   A touch darker than typical but the roastiness should play nicely off all the crystal in the grist.  I used a couple grams of Chalk, as well as a 3 to 1 ratio of Calcium Chloride to Gypsum to bring the ratio over to the malty side.  Fermenting now at 66 degrees.

The plan is to fine with gelatin this weekend and cold crash and carbonate.  I hope to be able to serve it Thanksgiving weekend.

The sticke bock nuts has been brewed and looks promising. I collected 9.5 gallons of 1092 wort and pitched the 2206 this morning. Deep ruby in color. Sample exhibits strong maltiness with very mild bittereness. The final recipe:

28.00 lb Munich Malt, Dark (12.0 SRM) Grain
2.00 lb Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM) Grain
1.00 lb Carstan (37.0 SRM)

3 oz Willamette FWH
2 oz Hallertauer 60 minutes

I am going to ferment in the garage using the temp controller, a water bath, and an aquarium heater. The target temp is 50 degrees.

The grain bill may be a bit non-traditional, as wheat is not typical in the style. Ive added it in this case to try an aid in some head retention. Id love to see this beer finish in the around 1020, however that will probably take some real coaxing. I will be adding Fermaid K towards the end of the week (pitch + 5days). This beer is more of a Doppel Sticke rather than a dopelbock, however given that I am fermenting as a lager it will probably exibit more lager characteristics.

I recently bought a 10 gallon corny keg to use as a fermenter.  It is perfect to ferment lagers in because it is as tall as a standard corny so it fits nicely in my kegerator.  In order to use it as a fermenter I simply connect a piece of tubing to a gas ball valve, connect that to gas in, and run that into a growler of sanitizer.  It worked perfectly when I fermented my Yellow Sally Pilsner.

On Sunday I used it as my fermenter for my Wader Patch Wit.  I sanitized it, racked into it, connected the gas valve to the beverage out post….wha wha what!…The next morning when I walked into the fermentation chamber (basement bathroom), the active fermentation had pumped four of the five gallons onto the floor and carpet.

Quite a mess.

Quite a big mistake.

Not one I will be making anytime soon again.

This past Sunday my brewing buddy, his dad, and I brewed up thirty gallons (three ten gallon batches) of summer beers.  Whats a summer beer?  Well for me Summer beers are light in color, typically have wheat in the grist, and are refreshing in nature.  Every year I brew my Wader Patch Wit so that we definatly in the plan.  Last year I brewed up an Oberon Clone  – cleverly named Oberkey Wheat.  My lovely wife did a side by side blind tasting of it and chose it over the real deal so that is in the cards as well.  The third batch was kind of a toss up.  I love me some hops, and I love trying new things so I figured I would make a run at a Black IPA as well.  I named it the Black Beta IPA.

As typical Jon was late getting to the house and had some lame excuse about having to clean up dog vomit.  I say if you are going come bearing excuses next time make it something original.  I mean dog vomit, that is weak.

It was a long ass day lasting over 12 hours.  Longer than usual but fun none the less.  I think the problem was that we were very inefficient in getting our recipes ready for the next batch.  Instead of having batches ready to boil immediately following the cleaning of the boiler, there was a lot of downtime.   I think honestly that it may be my last day of doing 3 batches in a single day.

I modified my standard wit recipe adding 1 oz of organic lavendar from whole foods @ 5 minutes.

The black beta is more of a brown beta at this point.  I am going to try and take the color darker by doing a very quick steep of probably a lb of dark grains, doing a 10 minute boil, cooling and adding to the exsiting fermentation.  It should work, I will keep you posted.

This past Friday I brewed my house rye beer.  The beer is named harry knuckle in honor of the lost hair on the knuckles of my harry friend Mitch’s.  The first time we brewed he didnt have the  common sense brewing experience to know that you should not have your hand in the burner when you light it.  Needless to say the hair was the first thing to go.

The recipe is basically:

It should yield about 6 gallons of 1074 (based upon 75% efficiency)  wort after the boil.

In order to save time when doing a work day session, I have been doing all day mashes.  I will prep the grain,  water, and mash tun the night before, then the next morning before work I mash in, then run off when I return home.  I have done this once before for a pilsner and did see an increase in efficiency to about 80%, but that was nothing compared to what happened with this beer.  I ran off and sparged and collected just shy of 8 gallons.  I took the preboil graving and it was 1033 @ 210.  I went inside to do the temperature correction and was quite surprised to find the corrected reading was 1074.  That was my target post boil number!  When I did the calculations it showed that I was 97% efficient.

Now I still cant believe that number.  There is just no way that the beer came in with that high an efficiency, but I thankfully whatever the cause, I caught it before I started adding hops.  I added an ounce of Magnum bittering hops (75 min) bringing the total IBUs’ up to 115 and a SG of 1093.  So given the high gravity and the high IBU’s I now give you The Very Harry Knuckle, my first Double Rye IPA.

I pitched the yeast cake of Wyeast 1318 and it is currently fermenting @ 68 degrees.  By Sunday it was already down to 1030.  I suspect the long mash will result in low finishing gravity in the 1013-1017 range which would yield a ABV of around 10%.

It should be an interesting beer and I am looking forward trying it sometime in early May.

Once again I had the opportunity to brew for our annual St.  Patricks day party that we attend.  Friday night I had about six different beers on draft at the house.  The big winners were The Harry Knuckle Rye closely followed by the ctrlALTdelete.

For the actual party on Saturday I brought along 3 kegs, South Side Pride – The Irish Red,  Seven Degrees Of Wilfrod Brimley (Oatmeal Stout), and The Winter Wader Patch Wit (Rye Wit).  In addition to my beers they had a keg of Miller(?).  The beers were all pretty well recieved but the wit proved to be the least popular.  Of course I need to work with my Bartenders a bit on selling the beverages, given that one of them described the wit as:

“Yellow, Fizzy, and you know, Yeasty”

Needless to say, that person passed on trying it.  Given that the crowd was more of a BMC group, I can understand that the wit was not popular.  One gent tried the first two and liked them.  Then he tried the thrid and said “This is not even drinkable” – Fair enough, my Wit’s have a tangy flavor from the acidulated malt that alot of people find unusual in beer.  Add a solid blast of fresh indian coriander and they are in the “This doesn’t taste like beer” range.

I did have a great discussion with a husband and wife who tried all the beers. The gentleman was telling me that he used to live in Colorado before moving to New Jersey and told me about how they used to love Coors.  They are not currently beer drinkers.  They tried the Wit, then the stout, and then the Red.  She liked the wit the most while , he loved the the red.

One last ancedote from the night.  The following week I recieved an email from Bridget and it contained this:

We realized that no one, and I mean NO one, drank any of the green beer. My mom said that Patrick brought a pitcher upstairs to serve the “older crowd” and they all shook their heads and said “No, no, we’re not drinking THAT. We’ve got the good stuff”.

I just love that.  These are not people that would find themselves wandering the craft beer asile or trying different beers.  In my book thats my beer evangelism for the year (ok fine the month).

The biggest thrill though was that at the end of the night all of my beers were gone (Thanks Patrick) while 3/4ths of the Miller keg remained.  I recieved a call from the host of the party the next week to ask if I would be open to brewing all the beer the next year.

Quite an honor.

And Quite a Pleasure.