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Justin on Saturday, July 17th, 2010 |
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Since supplies are running low in my basement, it was time to brew my 2nd batch in as many weeks. Today I brewed up a recipe available in the BeerEasy Member’s section, my Lake Superior Porter, with a couple new wrinkles to the recipe. It was a hot and humid day so I got an early start before things got unbearable.
Below are a few snap shots of the brew kettle, before the boil and during the boil. The recipe tweaks for this batch were to increase the chocolate malt to 1.0 lb and increase the Crystal malt to 0.75 lb. The brew day went very smoothly! I think the smell of a porter or stout wort might be my favorite!
Enjoy brewing up this delicious porter today, get the recipe by becoming a BeerEasy.com Member!
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Justin on Friday, July 2nd, 2010 |
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Mmmmmm….pale ale. It’s been a while since I’ve posted about a brew day, but I had to share my Simcoe Pale Ale brew day. I bought some Simcoe hops, a hop I have enjoyed from commercial beers but had not brewed with. So I crafted a super hoppy pale ale recipe, quite bitter, and extremely hoppy. I paired the Simcoe with a little bit of Amarillo.
The hop schedule looked this:
0.50 oz Galena 13.2% AA – 60 minutes
0.25 oz Simcoe 12.2% AA – 60 minutes
0.50 oz Simcoe 12.2% AA – 20 minutes
I blended 1.5 oz each of Simcoe 12.2% AA and Amarillo 7.5% AA, for a total of 3 oz or 84 grams. I added 7 grams of the hop blend every minute from the 12 minute mark to the end of the boil.
After the primary fermentation is drawing a close, I will dry hop with 0.5 oz each of Simcoe and Amarillo.
I’m thinking maybe the name of this recipe should be ‘Can You Handle It? Pale Ale’ because the hop flavor and aroma will be off the charts. A solid 61 IBUs will provide a firm bitterness in what will be a mid 5% ABV brew.
I’ve included a few pictures from today’s Simcoe Pale Ale brew day. I can’t wait for this one to finish up!
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Justin on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 |
No CommentsSo you love Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or maybe Guinness Stout is more your style and want to make a Guinness Stout Clone. Where do you begin? It’s not as easy as throwing some ingredients together and it’s not as hard as finding the Holy Grail, it’s somewhere in between.
Having brewed many, many batches of beer and thereby getting a feel for different grains, hops, and yeast certainly helps. But that will take some time and you might want to brew a clone of your favorite ale sooner than later. Well having someone who fits that billing might be helpful, but not everyone has the luxury of a buddy who has brewed beer for years. So one way to get there more quickly is by critically drinking beer.
Critically drinking beer, seriously, what does that even mean? Well if you want to quickly gain an appreciation of the many grains and hops available to the brewer, critically drinking beer will certainly help you out. Drinking your beer critically is simply pouring your beer into a clear glass instead of gulping it down right out of the bottle and making notes about what you see, smell, taste, and feel. Start by buying some random six packs of commercial craft beers at the local beer store. Buying mix and match six packs are a great way for trying a lot of different beer without buying entire six packs. After you’ve got the beers chilling in your fridge, take one out that looks good. Go to the brewery’s webpage, many brewers will list ingredients (grains and hops) used in the beer (they won’t give you the exact amounts, afterall they want to you buy their beer, not make it!), then taste and smell the beer carefully. This will allow you to get to know what Amarillo hops might taste like or what roasted barley tastes like. Trying different beers with the same ingredients is nice to see how different ingredient combinations or different proportions of ingredients might taste.
The nice thing about a clone beer recipe is it might not be exactly what you were shooting for, hell, your first couple clones might not even be close to the target, but you’ll still have a couple cases of tasty beer to enjoy. As you brew more and drink more beer critically, you’ll get better at cloning your favorite commercial beer.
Let me know how your latest home brewed clone has turned out!
Justin @ BeerEasy.com
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Justin on Friday, February 12th, 2010 |
No CommentsHere is a beer I brewed up back in the fall that I hadn’t shared up this point. Northern English Browns are malty beers with just enough hop bitterness to keep the beer from being overly sweet. Commonly malt flavors include nutty and biscuit. Northern English Browns typically are a bit drier on the finish and a little more hop oriented than their Southern English brethren, which tend to be a bit sweet on the finish. The picture is a bit darker than what the beer really looks, the color is more medium brown with some amber hues when held to a light.
Here’s the recipe for this brew, it’s quite tasty!
- 8.00 lb Maris Otter
- 0.50 lb English Crystal 55L
- 0.75 lb Biscuit Malt
- 0.25 lb British Chocolate
- 1.00 lb Flaked Barley
- 1.5 oz Kent Goldings – Bittering, 60 minutes
- 0.5 oz Kent Goldings – Aroma/Flavor, 5 minutes
- Wyeast 1968 Extra Special Bitter Yeast
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Justin on Monday, February 1st, 2010 |
No CommentsI couldn’t be more happy with the way the Carty Cascade 2009 turned out! Recall I was shooting for a straightforward APA recipe that would showcase the hops we harvested in September. Here’s my writeup of a recent tasting and a picture. I really enjoy the hops and look forward to future harvests!
The beer pours a dark golden bordering on amber with a very clingy white head. The aroma is moderately hoppy, citrus and spicy with a noticeable sweet malt in the background. The flavor is moderately hoppy but there is also a noticeable and competing malty flavor, a bit sweet, slightly bready and something a bit different than any other beer I’ve made, perhaps the wheat malt shining through. (I’ve only used flaked wheat previously.) The bitterness is medium-low and provides a nice balance combined with a slightly dry finish. The carbonation is moderate and body is quite smooth. Overall I’m very happy and very impressed with this beer and the hops! I don’t know I’d change much with this recipe, it is quite tasty.
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Justin on Monday, January 18th, 2010 |
No CommentsIf you’re wondering how the marriage of Maibock grains and and a healthy helping of German hops turned out, keep reading. I’m quite pleased with the appearance of this brew, a nice golden color with a frothy white head. Here take a look:
More importantly is the aroma and flavor. The aroma is moderately malty, quite bready and a bit sweet, the hops also shine as well, spicy and a bit floral. I wish the hop aroma would have come through a bit more, but I’m not complaining, this beer is very inviting. The flavor is malty upfront and remarkably smooth. At the swallow the moderate hop bitterness and spicy German hop flavor cleanse the palate. I very much enjoy how both the malty flavors and hops shine in this beer, it really captures what I was intending. German malt flavors akin with Maibocks and a hoppiness typically seen with American Pale Ales (albeit a German hop flavor/aroma).
Would I do anything different next time? Yes. The hops just don’t come through quite as much as I wanted. I’d prefer the hop flavor and aroma both to be a bit more noticeable, but not too much more. The bitterness is about right. The thing I like most about this beer is the exceptional smoothness and the fact the malt and hop flavors are both quite evident.
Brew this one up today! Let me know how it turns out!
Justin
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Justin on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 |
1 CommentWhat better to do on a cold December morning? Brew! Today I brewed an American Pale Ale, using the Cascade hops grown in my buddy’s backyard this summer. The recipe I crafted was quite simple, I wanted to showcase the hops. I’m curious to how these Cascade hops will compare to Cascade hops grown in the Pacific Northwest. They smelled quite similar, maybe a bit more spicy and little less citrusy, but overall quite similar.
So the brew day started at a chilly 23F. But no worries, I had my winter jacket and hat on. The brew day went well despite the cold temperature, although running the hose to the wort chiller was kind of a pain, the hose was quite stiff. Some of the water froze in the hose while I was cleaning, but no big deal, I’ll let it melt in the garage. Also using so many whole hops I knew siphoning the wort might be a challenge, so I tried something new, using a copper scrubber attached to the racking cane to act as a filter, I got the idea from another brewer on the web. It worked very well, no clogged racking cane. Although I’ll say this, no more brewing outside in subfreezing weather…back to the kitchen until spring or maybe a mild spell.
The recipe today was quite simple:
9.0 lbs Maris Otter
1.0 lbs Wheat Malt
1.0 lbs Crystal 40L
Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast
1.25 oz Cascades 60 mins
1.20 oz Cascades 15 mins
1.20 oz Cascades 0 mins
I will ferment this batch cool, in the low 60s. With the simple grain bill, clean yeast and cool fermentation temperatures this beer will showcase the entire 2009 harvest of our Cascade hops. I’ve attached some pictures of brew day if you’re interested. If I have time I’ll also post a few things about two of my other latest brews, a Northern English Brown, which tastes fantastic and an update on the Maibock Pale Ale which I’m enjoying as I write this.
The pictures: 1) a cold start! 2) the grains, toward the ‘top’ of the bag you can see the crushed wheat malt atop the other grains 3) the mash after doughing-in 4) the bittering addition 5) wort before the boil got going 6) wort with the bittering hops added
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Justin on Saturday, September 12th, 2009 |
1 CommentSo a few weeks back I ventured into the hop garden at my friend’s house. We harvested the hop cones from the 2 year-old Cascade plants we have growing along a fence in their backyard. Last year we got very little hops, not even enough to really use, but good bine growth. This year the bines were longer on June 1 than they got the entire first year. As the summer continued the hop bines became littered with flowers and eventually plump hop cones.
Sunday, August 30 we harvested the Cascade hop cones. We harvested 15 5/8 oz wet (444g) of luscious hops! Below are some images of our hop harvest. After I got the hops home I set them out on some non-fiberglass furnace filters and bungee corded them to a box fan for drying. I can’t accept credit for this drying method, I got the idea from Alton Brown’s Beef Jerky Good Eats episode on the Food Network. Below are some pictures of my drying rig. I blasted them with the box fan for 4 days, I’m sure they were plenty dry after about 2 days, but wanted to be sure. After drying, the hop’s weight had decreased by nearly a factor of 5! The 15 5/8oz (444g) of wet hops now tipped the scale at 3 5/8 oz (106g). Finally I put all the dried hops into a vacuum seal bag and sealed them up for storage in the freezer until brew day. You can seem them sealed up in a bag not much longer than an average size banana.
Now the brainstorming begins for a recipe using these hops. Although it shouldn’t take too much brainstorming. We want to showcase our hops in an American Pale Ale, so the recipe will be rather simple with a clean yeast and we will use only these hops. Look for the recipe sometime soon! Until then, enjoy the hops pictures!
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Justin on Sunday, July 12th, 2009 |
No CommentsSo last April (2008) my buddy and I planted three Cascade hop rhizomes along a fence in his yard. Last year our harvest, as expected was quite minimal, but we got some good vine growth. By early April this year our hops were poking through the ground. By the end of May the hop vines had already matched last year’s entire growth. Over the weekend we went over to their place for a cookout and to enjoy the great weather. WOW! Look at those hops! The vine growth is tremendous and there lots of little hop buds all over the place. We’re hoping to have enough to completely hop a batch with our own hops, which by the looks of it should be very doable. I hope to take some pictures and share sometime soon. Do you grow your own hops? How is the growing season treating them where you live?
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Justin on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 |
No CommentsSo a couple months ago I posted about my 1120 IPA recipe I crafted. I know the world is eagerly awaiting the report, so how was it? Ok, no one is dying to know, but if you were curious here’s the report. Enjoy!
Like I said in my previous reports, my racking cane got clogged so my volume was a bit light and my efficiency was a bit off being my first batch with my new water supply, so this is a high end APA or a low-end IPA, either way a damn tasty beer!
I was a bit concerned about the slow performance of the Nottingham yeast, but like I said I was fermenting this rather cool, in the 56/57F range. Well the beer turned out great, this was the first time I used Amarillo hops and really enjoy them, I prefer this Amarillo/Cascade blend over soley Cascade. I’ll stop rambling about the beer, here’s my review with a picture of the beer! Try the recipe out, if you like hops, you’ll love this!
At a couple months age (and even at just over one month) this beer is fantastic. It pours fairly clear golden-orange color with a moderate white head. The aroma is quite hoppy, lemon-citrus qualities from Amarillo and Cascade hops. The flavor is moderately hoppy with a noticeable, yet not tongue splitting hop bitterness. The beer finishes with a nice linger of hop flavor and a bit of sweet, nutty malt. The carbonation is moderate and body medium.This beer turned out wonderful, a refreshing, very flavorful pale ale!
