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!

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!

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

The recipe I came up with used a lot of German pilsner and German munich malt and a bit of caramel malt, hence the maibock part of the beer recipe, basically similar malts I would use in a maibock recipe.  We bittered with Perle and made a 15 minute, 5 minute and zero minute addition of Tettnanger hops.  For yeast we went with Wyeast 1007 German Ale yeast, as this should give a rather clean fermentation, allowing the hops and malt to shine.  If you want the recipe, give me a shout, otherwise here are a few pictures of the fermentation that is going strong in my basement.

Oh, and if you were curious I ended up going with Nottingham Ale yeast for this batch.  I fermented at 57F, it took a full 24 hours to see action from the yeast at this cool temperature, but once it got going it fermented slowly and steadily through much of the week.  It will be interesting to see how this beer tastes, I never have fermented an ale at this low of a temperature.  I’ll post back in a couple months with a tasting.  Here are a few pictures I thought you may enjoy from my brew day last Sunday.

1120 IPA Grains

Here is the grain bill mixed throughly before adding to the mash tun.  The non-barley specs are flaked barley, which I think will give this IPA just a bit of a creamy mouthfeel.

Bittering Addition

The bittering addition, added at the beginning of the boil.  The whole hops are Amarillo and the pellets are Cascades.

Mash after draining

Here is the mash after draining, before the first sparge, smells SO good!

Draining into brew kettle

Draining the first runnings from the mash tun into the kettle.  I have the burner on low after running off to stop any further enzyme action that may be going on.

Rolling boil

Ah, a full rolling boil, you can see the whole hop flower pieces if you look closely.

Well there you have it, another enjoyable brew day!  I can’t wait until this one is ready!  Are you brewing anything soon?

The beer on the left is the beer from the fridge and the beer on the right is the cellar temperature beer.  The cellar temperature beer held a frothier head than the cold beer, I can’t say why.  The pours were equally agressive and glasses were both clean.  Anyway, the aroma of the cellar temperature beer was much roastier than the cold beer, I think part of that was due to temperature differences as well as the fact the cellar beer had a much larger head.  A larger head delivers a more intense punch of aroma.  The color of the beers were the same, very dark brown, not quite black.

The taste of the these two beers were (not surprisingly) very similar.  Both have a moderately roasted flavor, medium/light body and low carbonation.  The finish is rather dry, but not too dry.  There may be a hint of hop flavor in there as well, tough to say.

So what do I think?  I think it’s a good beer, not a great a beer.  The next time I make this brew there are some changes I want to make.  Here is a key part of making great homebrew.  Take great notes.  Note what you like, what you don’t like, and how you would change things.  You won’t remember 6 or 9 months from now!

I purposely went for low carbonation since too high of carbonation on a dry stout can overly accentuate the dry/acrid nature of the beer to a point where it is overwhelming.  Next time I’d prefer just a bit more carbonation, ideally I’d have a nitrogren beer engine, but I’d settle for just a bit more carbonation.

The body is purposely lighter bodied since this is not supposed to be a big thick beer, but rather a beer you enjoy through the night of playing cards.  To me it still needs something a bit more.  Next time I will mash at a slightly higher temperature.  The slightly higher mash temperature will give the beer a higher finishing gravity, and hence a bit more sweetness and more body.

I wouldn’t mind a bit darker color and bit more roasted flavor.  So I think I will increase the roasted barley a bit and maybe try pulverizing the roasted barley.  I have read that pulverizing roasted barley can darken the color and slightly change the flavor profile.

So there you have it.  The Beamish Irish Stout turned out pretty good.  There is room for improvement, but until next time, I’ve got a little over a case of tasty dry stout left to drink.

Good luck with your brewing

6.0 lbs Maris Otter Malt

1.75 lbs Flaked Barley

1.0 lbs Roasted Barley

1.0 lbs Rice Hulls (for easier sparge)

1.0 oz Challenger Hop Pellets 7.6% AA – 60 minutes

0.5 oz Kent Goldings Hop Pellets 5.6% AA – 60 minutes

0.5 oz Kent Goldings Hop Pellets 5.6% AA – 15 minutes

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast Smack Pack.

The mash went well, I got 82% efficiency on my mash and mashed at 152F.  The OG of my wort was 1.043 and calculated IBUs was 40.  I oxygenated the 5.5 gallons of wort in my fermentor for 45 seconds and pitched the yeast into wort at 71F.

Here are some photos I think a lot of you may enjoy.  Next week I’ll share a few photos of the fermentation process.  But now to the brew day photos!

Justin

Here is a photo of the grains before adding to the mash tun.  The white specks are barley endosperm, the whiteish flakes are the flaked barley, the dark specs is roasted barley and you can see a great deal of barley husk and rice hulls.

Here is a photo of the mash shortly after doughing-in.

This is the mash after 60 minutes. Notice how the top watery portion of the mash has become clear compared to after doughing-in.  This is one sign of complete starch to sugar conversion.

Here is my boil setup.  The collected wort with a propane tank fueling the boil.  You can also see the big pot in the background, that’s what I use to heat my water for mash and sparges.

Not that is picture is especially exciting, but I thought it was neat with the steam rising.  It is the spent grain in a trash bag.

A wonderful photo of the boil.  You can see some flecks of protein and hop in the clear portion of the wort, lots of steam and on the left is protein hot break.  Occasionally I’ll skim some of this out and dispose.

……And finally the chilled, oxygened and yeast pitched wort.  I’ve got a blow-off tube in there just in case.  I’ll leave this post here for now.  I’ll post a few pictures of the fermentation process during the week.  An early update: fermentation is going well, I have a krausen head developing about 8 hours after pitching my yeast.

Today I brewed up a clone recipe from the September 2008 issue of Brew Your Own magazine, this recipe is for Beamish Irish Stout (I think I said Murphy’s Stout in the video clip, but this was the one for Beamish Stout.  Too many recipes too little time I guess!).

Beamish and Guiness are similar beers, although I like Beamish a little bit more.  It as a bit of hop flavor/aroma that isn’t in Guiness.  Anyway here’s a short video clip of the rolling boil.  It smelled wonderful, if only your monitor was scratch and sniff.  I’ll post some pictures and a some more details later in the weekend.

Anyone else brewing up a batch this weekend?  Enjoy the video!