Ordinary Greatness

It's always nice to keep a beer on tap that you can drink more than a few pints of and still remember to feed the dogs. English bitters are a great beer for that. For a long time I would never order an ordinary bitter or extra special bitter off of a beer menu because I always thought they were going to be, well...bitter. In fact they are usually much less bitter than a standard American pale ale having an average IBU of 25-35.

Since trying a few I thought it was time to throw one on tap. My plan was to shoot for a beer on the high end of the ordinary bitter style range but after hitting some really good efficiency on my new system I ended up with a wort more resembling a premium bitter, clocking in at 1.045.

Gregg and I made 10 gallons of this beer using imported ingredients that will resemble a beer that would get served to you in England. Although these are typically served from a cask, which I don't currently have, I plan to keep the carbonation low at around 1-1.5 volumes.

Brew day went well and we ended up with exactly 10 gallons of wort. To make things more interesting Gregg decided to pitch WLP 001 and I pitched S-04 English Ale yeast so that we could taste how each yeast effected the flavor of the final product.

Fermentation started within a few hours and was churning strongly by morning sitting right at 68*, ambient temps of 65*. One day into fermenting I slowly lowered the temps down to 65* to keep esters at a minimum. It was done within 3 days and had already flocullated and dropped out, S-04 is a workhorse!



Brewed 3/5/11

3/13/11 - FG 1.010 Tasted some diacetyl but it was very clear.

3/22/11 - Diacetyl was gone, Kegged.

Ordinary Greatness

13.3 LBS Maris Otter
8 oz Crystal 120L
4 oz Special B
1.5 oz Fuggles 60 min
.7 oz Fuggles 30 min
.6 oz East Kent Goldings 30 min
.4 oz East Kent Goldings 10 min
Irish moss 10 min
Yeast nutrient 10 min

Rye IPA

My obsession to find a good deal on brewing equipment on craigslist lead me on a two hour drive, in a blizzard, driving a rear wheel drive box truck with bald tires to pick up a boat load of goodies for a steal. I was able to grab 3 SS 10 gal. pots with ball valves and thermometers, 4 propane burners, a 3 tier gravity brew stand, kegerater, some carboys, corney keg, 2 CO2 tanks and regulator, 2 propane tanks, wort chiller, as well as a bunch of other misc. stuff. Luckily for me this guy used the system once then decided (or someone decided for him) to quit drinking. Quitter.

So anyways, I was very excited to give my newly acquired system a test drive, and my buddy Gregg got to brew his first all-grain batch with my old pots. I had just tasted a very good rye IPA and wanted to take a shot at my own.

The brew day got off to a rough start with one of my new pots having a leak and Gregg missing his mash-in temps...3 times! Its OK Gregg your Mom still loves you. Once we got rolling though everything went smooth. We smoked a good cigar and drank some good home brews. I had just kegged my French Saison which turned out really well, so we got to sample that for the first time. That might end up being one of my standard house beers.

Rye IPA: Brewed 3/3/11

10.5 #s 2 row

1 # rye

1 # wheat

.5 # crystal 60L

1 oz centennial first wort hops
.5 oz simcoe 10 min.
1 oz citra 2 min.
.5 oz simcoe flame out
.5 oz each simco, centennial, citra dry hops

irish moss, yeast nutrient 10 min

wlp001 1500 ml starter on stir plate 2 days before

3/30/11 If you like a face full of hops, this beer is for you! Real good, hoppy but not real bitter. Could prob use a bump up in the early hop additions to balance it out just a bit.

Simple-Hard Apple Cider

Although beer is my love, I also enjoy wine, a mixed drink and some good old fashioned hard cider. I have made apple wines, and dry ciders but what I really like is a semi sweet cider. From what I have read Woodchuck's Cider in the bottle has a gravity of about 1.028. That is really sweet! My dry ciders that are fermented with wine or champagne yeast finish around 1.000, maybe a little higher.

So with Winter hopefully winding down soon I wanted to make a semi sweet cider that would be ready to be put on tap in about 6 weeks. Like anything else, ciders are as easy or as hard as you want to make them. I have tried my fare share and have tasted great examples of both. For this recipe I went very simple. Apple juice, champagne yeast, apple juice concentrate, and potassium sorbate. Thats it! Believe it or not, it tastes extremely similar to Woodchuck.

Step one: Buy 100% apple juice or apple cider that has no preservitives in it. (I usually make 3-5 gallons)

Step two: Sanitize a carboy and funnel. (You don't really have to have much head space because you don't get a krausen.)

Step three: Pour half of each jug of juice into the carboy and recap them so that you can shake the rest to aeriate. Shake the carboy to aeriate the other half. Pour the rest in from the jugs.

Step four: Pitch some Champagne yeast or wine yeast.

Step five: Wait a month. (Ya I know it sucks)

Step six: Add potassium sorbate to kill off the yeast. How much to add depends on how much you are making. If you want it dry, you don't need to add this, just bottle or keg as is.

Step seven: Backsweeten with cans of apple juice concentrate. This gives you the flexability of getting it to the sweetness you enjoy. I will probably bring this one back to about 1.018.

Step eight: Keg and enjoy.

Side note: Once you add the potassium sorbate and kill off the yeast you will not be able to carbonate this in a bottle. This may be obvious but I figured I would throw it in anyways.

If you want it to be sweet and bottle it AND have it carbonated you will just have to sweeten each glass you pour, seven up works great.

If I only knew how easy this is to make while I was in high school.....

Simple Hard Apple Cider

Made 3 gallons 2/11/11

Why do you homebrew?

I asked this question last month because I think a lot of us brew for lots of different reasons, and for multiple reasons. Having studied biology and a lot of that being micro biology I really enjoy the process of cultivating yeast as well as providing them with the best habitat, or living environment for them to be successful and do exactly what I want them to do...make good beer. We as brewers don't make beer, we make wort, and the yeast do all of the hard work to make it all come together for us. Without yeast, beer is not possible.

I also enjoy sitting in the garage, smoking a cigar and hanging out with friends while we drink beers from previous batches. Some beers come out better then others, but I don't fret the occasional mediocre batch, especially if I was experimenting with something different because I know that I had a great time making it. Not to mention being able to learn from those mistakes.

From the poll results it seems like most people enjoy the science behind beer and the process as much as they like to drink that beer and share it with others. So tell me more, what got you into brewing, and what has kept you going back for more? Even after all those broken carboys, infected batches, stuck sparges, messy boil overs and bottle bombs! Lets hear it in a comment below!

Poll Results: Why do you homebrew?

Like the process                            61%
Cheap Beer                                  15%
Drinking it                                     46%
Having others drink it                     38%
Make something you can't buy       23%        
The science aspect                        46%
Other                                             0%


*could choose multiple answers

2 beers 1 day: French Saison & Irish Red Ale



Smelling the Greatness



Over the past few weeks I have been showing my buddy Gregg the ropes in the world of brewing. He has officially 'caught the bug'. So we both wanted to brew this weekend. I had a French Saison planned and he wanted to try brewing his first beer without my help.

We both made starters a few days before, I went with Wyeast 3711 and he chose WLP004. I chose 3711 for a few reasons, I wanted the beer to finish very dry and I have heard of this yeast putting a serious whooping on some sugars, taking it down past 1.010. Also I wanted all of the peppery and citrusy esters that it is known for.

My malt bill was simple for the Saison, mostly Belgian pilsner and a little Belgian wheat. I have been on a very simple malt bill kick lately to try and understand what each of them does for any given beer. I wanted to accentuate the peppery, spicy yeast notes by only using Saaz hops which can have those same characteristics.

Being Gregg's first beer he chose to do an extract batch with specialty grains, light malt extracts, roasted barely for that nice red color and some crystal 80L.

Brew day went well except for the fact that I didn't hit my efficientcy that I was hoping for but I think it is because I did a single batch sparge instead of splitting it into two batch sparges which is my normal.

Irish Red Ale

Brewed on 1/30/11 By: Gregg

5 Gal.

OG 1.067

FG 1.020 (anticipated)

IBU 20

SRM 17

6 lbs Light DME

3 lbs Light malt extract

6.5 oz Crystal 80L

3.5 oz Rosted Barely

1 oz Cluster 60 Min.

.5 oz Cluster 30 Min.

WLP004

1/31/11 - Lets just say its a good thing we put a blow off tube on that bad boy!

French Saison

Brewed on 1/30/11

5 Gal.

OG 1.046

FG 1.010 Anticipated

IBU 26

SRM 4

9 lbs Belgian Pilsner

1.25 lbs Belgian Wheat Malt

1 oz Saaz 60 Min.

1 oz Saaz 10 Min.

1.5 oz Saaz Flame Out

Yeast Nutrient & Irish Moss

Wyeast 3711 (Made 1 Liter Starter on stir plate)

Royal Oak Stout

Since I had such a nice, relaxing time making my Honey Amber Ale on my stove inside I was quick to do something similar. For this beer I decided to do a partial mash on the stove top using a steeping bag to mash in. I'm not sure where this beer will end up but here is how it got started. I am getting low on stouts, I only have 4 bottles of an oatmeal stout left that I made last April but am planning on saving these for a while to see how they age out.

The base wort is pretty simple, just using a few pounds of maris otter, pale LME,  crystal 80L, and some chocolate malt. I don't want it to be a sweet stout, dry stout, American stout or an export so I guess this one won't fit into any category or specific style which I think too many brewers focus on. I want to make good beers that taste good to me, not for a judge who is worried about IBUs, SRMs etc.



Rehydrating Yeast



This beer is made to focus on the specialty grains and malts. It doesn't have any finishing or dry hops, nor will it have a specific yeast character as I chose to use a very neutral strain. I am also going to be soaking some oak chips in some crown royal for a week or so before I add it to the secondary fermentor to give it that bourbon barrel stout flavor which I hope stands out but isn't over powering. To accomplish this I will only use about 3/4 oz of oak and 4-5 oz of crown. I will be taking samples almost everyday until I get the taste right where I want it. I know from sampling some other beers aged in oak that it can easily become way too oaky.



What I haven't decided yet is if I am going to funk this beer up with some Brett. And if I do, what Brett. I will use. It most likely will be Brettanomyces bruxellensis which is moderate in its flavors and intensity. Who knows, It may even get some sour cherries added to it this summer. Stay tuned to see what the future holds...

Royal Oak Stout

Brewed by: Gregg and I

Brewed on 1/14/11

3.8 Gallons partial mash

O.G. 1.061

F.G. 1.015 (anticipated



IBU 33.7

SRM 33.6

85% efficiency

3 lbs maris otter

3 lbs pale LME

10.1 oz roasted barely

5.6 oz crystal 80L

2 oz chocolate malt

1.5 oz fuggles 60 min.

.4 tsp yeast nutrient 10 min.

.4 tst irish moss 10 min.

Nottingham yeast (rehydrated)

1/21/11 Racked to secondary. Gravity: 1.014. Tasted good with lots of coffee notes.

2/9/11 Added .75 oz of oak chips that I have been soaking in 4 oz of Crown Royal. (added the Crown too)



Dave's Dort

I typically don't brew lagers but a few things made me go ahead and make one. For one, I just bought a brand new stir plate and couldn't wait to make a big starter and put it to use. Northern Brewer has their own stir plate on their website for about $62 if anyone is looking for a good one at a decent price. Also, my basement has been sitting right at 49-50* F ambient which will be perfect to get a nice clean lager beer.

Also, I can't be the only one with friends and family who do not like to drink 8% ABV 90 IBU imperial IPAs or vanilla bean imperial stouts. Why? I don't know... but this will be a good beer for those that like an easy drinking smooth malty beer.

I started this project off by making a 1.5L starter of White Labs 838. Going off of the book 'Yeast' by Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff this size starter and a fresh vial of yeast will produce about 181 billion cells without a stir plate. And also in that book it says that a stir plate will double to triple the amount of cells produced making this come out to about 262 - 343 billion cells assuming everything is perfect!!! Using Mr. Malty's yeast calculator I need about 364 billion cells so I should be fine. I wanted to make sure the yeast were extremely healthy since I was going to be fermenting at the lower end of the yeast's temperature range.

The brew day got off to a slow start because I undershot my temps when putting the hot water in my mash tun. I had to take some water out and boil it (twice) to get my strike temps where I wanted them. I mashed in at 155* for an hr.

I cooled the wort down to 62*f to give the yeast a head start before it got real cold and set it down in the basement. It was showing activity within 6 hrs and had cooled down to 55*. Since then it has been cruising right at 50* and has been fermenting very steady for 4 days now with a very nice malty smell to the CO2 being released. I plan on keeping it down there for 2 weeks then bringing it upstairs and raising the temps to 68* for a diacetyl rest for two days before racking and lagering for 60 days in the mid 40's.

Dave's Dort
Brewed on 1/9/11

6 gallons All Grain
73% efficiency
OG 1.043
FG 1.012 (anticipated)
IBU 26.4
SRM 4.9

8 lbs Belgian Pilsner
1 lb 12 oz Munich
.75 oz Cascade 60 Min.
.75 Saaz 30 Min.
1 oz Saaz 5 Min.
.5 tsp Irish Moss 10 Min.
.5 Yeast Nutrient 10 Min.
WLP838 1.5L starter on stir plate

1/21/11 Moved upstairs to 68* ambient for a diacytel rest for 2 days. Gravity: 1.010. Could taste some diacytel. (cooked corn flavor) This should all disipate after the rest and lagering time. clear, nice medium straw color.