Success!?

So, I just bottled the Imperial Irish Stout and it didn’t taste contaminated.

At least, the taste of contamination didn’t overpower the alcohol content.

Which, by the way, damn.

You know that face you make when you’re sober and do a shot? And that big exhale you do to try to get some fresh air?

You do that every single time you sip this beer. It’s THAT alcoholic.

I gotta say. I don’t know if the Beano is the cause of this, but if it is, I’m going to abuse the crap out of this new information.

Besides being really, really high in alcohol content, it’s pretty good – way dry, which I’ve read is an effect of using Beano, and has kind of a burnt caramel / molasses flavor. It’s not bitter at all, and not malty. It seems really well balanced once you get past the alcohol. It’s not really heavy, either, despite the fact that you can’t see through it at all. At all. Light does not escape this beer.

Seriously – I’m kinda dizzy and all I’ve had is the skinny little testing tube! OK, I haven’t had anything to eat yet (priorities!).

I’m christening this one “Black Hole Sun”.

Imperial Irish Stout

• 2lb Roasted Barley
• 1/2lb Black Patent Malt
• 1/2lb Chocolate Malt
• 1/4lb Crystal 40L Malt
• 9lb 2-Row
• 6lb Light Malt Extract
• 2oz Centennial Hops (11.5% AA)
• 1oz Cascade Hops (5.6% AA)
• 60z Bushmill’s 10 year
• 4 Beano caplets

This one was a total CF. First attempt in my new kitchen and lots of problems throughout the day lead me to believe that there’s a good chance this one got contaminated.

First of all, that is A LOT of grain. A LOT. You can’t (or shouldn’t) make this with anything short of a 5gal boiling pot and you need 6-8 grain bags (big ones) for all that grain. I had to make it in two pots and change the grain 3 times to get it all in there. So that was big problem #1.

No.

That was big problem #2.

Big problem number one was staying out ’til 4:00 in the morning and getting totally wrecked. Note: Sweating alcohol while you’re trying to remember how to brew when you’re not physically or mentally on the ball leads to a fair amount of sloppiness.

So after I made wort from all that grain, I didn’t have any grain bags left for the hops. So I just put the hops in the pot loose. That works, technically, but it makes it WAY harder to get the beer into the carboy without contaminating it, ’cause you have to get all the hops back out somehow. So I had to pour the beer through a strainer, through a funnel, and into the carboy, reaching into the strainer to pull hops out every once in a while so that it didn’t just clog up. So that gave me several more opportunities to contaminate the beer, on top of making me splash the crap out of it and getting beer EVERYWHERE.

This is a really dark one, too, with a lot of sugars in it. So when I say I spilled it everywhere, I mean it looked like a bottle of thick soy sauce exploded in my kitchen.

Anyway, after lots of potential screw-ups, contamination, etc. I finally got all this black oil into the carboy and it’s fermenting in the back room now. I also threw some Beano caps into the fermenter to see what the effect of that is. Supposedly the enzymes that are in Beano break down complex sugars (starches) into fermentable sugars, reducing the amount of carbs in the beer and making it more alcoholic. Both desirable. We’ll see how that goes.

Actually, not really. Since I don’t know how this was supposed to turn out, and didn’t take an OG reading when I put it into the carboy, I don’t know how I’ll even tell how much alcohol is in there. I’m hoping 8-10%. And I’m hoping that this isn’t contaminated and tastes like it looks. This is some seriously dark beer.

Imperial Stout

The next one is going to be an Imperial Stout…with Whiskey.

http://hopville.com/recipe/133381/russian-imperial-stout-recipes/jameson-imperial-stout

Here’s the closest I could approximate for ingredients from Perfect Brewing Supply:

9 x	Rahr 2-Row (1 lb.)
2 x	Briess Chocolate Malt (1 lb.)
2 x	Munton’s Light Dry Malt Extract 3#
1 x	Briess Black Patent Malt (1 lb.)
2 x	Briess Roasted Barley (1 lb.)
1 x	Briess Crystal 40L (1 lb.)
1 x	Centennial Whole Leaf Hops (2 oz.)
1 x	Cascade Whole Leaf Hops (2 oz.)

Pumpkin Beer!

So, the pumpkin beer turned out pretty damn awesome. Subtle in it’s pumpkin flavor, and a little on the sweet side, but quite well received. Next time, though, more spices and more time with the pumpkin in the mix.

But this is the second batch I’ve made that hasn’t carbonated quickly at all. Like, at all.

It’s been in bottles for over a month now, and it’s still on the flat side when I open it. Which is pretty annoying.

I don’t know what’s causing it, though!

Maybe it’s cause I ran the bottles through the dishwasher to get the labels off? Some residue from that which prevents the yeast from being active in bottles?

Maybe it’s cause I’m not using enough priming sugar?

I just don’t know.

I am thinking about ordering some fresh, clean bottles for the next one. Maybe even getting some printed? How cool would that be?

Anyway, it’s coming. Right as I was planning to start a new batch, things changed and I had to move into a new apartment, so that put the process on hold for a bit.

But I think things are settled enough that it’s about time to get ready for the next one.

The world needs heroes

Sometimes, just when you need someone to look up to, someone to give you a path, one lands in your inbox:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/only-in-portland-beer-keg-carrying-party-bike/

I may have spent enough money there to finance this, but I don’t regret a single cent. Hopworks rules.

Bottled Pumpkin

With the kind of hangover that accompanies a birthday, I manage to get batch 004 into bottles today.

It was pretty sweet and I think it will be really good after a few weeks in bottles. I would’ve liked it to come out more spicy and a little more pumpkin flavored, but I think that it will be a crowd pleaser.

I didn’t transfer it into the priming bucket before bottling, I just went straight from the carboy to bottles. I don’t know if that will have an effect, but I dis it that way for batch 001, so I am not too worried about it.

OG: 1.020 @ 80F, so 1.026 at 60.

Recipe 004

• 1lb. Breiss Carapils
• 1lb. Rahr Red Wheat
• 1lb. Munich
• 2lb. Gold Dry Malt Extract
• 3lb. Amber Dry Malt Extract
• 2 medium pumpkins
• 1oz. Mt. Hood hops (5.5% AA)
• 1tsp. Pumpkin Spice
• 1tsp. Vanilla
• WyEast 1056

1. Roast pumpkin at 350F for 1hr. in 1in. of water, remove shell.
2. Heat water to 150-170, add grains and pumpkin meat, let stand 1 hr.
3. Remove grains and pumpkin and bring to boil.
4. Add hops and malt, boil 60 min.
5. Add 1 tsp. Irish Moss with 15 left in boil.
6. Add Pumpkin Spice & vanilla at flameout.
7. Cool to 75, add to carboy with yeast and a little water to make 5gal.

OG: 1.062 @ 80F = 1.068 @ 60F

I think everything today went pretty smoothly. The beer smells awesome. I think it could use more hops, but the other hops that I had were 16% AA, which would’ve been way too hoppy, I think. So 1oz. will have to be enough. The beer at this point tastes fantastic – sweet & spicy.

I don’t think that I messed anything up, and I think I did a pretty good job of not contaminating anything. I probably could’ve used more Red Wheat to make the beer more colorful, but it looks pretty good as is.

I am really looking forward to this one.

Also, per someone’s advice, I froze the pumpkin after I removed it from the brew, so when the beer is ready I will make beer flavored pumpkin pie to go with it.

Planning 004 (Pumpkin Ale)

Normally it would be about mid-October and I’d start thinking “Man, I wish I’d started brewing a pumpkin beer about six weeks ago!”

This year, somehow, I thought to do it with time enough to do it.

So Batch 004 is going to be a pumpkin ale – one of my favorite beers. If you’ve never had it, I highly suggest trying either Dogfish Head’s Punkin’ or one that’s just called “Pumpkin Ale”. I think the recipe is from Buffalo Bill’s in Montana, but it’s brewed and bottled locally in lots of regions.

I am, again, not specifically following any recipe, but found these two that look pretty good:

• http://beerrecipes.blogspot.com/2007/09/pumpkin-ale.html
• http://www.thebrewsite.com/2004/10/11/pumpkin_ale_recipe.php

I’ll post the exact recipe when I do it, but this time I’m noting the recipes I’m looking at before I lose them.

Brew Not Bombs

Bottling 003

Because I dry hopped this one, getting the beer from the carboy and into bottles without bottling hop leaves posed a bit of difficulty.

Here’s what I did (for better or worse):

• boil 1 cup extra light malt w/ 2 cups water
• pour that into plastic fermenting pail
• add some filtered water (to cool it)
• siphon beer from carboy and through mesh bag into plastic pail
• bottle from there

I don’t know how this will have affected anything, and one of my big concerns with this entire batch has been that I filtered out too much yeast each time I transferred it. I’m kinda afraid that this has meant not enough fermentation, or not fast enough fermentation, resulting in low alcohol content. Which (see below) seems true.

It is, however, delicious. It has a very hoppy aroma, but the taste is not at all bitter. I think that it would best be described as an aromatic Pale Ale. Which is what I was going for, so I’m not disappointed at all. I think it’s going to be very good in three weeks and will be great when it’s hot in September.

I ended up with 39 12oz bottles and about 4.9 22oz bottles. (12 * 39) + (4.9 * 22) = 468 +107.8 = 575.8 oz = ~48 12oz bottles. That’s just a little short of what I wanted. I figure that I could’ve added water to the pail before bottling to get more, but this one was a pretty light, golden color, and I didn’t want to have to boil a bunch of water and let it cool before adding it.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to enjoying this one. Abby, Ben, Bean and Talia all enjoyed the warm, flat, unfinished version.

1.010 @ 80F = 1.016 @ 60F.

(1.038 – 1.016) * 105 = 2.31% ABV

Whoa. That’s low. Bummer.

Uh…at least it’s organic?