I was thinking of making up some “fruited” wheats in the next go around of the mash tun.

I love trying to maximize my return in the brewhouse for the amount of work I put in, also while learning something in the process of each style I brew.  To that end, I think I am going to brew up a large batch of wheat style beer and split it into several fermenters for fruit additions in secondary.  Something along the line of an American Wheat (50/50 barley/wheat) with a simple hopping schedule.  This time though I think I want to use traditional American ale yeast like WLP001 or US-05.  I’ve never brewed a wheat beer without the contributing flavors of wheat yeasts, so now is the time to learn what wheat tastes like on its own (see, that’s the learning part!).

With my current setup, I think I can mash in a batch and collect about 14 gallons of wort, boil it down to about 12.5 gallons, then split it into three 4 gallon batches.  I’ll ferment them all with the same yeast strain.  Once done I plan to secondary two of them with fruit (strawberry and blueberry) and the third I leave plain for comparison as a base beer.  I am anxious to try the fruit purees I had talked about in an earlier post.

I realized too that blending the finished beers from the bottle might be interesting too. Like a 50/50 strawberry/blueberry mix.

I’ve got to go plan the ingredient list, but hopefully I can fire these brews off soon.
I’ll post the recipe and hopefully some pics of the process.

Cheers!

Light and crisp; American Cream Ale is a great light, no-frills beer to make for the summer. Done right, it will rival all the American Lagers your swill drinking friends drink and you’ll be making yourself on the cheap. The best part of American Cream Ale is that it is an ale!!!! You don’t need to lager or cold ferment which takes a dedicated fridge to do it right.

Fire up the brew kettles and give this Cream Ale a shot. I modified the recipe from Jamil’s “Brewing Classic Styles” to use Nobel Saaz hops. I wanted it to have a little more of that European lager like quality to confuse my light beer drinking friends and family (Oh you know who you are). The key to brewing a great cream ale is the neutral qualities of American Ale yeast. I use US-05 dry yeast from Fermentis, but I used it from a slurry off a previous beer. I love that yeast as a second pitch yeast. It is so clean. Much cleaner than I have ever gotten out of a White Labs WLP001 from a starter. (though I am sure that repitching WLP001 if you have it would be just as clean). Focus on a good pitch of super healthy yeast and your Cream ale will be so clean and crisp, you’ll probably brew it several times a year just to slake your thirst.

Mike’s All-grain American Cream Ale Recipe

BJCP Style 6A

Size: 6.0 gal
Efficiency: 70.0%
Attenuation: 80.0%
Original Gravity: 1.052
Terminal Gravity: 1.010
Color: 3.3
Alcohol: 5.5%
Bitterness: 17.85

Ingredients:
5 lbs Pilsner Malt
5 lbs 2-Row Brewers Malt
1 lbs Corn Flaked (Maize)
1 lbs White Table Sugar (Sucrose)
0.85 oz Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
0.5 oz Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 2 min
2 tsp Irish Moss - added during boil, boiled 15 min
1 ea Fermentis US-05
Mash In -152 °F

John’s Partial Mash Cream Ale Recipe

4 lbs. American 2-row Pale
0.25 lbs. American Caramel 10°L
3 lbs. Dry Extra Light Extract
0.50 lbs. Flaked Corn
0.5 oz. Cluster Pellets boiled 60 min.
0.5 oz. Cascade Pellets boiled 15 min.
WYeast 1056 American Ale

Check out the cream ale brewing notes on this partial mash recipe.

I reread Mike’s post on brewing fruit beers and I dreamt up this all grain blueberry ale recipe that balances sweet (from the malt), spicy (from the hops), and tart (from the berries) flavors into one beer. You’ll need a secondary fermenter for this recipe.

Ingredients:

8 lbs. American 2-row
0.25 lbs. Honey Malt
0.75 lbs. German Vienna Malt
0.50 oz. Perle (Pellets, 8.25 %AA) boiled 60 min.
0.50 oz. Saaz (Pellets, 5.00 %AA) boiled 15 min.
2.5 lbs Oregon Fruit Puree - Blueberry
Yeast: White Labs WLP051 California Ale V

Instructions:

Mash grain at 150 degrees for 1 hour. Boil for 60 minutes and ferment at 68 degrees for 2 weeks. Add fruit puree to secondary fermenter and rack beer on top of it. Let beer condition for 1 week. Bottle or rack to a keg for another 2 weeks of conditioning.

Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.010
Color: 4.69 °SRM
Bitterness: 21.5 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 4.8 %

I have an “overstock” of Cascade pellets that I need to use up so I was thinking that a couple single hop beers were in order.  Looking at my American Beer series line up, I think I will substitute this Cascade Pale Ale for the American Wheat.  (I have other plans for a wheat series later this month, so stay tuned).

Here is my Cascade Pale Ale recipe. Let me know what you think. I was keeping it simple to be a clean drinker but still showcase the Cascade hop.

Cascade Pale Ale

10-A American Pale Ale

Size: 6.0 gal
Efficiency: 65%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Original Gravity: 1.050 (1.045 - 1.060)
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.010 - 1.015)
Color: 8.3 (5.0 - 14.0)
Alcohol: 4.87% (4.5% - 6.0%)
Bitterness: 38.87 (30.0 - 45.0)

Ingredients:

12.0 lbs 2-Row Brewers Malt
1.0 lbs Crystal 15
0.6 oz Chocolate Malt
1.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
1.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1.5 oz Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min

1.0 ea Fermentis US-05 Safale US-05
1.0 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 15 min

Mash at 154F for 60 minutes.

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.0.29

Another recipe for our Summer Beer series comes to us from Allagash Brewing in Portland, Maine.

I really love the light and citrusy flavor of this beer.  A good friend on the Brewing Knowledge Base forum (BKB for short) gave me this clone recipe for Allagash White. (Thanks again to ”Dartgod”)

Allagash White is one of the greatest everyday drinking beers available.  Living in New England, I am fortunate to have access to a ready supply of this beer.  However, I am going to try my hand at brewing this one very soon.  I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do.

Allagash White Clone

16-A Witbier

Size: 6.5 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Original Gravity: 1.045 (1.044 - 1.052)
Terminal Gravity: 1.011 (1.008 - 1.012)
Color: 3.3 (2.0 - 4.0)
Alcohol: 4.37% (4.5% - 5.5%)
Bitterness: 21.76 (10.0 - 20.0)

Ingredients:
6.75 lbs Pilsner Malt
4.25 lbs German Wheat Malt Light
0.98 oz Tettnanger (4.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
0.32 oz Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
0.32 oz Saaz (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min
0.3 oz Coriander crushed - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
0.3 oz Ginger (fresh) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
0.3 oz Bitter Curacao/Bitter Orange (Peel) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
1.0 ea White Labs WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale
-OR-
1.0 ea White Labs WLP410 Belgian Wit II Ale

Mash in at 152F
Ferment at 65F
Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.0.29

With the gracious help of my wife, we got the IPA and the Kolsch bottled up. These two beers were made out of the same mash, then tweaked with steeping grains as I reported back on my Double Brew Day post.

My kegerator is dead, and has since been hauled out to make more room in my garage. So back to bottling for this devotee of home kegging. I didn’t have any corn sugar on hand, so I just used 3oz of table sugar (sucrose) for my priming agent. I considered using DME, but I wanted the beers to carb up quickly and DME priming can take a little longer than refined sugars. Both beers spent three weeks in primary and were looking nice and clear in the carboy.

Everything went as planned. The IPA had a finishing gravity of 1.014 and the Kolsch was a dry 1.009. I had considered dry hopping the IPA with 2 oz of Cascade, but the aroma from the later hop additions was already great, so I decided to save those Cascades for an American Brown in the near future.

We are certainly looking forward to tasting these two beers once they are ready. As this was the first time I have used Columbus and Centennial hops (IPA), I was pleased with their aroma and flavor. We’ll have to see how the beer is all carbed up and conditioned. I’ll post back with pictures of each beer and a taste review in a couple weeks.

Be sure to look for my next post on using the Better Bottle carboy as I totally forgot about one key factor about them that may have ruined the Kolsch.

Brew ON!

My Kolsch and IPA brew session went of without a hitch last Friday night.  Today, almost a week later both beers are almost quiet with their fermentation activity, but I’ll continue to let them set for another week before I rack them into kegs.   I may dry hop the IPA with 2oz of Cascade plugs I have.  And I need to get that Kolsch chilled down for some cold conditioning.

During this session I brewed the two beers from the same mash.  Doing this saves some time and allows me to get two full beers out of one mash session.  I have two burners to use so I can split the total wort and then boil the two worts at the same time.  I have done this double sized mash a couple times and I find it works really well for me.

In my Kolsch recipe it called for base malt (Pils), some Munich and some CaraPils.  That is a pretty simple grain base that I felt would work also as a base for a clean American style pale ale like IPA.  My IPA recipe reflects that base and also has the addition of some crystal 120L in it to get more of that crystal malt flavor that I like in a pale ale.  My approach with the double sized mash then is to mash with enough grain to generate enough wort to cover both batches.  In this case I needed about 13 gallons of wort.  I calculate the amount of grain needed to be sure to hit the gravity of the highest of the two OGs (in this case the IPA at 1.060).  Then I can dilute down some of the resultant wort with water to get to the appropriate pre-boil gravity of the lower gravity beer ( in this case the Kolsch at 1.040).

Once I had collected all the wort I needed, I diluted the wort for the Kolsch and started the boil.  For the IPA wort, I placed the 0.5lb of Crystal 120L in a grain bag and steeped in in the wort for 30-40 minutes. At the same time, I started the boil in the Kolsch.  A second advantage to this steeping phase is that it helps set up my chiller process.  If you start both beers at the same time, then one beer will have to sit hot while you chill the first one down.  In this session, I steeped for about 40 minutes in the IPA.  This builds in a 40 minutes buffer for me to get the Kolsch chilled and transferred at the end of its boil before I need to start chilling the IPA.

Essentially this double mash session is like using a big batch of extract wort that you would then use with specialty grains to get the beer you want.  The greatest difference here is that I am using an all-grain process to control the mash profile of the wort I am making (which you can’t get with extracts) and I am controling the freshness of that wort (which you are always unsure of with extracts).  I have used this techinque to mash in a large batch of English Pale malt to make a porter and an English Pale.  The variations are endless.  It’s just like doing extract with grains.  I think that this technique is a great way to get double the production with just a little more work (essentially just the staggered start times difference for chilling).  Try it out for yourself and let us know how it works out for you.  Just be prepared to now have twice the beer on hand after each brew session.