As one of my brew year’s resolutions for 2011, I am planning to make a mead.  I thought a simple recipe to put together would be for a raspberry melomel.  For my first one, I was thinking I could make a simple show mead with medium sweetness…but my tastebuds are calling for a melomel.

To keep it simple, I chose one fruit to add in.  I think raspberries deliver good flavor and I think they complement honey very well.

Plus, I need to find out if I can make a raspberry melomel that tastes better than the commercial offering the Brew Dudes had at a wine tasting that had the aroma of gym socks.

After reading The Compleat Meadmaker and watching Curt Stock’s video on BrewingTV, I thought I would give this recipe a go.

Ingredients:

15 pounds of clover honey
8 pounds of raspberries
3 gallons of water
1 teaspoons of yeast energizer (Fermaid-K)
2 teaspoons of yeast nutrient (diammonium phosphate)
Yeast: Wyeast 4632 Dry Mead

Instructions:

I plan to make a yeast starter for this melomel. There are instructions on how to do that in Compleat Meadmaker and I’ll write a post dedicated to mead yeast starters.

Although Mr. Stock ferments everything together, I think I am going to ferment without the fruit. I plan to rack it to a secondary vessel (plastic bucket) and add the fruit to it there.

So, for primary fermentation – add the water, honey, and yeast together and oxygenate your must. Then add a quarter teaspoon of the yeast energizer and a half teaspoon of the yeast nutrient. Then follow this schedule for the rest of the yeast energizer/nutrient:

Add .25 teaspoon yeast energizer and .5 teaspoon of the yeast nutrient 24 hours after fermentation begins
Add .25 teaspoon yeast energizer and .5 teaspoon of the yeast nutrient 48 hours after fermentation begins
Add .25 teaspoon yeast energizer and .5 teaspoon of the yeast nutrient after 30% of the sugar has been depleted

I plan to let the primary fermentation go for a month, then I will rack it to a bucket and add the raspberries. If I can get them from the local farm down the street, I will. I’ll wash them and freeze them before I add them to the mead.

I’ll let it sit in the secondary for a couple of weeks at least, then I will bottle. I am not sure if I will prime or not, but we’ll see…

Bottle condition for at least two weeks before I try it, then I hide it somewhere and try to forget about it for 6 months or so.

Here is the recipe for the American Brown Ale I brewed last night. This recipe is a tweak on a a previous attempt. I hope it comes out great, although it seemed a little darker than I anticipated in the fermentor.

For this recipe I employed a 90minute boil. 30 minute preboil before first hop addition. I split the batch into to carboys and pitch one vial in each to compare the yeast side by side. I am also experimenting with the wheat. I actually used torrified wheat as some brewing friends of mine really swear by it when you want to add some head retention properties without the wheaty character of a traditional wheat malt.

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Original Post 

The Friday after Thanksgiving I got up before the sun on that cool autumn morning and fired up the kettles to make this starting attempt at an American Brown Ale.  I had over half a pound of Cascade hop pellets (5.8%AA) sitting around which I used exclusively.  My main reason for this was that I have an single hop American Pale Ale I want to make in a manner very similar to this brown ale just without the roast.
The other unique part of this brew was that I had two packets of dried yeast that I were close to their expiration date.  So I re-hydrated both and pitched them in.  That doesn’t sound very novel does it….well one packet was US-05 the other was S-04.  So this brown has a yeast blend of my favorite American yeast and my favorite English yeast.  More on yeast blending in another post…

Here is the recipe:

Malts 
10.0 lbs  American 2-row
1.0 lbs    Crystal 15L
0.25 lbs  Crystal 125L
0.5 lbs    Special Roast
0.75 lbs  Chocolate Malt
2.0 oz    Roasted Barley
(Mash temp 155 F)

Hops
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 60min
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 10min
1.5 oz Cascade pellet 1min

Yeast
1 packet US-05 (Fermentis)
1 packet Safale-04 (Fermentis)

I made this as a 6 gallon batch and my OG was riding a little higher than I wanted at 1.055, so I diluted it out to 1.048 with some cold water in the fermentor.  (Total fermentor volume was 5.5 gallons)  I anticipate the IBUs at ~43, a little high for my tastes but it think it will work well with the crystal and special roasts in the grain bill… and the other hop heads in my life.

Keep you eyes peeled for my Cascade Pale Ale recipe which will eerily mirror this one just minus the roasted malts.  I hope to use the cake from this brew to ferment the next!

BREW ON!

Check out our other homebrew recipes.

The beer world is fired up lately with the Gose style.  Here is our Gose recipe.

Ingredients:

3 lbs. Pilsner Malt
6 lbs. Wheat Malt
1.5 lbs. Acidulated Malt
.65 oz. Tettnanger Pellets boiled 60 mins.
1 oz. ground coriander (best to get whole seeds and grind them yourself) boiled 10 mins.
1 oz. sea salt boiled 10 mins.

Yeast: White Labs WLP029 German Ale/ Kölsch Yeast

Predictions:

Original Gravity: 1.047
Terminal Gravity: 1.009
Color: 6.28 °SRM
Bitterness: 13.6 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2%

Here’s the all grain dunkelweizen recipe that I came up with. It’s a little different from the Roggenbier recipe that I posted last week. I made that one sweeter, where this one is more “wheaty”.

Breakfast of champions.

Ingredients:

3 lbs. Munich Malt
6 lbs. Wheat Malt
0.75 lbs. Caramel Malt 120L
1 lbs. Honey Malt
1 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
0.5 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh Pellets boiled 60 mins.
0.5 oz. Hallertau Mittelfruh Pellets boiled 15 mins.
Yeast: White Labs WLP300 Hefewizen Ale 

Predictions:

Original Gravity: 1.052
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 17.05 °SRM
Bitterness: 13.0 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2%

Some notes: Mash at 152°F. I read a lot online and elsewhere that a decoction mash would work well for this style. Go for it if you have the time. Check out this link to learn more: http://brewery.org/library/DecoctFAQ.html

Ferment at 62°F for two weeks. Bottle or keg as usual.

This is a Roggenbier recipe for a traditional German Rye beer, which is basically a dunkelweizen with rye instead of wheat.

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs. Munich Malt
6 lbs. Rye Malt
2.5 lbs. Caramunich Malt
2.5 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
.5 ounce Hallertau pellets boiled 60 mins
.5 ounce Hallertau pellets boiled 15 mins

Yeast:White Labs WLP300 Hefewizen Ale

Predictions:

Original Gravity: 1.052
Final Gravity: 1.012
Color: 16.72 °SRM
Bitterness: 14 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.2%

Mash at 154°F.  Ferment at 62°F.

So I helped Mike move and he gave me a bottle of Harpoon’s Chocolate Stout.  I got to thinking about how I would create a recipe for chocolate stout.

Ingredients:

5 lbs. 2-Row Brewers Malt
1 lbs. Chocolate Malt 350°L
1 lbs. Roasted Barley
.5 lbs. American Caramel 80°L
0.5 lbs. Flaked Barley
0.75 lbs. Cocoa Powder
1.5 oz. Fuggle (Pellets, 4.75 %AA) boiled 60 mins.

Yeast: White Labs WLP004 Irish Stout

Predicted Outcomes:

Original Gravity: 1.039
Terminal Gravity: 1.008
Color: 31.88 °SRM
Bitterness: 37.6 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume): 4.0 %

Notes:

Mash at 151°F.  Add cocoa powder at flameout and mix well into wort.  Rack to fermentation vessel and let it sit for 3 weeks at 65°F.  At the end of 3 weeks, bottle or keg as normal.

Since my basement in the winter stays a (pretty much) consistent 60°F in the winter, I think that a California Common or Steam Beer recipe would be good to try out since I have the correct temperature for fementation.

I always imagined that this beer would be my first lager attempt, but the beer fridge changed that trajectory. 

Here is a recipe that I formulated to resemble Anchor Steam. 

Ingredients: 

9 lbs. 2-Row Brewers Malt
1 lbs. American Caramel 40°L
.8 oz. Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8 %AA) boiled 60 min.
.5 oz. Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8 %AA) boiled 15 min.
.5 oz. Northern Brewer (Pellets, 8 %AA) boiled 1 min.
Yeast: WLP810 San Francisco Lager Yeast

Predicted Results

Original Gravity: 1.050
Terminal Gravity: 1.012
Color: 11.11 °SRM
Bitterness: 38.1 IBU
Alcohol (%volume): 5.0 %

Notes:

I may need to recalculate the hops amounts based on the AA%. If it’s lower, I will need to buy and add more. Looking to collect enough wort for a 6 gallon boil for 60 minutes.

After the boil, I plan to chill the wort to around 58°F and let it warm up over the first few days of fermentation. Ferment for 2 weeks. Bottle after that.