Brew Dudes

Straight from the pages of Brew Your Own Magazine, comes this weeks summer beer. John wanted a light a refreshing fruit beer to beat the summer heat. Along came the July/August issue of BYO. Here’ our review and comments on the Funkwerks Raspberry Provincial Clone.

This recipe comes from the great folks at BYO magazine. We both been long time subscribers, although we don’t official pimp for them regularly. We made this beer out of summer necessity not a chance to advertise.

Recipe:
4.3# Pilsner Malt
2.2# wheat malt
0.5# Carapils
0.5# Flaked Wheat
1.2# acidulated malt (added last 20 min of mash)
25oz Oregon Raspberry puree
WLP400 Belgian Wit

John brewed this one with some slight changes. He used two yeasts pitching some WY 3944 Witbier and some WY 3942 Belgian Wheat yeast. Because he had it on hand and wanted to use it up. Also we both have brewed plenty of fruit beers off and on. Tis the season for great fresh fruit so John decided to use 2# of fresh raspberries rather than use puree.

This beer was refreshingly tart with a good balance of raspberry. The beer is definitely fruity with very little witbier character. I think that acid malt and the raspberries are masking the true witbier character. I am sure though that any other yeast would not adequately support the fruit and the acidity.

The best part is how quick John turn this around. In just over three weeks, it had been brewed bottled and ready to drink. I think if you really sat on top of your schedule, you could get this done a little sooner y pitching more yeast.

So if you still think there are some hot days ahead as summer starts to slip away… this might be a salvation beer. One last hail Mary to the brewing gods for those final days of summer burgers and dogs. Give it a try and let us know how it comes out for you.

BREW ON!

There is a new homebrewer community and a new type of brewing competition gaining momentum. If you haven’t heard of it, its the BrewUnited Challenge!

Formerly BrewDad.com, BrewUnited.Com has been relaunched with an enriched home brewing community slant. There’s recipes, forums and articles/blog style posts. As part of the relaunch, there is a very nifty competition with a format twist lined up for this fall.

This competition restricts the brewer to approximately 12 different styles of beer. Dived into three subcategories: Malty, Balanced and Bitter. You can chose only one from each category if you want to do multiple entries.

Brewing each beer is pretty easier with the exception of one hitch. They have also restricted the ingredient choices. Only four malts and six hop varieties are available. Your are free to go crazy with the yeast choice. You must use only two of the hops available, and you must use ALL the malts provided to at least 1% of the grist. You can however modify the malts through roasting, toasting, bleaching or nuclear fusion (maybe).

Its a pretty interesting idea. It certainly will stretch your abilities as a brewer to make it all work. Some of the styles pose interesting challenges. Like a brewing a Kolsch with some crystal 60L in it. Or brewing an English Brown Ale with no chocolate or dark malt. (or EKG, my favorite English hop).

We chat it up in the video about the unique challenges, due dates and the nifty prizes they have lined up. Space is limited so get on board soon if you want give it a try.

Check them out and let us know what you think.

BREW ON!
BREW UNTIED!!!

The Thirst Friend ChillRod Supreme is an innovative way of keeping your cold beer colder longer. We received one set of these rods in the mail and decided to give it a go on John’s last two bottles of Harvest Lager.

The basic premise with these rods is that you freeze them for at least 40 minutes. They get inserted right into a bottle of beer (after taking one generous swallow to make room for the ChillRod Supreme). At the top of the rod is a larger bottle like opening made of stainless steel. You drink from the bottle as normal.

IT wasn’t clear to us via the packaging whether the rods were meant to chill warm beer as it passed through or they simply enhanced or maintained the chilled beer experience of already cold beer. Or fun first trial with these chill rods clearly favored the latter. Cold beer, big sip, insert the chill rod and drink as normal without the beer getting warm as fast.

I normally drink from a glass as I am sure many beer connoisseurs do. But when I do drink from a bottle its always been a set back that your warm hand warms the beer as you hold the bottle. I guess you could grip it by the long neck, but what if you are drinking form stubbies??? Craft beer in the can is becoming more and more prevalent and I have plenty of beer-coozies to keep as cold but none for bottles.

Thirst Friend ChillRod Supreme certainly picks up the slack there and has the potential for keeping beer colder longer when drinking from the bottle.

Thanks for Thirst Friend for looking us up and sending us a couple samples.
Please stop by their website for more information and order info.

We live in incredible times for hops. More varieties every year with different characteristics. Here’s another SMASH beer review. This time, it’s a Jester Hops SMASH!

As with all our SMaSH beers, our hop additions follow this schedule:

Added with 60 minutes left in the boil
Added with 15 minutes left in the boil
Added at flame out
Added as a dry hop with 4 days left to go in primary fermenation

Jester hops may very well be the most pronounced example of terroir on hop growing I have ever experienced. This hop is unique.

Pungent aroma of green onion, earth, maybe even some jalapeño and the flavor is more of the same. I detected a little lemon in the flavor that maybe I could then pick out of the aroma.

A very interesting hop. This is also an example of where SMASH brewing can be sort of unfair to an otherwise good hop. These Jester hops could certainly be a great base to build on. It would give a very different earthy base to a Noble hopped beer. I could even see it being flexible to serve as a base underneath some super dank resinous hops in a big American IPA.

Special thanks to Stocks Farm in the UK for sending these out to us. We love experimenting with new stuff and then telling you about it.

Please check Stocks Farm at: Stocks Farm
When we take the Brew Dudes world tour, we’ll have to give them a visit!!

Cheers!

To read more about Jester hops and how they were delivered to us, read our profile post here:

https://www.brew-dudes.com/jester-hops/5799

Last week we did a blind triangle taste test comparing one wort and two yeasts. Those yeasts were the two most used classics in the White Labs catalog. This week we do it again comparing English yeast to English yeast.

John didn’t think he’s ever had a beer brewed with Wyeast’s 1028 London ale yeast. I am sure he has as he’s been drinking my beer for years. I know I’ve used it a handful of times but I’ve just never really announced it when sharing beers.

Admittedly, I use White Labs 90% of the time whe I brew. I’ve become quite comfortable with the White Labs catalog and line up. I think knowing what the general catalog is for on company makes it easy to switch things up when you LHBS doesn’t have the yeast you are looking for. I can make a pretty good guess of what else to use if I don’t see my first pick in the store fridge.

WLP002 and WY1028 should be pretty close in character. But supposedly they are not the same strain. So running the side by side was something I’ve been wanting to do for some time.

It was difficult to pick the right pair in the triangle test. It was like splitting hairs. In the end I think the WY1028 was a but fruitier and the WLP001 was a tad maltier. Both seemed to have comparable bitterness. From a technical ote the WY1028 finished 2 specific gravity points high thatn the WLP001. Maybe this drove the fruitier finish.

Not sure if I can make any real choices between using one over the other. There are several other English strains out there as well. A bigger side by side line up maybe needed to help choose a favorite house English Yeast.

Do you have a favorite English strain? Tell us about it in the comments.

Cheers. Brew on!!!