Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Lambic Brew Day

On June 7, 2014

After a long period of time of no brewing, I finally got off the schnide and had myself a lambic brew day. The recipe I followed was the one I posted a few months ago.

Scheduling has been an issue over the past few weekends. Plans were made and there was no time for brewing beer. Even with this extract brew, which takes much less time to complete, I didn’t have the free window to get it done.

All right – enough of this pathetic explanation of lack of brewing, let’s get to the details of the session.

Sometimes, it’s nice to light up the kettle and get to the boil. With all the extra steps with all grain brewing with heating up water for the mash and rinsing grains, it’s nice to rock the one kettle and focus on the brew part of brewing beer.

I believe this session was the first time I have used wheat malt extract. All the other recipes that called for wheat, I mash it with the other grains. Here’s a photo of the extract I used.

It tasted pretty good. It wasn’t as sweet as the malt extract. The boil went fine without any issues – no bad boil overs or other random silliness that can happen during a brew day. I added some maltodextrin since I read that it gives the brettanomyces something to chew on once the primary fermentation is over.

I pitched the Roeselare blend from Wyeast without making a starter. I smacked the pack and pitched it.

You can see that manufacture date on the packet. It’s a little long in the tooth but not too bad, right? It should do the trick.

I put in some clean ale yeast as well to make sure I got the gravity down to where it needs to be. I did proof this dry yeast.

And now we wait. This is my first sour beer so we’ll have to see how it comes out. There’s a bunch of information about how much oxygen should get in while the beer is fermenting and conditioning. The pressure is on to make an excellent lambic. Shouldn’t I relax?

Summer Brewing

By Mike

On June 4, 2014

In Videos

Longer days and short nights makes for plenty of extra time after the kids are in bed to do more brewing. There are a lot more reasons to brew in the summer time; my favorite are cookouts and gatherings with friends. John and I discuss in this weeks video post what some of our plans are for not only some summer style beers, but also some longer term projects.

Summer Brewing and summer beer styles for me include clean crisp easy to drink beers. Two of my favorites for the summer are wheat based beers that are pretty clean and sometimes doctored with some early summer fruit like locally grown berries. My second favorite style is American Cream Ale. We seem to be talking about cream ale a lot lately, but it really is that time of year when a cream ale after putting the mower away is pretty much heaven.

Johns plans include attempting to redeem his Saison brewing efforts from last year’s Saison Throwdown. John also has a growing collection of New Zealand and Australian hops that he’s been meaning to brew with. Perhaps an ad hoc Australian IPA will be in the works in the near future.

Finally, we both are also looking at using some of our summer brewing schedule to laydown some longer term projects. Namely we both want to put down out first sour beers. John has a Lambic-style brew planned. I am still debating something darker and sour, like an Oud Bruin or something in the Flanders Red category. I am toying with the idea of a sour stout or even a straight up pitch of souring microbes into my tried and true Brown Ale recipe.

As always the summer has limitless possibilities, and so should your summer brewing plans and dreams. Did I mention that I still need to get that brew stand built???? Maybe that’s a good garage summer night project.

What’s going to be brewing in your kettles this summer?

BREW ON!

Homegrown Cascade Hops Are DOA

By John Krochune

On June 2, 2014

In Hops

Year three is supposed to be the year for any hop plant that you grow at home, if you believe the literature that they send to you along with the rhizomes.

Somebody must have sold my Cascade plant a different path because this year, on its third anniversary of being planted in my yard, it has decided to not make an appearance.

The photo above shows the sad scene. Do you remember the good old days when I had a strong hop season and harvest? Two strings await the hop bines to start climbing them but there are no plants around to take the trip. It’s just a mound of dirt.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Let’s back up a bit. There is some information I am withholding that may shed some light on why the bines are not sprout up this year or for any year in the future.

Right after the snow melted away and the bare ground was exposed, I would check on the plant to see if there was any growth. One morning, I think in late February, I took a look at my little plot to find that something had dug into the earth and had exposed a good amount of the hops roots(?). I believe my friendly neighborhood skunk had dug in looking for grubs and tore up some of my about-to-sprout hop plant. I buried it back up as quickly as I could, hoping that the damage wasn’t too bad.

A few weeks later, a few shoots started to come up and I thought we were in the clear. I nurtured them as best I could but then they disappeared or more truthfully, they dried up and died.

So, I am at a loss. Have we seen the last of this Cascade hop plant?

I guess I will wait it out until the end of this season and dig it up for a new rhizome to plant next year. It’s a real shame.

I will definitely protect the plant from grub-hungry skunks next time.

All is not lost for my hop growing at home. My Magnum hop is still rocking but I still need to figure out a new trellis for it.

Blonde Ale Mistakes

By Mike

On May 28, 2014

In Videos

One of my most recent brews was an attempt at American Blonde Ale. I was looking to create something that was pale and yellow in color but with a decent American hop kick. Something to bridge the gap in my current selection of brews on the kegorator (Stout, Red Lager and Saison).
With recipe in hand I headed to my local brewshop with little time to spare during the work day. I couldn’t find one ingredient that I had planned to used so started to get creative. Perhaps a little too creative as my would be pale yellow beer turned into a not so Blonde Ale mistake.

My original recipe called for a mix of Pilsner, munich and a little aromatic malt. Well the shop either was out of aromatic or it had been moved since I last looked for it. I also didn’t really have time to ask for help. So looking at what else was available I considered things like melanoidin malt, Crystal 20 or maybe even some carapils. Anything to help round out the depth in the malt malt bill I was creating.
Well then I saw it… CaraAroma malt. Something in the back of my brain wasn’t firing right because I went for a half pound of this stuff as a straight up pound for pound substitute for the aromatic malt.

I know they are not the same but the true distance between them didn’t occur to me until long after all the grain was milled. CaraAroma malt is 120L. The half pound of that stuff totally crushed my Blonde Ale and turned it into more of an unnatural redhead.

The good news is that everything else about this brew was great. I did a mixing/layering of Centennial and Cascade hops. Two classics that shouldn’t be forgotten. They play so nice together. And my fermenation with US05 American Ale yeast was totally spot on. I also was playing with a longer and more vigorous boil, so my hot and cold break were greatly improved, leading to a clearer beer in the end. (More on that another day).

All in all my Blonde Ale mistake turned out to be a great drinking beer. It doesn’t fit the style guidelines on color but it certainly tastes like a winner. Maybe I can send it into to some judges but tell them not to look at it… Besides appearance is only 3 points out of 50 and the clarity would have to count for something right??? might be worth sending it in to just drive some judges crazy.

Mead For A Honeymoon

By John Krochune

On May 27, 2014

In Brew Log

Let’s make mead for something it was meant for – a wedding and all the things that come with it. I know this guy. He’s getting married in September and he wants me to make a mead for parting gifts/favors for all that attend his wedding. The role mead played in the marital ritual in days of old intrigues him and he wants to bring it back. Let’s bring it back.

He wanted to pay me for my services but I said to myself long ago I would not charge for my passion until I was licensed to do so. (Heh heh) I asked him to reimburse me for all the costs but I would make the mead for the experience of it and nothing more.

He’s buying the bottles and the labels but he’s leaving the rest of it to me. This past weekend I got a two gallon bucket of raw honey for the mead making. I have bought from the Merrimack Valley Apiary before and I was happy with the product. Their prices are better than what I can get online and picking it up myself saves on shipping costs as well.

This white bucket has around 24 pounds of honey in it, which combined with some of the honey I have from previous purchases should be enough for the 10 gallons of mead I am planning to make. Opening up the top of this pail reveals the raw honey goodness.

When I used this type of honey before, I scooped it out and weighed it before adding it to my fermentor. It’s not as easy as filtered honey that is surprisingly free flowing in comparison to this stuff. The raw honey is fairly solid (it has the consistency of soft ice cream) and can be moved from the bucket to the fermentation vessel using a big spoon.

I don’t have a large enough vessel to ferment all ten gallons of mead together so I will be splitting it in half and fermenting in two separate fermentors. Here’s the yeast I am using.

I am going to use a simple champagne yeast that I have had success with in the past. The plan is to make a dry mead aged on oak. The guy liked that style of mead and it’s simple enough to make. I will need to buy a couple of oak spirals for the conditioning phase which should take us right up to the end of August. I am excited for this project.