Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Boston Beer Week 2010

On June 17, 2010

This week is Boston Beer Week! It’s more like 10 days but who’s counting?

It all culminates with the American Craft Beer Fest this weekend….which the Brew Dudes will be attending Saturday afternoon.

To learn more abour Boston Beer Week, go here: http://beeradvocate.com/bbw/

After the fest, I’m hoping we can hit this place: http://www.stoddardsfoodandale.com/

Lots of cask ales at this place. We’ll see if peeps want to make the trek.

Also hitting this place on Monday night (6/21) – extending the week for ourselves by a day.

http://www.deepellum-boston.com/

Rauchbier Recipe

By John Krochune

On June 14, 2010

In Recipes

I received a note from one of my wackier friends to brew a Rauchbier. You may remember him as the dude that accompanied us to IncrediBrew in Nashua, NH.

All right, you probably do not remember him.

Anyway, I did a little research and put this recipe together. I believe that these beers are best brewed as lagers. Also, Rauch malt extract is not easy to find. Couple this issue with the fact that you really need to mash the rauch malt to get the smoky flavor needed for the style, it forces you to create a recipe that follows an all grain procedure.

Ingredients

5 lbs. Pilsner Malt
4.5 lbs Rauch Malt
2 lbs. Munich Malt
0.5 lbs. Caramel Malt 60°L
0.25 lbs. Melanoidin Malt
2 ounces Black Malt

1.0 oz. Liberty Pellets, 4 %AA boiled 60 mins.
0.50 oz. Liberty Pellets, 4 %AA boiled 15 mins.

Yeast: White Labs WLP820 Octoberfest/Märzen

Predictions

Original Gravity: 1.050
Terminal Gravity: 1.010
Color: 17.90 °SRM
Bitterness: 14.0 IBUs
Alcohol (%volume): 5.3%

Mash at 154°F for 60 minutes. Ferment at 50°F.

Boiling with Whole Hops

By Mike

On June 10, 2010

In Hops

With my latest brew session, I wanted to try something new out in my equipment. Late last year I got a false bottom and stainless dip tube assembly with the hopes of turning one of my sanke kegs into a mash tun. I want to build a direct-fired mash tun, but the false bottom (FB) I got is a little small in diameter and I am afraid I’d get some scorching of the wort. So while I try and figure that one out I decided I could still put the FB to work in the brew kettle and use it as a hop screen. Normally I use pellet hops, but this time I went with all whole hops. Pellets would definitely just slip through the FB.

My first impression of using whole hops was that it was rewarding. There is something a little more magical to seeing whole hops floating around in the kettle then using pellets. Seems more traditional and heart warming.

At the end of the boil my FB worked great, it held back all the hops and I still had a great flow rate through the whole draining of the kettle into my two carboys. I even had 4+oz of orange peel and coriander seeds in the kettle. The seeds were nicely held up in the hops as a filter itself. I am sure that I got plenty of cold break through the hops and FB, but maybe some of it stayed in the kettle… who knows really.

I liked this so much that I may go completely to whole hops for my next couple sessions just for kicks. The only concern I have with whole hops is availability and freshness. My LHBS seems to have a pretty good turnover so freshness should be good. But sometimes I can’t find any EKG whole hops. Which is a shame because I make a lot of English inspired beers and like EKG the best.

I think using the FB and whole hops may be one small step in moving closer to using a plate chiller or counter flow chiller in the near future. My resistance to such tools has been separating hop debris out of the wort to prevent clogging of those types of chillers. Certainly a counterflow and FB-whole hop combo would work well in this regard.

BREW ON!

Orange Wheat Ale Recipe

By Mike

On June 9, 2010

In Recipes

Here is the recipe for my Orange infused wheat beer I brewed this past Friday night. I was shooting for something similar to Harpoon’s UFO White. I love the orange background in the beer and last summer I must have bought two cases worth over the summer. So I decided if I could brew something similar to it, I wouldn’t have to buy it. I wasn’t shooting for a dead-on clone, just a great wheat beer with an orange flavor and aroma to it.

I decided to two 12 gallons and I split the batch into two fermenters to pitch two yeasts: WLP001 and WLP400, American Ale yeast and Belgian Wit Yeast. Not sure what flavor profile I was going to get with the American but I wanted to try a witte at the same time so there is the experiment.

I also added a touch of acid malt to the batch, because I wanted to see if I could get a little bit of sourness. Not enough to notice as sour, but enough to get the orange to stand out a bit and seem “bright”….if that makes sense. Ok enough justification here is the recipe:

12 gallon post boil batch size
75% efficiency
90 minute boil
EST OG 1.053
EST IBU 34
MASH Temp 152F

10# Pilsner
10# Wheat
1# Honey Malt
1# Munich 10L
0.5# Acid Malt (added at mash out)
0.5# Rice Hulls
1.0 oz Hallertauer (3.8%AA) 60min
1.0 oz Magnum (15% AA) 60min
1.0 oz Hallertauer (3.8%AA) 30min
1.0 oz Hallertauer (3.8%AA) 10 min
1.0 oz Corriander seed (2min)
Zest of 6 oranges fresh (2 min)

Split batch on WLP001 and WLP400

EXTRACT EDIT:
This is for a 6 gallon extract/partial mash batch. To do this with extract requires the use of a little partial mash process. So this recipe may be a fun way to try something new. First off drop the rice hulls, those were in there for my lautering needs. I would crush and combine the munich, honey malts in 2.5 quarts of water and let them rest together at ~150F for 60minutes or so. At the same time, I’d start heating up 6 gallons of brewing water. I’d say steep the 0.5lb of acid malt in the brewing water like you normally would for a specialty grain. After the mash has been going for 60minutes, I would strain it out and put the liquid in with your brewing water. And rinse the grain bed with some of the water too, right back into the brewing pot. Once you are ready I’d then substitute the pilsner and wheat malts with 8-8.25lbs of wheat LME. That should provide 1.050-1.055 OG. Keep the hops, corriander and the orange peel the same. Pitch either yeast.

Starter Wort

By Mike

On June 8, 2010

In All Grain, Experiments

Here is a curious thing. I made a batch of Witte on Friday night. It was sort of a last minute thing, so I didn’t make a starter the night before. My plan was to make a starter while I was brewing the beer, let the starter go over night, then pitch the next day. Pitching late would also let me leave the wort I made in the fermentation fridge overnight to continue to chill down to pitching temps. The ground water here is about 60F so it really takes some time to get an immersion chiller to carry the wort down to 65-68F, which is where I like to pitch.

As I was cleaning up at 1AM after the session, I realized I still hadn’t made a starter. So I had to chose and stay up later and make a starter wort, or just pitch the yeast and hope for the best. But as I was draining the kettle into my fermentor I realized I was going to have plenty of wort left over. So I grabbed my sanitized starter flask and drew a liter of the wort into it.

Conventional starter wisdom advises against this. First of all, most starter wisdom suggests your starter shouldn’t be above 1.040. My wort was 1.053. Second, your starters shouldn’t contain hops. My wort had a 35IBU bitterness rating. To top all that off the wort also had a couple ounces of orange peel and some coriander in it. Definitely not things you typically seen added to starter wort. Despite these “detriments” I broke from conventional wisdom and said SCREW IT. I pitched my yeast into that 1L, put it on the stir plate and went to bed.

The next morning the wort was creamier in color suggesting good yeast growth had happened. There was even foam on top of the starter, which I never see with normal 1.040 wort on a stir plate… so clearly the yeast were chugging along. I pitched the whole slurry into the awaiting beer around 11AM. By 9PM, the beer was starting to chug along.I haven’t tasted the beer yet, but so far things are progressing along normally.

What have I learned here? I am wondering if I shouldn’t just save my DME dollars and be doing this normally for most starters. I wonder what the real harm is in using the same beer wort for my starter and pitching the next day. (Hold your concerns over the wort getting infected overnight for a different conversation.) If the beer comes out great I’ll definitely make my starter this way again, to collect more data. But it was very easy and cost effective.Only time will tell.

BREW ON!