Brew Dudes Homebrewing Blog

Flaked Adjunct Comparison – Corn (Maize) Vs. Rice

On February 16, 2022

Just like I brewed three beers with flaked grains to understand what mouthfeel characteristics they brought to NEIPAs, Mike brewed three beers for a flaked adjunct comparison. We wanted to understand the difference between flaked grains that lighten beers. Check out this video where we taste and discuss our findings.

Look at the rocky heads on those beers!

Flaked Grains to Lighten Beers

I am not sure if this sentiment still exists, but brewing with rice or corn was frowned upon when we first started brewing. Maybe this notion is a relic of the past, but brewing all malt beers (without adjuncts) were a way to show the world that homebrewers didn’t cut corners on ingredients. With time, Mike and I have come to understand that these flaked grains are just another color on the palette. They should be used when needed for the desired result.

Even though we understood it was ok to brew with them, we don’t have much brewing experience. We have brewed with flaked corn (maize) before but not rice. This experiment was conducted to help us understand the difference between the two.

What Differences Did We Pick Up?

Mike brewed three small batch brews. The first one was an all-malt beer to be used as our control. The second one was brewed with the same malt, but 10 percent of the grain bill was replaced with flaked corn. The third and last beer – the same deal. It was also brewed with that base malt but 10 percent of the grain bill was flaked rice.

All Malt Beer – Tasting this beer set our baseline for flaked adjunct comparison. Once we tasted the other two, the body of this beer seemed quite heavy. It was clear that using either of these flaked grains as 10 percent of the grain bill would have a dramatic effect on the body of your beer.

Beer Brewed with Flaked Corn – Again, certainly had a lighter body than the control. There was a perceived sweetness in the aroma. That same sweetness was slightly present in the flavor.

Beer Brewed with Flaked Rice – The body of this beer was the same as the flaked corn one. The aroma and flavor was cleaner – it didn’t have the same notes as the corn beer did.

Overall, this comparison was enlightening (pun intended). I personally would like to brew with some flaked rice this summer to brew a clean light lager for those days you need a refreshing thirst quencher.

What’s your experience with these flaked grains?

BREW ON!

Palisade Hops SMaSH Beer Tasting

By John Krochune

On February 9, 2022

In Hops, Videos

One malt and one hop – everybody knows the rules. We brew these small batch beers to learn more about hop varieties. We have put together many of these different video profiles over the years but there’s always room for one more.

Palisade hops have been on the market for a while so it wasn’t high on our priority list. But with a packet of Yakima Chief Cryo Palisade hops in our stash, we jumped at the chance to brew a one gallon batch!

Our SMaSH Beer Process

Just in case you haven’t seen one of these SMaSH beer tastings before, let us run down the process. All the SMaSH beers we brew are 1 US gallon (3.78 L) batches. With 2 pounds of some base malt (typically Pilsner or Pale malt), one ounce of hops is used during the brew process to showcase the hops. The additions generally follow this schedule:

1st hop addition – 1/4 of an ounce or 7 grams – 15 minutes to go in the boil

2nd hop addition – 5/8 of an ounce or 14 grams – Flameout

3rd hop addition – 1/4 of an ounce or 7 grams – Day 3 of fermentation

After mashing at 150°F or 66°C with 2 gallons (7.6 L) of water for 1 hour and boiling for 1 hour, fermentation happens over the course of 10 days at 68°F (20°C) using SafAle US-05 yeast (about a third of the packet or a little less than 4 grams)

Our Palisade Hops Take

When we poured this beer, we detected a fine aroma with notes of herbs and fresh cut grass. There was also a hint of something citrus in there. The combination with the earthy grass aroma made Mike think of limes.

The commercial descriptors of Palisade list it as being grassy with a note of apricots. As the beer warmed, we slightly detected something in the fruity/sweet realm but it was too subtle to pick out.

Overall, we think this hop would be a nice addition to a West Coast Style IPA or could be a nice balancing hop to a NEIPA if you want to have a bit of bitterness in there as well. It would not be a traditional hop for the hazy ale loving crowd, but who cares. It’s homebrewing and you should have freedom to brew how you want.

Let us know your Palisade hops adventures.

BREW ON!

Winter Red Ale Recipe – Featuring Molasses

By John Krochune

On February 2, 2022

In Recipes, Videos

Mike brewed a winter ale – a winter red ale to be precise – and his special ingredient in this beer was molasses. If you’ve ever wanted to brew with this byproduct of refining sugar cane, this post is for you.

Looks good, don’t it?

Winter Red Ale Recipe

From Mike’s notes, here is the recipe for a 5 US gallon batch:

Ingredients:

12 pounds (5.44 kg) of US Pale Malt
1 pound (454 g) of Flaked Rye
10 ounces (284 g) Caramel Malt 80L
4 ounces (113 g) Carafa Special II
3 ounces (85 g) Molasses
2 ounces (56 g) of Challenger hops – added with 60 minutes to go in the boil

Instructions:

Mashed at 152° F (66.7° C) for one hour
Boiled for one hour
Fermented at 68°-70° F (20-21°C) for 2 weeks

Outcomes:

Original Gravity: 1.060
Final Gravity: 1.016
ABV: ~6%

What Did We Think of This Beer?

Mike wanted to brew a deep, red colored ale and he did that. This winter ale had the mahogany with ruby highlights that he was targeting.

The beer had hints of caramel and toast on the nose. In the flavor, the molasses brought a dark caramel note along with the strong malt presence from the specialty grains. The richness of the rye was complemented well with the added molasses.

Mike thought this beer could have attenuated more but overall, we were pleased with this winter red ale.

Let us know about your molasses brewing adventures in the comments.

BREW ON!

Cosmic Punch Yeast – Blue Comet Clone Recipe

By John Krochune

On January 26, 2022

In Recipes, Videos

Once upon a time, Brew Dude John had a late lunch at a restaurant in Braintree, Massachusetts, USA. They had an NEIPA on draft called Blue Comet from the Widowmaker Brewing Co., located in the same city. John had a great experience with that beer and he looked up more information about it. He found little – just the name of the hops used in the beer: Simcoe and Comet. Since our own beers brewed with these hops weren’t super, John took out an insurance policy of sorts and fermented this year with Omega Yeast’s Cosmic Punch Ale Yeast. Using his memory, he create a plan to clone this beer. Learn more about the recipe and how this beer turned out:

Can your NEIPA get juicer? Uh, yeah.

Blue Comet Clone Recipe Details

Here’s the recipe I came up with for the Blue Comet NEIPA Clone. I used only Comet and Simcoe hops along with the Mike Warren patented grain bill for this style.

Ingredients:

11 pounds (5 kg) of Briess Pilsner Malt
2.5 pounds (1.1 kg) of Flaked Wheat
0.5 pounds (225 g) of CaraPils Malt
0.5o ounces (14 g) of Comet hops – added at 60 minutes to go in the boil
3 ounces (85 g) of Simcoe hops – added as a whirlpool hop with the wort chilled to 185° F for 20 minutes
3 ounces (85 g) of Comet hops – added as a whirlpool hop with the wort chilled to 185° F for 20 minutes
1 ounce (28 g) of Comet hops – added as dry hops at day 3 of fermentation and removed after 3 days of contact
1 ounce (28 g) of Simcoe hops – added as dry hops at day 3 of fermentation and removed after 3 days of contact

Yeast: OYL402 Cosmic Punch

Instructions:

Create a one liter for the yeast a couple of days ahead of time. I use the 1 gram of dried malt extract to 10 ml of water ratio (100 g DME into 1 liter of water). I boiled it for 10 minutes and let it cool. Then, I poured it into a sanitized 1 gallon jug and added the packet of yeast to it.

Crushed all the grains and then mashed at 150° F (66° C) for an hour, boiled for 90 minutes. Fermented at 68° F (20° C) for 10 days. Kegged and forced carbonated.

Outcome:

Original Gravity: 1.068
Final Gravity: 1.014
ABV: 7.1%

How Did This Beer Taste?

John can’t say he made an exact clone of it but the flavors he got out of it reminded him of this underrated beer. Mike picked up on the large amount of mushy fruit flavor which included pineapple and other tropical fruit notes.

We were amazed that these hops produced these kinds of flavors. The yeast strain really came through and delivered for this beer. The lack of heavy dry hopping probably caused this beer to be clearer than the original. Maybe next time more dry hops can be used.

Main Takeaways For You:

This yeast strain is great – strong fermenter after being roused in a starter. It made a little bit of a mess. Keep an eye on it
Revisit Comet hops as a variety to be used late in your beer brewing process
Try out Mike’s NEIPA grain bill and ask the question if oats matter..

BREW ON!

These Brew Dudes Made Kombucha

By John Krochune

On January 19, 2022

In Experiments, Videos

So, I made some hop teas because I was interested in the process and how the finished product would taste when making it at home. Well, I did that and we talked about it on camera. Then, Mike brought down his carboy of Kombucha and we decided to taste it. Here’s our video on Kombucha making at home.

How Did Mike Make It?

So, if you don’t know, Kombucha is a sweetened tea beverage that undergoes a mixed fermentation using a SCOBY.

A SCOBY (a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) comes as a gelatinous ‘puck’ of mixed organisms, primarily composed of yeasts and acetic acid producing bacteria.

The symbiotic blend of organisms makes a beverage that tastes very similar to other probiotic-style fermented beverages like Kefir.

The SCOBY chomps on the sugar in the tea solution and makes a tart, slightly bubbly drink.

Mike made this batch following the instructions of the recipe. He feels that because it was the first batch of Kombucha, the SCOBY hasn’t fully recovered from being packaged.

Drinking it, you can get detect hints of fermentation and acetic acid in the kombucha. Overall, he’s not happy with how this batch came out.

What he plans to do next is to get this SCOBY moved into a new batch of tea and see if it begins to grow and get stronger.

Let us know if you have experimented with Kombucha before.

Brew ON!