Pours crystal clear. Golden straw in color. Thick head. Rich aroma. More citrusy than floral. Caramel malt and robust, citrusy, resiny, hop finish.

Would like to make one like this again.

- 7.5lb American 2-Row
- 2lb Vienna
- 1lb American Crystal (20L)
- 0.5lb Chocolate (English)
- 1lb Flaked Wheat
- 2lb Honey
- 1lb Sugar

~4g strike water @ 175F

one step infusion mash, 60min

~5g sparge water @ 145F

75min:
1.5oz Willamette pellets (4.9%)

5min:
1oz Goldings pellets (6.7%)

OG: 1.090

Pitched White Labs Belgian Saison Yeast Blend (WLP568)

NOTES
Second batch of a two batch day. Stuck mash during sparge, should have squeezed more out. Additionally, cut the recipe in half. First problem occurred at Beer + Wine Supply, figuring it was OK to use 0.5lb Chocolate. Which is double the original recipe, which I halved, so the chocolate malt is quadrupled in this 5gal version. Then, when adding the adjuncts, I was looking at the original recipe and neglected to halve the honey + sugar. So, all that, plus not collecting enough runoff at sparge time makes this one have an OG-worthy OG.

(source)

2011OCT02

Racked to secondary

0.5oz Goldings pellets (6.7%)

SG: 1.021

2011OCT30

FG: 1.011 (ABV 11.0%)
Primed with 1/2 cup brown sugar

17 12oz bottles
10 22oz bottles

2011NOV03

Pours deep brown, clear. Little head, little carbonation. Malty nose. Smooth, creamy mouth-feel. Alcohol on the finish. Dry.

- 13lb American 2-Row
- 1lb American Crystal 20L

~4.5g mash water, strike @ 170F

one step infusion mash 60min

~4.5g sparge water @ 170F

Boil

75min:
1oz Magnum pellets (13.1%)

0min:
1oz Cascade pellets (6%)

OG: 1.074

Pitched White Labs East Coast Ale (WLP008)

NOTES
First batch of a two batch day. Stuck mash towards the end of the sparge. Should have kicked it up to get more wort. OG is wee heavy.

(source)

2011OCT02

Racked to secondary.

2oz Cascade pellets (6%)

SG: 1.022

2011OCT15

FG: 1.014 (8.5% ABV)
Primed with 3/4 cup dark brown sugar

28 12oz bottles
6 22oz bottles

NOTE: Citrusy hop aroma, weak malt flavor. Could use more backbone. Bitter, almost grapefruit finish. The alcohol might be too much, that “hot” flavor gets in the way.

Hauled all the brewing gear to Maine for a memorial day weekend brew. First outdoor brew with a turkey fryer, plus had hot and cold hose bibs right nearby. Great brewing setup, sounds of crashing waves make for better brewing I think. Enjoyed the help from friends, chiefly Kate X.
Left the brew log at home so I’ll have to live blog this one.

6.5 lb German pilsner
1.0 lb light wheat
0.5 lb Dextrine

Initial strike in 10 qts water at 168F for a target mash temp of 152.
Was 153F 30 min into mash. Mashed for a total of 60 minutes.

Sparge with 18 qts at ~174F, collected about 6.25 gal that measured 1.036 at 140F which I think corrects to about 1.048 [2011-05-31 edit] According to C.Lyons (1992), its closer to 1.052, but he’s using values for the density of water, I question whether that’s fully valid for a sugar-water solution.  Going by those numbers, I ended up with 324 points. [/edit]

2.5 oz x 2.6% AA spalt at 60 min
0.5 oz x 2.6% AA spalt at 10 min

Post chill we ended up with about 4.9 gal that measured 1.044 at 71F. [Edit 2011-05-31] This corrects to 1.045 using every table or formula I’ve found.  That means that post-chill I had 222 points.  To recap, pre-boil: 324, post-boil: 222.    Theoretically, these numbers should match, because during the boil, the only thing that leaves the pot is pure water in the form of steam, leaving all the sugars (points) behind.  So basically, my numbers after the sparge are total crap.  Either the corrections are no good, or I can’t get a reliable reading for some reason, or (perhaps most likely) my technique of using “the thief” to sample straight from the runoff bucket after the sparge is sucking up only the more dense wort near the bottom of the bucket.  Next time, I will stir thoroughly, and report back. [/edit]

Pitched Wyeast Kolsch.  Left in the basement shower stall because I’d hate for a wild ferment to make a mess out of that house, and because I bet the temp will be good there.

Targets:

• OG: 1.060
• FG: 1.016
• SRM: 39
• IBU: 58

Ingredients:

• 7.5 lb 2-Row Pale
• 1 lb Roast Barley (525L)
• 1 lb Crystal 90
• 0.5 lb Flaked Barley
• 0.25 lb Cherry Smoked Malt (Briess)
• 2 lb Briess Pilsen Light DME (actually only used 1 lb)
• 11.6 AAU Brewer’s Gold pellets @60 min
• 6 AAU Perle pellets @60 min
• 1 tsp Irish Moss @10 min
• Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Single infusion mash, target temp 154*F.  10.25 lb of grain in 16 qt water at a strike temp of 165*F, initial temp readings at mash in around 155-156*F.  60 min mash, temp at end was ~148*F, pH ~5.

Sparge with 16 qt at 167*F. Collected ~6.5 gal, measured a corrected 1.044, for 286 pts. This was more than I was expecting, based on my calculated efficiency from my last batch (67%).  I did some math and estimated that if I boiled off a gallon and added only 1 lb of the extract instead of the planned 2, I would hit my target volume and target gravity right on.

In the end, I only boiled off maybe a half gallon in the 1 hour boil, and I added only the 1 lb of extract.  After chilling, I measured only 1.051 instead of the planned 1.060.  Maybe I can’t trust my high-temp gravity readings of my runoff.

Primary is going to be in a 5 gal glass carboy, and I don’t have a blowoff setup, so I may have a mess on my hands here.

[2011-06-02] Tasting Notes

From the tap at ~40F and 11psi. Color is deep brown to black.  Nice brown head fades rather quickly.  Roasty aroma with the barest hint of smoke, no real hop aroma to speak of.  Almost smells a little like soy sauce.  Initial flavor is strongly marked by the tang of the carbonation.  Mouthfeel is balanced, tending more towards dry than big and malty.  Finishes with a bit of the bitter burnt bite of the roast barley, and just a hint of smoke.  Overall pretty good, I think I would like it better if it had been naturally carbonated bottles or if it was served on nitrogen.  The tang of the carbonation is a bit much for the style I think.

New counterflow chiller (thanks Fred)! New faucet-mounted Brita filter (best brewing investment yet)!

• 7.5 lb American 2-Row Pale Malt
• 2 lb Crystal 60
• 1 oz (5%AA) Cascade pellets @60 min
• .75 oz (5%AA) Cascade @10min
• .75 oz (4.8%AA) Willamette pellets @10min
• Wyeast 1332 Northwest Ale

Targets:

• OG: 1.051
• FG: 1.016
• SRM 14
• IBU 29

Single infusion mash of 9.5 lb grist in 12 qts water = 1.26 qts/lb.  Strike temp 167*F to hit target mash temp of 154*F.  Measured temp of mash after strike, read 158*F, so I added 1 qt from the tap, the temp now measured 144*F. No good.  To the spreadsheet!  If i draw off 2 qts and bring it to a boil, then add it back, i should get to 154*F.  I did, added it back at about 25 min into the mash, and the temp I read was 160*F.  Screw this. When the mash was all over, the temp read between 151 and 153, depending on where I stick the thermometer.

Sparge with 4 gal at 168*F.  Collected ~6 gal at a corrected 1.036.  My target is 1.051, so I’d have to boil down to 4.5 gal.  Not likely.

Boil, Chill.  Collected 4.7 gal out of the chiller at a corrected 1.039.  OK. It’s going to be a session beer.

Rack to secondary on Oct 10.  SG 1.010

Keg on Oct 24. FG 1.008.

Ended up being a nice mild beer. Tasted more like a brown ale than an amber or a red.  Keg went fast, thats got to be a good sign.

• 10 lb Maris Otter
• 1 lb Crystal 20L
• ½ lb Caramunich
• 7 lb Light dry extract
• Mashed at 157 F for 90 minutes.  Raised the temp to 170 and mashed out.  Boiled for 90 minutes.

• 5 oz Kent Golding @ 90 min (82 IBU)
• 1 oz Kent Golding @ 45 min (16 IBU)
• 1-1/2 oz Fuggles & Irish Moss @ 15 min
• 1 oz Fuggle @ 5 min

• Pitched with a starter of Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale (1^st generation yeast).  I set up a blow-off tool, and wow did I need it.  The yeast was very contently chugging away the next day.
• 01-18-09: Racked to the secondary and dryhopped with 2 oz of Fuggles. 1.030 gravity.
• 01-31-09: added a second dose of Whitbread yeast slurry from another batch of beer.
• 02-23-09: Yeast is still slowly chugging along.  The air from the airlock smells very hot, hopefully this will fade. 1.026 gravity.
• 03-28-09: Hot smell has faded.  The beer was a nice warming taste to it. 1.020 gravity.
• 04-11-09: Bottled with ¾ cup priming sugar.  1.020 final gravity.

• OG: 1.100
• FG: 1.020
• ABV: 10%

• Tastings:
• 06-03-09: Not too overboard with malt or hops, the beer could actually handle a bit more of either.
•  09-15-09: Too malty.  I would like it to be dryer and with a bit more bitterness.
• 01-14-11: Just over 2 years since this was brewed and it really found its groove.  Could still use more bitterness for my taste, but for the style (English Barleywine) it’s pretty spot-on.  Malt and hops really compliment each other.

• Results: Over the aging process this beer really changed.  It started a bit low key, then the maltiness took over (I don’t really like malty beers, so I was unhappy at this point) and ended up being a pretty solid, well rounded beer.I learned an important lesson.  When it comes to beer, especially big beers, patience really is huge and will pay you back.  I know it is cliche to say ‘your beer is ready to drink when you pop open the last one’, but in the case of big beers it really is true.

• Comments:  For my barleywines I like to minimize the amount of specialty grains and use a higher quality base grain like Maris Otter or ESB for 25% to 50% of the grain bill.  With a barleywine you have such a large amount of grain and hops that you can easily overcomplicate a recipe by adding a bunch of specialty grains.

- 8lb American 2-Row
- 4lb Flaked Oats
- 1lb Munich
- 1lb Chocolate Malt (English 2-Row)
- 1/2lb Roasted Barley (English 2-Row)

~5g mash water, strike @ 175*F

one step infusion mash 60min

??g sparge water 175*F, collecting 6g

Boil

60min:
1oz Centennial (8.7%)
1oz Cascade (6.0%)

15min:
1oz Cascade (6.0%)

0min:
1oz Centennial (8.7%)
1 1/8oz ground coffee (Whole Foods Market/Winter Blend)

OG: 1.065

Pitched 1 packet Safale US-05

(Source, PDF)

2010JAN21

Transferred to secondary
SG: 1.020
Pitched 1 pkg Red Start Pasteur Champagne

NOTE: Roast malt aroma and flavor, then coffee notes, and a crisp hop bite.

2010JAN29

FG: 1.019 (6.59% ABV)
Primed with 1 1/4 cup Munton Light (DME)

48 12oz bottles (!)

NOTE: Rich coffee malt flavor. Bitter roasted malt turns to bitter hops.

- 13lb American 2 Row
- 1lb Crystal 20L

~4.5g mash water, strike @ 175F

one step infusion mash 60min

~4.5g sparge water @ 175F, collecting 6g

Boil

60min:
1oz Northern Brewer pellets (11.0%)

0min:
1oz Cascade plugs (7.3%)

OG: Unknown

Pitched White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP001

NOTES
Brew day complicated by children. Excessive boil over, resulting in a finished volume of less than 5 gallons. Also neglected to measure the specific gravity. Since it’s not yet fermenting, I may still be able to get a reasonable reading.

2010DEC??

Racked to secondary.
2oz Centennial pellets (?%)

2010DEC19

FG 1.021

Primed with 3/4 cup brown sugar
34 12oz bottles

2010DEC23

Overly effervescent. Thick head, pours cloudy, golden. Piney hop aroma. Sweet malt flavor then a hop rush. Piney bitterness lasts and lasts. Cloying? Maybe.

2010JAN26

Chill excessively. Open at sink. Barely ease up the cap. Let all gas escape. Pour, gently, gently. Pours an insane head. Head never really disappears, it subsides, as thick as shaving cream. Grassy, apricot, hop aroma. Fully carbonated. Cloudy, yeast and flecks of hops. Rich mailt flavor, then quickly piney, astringent hop-flavor. Not flabby, there’s a malt backbone. Pucker-inducing, highly hopped.

Threw this recipe together myself, with nothing more than the BJCP style guidelines for “American Wheat or Rye Beer” (I told you I needed a more imaginative name).

Stats:

• OG: 1.047
• FG: 1.012
• IBU: 18
• ABV: 4.7
• SRM: 5* (Yellow to Gold)

Greedys

• 5.5 lbs US 2-Row Pale Malt
• 2 lbs Rye Malt
• 1.5 lbs Wheat Malt
• 1 lb Crystal 20
• 1 lb Rice Hulls (damn slow sparges!!)
• 0.5 oz x 8.7% AA Amarillo Pellets @60 min
• 0.2 oz x 7.5% AA Cascade Pellets @ 15 min
• Wyeast 1010 American Wheat

After two not-so-great brew sessions with the stupid Blue Moon clone, I felt like I needed another shot at a beer with some wheat in it.  That said, I’m still a little gun shy around non-barley grains, so i kept this one well below 50% wheat and rye.  I wanted to try the three stage mash again (beta glucanase rest to break down the gum, protease to break down some proteins, and saccharification to make some sugar), but because of the difficulty i had last time trying to accomplish all that with hot water infusions into my 5 gal cooler, I decided to try stovetop mashing in my brewpot, then transferring to the cooler for the sparge.

Mash Schedule

• Beta Glucanase rest: 20 min at 110*F
• Protease rest: 20 min at 122*F
• Saccharification: 3o min at 154*F

I went with 15 quarts of water, which is about all I figured i could safely expect to fit into my 5 gal cooler.  I heated it to 115*F and added the grist.  that brought me damn close to the target 110*F, and I was suprised to find that it only made up about 5 gal of wort (I was expecting closer to 5.5 gal).

Wary of slow sparges from thick mashes, I decided to add a quart of boiling water as part of my heating to the second rest.  that got me about half way, and I fired up the stove for the rest, stirring periodically.  It took about 5 minutes to come up to 122*F by my probe thermometer, then I killed the stove.

Every few minutes i’d stir and take a temp reading or six.  even at ~1.5 qts/lb, there were hot and cool spots in the mash, and apparently the heating process had left some hot pockets down low that I didn’t know about, because 10 min into the rest, the measured temp was now ~8-10*F too hot, right at the upper limit of the protease range.

After the 20 minutes were up, i fired up the stove again on the way to 154*F.  I stopped the stove when I got a reading of 150, wary of overshooting.  Turns out i should have stopped much sooner, because a few minutes later I was getting readings in the 165-170 range.  Yikes! Thats the temp where the enzymes I need start dying off (or whatever it is that enzymes do when they stop working).  In goes two trays of ice cubes.  They melt.  temps still in the 160-167 range.  Oh well.

Wait.  This thermometer isn’t working right.  My fantastic “Super Fast Thermopen” isn’t working right…at all.  I switch to the cheap probe on the kitchen timer, and it turns out that the mash is actually around 135*F.  WTF. Back on the stove.  My planned 30 minutes for this rest have come and gone, but i give it another 20 more on the stove, stirring and heating.  When the readings get to 145-155*F, I called it quits and poured it all into the cooler to lauter.  We’re winging it now.  It JUST fit.

This sparge FLEW.  Turns out rye isn’t nearly as unruly as wheat and oats (or so it seems).  Sparged with 17qts water at ~168*F.  Collected so much wort that i needed to dump some.

Boil was thankfully uneventful.  Chilling takes forever.  I need to upgrade from my 25ft immersion cooler. Maybe i’ll make a new one out of 50ft, or maybe i’ll get a fancy counterflow guy.  This is just a lot of waiting, and a lot of wasted water.  I’ve already mopped the floors, watered the plants, and refilled the toilet tank with chiller outflow, now the rest is going down the drain.

90 minutes of chilling, poured off the trub, yielding about 4.8 gal at a corrected OG of 1.046. Pitched Wyeast 1010 American Wheat at about 80*F.

UPDATE 2010-07-24

Came back from a day at the beach, opened the apartment door and smelled beer. The ferment went wild and blew out through the airlock, making a nice pool of near beer on the floor.  First time that’s happened, extra surprising given the couple extra inches of headspace this time from the slightly smaller batch.