Pours clear. Brown with red hue. Head quickly fades to reasonable lace. Did not notice hop aroma, possibly due to my lingering cold. Roasty malt flavor at first with a quick transition to clean bitterness. I was trying to find a “band-aidy” flavor. Maybe I imagined it there between the malt and the hop. If anything, there was a herbal quality to the hop flavor.
Nice combination of roasted barley and hops. I’ve had worse phenolic flavors, surely.
Poured from a 12oz. bottle.
2010MAY31
- 5lb 2-Row Pale
- 5lb Wheat
- 1 lb Munich
- 1/2lb Crystal 10L
~4g mash water, strike @ 165*F
one step infusion mash 60min @ 152*F
~6g sparge water @ 175*F
Boil
60min:
0.5oz Northern Brewer
0.5oz Saaz
15min:
0.5oz Saaz
0min:
0.5oz Saaz
OG: 1.043
Pitched White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001)
(source)
2010JN10
Racked to secondary.
SG: 1.004
NOTES: My sample was fairly clear. Low hop aroma. Not very wheaty, there’s a bit of a medicinal flavor at the finish.
2010JN16
FG: 1.004 (5.95%)
Primed with 3/4 cup brown sugar
54 12oz bottles
Pours black, with coffee-colored head. Head subsides to a fine lace on the glass. Dark roast nose, a hint of chocolate. Smooth, even roast flavor. Any hops bitterness is absent, the malt dominates. Coffee finish.
Poured from a growler, hand delivered from the brewery.
8.8 lbs Premier light hopped malt extract
1.2 lbs Vermont light amber maple syrup
2 oz Cluster hop pellets
water to make 5 gal
Boiled the malt, 1 gal water, and 1 oz of the hops, then added maple for 1 minute boil, and second oz of hops just before shutting down. Pitched 5 packets of stale (several-year-old) yeast.
2010MAR19
- 9lb Belgian Pilsner
~3g mash water, strike @ 160F
one step infusion mash 60min
~5.5g sparge water @ 210F, collecting ~7.5g
Boil
60min:
1.5oz Hallertau (3%)
10min:
0.5oz Saaz (2.8%)
OG: 1.042
Pitched Wyeast Activator Trappist High Gravity 3787
(source)
2010MAR31
Racked to secondary
SG: 1.011
2010APR09
FG: 1.006 (5.3% ABV)
Primed with 2/3 cup brown sugar
56 12oz bottles
Thin mouthfeel. Nice, full pilsner malt flavor. Crisp finish. Funky yeast flavors: not so much.
mac batch #4
Based on a “Black 47 Stout” recipe from North American Clone Brews. Black 47 is brewed by The Old Nutfield Brewing Company of Derry, NH, but as I’ve never had any of their beers, I don’t quite know what to expect out of this brew, hence “Black Box”.
[2010-02-28] Boil Day
steep all above grains (two giant muslin sacks worth) in 155*F water for 45 min (started with 5 3/4 gal), then bring to boil
Ended up with 1.018 @ 78*F, which corrects to 1.021; using hopville’s beer calculus, I worked out that I got about 56% efficiency from my “super steep” method.
The recipe I was following has OG at 1.047, so I needed to work out how much dry malt extract I’d need to add. Fortuitously, the 3 lb that I calculated I needed was exactly how much I had on hand.
As I was bringing the wort to a boil, I added ~1.5 tsp of gypsum. I’d never used the stuff before, maybe I should have added it before the steep, since I’ve read that its supposed to alter the pH, which has an effect on the mash.
Add Northern Brewer, boil 45 min
Off heat, add dry malt extract and Irish moss, return to boil for 10 min
Add Fuggles, boil 5 minutes
Chill to ~70 deg with immersion chiller (took 30-45 min)
Pitched Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale using the “immediate” method, rather than the “let swell for at least 3 hrs” method. It was probably around 10PM when the yeast met the wort.
Gravity was 1.049 @ 68*F, which corrects to 1.050; a little high. I have about 4.8 gals in the ale pail, so that’s 240 gravity units. If I want 1.047, I need to add water to get to 5.1 gal, so I put about 6 cups of water on to boil and cool (dig a hole; now fill it in). When it got to ~70*F, I popped the lid on the ale pail and poured in the water. I didn’t bother to take a hydrometer reading (cleaned and put away), but the math doesn’t lie, dude. OG should be 1.047 for my now 5.1 gal of wort.
- 6 lbs Midwest Supply Wheat Liquid Malt Extract (65% Wheat, 35% Barley)
- 8 oz. Carapils
- 2 oz. Tettnanger Hop Pellets (4.7% AA)
- Danstar “Munich” German Wheat Dry Yeast
2009-12-29: Boil Day
- Steep Carapils (placed in muslin bag) in 5 gal of filtered water at 155*F for 30 min
- Remove grains, bring to boil.
- Remove from heat, add Liquid Wheat Malt Extract.
- Return to boil, add 1 oz. Tettnanger Hops (60 min)
- Add 1 oz. Tettnanger Hops (2 min)
- Meanwhile, boil 1/2 cup water, cool to 90*F and add dry yeast.
- Chill wort to ~70* F, using the finest homemade immersion chiller you can lay your hands on
- Neglect to take a SG reading.
- Transfer to primary and aerate (shaka-shaka)
- Pitch bloomed yeast
- SG: ~1.042
2010-01-02: Ferment slows to a crawl
2010-01-04: Rack to Secondary. Specific Gravity: 1.010
2010-01-12: FG 1.010. Prime with 5 oz corn sugar, bottle (yield ~46 12 oz. bottles). Smells a little like plastic.
2010-01-14: Still flat. Still a bit plasticy (phenolic?)
2010-01-21: Its beer! The head fades kinda quickly, but the carbonation level seems OK. This brew is a bit light on both the alcohol and body. The plastic aroma has mellowed way out, and is barely noticeable.
2010-01-27: Better head retention after a while longer in the bottles. All in all a nice brew, it went over well at a roll-your-own sushi GTG this weekend. “This is pretty good, the last homebrew i had tasted a bit like skunk or something,” says one. I might make this or something similar again, definitely a nice quaffable summery brew.