Rhubarb-Berry Melomel

I've yet to try an oaked mead, but it's something I've been curious about since I first read Ken Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker. He raves about the character oak can add to an already good mead. Now that I've got my 10-gallon Peach Brandy barrel this is my chance to find out!

I looked at some of the St. Paul homebrew club's info on staggered nutrient additions, pH adjustment, etc for meadmaking. Kristen England has a powerpoint online from a mead presentation he gave, and there is a good interview (w/ 2 recipes) from Curt Stock on Brew TV as well. With info in hand, I got some KOH from one of the guys in the Milwaukee Beer Barons club while taking my BJCP exam earlier this month and set out to make a big Stock-inspired melomel.

We have around 20 lbs of rhubarb in the chest freezer from my grandma's garden last year. I saved the really thick stalks for mead/beer since they are too big and stringy to work well in pies. (My grandma makes the best rhubarb pie ever, just for the record!) I also went out and bought a bunch of strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and 2 containers of Blueberry-Pomegranate juice concentrate. Along with 40 lbs of honey from 3 different sources, I split this all up into 2 buckets and did my thang. . .

Peach Brandy Barrel Aged Rhubarb-Berry Melomel

brewed on: 3/30/11
OG: 1.120
FG (bucket 1): 1.033
FG (bucket 2): 1.012

 Honey:
18 lbs - Wildflower (Sean's dad's apiary, Fall '10 harvest)
6 lbs - Wildflower (DP. Wigley, funky/earthy smelling & crystallized)
16 lbs - Wildflower (Jim Payne, older honey, crystallized, but very clean tasting)


Fruit:
8 lbs - rhubarb
7.5 lbs - strawberries
5 lbs - blueberries
3.5 lbs - blackberries
2 cans - blueberry-pomegranate juice concentrate

Yeast:
25g Lalvin Narbonne 71B (split 12.5g/bucket)


Nutrients & pH adjustment schedule:
Day 1 (per 5 gallon bucket)
4.5g Wine yeast Nutrient
12.5g 71B yeast, rehydrated
28g GoFerm
2g DAP

Days 1, 3, 5, 7
stir to degas

Days 2, 4, 6 (per 5 gallon bucket)
stir to degas
4.5g Fermaid K
2g DAP
50ppm KOH (10 ml, 2M solution) 


Fermented at 63F ambient temp

Added to Peach brandy barrel after 2 weeks. Average FG of 1.022.

5/17/11 - blended FG in barrel 1.017. Picked up just a hint of the oak & brandy barrel character. Also deepened the color to a deep orange. Cleared Nicely. Bottling tonight. Refilling barrel with RIS.

New 10 gallon Peach Brandy Barrel!

I was happy to receive an email the other day from the owner of Aeppeltreow Winery where I occasionally help out with bottling. Charles turns out some very good ciders and recently started releasing brandies as a distillery as well.

I had asked awhile back about the availability of any barrels when Charles was done with them. He just got done using a 10 gallon Minnesota oak barrel that had been filled with his first, small batch of Peach Brandy. I was happy to give it a new home. Now my dilemma is what to fill it with! I'd really like to go with an oak aged mead of some sort, but I'd like to fill it sooner than it will take to turn out a mead from the primary. My preference would be to do a mead and/or cider prior to any beer, but it may have to be a beer. Eventually, I hope to turn it into a 10 gallon sour beer solera with a Flanders or something similar. Charles thought the first batch or 2 to go through the barrel would pick up some of the brandy character, and future batches would just pick up oak. Maybe a big beer is best to soak up the brandy character first anyway. Time will tell.

(Photos will be added soon!)

'Historic Influenced' Porter w/ Brett

In an effort to use up the last few packs of yeast waiting for attention in the fridge, I was debating what to do with a smackpack of Wyeast Old Ale blend, a special release from last year. A few friends had been doing historic, or historic influenced porters of late, and I figured something along those lines would be fun with this brew. I was considering a Whitbread Porter recipe from Whitbread in 1811. However, the more I played around with the recipe, the more I was convinced that the brown malt I have is nowhere near the malt they referred to as "brown malt" in this article. Mine is too light, so I adapted and went with something closer to a modern porter recipe. I added some crystal (Carastan, in this case) and some pale chocolate malt. Both ramped up the color into the dark range, rather than mid-brownish 18SRMs I was getting before. They should add more complexity too.

Porter (w/ Brett)

brewed on: 3/20/2011
expected OG: 1.048

Expected IBUs: 27 IBUs
mash temp: 154F

mash:
6.5 lbs Marris Otter
2 lb Brown Malt
1 lb Carastan
12 oz Pale Chocolate

Hops:
1.2 oz Fuggle @ 5.1% - 60 minutes
0.5 oz Fuggle @ 5.1% - 10 minutes

Yeast:
Decanted 1 liter starter of Wyeast Old Ale blend

Added 0.3 oz House Toast French Oak cubes to primary.


3/28/11 - SG - 1.015. Chocolate notes, slightly roasted flavor. Body is on the thin side, but ok for a brown porter. Besides, the brett will chew the body up when it kicks in anyway.

Wine Barrel Rye Porter

Awhile back, our local barrel group filled a Zinfandel barrel with English barleywine. At last tasting (which I could not attend) it was pronounced to be pretty oaky, so it's time to refill with our next beer, a Rye Porter recipe from fellow homebrewer Eric Wolf. He did a non-oaked 5 gallon batch of this, along with several other rye beers, that we all liked and thought would take on the oak well. This was my first time brewing with rye. I've heard it is very gummy and can lead to stuck mashes easily. I added 1+ lb of rice hulls to my mash and it was one of the easiest I've ever had to run off.


Wine Barrel Rye Porter

brewed on: 3/18/2011
expected OG: 1.065

Expected IBUs: 59.9 IBUs (I had to tweak my recipe a bit, so was a tad over the planned 58.4 for the group)
mash temp: 154F



mash:
4 lbs US 2-row
4 lbs Rye Malt
3.5 lbs Munich Malt
1.25 Caramunich 
8 oz Chocolate Malt
8 oz Special Roast
0.4 lbs Pale Chocolate Malt



Hops:
1.25 oz Mt. Hood @ 5.5% - First Wort (calculated as 20 minute addition)
0.9 oz Columbus @ 14.4% - 60 minutes
1 oz Mt. Hood - flameout
1.5 oz Columbus - dry hops (we will each do this on our own after barrel aging)

Yeast:
US-05

Saison for Beer Fests

I recently volunteered to brew up a keg of saison for the upcoming Kenosha Beer & Cheese Fest going on next month, as well as a keg for the Milwaukee Firkin a few months later. I figured I might as well get it all out of the way now and just brewed up a 10 gallon batch. I stuck with my base recipe for this one. With Spring in the near future, I'll be back to brewing more saison variations this year soon enough though! This was a good kick off. I've gotta say it's really nice having a few hundred lbs of grain on hand, and 9 lbs of hops! The only thing I had to pick up for this batch was yeast! I don't have a lot to say about this one. It went smoothly and I cooked some good Thai papaya salad while mashing & boiling. The only changes I made from past batches was that I ran out of Franco-Belgian pils malt after the first 4.5 lbs, so I made up the difference in MFB Pale malt. Also, I had a spare ounce of Crystal hop pellets in the freezer, so I added those at flameout. I was shooting for 11 gallons, but boiled down a tad too far and ended up with 10. Not a big deal. My normal OG for this recipe is below the minimum BJCP guideline, not that I follow those for everything. There was definitely room for higher gravity though. The IBUs were toward the low-middle range. They are still within the suggested range.

In other news, my pomegranate mead got the thumbs up from Annie today and will be bottled soon! 


Saaz Saison

brewed on: 3/6/2011
expected OG: 1.044

Expected IBUs: 32 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
10 gallon batch
90 minute boil

mash:
12 lbs Belgian Pils (subbed Belgian Pale malt for 7.5#)
3.5 lbs German wheat malt
8 oz acidulated malt


Hops:
2oz Saaz @ 5.5% - 60 minutes

2 oz Saaz @ 5.5% - 15 minutes
3 oz Saaz @ 5.5% - flameout
1 oz Crystal - flameout

Yeast:
3711 French Saison - 1 pack per 5 gallon bucket

3/28/11 - OG 1.002. Dry hopped each 5 gallon batch with 1 oz Crystal (3.2%) whole leaf.

American Stout 2

With a lot of carboys of sours aging, 2 more planned in the near future (to make use of Bugfarm 5 and Flemish Ale blend from ECY,) I've been on a bit of a clean beer kick lately. I just brewed a Munich Helles awhile ago, and now it was time to revisit my American Stout recipe. Last time I brewed this the keg was tapped out faster than any other beer I've brewed. It turned out really well, and was quite delicious! So, it was time to revisit the recipe. I made a few basic changes, just due to what I had on hand. I was happy enough otherwise that I didn't want to make more changes than necessary. Awhile back I ordered some ECY Old Newark lager yeast strain, but received the ale strain instead. Ah well. I figured I'd use it for something anyway, so kept it. So I had some Old Newark Ale yeast on hand, so I pitched that along with one pack of US-05 yeast, vs just 2 US-05 packs last time. Although I listed Chocolate Malt in the last recipe, I've had this nagging feeling that I used half Pale Chocolate since I have a lot of that on hand. I split up the chocolate malt into 2 halves to do that (again?) this time. My LHBS was out of Yakima Magnum, so I subbed in Columbus at the same exact AA% for bittering. Also, I didn't have black barley on hand, but I had a bunch of Roasted Barley, so I swapped in the roasted stuff. 300L vs 500L wasn't a big deal for a few ounces since the recipe was already darker than BJCP guidelines for a stout (which I find funny because either way it's BLACK), but seeing as I don't really care what the BJCP tells me a stout needs to be anyway, that's not a big deal. The 2 grains definitely have different character to them, but I think it'll still be complimentary. Here's the recipe!:

American Stout

brewed on: 2/27/2011
expected OG: 1.069 (I ended up with 1.074. Still getting used to Beer Smith rather than Beer Alchemy, so I was a bit off on the efficiency.)

FG: 1.022
Expected IBUs: 54.1 IBUs
mash temp: 155F
6 gallon batch

mash:
15 lbs US 2-row
0.5 lb Black malt
0.5 lb Roasted barley
12 oz Crystal 40L
12 oz Coffee malt
6 oz Chocolate malt
6 oz Pale Chocolate malt 



Hops:
1.5 oz Columbus @ 14.4% (60 minutes)
1 oz Centennial @ 9% (5 minutes)
~ 1 oz homegrown Cascade (flameout)


Yeast:
 1 pack - Safale US-05 1 vial - ECY Old Newark Ale

3/6/11 - FG 1.022, kegged

Munich Helles

In today's news: I finally went out and got my chest freezer for lagering! I've been procrastinating since this fall. Lagers are something I've wanted to brew for awhile though. Back when I bought my chest freezer for kegerator purposes I was going to get a really big one to hold four-ish kegs plus room for a carboy. It turned out that a medium and a small chest freezer together were maybe $10 more total than buying one big one. So, I got my wife to agree that I'd just get a medium (7 cu. ft.) for the kegs with the understanding that I'd be getting another small one (5 cu. ft.) in the future to use as a lagering chamber. Somehow I managed to keep putting that off until now.


A few weeks ago I went over to my friend Jim's house to hang out and brew while he did his first decocted lager. He recently racked it and was nice enough to save half of the yeast slurry for me. He even gave me 10 lbs of spare Best Pils malt on top of it. With both of these in hand today, I set out to brew my first lager. I've been wanting to try brewing a Helles. Jim gave me Czech lager yeast, but I went ahead with the Helles recipe anyway. I'm not sure if it's appropriate or not (I haven't read up on lager yeast nearly as much as ales/bugs) but I figured even if it wasn't a spot on Helles, it'd hopefully at least be a nice drinkable light lager of some sort and that's good enough for me for now! Here's the recipe:


Munich Helles
brewed on: 2/13/11
OG: 1.045
IBUs: 18.5 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
expected color: 3.8 SRM
7 gallons

grist:
10 lbs. German pils malt
1 lb Cara-pils
6 oz Vienna malt


Hops (loose pellets):
1 oz Hallertauer @ 3.9% - 60 minutes
0.5 oz Hallertauer @ 3.9% - 20 minutes
0.28 oz Hallertauer @ 3.8% - 20 minutes
0.5 oz Hallertauer @ 3.9% - 5 minutes* (see below)



Yeast:
Czech Lager slurry from Jim's German Pilsner

Ferment at 52F.
  
 Mashed in at 1.1 qts / lb.
Protein rest 130F - 15 minutes
Decoction - 40% weight (15.8 lbs)
Sacch rest - 60 minutes
90 minute boil


I forgot to add he 5 minute hop addition. No huge loss in IBUs, but I do like Helles with a bit more floral hop nose than is probably traditional. 

Also, I planned on a 6 gallon batch, but didn't realize until after the fact that I'd get better efficiency from decocting. Thus, I ended up at 1.052 and diluted the wort with a gallon of distilled water while chilling.

More little mistakes on this one than usual, but I expected some since I wasn't used to the step-mash, decoction process.

2/21/11 - SG: 1.010. Raising to diacetyl rest. Clean malty taste w/ very slight floral background.
2/23/11 - Lowering to lager temp.