The Whine & Cheese Beer Diary

We brew stuff and write about it so you can follow along.

[whineandcheesebeer]

Kegged the Sierra Nevada clone. It went smoothly, although I noticed that one of the fermenters was not hoppy enough while the other was too hoppy. So: duh, I blended them. Should be very tasty.

[whineandcheesebeer]

Belgian Fail

The Belgian kind of failed miserably. It tastes corny, with a maltiness you expect from a pilsner, with almost no estery character and no fruits present at all. I think the problem was the way it was fermented and I may have over pitched the yeast, too. Will try again.

[whineandcheesebeer]

The Kegs

[whineandcheesebeer]

Nierra Sevada (Sierra Nevada clone)

This was my first 10 gallon batch, and I did it without my esteemed brew partner. Sort of big mistake. But, it worked out, and it turned out well, with a yield of about 8.5 gallons.

Recipe: here

Target OG: 1.046

Actual OG: 1.044 (yay!)

Heat 12.87 gallons of water (!!!) to 159.9 degrees

Add the following grain bill:

15 pounds of 2 row pale

1 pound CaraPils

1 pound Crystal 60L

Mash at 154F for 70 minutes (ended up mashing at 158F for 10 mins, then added 2 quarts of cold water to get to 154F)

Bring to a boil (and strain the big bag o'grain

add the following hops:

2 oz Perle @ 70 mins

2 oz Cascade @ 10 mins

1 oz Cascade @ 5mins

Pitched 2 packets of Safale US-05 to a quart of 90F water for 30 minutes, then pitched straight into the wort.

Ended up with about 8.5 gallons, 5 in 1 fermenter, 3.5 in the other.

[whineandcheesebeer]

I bottled the Belgian today. Total pull was 41 bottles, 1 SodaStream bottle, and 1 fliptop thing from IKEA.

To be honest, I'm confused about the lack of belgian spiciness. I don't know if I fermented it at the wrong end of the temperature range, or if it's something about the amount/type of malt, but it's not entirely blowing me away. Regardless, it's incredibly drinkable and highly alcoholic for how dry and delicious it is. I consider it a success.

[blogobuffy]

[whineandcheesebeer]

Le Petit Orange final gravity

OG: 1.050

SG (1 week after beginning fermentation): 1.002

approx. ABV: 6.3% <-- success!

[whineandcheesebeer]

The Belgian Ale fermenting, 18 hours after pitching the yeast. Got some good activity going!

[whineandcheesebeer]

O.G: 1.050 (recipe specifies 1.052)

This is a take on a belgian Dubbel, but a little less intense. Think Blue Moon done the craft beer way.

We did this as a Brew In A Bag with the new pot, burner, and kit from Northern Brewer. Overall it went really well, although we overshot the mash temp in the last 10 minutes due to a bad thermometer reading (as in, I screwed up). There was also some confusion about why the boil volume didn't decrease as much as it was supposed to. We had a rolling boil, though, so i'm not too concerned.

1. Heat 6.94 gallons of water to 154F.

2. Add:

7 lbs Belgian Pilsner malt

.5 lbs Belgian CaraPils

.5 lbs Belgian CaraVienne

.25 lbs Belgian Aromatic

.25 lbs Belgian Biscuit Malt

3. stir and mash at 149F for 70 minutes

*note: we mashed at 151F for 60 mins, and 156F for 10 minutes

4. remove bag and strain

5. Bring to boil, and add:

1 oz Styrian Goldings

1 lb brown Candi sugar

6. Boil for 60 minutes

7. chill with wort chiller (new! worked great!)

8. Aerate and pitch 1/2 gallon yeast starter (Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey)

[whineandcheesebeer]

The finished bottles. They came out perfectly.

Tasting notes:

Aroma: Citrus, with an intense and herbal hop presence. A little malt/bread coming through too.

Taste: Floral and hop-forward, very bitter, but balanced against a bready malt taste. Fades into citrus and spicy hop flavor with a hint of almost smoky honey flavor. Medium body, nice head retention, lacing was average.

This is a winner. It's drinkable, almost dangerously so at 9% alcohol. Frankly I'm surprised at the high-moderate hoppy taste, since we added over a pound of the stuff. We will definitely brew this again, probably with smarter hop addition times and maybe with first wort hopping, too.

[whineandcheesebeer]

Taking the setup for a test run. All systems go!

[whineandcheesebeer]

Homebrew Lessons Learned

We bottled the beer we're calling Look At This F$&!ing IPA (Just Look At It) and it's looking great. It's also tasting amazing, and the yield was pretty good (40 bottles).

Since putting it in the primary we took the following steps:

transferred to a secondary after 7 days in the primary

Added the remaining 6 oz of hops in a sanitized muslin sock, in a sort of hacked-to-hell version of dry hopping

removed the hops (or tried) after 7 days

bottled after another 7 days in the secondary

made a huge mess trying to remove the hops from the secondary.

So, while we made a delicious, even nuanced double IPA, there were a few things we did that could have been done better:

topping off with more water: we use a 5 gallon pot for partial mash boils, so we add about 1/2 gallon of water before transferring to the secondary. With the amount of hop and yeast residue, this really only yielded 4 gallons. Totally acceptable, but also avoidable.

adding the DME at the end of the boil: this allows more alpha-acid isomerization to occur (a higher rate of isomerization occurs at lower gravities). Probably only important for IPAs and hop-forward brews.

filter the trub prior to adding to the primary: It just makes it easier to get a cleaner, clearer brew, and gives you a better sense of the top-off water needed to hit your target volume.

dry-hopping in the primary: the mess that resulted from trying to cram 6 ounces of hops into a carboy nozzle was totally avoidable (Sorry about your bathtub, Cait). And furthermore, we risked contamination by not having a great seal around the muslin sock. It's probably safe to do 2 weeks in the primary with one addition of hops at 7 days, and then transfer to the secondary for a week to clear it all up and harvest the yeast.

harvest the yeast: this stuff was almost magical, it was so epic. We should have harvested it to use in another similar brew, but alas we rarely think that far ahead.

drink more beers in the interim: buying bottles is totally avoidable. Oh well. Now that we're at the 5-gallon level we will never really need new bottles if we treat this set well.

[whineandcheesebeer]

40 bottles exactly. 9% alcohol, strong malty backbone with floral and herbal aroma. Bitter, but not bitingly so. A nice buttery, earthy undertone that will probably mellow out with age.

[brewstagram]

Not your mothers beer by juebear http://instagr.am/p/UXh1U4s6Em/

[whineandcheesebeer]

A to-do list

[brewstagram]

Awwww come on @stonebrewingco!!! None of these are anywhere near New Orleans!! 😩😩😩 It’s not fair!! by brewtography http://instagr.am/p/UW55lCpVsv/

[whineandcheesebeer]

Original Gravity: 1.080 Today's Gravity: 1.014 Approx ABV: 8.8%

This is a MONSTER. Cannot wait to taste this.

[whineandcheesebeer]

Transferred to the secondary with 6 oz of hops in a sock for aroma. This is called dry hopping. We will take these out in a week, and bottle a week after that.

The sock was a bit of a hack. I'm still not entirely sure how people do this, but we sanitized the sock, opened it inside the carboy, and then poured the hops in. The stopper is (hopefully) sealing just fine, but it's a bit of an experiment.