Galaxy Cuckoo

So, I finally got a hold of some Galaxy hops! I’ve been meaning to brew with them for a while because I wanted to make a beer to suit my wife’s tastes. She loves Galaxy Unicorn. This should be more sessionable than the Pipeworks brew it seeks to emulate, yet still very hoppy and fruity.

Here’s the recipe; brew it before they release a new hop from the Southern Hemisphere that will make Galaxy passé.

Galaxy Cuckoo

Style: Wheat IPA

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Carapils

Extract:

7 lbs. wheat DME

Hops:

1 oz. Columbus pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Galaxy pellets (flavor @ 30 min.)

1 oz. Galaxy pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Citra pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

1 oz. Galaxy pellets (dry hop)

1 oz. Citra pellets (dry hop)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1272 American Ale II

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:

The original gravity was 1.062 and the final gravity was around 1.014; ABV should be around 6.3%. I drank my hydrometer sample the other day after bottling and I was blown away by the aroma. I dry hopped with Galaxy and Citra; it was a lupulin KO!

I stand by the logic of dry hopping with pellets after making this one. Whole leaf hops look pretty cool in the carboy, but they act like one big sponge and I think some volume is lost. They often impart less aroma in my experience too, perhaps because the cell walls aren’t broken down as much by the extrusion process that pelletized hops go through. Just a hypothesis; don’t quote me on that one.

Rye Shell

I just made this beer for my brother’s wedding. I wanted to make something that embodied both him and his fiancée, and I added ingredients that corresponded to both of their tastes and personalities.

My brother loves big IPAs; Wookey Jack is one of his favorites, so this obviously had to be a rye beer. He also enjoys Founders Red’s Rye, so I added a pound of Weyermann CaraRed. He’s a big, bold guy, so the malt and rye spice needed to be present.

His fiancée loves bright, tangeriney hops, so I finished the boil with some Citra and dry hopped it with two ounces of whole cone Amarillos. Good relationships are about balance, and so are good beers. I see this beer as a metaphor for their happiness together.

Here’s the recipe:

Rye Shell

Style: Rye IPA

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. CaraRed

Extract:

9.9 lbs. Briess Rye LME

Hops:

1 oz. Chinook pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Centennial pellets (flavor @ 30 min.)

1 oz. Centennial pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Citra pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

2 oz. Amarillo pellets (dry hop)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1056 American Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:

The original gravity was about 1.064, which is slightly lower than expected. Maybe I added a little more water than usual. It finished around 1.017, which should still make the ABV around 6.2%.

I'll do some tasting notes soon. I tried some the other day after it carbonated, and I'll say that the rye bite is definitely there. The citrusy aroma is present, but not quite as strong as I hoped for. I think I'll use pellets for the dry hop instead of whole cone hops next time I make this. The rationale for using the whole cones was more surface area in contact with the wort, but unfortunately I think they absorbed a lot of the beer and didn't impart as much hop aroma as I wanted. Still, a noble brew for two people that I care about very much.

First Mead!

Actually it’s a melomel, which means mead with fruit added (tart cherries in this case). I have to confess that I’m out of my comfort zone here, but that’s a good thing. It’s how we grow as people, right?

I am not an expert at mead brewing by any means. In some ways I think it’s probably a little easier than making beer (no mashing, no boil time, no hop additions, and no cooling time, for example). In other ways it seems a little more demanding (using yeast nutrient and energizer effectively, dealing with potential stuck fermentation, and waiting far longer before the final product is drinkable).

This is not necessarily what I’m recommending for others to do; it’s merely a document of what I did. I’ll let you know in a few months how the final product turned out. If any experienced mazers read this and want to set me straight, by all means do so.

Mellow Mel

Style: Tart Cherry Melomel

Water:

3 gallons of spring water

Honey:

5 lbs. of Sunny Hill Honey from May’s Honey Farms in Harvard, IL

Juice:

2 quarts of tart cherry juice (R. W. Knudsen Just Tart Cherry).
A few more ounces of juice (if necessary) to add when racking to secondary to achieve desired volume.

Fruit:

4 cans of Oregon Pitted Tart Cherries in Water (14.5 oz. each)

Yeast:

2 packets of Lalvin 71B-1122 (dry wine yeast)

Other Ingredients:

2 tsp. of Wyeast Wine Nutrient Blend (½ tsp. a day for the first four days).

1 tsp. of LD Carlson Yeast Energizer (¼ tsp. a day for the first four days).

Recipe:

So here is the ingenious process that I pieced together from doing some online research. As with making beer, everyone has a different opinion on how to make certain processes happen, and it’s hard to find straight answers sometimes. Someone should do a blog on this stuff to set everyone straight.

First, rehydrate the two packets of yeast in four ounces of warm water (104 to 109 F). I recommend sanitizing a small pot and heating up some of the spring water to the desired temperature, and then pouring it into a small sanitized measuring cup. Add the contents of the yeast packets into the warm water and let stand for 15 minutes without stirring.

Add 1 ½ gallons of the spring water to a sanitized 5 gallon bucket. Add the first dose of the yeast nutrient and energizer to the water. Add the 5 lbs. of honey as well. It helps if you immerse the container in hot water first; it really cuts down the viscosity of the honey when you pour it. Thoroughly incorporate the honey and aerate the hell out of the mixture with a sanitized plastic paddle. This will take about ten minutes. You now have mead must.

Add the two quarts of tart cherry juice, as well as more spring water to achieve 3 total gallons of must. Aerate for another five minutes or so until all ingredients are well incorporated.

Open the four cans of cherries with a sanitized opener. Pour the cherries and the liquid into your primary fermenter (a sanitized 5 gallon carboy) through a large sanitized funnel. Add a few at a time; they tend to clog up. It helps to have a stick to push them through the opening. I used my bottling wand.

Pour the well-aerated must through the funnel as well. Place a cap on top of the carboy. Gently shake it to incorporate and aerate the must further. Be extremely careful when doing so.

Take an original gravity reading; it should be around 1.079-1.080. Stir the yeast well with a sanitized spoon and pour it into the must. Gently shake the carboy again. Attach your airlock and put in a safe place to ferment.

For the next three days add the quantities of nutrient and energizer specified above. Stir the must to incorporate these additives and to degas it.

After two weeks, rack the mead to a sanitized 3 gallon secondary fermenter. Fill the carboy up as high as it can go without interfering with the stopper, ideally to the base of the neck. Add a little more juice if necessary to achieve this volume. Do not transfer the cherries to the secondary. Put in a tight fitting stopper and airlock. Make sure it has a good seal, as the mead will stay in the secondary for at least two months. Also make sure to check your airlock and keep it filled with sanitizer or vodka to the appropriate level. If the stopper or airlock is compromised, your mead will be oxidized. You like that Johnny Cochran action?

Bottle when the mead has reached its final gravity and cleared (approximately 2 months). I would estimate that this one will be pretty dry, so the FG will likely be around 1.000.

Notes:

We’ll see what happens! My melomel gets transferred to the secondary this week. I’d like to share some with my family this holiday season, although I know it will still be pretty young then. Cheers to my first Viking brew!

By the way, this honey from May’s farm in Harvard, Illinois tasted awesome. It had a complex spiciness to it that I really hope makes it through to the melomel. Their honey comes from assorted wildflowers and you can really detect the terroir.

White Wizard Redux

I really enjoyed this last time I made it, so I won’t tweak it too much. As with Honey Badger, I’m going to steep a pound of Carapils in the future, instead of trying to mash any adjuncts with 2 row.

I’m also going to boost the amount of wheat DME from six pounds to seven to kick the booze up a notch and create a stronger backbone to support the hops.

I’ve doubled the amount of coriander and sweet orange peel as well. It wasn’t that pronounced last time so I want to add another dose of both in the last five minutes of the boil to see if it imparts a desirable aroma. Plus, I hate buying packages of specialty ingredients and then only using a pinch.

White Wizard (2014)

Style: White IPA

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Carapils

Extract:

7 lbs. wheat DME

Hops:

1 oz. Columbus pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Cascade pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Centennial pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

1 oz. Citra pellets (dry hop)

Yeast:

Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit

Other Ingredients:

1 tsp. ground coriander (½ tsp. added @ 15 min., ½ tsp. added @ 5 min.)

½ oz. sweet orange peel (¼ oz. added @ 15 min., ¼ oz. added @ 5 min.)

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:
The original gravity should be around 1.062 and the beer should finish around 1.014, making for an ABV of around 6.3%. This one's a winner!

Honey Badger Redux

So this is the next evolution of my famous Kölsch style/honey ale hybrid, Honey Badger. The hop schedule should be about the same as the previous incarnation of this recipe that I posted last year, but I have changed a few things.

For starters, I no longer intend to mash 2 row barley with torrified wheat during the preboil. Frankly, I’m not sure if my prior method adequately converted enough of the starches in the wheat into fermentable sugars. I like the boost of head retention that the wheat offers, but I’m pretty sure that I can get that from a pound of Carapils instead, which can be steeped according to Briess.

Secondly, I know some Kölsch breweries do add wheat to their overall grain bill. Since I’m no longer using the torrified wheat during the preboil, I intend to add some wheat DME to help achieve the desired flavor profile.

Lastly, I’ve omitted the ounce of Saaz for dry hopping. This is already a fairly hoppy brew, and I want the aromatics in the honey to come through instead of a wall of lupulin.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual down at the Honey Badger Picobrewery. Cheers!

Honey Badger (2014)

Style: Kölsch with honey

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. Carapils

Extract:

3 lbs. extra light DME

2 lbs. wheat DME

Hops:

1 oz. Hallertauer pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Tettnanger pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Saaz pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

Honey:

2 lbs. of orange blossom, clover, sunflower, or other light honey added at flameout

Yeast:

Wyeast 1007 German Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime the beer before bottling.

Notes:
The original gravity should be around 1.060 and the beer should finish around 1.010, making for an ABV of around 6.6%. Happy brewing if you try this one. I'll make it soon and post my tasting notes.

Recipe Reboots/Alt Country

I love homebrewing with a passion. I love experimenting with new ingredients, and I like hectically jockeying a few batches around at once, especially in the summer when I have the time to do so. The consequence of this, however, is that I don’t always keep the best records of my ingredients and processes. I’ve found myself documenting original gravity readings written on Post-it notes, scrawling a schedule of hop additions sketched on our refrigerator whiteboard, and hunting for old Brew and Grow receipts to figure out which yeast strain or specialty grains I used. Enough!

When I started doing this a few years back, I kept meticulous records. I even received a specially formatted notebook for keeping track of homebrew recipes from my sister-in-law and her fiancé as a Christmas gift. I filled it out in detail for a while, but—alas!—I eventually got too comfortable and went back to my Post-its and whiteboard shenanigans. I was like the time when Mr. T was at the mall and Homer Simpson kept telling himself, “I’ll go a little later, I’ll go a little later.” Folks, not keeping track of your homebrew records will hurt the quality of your future beer endeavors. The next time you want to brew that Columbus and Citra White IPA that your friends and co-workers drooled over and you can’t figure out how to replicate it, you’ll know that Mr. T has left the mall.

This has led me to the realization that I can’t ever let this kind of lapse in record keeping happen again, especially since I design my own recipes and rarely brew from kits. Over the next few weeks I’m going to post summaries of all of my past brews, or at least the most successful ones that I plan on doing again. I also intend to update recipes posted in the past if I have made any adjustments or improvements to them.

I’ll start with my most recent brew, Alt Country. It’s my take on an Altbier, yet it incorporates some American hops and UK malt into the mix. It’s ready to bottle on August 21^st. Cheers!

Alt Country

Style: Altbier

Water:

2 ½ gallons in brew kettle, heated to 155 F to steep specialty grains.

1 gallon in separate pot, heated to 155 F for sparging specialty grains.

Grains:

1 lb. 55 L UK Crystal Malt

Extract:

7 lbs. extra light DME

Hops:

1 oz. Northern Brewer pellets (bittering @ 60 min.)

1 oz. Cascade pellets (flavor @ 30 min.)

1 oz. Cascade pellets (flavor @ 15 min.)

1 oz. Willamette pellets (aroma @ 5 min.)

Yeast:

Wyeast 1007 German Ale

Other Ingredients:

1 Whirlfloc tab or 1 tsp. or Irish moss (added 15 minutes before flameout).

Water to add to the wort to achieve 5 ½ gallons of total volume in the primary fermenter.

¾ cup of corn sugar or 1 ¼ cups of ex light DME boiled in 2 cups of water for five minutes to prime beer before bottling.

Notes:

The original gravity should be around 1.062 and the final gravity should be around 1.014, which should put the beer at about 6.3% ABV. However, these readings obviously depend on how much water you add to the fermenter when diluting the wort before pitching the yeast. I used to start with about 5 gallons, but I’ve adjusted that to around 5 ½ because of all the volume I lose in trub and yeast sediment when transferring to the secondary and bottling bucket. I don’t strain my wort obsessively like I used to when transferring from the brew kettle to the primary carboy. I don’t see the point because the Whirlfloc helps a lot of the gunk settle out, and I do a secondary fermentation anyway. Consequently, I have a lot of trub at the bottom of my primary, so I think that extra half gallon helps me compensate for the extra volume of solids.

Also concerning water, I would recommend using distilled H20 (I’m saying this from the perspective of someone with hard tap water; if you have an awesome source at your disposal, disregard). I know my tap water sucks because the hardness is through the roof whenever I test the levels in my fish tank. I’ve had much better results when switching to distilled water. Also, it also has the benefit of being more sterile than what might come out of your faucet in terms of beer spoilers, so that’s another bonus. This advice applies only to extract brewing; all grain brewers shouldn’t use distilled water because it lacks some desirable minerals for yeast health. Malt extract has the minerals from the water table where it was produced, so it’s not an issue.

I’ll post some tasting notes on this one after it’s bottled and carbed. Happy beer adventures in the meantime!

Ghosts of Beer Adventures Past

Here are a few zymurgy/gastronomy highlights from 2012. Enjoy!

February 2012 - Homebrewed ale

Overprimed? Maybe slightly, but still aesthetically pleasing.

April 2012 - Steak fajitas with a chipotle rub

I really appreciated Steven Raichlen's awesome advice from How to Grill on how to treat the skirt steak, green onions, and poblanos.

I made some chicken fajitas on the grill as well. I used Bill Baron's Fajita Seasoning as a rub; it was very savory.

I paired both with Three Floyd's Rabbid Rabbit. As a saison, I found it more fitting with the chicken, but it helped cut through the spice of the steak as well.

April 2012 - New Glarus trip

You can't beat that old world copper appeal.

Open fermentation in progress



Roasted red peppers at the Glarner Stube

May 2012 - Beer brats with grilled onions paired with Sixpoint's Crisp 

It's served with Mama-in-law's potato salad, my wife's coleslaw, and horseradish with beets on the side. 

May 2012 - Ye olde Dubuque Star Brewing facility

It's been converted into a restaurant and a museum now.

June 2012 - Orval mural at Goose Island

June 2012 - Headwich at Fat Head's in North Olmstead, Ohio

I can't believe I ate the whole thing!



June 2012 - Salmon and Trout grilled on indirect heat  

I used Whole Foods Thai Ginger Marinade. The fish was great cold on crackers the next day too! 

June 2012 - Homemade angel food cake with strawberries

We used Alton Brown's recipe and it turned out nice and fluffy.

July 2012 - In the words of the immortal Wesley Willis, "Rock over London, rock on Chicago."

July 2012 - Southern Benedict and Smoked Trout at the Old Oak Tap in Chicago

July 2012 - We stopped at Keeweenaw Brewing Company our way to Isle Royale. There was a cool mural and nice views from their back terrace.

July 2012 - Dinner at the Harbor Haus in Copper Harbor, Michigan

July 2012 - Hop farm on the Old Mission Peninsula just north of Traverse City

July 2012 - Beer flight at North Peak Brewing Company in Traverse City

We also got to meet Russ from Right Brain while on this trip. He welcomed us into their new location while it was still under constuction, and he poured us some pints right out of the fermenters. He also gave us a growler and some logo glasses to take home. What a gent! I cant wait to check it out again next time we're up there.

July 2012 - Homemade blueberry pancakes

We picked the blueberries at The Blueberry Ranch in Mishawaka, IN. We froze the rest and used them to make a blueberry saison.



July 2012 - Homemade pizza with one of Wisconsin's finest beverages

I highly recommend using a pizza stone for pies made from scratch; you can't beat the even heat.

August 2012 - First Lager!

This was a Pilsner that I called Czech Mate. Note the righteous frame that I built to support the carboy.