El Simarillo IPA

For one reason or another IPAs are just not a style I brew that often. It's not that I dislike them it's just that it seems that everywhere I turn there's an IPA. Not that that's a bad thing. People are free to brew and drink what they prefer, but for me this hop assault is tiresome.

So that being said when I do brew an IPA it's usually something a bit different. The last one I brewed about two years ago for a friends wedding and fermented it with Belgian yeast. Great beer, but I digress. This one is a bit of an oddball and not entirely sure I can even call it an IPA.

The one thing I dislike about so many American IPAs is that I usually can't taste anything but hops. I wanted a more malty base so for this one the base malt was Vienna along with white wheat. Then a pound of 60l crystal added for color. For the hops I did a first wort hop addition of target (which I do for all of my hoppy beers) and then late hop additions of el dorado and simcoe hops. The beer will later be dry hopped with more el dorado, simcoe then also some amarillo (El Simarillo get it?).

Brew day was largely uneventful. With the exception of burning the tubing to my wort chiller (good thing I have a back up. It was also my first brew using the new false bottom I purchased for my mash tun. I can't confirm it yet but my efficiency was lower than normal and I have a feeling that the change in gear was the culprit.

Mash profile single infusion at 154
Mash efficiency 70%
OG 1.046
IBU 76.8

Mash ingredients
5lbs Vienna malt
3lbs white wheat
1lb 60L crystal malt

Hop schedule
1oz. Target 8.8%aa FWH
1oz. Simcoe 14.1%aa 10min
1oz. Simcoe 14.1%aa 5min
2oz. El Dorado 16%aa 5min

1oz. El Dorado dry hop
2oz. Amarillo dry hop
2oz. Simcoe dry hop

Update 3/18/2011 - Racked onto 2oz. Simcoe, 2oz Amarillo and 1oz. El Dorado. Sample I had was really nice. Bitterness was smooth and clean, which is something I had worried about since using all very high AA% hops.

Calabaza de Fuego - Tasting

I'll start out by saying that I freaking love this beer. It's just so damn good. It has so much stuff going on for such a relatively tiny beer. The base of the beer is an English Dark Mild. A style of which I am particularly fond. I added pumpkin to the beer for body, and then also cocoa to the mash and finally ancho chilis to the fermenter.



The beer is dark (duh) almost cola like. Held up to the light it has a nice ruby color. Pours a very pitiful head that disintegrates into nothing in a matter of seconds... but that's to be expected in this style.

The nose is all over the place and in a good way. First bits of chocolate and roast followed the smallest bit of coffee, then just completely assaulted with the smell of sweet chilies followed by a bit of classic fruity English yeast character.

The taste is pretty much on par with the nose. A nice bit of biscuit and toast and chocolate at first. With just enough chili at the finish to remind you that it's there but not enough to steal the show.

The mouthfeel is where this brew falls short. It's a bit thinner than I was hoping. Brewday for this one had some challenges due to garage brewing on a very cold day, which resulted in me being unable to hold a solid mash temp. Fortunately though I had the foresight to keep the carbonation very low (1.8ish volumes) so it's not astringent at all.

Overall this is a great beer that I had originally brewed for the holidays, but am very glad I held onto a case. It ended up being the perfect beer for this time of year (it's practically spring in Texas right now). Fairly complex and interesting with great flavors layered one ontop of the other but so damn easy to drink. It also pairs incredibly well with BBQ.

Back

Okay. I have several brewing related goals for this year. The first is to keep this blog more updated, hopefully I can post once a week. The second is to brew more... a lot more. I'm aiming to brew at least two times a month. The third is to brew sour beers, and a lot of them. The goal is actually eight for the year, so that later next year I can go back and blend.

I actually did the first sour yesterday. The base for the beer was pretty close to my Belgian single from last year, however I added some Munich and victory malt for added breadiness, upped the chocolate to a quarter pound and got rid of the special b. For hops I just did a FWH addition of Willamette. You want something low AA since bitter and sour don't jive. I pitched a smack pack of Roeselare straight from the package. That package of yeast is a very specific blend of yeast and critters. Making a starter will throw off the blend, so don't build one when using the blend. You don't really need to worry about the pitching rates as much because the bugs will attenuate it our over time. I got lower than expected efficiency (65%) so I added 1lb of light DME to it. This beer is going to set for about two months and then getting hit with some fruit.

I'll post the full recipe tomorrow. I've also tried harvesting wild yeast by placing mason jars with weak dme solution outside. I got small signs of fermentation with no mold growth in two of them. Last night I pitched then into a starter actually pulled from the mash of yesterdays beer. Should it take off I'll be brewing a Hoppy Saison with it.

Look for several posts soon with tasting notes on a lot of last years beers.

Hoppy American Amber Brewday. Epik Tasting.

So my brother is in town from college and has been interested in homebrewibg for a while. So I decided to teach him how. Now originally I had planned on doing the hoppy farmhouse table beer, but my brother was interested in making an American Amber. So we did that instead. We also drank a fair amount of beer. Including some that I have been aging and waiting to open. Sorry there's no pictures but when you start your brewday at 9:00 and begin drinking at 10:00 so as not to anger the brew-gods..... you tend to forget stuff.

EKG American Amber

7lbs. Two Row - US
1lb. 12oz. US crystal 60L
2lbs. Homemade amber candy syrup

1oz. Willamette 5.5%AA - FWH
1oz. East Kent Goldings 5.0%AA - 10min
1oz. East Kent Goldings 5.0%AA - Flameout
1oz. East Kent Goldings 5.0%AA - dry hop 14 days

Yeast - US-05 dry yeast

Measured O.G. 1.054

Epik Tasting

I tried the first bottle of this a few months back but it wasn't ready so didn't post about it. This is the beer that started out as a utopias clone
then realized it would do better as a barleywine.

Appearance
Pours a deep rich crystal clear mahogany with a small build up of an off white head that then dissipates quickly (not surprising considering.the 14%+ ABV. Held io to the light there's a slight reddish color at the edge of the glass, probably from the munich and caramunich.

Nose
The nose is sweet and boost without being solventy. Notes of fig, dried plums and tobacco dominate the nose followed by a thin whisp of fruity and perfumey alcohols.

Taste
Not nearly as sweet as I had initially feared from the nose. It did attenuate extremely well afterall. Nice figgy and sherry like taste up front with bits of slightly tannic oak in the middle.The alcohol is nice and warming without being harsh.

Overall
Overall great beer... still needs another six months to round out.

Chocolate Chili Pumpkin Porter and Other Stuff

I apologize to the three people who read this blog for the severe lack of activity. But all has been quiet on the yeastern front here for the last few months.

First an update on the Utopias clone. The original plan was to add some honey and maple syrup to the fermenter to push up the abv. Then leave it to age for a year or more on oak and then to bottle it completely still. However after tasting it I just couldn't bring myself to mess with it anymore. So I decided to bottle it and carb it to about 2 volumes.

I haven't opened any yet but I did have a few tastes upon bottling and here is what I have to report.

As you can imagine a 14%ABV beer being it was quite boozy. Fortunately it's not fusel in any way, just lots and lots of alcohol coming through the nose; almost port like. The oak shines through nicely, and there's a small degree of sweetness, but not cloying.

In other brewing news. I've been craving good dark beers here lately. With all of the saisons and kolsch etc etc... that I've brewed for the summer months I've really been wanting something nice and roasty. So I brewed a batch of chocolate chili pumpkin porter.

I wanted to keep it small and sessionable, but still with enough going on to keep it interesting.

The base is pale malt with a pound of homemade brown malt. Specialty malts included some chocolate and pale chocolate malts, along with roasted barley and a little 60L crystal. For the pumpkin I wanted to use a light hand because in a beer this small pumpkin can easily become vegetal. So I only used 3 lbs. in the mash. There's also 1 cup of coco powder in the mash. Then I seeded and stemmed 5 ancho chilis and put them right in the fermenter. I went with anchos because I wasn't really looking for a lot of chili heat, more of a nice chili taste with a touch of smoke. If you've never had an ancho chili before, they taste like a smoky raisin.

Calabaza de Fuego - Chocolate Chili Pumpkin Porter

Mash
5 lbs. Pale Malt - UK
1 lb. Homemade Brown Malt
8 oz. 60L Crystal
6 oz. Pale Chocolate
4 oz. Roasted Barley
2 oz. Chocolate Malt
3 lbs. Canned Pumpkin
1 cup coco

1 oz. Targer Hops - 30 minutes

5 ancho chilis - in the fermenter for 1 week

Dry Nottingham Yeast

Carbonated to 2.1 volumes

Epik - with a "k" - Utopias Clone - Super Attenuation Update

So holy crap everyone. This thing has attenuated like a fracking champ (shut up. don't act like you've never seen Battlestar Gallactica.) After three days of the lower runnings beer fermenting I aerated the large batch and combined the two along with a very small droplet of olive oil. I realize that while the findings on the olive oil thing are controversial I figured a small droplet couldn't hurt anything and I wanted to everything I could to encourage cell growth.

I wish I had also added some fermcap but I figured with a gallon's worth of head space in my fermenter I should be fine.... boy was I wrong. Three hours later fermentation had taken off like a rocket and I had some blow over... but I only lost a quart or so. I let it go for 12 days past that. Fermentation was kept cool at about 64 for the first three days then I just let it free rise to 70. I just checked the S.G. and we're sitting at 1.015! How awesome is that!? That is some serious attenuation.

The hydro sample I just had is pretty darn good. Lots of perfumey alcohol and some nice sweetness, but deceptively smooth in taste. I can only imagine how it will be with some age. I'm now considering not trying to make this as crazy alcoholic as before because I'm enjoying where this beer is at... I'll still add the oak and let it age. But maybe not the extra fermentables.

Epik - with a "k" - Utopias Clone

Sorry for the lack of posting lately, but work has left me little time for brewing. A few weeks ago I did a strawberry ginger beer for my wife. I'll have a post on that before too long. But I'm more excited to talk about what I just finished brewing.

This was hands down the longest brew day I've ever had. From heating up the strike water to pitching the yeast was just shy of seven hours. "What could take so long?" one might ask. A 22%ABV beer. That's what took so long.

In much the same vain as Sam Adams Utopias or the Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA, I've often wondered about making a beer of insane gravity. After doing tons of research, careful planning and recipe design, I decided to brew it today. This more of a clone of Samuel Adams Utopias than anything else. I intend the end result to drink more like port than like beer.

Some of these ideas are not my own, so please don't think I'm the one who came up with a lot of this stuff. I rather read about other people's experience trying to do this, read about their successes and failures, and tried to come up with a plan based on that.

The most important thing in making a beer of this magnitude is yeast health and a strong fermentation. Most yeast stop fermenting in environments that have too much alcohol. It's also quite easy to underpitch into something of this magnitude, or to over stress the yeast. All of these things could end up in under-attenuation.

Also how do you mash that much freaking grain without having 30 gallons of water to boil down? Well allow me to explain.

I'm making a six gallon batch. I figured after trub loss and having a crap ton of yeast that should yield me with around five gallons of finished product. I made this beer with a whopping 31 pounds of grain. Two-Row, Munich 10L, Caramunich 1, 60L Crystal, and Smoked Malt. Then it will get doses of honey, maple syrup and table sugar... but that's for later.

Here's my recipe:

Epik Epikness

15lbs. American 2-Row

10lbs. Munich 10L

2lbs. Smoked Malt (Rauch)

2lbs. American 60L Crystal

2lbs. Caramunich 1 (33L)

2lbs. Honey

2lbs. Table Sugar

2lbs. Maple Syrup

1.5 oz. Medium Toast Oak Cubes - soaked in Apple Brandy

1.5oz. Medium Toast Oak Cubes - soaked in Malbec

5oz. Target Hops 8.6%AA - First Wort Hop Boil #1

2oz. Target Hops 8.6%AA - First Wort Hop Boil #2

Yeast WLP099 - Super High Gravity

Nottingham - Dry

I first mashed the 15lbs. of 2-Row at 145 for one and a half hours. I yielded about 2 gallons of 1.072 runnings. I then batch sparged and collected 3 gallons of 1.040 runnings. The runnings were then heated to 156 degrees which I then used to mash the remaining 17lbs. of grain. The mash temp settled at 145 degrees, held for 1 hour.

I then collected somewhere around 4.5 gallons of 1.107 runnings. While I was collecting these I added the 5oz. of target hops and began to boil.

I batch sparged this second round of grains and collected runnings of 1.060. These got a FWH addition of 2oz. Target, and then started the boil.

Both were boiled for one hour and got a hit of yeast nutrient and whirlfloc. The higher gravity kettle went down to roughly 4 gallons of 1.115 wort. The second kettle went down to 2.5 gallons of 1.072 wort. I was surprised at how little the larger kettle reduced in volume over the hour. I suppose that with more sugar to water ratio it had less to blow off and just didn't evaporate at it's usual rate.

While the larger kettle was still boiling I used a sieve to remove as much of the hop particulates as possible. I then put it strait into a sanitized bucket with an airtight lid.

The other one was crash chilled and whirlpooled, and then I aerated the ever-loving crap out of it. Into it I pitched all of the yeast, the two vials of WLP099, and the two packs of dry Nottingham (rehydrated of course).

The plan is to let this one ferment for 3 days. By that time the yeast in there should have reached the end of the growth period. At that time I intend to aerate the large gravity wort and put that strait into the fermenting beer. Then after high krausen is reached I will add the maple syrup, allow it to ferment then go in with the honey, and then finally the sugar. This should give me a S.G. overall of 1.170. Which is a shade lower than I was hoping so I may throw in a few pounds of DME.

Once my F.G. has been reached (I'm hoping for 1.022 or lower) I'll rack the beer to a glass carboy with the oak chips where it will age for at least six months... probably a year.

May/16/2011 - Brewed.

May/19/2011 - Higher gravity portion added to lower gravity portion.

June/3/2011 - Racked to secondary with oak cubes for bulk aging.