YAMber Ale and more...

It was a seriously busy weekend for home brewing.

I filled all my kegs and a bunch of bottles. I was also able to brew up a small batch of some Yam beer... More on that in a minute.

I needed to free up some corny kegs so I bottled the remains of my recent Cascadian dark ale and a big dark strong Belgian.

I then filled a keg with my Farmhouse Saison. It's been sitting in primary for 5 weeks. So I transferred it to a keg and will leave it in the basement for a while.

I also put my experimental old ale/braggot I brewed last Oct into a keg to carb. I will plan on bottling that in a few days. That one is quite interesting. You can find a previous post from my brew day on that.

Next I emptied the conical of the 10 gallons of Coconut porter. I put it into kegs where I will let it sit another week or so before carbonating it.


Then finally I wanted to brew an autumn beer... Yeah it's probably a little late but whatever.
I thought about a pumpkin ale, but that's pretty common now days. I decided to use yams instead. Probably not all that different in the end, but it sounds cool.

I did a small 7 gallon batch. Into it went 6 pounds of yams that I chopped up, sprinkled with brown sugar, and cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, and cloves. That was baked in the oven and then mashed up. I dumped that into the mashtun and added a small amount of additional spices with 5 mins left in the boil. It's fermenting away now and I hope it is drinkable before the snow flies around here. If not it will probably end up as a holiday beer :)

So that's it... Busy couple of days.

Coconut Porter in the fermenter

I finally got around to brewing a coconut porter yesterday. I am not a big fan of fruit beers but this one has always intrigued me. I had a chance to try Maui Brewing’s Coconut porter a few weeks back and I think that really pushed this one to the top of the brewing schedule. I liked that porter, but I thought the coconut could stand to be a little more apparent in the beer. So of course I decided to brew it with a stronger coconut flavor.

Mash being recirculated.

Here is the recipe of the top of my head.

11 Gallon batch Coconut Porter

Malts:
16 Pounds Northwestern Pale ale malt
4 pounds Dark Munich malt
2 Dingmans chocolate malt
2 Golden naked oats
2 Crystal 40

Hops:
1 oz Calypso hops (12.9%) 60 mins
2 oz East Kent Golding (4.9%) 15 mins

Coconut:
Unsweetened shredded, lightly toasted on cookie sheet at 350 degrees. Each sheet spent about 5 mins in the oven and the coconut was flipped one time in that 5 minutes.

2 Pounds went into the 60 minute mash
2 pounds went into the kettle at flameout and was whirl pooled for about 10 minutes while chilling.

Draining the boil kettle with 2 pounds of coconut.

I mashed this one at 154, OG came in at 1.065, and I pitched US-05 yeast.

This thing smelled wonderful. The mash reminded me of a mounds or almond joy candy bar. It will be interesting what this tastes like when fermentation finishes. I am reserving the option to add some more coconut after fermentation, but it just depends on how it tastes.   

Pumping from the kettle to the fermenter

Brewing heavily

I have not posted on here for a while but I have been brewing quite a bit the past couple of months.
A couple weeks ago I received my portion of a big bulk grain order. All total about 600 pounds of barley.

So far I have brewed two 15 gallon batches from it. The first was a clone of Surly Cynic based on the recipe from the brew master Todd Haug. I put 10 gallons of that into my conical with WLP550. I put the other 5 in a carboy and pitched some WLP670 American farmhouse blend. I went ahead and filled a couple of bottles with this and sent it down to the beehive brew off competition.

I also brewed up a big cascadian dark ale. This is a big one that comes in at 9.5% ABV and something around 100 IBUs. This one is looking to be a great one so far. I am currently dry hopping it with some cascade hops.

El Dorado RyePA

It's still on the cold side for outdoor brewing, but it warmed up long enough this past Saturday to get some brewing done. It is still getting too cold to ferment in my garage fridge so I came up with an ale to ferment in the basement.

I just got some El Dorado hops and figured I would use them in a single hop brew to see how I like them. These hops sound pretty good, but they are also about the only hops that have their own profile on Facebook. So obviously someone is really pushing the marketing of this new hop.

Description: This dual purpose hop variety has high alpha acids making it great for bittering. Additionally, it has a tropical fruit, watermelon candy, pear and stone fruit aroma making it an interesting flavor and aroma hop.

The Grain bill consisted of about 70% 2 row, 15% Rye Malt, 10% Vienna, and 5% Crystal 120
Hops were added at 10 minute intervals until 20 minutes and then every 5 minutes. A total of 3.5 Oz of leaf hops went into the brew. The remaining half once will be used to dry hop. IBU calculation came in at approx 75

Impériale Dubbel Bruin

With today possibly being the last pleasant weekend day of the year, I decided I would get something brewed.

My Belgian black honey ale was ready to go into secondary so I wanted to pitch on the left over yeast cake. The yeast is WLP530 or Westmalle yeast (also used by Achel and Westvleteren). So it was clear whatever I brewed would be in the Belgian style.

After some back and forth I decided to use Achel Bruin Extra 9.5° as the inspiration. This is a beer that really doesn't fit into a predefined style. It basically an imperial dubbel, also called an Abt, quad, or quadrupel, so it would fall into the catch all Belgian specialty category. Achel is one of the coolest Trappist brewers in my opinion. While they are a commercial brewery, they are tiny in comparison to some of the others. They sell most of their beer at a cafe at the Monastery. Monks actually have a had in brewing here too.

I used much of the information found in the book by Stan Hieronymus, "How to brew like a monk". Here the general ingredients as well as mash process is reveled. The beer uses pilsner and chocolate malt, dark candi syrup, and Saaz hops.

I tried to match the grain ratio as closely as possible. I also used the same mash process and temps. I ended up doing a no sparge step mash of 118° (15 mins) | 143° (20 mins) | 163° (40 mins) | 173° (10 mins)

Had to use gravity to be able to do the step mash. I used direct heat on the kettle to maintain temps while recirculating back through the mash tun

 
Instead of using all early addition Saaz, I used Pearle and Tettnang hops. I used one pound of date sugar instead of the candi syrup. This is really just finely chopped and dried dates... but it is sweet and has a very nice flavor.

Date Sugar

Only 2.5 hours after pitching on the WLP530 yeast cake and it is already bubbling away like mad. The following morning my bucket looked about ready to explode. I quickly set up a blow off tube in order to divert a disaster. I am usually fine without one when I ferment 5 gallons in a 7.5 gallon bucket, but not this time.

Ingredients
Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
14.00 lb	Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)	Grain	90.3 %
0.50 lb	Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)	Grain	3.2 %
1.00 oz	Pearle [7.50%] (90 min)	Hops	25.9 IBU
1.00 oz	Tettnang [3.90%] (20 min)	Hops	7.6 IBU
1.00 lb	Date sugar (5.0 SRM)	Sugar	6.5 %
1 Pkgs	Abbey Ale (White Labs #WLP530)	Yeast-Ale

Beer Profile
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.091 SG (1.062-1.075 SG)	Measured Original Gravity: 1.090 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.021 SG (1.010-1.018 SG)	Measured Final Gravity: TBD
Estimated Color: 19.6 SRM (10.0-14.0 SRM)	Color [Color]
Bitterness: 33.5 IBU (15.0-25.0 IBU)	Alpha Acid Units: 2.4 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 9.2 % (6.0-7.5 %)	Actual Alcohol by Volume: TBD

KSL investigates a product that turns juice into alcohol

I found this special report on a local news website.

"KSL News tested the product in two separate trial runs. We used grape juice in the taste tests, but the product suggests any juice can be used. Within 48 hours, the first juice we spiked had an alcohol content measured at 3 percent. After two weeks, the second juice we spiked had a 9 percent alcohol content, suggesting a stronger alcohol concentration the longer you let the product sit."

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=13109475


I have got news for you KSL, your about 10,000 years behind on this news story.

"HB" Kölsch

Yet another style of beer that originated in Germany. Production of this beer is centered near Cologne. It is a close relative and a direct competitor to Alt. Düsseldorf and Cologne are neighboring cities, and there has been fierce rivalry in the past between the two. There are reports of violence breaking out for ordering the wrong kind of beer in the wrong city. True or not, it is not an issue these days although for the most part if you live in Cologne you drink Kölsch exclusively and vise versa.


Kölsch is fermented at even cooler temps than Alt and use no dark malts and far less hops. It was essentially created by ale brewers around Cologne to compete with pilsners. Kölsch is usually less hoppy than a traditional pilsner and can even be on the sweet side. 

This Kölsch uses the exact same yeast as my Alt. It is quite light and clean, but does have some esters present that you would not get in a true lager. I fermented this in my temp controlled fridge at 55. I lagered it at 35 for a couple weeks before kegging and then bottling. I was attempting to create a beer that was similar to the standard HB or Hofbräu lager. I think this comes pretty close even though it  uses an ale yeast.

There is not much of this stuff left, so I figured I would document it here.  












Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.00 gal     
Boil Size: 6.02 gal
Estimated OG: 1.054 SG
Estimated Color: 4.3 SRM
Estimated IBU: 25.2 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 75.0 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes
Mash temp: 150

Ingredients:
------------
Amount        Item                                      Type         % or IBU     
8.00 lb        Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)             Grain        80.0 %       
1.00 lb        Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)                     Grain        10.0 %       
0.50 lb        Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)              Grain        5.0 %        
0.50 lb        Munich Malt (5.0 SRM)               Grain        5.0 %        
2.00 oz       Crystal [3.50%]  (60 min)                 Hops         25.2 IBU     
1 Pkgs        German Ale/Kolsch (White Labs #WLP029)    Yeast-Ale