Dry Rye Roggenbier

For my fifth beer, I decided to brew a Dry Rye Roggenbier from Midwest brewing. Of course I can't simply follow the directions that are included with the kit. That would be too easy. For this round of brew I'm trying three new techniques
1) Yeast Starter
2) Partial Mash
3) Use of a hops bag and filter on funnel

I decided to do a yeast starter for this beer because I've been reading that it’s better for the beer. Less lag time before fermentation & better attenuation. Why not try it? I followed one of the many tutorials online. I used a 1/4 cup of wheat DME and boiled it with water for 15-20 minutes. My goal was an OG of the wort ~ 1.040. I used a 32oz EZ cap bottle for the "fermenter" covered with foil instead of the cap. The process was easy but I was a little worried at first due to a funny sour smell coming from the starter. However, I read up online (I love the internet) and found that the smell may be due to acetaldehyde, whatever the hell that is??? Ask a chemist, I'm a computer engineer. Bits and bytes for me.

I also thought it would be fun to try a partial mash(PM). This beer was a good choice to do a PM because I really wanted the rye flavors to come through. A traditional Roggenbier has roughly 50% of the grain bill from rye (from what I've read). The recipe kit from the Midwest brew had a very small amount of rye grains for use during the steeping process. I decided to amp up the rye flavors by purchasing an additional 1.5lbs of rye (flaked, chocolate, and malted). I then made a partial mash with all the grains (kit + additional purchase). For the partial mash I used three pots; a pressure cooker, my brew kettle, and a 2.5 gallon stock pot. The pressure cooker was used for the actual mashing. It was a great pot for the job. It's thick and holds the heat well. It also has a very tight fitting lid which keeps the mash warm (target 155F). The stock pot was used to heat the strike water and sparge water. The brew kettle was used in obvious ways. I posted some pictures and a short video of the adventure. Let me know if you see anything wrong with the procedure.

The last new thing I did was use a hops bag. I did this per Nate's suggestion that it helps reduce "trub" and improves yields. I did have some issues with the bag though. I burnt the tie string (gas stove). I also dropped the bag into the pot. Caused a small boil-over when adding new hops. I also burnt my hand when trying to squeeze the hot wort from the bag in the end.

In the end the brew made it into the carboy around 1.:15 AM. A long night of brewing.

My OG for this brew was 1.51 (potential ABV ~6.5%). The higher OG was not doubt due to the additional sugars from the PM. Is this a problem? No. As our slogan states: We have strong wives, we need strong beer.

Yeast used: American Wheat W1010. I wanted a wheat yeast with little to no banana or bubblegum flavor.

Update Aug 12th. Read the hydrometer tonight, SP of 1.15. Still needs more fermentation.
I tasted the beer tonight and I’m very excited. It had a nice subtle rye flavor. Honestly I was hoping for more but I think this will be a great way to ease non-rye lovers into this style of beer. This beer should be just in time for bow hunting.

Padre E Figlio Label

I was playing around with label ideas for my first lager which is currently fermenting in secondary.

Lagering has an origin in Roman history, so I chose an Italian name. Padre E Figlio would be translated "Father and Son" where as Rossa Birra Chiara would have a literal translation of "Red Lager"

What do you think?

Heartburn

So this is a little off topic but here goes. For the last 5 years, beer occasionally will cause my chest / throat to hurt. It feels like I swallowed a golf ball. For a while I thought I was allergic to alcohol, yeast, wheat, or some type of preservative. However, I have now come to the conclusion that it is simply heartburn. Last night I encountered a case of said heartburn while drinking a delicious homebrew from a buddy of mine at work (thanks for the Pale Ale Nate!).

Wanting to finish the brew without pain, I did some research. I read a site that said to 1) Drink Vinegar and 2) Eat a stick of celery.

This sounds really dumb but it worked wonders for me.

English Bitter

For my fourth homebrew, I decided to brew a session beer meaning something light and easy to drink. A beer that can be drank by the 6pack, not one a night like my Maple Porter. For this beer I wanted something new but yet nothing complex. I choose between the cream ale and the English Bitter. The English Bitter won for no good reason at all. One of the posts below describes my "on deck" beers. It's really funny that this one was not on the list but is being brewed. It's funny what happens to a man in the brewstore when so many good looking beers are at an arms length. Anywho ... here are the highlights / lowlights

- The only mistakes that I made were 1) dropping some ice into the wort when making the ice bath and 2) losing my thermometer. I bought another one but it cost me 24 hours.

- I measured the OG for the first time. My OG was 1.038 which puts my estimated ABV a little under 4%. Not bad for a lighter beer.
- I decided not to use a primary and secondary fermenter. I simply put the wort into the carboy and pitched the yeast

- When transferring the wort into the carboy, I discarded the sludge of hops from the bottom of the pot. Next time I may even run the wort through a filter to capture the left over hops. I'm not sure if this will help clean up the beer or take away from the flavor

- I used the dry yeast packet and this time I rehydrated the yeast before pitching

- The morning after the boil, the fermenter was going nuts ... way more than I have ever seen (see video)

Update Aug 12th: Checked the SP today, 1.012. I think it is getting very close. the taste is good as well but needs conditioning.

Update Aug 16th: Sp measured at 1.008. The fermenter is still bubbling as well. Its been a very strange fermentation.

On deck brews

New thought. Instead of brewing a bunch of strange brews, I'm going to stick to somewhat standard brews for the next batch or three. Of course if I run into a good patch of blueberries, all may change.

Next up:
Pale Ale
Cream Ale

Cherry is Popped: First Sip!

Without sounding like a total panzy:

I was pretty excited, nervous, and unsure about opening my first bottle of Octane IPA. After all, we've invested a decent amount of money, time, and effort into our new little hobby. I first want to thank John and the maple porter (great new pics by the way) for initiating our new found pastime of crafting premium basement brew. It also seems a little weird, because we have already brewed multiple batches and I personally hadn't tasted the fruits of my creations yet. Also weird that even with a sample un-sipped, the process (of extract brewing mind you) seems pretty ingrained already. Un-sipped as of tonight I should say. It's been a month and four days since my hands squeezed their first grain sac. The Octane waited patiently this past month for this very day and I shall share my thoughts.

First, I think we learned a lot from the maple porter. This first sample of Octane had a better chance from the get go, just by following a few simple steps: One, be patient. Two, don't crash cool. Three, keep the yeast at the bottom of the bottle.

Ok, the results. I was happy with the taste of our beer, as I really was just hoping not to vomit quite honestly. The beer was pretty darn good. I am my own worst critic however, so there are definitely things to comment upon. I really wish I had one of the "brother's brew" over to sample with me, because I had to choose the only two people who happened to be around that night: My wife and my mother :/

Don't get me wrong, Patti Bye can throw the brewskie's back, but I guess I had envisioned a slightly more manly first encounter with the Octane. On top of that, Cathy pretty much hates all beer with a passion, especially anything resembling my usual drink of choice: Summit Pale Ale. But God bless her for being a good sport about it. I can only work with what I got, you know? Here are general comments/notes from the three samples:

Color: Caramel (with a little red)
Clarity: Surprisingly clear (but definitely had a slight cloudiness)
Smell: You can sure smell the hops! Hoppy Hoppy! Maybe too strong of scent :)
Taste: Sharp and Crisp. Afterbite. Almost no taste of yeast! A hint of sweet (maybe from bourbon woodchips?). Could be considered a little heavy.
Misc: Decent head retention. Dries your mouth out (cathy). High alcohol content (good buzz from a small glass). I would argue each glass had a different flavor/taste, although minimal (not sure that this is common or unheard of?).

I am eager to witness and document the changes our Octane makes over the next month of bottle conditioning. All in all, I was very pleased with the first sample.

Taste test 2 set for next Wednesday. Who's with me?

Backyard Maple Sap Porter

There have been a lot of jokes regarding my first homebrew .... Backyard Maple Sap Porter. Admittedly, many of the jokes came from me. However, the beer has come a long way since its initial tasting. Now that we have a blog, I should document the history of the brew.
There are two things that brought the maple sap beer to life.
1) I have over 30 mature sugar maple trees in the backyard that are prime for tapping
2)My neighbor Dave makes some mighty fine homebrew and got me thinking about brewing a batch (with his help)

If you’re a semi-normal person you:
1)tap the trees and make maple syrup
2) Brew a batch of beer using a normal beer recipe

Not me. I’m efficient. I combined both tasks into one. Here’s what I did:

-Collected roughly 10 gallons on maple sap
-Boiled down the maple sap to roughly 5 gallons
- Brewed the beer using the maple sap instead of water
- I also used a few cups of maple syrup in the secondary. Why? Why not???

For the beer recipe, we used the Power Pack Porter kit (extract) from Midwest brewing. This beer is already high in hops (IPUs) and alcohol content (???). By adding sugar via maple sap and syrup, I amped up the alcohol content even more. I estimate that I added 2 pounds of pure sucrose to the wort. How does that translate to ABV? I have no idea.

The first taste of the maple porter was not very good. Specifically it had a very “green” flavor to it. However, the first taste was 1 week after bottling so it needed time. Also, the beer had WAY too much alcohol flavor. It kicked you in the mouth every time you took a sip. My initial reaction was a failed experiment. However, I had 5 gallons of the stuff to drink so I might as well try aging it.

Fast forward 3 months. This time I placed a maple porter beer into the fridge for a couple days before drinking. To my surprise, the beer now tastes fairly good, maybe great! My first sip was OK but by the end of the beer, I was craving more. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job documenting what it tasted like and I’ll update this post the next time I try the beer. However, I remember that it wasn’t too sweet and had a very nice (and strong) maple, woodsy flavor. This blended very nicely with the heavy, dark malts used to brew the beer. Also, the alcohol flavor now added to the beer. It is now a “warm” flavor vs. the harsh flavor that it once was. Overall, a very nice dark beer. I’m very proud to have produced this brew. Thanks for the help Dave!

Yeast Taste In Da Beer

Derek and I both agree that our first batches of beers all taste the same; yeasty. Of course this doesn't include the fantastic "Backyard Maple Sap Porter" which is over-powering with sweet, hoppy, woody goodness that makes you crave for more. But I'll post more about that later.

Here's our observation:

The Double Honey Amber brewed on 6/17/09 and bottled 7/08/09 tasted ... well, yeasty. That's the best way I can describe it. It didn't taste like bread, but a different yeasty, "green" taste. When we tasted the beer, it was approximately 1 week after bottling and 1 month since brewing. So our beer is green and needs time right?

Well, we also tried an Octane IPA brewed from a buddy at work (thanks Nate). The taste of the brew was VERY good but we also detected the same yeasty flavor. Granted, the bottle that Nate gave to me had an adventure the day we drank it. It went for a motorcycle ride and a crazy car ride up Dell road (dirt road). From there it was thrown into a freezer for 20 min and drank. So I'm guessing that we "shook" up the bottle too much and caused the yeast to go wild and shocked the beer b/c the cold temps???

In any event, we are in pursuit of great beer here at 4DB and now need to run some experiments. I read on a website http://blogs.homebrewtalk.com/Revvy/Of_Patience_and_Bottle_Conditioning/ that we need to be a little more patient with bottle conditioning. 3 weeks in the bottle and possibly another 2 weeks in the fridge. Along the way we will test the beer every week to see the difference in quality of the beer and how / if it improves with age and refrigeration. Here we go:

Updated July 19th (click table below)

Lonesome Porter

It was a cool and cloudy night, and the lonesome porter and I made sweet, sweet love. The crushed grains steeped and the dark malt dissolved slowly leaving the kitchen an aromatic orgasm of heavenly porter goodness. Ok, that was creeping me out a little bit.

Had a solo brew session last night, hence the name - Lonesome Porter (good call John). I snapped a few photos to share. Here's the lonesome porter live and in action: Hmmmmmm Beer

The IPA is bottled

Hi All,

Ben and Laura came over last night to help bottle the Octane IPA. While we were at it, we bottled the honey amber ale that I brewed a few weeks ago. Overall the process went smooth. We tasted both beers and I must say that we are in for some good drinking in a few weeks. The IPA was a little strong on the oak flavor but I think it will mellow with time. A very good beer. The honey amber had the least amount of flavor but should be perfect for some hot summer nights.
The biggest obstacle we ran into was that we didn't have enough bottles. I had to quickly wash and sterilize some 12oz bottles that I've been saving from some commercial brews.
2 more weeks and we’ll be drinking some good beers. Perfect timing to celebrate a new baby!