March 2008 Archives
There's been a lot of talk about Joe Strummer lately. Since I'm a fan of the Clash, I'm dedicating this entry to their late front man.
By order of the prophet, I decided to rack my pale ale in preparation for bottling. I was thinking about dry hopping this ale but I'm not sure if I want to. I have a small amount of hops on hand; Hallertau, Fuggles, Tetnang, and some bittering hops. I might use one of those, or I might just leave it as is.
Now over at the temple, the target gravity for this ale is 1.010 and that's where the beer is. I plan to bottle in the next couple of weeks.
The king called up his jet fighters because he was starting to worry about this batch. It was very active for the first couple of days, but then it seemed all activity in the airlock ceased. I did a gravity test and it was around 1.020ish. I stirred the beer a little and let it sit for another few days. I then did another test and it was at 1.012. So yet again, the advice and guidance from John Palmer's book paid off. Thanks John.
http://www.howtobrew.com/
I'm really looking forward to drinking this beer. I've been trying to find a good "every day" beer. I think a nice medium body pale ale with a little over 5%
Drop your bombs between the minarets and email me some suggestions at paul@paulbeer.com.
You know he really hates it.
With today being my last day of mini-vacation, I decided to brew a batch of beer. I took my amber ale recipe and made some modifications to it.
I swapped the pale LME for some light DME. I also skipped the step of adding the dark DME. My goal is to just try something different. I'm also hoping to brew something I can call my "every day" beer. I've been switching between Sam Adams, Flying Fish, Yuengling, Blue Moon, and my very own wheat ale.
The Sam Adams selection is nice but at 8 bucks a six pack, it's not really an every day beer. Flying Fish also isn't that bad. Their XPA (pale ale) ESB and their IPA are pretty good too but also a little too pricey for an every day beer. Yuengling and Blue Moon are good but not something I want every day.
The OG of this beer turned out to be 1.050. I let it sit at room temp for a while and the gravity stayed. Target FG should be around 1.010.
For hops, I chose to stink with East Kent Goldings and Fuggles. I added 2.5 ounces of EK Goldings and .75 ounces of Fuggles. I'm not sure I'm going to dry hop this beer. I may rack it to the secondary and bottle it in a few weeks.
Ugh...did I say bottle? I mean mini keg! We'll see when the time comes. I need to order some new minis.
Well that's all for tonight.
I swapped the pale LME for some light DME. I also skipped the step of adding the dark DME. My goal is to just try something different. I'm also hoping to brew something I can call my "every day" beer. I've been switching between Sam Adams, Flying Fish, Yuengling, Blue Moon, and my very own wheat ale.
The Sam Adams selection is nice but at 8 bucks a six pack, it's not really an every day beer. Flying Fish also isn't that bad. Their XPA (pale ale) ESB and their IPA are pretty good too but also a little too pricey for an every day beer. Yuengling and Blue Moon are good but not something I want every day.
The OG of this beer turned out to be 1.050. I let it sit at room temp for a while and the gravity stayed. Target FG should be around 1.010.
For hops, I chose to stink with East Kent Goldings and Fuggles. I added 2.5 ounces of EK Goldings and .75 ounces of Fuggles. I'm not sure I'm going to dry hop this beer. I may rack it to the secondary and bottle it in a few weeks.
Ugh...did I say bottle? I mean mini keg! We'll see when the time comes. I need to order some new minis.
Well that's all for tonight.
After weeks of wanting to brew something, I was finally able to do so today. I've been drinking a lot of English beers and I wanted to try and duplicate one that I really enjoy: Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale.
I dug up an old recipe in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book for an English style ale. Since I'm not prepared to go all-grain right now, I did the partial mash method. I went to my local homebrew supply place and picked up the ingredients. Six pounds of Munton's Amber DME, two pounds of biscuit malt, one pound of medium crystal, and English Ale yeast.
The recipe calls for .75 oz of Northern Brewer hops at 90 minute boil and then .5 oz of Northdown hops at 20 minutes. Since my homebrew supply place has been out of Norther Brewer hops since...I don't know when...I decided to use the Northdown hops instead. Since Northdown hops have a fairly high AA%, I didn't want to use them again because I was afraid that the beer would be too bitter. So instead I used .5 oz of Fuggles for the 20 minute boil.
Brewing today seemed to go by very fast. I started at about 11:30am and finished cleaning up everything at 3:30pm. Now most of that time was spent cleaning and sanitizing, and of course boiling wort. But it didn't seem to take that long.
Part of what made it go by quicker today was the introduction of my homemade wort chiller. I reduced the downtime in between boiling and yeast pitching to 15 minutes. Not bad at all! I had concerns about the wort chiller but after some retesting and today's results, I no longer have those concerns.
One issue I had recently with my amber ale was fluctuating fermenting temperatures. When that beer was in its primary, the temperature outside the house was in the teens. I normally have the beer near a heat vent to keep the temp up. Well, somehow that vent was closed and the temp dropped to about 63 (possibly cooler at night) and slowed fermentation down. The end result is a sour green apple taste.
Lesson learned. My new English Nut Brown Ale is happily fermenting away wrapped up in a fleece with a heating pad belt attached to the exterior wall of the fermenter. That should keep an optimal temperature for fermentation. (Hopefully!)
I dug up an old recipe in Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing book for an English style ale. Since I'm not prepared to go all-grain right now, I did the partial mash method. I went to my local homebrew supply place and picked up the ingredients. Six pounds of Munton's Amber DME, two pounds of biscuit malt, one pound of medium crystal, and English Ale yeast.
The recipe calls for .75 oz of Northern Brewer hops at 90 minute boil and then .5 oz of Northdown hops at 20 minutes. Since my homebrew supply place has been out of Norther Brewer hops since...I don't know when...I decided to use the Northdown hops instead. Since Northdown hops have a fairly high AA%, I didn't want to use them again because I was afraid that the beer would be too bitter. So instead I used .5 oz of Fuggles for the 20 minute boil.
Brewing today seemed to go by very fast. I started at about 11:30am and finished cleaning up everything at 3:30pm. Now most of that time was spent cleaning and sanitizing, and of course boiling wort. But it didn't seem to take that long.
Part of what made it go by quicker today was the introduction of my homemade wort chiller. I reduced the downtime in between boiling and yeast pitching to 15 minutes. Not bad at all! I had concerns about the wort chiller but after some retesting and today's results, I no longer have those concerns.
One issue I had recently with my amber ale was fluctuating fermenting temperatures. When that beer was in its primary, the temperature outside the house was in the teens. I normally have the beer near a heat vent to keep the temp up. Well, somehow that vent was closed and the temp dropped to about 63 (possibly cooler at night) and slowed fermentation down. The end result is a sour green apple taste.
Lesson learned. My new English Nut Brown Ale is happily fermenting away wrapped up in a fleece with a heating pad belt attached to the exterior wall of the fermenter. That should keep an optimal temperature for fermentation. (Hopefully!)
