Batches 014, 015, and 016: AKA The Brewganza

About two weeks ago at work, we got a shipment from White Labs with a random variety of yeast strains for us to sell.  We got a vial of Berliner Weiss and were thinking that it would probably just sit in the fridge until one of us bought it.  So I did.  Now, one vial is too much for a 1 gallon batch of Berliner Weiss, but I could reseal the vial and pitch into two different batches.  I thought that if I did this I would have to brew them fairly close together to lessen the risk of the yeast going bad, which had been opened and exposed to the air.  So I bought the yeast and enough grain for what I thought would be two batches.  I messed this part up.  I had written in my notes that I needed 1.5# of Pilsner malt and 1.5# of white wheat.  When I went to bought them I thought that was for 1 batch and bought two sets of those ingredients.  I was wrong.  I only needed 3/4# of each for a 1 gallon batch.  So I upped my batch size to 1.75 gallons.  I also combined my bags of grain and split them into 2# batches (1# of wheat, 1# of Pils each). So Saturday I brewed my first batch.

Batch 014: Icht Bin Ein Bierassenseiter (I am a beer outsider)
Berliner Weiss beers are fairly simple to brew.  Equal part of wheat and pils, keep it around 8 plato (~1.030 sg), and hop as little as possible, in this case 5 IBU's.  I used Hallertau Hersberker hops since they are the lowest alpha acid we had (and frankly I have ever seen) at 2.3%.  I mashed at 154 for an hour.  Now for the different part, boil for 15 minutes.  Thats it.  Hops go in at the beginning of the boil and pitch the yeast blend when it is cool.  You want this beer to be as light as possible and any issues with DMS from the pils in such a short boil will be counteracted by the lactic bacteria in the yeast blend.  So I pitch half of my vial of yeast and set it back in the fridge until the next day.

Batch 015: Icht Bin Ein Bierassenseiter II
Thats right, I brewed the exact same beer the next day.  Everything went exactly the same except for one small hiccup.  I didn't realize it had started boiling when it did, so it boiled for an extra 5 minutes or so resulting in it being half a degree plato higher in OG.  Not an issue.  This one will get a fruit addition in secondary, I just haven't decided yet.  Anyone have any suggestions?  It may just come down to walking around the market for what looks good at the time I rack.  I used the other half of the vial of yeast and set this next to the other to ferment and sour.

Batch 016: Hunter's Harvest
This was one of the first beers that I ever brewed.  I am thinking it was my 4th batch.  I had read of this recipe online and wanted to try it.  I loved the result so I am finally getting around to rebrewing this with a couple tweeks.  I used the same grain bill that I used for the last two brews because that is what I had on hand and it fit the style.  I did lower the batch size back down to the normal 1.25 gallons to up the gravity a bit though.  Now the fun part about this is that this is a hefeweizen, but with blood oranges in it.  For those who don't know blood oranges are a cross between oranges and grapefruit and are a deep ruby color and are packed with antioxidants.  They are a very nice berry flavor and fit perfectly with the hefeweizen style.

I mashed this one a little lower at 152 and measured out some more Hersberker for hopping.  As the wort was boiling I started dissecting the fruit.  I used two oranges, which is more than the original recipe called for, but if I put fruit in a beer, I want to be able to know that its there.  I want it to be balanced, but I don't want to have to search for it.  First thing you do is to zest the oranges.  Be careful to avoid the pith (tough white rind) as it is really bitter tasting and will bitter your beer.

 Next you peel the oranges and separate the sections.

 After I separated the sections I butterflyed them open to make getting the flesh out easier.

 As you can see there is still a skin like membrane around each section.  I pulled the fruit out of this to make it easier to extract the flavors and colors into the beer.

 All of the flesh and zest gets added to a small pot with a little bit of water and heated to about 165 to sanitize it.  Avoid going higher than 170 or else you will just make orange jelly.  I let this mixture steep in the pot while the wort finished boiling.  When it was ready to cool my wort I poured the flesh into a nylon bag and added the water and fruit to the wort and cooled the whole batch.  The fruit will remain in the beer during primary fermentation.  I will not be doing a secondary on this so the oranges need some time to impact the beer.

So for now, all of my primaries are full, and so are most of my secondaries.  I need to bottle up the Killer Bee this week along with the Triple Berry Cyser.  Now that I have knocked a decent chunk off of my to-brew list, I need to come up with some new ideas.  I still have a long list, but am always looking for something else that is fun.  If you have heard of any fun beers lately, let me know in the comments below

Until I bottle later this week,
Cheers

Recipes: http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/icht-bin-ein-bier-aussenseiter
http://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/hunters-harvest

Batch 009: Berry Cyser

Sorry for the delay in this post, but I threw this together very quickly Wednesday morning and went out for a long day of Christmas shopping and yesterday I went on an impromptu road trip.

This recipe came together when I was packing together some honey at work and decided it would be a good idea to use some of the honey I was working with.  So I bought 2 pounds of orange blossom honey.  I didn't think that would give me enough sugars so I decided on a cyser.  I mixed the honey with one gallon of apple juice.  After a disappointing lack of fruit flavor in the blackberry cider I upped the fruit in this recipe.  Having went with 12 ounces in the cider and only having a slight berry flavor I triple it.  I put 24 ounces of blackberries and 12 ounces of blueberries in a bag and threw them into the primary.  After primary I will taste it and decide whether or not I will be putting fruit into the secondary.  Everything was mixed up with some pectic enzyme, yeast energizer and a packet of Lavlin K1-V1116.  It came out with an original gravity of 25.2 Plato, so this will be a nice 13% ABV when it finishes out.  I may end up carbonating this, but I am not sure, we'll see what it tastes like when it is done.

Sorry this post was late, short, and pictureless.  Back to brewing beer next week though.

So, as always.....Until next week, cheers!

Batches 004 & 005: Black Napalm and Unnamed Blackberry Cider

This week I took a break from brewing beer to try out a few new things.  This is my first attempt at a homebrewed mead and my first true cider.  I have done some work with apple juice in the past, but always in the form of graff (a beer/cider hybrid).  Recently, BrewingTV(a production of Northern Brewer) used one of my graffs in an episode of theirs.  Check them out at www.northernbrewer.com/brewingtv if you haven't seen it.  They put out a lot of great information.

The mead.  I enjoy mead, but have never thought to make my own.  Then I found a mead I had never heard of that was completely different than the others that I had seen, bochet.  A bochet is a burnt mead, meaning you boil and caramelize the honey prior to diluting to your starting gravity.  I read online that it would taste like toasted marshmallows before fermentation, but couldn't find many descriptions of the finished product other than that it was all gone and they wished they had more.  That convinced me.  Due to the fact that you will be boiling the honey the variety won't matter as much as it would in a traditional mead.  I did a 1 1/2 gallon batch and used 6 lbs of clover honey.  Beersmith told me I would hit 1.138 OG and because of the cooking process it should end around 1.020-30, giving me a nice 14-16%ABV.  I am not going to trust Beersmith with honey any more and I will get to that later.

 The process. With pictures this time! This is a fairly straight forward process, boil until black, dilute, reheat, cool, pitch, wait.  I added my 6 lbs of honey to my 3 gallon brew pot. 

 As you can see it doesn't take up much room, for now.  Begin heating your honey, but keep an eye on it.  About 20 minutes later I was at a boil and had to quickly turn the heat down.

At this point I spent half an hour stirring to avoid a boil over and adjusting the heat to look for the sweet spot that kept it rolling, but kept the foam under control.  Soon after I was able to walk away from the pot for about 5 minutes at a time to do other things as long as I remembered to come back and give it a quick stir to knock it back down.  While it was boiling I managed to transfer St. Nick's Nog (Batch 002) to secondary and bottle up Papa's Pale Ale (Batch 001).  I also put together the cider which I will explain more below.

An hour into the boil the honey had darkened considerably, but not yet to the black that I had seen online.

Now, unfortunately after this the process kept me busy and I was unable to take more pictures.  I boiled for another hour and turned the flame off as the timer rolled past the 2 hour mark.  I gave the honey about 5 minutes to cool slightly before adding 1 gallon of water very carefully.  The water will instantly boil when it hits the hot honey so go slowly.  I mixed the honey into solution and started to heat it up again to ensure that the water was sanitized.  At about 190F I killed the heat and started the cooling process.  I took a small sample and put it in my refractometer to check the gravity.  I couldn't read it at all so I cleaned it off and did a base reading on some tap water.  0 Brix, right where it should be, so I tested the must again and still could not make out a reading.  That's when I took 1 once of tap water and mixed it in a cup with 1 once of must and tested that knowing that the gravity would be double the reading I would get.  My reading came out to 20.5 Brix, double that is 41 Brix or about 1.182 OG.  I checked this reading three more times and tried to figure out what went wrong.  I checked Beersmith one more time, 1.5 gallon batch, 6 lbs of honey =1.138.  Unfortunately I don't have anything larger than a 2 gallon fermenter so I sighed, added my yeast nutrient and started to rehydrate my yeast.  My 14-16% mead now (if the yeast allows) will be around 20%.  This has now become an experiment in making rocket fuel taste good.  Here's hoping I can make this work out.  I named this Black Napalm for a reason.  As the honey boils it will bubble up.  As those bubbles break occasionally they will spit honey out.  If your hand is in the wrong place at the wrong time, that molten honey will hit you and solidify on contact.  I only got hit once, but that was enough.  Not being able to take what is burning you off your skin is not a good situation.  With the higher gravity, I may end up naming this Black Death instead, but only time will tell.

The cider.  I hadn't really planned on doing a cider, but saw some good looking blackberries pop up at the store and thought why not.  I kept this super simple and just bought some preservative-free apple juice and the blackberries.  I smashed the berries with a potato smasher and added some pectic enzyme to help break them down and give me some good color and hopefully more flavor.  I let the enzyme work for an hour and then pour the berries into a muslin bag which was hanging in a one gallon jug.  I have made the mistake of not bagging blackberries in the past and would like not to deal with the seeds clogging every valve and tube they pass.  After that I just poured apple juice in to just above the 1 gallon mark, added yeast nutrient and my yeast and set it aside to work.  I haven't come up with a name for this one yet, but it has a wonderful dark pink/purple color.  Can't wait to try it.

So no recipes this week, just a couple wishful looks at airlocks hoping that everything turns out for the best.