What'cha brewin'? (Homebrew thread)

[FlyingMongoose]

http://firstwefeast.com/drink/calling-br...blow-mind/

[Evil Cheese]

Brewed an all grain Irish red ale today. Originally I was trying to have it done by St. Patty's day, but the scheduling didn't work out for that. Brew day went really smoothly this time; no major issues or set backs. SG was still a bit low, but in the acceptable range. I think I'm starting to get the feel of the sort of efficiency I can expect from my mash tun, so hopefully I can try to compensate for it in the future by adding a bit more base malt. Brewing during the winter always has it's own unique challenges as well. Interestingly enough we figured out a way to deal with keeping mash temps stable, but cooling is usually the hard part since breaking out the garden hose is a bad idea while its still freezing out which means we can't use the immersion chiller. We ended up burying the brew kettle half way in snow then stirring the wort which seemed to do the trick.

I also bottled the second batch of American lager I brewed in December. I tasted the gravity sample and it tastes sweeter with more body than the last batch. Probably due to the different yeast since just about everything else was the same. It will be interesting to compare the two batches once this one has finished carbing up.

[Evil Cheese]

Bottled the Irish red ale and tried my finished (more or less) American lager last weekend. The American lager was kept down in the basement while it was carbing up in the bottle, but due to the colder temps (50s - low 60s) the yeast stayed dormant and it never carbonated while it was in the bottle. I moved it upstairs which was much warmer (Around 68 - 70 degrees F), gave it another two weeks and it finally carbed up really nicely. I also added about double the amount of corn sugar this time for carbonating because my dad wanted more carbonation and a frothier head on this one. Despite the OG and FG of both batches of American lager being roughly the same (only a difference of one or two thousandths), this one came out tasting sweeter than the last batch. It was also a bit darker as well. The only real difference is the type of yeast I used and I'm a little surprised that it made so much of a difference when the gravity was relatively similar. Since this is a partial mash recipe, the steeping time of the adjuncts might have been different enough to make a difference as well. The darker color is just because I forgot to do a full wort boil and only boiled the LME with half the amount of water.






The Irish red is doing really well and tasted very similar to a Smithwicks which is what I was shooting for (even though technically Smithwicks is a lager). Can't wait to taste it carbed up. I think I'll be bringing this one to ACEN.

[Evil Cheese]

My lemon-lime hefeweizen finished carbing a few weeks ago and I have to say it's the perfect summer beer. Nice and refreshing with that zesty citrus lime flavor up front.  You get the flavor of the gentle wheat malt and a bit of grapefruit and clove from the yeast in the middle (hooray I found a hefeweizen yest that doesn't taste like bubblegum). It finishes with some lemony notes from the Mouteka and Sorachi Ace hops I used which are known for being very lemony. This is a great beer for quaffing next to the pool, on the beach, or out on a boat affirmed by plenty of field testing.








I also brewed an Oktoberfest this over the weekend and this time I learned my lesson about giving it plenty of time to condition before I expect to drink it. One thing that I did differently this time is use a stir plate setup for my starter. It was the first time I've ever done a starter like that and I got all nooby about it. Since I was using the starter to prepare the yeast for a lager I was going to step it up from a 1L to a 2L starter and started the process on Wed night. Well it was going fine until the 2L step where I filled it up a bit too much with starter wort and it started to overflow out of the foam plug when the yeast started fermenting. While a bit embarrassing, it would have been fine, but after I came home from work on Friday I discovered the foam in the starter had actually built up so high that it lifted part of the foam plug out of the flask and I was convinced the starter was now contaminated so I dumped it. Well when I went back to the homebrew store to pick up the grains and hops I needed to brew they were out of the yeast that I used so I ended up having to use something a little different that was also recommended for Marzen/Oktoberfest lagers. It was in a smack pack so instead of stepping up from a 1L to a 2L start I just went straight to 2L which I confirmed with a yeast pitching calculator would still be plenty. Due to the delay I was forced to pitch the yeast the day after I had brewed the wort, but overall I think it should still turn out fine. In hindsight the first starter I made probably would have been ok and I was probably being a little too trigger happy about dumping it. Lessons learned, hopefully the next one will be smoother.

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[CaffeinePowered]

That looks delicious

[copulatingduck]

Me gusta, nice job man that hefe sounds fantastic