December 3, 2007
The Brewing Pipeline Is Finally Coming Back In Line!
With crazy schedules, a new baby, and all the travel both work-related and personal, brewing hasn’t been a priority lately, and it’s been pissing me off to no end. For nearly 2.5 months, we’ve had 25 gallons of beer in fermenters, at least 15 gallons of which needed to be bottled at least a month ago. But we never had the time to get around to it, or to brew more.
Until yesterday.
Brewed:
10 gallons of the IPA that was a finalist in the Sam Adams LongShot. In typical fashion (for me), despite how highly it was rated, I decided to make a few tweaks to the recipe. It should help to smooth the hop character (when the beer is young), which is something that I had wanted to do. It should also increase some of the depth to the malt character, but without turning it into a “malty” beer. It’ll just be a slightly more solid backbone for the beer.
5 gallons of a Rye Pale Ale. When we were in Denver, my brother-in-law had several rye ales and enjoyed them, so we decided to give this a try. The last time I brewed with rye, I had a stuck sparge that took 2.5 hours to complete. Then, it got infected during fermentation. Ugh! Thankfully, this one didn’t have the first problem, and I’m not expecting the second either. We’ll see how it turns out. I used Chinook for bittering, Chinook and Cascade for flavor/aroma, and will then dry-hop with some additional Chinook & Cascade. It’ll have a heavier malt characteristic than the IPA, and I think it should come out to a nice well-rounded beer.
Both batches should be ready for bottling the weekend before Christmas, when I hope to also brew 15 gallons more.
Bottled:
5 gallons of a Belgian Witbier. We tasted this, and all the flavors came through pretty well. I didn’t detect any flaws, but then it’s still uncarbonated, so we’ll see. I think I’m starting to get better at tasting flat warm beer and understanding how it will turn out, so I think this is well on its way.
5 gallons of Belgian Lighthouse Ale. Again, I tasted this, and it seems to have come out exactly as I had expected. Should be very light and drinkable (for people who aren’t big beer drinkers), but not boring. My brother-in-law is having a Christmas party next Saturday, so we may put it to the test on some beer novices. We also have another 5 gallons waiting in fermentation that we had planned to bottle (but we were short on bottles), so we’ll get those bottled before the party Saturday.
Roughly 14 bottles of an American Barleywine I brewed in March. This beer was brewed back in Georgia, and my neighbor and I split the batch. We’ve had inconsistent carbonation on the bottles, and we both believe it’s due to overstressed yeast. So I popped all my remaining bottles and added a little bit of yeast. We’ll see where they go.
Fermenting:
As previously mentioned, the 15 gallons brewed yesterday and the 5 gallons of Belgian Lighthouse Ale waiting to be bottled are still in fermenters. In addition, we have 10 gallons of a Belgian Tripel (named “Tripel Threat” because 3 of us brew together) that we transferred to secondary to age. I expect we’ll bottle this sometime in January.
Future Plans:
I hope to make the next brew day the weekend before Christmas. At that time, we’ll bottle the two beers brewed yesterday, but continue to age the Tripel. I’d like to brew the following that day:
10 gallons of “Adam’s Red Ale”, which needs a better name. Adam is the third member of our brewing crew, and this was a recipe we made for his first-ever beer. It turned out really tasty (as only a 5 gallon brew), so we need to make another 10 gallons of it. It’s more of an Amber than a red, so we’ll continue working on that name! 
5 gallons of an unknown beer. The only constraint is that we’ll probably re-use yeast, so we’re stuck with a beer that uses a standard California Ale yeast. However, a LOT of beer uses that yeast, so we should be good to go there. I might try to make a stout, since I rarely do so and we’ll want to avoid hoppy beers (due to a worldwide hop shortage).
General Brewing News:
I tried something new yesterday. Typically to “sparge” the beer (for those of you who don’t know the process, this is where you rinse water through the “mash”, the hot water and grain mixture), I had been using a small pot or measuring cup to manually pour the water. This time, I used a bottling bucket up on a tall wire rack to hold that water, so that I could simply use two valves to control flow rates, and keep the process much more automated. It’s something that I’ve been putting off for a while (since we don’t have a “sculpture” yet), but it worked great. We’ve got a few extra kegs that need to be cut open, and then we need to weld up one of these:
We probably need two of them, one for the 5 gallon and one for the 10 gallon rig. Once we have that, the process will be much smoother and easier from a labor standpoint.
Of course, we still need a scale and grain mill, so if anyone wants to buy me a Christmas present…
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