Springtime Aroma Pale Ale

Well, spring is in the air and it has been beautiful here in Portland lately.  Best spring I can remember.  That better not jinx the next three months... I tried a new beer the other day, NWPA from Fort George Brewing.  It was awesome.  Light bitterness with a ton of hop aroma.  There was a large amount of hop particles floating in the beer, that was poured from a can (why breweries filter everything seems strange to me, I like the lack of filtering on a beer like this).  It was delicious.  So naturally, I used that beer to inspire one of my own.

This is a session style beer (4.2%) with only 23 IBU's.  There are a ton of hops in this thing though.  I'm hoping that the aroma and flavor really dominates over the usual crazy bittering I do.  I also didn't do any hop additions at 60 minutes, but let it boil plain for 30 minutes, then added hops at the midway point.  Hopefully that really does something good for the beer.  Anyways, here's the details...

Recipe:
10.5 gallons

Fermentables:
12.5# GW 2-Row
2# Victory
1.5# Carapils
1.5# Crystal 30L

Anticipated OG: 1.044
Actual OG: 1.048
Anticipated FG: 1.010
Actual FG:
Anticipated ABV: 4.5%
Actual ABV:

Hops:
(60 minute boil)
1oz CTZ at 30m
2oz Citra at 5m

2oz Cascade at flameout
2oz Citra at flameout

4oz Cascade dryhop for 7 days
2oz Citra dryhop for 7 days

IBU's: 23

Yeast:
1 pack of Safale US-05 made with 1L starter two days before.

Notes:
4/24/13: Brewed this last Monday (2 days ago).  I'm fermenting this one in a 50L keg with a stopper and an airlock in the bunghole.  So far so good.  Gravity was at 1.019 today which is impressive since I only used one pack of Safale.  I guess the starter is helping out.  It's the first time I've used a starter.  So far the aroma and flavor is exactly what I was going for.

Cana's First Run

Rather than repost what we did, how bout you check this out!
http://canahomebrewclub.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-first-gathering.html

This is going to be sweet!

Summer Fruit Beer Series

Summer is quickly arriving (as it's raining as I type this...).  Summer means warm weather (usually, this is Portland afterall...), BBQ's, and sitting on the porch in the evening enjoying life.  So to go with all three of those, I'll be brewing up some fruit flavored beer.  I typically don't really enjoy these too much, but a lot of other people do, so I'll brew them up to show good hospitality (and to keep their hands off my IPA's).  I decided to do the Trixie again that I did last year that turned out really well.  I also wanted to try something new, so I'll be splitting the batch (10 gallon) in half.  Half with be Trixie (raspberry flavored beer), and the other half will be halved again.  One (2.5 gallons) will be aged with whole strawberries on secondary, the other half will be grapefruit.  I think I'll throw in some amarillo or summit hops with the grapefruit to really try to highlight the grapefruit.  This will be an experiment.  It could be awesome, or it could be horrible, the good thing is that it's only 2.5 gallons and cost me all of $3 or so for the 2.5 gallons.  Total cost of this recipe to me is probably $2 for the beer ingredients (thanks to a kind gift of a 50 pound grain bag on my ledger at Brew Brothers from a good friend) and it'll be another $12 or so for the fruit I'm guessing?  I hope to use real Oregon Strawberries which will really up the quality!  So $14 cost to me isn't too shabby.

Recipe:
10 gallons

Grain:
20 lb GW 2-Row

Anticipated ABV: 5.0%
Original Gravity: 1.050
Final Gravity: 1.013
Strike Water: 7.5 gallons @ 163 degrees
Sparge Water: 9 gallons @ 183 degrees

Hops:
1oz CTZ (16.8%) for 60m

Yeast:
1056 slurries

Extras:
I'll boil 24oz of raspberries in 1/2 gallon of water for about 30 minutes, strain out the chunks, and add that to the secondary for the Trixie (Mcmenamins Ruby Clone) portion.
I'll add a half pound or so of whole strawberries to the 2.5 gallons of one of the experiment fruit beers.
I'll add a couple grapefruits cut into slices to the secondary of the other 2.5 gallons of experiment beers plus maybe an ounce or so of summit or amarillo (probably summit because it's way cheaper than amarillo).

Notes:
Brewed last weekend (5/26/12) and everything went fine.  Fermenting nicely.  Should be ready to transfer to secondary in about a week.  Also I was able to break out the grain dryer only to have it start pouring like I've never seen in Portland a few hours later.  Most of the grain dried pretty well though, so at least there will be something for the chickens!
Update 6/19/12: Sorry for the delay on the update.  I split one bucket into two buckets at secondary.  One I added a grapefruit cut into eighths with 1oz of Summit Hops.  The other got a pint of whole Oregon strawberries (so much better than California or anywhere else).  I let those sit for a week or so and then bottled them last night.  The other buckets I racked to secondary along with 24oz of frozen raspberries that I boiled for 30 minutes, then strained and chilled.  Those have been sitting about a week and will need to be bottled shortly.  I'll update again when I taste each of them.
Taste Update: The early tasting on the raspberry one is that there's a funky flavor.  It's one I've had come up before so it's got to be from the yeast.  Time to get rid of all the 1056 slurry's I have since it's definitely from that.  The flavor isn't bad, it's just not as good as it should be.

Opening Day Pale Ale 2012

Opening Day, a national holiday at least in my household, is only three weeks away.  After a long winter of staring out the window waiting for spring, baseball is almost back!  Spring Training is already here, which means that it was time to brew up an Opening Day Ale.  Last year I did an amber ale, which was pretty good, but also an extract beer.  This year I decided to do a pale ale.  Here's the details...

Recipe:
5.5 gallons

Grain:
10lb GW 2-Row
.8lb White Wheat
.8lb Crystal 40L

Hops:
.75oz Chinook 14.2% for 60m
.50oz Chinook 14.2% for 15m
.25oz Chinook 14.2% for 1m
2oz Cascade 6.0% for 1m

Dry Hops:
2oz Cascade 6.0 % for 7 days
.50oz Chinook 14.2% for 7 days

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056 Slurry

Notes:
Smooth brew day (brewed on 3/11/12).  I forgot to take the Original Gravity though, so I'll just assume that I hit my target of 1.056.  Fermentation is going well.  I'll hopefully move this to secondary soon.  I'll need to get a keg opened up by April 4th, so I can at least quick charge it in time for the game on the 5th.  Go Cubs Go!
Update 3/20/12: Racked to secondary and added the dry hops.  I put in 2oz of Cascade and .5oz of Chinook.  I saw some Summit in my fridge I was tempted to throw in as well, but decided to save that for something else down the road.  Can't wait for baseball to officially start again!

Cascade Pale Ale

I've had way too many IPA's brewing lately (wait, is that even possible?) so I decided to scale back and brew up a classic Pale Ale.  This is loosely based on a Mirror Pond (similar grain and cascade hops) but it's a made up recipe from my head.  I really love me some Cascade hops, especially when I'm using some of the 5 pounds worth I got for $30.  In case you're wondering, that's less than half of what normal retail is for these.

I switched from brewing on the side of the house after my buddy Scott (www.beanbotbrew.blogspot.com) noticed that the ceiling on my porch looked like it was probably high enough to brew under.  After check that out, I agreed and moved to the porch.  Way better.  Plus I can watch college football from there while brewing.  Talk about living large!

So here's the details that you're dying to know:



Grains:
10lb GW 2-Row
1.65lb Crystal 60L
1lb Carapils

Hops:
1.5oz Cascade @ 60m
1.25oz Cascade @ 15m
1oz Cascade @ 1m

Yeast:
Recent slurry of Wyeast 1056

Notes:
Brewing on the porch is awesome, other than having to haul the brew tree from the backyard.  Great weather that day as well.  One of my propane tanks is busted now, the top valve is somehow not functioning properly, so that's a real bummer.  I also created a new airlock for my bucket fermenter.  I hate the overflow of yeast and stuff on the tops of my buckets so I reverted to a hose in a bucket of water method.  I simply added a hose to the stem of a busted airlock and put that into a bucket of water.  Works much better for primary fermenting than a regular airlock or just a hose.  Keeps the seal tighter.

Update 11/20/11: This turned out great.  Good crisp flavor and a smooth body.  Quite a tasty pale ale.

Sierra Nevada Pale Round 2

So I tried the Sierra Nevada again today.  This time I dropped to Crystal 40L instead of the 60L to try to get the color a little closer.  I also used fresh Cascade hops for the flameout aroma addition.  Everything went smooth, although it took 6 hours since I was doing a double batch.  I ended up with close to 12.5 to 13 gallons fermenting.  This will nicely fill my keg, fill 48 bottles for my neighbor, and still leave me with a supply to give away to friends!

Recipe:
25lb GW 2-Row
1.65lb Crystal 40L

Hops:
1.5oz CTZ for 60m
.5oz Warrior for 30m
1oz Fresh Cascade for 10m
4oz Fresh Cascade at flameout for 10m

Yeast:
1056 Wyeast slurry that keeps on going!

Extras:
2tsp Irish Moss @10m

Notes:
Gravity came in at 1.062.  It was supposed to be 1.063, so I'll take it!  Smooth brewing day, other than ending up with about a gallon more than anticipated.  Maybe I need to lengthen my boils to 75m.
Update 9/4/11: Kegged my portion and got 12 12oz bottles with it.  It's pretty cloudy, but really tasty.  I also bottled my neighbors portion and got 48 12's for him and another 18 12's for me!  Nice thing about having too much, I get to give some away now! FG on my batch was 1.011, and 1.016 on the other half.

Trixie 2.0

So the Happy Birthday Aunt Trixie was a huge success, especially to my wife.  She was really psyched on it and started to give me some flack about giving it away, so I told her I would brew up some more.  So here it is.  I modified it a bit from the original, but it's pretty similar.

Recipe:

5.5 Gallons

Grain:

10 lb GW 2-Row

Hops:

.6oz Nugget Pellets from Old Dirty Randy for 60m

Yeast:

1056 Slurry that keeps on giving

Extras:

1tsp Irish Moss at 15m
I'll add 24oz of boiled and strained Raspberries when I rack to secondary.

Notes:

The new grain mill at Brew Brothers must be doing it's thing because I was back to 75% efficiency today.  That means that instead of 4.2ish % ABV, I got 5%.  Still a decent session summery ale, so I'm happy with that.  OG was 1.052.  FG should be about 1.013 for the 5% mark.  Everything went super smooth as well.  Total brew time was about 4 hours.  Sunny day as well.  Perfect Brew Day!
Update 6/25/11: Racked to secondary and added the raspberries.  I boiled 24oz for about 1/2 hour and then strained out the chunks and added the raspberry juice/extract to the brew.  Forgot to get a final gravity.  I'm assuming it was around 1.012ish.

Happy B-Day Aunt Trixie

I usually don't like to brew fruity beers, since I don't really like to drink fruity beers.  However, my little sister in law turns 21 in June, so I'm going to break down and brew her a McMenamin's Ruby Clone, which is a raspberry pale ale.  I should be brewing this tomorrow morning.

Recipe:
5.5 gallons

Grains:
8.8lbs GW 2-Row

Hops:
I think I'll use like .5oz of Colombus for 60minutes.

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056 slurry that keeps on giving.

Anticipated Results:
Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.036
Post-Boil Gravity: 1.044
Final Gravity: 1.011
ABV: 4.4%
IBU: 21

Extras:
I'll boil about 2 pounds of raspberries and strain the extract and add to secondary.  That way it won't affect the gravity or add too much more fermentation.

Strike: 3 gallons @163
Sparge: 4.6 gallons @ 176

I'll post actual results as they occur as usual.

Brewing Update:  Man, five gallon batches are really easy!  Including cleanup the whole process took about 4 1/2 hours.  Everything went super smooth.  Possibly the smoothest brewing day yet.

Actual Results:
Pre-boil Gravity: 1.036
Post-boil Gravity: 1.040
Collected 1.85 gallons from strike and 4.5 gallons from sparge.
I think I'm missing my temps on the strike cause I'm not pulling the gravity's I'd like to be.  I'll raise them and see what happens.  Either way, this will be a good session beer gravity, which will be good for a 21 year old!
Update 5/13/11: Gravity down to 1.009.  Really good flavor too, and I don't even like beers like this!  I'm going to try to bottle this up tonight.
Update 5/15/11: Finally bottled this.  Got 35 12's and 9 22's.
Update 5/23/11: So my wife said this is her second favorite of anything I've made so far.  Looks like I'll be brewing this again to make her happy.  The raspberry is a nice subtle aftertaste.  This is probably a really good ale for the summer time.

Chico's Finest Export

or should I say Chico's only export?  Anyways, I'm pretty excited about this one.  Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is one of the first brews that I really liked, so I figure it's probably the best pale ale to start with.  I've done a few IPAs and some Bitter Ales, but no true pale ales, so here goes.  I found this recipe online somewhere a couple weeks ago and plugged it into my brewpal app on my phone.  Well worth the $.99 if you have an iphone.  I subbed out some Nugget (which I already had) for some Perle, but otherwise I guess this is straight from the brewer.

11 Gallon recipe so I'll hopefully fill a Cornie Keg and split the other half with someone.  5.5 gallons seems to end up at 5 gallons after losing the yeast cake and secondary transferring.  So here's the details.

Recipe:
11 Gallon Recipe

Grain:
25.3lb of GW 2-row
1.65lb of Crystal 60L

Hops:
1.5oz Columbus @ 60m
1oz Nugget @ 30m
2oz Cascade @
4oz Cascade @

Yeast:
Wyeast 1056 American Ale Slurry

Extras:
2tsp Gypsum @ boil
2tsp Irish Moss @ 15m

Details:
Strike 10.1gal @ 163
Sparge 6.9gal @ 183
Anticipated Preboil Gravity 1.058
Anticipated OG 1.068
Anticipated FG 1.017
IBU 42
Anticipated ABV 6.6%

I'll post details and results tomorrow night or Saturday.  Cheers!

Brewing Update:
Everything went relatively smoothly.  The counter flow chiller continues to get dialed in a little better.  I got 7 gallons from the mash and another 7 from the sparge, which meant 14 gallons boiling to start in a 15.5 gallon keggle.  The pre-boil gravity was 1.046 adjusted (1.032 @ 132*) and finished up at only 1.054 adjusted.  I was really hoping to hit closer to my target of 1.068, although since I ended up with close to 12 gallons despite a 90 minute boil, I guess that's part of the problem.  Hopefully this at least gets down to 1.014 or so.  It's blowing off like crazy right now, so that should help.  So this may be a SNPA Session clone.  As long as it's tasty, I'm not too worried.

Brewing on the tree is super easy though.  If you're thinking about upgrading your system, I highly recommend building a tree.  The only problem is having to get out the ladder to fill the HLT, but that's not too big a deal.  The ease of everything else makes it totally worth it.

Once I figure out how to better hit my targets as far as the proper amount of wort to start the boil with, things should be better.  Also, I need to move the banjo burners closer to the keggles to speed up my heating and boiling times.  It's taking like 30-40 minutes to get my boil started.
Update 4/25/11: Gravity is down to 1.012.  I'll give it another day or two and then move to secondary.  Good taste.  Another winner.
Update 4/28/11: Racked to secondary.  Gravity was down to 1.010, so ABV should be about 6%.  Really smooth flavor.  I'm going to have to do a side by side with this one.  Also, I was able to split the two jars of yeast slurry I put into (one into each bucket) into four jars.  So now they should last even longer!
Update 5/7/11: Bottled half of it for my neighbor.  Got 48 12's for him, and 3 22's for me.  The stem that I got for my cornie (for my half of the batch) is too short, so I need to switch that out before I can keg it, otherwise I'll lose over 1/2 gallon of it at the bottom of the keg.
Update 5/9/11: Decided to just keg it and I'll pour the bottom dregs into a half gallon jug if need be once it gets down all the way.  I'll hopefully add the second tap to the kegerator in the next day or two.
Update 5/24/11: Really enjoying this one.  This is a tasty pale ale.  Brought my neighbor his half of the batch last night and he was super stoked.  I'm sure I'll brew this one again!

Update: 5/27/11: Did a side by side comparison with a SNPA.  Flavor was really really close as was the hop flavor/finish.  My color was much darker, but this was the dregs of the bottom of the keg.  Next time I brew this I'll do a comparison a little sooner.  Pretty good though!