Belgian Pale Ale

I often hear Jamil talk about some of the best beers he's made, comes from re-using yeast. Often in Belgian beers, he mentions what yeast to use, and suggests building off the yeast used from another batch. I decided to do just that with this batch. I did a regular Belgain Pale and used WLP500 - Belgian Trappist blend. This is one of the few people use in Belgian Pales, probably not as popular as others, but my goal was to reuse the yeast in a Dubble recipe.
I actually brewed this on April 17th (yeah I'm getting lazy about blogging). The brew went well. I racked this to a secondary last week when I did the Dubble and had a taste.. it tastes fantastic. It has that "Belgian" taste to it from the yeast, and I can tell it's going to be very drinkable. I'm a bit unsure of the gravity reading, I'll take another when I keg it this weekend. My reading I logged said 1.008, with a OG of 1.066. I'm thinking I typed this in wrong, it probably should be 1.018 - which would bring it to the 6-7% abv range, which is what I was shooting for. Gravity readings and a few beers never mix!

Anyhow, here's the recipe - it's out of Jamils book, but I changed some things up a bit and used a different yeast. I think his is called something Antwerp Ale..

Fermentables
10lb. German Pilsner
.75lb. Belgian Cara 60
.25lb. Biscuit
.50 lb. Corn sugar (drying) - end of boil

Hops:
1 oz. Golding 4.5% - 60 min.
1oz. Golding 4.5% - 20 min.
1 oz. Tettnang 3.0% - 15 min.
1 oz. Tettnang 3.0% - 0 min.

Yeast:
WLP500 - Trappist Ale

90 minute boil (reduce DMS from Pilsner grains). Fermented good for about a week, then I let it sit another week. I was fairly close to a BJCP style on this one, my IBU's are a couple points higher as is the ABV. SRM's are right in line. Can't wait to try this one!!

The picture? I have no idea. I just googled Belgium and she came up.. I figured what the hell. I'll toast to her when I tap this beer. :)

Beer report - Maibock gone!

Well, my very first lager was a huge success. It was very drinkable and had a very nice kick to it. Maibocks are generally high in alcohol, up to 8% for the style.. mine came in between 8 and 10. I say that because I really didn't taste a strong "alcohol-ness" to it. My readings had it coming in at 10.2%. I question it, because it was so drinkable. So much so, that it lasted 6 days. Drinkable yes, kicked me in the arse = FOR SURE. So, it very well could of been that high, it had a powerful kick to it after just a few of them. I didn't secondary this one, I just threw it in the keg and let it sit for a week. Upon first tasting it had a bit of a yeast taste to it. After the week of sitting, it was pretty awesome. We finished it off last night. I sure had my share of it! I will probably repeat this same recipe for next year. The lagering went very well in my garage, the temp of the carboy stayed in the high 30's to 40's.

The photo shown is the Maibock tapping day, which happened to be a Sunday Redwing playoff party. I enjoyed so many Maibocks, it took me until Wednesday until I was feeling better. :p

#27 and counting...

Someone recently asked me how many batches of beers I've brewed. I never actually counted. So I went through all of my blog posts and tallied them up. 27 I just did last week, and have yet to blog on it. It seems like more. Probably because some of those batches lasted a lot longer than normal, because they were 10 gallon batches. Anyhow, I thought that was interesting. Here's the list with a note by each:

Porter - first batch. Brewers Best kit. Yuck.
ESB - Awesome. We drank this fast.
Christmas Ale - Excellent. Two bottles left.
Wheat - Good. Gone quick.
Cherry Wheat - Even better. Very cherry.
Oatmeal Stout - Good. Few bottles left.
IPA - Two Hearted clone. Gone quick.
80 Shilling Scottish Ale - For St. Pats last year. Was very good.
PBR Clone - Crap. What the hell was I thinking?!
Cream Ale - First all grain. Very good. 10 gallon batch went very fast.
Saison - Excellent. Still have some bottles I'm aging.
Weizenbock - Good. Too strong, but good.
Cherry Dunkel - Crap. Though people drank it. Dumped 1 gallon.
Apricot Wheat - Awesome. Bottled half, kegged half, everyone gobbled this up.
IPA - Awesome on tap, bottles had something funk happen to them. Still good both ways.
Pale Ale - Experiment using fresh hops. Didn't work, but beer was good.
Blonde Ale - Awesome.
Porter - Awesome.
Christmas Ale 2008 - Blah. Bottles seem to be tasting better over time.
Mild - Awesome. Went really fast over the winter.
Bourbon Brown Oak Aged - Awesome. Best beer so far. Lots of bottles left - saving for a competition or two.
Sweet Stout - Excellent, still on tap.
Irish Red - Very good, very malty - best Irish Red I've ever had I'd have to say.
Sour Beer - Aging for a long time.
ESB - A little less on the "B" but pretty good. My favorite on tap now.
Maibock - Be done by May 1st-ish.
Belgian Pale Ale - Freshly brewed and bubbling! More to come on this batch.

We got the funk - DRB experimental batch #1: Sour Beer

Almost two weeks ago now, I brewed my first experimentation beer. Sure, I've done partial experimental batches in the past, where I've upped a recipes grains or hops, but this batch, I made up completely. Here's the recipe and following are my thoughts on it:

OG: 1.076
31.5 IBU
16.0 SRM

German Pilsner Malt 10.00 lb
UK Pale Ale Malt 2.00 lb
Belgian Caramel Munich Malt 120 0.69 lb
German Munich Malt 0.62 lb
UK Black Malt 0.13 lb

My grain bill started off as an altbier type recipe, but I didn't have enough Munich to balance things out. To replace the Munich, I added a couple pounds of maris otter. The crystal 120 will give the beer a thicker caramel like character and the black I just added for color.

1/2 oz. Magnum 13% hops - I had this leftover from the Maibock batch. I didn't want a huge hop characteristic coming through on this beer, just something subtle in the background.

Yeast: recycled London Ale yeast (from the bitter) - made a starter with 4 oz. of DME - added the yeast cake from the bitter.

Also added Irish moss with 15 mins. left in the boil - as well as Yeast nutrient.

Now, the crazy part. After primary (it's been 10 days and there is still airlock activity), when I transfer to the secondary, I'm going to add a vile of White Labs Belgian Sour yeast (WLP655). This yeast includes Brettanomyces, Saccharomyces, and the bacterial strains Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. All bugs that will add some "funk" to my beer. The taste should be a slight acidic sour taste, and potentially over time, will add a stronger sourness to the beer. I'm not sure how long I'm going to let it age, I'll probably let it sit over the summer and check on it once a month to see how the taste is developing. My plan then will probably be to bottle the whole batch, drink a few here and there, but mainly sit on them even longer, to see what happens in the bottle after a year or so.

So that's that! One thing I heard about using these type of yeasts is, to keep equipment separate, otherwise all of my future beers will come out tasting like it. Glass shouldn't be an issue, but anything plastic could pick up the bugs. Luckily, i just scored a bunch of extra equipment from my neighbor, so I'll be able to mark these off and use them just for funk beers.

I'll post back on how this turns out. I'm pretty excited to see what will happen.

Maibock - my first lager

DRB Maibock
10.5 lbs. German Pilsner
5.5 lbs. Munich
Hops: 1/2 oz. Magnum 14.4% AA
Yeast: Yyeast 2206 - Bavarian Lager

Got this recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. This is my first lager beer. The difference between lager and ales are, lagers need to be cold fermented. They ferment anywhere from 40-50 degrees. And they ferment for at least a month. This Maibock (May Bock) should be ready by May 2009. It's already started fermenting, I'm pretty excited about that. The brewday went pretty well, besides i came out a little high on my mash temps and my OG was off at the end (which I don't quite get, because my pre-boil gravity was perfect. I did lose a lot of wort on the boil, so a day later after much contemplating, I added about a 1/2 gallon of water (per BA's suggestions).
So, I guess we'll see how this turns out. I wanted to do a lager, since this is the perfect time of year to do one. My garage has been holding a steady 40ish degree temp and with the carboy blanket around the carboy, the wort is chilling at a pleasant 45 degrees. I'm not super concerned about holding 45 the whole time, I think I'll have a good couple of weeks to keep it at that temp, and if it warms up a bit, it shouldn't affect it too much.

Updates on St. Pats beer & Imperial Bitter

Been a bit since I posted and I have a few notes to add:

Dry Stout & Irish Red were a hit on St. Pats. Both sat for around a month and carbonated on their own with a small amount of co2 pumped into them. The bit of aging was good for both of them. The color came out awesome on the red - probably a tad on the darker side, but when held up to the sun, it was a deep copper color (I'll try and take a pic and add it to this post later today). The stout turned out a creamy chocolaty flavor with a nice balanced sweet end to it. Very good and at just less than 5%, very drinkable. The head is the most impressive thing - it pours a deep tan caramel looking color that just makes you want to eat the foam off the top. Very good, once again I impressed myself.

Imperial Bitter (or a jacked up English Special Bitter) came out to a 7.2% beer and tastes great. I'm racking it to a secondary now after sitting on the yeast for over 2 weeks. I took a reading early last week and wanted to wait to see if it was going to drop anymore. Same reading today - FG: 1.0260, so it's getting racked and going out to the garage where I'm hoping to cold condition it for a week or two before I keg it.

Another post to come at some point today, it's another brewday, so I've got a recipe to post and maybe even a brewcast.. if I can clean my garage - it's literally trashed!!

Brewday Saturday, March 7th @ 9 a.m. - Watch Live!

Live Saturday March 7th @ 9 a.m.
Brewing: English Special Bitter
Web Link: http://www.justin.tv/daytonroadbrewing

Recipe: Imperial English Special Bitter (still tweaking, but so far this is the basis)

15 lbs. Maris Otter
.63 lb. Crystal 20
.30 lb. Crystal 120
Hops: Kent Goldings - 2 oz. 60 min / 1 oz. 0 min. (may dry hop too)
Yeast: WL London Ale (made a starter last night)
OG: 1.083 (should turn out to be right around 8% abv.)

See you on brewday!