It's getting super close to Christmas, and difficult to stay focused at work :P. We will be brewing our next beer tonight. It'll be a vanilla cream stout. The recipe is mostly from DeFalco's, but the store we went to for the ingredients was out of a lot of stuff.
We are starting with a base DeFalco's recipe for an American Porter, but we will add lactose (milk sugar) and vanilla beans. That is hoping we can find those ingredients at Whole Foods.
We will also be bottling the beer we brewed a couple weeks ago. We ordered it online based on a DeFalco's recipe. This turned out to be more difficult than it sounds. Since we wanted specific things, we had to search for each item. We didn't want to order from different online stores, so this single store didn't have everything in stock (seems like a growing trend). Each grain/ malt had to be bought separately, and some didn't come in the quantity we needed, crushed, and so forth. Plus we don't really know good substitutes yet, so we had to research that also.
In the end we got our ingredients in the mail in what seemed like an impossibly small package. (I don't know how they did that!) Everything seemed like good quality and we were happy. The price wasn't much different than our neighborhood store though, maybe a little more expensive actually, so we're paying for convenience. A little hard to justify, but we'll see if we decide to do it again.
For today's brew we had to substitute Pilsen malt for two-row malt, basically the same thing only lighter. But we have the chocolate malt, crystal malt, et al that will darken it up nicely. They also didn't have the Centennial, Chinook, or Mt. Hood hops we needed, so we had to substitute that as well. *Groan* Well, at least we'll have something unique!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
At Least it's Getting Cooler!
After the breakfast stout, we waited almost a month to brew again! So we did an easy peasy Christmas Ale recipe. Can't mess it up, just go to the brew store, measure it out, and follow the recipe! We have yet to fix the gas line to the burner, so it was still pretty short. Kids: it's not safe to have a propane tank less than 2 feet from the burner, especially when the burner is getting all rusted out and spouting a lot of orange flame. Do as I say, not as I do.
Carrying on... fortunately we didn't have any mishaps this time. The wort barely boiled over, and it chilled nicely due to the fine weather. There's not a whole lot more to say about it actually. Since we didn't tweak it. The original gravity was 1.062, and the recipe estimates 1.065, so that's pretty close. I promise next time we'll do something more fun to write about. :)
Carrying on... fortunately we didn't have any mishaps this time. The wort barely boiled over, and it chilled nicely due to the fine weather. There's not a whole lot more to say about it actually. Since we didn't tweak it. The original gravity was 1.062, and the recipe estimates 1.065, so that's pretty close. I promise next time we'll do something more fun to write about. :)
The Texas Breakfast Stout
The hard part is over! We secondary fermented, adding the oak chips and more yeast. It sat in the fermenter about 2 more weeks before we bottled. Now it's been conditioning in the bottles for almost 3 weeks. We tasted it last Sunday... oh my gosh it's good. There's a ton of chocolate flavor and you can smell the oaky rum but not taste it. It's thick... it reminds me of the Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout.
It needs some time to age, I think we'll try it again in another week. It'll be awesome when we enter it into the contest in January. We have to come up with a name for our team!
Our next brew is a Christmas Ale, modeled after the recipe by our oldest craft brewery in Texas: Saint Arnold Brewing Company.
It needs some time to age, I think we'll try it again in another week. It'll be awesome when we enter it into the contest in January. We have to come up with a name for our team!
Our next brew is a Christmas Ale, modeled after the recipe by our oldest craft brewery in Texas: Saint Arnold Brewing Company.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
On to the Next Brew
A local beer bar posted on their Facebook page that they are going to host a home brew competition in January. So naturally we had to oblige. The entry has to be a stout. We researched (googled) different stout styles to figure out what we wanted to make and how to tweak it to our liking. One style that stuck out to us was a breakfast stout. We've brewed a coffee stout and a chocolate stout, and breakfast stout sorta combines the two. But the recipe is pretty intense, we had to go all over town looking for cocoa nibs. BTW I don't recommend eating them alone... it's basically raw unsweetened chocolate. Take my word for it ;)
In order to make it OUR recipe, we are calling it a Texas Breakfast Stout. We got locally roasted coffee that we cold-brewed (this is supposed to take some of the bitterness out of the coffee as well as cut down on the oils present). We are also aging it in "oak Texas rum barrels". That is, soaking oak wood chips in rum and adding them to the fermenter. We bought Treaty Oak Rum distilled in Austin Tx.
We went to our good 'ole home brew store to get our grains, hops, and yeast. Our recipe called for over 20 pounds of grain; they had to put it in a burlap bag instead of the normal clear plastic bag since it was so heavy. They didn't have the hops we needed (Mt Hood and Nugget) so we had to improvise.
During the brew we had a setback: the hose from the propane tank to the burner was too close and actually CAUGHT ON FIRE. Fortunately my husband was talking to our neighbor outside nearby and she alerted him saying, "oooh it's on fire!" It turned out that most of the tube was salvageable and the destroyed part was cut off. Then after the mash soaked for an hour and we were draining the wort out the tube fell out of the pot and we lost who knows how much on the ground... Luck was not on our side. But that was the last adversity and we joyfully finished our brew, which ended 1 1/2 hours later than usual.
For the first time in a while, the weather was nice and cool and the wort cooled down much more quickly than when it's 95 degrees at 9pm. So the yeast was happy and we had good strong fermentation. We will be secondary fermenting after 5 days and adding more yeast as well as the oak chips. I will keep you updated in the coming weeks!
In order to make it OUR recipe, we are calling it a Texas Breakfast Stout. We got locally roasted coffee that we cold-brewed (this is supposed to take some of the bitterness out of the coffee as well as cut down on the oils present). We are also aging it in "oak Texas rum barrels". That is, soaking oak wood chips in rum and adding them to the fermenter. We bought Treaty Oak Rum distilled in Austin Tx.
We went to our good 'ole home brew store to get our grains, hops, and yeast. Our recipe called for over 20 pounds of grain; they had to put it in a burlap bag instead of the normal clear plastic bag since it was so heavy. They didn't have the hops we needed (Mt Hood and Nugget) so we had to improvise.
During the brew we had a setback: the hose from the propane tank to the burner was too close and actually CAUGHT ON FIRE. Fortunately my husband was talking to our neighbor outside nearby and she alerted him saying, "oooh it's on fire!" It turned out that most of the tube was salvageable and the destroyed part was cut off. Then after the mash soaked for an hour and we were draining the wort out the tube fell out of the pot and we lost who knows how much on the ground... Luck was not on our side. But that was the last adversity and we joyfully finished our brew, which ended 1 1/2 hours later than usual.
For the first time in a while, the weather was nice and cool and the wort cooled down much more quickly than when it's 95 degrees at 9pm. So the yeast was happy and we had good strong fermentation. We will be secondary fermenting after 5 days and adding more yeast as well as the oak chips. I will keep you updated in the coming weeks!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Update on the Wit
Well my fears were realized: the Wit is very weak. The taste is ok, it's got a good head, but there's got to be about 3% ABV in there. Oh well, we're bound to make mistakes when we try to do our own thing.
Lessons learned: it needed more malt. We knew there wasn't enough when we poured it into the tun. Next time, we'll make sure the measurements are right. Well, I think actually we'll just measure it ourselves if we go to the newer store. Also there's a chance the powdered yeast may have been a problem, as we've heard it is not as ideal. We have used powdered yeast once on our first batch, but we also used bru vigor to aid in its fermentation.
The worst thing is now we have 5 gallons of this stuff. I guess we can always bum it off to friends and family that like lite beer. Har har...
Lessons learned: it needed more malt. We knew there wasn't enough when we poured it into the tun. Next time, we'll make sure the measurements are right. Well, I think actually we'll just measure it ourselves if we go to the newer store. Also there's a chance the powdered yeast may have been a problem, as we've heard it is not as ideal. We have used powdered yeast once on our first batch, but we also used bru vigor to aid in its fermentation.
The worst thing is now we have 5 gallons of this stuff. I guess we can always bum it off to friends and family that like lite beer. Har har...
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A Belgian Wit
Our latest brew was a Belgian Wit, and I really feel like we're beginning to come into our own. We researched recipes online to see what we wanted to get at the home brew store. The end goal, which I really don't know how to do, was to get a beer like a Hoegaarden or a Blanche de Bruxelles. Those beers are so light and almost golden, we've never gotten a color close to it. We brewed 2 wits before this one, and while they tasted pretty good, they didn't have the color or were as orangy flavorful as those Belgian beers. The ones we brewed before were recipes from the brew store, and the latest one was different.
The recipe we used was the one on this website http://www.brew-dudes.com/belgian-white-ale-recipe/248. We didn't measure the malt ourselves, and once we got it into the mash tun I really felt like it wasn't enough. We also went to a different brew store, so I'm afraid they may have measured the weight of the malt incorrectly. They also didn't have liquid yeast, so we had to re-hydrate dried yeast (some sources say this is not preferable).
All in all we brewed the recipe, added the hops, crushed the coriander, etc. We substituted powdered ginger instead of fresh. The initial gravity was low (I don't remember the number now, but I'll add it in when I can look it up). Added the yeast. At 4:45 AM the next morning, I was awoken to a spurting sound. Granted, we've had blowouts before, but never this early after brewing. The beer was spraying out the top of the air lock. We traded out the air lock with a tube and bucket of water to keep it under control.
The fermentation quit after a couple of days, which leads me to believe there wasn't enough sugar from the malt and the yeast quit eating. But it could also be the different yeast. We'll have to see. The plan is to bottle this week, which will be day 7 of fermenting. That's shorter than usual, we usually give it 2 weeks. When it's done it's done!
We'll see how this one goes. There will definitely be an update! And next up: a 90 minute IPA! Dogfish Head Style. I love me some hops!
The recipe we used was the one on this website http://www.brew-dudes.com/belgian-white-ale-recipe/248. We didn't measure the malt ourselves, and once we got it into the mash tun I really felt like it wasn't enough. We also went to a different brew store, so I'm afraid they may have measured the weight of the malt incorrectly. They also didn't have liquid yeast, so we had to re-hydrate dried yeast (some sources say this is not preferable).
All in all we brewed the recipe, added the hops, crushed the coriander, etc. We substituted powdered ginger instead of fresh. The initial gravity was low (I don't remember the number now, but I'll add it in when I can look it up). Added the yeast. At 4:45 AM the next morning, I was awoken to a spurting sound. Granted, we've had blowouts before, but never this early after brewing. The beer was spraying out the top of the air lock. We traded out the air lock with a tube and bucket of water to keep it under control.
The fermentation quit after a couple of days, which leads me to believe there wasn't enough sugar from the malt and the yeast quit eating. But it could also be the different yeast. We'll have to see. The plan is to bottle this week, which will be day 7 of fermenting. That's shorter than usual, we usually give it 2 weeks. When it's done it's done!
We'll see how this one goes. There will definitely be an update! And next up: a 90 minute IPA! Dogfish Head Style. I love me some hops!
First Post!
I've never done a blog before, but I wanted somewhere to write about our adventures in brewing so here it goes!
We started brewing in January 2011, after my husband received a brewing kit for Christmas. About a month later our close friends and neighbors bought a kit for themselves. So we decided to brew together! This turned into brewing 5 gallon batches every 1-2 weeks. Brew 1 week 1, brew 2 week 2, bottle 1 week 3, brew 3 week 3, bottle 2 week 4, etc. We were making a lot of beer! We still almost follow this schedule unless it's a busy week.
There's still a lot of learning to be done, since we follow recipes mostly and haven't experimented very much. And that's why I'm starting this blog! I need somewhere to write our thoughts and experiences to be able to grow. So without further ado....
We started brewing in January 2011, after my husband received a brewing kit for Christmas. About a month later our close friends and neighbors bought a kit for themselves. So we decided to brew together! This turned into brewing 5 gallon batches every 1-2 weeks. Brew 1 week 1, brew 2 week 2, bottle 1 week 3, brew 3 week 3, bottle 2 week 4, etc. We were making a lot of beer! We still almost follow this schedule unless it's a busy week.
There's still a lot of learning to be done, since we follow recipes mostly and haven't experimented very much. And that's why I'm starting this blog! I need somewhere to write our thoughts and experiences to be able to grow. So without further ado....
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