Brewing This Weekend

Got up before dawn and made a Vienna Lager base (lager malt amber malt and caramalt) but as I can’t control my fermentation temperature to be low enough i have used SO5 yeast. Tasted lovely going into the fermenter. Sweet biscuit and herby hop. Used Perle for bitterness and hersbrucker for aroma. Will dry hop with more hersbrucker later. Did my first ever continuous sparge too. Lots of firsts for me today. First time with lager malt first brew with German hops. Quite excited to see if it works out.

Gonna be rebrewing my Prussian Pilsner. All bestmalz pilsner malt and all Marynka hops, to about 4ibus, step mash. First batch ended up fantastic. Gonna try and actually keep it lagering until it hits 8 weeks this time...

Oh, and using a new yeast, Wyeast Hellabock. Probably make a mead as well..

Double brew day yesterday. Made the Urban Chestnut Hopfen clone from Stan’s Hops book which is a "bavarian ipa" lots of hallertau hops used. Also made a Saison - 1.046, 3711 yeast, a healthy dose of styrian, EKG, and Saaz, and will dry hop with some EKG and Saaz. Both are fermenting away on the cool side (low 60s).

Bottling a strong chocolate and vanilla porter, which is not normally the sort of thing I brew (it’s 10% and finished at 1.030), so interested to try it.

Also bottling a pretty mental saison that ended up containing smoked wheat malt, pandan leaves, curry leaves, kafir lime leaves, coconut and a fair bit of pineapple. Smelling pretty great in the fermenter, but I’ll be very interested in finding out what it tastes like carbonated.

If I can get is past the old ball-and-chain, I might also brew a 100% brett trois beer I’ve been planning, with some wheat, some oats and a wine barrel finish (some untoasted oak soaked in something: either something sweet, like a Sauternes or Monbazillac, or maybe a Sancerre or even an Alsatian Riesling). It’ll probably be dry-hopped a little too, but I’ll wait until I decide the wine finish before I pick a variety.

Kegged up a pale ale extract kit that was sitting in secondary on some meyer lemons and kumquats for 2 weeks. Tastes really nice, looking forward to getting it carbed up.

Took a gravity and tasted a blueberry maple mead that was back sweetened a few months ago with some honey, maple syrup and blueberry juice. Gravity was 1.024 and tastes really nice! Maybe a bit light on the blueberry, but its a very nice color and has good maple character.

Will transfer a massive RIS from primary into secondary soon. BCBS clone that will age on oak cubes soaked in smoked maple bourbon. Now that the snow has melted in Minnesota, gotta start getting stocked up and ready for the Fall. Winter is coming.

Porter. Briess 2-row, a good amount of Munich 10, Crystal 120, Chocolate Malt, Black Malt, flaked barley, Nugget hops to bitter (the sole hop addition), S-04. I also transferred a Citra IPA and started the dry hop. Got that one down to 1.008 as I was hoping. Sample tasted quite nice. Homebrewing is just the best.

Today, I took a very, very small role in a large 85 gallon batch with my local homebrewers’ club that made a 100% brett fermented golden ale, some of which will be aged in white wine barrels.

Brewing a Mosaic pale ale on Saturday

SMaSH this weekend with Maris Otter and Legacy hops. First time brewing with Legacy.