What’s on the go?

Brewed that Chillwave clone (with a lot of my own tweaks) a friend wanted on Sunday morning. Fermenting like crazy right now.

Did our first test batch on our brew kit at BrewDog Stockholm on Sunday. Simple pale ale, like 65% pilsner malt, 33% Marris Otter and a touch of Carapils. Simcoe, Centennial and Citra hops. Took 8.5 hours in total. Had huge problems during the beginning of the mash, the false bottom/filter on the mash stuck as soon as we switched on the recirculating pump. Took about 3 hours to solve it, so we had the weirdest mash schedule ever. 3 hour acid/protein rest, 1 h saccrification rest and 15 minute mash out. Still ended up with 34 liters of wort though. Ended up at 1048 OG, was aiming at 1050. Except the mash problems, the brew kit worked flawlessly. Plate chiller had all of the wort chilled to 20ish C in less than 5 minutes. Currently fermenting away.

Ordered everything I need to make an 8gal batch of Berliner (or sour wheat beer as CLevar would say) and a 5gal batch of what will be a cantaloupe wheat beer, as suggested by Facebook friends.

I have no issue with calling a sour wheat beer a "Berliner". The same cannot be said for others.

Guess I’ll throw my hat into the ring. The weekend before last I brewed a Belgian DIPA with a starter from the dregs from Goose Island Sophie. Simple grainbill with Pils and red wheat with a couple lbs. of table sugar. The kicker was that I didn’t use any kettle hops at all. LOTS of Amarillo and Azacca at 180F, though, and it’ll get a healthy dry hopping with both of those hops.

With the leftover runoff (I run off a lot more than usual with my hoppy beers to make up for absorption from the whole leaf) and the rest of the LME kit I used for a starter I made a Brett table beer. Going to reuse the dry hops after the Belgian DIPA gets them so that the Brett can metabolize the glycosides and get some additional character from them. I’ve used that technique before with pretty nice results. More hoppy beer is never bad, IMO.

Originally posted by drowland
Brewed that Chillwave clone (with a lot of my own tweaks) a friend wanted on Sunday morning. Fermenting like crazy right now.

Made an IPA today with Apollo. First time using it. Smelled really dank.

I’m still making preparations, but the next thing I’m planning is a pretty exciting Old Ale. I posted a while ago about getting some microbes to grow from a 1982 bottle of Gale’s Prize Old Ale (which I opened and drank in 2006, then stuck the cork back in and, noticing some liquid in the bottle some weeks ago, I tried to grow some, and it worked! It’s smelling a good, and a bit like the Gale’s that I remember).

I just started growing the saccharomyces tonight from a bottle of Fuller’s, so I’m going to co-pitch the Fuller’s saccharomyces along with whatever is in the starter from the Gale’s.

The plan is to do the beer from 100% Fawcett’s Maris Otter, collect about 50-55 litres of wort and boil it down to 20 litres over 5 or 6 hours until it’s a treacley, amber monster of around 1.110. I’ll first wort hop to about 60 IBU’s with a mix of whole East Kent Goldings and First Gold, removing the hops after an hour, then hop with a blend of the same with around 10 mins to go.

Planning a 2 hour mash at 63, followed by fairly low-temperature sparging, so it will be converting all the way until the kettle is hot.

I’ll cool to about 15C, then pitch the yeast and add about 50g of medium -toast French oak at the start of primary, removing it after about a week. I’ll keep the temperature low for a couple of days, then let it free-rise to make sure it finishes well. I’ll leave it in primary until gravity is stable (probably a few months, just to be safe), then bottle (I’m not planning to reyeast, but I’ll have to think about that) and drink it over a few years.

Feeling that some should be ready in time to have one on Christmas day, then save it as a Christmas beer for coming years. I’ll post back when I do the beer. Quite excited about it now all the yeast is going.

Looking at the 25 pounds of honey I have stockpiled and dreaming of wonderful things ahead if I can ever find the time.

I went to a local chocolate factory this weekend and was really intrigued by their blackberry basil truffle. I’m now planning a blackberry basil stout for later this month.