Personally, I will be using some GOP only because I have a little left over and I am just going to throw them in, but it shouldn’t be enough to really make much of an impact.  I was thinking that I would also use some orange peel just to get some citrus notes, but I would like to keep all these flavors on the back burner for this brew.

With the yeast being the key component to the brew, temperature is going to be essential here.  I am going to do some scouting out on temperature predictions for the next few weeks to hopefully get a hot spell where I can ensure that I will get an 80+f temp for 5-7 days.  That is going to be key to getting all of the esters and complexity out of the yeast.

I am still researching the exact recipe, but I would like to use some of the ingrdients that I have left over from brews past so I will use some 2 row and probably get some pilsner in there as well.  Most of the recipes I’ve seen add some corn sugar to the wort, but I am not sure about that, I would like to be on the lower end of the 5%-8% ABV scale I’ve seen so I shouldn’t need it.

More to come, any advice on this style would obviously be greatly appreciated.

For me, this brings up an interesting point because I am actually brewing a holiday favorite of mine this weekend!  I’ll get to that in a minute.  For the holidays, I would say there are three beers that stand out to me.  The first was my doppelbock.  This was a great beer and I personally credit a lot of this to the fact that I decoction mash.  Before you jump in and tell me that modern grains are modified and don’t need a decoction mash, I know.  However, I would argue that there is some caramelization of the sugars in the process that contributes some unique qualities to the flavor.  Plus its a cool process that pre-dates thermometers, how many things do you do today that do that?

The second brew for me would be the Wilford’s Best Oatmeal Stout I just brewed.  I’ve already killed a keg of it!  I don’t like that fact, but it’s a stout I am still not sick of.  This is a great beer that is easy to drink and a nice little winter warmer.

Finally, my Bobby Brown ale that was the first brew Nick and I made together (shed a tear).  This was one of the earlier beers I all-grain brewed and it was my first 10 gallon brew.  At the time, we were really happy with the brew, but about a year later we cracked open a flip top of it and it was still awesome!  That’s why I am brewing it again this weekend:

Bobby Brown this time around:

• 20.5lb US2 row pale
• 4lbd Crystal 60L
• .75lb Chocolate malt
• .25lb Black patent
• 2oz Norther Brewer 60min
• 1oz Cascade 30min
• 1oz Cascade 15min
• 1oz fuggles dry hop
• Irish Ale Yeast (reused from some of my earlier brews)

The yeast is different on this one, but everything else should be the same.  This will also be my first time using my pump and my newly installed sparge-arm so hopefully everything functions.

Best picture I found about oatmeal

That’s right, beer isn’t just for dinner and lunch anymore, now it’s for breakfast.  My friends over at the Brew Dudes have also been in on the Oatmeal Stout and I haven’t brewed one since I used to kit brew.  I think it’s time to re-visit this classing breakfast drink.

Seriously though, I am going to be continuing on my path of less is more in my brewing.  This is a simple stout with some flaked oats to hopefully give the beer some body.  I am currently at 3lbs of flaked oats, but I might be splitting that half flaked oats and half flaked barley.

Here is what I have so far:

 Amount Item Type
26.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK (3.0 SRM) Grain 
3.00 lb Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain
3.00 lb Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) 60 min
1.00 oz Warrior [15.00 %] (60 min) Hops 30 min
1.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (30 min) Hops 10 min
1.00 oz Fuggles [4.50 %] (10 min)
Irish Ale Yeast (1085)

This is going to be a single mash infusion held at 154 for 60 min with two batch sparges.  In case it wasn’t obvious by the recipe, this is a 10 gallon batch.  I want to treat the water with some calcium, but we’ll see how the brew day goes.

Cheers.

• 20lbs – US 2 row pale malt
• 1.5lbs Crystal 40L
• .5lbs Munich
• 1.5oz UK Goldings
• 1.5oz (umm I forgot)

I am using the 1056 from my barley wine (I tasted it, and it was awesome!!!).  I am going to be single infusion at 158f for 45min with two batch sparges.

Simple enough brew, what can I say?  This is a 10 gallon batch for sustenance, but I am excited about this brew.

cheers.

The plan is simple enough:

• 12lbs US 2 row pale malt
• 1lb Crystal 40L
• .5lb Crystal 10L
• 1oz Warrior 60min
• .5oz Cascade 30 min
• .5oz Cascade 10min
• 1oz Cascade dry hop
• California Ale Yeast – 1qt starter

I am going to do a single infusion with no sparge, at 152f for 90min.  I want a 90min boil so I am looking to have 5 3/4 gallon pre-boil volume.  The pre-boil gravity should be 1.085 SG and the OG should end up at 1.098.  The light malt is leading Beer Smith to give me a reading of 11.5 SRM, but I am willing to bet it’s going to be a lot darker with the 90 boil.

This should end up being about 9.5% abv 76 IBU cascade heavy barleywine.  No assuming anything though.

Below are pictures of the hops, oh yea, coming along nicely and naturally (unlike some people that are using hops enhancing drugs).

So, while Nick and Bryan were both pre-occupied, I was on my own for a brew day so I decided to do a brew that was not as conducive to the volume brews we had been doing.  Since I hadn’t made a Belgian Dubbel since the Abbey I brewed in extract many years ago, I decided to take this brew to the next level and brew one (as close as possible to the original) in all-grain.

Here is the recipe:

6 gallons – 90min boil 60% efficiency

Grain bill

• 16lbs UK 2 Row Pale Malt (3SRM)
• 1lb Cara-Pils/Dex (2SRM)
• 1lb light Munich (6SRM)
• 1/2lb Victory (25 SRM)
• 1lb Dark Belgian Candi Sugar (275 SRM)
• 2oz Fuggles (4%) 55min
• 1oz Saaz (4%) 5min
• Belgian Witbier Wyeast # 3944

I struck this brew at 7:48am on Sunday morning and was cleaned up before the 12:10pm SU tip off (Go Orange!!!).  A quick overview of the steps are as follows:

1. Strike 4.6 gal at 164f – Step temp 150f – Hold for 1hr 15min
2. Mashout 1.6 gal at near boiling to achieve 168 – Fell short, only 164 (Meatball was wandering around and found a couple of boxers he had beef with, left the mashtun open and it was cold out)
3. Prepared 4.6 gal for two equal rounds of batch sparges
4. First runnings 21 brix, second 14 brix, final running were 10 brix
5. Preboil OG (without candi sugar) was 1.059

There was a 90 min boil for flavor and character.  It worked out well because at 60% efficiency I expected 1.072 OG after the boil and was pleasantly surprised with 1.080.

It is amazing how much faster a 6 gallon batch is than a 20 gallon batch.  Water temps come much faster and things are generally a lot more manageable.  It makes for a very relaxing brew day.  Add to that the fact that the ‘Cuse won in convincing fashion and it made for a great Sunday.

What better way to celebrate the end of a sub-zero temperature stretch than some early morning cold brewing?  Since we both have some great conditions for lagerning brews, Nick and I decided to revisit our very successful “Samuel L. Jackson” brew that was a slightly stronger version of Sam Adams.  Since we both enjoyed this brew so much the first time, we decided to double the recipe and make it a big batch.  As I have mentioned in the past, volume has been a reoccurring problem in this most recent brewing season.  I thought about it and went to the drawing board for some potential solutions.  I think I have it all figured out though.

First off, the recipe was the same as the original, just doubled.  I also had to make some slight adjustments to the hops and the yeast.  I used a Wyeast Czech Pils instead of the Munich I used the first time and I changed the flavor and aroma hops to all Liberty.  The bittering I changed the hops to Galena so that I could get the alpha acids with using less hops.

So here is the recipe:

42 lbs 2 row US
4.6 lbs Crystal 40L
4.5 lbs Munich
3oz Galana hops (60min)
2oz Liberty hops (30min)
2oz Liberty hops (dry, secondary)

Mashing:
Strike – 16 gallons (1.25qts per lb) at 165 for 153f 60min
Mashout – 5 gallons boiling to bring the temp to 168 – This required us to draw some off because of a loss of head space. We need to make sure that we stay under 52lbs in the future so that we can fit in the volume of water to get up to temp
Sparge – 11 gallons at 170 – batch sparge

This was a total of 32 gallons in volume which put us spot on for the final volume we were looking for. It appears that the problem I was having was that I was not adding in mash tun dead space. I had kind of let is pass in the past because we were using the smaller tun, but with the 20 gallon mash tun it creates a lot of dead space. Below are pictures from my dead space testing I was doing Saturday night. Now I am currently adding in a gallon worth of losses in mash tun dead space.

At the end of the day, we have 10.5 gallons of Samuel L. Jackson each with a OG of 1.052 (.002 below our target, oh well, close enough).  We got some breakfast and had a pretty relaxing brew day.

Brewday Breakfast

As for the brew day, there was room for improvement.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that our pilsner will be a fine beer, but for the second week in a row, there were brew volume issues.  Allow me to explain.

The recipe was pretty simple, 42.75lbs pilsner malt, 2lbs cara pils dex.  With a total malt bill weight of nearly 45lbs, I planned a total brew volume of 29.5gallons.  The idea was to have a 24.5 gallon pre-boil volume, thus giving us 5 gallons of absortion on the mash.  This was split up as a 14gallon strike at 135f with a 126f step for the protein rest, a 6 gallon addition at 188f to raise the temp to 158f, and a 4.5 gallon dection to get the mash up to 168 for mashout.  I was going to sparge with 9.5 gallons of water at 175f to add up to my total volume desired of 29.5 gallons.

There were a few temps that we missed on and I had to add an extra rest to ensure that all our conversions happened, but in the end, all that was fine.  When the time came to run off into our fermentors, we were each a gallon short of our desired 10 gallons.  Now the gravity wound up at 1.054, well above the target 1.048, so we were extracting the proper gravity, we just did not get the volume we needed.  The solution is easy enough, but the more important question is; why are we short on volume?

Last night I took some time and reviewed Ray Daniels book Designing Great Beers to try and get some insight on where I might be going wrong on my water volume calculations and it didn’t take long to figure the problem out.  According to Ray, my volume calculations should have been as follows:

45lbs grain weight x .2= 9 gal of water lost in absorption

I took and adjusted everything else in my system through my other calculations and it all worked out.  This appears to be the problem area.  I use Beer Smith so I’ll have to figure out if there is something in the settings that is causing the problems.

In other news, I found a great little corner of my basement that is a nice steady 54f, prefect primary lagering temp, to keep my babbies bubbling in.  Excellent!

Cheers.

This brew is a German pils with a Czech pils yeast.  Why the Czech yeast?  Why not.  Bryan is a fan of the lighter brews so he and I are going to hit up a 20 gallon batch of this hoss.  This is mostly pilsner malt so we are going to be doing a multi step decoction as a way to make sure the grains are modified properly.

Anyway, this is the recipe:

Recipe Specifications
————————–
Batch Size: 20.50 gal     
Boil Size: 24.57 gal
Estimated OG: 1.048 SG
Estimated Color: 4.1 SRM
Estimated IBU: 34.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
————
Amount         Item                               Type             % or IBU      
42.25 lb       Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM)      Grain            95.48 %       
2.00 lb        Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)       Grain            4.52 %        
3.00 oz        Northern Brewer [8.50 %]  (60 min) Hops             23.0 IBU      
1.00 oz        Northern Brewer [8.50 %]  (30 min) Hops             5.9 IBU       
2.00 oz        Northern Brewer [8.50 %]  (10 min) Hops             5.6 IBU       
1 Pkgs         Czech Pilsner Lager (Wyeast Labs #2Yeast-Lager                    

The mash schedule is as follows:

Mash Schedule: Decoction Mash, Double
Total Grain Weight: 44.25 lb
—————————-
Decoction Mash, Double
Step Time     Name               Description                         Step Temp    
35 min        Protein Rest           Add 22.13 gal of water at 126.6 F   122.0 F      
20 min        Saccharification   Decoct 7.11 gal of mash and boil it 147.0 F      
20 min        Saccharification   Decoct 4.33 gal of mash and boil it 158.0 F      
10 min        Mash Out                 Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min         168.0 F 

It’s supposed to be a cool weekend, so we’ll have to buundle up.

Cheers.

*I reserve the right to gank images and use them in my blog because I don’t make any money off this.

Well we are into December and the days left to get some brew on are limited so I have dedicated myself to a schedule. Nick is limited in time and Bryan has been busy keeping the mean woods safe by killing those gang-banging deer (ok, that didn’t sound good), so I am going to be doing some solo and team brewing all mixed in.

As for right now, because I am going to be finishing our bathroom project, this weekend is out. Next weekend Nick and I are going to be brewing 10 gallons of kiwi wit with a Belgian yeast and another 10 gallons of cider.

The weekend after that (hopefully stiff before Christmas) I would like to brew a high volume German pilsner, 20 gallons.  This brew is right up Bryan’s alley so I figure I am going to see if he is interested in that one.  Finally I am going to go it alone on an Abby ale.  I love the rich flavor of an Abby and  it’s about time I brewed another one.

Cheers!