Just like last year, I decided to do a harvest ale using the wet hops from my garden.  I was first introduced to this concept by the Sierra Nevada harvest ale and was a big fan.  The fresh hops give a totally different flavor profile and having my own hops vines helps as far as getting them in a timely fashion.  Last year I took part of my harvest for this brew and dried the rest, but this year, the Japanese Beetles really decimated my crop so  took what I would salvage and made another harvest ale.  This might be a regular in the rotation.

Now this one I was low on time so I did a partial mash.  I used 6.6lbs of light LME and 4lbs of UK 2-row.  Simple enough base.  Then it was just plenty of Cascade to get some IBU’s in there and the rest was just a matter of adding the wet hops at flame out to ensue the flavors and aroma are maximized.

I pitched this to the yeast cake from the pumpkin ale so that was easy enough.  All my targets were hit and the brew seems to be all good.

Cheers

Tonight I kegged up my IPA and I have to say, it’s the best IPA I’ve made.  To make something good even better, I added two ounces of whole leaf hops that I grew in my back yard into the keg for a nice dry hop.

The picture below is a little comtraption I came up with to try and keep the hops from clogging up the keg.  It’s a stainless steal strainer that I poked a hole in to allow the stem through.  If I am lucky, this will keep the hops out of my glass.  We’ll see if it works, but it seemed like as good an idea as I have had for dealing with this.

The dry hops are cascade.  The brew is already plenty bitter, so I would love to get some great grapefruit flavors and a huge hops aroma.  Cheers.

The recipe I came up with is the following:

• 16lbs UK 2-Row
• 1lb 60L Crystal
• 1lb Biscuit
• 1lb Carapils Dex
• 1/2lb 120L Crystal

The hops setup was aggressive to say the least:

• Columbus 1oz 60min
• Centennial 1oz 60min (homegrown)
• Cascade 2oz 60min
• Cascade 2oz 30min
• Cascade .8oz 15min (homegrown)
• Cascade 2.2oz Flame out (homegrown)

That’s a 109 IBU Imperial IPA that is going to be a good one!  With the help from Mike, my brew pupil for the day, I had a very productive brew day where the following was hit:

• Preboil: 1.072
• OG: 1.076
• Efficiency: Something like 70%

The whole brew day started at 9am and ended at just before 2pm.  Mike and I managed to also bring my dishwasher into the house where I installed it after a full brew day.  Not too bad.  So far, the name I’ve come up with for the beer is “The C-Word Imperial IPA” but I’m not totally sold on that.  Any ideas?

Cheers

Anyway, I started the water on this one at about 9am and was finished by 1:15ish so it was a pretty productive brew day.  I started out with 8.5 gallons that I wanted to be 161f, but I let the burner go a little long and had it up to 175f.  I dropped some ice into the kettle to cool it down and by the time I struck the water to the grain, the grain bed was only about 146.  It was about 41f outside so I think the problems I had were mostly due to the outside temp.  It’s amazing that after all these years, the impact that cold weather has on my temps still takes me off guard.

To adjust my temp to the desired 150f, I added 2qts of water at boiling temp and the grain bed was up to 150f for about 45min of the mash with the first 30min at 146f.  Just an extra step, thats all.

My first runnings were 20 brix (about 1.087), second was 11brix (1.046) and final was 10brix (1.042).  I used a batch sparge on this brew, but again I think that the outside temp snuck up on me because my batch sparges didn’t get the grain bed up to 168f, I was at 158f on the first and 162 on the second. 

The good news is that the pre-boil gravity was 1.050 (spot on with the target) but my volume was a little low.  My hops additions were as follows:

• 1/2 oz Challenger 60min
• 1/2 oz Columbus 60min
• 1.2oz Centennial 60min
• 2oz Cascade 30 min
• 2oz Cascade 15 min

 One new item in my brew war chest was my first 6 gallon carboy.  I forgot to make proper markings on it so I would know the volume so I was a little out of sorts with that, but it’s not a big deal.  After my boil I was short on my volume, but I was not sure by how much so I tried to disperse the wort evenly between both my bucket and my 6gal carboy. 

My OG was 1.062 and my volume was short so I needed to add some water to top off my brews.  My bucket was 1/2 gallon short so I added a 1/2 gallon to both the carboy and the bucket.  I did a gravity measurement and it looks like I am at 1.054 on my OG.  The lesson is to start small with the water top-off and then match it with wort in the carboy.

At the end of the day, my target was 1.057 and I was at 1.054 at proper volume.  Hindsight is 20/20, but I also could have just added the water to the brew kettle when it was cooled and just shot for my volume as I know the markings on that.  No big deal though.  I am going to dry hop these in lieu of a late addition hop addition because I have some homegrown cascade whole leaf hops.  Should make for a great beer.

With this one, I am going to use the Po-Boy IPA malt profile and utilize some of my hops purchased from Tim at Pompey Mountain Hops Farm along with the hops I grew this summer should make for an interesting “Empire State of mind” (Go Yankees!) Po-Boy.  I will be updating this post with the hops additions once they’re ready, but here is the malt profile and I am going to be using my Irish Ale Yeast from Wilford’s Best Stout so it should make for some variations on the original:

• 25lbs US 2 Row Pale
• 1lb Crystal 20L
• .75lb Crystal 60L
• .65lb Cara-pils

Again, the hops will be a mix of whole leaf cascade and cenntenial hops with pellet cascade.  I have almost 4lbs of hops so I will not be stingy with with my hop additions.

Step mashed – I used a step mash instead of a single infusion mash. I did this for more practical reasons of just questioning the amount of water that I could add to the mashtun with that volume of grain. The first step was 135 for 30 min and the second step was 150 for another 30 min. Finally, because we were not able to get up to 168 for mashout (short on room in the mashtun) and because it was so cold out, we sparged out with near boiling water. All day we were losing temp on water because of the extreme man cold that we brave for beer.

Finally I broke out some of the Tripel Nipple that I have been aging since January. It’s great. I am really pleased how this beer turned out. It’s a little intense on the tongue, but the banana and spices really make this a great example of a tripel. I need to dial down the carbonation a bit, but the recipe is spot on. I am going to need to do this one again.

…It felt good to be out of the snow. While we are still unsure about the name of this IPA, for now it’s a poe-boy because we used our free hops from Red Hook for it! It’s a great tour if you get the chance and you’re in Portsmouth, I recommend it.

As you can see from the picture above, it was actually cold out for our brew day. This is man brewing conditions, not like those in Georgia where 55f is a cold brew night. We got to brew out the Carharts already!

This was an IPA with a lot of hops and about 55lbs of grain involved. There were some adjustments to the recipe that was indicated earlier. First off, it was German Tetinang, not Galana that we had to brew with so we went a little heavier on the Northern Brewer. In the end, we were able to get very near our intended IBU’s.

Now when it came to how to distribute the hops over two 10 gallon batches of beer, Nick had a pretty crazy idea to help us brew and cool in a timely manner. First off, please note that we take and mix all of the batches when we put them into our fermentation buckets.

Now Nick’s idea was simple – We have bittering hops and flavor hops. The flavor/aroma hops do not need to boil for the full 60 min, nor does the wort that gets those hops. So, we have one 10 gallon keggle for bittering that boils the full 60 min, and the second one boils with all the late hops additions. While we cool the flavor/aroma keggle, the bittering keggle is on the second leg of it’s boil. By the time we are done with the flavor/aroma keggle, the bittering one is ready to cool.

I racked my brain for a way to make this not an acceptable method, but it seems pretty logical. I am interested to hear some feedback, if I get ambitious, I may make a diagram for this.

So, quick recap – The keggle on the left has all the bittering hops additions. The keggle on the right has all the aroma and flavor hops additions and only boils for 1/2 hr. In the end, they are all mixed together.

Overall it was a great brew day. We missed out on our volume and didn’t take any mashing/sparging readings, but we were well over our mark on gravity (1.066, instead of 1.057) so I think in the end, we were right where we wanted to be. The beer was a nice straw color, so we will see how it settles out.

We also did a tasting of Ted’s Mint Stout. I will be posting up a video later this week to get everyone through turkey day.

Cheers!

This is currently a namless IPA, but I am sure Nick and I will come up with something good.

Recipe Specifications
————————–
Batch Size: 20.00 gal
Boil Size: 22.89 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 8.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 98.4 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 60.00 %
Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Ingredients:
————

50.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) 91.32 %
2.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 20L 3.65 %
1.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt – 60L 2.74 %
1.25 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine 2.28 %
5.00 oz Galena [13.00 %] (90 min) 59.8 IBU
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (45 min) 13.4 IBU
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (30 min) 11.2 IBU
2.00 oz Northern Brewer [8.50 %] (20 min) 8.9 IBU
2.00 oz Williamette [5.50 %] (15 min) 4.7 IBU
2.00 oz Williamette [5.50 %] (1 min) 0.4 IBU

1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [SYeast-Ale

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Light Body
Total Grain Weight: 54.75 lb
—————————-
Single Infusion, Light Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
75 min Mash In Add 17.11 gal of water at 161.4 F 150.0 F
10 min Mash Out Add 10.95 gal of water at 200.2 F 168.0 F

I am still up in the air about weather or not we’re going to fly sparge or batch sparge. It will be a game time decision.

On another note, I would like to congratulate Joel (the picture was taken at a MNB brew night)from Monday Night Brewery was recently elected 4th ward dog catcher. With his political prowess, I am sure he will be moving up the ranks to city-wide dog catcher in no time!

Cheers

As many of you know, I have been at war with the guys at Monday Night Brewery (or MNB as they are now officially called) and like all wars, it hasn’t been pretty. I would like to begin by putting to rest the rumor that Bryan Adams is a member of Hezbollah. While his lyrics certainly raise the question of his commitment to the United States and it’s war on terror, there is no physical evidence that links him to the leadership of Hezbollah.

I’ve come to this bit of a humble ending to my war with MNB due to the taste off we had. While MNB tried to butter us up with beer glasses and an awesome stout to go with the Swashchuckler IPA they sent us, I have to admit that without a doubt, (gulp) their beer was better.

Nick and I started off with the Swashchuckler and poured it into a pint glass. It poured a deep gold color with an off white head. IT started with two fingers of head and kept it’s head for a good amount of time. I got a nice smell of pine and citrus on the nose, the pine sets in before the citrus, but it rounds out to a great aroma.

Once the head settled, it left a healthy amount of lacing in the glass. The taste was really dominated by the bittering hops bite. It finished clean and didn’t linger, which was nice, but the hops were a dominant player in the mix.

Overall this was a great experience and if I were to make any recommendations, I would say to dial down the hops a little to let the malt profile stand out a little more.

With our Lagunitas clone there was a melon smell on the nose, a lighter color, more of a straw than a gold, and a white head. The problem came in the taste. There was a distinct metallic flavor that we picked up in the brew.

Bottling has been a loosing battle with me as of late, but I hope that this is not the case with all of the beers I sent out. In the end, the metallic flavor died down a little bit, but never enough to make the beer really appealing.

The Swashchuckler IPA took us hands down. I am now looking for recommendations on what beer pairs with crow for the main course and humble pie for desert. I am guessing that a nice Double IPA might wash down the crow and perhaps a barley wine for the humble pie?

Seriously though, they have a great start to a beer there, it could use a little fine tuning, but the malt profile was great (when I got into the beer a little more) and the nose it awesome. Congratulations from the Nick and I go out to the MNB crew. Cheers!