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Happy holidays!  Santa was good to my hobby this year.  I gained a chest freezer that I turned into a four tap keggerator and a custom built brew tower.  More to come on both of those as well as the 20 gallon Old Ale brew day, but for this post I wanted to share a review of  CNYBrew Friend Jeremy’s Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter.  Jeremy recently made the change to all-grain brewing and has a few batches under his belt.  The recipe was by Danny Conn and is available here, Jeremy was looking for a brew to give out to friends for holiday gifts.  Here are Jeremy’s comments on the brew he made;

I scaled my recipe down to 2.5 gallons to fit into the 12 1 Liter bottles I had. I also didn’t use the oak chips as I had never used them before but had read that it is very easy to go overboard and I didn’t want the oak to dominate the flavor.

7.5 lb Pale US 2-Row
1.25 lb Munich 10L
.75 lb Special Roast
.50 lb Caramel 120L
.50 lb Caramel 45L
.12 lb Chocolate 350L
.50 oz Columbus – 60 Mins
.30 oz Goldings – 10 Mins
Mash was the same as above. 60 min boil. I used Wyeast 1056 (with starter) instead and my fermentation temp was a bit higher at 70 degrees. It was in the primary for 2 weeks and then I racked into a secondary on top of a Madagascar Vanilla Bean that I had cut down the middle, scraped out the inside, and then chopped into quarters. I soaked the pieces in a bit of bourbon for a day beforehand. I left it in the secondary for another 2 weeks and added half a cup of Jim Beam Bourbon at bottling.

Now I had this while my wife and I were over for dinner, but Jeremy was nice enough to give me a bottle to try on my own.  I enjoyed it over some football, here are my notes:

Aroma: I noticed a lot of fruity smells in the nose, there were some light vanilla tones, but very subtle.  Vanilla is a forgiving additive for a beer, it plays nice.  The fruity aroma was pretty intense and probably a result of the warm fermentation.

Head: A pretty thin head until I poured it more aggressively, this happens in beers with higher alcohol content, he may want to increase the dex on the next time around.  The color of the head was cream/off white and reminded me of a cream ale head.

Color: Deep rose red to a mahogany color, a nice color for a porter.  The clarity was fantastic on this brew, there was no chill haze or sediment in the brew.

Taste: There were hints of fruity esters on the front end with the creamy vanilla flavors following on the back end.  Clean finish with all the flavors being subtle and nothing really overwhelming the beer.

Mouth feel: Early on there was some carbonation burn on the tongue, but nothing too bad and it really tapered off as I drank.  The body was clean, crisp and easy to drink with no alcohol burn.

Over all: This is rich, but not overbearing.  The vanilla and caramel notes really set this beer off, but it finishes clean on your pallet.  This makes the beer very palatable that I might even go so far as to call it a session beer (perhaps it’s a drinking mans session beer, but it’s something I could have a few of and not get sick of).  There are only two things I would change; fermentation temp to keep the esters in check and maybe tweak the recipe to give it a little more complexity, but it should be done in extreme moderation as it’s a very drinkable beer and that should remain.

Thanks to Jeremy for sharing his beer, it’s a great beer and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did.

Cheers

This weekend was my first brew session with my “pump in a box” in full effect and things went well.  There were a few problems that were caused mostly by my inexperience with priming the pump, but once I got over that hump, things went very smoothly.

For anyone that does not have experience in priming a non-self priming pump, you are essentially trying to remove all the air from the pump  so that suction can be created.  This takes a few minutes and one thing that is helpful to to make sure that your exit hose is held straight up from the pump.  This helps purge any air that could be lingering in the pump head.  Give it time.  Make sure you wait a few minutes for the process to take place.  Finally, once you have the pump primed, the next few times it happens much easier.

On another note, using the pump to chill the beer is not a great way to work.  It’s very slow (took about an hour to chill 10 gallons compared to 30 min the other way and I had to keep feeding ice into the reservoir.  I am going to re-think this one a bit and see what I can come up with, perhaps a snowbank bath first to knock off the first 50 digrees or something.  I’m not sure, but I am not giving up on this one…

Cheers.

That’s right, we’re still cranking on FF and for December, it’s a kind of free-for all on days, but that works for me.  I’ve been hit or miss with them anyway.  For this FF, the question was about our favorite holiday homebrew.

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.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on following the “Pumped up Toolbox” project from BYO where author Ryan Locakard (follow him on Twitter @Ryan_PA) makes his pump a convenient carrying case for brewing odds and ends while also making it more mobile.  I found this project after I had been thinking about introducing a pump into my brew process for a while.  This project came along at the right time as Nick is no longer brewing and Bryan is in the woods for the next few weeks controlling the deer population so I’ve been hoisting my mash tun on my own for a while and it sucks.

Over all, I would say this project came out to about $220 give or take some money.  The large expenses were the pump, the shock buster outlet adapter (to keep from electrocuting myself) , and the quick release valves which will allow me to easily change the pump from sparge water to circulating my water for the chiller.

Below is a video I made about the project.  The pump is working and the project was really easy.  It should be a handy addition to my brew process and save me from another hernia operation:

Since this is my first time using my glass carboy, I figured I would make a short video of the fermentation happening.

Today was one of those waining beautiful days in Upstate so spending my morning in the driveway brewing beer was perfect.  This was another one of my solo brews as Nick has cashed out and Bryan is helping to control the deer population.  My pump is still not up and working just yet, so hopefully if things go well, I will be brewing with a whole new setup on my next batch.  This should help with some of the heavy lifting that’s going to put me back in the hospital for another hernia operation.

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.

It’s been a few weeks and I’m starting to go a little light on my brews so it’s time to get my act together and start brewing!  My pale ale is on it’s last legs so I am going to replace it with an IPA, a style I can’t seem to go wrong with.  As much as a like all kinds of different brews, there is no other style that is more of a “comfort beer” than the IPA.  I love the variations and it’s always on my pallet to grab one.

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.

If you made it here (assuming your a returning reader) you’ll notice that this is a new design.  We’ll it’s actually whole new website.  I made the plunge from WordPress.com (free hosted solution) to WordPress.org (I host the new website) so my RSS Feed location changed to:

http://cnybrew.com/?feed=rss2

Or you can click the button below to add my new RSS feed to your iGoogle account or Google reader:

Sorry about the change, please let me know what you think about the new design.

Cheers!

*UPDATE – It looks like the RSS feed issues has resolved itself so now the feeds are updating properly.  You might want to talk a look and make sure, but this is going to be the most recent post until the week after Thanksgiving.

So this past Tuesday was our monthly brew club meeting.  I brought a growler of my (newly named) Wilford’s Best Oatmeal Stout to the meeting to get some feedback from fellow brewers.  For anyone out there that doesn’t currently attend brew club meetings in your area, I recommend you change that.  It’s an outstanding place to meet up with fellow brewers, share advice, taste beers, and get some solid feedback.  Brewing in bubble isn’t healthy.

Anyway, I sought out some feedback on the brew and was not disappointed with the response.  Fellow brewers are gentle, but constructively critical.  Here are some of the highlights of the feedback:

Pros – It was generally seen as a smooth beer, especially compared to some of the commercial stouts we tasted that night.  Most found it to have good mouth feel without an overpowering alcohol burn.  One club member noted the chocolate notes that were subtle, but present.  The overall view was that it was a surprisingly good drinking stout considering the 7%abv.

Cons – Lacks the “wham-bang” of some more complex and rich stouts.  It’s a good beer, but not a great beer.  It’s a little high for style (abv), but with stouts there is a pretty wide accepted range.

So over all I was really happy with the response.  I was going for a palatable stout that I was be comfortable drinking 10 gallons of.  The feedback was in line with what I was looking for, both the positive and the negative.

After the meeting, I decided to have a glass to collect some of my thoughts.  After trying three different stouts and a handful of other brews, I found that Wilford’s Best did lack some complexity.  While is was drinkable and had nice mouth feel, it really fell short on the flavors.  It could use some hints of toffee, chocolate and coffee to really set it off.  Instead, you get a great swath of delicious aroma and the flavor falls short.

*Notes for next time, split up the roasted barley with some 120L crystal and a small amount of chocolate malt.  I think that this will give some more complexity, but it needs to be done in moderation as this could make the beer really over powering.

This past week I was fortunate enough to get to visit with Tim Manchego from Pompey Mountain Hops Farm in Pompey New York.  I found this after an article in the local news paper about Tim’s operation ran and was brought to my attention.  Initially, I wanted to get up there during hops harvest to get some nice hops shots, but because of my personal schedule, I wasn’t able to get up there in time.

I spoke with Tim for over an hour and learned a lot about his operation.  This past year he harvested 600lbs of hops!  Some of them were pellets and others were sold as whole leaf hops.  Tim offers a fall “you pick’em” special for $5 a bucket full of fresh hops.

This past year he built an oast out of a greenhouse that he is able to haul from the farm to his house for winter storage.  Tim has a pelletizer that allows him to offer pellet hops of all varieties.

He indicated what I have heard a lot about hops in New York, the C letter hops grow best in NYS.  His Cascade, centennial and Chinook all grew the best on his farm.

This spring I am going to go visit with Tim to see how he gets the trellis’ setup and treats the sprouts.

Special thanks to Tim, I personally picked up 3lbs of cascade that I broke up and vacuumed sealed in smaller packs.  Should make for a productive winter!