Beer Brewing Blog

This is my first attempt at a specialty brew involving other than normal ingrediants. I got the recipe, again, from The Brewmasters Bible and the recipe is from Joe & Bryan Timmons of Boston Brewers Supply Co. Here are the stats:

Starting Gravity: 1.046-1.046

Final Gravity: 1.010-1.012

Potential Alcohol: 5% ABV

IBUs: approximately 29

Ingrediants:

1 pound British Crystal Malt (Cara Malt, Crisp Malting (UK) 1 lb)
1 pound light dry malt (American 2-Row (Rahr) 1 lb.)
6 pounds light malt extract (Breiss Light Unhopped Liquid Malt Extract 6 lbs)

2 ounces Willamette hop pellets

4 pounds fresh pumpkin

2 whole nutmeg

2 cinnamon sticks

4 whole cloves

1 teaspoon Irish Moss flakes

1 package dry ale yeast

6 ounces corn suger for priming

The first thing I did was cut up the pumpkin to bake it in the oven. I bought a 10 pound pumkin and used half of it, cutting it into 8 wedges, covering with tin foil and baking them for about 45 minutes @ 400 degrees inthe oven. The recipes said 30 minutes @ 350, but it wasn’t doing much so I upped the juice a bit. I then brought 2 gal of water to 160 degrees and let the malt steep for 30 minutes. I then added the malt extract and brought to a boil, added half of the pumpkin and all 2 ounces of hop pellets. I let this boil for 30 minutes, then added the Irish moss and boiled for another 15 minutes. At that point I added three cinnamon sticks, one crushed nutmeg, and 8 whole cloves. I upped the spice amounts in the recipes because I want a spicier brew; the cinnamon I added a extra stick, the cloves I had were a bit old so I added way more just to get a nice flavor, but kept the nutmeg to one because I found out that fresh nutmeg is extremely strong and I didn’t want to overpower anything. After the spices I finished the boil for 5 minutes, took off heat and let steep another 10 minutes per the recipe.

Once that was done I scooped the pumpkin out of the wort and then added to the fermenter, through a strainer, to 2 gallons of cold water. I finished off with topping the fermenter with another gallon of water and the other half of the pumpkin (in cube form now). The wort was warmer than I had hoped, about 80 degrees as I didn’t allow the spring water to cool enough before it was time to fill the fermenter. The hydrometer reading was 1.038 @ 80 degrees, corrected to an actual of 1.041 which is just a bit low for what the recipe called for. I then pitched the Wyeast American Ale yeast tube and sealed up the fermenter.

The great thing about this recipe is that my apartment now smells like pumpkin pie. Awesome.

I just finished up bottling the Belgian White. I brewed on 10/9, transferred to another bucket on 10/15 because I still don’t have a carboy, and bottled it up on 10/20. Off to sit for 4 weeks and then I’ll try it.  Final Gravity: 1.010.

The time is here, time to start brewing again.  While I tried to boil up the wort over the weekend, one key ingrediant was missing from local grocer so I had to look elsewhere today.  Corriander, it’s not THAT uncommon…come on.  Anyway, my first beer of the season is a Belgian White recipe I took from The Brewmaster’s Bible by Stephen Snyder.  This is a great book that goes beyond the basics and gives great descriptions on the technical aspects of brewing for both extract and all grain brewing.  While my habitat restricts me to extract brewing, there are enough recipes in the book to keep me busy for some time to come.

I choose two recipes to start the season, this Belgian White will be my first.  I picked up the ingrediants from Midwest Brewing via UPS and the corriander from a shop near work.  Here are the specs:

The recipes was submitted to the book by Dick Foehringer from Fair Oaks, CA.

Original Gravity: 1.042

Final Gravity: 1.010

Potential Alcohol: 4.1% ABV

Ingredients:

1 Pound steel Cut Oats ( Golden Naked Oats, Simpson’s (UK) 1 lb)

4 Pounds Alexander’s wheat Malt Extract ( Munton & Fison (UK) Wheat DME)

2 pounds English light Dry extract ( Munton & Fison (UK) Light DME)

2 ounces Hallertauer Hops

1 ounce crushed coriander seed (I used 2/3 of a 1.5oz bottle of ground coriander, hope that works)

1 teaspoon Irish Moss

1 teaspoon gelatin

1 Wyeast Belgian Ale liquid yeast (I used White labs pitchable tube, Belgian Ale liquid yeast)

3/4 cup priming sugar

The boil was fairly easy, no real boilover and the DME dissolved without much hastle.  Per the instructions in the manual, I added the 1 pound of oats in a muslin bag to about 2 galloons of water, brought to 170 F and let seep for 30 minutes.   After that, I slowly added the DME, one 2 lb bag at a time until completely dissolved.  I then brought to a boil again and added 1 1/2 oz of the Hallertauer hops.  For this recipe I tried something new, whole leaf hopes just added straight to the boil.  I boiled this for 45 minutes and then added 1/2 oz of the same hops and the Irish moss.  This boiled for 10 minutes, and the last 5 minutes I added the 1 oz of coriander.  As soon as I added the coriander, the wort began to boil up and I had to bring the heat down to keep from boiling over.  During this time, I had the fermenter soaking in sanitizer along with the rest of the equipment needed (strainer, airlock, spoon).
This batch I screwed up a bit.  As usual, I had a couple 2 1/2 gal jugs of spring water chilling in the fridge and I put int he freezer just before using it to cool it down more.  Should not have done that.  I added about 3 gallons to the fermenter and then added the wort through the strainer.   The wort only yielded about 1 1/2 gallons afters straining the hops so I had to add another 1 gal to get the 5 1/2 gallons the recipe called for.  The problem was the temp of the wort/water mixture was all the way down to about 45 F, not good, it should have been in the 65 to 70 degree F.  Not wanting to have the wort sit around, I took the specific gravity and then added the yeast.  We’ll see how it turns out.  I’m expecting a bit longer to start fermenting but shouldn’t affect it in the long run.  Cross my fingers.
The starting sg was 1.018, which @ 45 degrees F comes out to 1.003 according to some research…not a good sign.  Very possible I might have diluted the solution too much, we’ll see.

And that means just one thing:  Time to start brewing again.  I just received the ingrediants for a couple of new brews, A Belgian Witbeer and Pumkin Ale.  I’ll probably start with the witbeir, I just need to acquire a carboy before I start that one.  Details to follow.