Beer Brewing Blog

Back to brewing.  I had a few weeks off, but I’m back.  Three weeks ago I brewed up an oatmeal stout that is now ready to bottle, I’ll get to that tomorrow.  Today I brewed up what I’m calling my Drunken Deacon.  I upgraded to a 10 gallon mash tun cooler so I thought I would give the Drunken Monk another shot with a proper amount of grain this time.  As luck would have it, or lack of luck, I was at a homebrew store and picked up the ingrediants so I could get this ready in time for Brewtopia in October.  As I assumed, the store didn’t really have what I wanted, so instead of 15 lbs of Belgian Pils malt, I have 10 lbs and 5 lbs of Briess 2 row.  Plus, no Belgian Strong Ale yeast, just a white labs high gravity yeast.  We’ll see what happens, it shouldn’t be too bad.  Oh, and I stopped by the store for some brown sugar but I spied a bag of dememera sugar so I picked up that.  $6 for a pound of sugar, gotta love NYC gourmet stores.  SG on the Drunken Deacon was only 1.072, should have been higher.  It doesn’t look like I’m going to get the efficiency I wanted on this one, I hope the high gravity yeast does some magic.

Today was bottling day.  It was supposed to be brew day for my oatmeal stout but like the dumbass I am, I forgot to add hops to my last order.  After three months, my Port Barrel Aged Belgian Brown ale was ready to bottle as was my Saison.  I’m still a bit miffed by the Saison as the FG was only 1.020.  The FG for the Brown Ale was 1.004 giving it a 7% ABV.

I decided to try a saison for this batch.  I brewed it up about a week ago and just racked it to the secondary.  I was a bit worried about the yeast I ordered from Northern Brewer as it was a Wyeast Activator Belgian Saison (#3724) and by the time it arrived the pouch was already puffed out.  To cover myself, I happen to be near a brew supply store and while they didn’t have a saison yeast, I picked up a White Labs Abbey Yeast.  I made a starter with the saison yeast and it seemed to take well so I used that.  OG was 1.070.  When I racked to the secondary today, it was only 1.040 so I thought, what the hell, lets add in the Abbey yeast and see what happens.  I also added about 1 tspn of vanilla extract as I couldn’t really find any vanilla beans near me.  See my Beersmith page for Beersmith notes.

I racked both the Hoegardden Clone and the Scottish Ale to the secondary yesterday.  The Hoegardden had a SG of 1.008 and the Scottish Ale was 1.014.  I was pleasantly surprised at the Scottish ale as the chocolate malt doesn’t seem to be overpowering the rest of the flavors.

I brewed up an all grain Hoegaarden Clone recipe yesterday. I retrieved this from some forum post, can seem to find the post again so apologies for no correctly citing the direct source.

The Beersmith notes will sum up the brew nicely. I’m still having issues bringing the lauter tun up to temperature and I’m now thinking I have a serious thermometer issue as I’m finding a 20 deg F difference between my pocket dial thermometer and my two digital probe thermometer. Even though this was only 9 lbs of grain, I found myself using too much hot liquor on the mashout and I still can’t get it above 160 deg F. Next time I’m going straight for boiling water to see if that helps matters. Initial SG was 1.048.

I also had my first stuck mash on this batch, obviously due to the abundance of oats & wheat. I tried the blow out method, didn’t work. I tried stirring, didn’t work. I eventually just hooked my spoon on the false bottom picked it up a bit and that got things moving again. Of course, it shot extremely hot wort all over my leg but live and learn.

Beersmith notes:

As I’m really getting into the all grain brewing now, I’ve got two recipes worth of ingredients. The first is a kit I got from Northern Brewers, a Scottish Ale 80. I brewed this up today. In addition to what was in the kit, I added 1lb of Franco-Belge Kiln Coffe malt and 1/2 oz of Kent Golding hops. Don’t ask why I did the coffee malt, I thought I ordered the chocolate malt to give a deeper taste. I may have ruined the recipe, we’ll see.

Ingredients:

9 lbs of Simpson’s Golden Promise

1 lb of Simpson’s Crystal

1lb of Franco-Belge Kiln Coffee

1 oz of Ken Goldings (60 minutes)

1/4 oz of Kent Goldings (15 minutes)

1 tspn of Irish Moss (15 minutes)

1/4 oz of Ken Goldings (5 minutes)

Wyeast #1728 Scottish Ale Yeast Activator. I didn’t use a starter as it didn’t work with my time frame this week.

I did a single infusion mash, 154 deg F for 60 minutes, mash out at 158 deg F for 10 minutes. I’m finding that to get my mash temp correct I need to increase the temps from Beersmith 15-20 deg and still having problems. I ended up using a gallon more in the mash than I wanted and still didn’t get the 158 deg I wanted. I then tried 2 gallons of 200 deg water for the mash out and only brought the temp up about 4 deg because of all the water I started with. I did make sure to recirculate about 2 gallons this batch with really helped clear up the wort but my runoff was still way fast, it took about 30 minutes to get my 6.5 gallons.

Also to note: 3 pots on my stove burns the wall.

Initial gravity was 1.050. Although I was going to aerate the wort overnight, I just didn’t have the time and was worried it might bubble up too much if I didn’t watch it for the first few hours.

Note:  After about a day, the yeast hadn’t taken at all.  I stuck in the aerator pump for a few hours, stirred it up well and it seems to be bubbling from the airlock so it should be ok.

I bottled up the Drunken Monk Belgian tripel today.  It was about 20 days total fermentation, however there was no change in the SG from when I transferred to the secondary 12 days ago.  Final SG is 1.006 giving it a 9.4% ABV.  Not bad.  The initial tasting hints it being hot, the alcohol very evident.

The Chocolate Cream Stout came out well I think but not perfect. It has a nice body and good lasting head. The nose is initially slightly chocolaty but the hops are noticable. The first taste has a dark chocolate beginning with the lactose sweetness mixing in for almost a sweetened coffee taste. Toward the end you there is an acrid bitterness to comes slowly but becomes stronger from the black malt used. My thoughts would be to use less black malt and less lactose should I do this recipe again. The alcohol on this batch was low, just under 4% ABV which I assume is attributed to the less active yeast and abundance of non-fermentables in this particular recipe. I’m tempted to try this maybe with some dark chocolate although I think it may hinder the taste of each. While drinking more, I’m akin to comparing this most to chocolate mousse. It is definitely a big beer but not in all the ways I want.

A few months after bottling my Wheat Beer, the mistakes I made on the batch are clear.  Initially I thought the batch may be ruined by an off smell I detected coming from the starter wort but while still a bit present, this off flavor has subsided.  I’ve had a few bottles over the past month or two and there was something that just seemed a bit off.  It isn’t a bad beer per say:  I don’t mind drinking it.  What I was noticing is that after a glass or so, the taste just seemed to become more off the more I drank.  After listening to one of my homebrewing podcasts, I realized what the problem with this beer was - not enough hops.  The purpose of the bittering hops is to compliment the sweetness of the malt and if you do not use enough, the sweetness of the malt with eventually overpower the tastebuds.  As it was described on the podcast (I can’t remember which one) you will drink the beer but not have the urge to drink another due to the subtle oversweetening of the beer.  This is right on the money for this beer.  While initially it tastes like a nice German hefeweizen, the more you drink there is almost this subconscious urge that something is out of place.  This beer had 8 lbs of wheat/barley malt extract plus two pounds of wheat/barley grains and the 1 oz of Hallertauer hops just was not enough to offset all of the malt.  I’ve been drinking bottles here and there but this is definitely not one I want  to share and has taught me that you really need to head your sugar/hop ratio.  While I’m generally not a hop head, I now see that you can’t skimp on the hops too much or you end up with a sickly sweet batch of beer that is drinkable but not necessarily palatable.

After about a month of conditioning, the Blood Orange Hefeweizen came out really good. The nose has a very noticeable orange aroma made sweeter by the wheat malt extract. It takes a semi heavy pour to pull off a one finger head which disapates quickly. The color is a deep brown-amber. The taste is a nice smooth sweetness you would expect from a hefeweizen with the orange just hinting at the beginning. The low hop level seems just right for this beer; barely noticable but enough bittering to mellow the sweetness of the wheat. Overall a great beer.