Carolina Reaper IPA Racking

It's been a while since we blogged a beer racking - normally they're pretty mundane - but this was no ordinary beer racking! Last night we took our Carolina Reaper chili extract and combined it into three different carboys with our IPA beer to form our first chili beer!

Last week we created two different chili extracts - one with the seeds and ribs of the pepper intact and one with them removed. The one with the seeds in particular smells amazing now. So much smoke and heat. The easy part of the day was racking the beer to three different carboys, but then we had to figure out how much chili extract to put in each.

We took a cup and a half of the beer and put it into three different 4oz cups, then used a pipette to gradually put more and more drops of extract in to get the taste we were going for. The seedless chili extract imparted a lot of pepper flavor into the beer without a ton of heat. We decided something in the range of 6 or 7 drops was good in 4oz of beer. The hotter chili extract gave a lot more heat to the beer, so we thought around 5 drops was good in 4oz. For the third batch, we decided to do both, with about 6 drops of the seedless extract and 9 or so of the hot extract. We're hoping it gives a nice combination of heat and pepper flavor. When converted up to full batch scale, we went with 2tsp of seedless in the one gallon, 2tsp of hot extract in the other, then 2tsp of seedless and 1Tbsp of hot in the third gallon.

As far as the fermentation progress, this beer had a huge krausen, and some yeast sludge was still on the top of the beer even at the time of racking. The refractometer confirmed that the fermentation went well. We got a measurement of 9.0 brix equating to 1.013 specific gravity. Given the original gravity of 1.072, that gives us a 7.8% ABV beer.

We're planning to bottle this weekend, so then in maybe a month we should be tasting our first Imperial Chili IPA!

[ Carolina Reaper IPA Brew Day ] <---

Carolina Reaper IPA Brew Day

On Sunday we brewed an IPA that we're planning as a base for some delicious chili heat. A friend at work has been growing Carolina Reapers (the hottest pepper in the world!) for another friend who loves spicy food. I enjoy spicy beer anyway, such as the Ballast Point Habanero Sculpin, and so brewing a chili beer has been on my radar since we started brewing again.

I found some good info and a recipe at http://www.homebrewing.com/articles/chile-beer.php, so all the brewing was pretty straightforward.  One of the particularly fun parts of the brew day this time was live-tweeting everything from our desert penguin twitter account. Since this beer is a bit tied in with my buddies at work due to the chili peppers, it was fun including more people in the brew day.

The other particularly interesting and fun part of this brew day was creating the chili extract from the Carolina Reaper. We cut the pepper in half and are making two different extracts - one with all the seeds and ribbing intact for full heat, and one with the ribbing and seeds removed to try to get a bit more flavor. The peppers will soak in vodka for the next week extracting the flavor and heat, and I'm really curious to see what that vodka is like in a week when it's time to add it to the beer.

Our plan is to rack the beer into three 1-gallon carboys in order to try three different levels of heat - one with the seedless extract, one with the seedy extract at a normal heat level, and one that is borderline melt-your-mouth for the true hot-heads. That said, I'm a bit worried about our ability to get the spice and heat level just right in the final beers. If we manage to get one batch out of the three that's squarely between "way too mild" and "undrinkably spicy," then I'll consider it a success.

---> [ Carolina Reaper IPA Racking ]

Die Bier, Die Tasting

This weekend we opened the first bottles of our oktoberfest and we're happy to say that our first lager is a success! This time for the tasting we did a blind taste test comparing our beer to Ayinger Oktoberfest-Marzen. It was amazing how similar they were. They were virtually the same color. The head in particular was almost identical - starting out pretty tall with very dense bubbles and eventually dissipating to just a little bit of lacing on top. Even the mouthfeel was pretty similar.

They did have noticeably (though not drastically) different flavors. The Ayinger has a little bit of an almost fruitiness to it, which I had previously thought was just a characteristic of its maltiness. The Ayinger was also a touch more bitter than our home brew.

Two of the three of us doing the tasting did prefer the Ayinger and also correctly identified which one was the home brew. Still, the fact that it wasn't blindingly (excuse the pun) obvious from the first sip, and that one of us even preferred the home brew over the Ayinger, I consider a huge success.

I could still detect a hint of acetaldehyde which may just mean the beer needs another month or two of conditioning time. I'm not sure if there's anything we're doing wrong in our process that keeps giving us this flavor, or if we just need to be brewing with enough lead time that the beer can condition for longer in the bottle before we start drinking it.

And as for the name, it's German for "The Beer, The" and is a reference to Sideshow Bob in the Simpsons episode "Cape Feare." But you already knew that.  ;-)

[ Oktoberfest Bottling ] <---

Doppelbock Brew Day

Today we brewed our second lager - a doppelbock we're hoping to have ready in time for Christmas. Amy found the recipe in a recent issue of Zymurgy and she's been wanting to brew a doppelbock since all the way back in our Flying Barrel brew-on-premises days.

As with the oktoberfest, Annapolis Home Brew didn't have our primary choice for yeast. Instead of rolling with an alternative, this time we went to Maryland Home Brew to pick up a vial of White Labs WLP833 German Bock Lager yeast. As it turns out - I actually should have bought two. Lager ideal pitch rates are a lot higher than ales, and with this being a big lager (target starting gravity of 1.096), we would have needed a 2.5L starter to get the 443B cells we wanted. With only a 2L Erlenmeyer flask and one vial of yeast, we had to boost the starter gravity to 1.046 to have the calculations point to the right number of yeast from the starter. The small starter also led to me accidentally letting the starter boil over, despite using fermcap. We're definitely planning to get a 5L Erlenmeyer flask for next time.

For whatever reason, the starter didn't attenuate as much as it should have. It only reached a final gravity of 1.025 when I would have expected it to reach something more like 1.013. Unfortunately, we don't know whether this was a problem with the yeast or something we did with the starter. It could have been something as simple as not giving it enough time or not having the stir plate set up correctly. Since we were brewing on a Sunday morning too, we couldn't just go to the home brew store and pick up a fresh vial of the same strain of yeast. We decided to just roll with the yeast from the starter, but we're going to be closely monitoring the primary fermentation to make sure the yeast is doing okay.

During the brew day, we encountered a few minor issues but nothing serious. The volume of water after the mash was only about 4.8G instead of 5, indicating there was more grain absorption than BeerSmith had calculated. We also ended up only at 1.086 original gravity instead - not sure if there was an issue with the efficiency of the mash or if it was just down to differences in the ingredients compared to BeerSmith's numbers.

Despite those issues though, we're still excited to have finally brewed a doppelbock. Eight hours after brew day and happily we already have good krausen and the airlock is bubbling. Plus with our first lager seeming to turn out well so far, we're very optimistic for another delicious beer!

Oktoberfest Bottling

Thursday night we bottled our Ayinger Oktoberfest clone and, although obviously not carbonated yet, so far it's tasting great!

It's been nearly eight weeks since we racked it to the secondary and it feels like forever since we've done any kind of brewing. The biggest pain with bottling this time was that we had to re-wash all of our brewing equipment because the basement where it was being stored has been undergoing some major construction.

After looking over our previous few brews we decided to go with 150g of DME for the carbonation. That's higher than the 100-120g we used for the Belgian quad, black IPA, and breakfast stout, but less than the 168g we used for the saison. Hopefully we struck a good balance and got the right level of carbonation for the style.

The DME we used is also pretty old, so hopefully we don't run into any problems with the yeast fully processing it. The other possible problem I'm worried about is a general lack of yeast for carbonation since it's been ten weeks since we brewed. Everything I've read seems to indicate that there should still be enough yeast still in suspension in the beer that it shouldn't be a problem though.

It'll be in the bottle for just over four weeks when Oktoberfest starts. I'm anxious to crack open that first bottle in four weeks to see how well it carbonated and how the final product tastes.

[ Oktoberfest Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ Die Bier, Die Tasting ]

Oktoberfest Brew Day

Almost a month ago now, on June 12th, we brewed our first lager! We used an Ayinger Oktoberfest-Marzen recipe from the Clone Brews book. The home brew store didn't have the preferred yeast (Wyeast Munich Lager if I remember right) so instead we used the recipe's "second choice" of Wyeast Oktoberfest. Who knows what the flavor difference will be, but maybe it'll be interesting having a little bit of a departure from the exact book recipe.

As far as the brew day goes it was basically the same as any ale we've done. Since I did all the tweaking with BeerSmith settings it did seem like the temperatures and measurements went better this time - particularly the strike temp / mash temp that we had problems with last time. The worst part of the brew day was that we started it at 8pm, so we didn't actually get completely finished until 2 in the morning.

One challenge that's new with the lager is that this is our first time actually using the chest freezer to keep the beer cold. Previously we've been using a space heater to keep it at about 69 or 70, but for the lager yeast we wanted fermentation to happen in the low 50s. Even with the temperature differential (the difference between the turn-on point and the turn-off point) of the temperature controller set to only 1 degree, the freezer would kick on, stay one for a bit, and then even after it shut off the temperature would continue to drop several degrees past the shut-off point. I put a small fan in the freezer to help air circulation and that seems to have helped a little bit. Plus, as Amy pointed out, even if the air temperature is fluctuating as much as five degrees when the freezer kicks on, that doesn't mean the actual 3 gallons of beer in there is changing temperature that much.

We waited two weeks to rack the beer, which all went smoothly. The beer seemed to taste good, although it clearly needed more time to develop. It also reached the target final gravity so that was a great sign that fermentation went well and we were ready to start lagering.

After racking we dropped the set point on the temperature controller one degree each day until the beer was down in the low 40s. Now our beer is officially lagering! The plan is to let it sit for five weeks, bottle, and then let it bottle condition for another five. If all goes well, we'll be tasting on September 19th - the official start of Oktoberfest in Germany!

---> [ Oktoberfest Bottling ]

Early Starter Tasting

Our much-anticipated (for me, anyway) Founders Breakfast Stout clone is finally ready to drink and I'm really happy with the results. This was our first beer using a yeast starter, our first beer using temperature control all the way through fermentation, and a fun beer to brew since it involved chocolate and local coffee from Ceremony Coffee Roasters. The beer smelled amazing all the way through the brew process so I've been really looking forward to tasting it.

There's tons of coffee flavor. There's some chocolate too but not a ton. I could see adding more chocolate if we brew this again. It also could use a little bit more carbonation. We only used 100g of DME for carbonation in this brew compared to 119g for the black IPA and 152g for the saison.

The first bottle I tried seemed to lack a little bit of mouthfeel, but for the second bottle I tried swirling the yeast in the bottom and pouring it into the glass rather than into the drain and it seems to improve the body a little. I'm so used to leaving the last little bit of yeast in the bottle with home brews but maybe that's not always the best idea.

I've been getting a lot of flack for noticing (imagining?) off flavors in a bunch of our home brews, but with this beer I really don't find any. It's a strongly flavored beer so they'd be easy to hide, but hopefully it's a good sign for our current brew process with the yeast starter and temperature control.

The name of the beer is partly a reference to the fact that this was our first beer using a yeast starter. It's also because so many coffee beers are named around the idea of starting your day with a beer. After all, as the saying goes, you can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning!

[ Founders Breakfast Stout Brew Day ] <---

Une Autre, SVP! Tasting

This week we tried our saison for the first time and we're thrilled with the results. The beer has a nice citrusy lemony flavor and a great flavor contribution from the French saison yeast. I think as Spring rolls into Summer this will be an excellent warm-weather beer - just like a saison should be!

While this is technically our second beer where we used a yeast starter, it's the first one we're tasting as the breakfast stout still has a few days to go before it's ready. Honestly it's a bit hard to say what the flavor improvement might have been compared to pitching a yeast pack directly into the beer. With a beer this light too, the difference in yeast count between the smack pack and the starter probably wasn't that high anyway. Still, it would be a lot of fun to do a comparison test at some point where we split a batch of wort and use a starter in one and a smack pack in the other.

The other new thing we did with this beer was use fermentation control all the way from the start of fermentation. There is a ton of (mis)information on the internet in the home brew community about the right way to control fermentation temperature. The core of the confusion comes down to the "ideal temperature" for the yeast mixed with the fact that a wort at the height of fermentation can be as much as 10F degrees higher than ambient. So if my saison yeast likes 71F, do I set my temperature-controlled room at 71F ambient and let the beer naturally rise above that during early fermentation? Or do I try to control the ambient temperature in a way that keeps the wort temperature closer to 71F?

I talked with the owner of my local home brew store about this, and he said to just set the ambient at the desired temperature for the yeast (71F in this case) and then don't worry about the wort temperature. The issue with trying to use something like a thermowell (putting the temp controller sensor inside the wort itself) to control the ambient temperature is that by the time you've heated the air around the wort enough to get 3+ gallons of wort up to temperature, the air temperature can be well over 100F. Then just because you're turning the heat source off, you still have super-hot air that ends up causing the wort to overshoot the desired temperature.

If we were using a heat source such as an electric wrap around the fermentation vessel, where it turns off all heat completely as soon as the wort reaches temperature, then it might be a different answer. With our setup though, we went with just setting the temperature at 71F and left it there for the whole fermentation, even if it meant that the actual wort temperature was rising above that during some of fermentation.

Again it's hard to really say specifically what this particular beer would have tasted like without temperature control, or with a cooler ambient temperature during the height of fermentation (more experiments ideas!), but the fact that we used temperature control and the yeast starter this time with tasty results is a great sign that, at the very least, we don't seem to be screwing anything up. Hopefully I don't eat those words in a day or two when we try the breakfast stout. :-)

One thing I noted in the brew day post for this beer was that we came in 4 points shy of our 1.050 original gravity target. Conveniently our final gravity also ended up 4 points low of the recipe (finishing at 1.004) so we still ended up right at our target of 5.5% ABV. Apparently the issues we had with the strike temperature didn't hurt us too much.

As for the name - it's mostly just a reference to the French saison yeast we used, but also sort of borrows from a funny little interaction with a waiter in Paris when we were there for our honeymoon. Amy was trying to order another of the same beer (Une autre de la meme chose) but butchered the phrase. The waiter just smiled at us and happily brought her beer. Just one of many cases of the Parisians being so much nicer than their reputation. :-)

[ Saison Brew Day ] <---

The Quad Of My Dreams Tasting

After 3+ months of waiting, our Belgian quad is finally ready to drink - mostly. In the last few weeks we've opened about a half dozen bottles and been about 50/50 on whether they're carbonated. I'm not sure what's causing the inconsistent carbonation with the bottles. Maybe we just tried opening them too soon and in the last week or so they're finally starting to be more reliably carbonated. It'll be interesting to see going forward if any of the rest of the bottles are also not carbonated.

The first one we opened was definitely not carbonated, and an uncarbonated beer has a significantly sweeter taste due to the unfermented sugars, in addition to obviously being flat. Amy's assessment of that first tasting was "This is not the quad of my dreams."

Since then though, the bottles that have been carbonated have actually turned out pretty well. The beer absolutely tastes like a quad, and finished up just over 10% ABV. Initially I was worried that some of the sweetness or alcohol sharpness that I first tasted in our quad were off flavors, but after tasting other quads since then I've realized that those are just normal properties of the style. This has been one of the unexpected side-effects of making our own beer - that tasting the different flavors of a beer we make in a particular style makes me more aware of different flavors present in that style even in commercial beers.

As of this writing, we have our saison in the fridge ready to be tasted for the first time and our breakfast stout only a week away from being ready. They're our first beers with starters and with start-to-finish temperature control, so I'm really excited to see how they turn out. Stay tuned!

[ Westvleteren Abt 12 Brew Day ] <---

Saison Brew Day

I'm falling behind on blogging, but a couple weeks ago now (March 28th), we brewed our lightest-colored beer ever - a saison! We were looking for some variety from all the dark beers we've brewed, plus with the weather getting better we wanted a nice lighter flavored refreshing beer. There aren't a ton of great Spring seasonal beer styles, but Amy and I both love saisons and found a good recipe online.

This was our second attempt at using a yeast starter. It was much smaller this time, despite the same batch size, because the saison is so much lower gravity than the breakfast stout. We used Fermcap this time and there was no foaming over while boiling the starter!

The biggest problem with the brew day this time was the mash temperature. We used the auto-calculated strike temperature in BeerSmith of 160F, but ended up with the initial mash temperature of about 157F instead of down around 149F. I had to mix in some ice to the mash to get it down to temperature. The biggest concern with the temperature being too high is that it would result in a lower-attenuating wort. The recipe calls for a starting gravity of 1.040 and a final gravity of 1.008 for an ABV of about 5.5%. The low final gravity is from a highly attenuating wort. If the mash is too hot then the wort won't get to as low of a final gravity, resulting in a lower-alcohol (and potentially sweeter?) beer. Our starting gravity ended up at 1.036 instead of 1.040 too, so that will also contribute to a possibly lower alcohol. We'll have to wait and see what gravity we reach after fermentation to see how much of a problem the temperature was.

After the brew day, I spent some time adjusting the numbers in BeerSmith to hopefully calibrate it better to what we're seeing in reality. I changed the grain absorption rate slightly to match the water we're losing during the mash so that we're better at hitting our pre-boil wort volume. I also changed our brewhouse efficiency so that we should get closer to our intended starting gravity. The third thing I changed was the mash tun temperature, which was listed as 71F originally. Since we're doing BIAB, the "strike" water is actually in the pot getting warm along with the pot itself, so it's not getting poured into a mash tun and losing temperature from the cool mash tun itself. By making BeerSmith think the mash tun temperature was actually around 155F, it looks like it'll give us a more accurate strike temperature, so that after we pour the room-temperature grains in we're at the target mash temperature. I'm looking forward to brewing our next beer and seeing if the number adjustments help us get closer to the targets in the recipe.

---> [ Une Autre, SVP! Tasting ]

If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Crap

Back in mid-January we cracked open the Oatmeal Stout we brewed with Craig and got our first taste of the finished product. The regular stout is a tiny bit on the sweet side, but does have a little bit of roasty malt character. The bourbon-oaked version seems to have lost all the real "bourbon" flavor that it had when we bottled and only the oak and some vanilla remain. The result is a beer that tastes more like a really oaky chardonnay than a roasty (let alone bourbon-flavored) stout. Still, both beers are totally drinkable and hopefully Craig had fun being involved in the brewing process.

The name was all Craig's idea and I absolutely love it. It's based on a quote from the Simpsons episode "Burns, Baby Burns." Our non-bourbon version is "If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Crap," with the bourbon version being "If This Is Too Good For You I've Got Some Bourbon Barrel Aged Crap." Super-long names for sure, but every time I see them on untappd I smile.

[ Oatmeal Stout Bottling ] <---

Founders Breakfast Stout Brew Day

This weekend we brewed a clone of one of my all time favorite beers: Founders Breakfast Stout. We found the recipe from another home brewer here. The brew day went smoothly and smelled fantastic. The combination of chocolate, coffee, and dark malts were just intoxicating.

One of the big changes for this brew was our first use of a yeast starter. After reading all about yeast and pitch counts recently, it seemed like the obvious next step for our brewing. I used the Brewer's Friend Yeast Pitch Rate and Yeast Starter Calculator to determine the starting viability of the yeast based on its age, the desired number of cells based on batch size and gravity, and the size starter we would need to reach the right pitch count.

The big lesson learned coming from the starter was that we absolutely need Fermcap-S to inhibit the foaming while boiling the starter. As soon as the wort would start boiling in the Erlenmeyer flask, it would foam up like crazy, get foam up into the foam stopper, and have wort seeping over the sides and onto the stove.

Other than the foaming issue, everything else with the starter seemed to go well. We had it on a StirStarter stir plate for 48 hours in our temp-controlled freezer at 72 degrees, then refrigerated for 12 hours to drop the yeast to the bottom.

On the morning of brew day, we went to Ceremony Coffee Roasters in Annapolis to pick up fresh local coffee beans for our brew. We also picked up all the ingredients from Annapolis Home Brew that morning. We started the mash as soon as we got home, but it made for a bit of a hectic brew day because we were trying to do all of our recipe adjustments and measurements at the same time as the brewing itself.

When the boil was finished and the wort was cool, we ran into a minor issue moving the beer to the fermentor. There was so much ground coffee in the wort that it was clogging up the siphon and messing up the seal. Luckily it was only with a few cups left to be transferred, so we managed to force the siphon the rest of the way to get the desired batch size into the primary fermentor.

In addition to the our first time using a yeast starter, it was also our first time using our new clear Big Mouth Bubbler for primary fermentation, as well as our first time using the temperature controlled freezer for primary fermentation. Through some combination of the starter and the warmer temp in the freezer, it seemed like there was very little lag for this brew. By 11pm the night of brew day it was already foamy and bubbling away in the airlock.

We're planning to go two weeks in the primary fermentor, then rack to a secondary and put more coffee into the beer. That'll go for two more weeks before bottling, and around May 1st we should be tasting. If the smells from brew day were any indicator, this is going to be one fantastic beer!

---> [ Early Starter Tasting ]

409 Tasting

This weekend we tasted all three versions of our "6x dry hopped" Black IPA. We accidentally put three times as much hops in each secondary for dry hopping, and for twice as long as the recipe called for. From the moment we realized the mistake, I've been worried that the beer would end up as just undrinkable hop juice.

As it turned out, the beer was quite tasty! The hop presence was certainly strong, but not undrinkable by any stretch. Of the three, the Sorachi version was my favorite. The Galaxy was lighter in flavor and crisper. The Cascade surprised me. I expected the flavor to be harsher but it had some interesting complexity and was really pretty good. Behind all those hop flavors was a nice dark malt base that made for good Black IPA flavors in all three.

Even beyond the specific hop and dark malt flavors though, the actual quality of the beer seemed really good. There were no off flavors I could detect. This was our first beer using our new temperature controller, and also our first beer using dry malt extract for carbonating rather than corn sugar. Of the two, I would imagine the steady fermentation temperature had the bigger effect. Regardless, it's exciting to see some improvement in our beer quality given all the changes we've made to our process and equipment since that first batch.

As for the name - if you're a Penn State fan it requires no explanation, but for the rest of you, we brewed this beer in mid January just after the news came out that Penn State's 112 wins from 1998 to 2011 were being restored, bringing Joe Paterno's total back to 409 - the most for any coach in NCAA Div 1 Football history. For all the players involved in those wins, and for all the devoted fans of the University and of Paterno himself, the reinstatement of the wins represents a tiny victory in the face of the vilification that has taken place over the last three years.

[ Black IPA Racking ] <---

Black IPA Racking

Tonight we racked our Black IPA and did the dry hopping for the secondary fermentation. We had a three gallon batch and decided to rack into three separate one-gallon carboys so that we could try different varieties of hops. Normally I don't bother with a blog post because racking is usually smooth and uneventful. Though not our most epic racking disaster, tonight still had enough twists to warrant the post.

When we took the lid off the primary fermenter, the krausen still hadn't fallen in the beer, so that was a little concerning. Ideally we would wait for the krausen to fall before racking, but with the plastic bucket there's no way to know without opening the lid and risking contamination. I think we're going to get a clear plastic fermenter so that in future brews we can see what's going on during primary fermentation. I don't know why the krausen still hadn't fallen after a week - maybe it was too cold in the room we had so the fermentation was slow. The gravity was down to 1.021. Ideally it would still drop a few points, but it is up to 8% ABV so at least that part is good.

We're using Cascade, Sorachi Ace, and Galaxy for our three hops. Since the three hops have different levels of alpha acid, I adjusted the amount of hops added to each carboy to balance them out. The goal is for each beer to have roughly the same level of hop aroma and flavor from the dry hopping. The alpha acid numbers are used to adjust bitterness levels when using hops during the boil. I'm not actually sure it will translate to the levels of aroma and flavor from the dry hopping, but that's all I could think of.

The original recipe called for 21.8g for each hop addition during the boil, then 21.8g of Cascade for the dry hopping. Based on the different alpha acid levels, 21.8g of Cascade translated to 13.1g of Sorachi Ace or 10.5g of Galaxy hops, which were the amounts we used. The only catch - those numbers were for the whole batch! I should have divided by three, giving 7.3g of Cascade, 4.4g of Sorachi Ace, and 3.5g of Galaxy in their respective carboys.

Not only did we use three times as much hops for the dry hopping as we were supposed to, I also forgot that we were supposed to do the dry hopping a week before bottling, not right at the start of racking to the secondary. I even have it on my calendar to do the dry hopping next Tuesday then bottle the following Tuesday.

I'm not sure what to do next to avoid totally overpowering the beer with the hops, since now we have three times as much hops sitting on the beer for twice as long as it was supposed to. Maybe we can rack the beer off of those hops in a week, or just go ahead and bottle in a week and give it longer in the bottle to continue the conditioning process. Or we can leave the hops in there for the next two weeks and possibly create some seriously face-slapping hoppy beer.

[ Black IPA Brew Day ] <--- | ---> [ 409 Tasting ]

Black IPA Brew Day

Today Desert Penguin ventured into a type of beer I never thought we'd brew - an IPA! To change it up and make it not all about the hops, we decided on a black IPA. It's the brew recommended for January by our new 2015 home brew calendar. We also wanted the ability to experiment with some flavors and see if we could come up with something different and interesting. The black IPA recipe we're using requires some dry hopping during secondary fermentation. We picked up a new 1 gallon carboy and we're going to do a different dry hop in each of 3 different carboys. Hopefully each gallon will have different qualities given the different hops that we chose.

Brew day went very smoothly again. We headed to Annapolis home brew in the morning and got all the supplies. They were out of some of the grains we were hoping to get, but Paul saved the day with some quick rework of the recipe. The combined grains weighed about 10 lbs.

We started brewing at 4:30 pm and were all finished at 8:30 pm. This recipe is another all grain brew using brew in a bag. The new pot and brew bag worked perfectly again. We started off with 5.7 gallons of water and we brought it up to the strike temp of 159. When the water was at the ideal temp, we added the brew bag and grains. About 5 min after we started the mash, we remembered to add the pH stabilizer to help improve the efficiency. It was a 90 min mash. After the mash finished, we pulled out the bag of grains and let it drain in the strainer while bringing the wort to a boil. We were just a little shy of the ideal amount of water after the mash. We added about 2 cups of water strained through the grains.

It was a 60 min boil and we added hops at 5 different points. At the start of the boil, we added summit hops. The summit hops had a really nice smell. With 15 min left, we added chinook hops; then at 10 min left, we added centennial hops; with 5 min left, cascade hops went in; and finally more centennial hops went in at the end of the boil.

With the outside temp keeping the incoming water very cold, it only took 12 min to cool the wort to 70 degrees. We racked the wort to the primary fermentation bucket, pitched the yeast, and took it downstairs to begin the alcohol making process.

The efficiency of this batch was slightly higher (66%) than our previous BIAB brew (60%), so it resulted in a higher gravity than expected. Not a bad thing in my book. :) The goal is to hit 8.16% ABV, but it might come in slightly higher. Another very fun and successful all grain brew in a bag experience!

---> [ Black IPA Racking ]

2014 Year in Review

The last six months have been a lot of fun for Amy and me, as we got back into home brewing after a very long hiatus. We brewed seven beers in 2014:

• El Jefe: 1 gal of hefeweizen that was extract-only
• Black Mo: 3 gal of Tumbler clone, which was our first use of specialty grains
• Bug Juice: 2 gal (which later turned into 1 gallon) of dunkelweizen
• Pumqueen: 2 gal of Pumking clone, which was our first all grain attempt
• Christmas Miracle 2014: 3 gal of Christmas beer with dried cherries, vanilla, and cinnamon
• 2 gal of oatmeal stout, with bourbon-soaked oak used in half the batch
• 3 gal of Belgian strong dark ale, our second all-grain brew

One of the fun things brewing this year was that we got to involve some of our family as well. We brewed the dunkel with Amy's Uncle Harold and the oatmeal stout with Paul's brother Craig. We also managed to get our finished beers (and sometimes our not-so-finished beers) into the hands of family and friends so that more people could share in the tasting. Amy and I are both looking forward to brewing more beers with family and friends in 2015.

Another fun thing about brewing this year was how much we're learning. It seems like there's a wealth of information out there, and it's so much fun to soak it all up - not just to apply to our brewing but also as beer lovers in general. I know so much more about brewing and beer now compared to six months ago.

The process of tweaking the brew setup with each beer has also been a lot of fun. The BeerSmith software has so many calibration options, and with each brew we get more information about how to set the numbers to get each beer closer to the desired result from the recipe. There's also a DIY aspect of home brewing that's really cool, with each person's home brew setup being slightly different. We started out with a pretty minimal setup, but have gradually worked our way up to a great set of home brew equipment for stove-top brewing up to 3-gallon all-grain batches.

As of the start of 2015, here is our current brewing equipment:

• Brew Day:
• 8-gallon MegaPot 1.2
• 5-gallon kettle
• BIAB bag from bagbrewer.com
• 5.2 mash pH stabilizer
• thermometer
• long stirring spoons
• 12" strainer
• scale (up to 11 lbs with 1g resolution)
• 2nd scale (up to 1.3 lbs with 0.1g resolution)
• irish moss
• copper immersion wort chiller
• sanitizer, bucket, and spray bottle
• auto-siphon
• hydrometer and test tube
• refractometer
• aerating stirrer
• Fermentation:
• 6.5 gallon bucket with lid
• 3-piece airlocks
• stoppers
• two 1-gallon glass carboys
• one 3-gallon glass carboy
• 5 cu. ft. chest freezer
• Johnson A419 temperature controller
• lasko personal space heater
• Bottling:
• bottle capper
• bottle washer
• bottle drying tree
• bottling bucket with valve
• spring tip bottle filler
• 12oz bottles
• 22oz bottles
• bottle caps

Here's to a fun half-year of brewing in 2014 and looking ahead to a great 2015 filled with more delicious beer!