What's Brewing: November 2018

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anteater1

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I've got my 3rd BCBS clone boiling away right now. 36 lbs of grain, 2 mashes, 5 hour boil and a mondo starter for 5 gal. I'm going to try something new with oak this time. I charred the same amount of cubes I'd normally used and have been soaking them in bourbon for the past few months. I'll ditch the bourbon and age on the cubes for 9 or 12 months. Made a lot of sense to me after reading this article.
 
About to pull the plug on my low ABV kveik adventures. I keep getting really bad attenuation with beers under 4% even with elevated heat and nutrients. Brewed a mildish beer on the 27th and it was at 60% yesterday. It basically went from 1032 to 1013 in 24 hours and has just stuck. I've shaken the fermentor a few times to get the yeast back into suspension since they flock so hard. But still no luck. I'll test it again this weekend and see.

3 Gallons
3.5lbs Marris Otter, 1lbs C40, 2oz Chocolate
1oz German Hersbrucker 45 mins (thought I had fuggles but I was out)
1oz German Hersbrucker 15 mins
A little bit of Cascade at flameout (maybe .25oz)

Yeast Bay Voss pitched at @ 100*f
 
I've got my 3rd BCBS clone boiling away right now. 36 lbs of grain, 2 mashes, 5 hour boil and a mondo starter for 5 gal. I'm going to try something new with oak this time. I charred the same amount of cubes I'd normally used and have been soaking them in bourbon for the past few months. I'll ditch the bourbon and age on the cubes for 9 or 12 months. Made a lot of sense to me after reading this article.
I really liked that guys blog. I haven’t looked at in a while but he gave me a lot of my early IPA recipes. Did you do two first runnings mash or did you sparge both as normal?
 
I really liked that guys blog. I haven’t looked at in a while but he gave me a lot of my early IPA recipes. Did you do two first runnings mash or did you sparge both as normal?

I treated it like two normal mashes for the most part except for sparging a bit less the second time. I start my boil after the first mash, top off the kettle with the second mash, and boil a few gallons of first runnings down to half their volume separately on my kitchen stove. Went from 11 or 12 gallons down to 6.
 
Took a sick day and brewed a mixed fermented saison to enjoy in the spring.
5 lbs pils
1 lb Munich 10
0.5 lb Rye
1.75 lbs Flaked Red Wheat

Hit that sucker with around 18ibus of Crystal and plan on drying hopping with more crystal before bottling.

Also transferred another mixed fermented saison onto 10lbs of peaches and another onto 2.5oz of hibiscus and three vanilla beans.
 
I've got my 3rd BCBS clone boiling away right now. 36 lbs of grain, 2 mashes, 5 hour boil and a mondo starter for 5 gal. I'm going to try something new with oak this time. I charred the same amount of cubes I'd normally used and have been soaking them in bourbon for the past few months. I'll ditch the bourbon and age on the cubes for 9 or 12 months. Made a lot of sense to me after reading this article.
Side note: that guy's Pliny clone is very good stuff.

Looks like I'm late with my holiday rauchbier, won't be ready until January... oh well. Gonna be brewing a few table beers as well so that they can condition by Christmas/new year's. One is an Allagash White-ish grist with saison yeast and JK dregs, the other is based on Petit Prince (aiming for 3%).
 
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No November brew day yet for me but I’m hoping Friday may be the day.

I plan to brew a buckwheat saison and pitch a culture from stepped up dregs of a single bottle of Allagash Belfius I opened in May.

This will be the second 5 gallon batch on this culture. The first batch is in secondary- pulled a sample the other day and it seems to be doing quite well so I want to keep it going.
 
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I was going to brew a cream ale for my first batch since February/inaugural batch in New home. Turns out completely changing your process is harder than expected. I had been doing traditional three tier, but was inspired by MadFermentationist to switch to this. Learned a lot and while I didn't end up with a cream ale (gravity came in low), I do have a lot of starter wort for my LAB/ Brett cultures. Hoping to take what I learned and do an IPA tomorrow.
 
I brewed a really simple English pale right at the end of last month. I'm going to keg that this week and use the cake to ferment my first shot at a raw ale. The keptinis approach of making a dark beer out of baking a mash of light grain is really interesting so I'm going to try that out. I plan to have that in the keg by Thanksgiving alongside the pale ale.
 
Up early today for a chilly (but hopefully dry) double brew day. Both 5 gal batches will get Belfius slurry.

7# floor malted Pilsner
1.75# Spelt malt
1.25# Rye malt
1oz aged Ahtanum @60 mins (<1 AAU)

7# floor malted Pilsner
1.75# Buckwheat malt
1.25# Wheat malt
1oz aged Hallertauer @60 mins (<1 AAU)
What is Belfius yeast?
 
What is Belfius yeast?

Stepped up mixed culture from a bottle of Allagash Belfius. Bière de Coupage style blend of their coolship beer and their saison.

View attachment 2050 View attachment 2051 No November brew day yet for me but I’m hoping Friday may be the day.

I plan to brew a buckwheat saison and pitch a culture from stepped up dregs of a single bottle of Allagash Belfius I opened in May.

This will be the second 5 gallon batch on this culture. The first batch is in secondary- pulled a sample the other day and it seems to be doing quite well so I want to keep it going.
 
Brewed a keptinis-inspired beer today following fairly closely the instructions from Larsblog which left me with a seven hour brew day (despite not allocating time to boiling beer) and some very dirty cake pans.

I was successful in turning 100% pilsner malt into what looks and tastes like something in between a brown ale and a porter.
 
Brewing 10 gallons of my standard mixed ferm saison wort tomorrow, but fermenting 5 with the Mad Fermentationist Blend from bootleg at ambient, and then the other in the fermentation chamber with 34/70 because why not?

OG: 1.051
IBU: 15

65% Pils
25% Flaked Wheat
8% Flaked Oats
2% Acid Malt

Saaz at 60
Splash of Citra at FO

Seems counterintuitive to have so much flaked stuff in a pale lager and it could be a little disjointed mouthfeel-wise, but I’m bored and definitely am not tied to making anything “to style” so ZFG :p. Thoughts on how this might turn out?

Will probably dry hop the lagered portion with Saphir or something as well.
 
Brewing 10 gallons of my standard mixed ferm saison wort tomorrow, but fermenting 5 with the Mad Fermentationist Blend from bootleg at ambient, and then the other in the fermentation chamber with 34/70 because why not?

OG: 1.051
IBU: 15

65% Pils
25% Flaked Wheat
8% Flaked Oats
2% Acid Malt

Saaz at 60
Splash of Citra at FO

Seems counterintuitive to have so much flaked stuff in a pale lager and it could be a little disjointed mouthfeel-wise, but I’m bored and definitely am not tied to making anything “to style” so ZFG :p. Thoughts on how this might turn out?

Will probably dry hop the lagered portion with Saphir or something as well.
My attempts are eerily similar except sub the flaked wheat for malted. Keep us posted.
 
Racked 5 gallons of farmhouse ale with hornindal kveik + rose buds/elderflower/lemon zest into the keg.
Split the other half to secondary on pinot noir tilquin/A&G/Lamnivus/mamouche dregs.

I missed my OG by 8 points, guess I didn't crush the white wheat good enough :-/

Can't wait to try these terps on the sour batch when it's finished.
 
Beer is hanging out in the kettle cooling over night right now. 60% pils, 30% wheat, 10% oats with a red cedar infusion for mash and sparge water. Boiled for 2.5 hours, Saaz and Magnum at 60, more Saaz at 0.

Plan is to rack the beer tomorrow morning. I’ll let it have a couple days head start then I’m pitching my dried yeast blend and saison strains with Brett. I hopped the **** out of it hoping to keep the LAB at bay. I’d like to blend this with an older sour beer.
 
Beer is hanging out in the kettle cooling over night right now. 60% pils, 30% wheat, 10% oats with a red cedar infusion for mash and sparge water. Boiled for 2.5 hours, Saaz and Magnum at 60, more Saaz at 0.

Plan is to rack the beer tomorrow morning. I’ll let it have a couple days head start then I’m pitching my dried yeast blend and saison strains with Brett. I hopped the **** out of it hoping to keep the LAB at bay. I’d like to blend this with an older sour beer.
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Beer is hanging out in the kettle cooling over night right now. 60% pils, 30% wheat, 10% oats with a red cedar infusion for mash and sparge water. Boiled for 2.5 hours, Saaz and Magnum at 60, more Saaz at 0.

Plan is to rack the beer tomorrow morning. I’ll let it have a couple days head start then I’m pitching my dried yeast blend and saison strains with Brett. I hopped the **** out of it hoping to keep the LAB at bay. I’d like to blend this with an older sour beer.



Added about a gram of dried yeast last night. Going crazy now.
 
I see mainiacal is releasing dried kveik soon. I'm stoked. Can't wait for the framgarden/stordal strain.

Kveik is also super easy to dry at home. Just top crop and put a fan on it. It will dry super dark. Stuff kicks off in about an hour in 100*f wort. 1 gram per 5 gallons
 
Harvesting yeast for the last brew of November. Aiming for 2.5-3% so hopefully it will be done so I can chug a ton for new year's.

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Beer ended up at 5.5 Plato so I'm expecting around 2.3-2.5%. Added Belle Saison yeast as well and it's currently ripping away at room temp (77 degrees) and smelling great. Hope I can bottle soon so I can drink half the batch young and condition the rest for a while.
 
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