Melon Hops

I haven't brewed in a while and I need to get back to it.  That said, I've got some melon hops I want to try, given that they're described as imparting melon and strawberry.  This time, however, I'm going to try a couple of different things.  First off, I'm reducing the boil time, and as such also reducing the amount of water I add to the brew kettle to get things going.  Second, I'm going to try a bit more aggressive to the hopping, using a hop stand.  Actually, this second part really isn't new, as its very similar to what I did with the Summer hops, and boy did that ever turn out good!

Brew Day: 16 Sept 2016

Partial Mash:
14 oz 2-row
2 oz CaraPils

Boil (20 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME
4 oz table sugar

Hops:
7 g HBC-438 (AA: 15.7%, @ 20 min; bittering)
1.5 oz Huell Melon hops (AA: 4.5%, 10 min "hop stand"/steep, @ flameout)
14 g Huell Melon (dry hop)

Yeast: Safale US-05 + 1/2 vial Clarity Firm

*I followed all of my usual processes for partial mashing, cooling the wort, and pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 28 Sept: Dry hopped the beer today with 14 g Huell Melon hops.  Will bottle on Fri.

Addendum, 30 Sept: Bottled today with 1 oz of table sugar dissolved in 1/2 c. boiling water.  Got 9 good bottles and 1 generous partial fill.  I'm really looking forward to trying this one in a couple of weeks.

Addendum, 14 Oct: Tried my first one tonight...very good.  Pours with a full, pillowy head, lots of lacing (think Bell's Two-hearted).  Fruit in the nose, and fruit with maybe a very tiny bit of pine or cedar on the tongue; this will likely dissipate with time.  None of the harsh bitterness typical of commercial American IPAs, but a very fruit-forward flavor.

As a side note, when I went to get one of the bottles to chill, I noticed that one of his 'brothers' had exploded.  This was my first bottle burst, and thankfully when I started home brewing almost 2 yrs ago, I got one of those storage tubs from Target and I keep the bottles in that while they're conditioning, just in case this sort of thing would happen.

More Sah'Tea

My second attempt at a Sah'Tea clone turned our pretty good, and I thought I do some minor tweaks and try it again.  My wife has really gotten into the ginger saison (she really likes that one!), and I have a hefeweizen and big Belgian that will be ready soon.

Interestingly, I used Clarity Firm with the Belgian, which makes it GR, or gluten-reduced.  So far, there doesn't seem to have been any effect on the flavor of the beer when I've used the Clarity Firm.

Brew Day: 11 Aug 2016

Partial Mash:
10 oz Munich malt
6 oz rye
2 oz flaked wheat

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME
4 oz table sugar (@ 60 min)
7 g German Hallertau (AA: 3.1%) (@ 60 min)

12 g crushed juniper berries + 2 black tea bags (@ 10 min)

Yeast: Safale K-97, 1/2 vial Clarity Firm

*I followed all of my usual procedures for partial mashing, as well as cooling the wort and pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 13 Aug: Fermentation is going really well; so well, I had to swap out the blow-off bottle for a clean one this morning.

Summer Hops IPA

Jillian down at Jay's Brewing home brew supply recently got a stock of Summer hops in, and set 2 oz aside for me, for which I am greatly appreciative.  She'd done some research (BeerMumbo says "apricot and melon profile") and landed upon this hop in particular, and I'm really looking forward to trying this in a fruit-forward IPA.

Something that's a bit different in the way I'm using hops is the hop schedule.  I'm not trying to get an overpoweringly bitter beer, as much as I'm trying to coax aroma and flavor out of the hops.  For example, Old Busthead Brewing recently posted to Facebook regarding an "ExtraExtra Ordinary Double Dry-hopped Double IPA in honor of our 2nd Anniversary."  The DIPA has 2 dry hops, as well as two hot hop additions (kettle, whirlpool), and comes out at 2 IBU.  I can't even begin to imagine how the Simcoe and Citra hops taste in the beer!

I'll be very interested to see how this one turns out.

Brew Day: 19 July 2016

Partial Mash:
1 lb Pilsen Malt
1.5 oz flaked wheat

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME
4 oz table sugar

Hop Schedule:
14 g Summer hops  (FWH)
1 oz Summer hops (flameout, steep)

Yeast: Safale US-05, 1/2 tube Clarity Firm

*I followed all of my usual procedures for partial mashing, cooling the wort, and pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 31 July; Dry hopped early this morning, with 14 g Summer hops.

Addendum, 8 Aug: Bottled tonight, with 1 oz of table sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup of boiling water.  I got 9 good bottles out of it.  Everything was cleaned up and put away quickly.  I'm looking forward to trying this one around the end of Aug.

Addendum, 24 Aug: Tried my first one of these tonight.  Wow.  The beer poured with a nice white, pillowy head, and there was a good bit of lacing throughout.  The beer was clear and straw colored, and the first sip was full of sweet fruit flavor, without the harsh, cloying bitterness usually associated with IPAs.  I really enjoyed this beer, and I'm definitely going to continue using the hopping schedule.

Addendum, 1 Nov: I recently found out that my daughter has taken a liking to IPAs, so I invited her over to the house last night to try one of these IPAs, have some dinner, and help pass out candy.  She said that she really liked the IPA and that it tasted "fruity".  I thought that was pretty good because (a) it was what I was shooting for, and (b) I hadn't told her anything about what to expect from the beer.

El Hefe

Most of my hefeweizens, particularly the ones using WLP380, have turned our pretty well, and given that it's summer, what better time for a nice refreshing wheat beer?  This one should be ready to drink right about mid-August.

Brew Day: 9 Jul 2016

Partial Mash:
12 oz red wheat malt
1.5 oz flaked wheat

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME
7 g Glacier hops (AA: 5%) (@ 60 min)

Yeast: WLP380

*I followed my usual procedures for partial mashing, cooling the wort, and pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 10 Jul: I checked in the two fermenters I've got going; the hefe is about 16 hrs since I pitched the yeast.  Everything is moving along nicely.

Addendum, 25 Jul: Bottled tonight, priming with 1 oz table sugar.  Got 9 good bottles.

Mead

Okay, I'm going to something a little different...I'm going to publish the recipe before I actually "brew" the mead.  I'm doing this so that I can share the recipe with someone.

As I was reading through Sacred Healing Herbal Beers (which I can NOT put down...), and got really interested in mead.  I reached to a good buddy of mine, and he said that he really likes mead.  I thought I'd try it...I'll have to find some at the local beverage store...but I thought that since I've already made cider (a couple of times) that mixing up a batch or two of mead would be pretty interesting.  Also, it's gluten-free, so folks who can't drink beer (at least, not without Clarity Firm added) can at least have options.

Something else to consider (from the book) is the inclusion of heather in the mead.  Fortunately, I found heather tips on Amazon...

1 gal recipes
Storm The Castle - recommends 2 lb honey for a dry mead, more for a sweeter mead
Storm The Castle #2 - this is the fastest, easiest, cheapest mead recipe
Pixie's Pocket -
Instructables Strawberry Mead
Savannah Bee Company Recipe - recommends 2 lb honey, champagne yeast, no mention of nutrients

The Storm The Castle site is great for a lot of information on making mead, including (but not limited to) the secret art of mead making.

Not a 1 gal recipe, but BeerSmith has a pretty good description of how to make mead, along with using a staggered approach to adding nutrients.  The recommendation is to add 1 tsp of Go-Ferm to 1 tsp of Fermaid-K, and then split it into 4 equal portions.  Add one when pitching the yeast, and the others added at 24, 48, and 72 hrs, respectively, by adding the nutrient mixture to a small amount of honey and water, and then adding it to the fermenter.  Recommended fermentation time is a minimum of 2 months, which is similar to the artisanal mead recipe over at Northern Brewer.

Here's Bray's One Month Mead recipe, in both 1 and 5 gal batches.

Some of the recipes I've read that just use yeast (and maybe a bit of nutrient) take up to a year to ferment.  Those the use nutrient and energizer take less time...two months, or in the case of Bray's recipe, half that.  I'm okay with letting the experiment go for a bit, as I'd like to get a nice result.

Yeasts
Meadist
GotMead

"Brew" Day: 11 July 2016

Ingredients:
3 lb honey - locally sourced (Hall's Honey Farm)
2 oz dried heather tips
Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast
Fermaid-K/Go-Ferm
Extra honey

Heat 1/2 gal of water to 150 deg F, add heather tips (in muslin bag), allow to stand covered for several hours. Bring to a boil, remove muslin bag.  Allow to cool to around 150 deg F, dissolve honey into liquid, then pour into fermenter.  Add 1/4 t. each of Fermaid-K and Go-Ferm, pitch yeast, and add enough lukewarm water to fill the fermenter to just below the "1 gallon" line.  Place a cap on the fermenter, add sanitized blow-off tube and bottle.

Nutrient addition schedule: at 24, 48, and 72 hrs, dissolve 1/4 t. each of Fermaid-K and Go-Ferm in a small amount of warmed water and some honey, add this to the fermenter and shake slightly.  Likely the best way to go about doing this is to boil some water in a measuring cup (the boiling will sanitize the cup), and then pour out all but enough water to dissolve the nutrients and a small amount of honey.  Reduce the temperature (ice bath) to 75 - 80 deg F before adding to the fermenter.

After 3 - 4 weeks, rack the mead to a clean fermenter, add an airlock and let sit for at least another 8 weeks before bottling.

Addendum, 12 July: I looked in on the fermenter this morning, a bit more than 12 hrs after pitching the yeast (actually, it's closer to 14 hrs).  I've never worked with this yeast, nor with honey before, so this will be interesting.  The mead is fermenting much like cider...some good activity, but not a great deal of krausen.  I'll be doing my first addition of nutrient and energizer this evening.

Addendum, 14 July: Added the last addition of nutrient and energizer this evening.  Everything seems to be going very well; there are a steady stream of bubbles coming from the blow-off tube.

Addendum, 31 July: Transferred to a clean fermenter this morning; I had my sanitizer and racking rig out this morning because I was dry hopping another beer, so I figured that I would just go ahead and rack the mead to a clean fermenter.  Now, it just sits for a couple of months...

Addendum, 21 Oct: Bottled today, with 1 oz of wild honey dissolved in a bit of warm water.  I didn't

need to sanitize the honey, but I did heat up some water to make it easier to pour into the fermenter.  I got 2 large (22 oz) bottles and 6 good 12 oz bottles out of it.  I also got a little bit more (see the image to the right) to try.  Now, it's been fermenting for a bit more than 3 months, and I had added the nutrient and energizer additions early on.  As such, it had a wine-like (wine-ish) scent, but I also detected some of the same notes as you get when you smell wild honey.  Of course, it's nowhere as thick as honey, and even as someone who doesn't drink wine, this actually turned out pretty well, I think.  My wife tried it, and at first she thought it was my sour beer (which she'd just asked me about...), and she liked it (she's the wine drinker in the family).  The mead has a slight while not overpowering sweetness to it, and I noticed that the alcohol warmth lingered on the back of my throat for a bit.  I've never had mead before, so I have nothing on which to base this or use as a standard, but I enjoyed the initial sample. I'm looking forward to seeing what the yeast remnants do with the priming honey over the next month or so.

Belgian Beauty

My wife really...read that, REALLY...likes the last Belgian I made, and has even taken to calling it the "Belgian Beauty".  As such, I need to make it again; this time, I'm going make a big beer, very high gravity, a "Big Belgian Beauty".

Brew Day: 7 July 2016

Partial Mash:
16 oz Munich
1.5 oz flaked wheat

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME (@ 60 min)
8 oz corn sugar (@ 60 min)
7 g Glacier (AA: 5%) hops (@ 60 min)

Yeast: T-58, 1/2 vial Clarity Firm

*I followed all of my usual processes for partial mashing, as well as cooling the wort and pitching the yeast/Clarity Firm.

Addendum: I checked in on the fermenter about an hour after I put it in it's special place, and there are already bubbles rising in the fermenter, as well as slow stream of bubbles coming out of the blow-off tube.  The picture to the right is four hours after pitching the yeast; the blow-off tube has material in it, and the blow-off bottle is clearly been collecting material, as well.  That T-58 yeast is nothing to mess with!

Addendum, 8 July: Checked on the fermenter this morning, had to replace the blow-off bottle as well as the paper towels beneath the bottle.  Things appear to be going very well at this point.

Addendum, 26 July: Bottled tonight, priming with 1 oz table sugar.  Got 9 good bottles.

Book Review: Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers

Okay, I'm going to do something a little different; rather than a recipe, I'm going to write a review of a fascinating book I just finished reading.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when I was at the supermarket and picked up a copy of "American Survival Guide" on the magazine stand because it had an article on healing wounds with sugar.  After watching The Equalizer and The Shooter, I thought, wait, how do you use honey or sugar to help heal wounds?  On page 112 of the magazine was an article titled, "Brewing - A Survival Skill?" that talked about how, during times of social chaos and hardship, some folks have turned to brewing in order to have something to barter with.  The article even provides a pretty simple recipe that you can make at home, using mugwort and lemons.  In the article, Buhner's book was referenced as the "bible" for wild brewing.  I thought, okay, I have a B&N gift card that's gathering dust, so I got online and purchased the book.

Once the book arrived, I could hardly put it down.  My educational background is in engineering (BSEE, MSEE), and my first career was in the military.  However, what I read completely fascinated me, and drew me in.

I consider myself to be a critical thinker (or at least tending in that direction...), and for as long as I can remember, I've not been one to follow the crowd.  In fact, the larger the crowd, the more likely I am to find my own path.  One the things I really appreciated about Buhner's book was places where he pointed out fallacies in Western thought; specifically, when it came to why indigenous people drank fermented beverages.  I think that the error of Western thinking, due to cultural ignorance and more than a little arrogance, in many ways parallels what I have seen over the past decade or so in my "day job".  In particular, a cyber attack may be attributed to someone of a different culture (Chinese, Russian, etc.) and someone will make assumptions as to why the attacker did something.  Like I said, I found a lot of parallels, and value, in the statements Stephen made.

I didn't start drinking until later in life.  I spent four years at a military college, and only really drank one time besides my 21st birthday, and in both instances, in accordance with the culture, it was about getting drunk and little else.  I spent eight years on active duty in the military and really didn't drink much during that time, either.  It wasn't until I was 36 that my wife introduced me to social drinking, and to be honest, I really wasn't interested in drinking to get a buzz.  I quickly became intensely interested in much more than just drinking beer, and started making it (but honestly, we all see that in other areas, as well).  In the short time that I've been home brewing, I've found it fascinating how many "purists" know very little about craft brewing, and I've encountered a lot of folks who speak with authority on topics for which they are just wrong.  Stephen's book really shows how ignorant someone is who thinks that pure beer brewing starts and ends with the mass-produced, commercial beers.  Stephen illustrates in very easy to read language how fermented beverages not only sustained the people who made and drank them, but also sustained their culture.

Something else I really liked about the book was the first appendix, which presented four heretical rules of brewing, as well as a number of heresies.  Stephen's comments were spot on...while I had a great teacher who initially got me started by sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm, I tend to believe that his assistance was required, as I had run into a lot of the "suck the joy out of the experience" kind of instruction early on.  Stephen's comments echoed a lot of my own experiences, and more than anything else, really laid bare a lot of what many new to home brewing may initially see as "the right way" to do things.  While there are somethings that are necessary, as Stephen points out, if it all falls apart, you've got some good fertilizer on hand.

Stephen's book isn't just about the history or "why"...he also presents a number of recipes for other types of fermented beverages, and provides a great deal of the "why" behind the beverage itself.  Some of the things I found fascinating included how the medicinal essence of a plant was conveyed or even enhanced through the fermentation process.  Vitamins and minerals provided by various plants would sustain those who drank them by providing the resources their bodies needed to fend off diseases; hence, when religious groups brought the idea of temperance to isolated cultures, those who stopped drinking the beverages fell victim to diseases.  Stephen provided a number of interesting recipes for everything from mead to nettle or dandelion beer.

Like I said, I was continually fascinated by what I read, and could hardly put the book down at any given moment.  I quite literally had to ration my reading...I knew that if I had 15 or 20 minutes to sneak some reading in in order to shift gears and give my brain a break, I could not pick up Stephen's book because the 15 minutes could quickly become over an hour.

Thanks, Stephen, for your great work, and for sharing it with the rest of us!

Gose

Not long ago, I'd stopped by Jay's Brewing to pick up some items, and shortly after I got home, found an email in my inbox from the folks at Jay's, with a recipe for a gose (pronounced "GOES-uh").  The recipe didn't specify a volume, but based on the ingredients, I assume that it would be about 5 gal.  The recipe is as follows:

3 lbs. Pilsen DME
3 lbs. Wheat DME
2 lbs. Acid. Malt (20min @ 156°)
1 oz.  Tradition(60 min.)
.5 oz.  Tradition(10 min.)
.75 oz. Sea salt (10 min.)
.50 oz. Ground Coriander (10 min.)
Yeast - WLP029

Okay, looks simple enough.  I have no idea how it'll come out, but that's the joy of home brewing, isn't it?

Pg 148 of Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing has a similar recipe for a gose.  As far as goses go, I like Anderson Valley's Blood Orange Gose.  Also, I visited Crooked Run Brewing on 21 May, and had the simply wonderful La Resaca, which is a 0 IBU gose.

During the course of my research, I found a couple of other, similar recipes:
Breakin' the Law Gose
Salty Gose the Margarita
SourBrew Blog - uses kettle souring
BYO Recipe

During my "other" research, I've tried some really good goses, a couple from Anderson Valley, specifically the Blood Orange and Briney Melon goses.

So, here's my first attempt at a gose...

Brew Day: 8 June 2016

Partial Mash:
8 oz white wheat malt
8 oz acid malt

I followed my usual partial mash process.

Boil (60 min):
13 oz Pilsen DME (@ 60 min)
4 g Hallertau (@ 60 min)
4 g sea salt (@ 10 min)
3 g ground Coriander (@ 10 min)

Yeast: Safale US-05, 1/2 bottle of Clarity Firm

I cooled the wort and pitched the yeast using my usual process.  I did notice that the resulting wort was very light in color...I think that minus the acid malt, replacing with Vienna, and adding some flaked wheat might make a really good Belgian wit recipe.

Addendum, 23 Jun: Bottled today with 1 oz of priming sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup of boiling water; got 9 good bottles out of it.  Tried a bit of the beer that was left after filling the bottles - was a little sweet and not even a hint of sour, but that might be due to the priming sugar.  We'll see how this turns out in a couple of weeks; I may give something like the NB Dawson's Kriek (uses WYeast 3278) a try if the acid malt doesn't really do much; either that or try WLP655, which my favorite home brew supply place has in stock.

Addendum, 12 Jul: Tried one of these tonight.  Light yellow color, very clear, pours with a full, persistent head.  No discernible aroma, not the slightest sour or tart taste, although there is a very mild sense that there is something there.  Came out as a clear wit beer.  Not bad, very light and refreshing...but not a gose at all.

Page 181 of The Homebrewer's Recipe Guide has an inset called "Full Wort Souring".  This inset describes how to sour the wort, simply by letting it set for 12 - 24 hrs.

Cider

A bit ago, I made a cider for my daughter's college graduation.  I'm not a cider drinker, and not really even a fan, so when I tried the partial fill that I had from the bottling, I didn't really think much of it.  However, not too much later, she tried one, and really seemed to like it.  I thought I'd try it again, this time with some small tweaks here and there.

Brew Day: 2 Jun 2016

Ingredients:
4 qts Harris Teeter brand Gravenstein apple juice
12 oz frozen apple juice concentrate
3 oz brown sugar

Yeast: SafCider

The previous cider I'd done had a good aroma of apples when opened, but the resulting cider was pretty dry, due to the yeast.  As such, I figured that I might want to start with something a bit sweeter this time.  For this cider, I followed a similar process as the previous cider; however, this time, I started with a 12 oz can of apple juice concentrate.  The ingredients list says "apple juice, absorbic acid", and that's it.  Because it's frozen, I don't need to pasteurize it, but I figured that raising the temperature a bit would make things more amenable for the yeast, and allow me to dissolve the brown sugar a bit easier.

So, I put the contents of the apple juice concentrate and some of the juice from the bottle into a sauce pan and raised it up to 160 deg F, and dissolved 3 oz brown sugar in the warm juice.

The previous cider had a bit of sediment from the juice, and my daughter was a little ooged out by it.  This time, I tried filtering the juice through a coffee filter (cupped in a strainer) as I poured it into the fermenter.

I'm going to dry hop this one with some Jarrylo (which I used last time) and a bit of Amarillo, just to see how the flavor comes out.

Addendum, 5 Jun: Checked in on the fermenters this morning during my usual rounds; there are three fermenters in the bathtub at the moment.  The cider is still bubbling away really well, about 3 bubbles per second, which makes a nice rhythm with the ginger saison, which is bubbling at about 1 bubble per second.  Clearly, it still has a while to go before dry hopping, but so far, so good.

Addendum, 10 Jun: Checked the fermenters this morning as part of m usual rounds.  The other day, I had checked and found that the fermenter cap for the cider had a crack in it, so I replaced the cap, and put the airlock back on.  The airlock cap has been sitting flush with the top of the post since I replaced it, but I know enough now that that is not an indicator of...well...anything.  I put the fermenter on a stable surface and took a close look at it, and I could see very small bubbles still rising in the fermenter.

This is one of the downsides of small batch brewing...equipment failures.  However, I'm familiar enough with what can go wrong (for the most part) and prepared...I keep extra caps available all the time, and check the caps on a regular basis.  Fortunately, these are a low-cost item, so it's not hard to have a few on-hand.

I'll be looking to dry hop the cider early next week, and from there, likely bottle before the end of the week.  That'll put the first taste test around 4 Jul.

Addendum, 13 Jun: Dry hopped today with 10 g Jarrylo + 7 g Amarillo (I had it left over, so why not?).

Addendum, 16 Jun: Bottled today with 1 oz of brown sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup of boiling water.  I got 8 regular beer bottles and one repurposed soda bottle out of the batch.  I also tried a bit of what was left in the siphon tube...a little dry, which apparently is a good thing.  We'll see how this batch turns out in comparison to the previous batch.

Addendum, 3 Jul: My daughter tasted the cider tonight...she liked it and initially said that it wasn't as carbonated as she would have thought, but her mind was changed shortly (and loudly).  I poured a little for myself, and took a whiff...slight apple scent from the glass.  The cider was very dry, with little if any discernible apple flavor.  My daughter said she liked it, and offered up the idea for trying a recipe that let a bit more apple through; as such, I'll need to consider something that's less of a champagne yeast, and go with a wine yeast that will let a bit of the fruit flavor through, or try a dry beer yeast.

Addendum, 8 Jul: I received an email from Northern Brewer this morning that contained a link to a Short Pours blog post on making cider.  In the blog post, there was a really good recommendation to use Red Star Cote de Blanc yeast in order to retain some of the apple character.  I think that's what I'm going to do with the next one...

Ginger Saison, Again

The ginger saison I did a while ago was so good, it's time to do it again...

Brew Day: 1 Jun 2016

Partial Mash:
4 oz Belgian Munich malt
10 oz Vienna malt
1.5 oz flaked wheat

The malt I used was primarily the result of what I had available at the time.  I followed my normal partial mash procedure.

Boil (60 min):
1 lb Pilsen DME (@ 60 min)
7 g Hallertau hops (AA: 3.1%, @ 60 min)
4 oz sugar (@ 60 min)
0.5 oz thinly sliced ginger (@ 10 min)

Yeast: DanStar Belle Saison

I followed my usual procedure for pitching the yeast.

Addendum, 16 Jun: Bottled today, got 9 bottles out of the batch.  Looking forward to trying this around the 4th of July.

Addendum, 7 Jul: My wife tried the beer tonight...definitely loves it, definitely a keeper. Interestingly enough, she really seems to enjoy it more when the beer is closer to room temperature.  I tried a taste when she was close to the bottom of the glass, and as I put my nose into the glass, I caught a whiff of the ginger.  There's no doubt, this one is definitely a keeper!