Home Roast Nestok Amber

So here's a new experiment: an amber ale with only home-toasted grains. Referencing this site on home roasting grains,
I roasted 1 pound of Gold malt, and one 1 pound of Amber malt.  Here's the grain bill:

Home-Roast Nestok Amber Ale
OG: 1.044
FG: We'll see!
 

Fermentables:
-7 lb Pale 2-row
-1 lb Home-toasted Amber
-1 lb Home-toasted Gold
Go here to learn how to toast your own grains


Hops:
-0.5 oz Cascade 7.5% 60 min
-0.5 oz Cascade 7.5% 30 min

Yeast:
Fermentis Safbrew S-33

Others:
-2 g Servomyces yeast nutrient 15 min
-1 tsp Irish Moss 15 min

 We heated 2.5 gallons of strike water to 167F, to achieve a mash temperature of 148F.  Pour in those milled grains!

Stir that stuff up good, break up any clumps.

Then we wrap it with a towel, and mash for an hour.  Enjoy a homebrew at this time, or a good craft beer if you're out at the moment.

On a side note, I've gotta say, I love Cascade hops.  We buy them by the pound!  Very cheap at Brewtensils.

 

60 minutes of mashing, and we ended up a little above 140F.  Then we remove the swollen grain bag,

Pour into a bucket,

And heat 2 gallons of sparge water to 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

We sparged for 20 minutes, then removed the grain bag to a drip bucket, for adding any drippings later in the boil; gotta get all that malty goodness!

Get that sucker boiling, stove on high,

and add the first half ounce of Cascade hops.










 30 minutes into the boil, we added the rest of the Cascade hops, in a muslin bag.

At 45 minutes we added the Servomyces and Irish moss, a fining agent.  Then after the full hour boil, we shut the stove off, made an ice water bath, and cooled.  Remember to whirlpool your wort with a sanitized paddle or spoon when cooling to collect solids in the bottom/middle.

 

Beautiful!  The beer looks great too!

After that we poured the wort eagerly into the fermenter splashing vigorously to aerate.  The yeast love us!  Then we pitched one 11g packet of Safbrew S-33 at 88F

Now it's bubbling happily away, should be a good one!  And super cheap too!

-Myles and Carla

Sour Cherry Crick

Pages: Brewday - Cherry Addition

So I'm undertaking my a big endeavor here; a trifecta of firsts.  We're  doing a sour mash, oak fermented, cherry wheat beer. We're calling it "Crick" because it'll be like imitation Lambic, with sour mash replacing the lacto culture. And of course, when I hear sour mash I think of some good old sour mash KY Bourbon, so there you go: Crick.

Fermentables:
-3bs 2 row Pale malt
-2 lbs Wheat malt
-1 lb Flaked wheat
-3 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME (65% Wheat, 35% Barley)

Hops:
-Tettnang 4.7% 60 min

Yeast:
-Safbrew T-58

Others:
-3 oz American Oak cubes (house toast) in primary
-10 lbs frozen pitted tart cherries during secondary

Day 1: I took 5 oz of the grist (no extract), mashed in 1 quart of water at 150 for 60 minutes

Then I cooled it to 120 and poured it into a thermos, filling it almost to the brim. I threw in a handful of raw malt, and sealed tightly.



Day 2: I opened the container, pH was about 5, and temperature was 80. So then I boiled a couple cups of water in a tea kettle and set a drip tray under the thermos for spillage. Then I poured in boiling water, mixing with a spoon until the temperature was back to 120. I sealed it tightly, wrapped a towel around the thermos, and set it in a warm place in the closet.

Day 3: Here we go!  Sour mash pH was 3.5.

Time to brew!




We heated 5 gallons of water to a strike temperature of 157 degrees Fahrenheit, rigged it with our trusty strainer bag,

and poured in our 6 pounds of milled grains.  But...oh crap, I miscalculated!

When pouring the grain, I had forgotten to account for space displaced by the grains (one too many homebrews, eh?).  We had a bit of spillover, and boy, what a nasty mess.  Sadly, there were no photo opportunities, because we were both in frantic action.  All I can say today is thank god for baking soda and scrubbies.  In retrospect, we should have mashed with 4 gallons instead of 5, or maybe even less, of course adjusting temperatures accordingly.

So we poured a gallon of the wort into a clean bucket, and held back 3 cups to sour a bit and add during the boil just for the hell of it (actually it was 3 cups over a gallon...double oops).

When all was said and done, though, our mash still landed right at 150F, the projected temperature.  After mashing for 60 minutes, wrapping the pot with a towel, 

and ending at a temperature of 140F, we sparged with 1 gallon of 170F water for 10 minutes.  Then we raised the temperature, adding the hops at 190F,

and brought the wort to a rolling boil for 60 minutes.

30 minutes into the boil we lowered the heat and added the 3 lbs Bavarian Wheat DME, stirring constantly to prevent clumping.  For the first 45 minutes of the boil, I periodically added the quart of sour mash as evaporation occurred.

Then in the final 5 minutes of the boil, we added the American house roast oak cubes, for sanitizing purposes.

We turned the burner off (flame out) at 60 minutes, and let stand 20 minutes before cooling in an ice water bath in the sink.

Once that sucker hit 88F it was on!  We pitched the eager yeasties onto their fresh malt meal, and this morning the airlock was bubbling away.  Golly those things sure are gassy. (heheh)

Uh oh...in an inebriated state, I seemed to have forgotten to take an Original Gravity reading!  Those VD American Ales sure are tasty...

But at 75% Brewhouse efficiency, this beer would have an OG of 1.076 .  We usually hit more around 80% or 90% efficiency, and maybe even higher on this batch, considering the high water/grist ratio.  And with the addition of cherries to secondary fermentation, you can only imagine how monstrous this beer will be.

This is one Crick you don't wanna be caught up without a paddle...

-Myles and Carla

EDIT: OG is more like 1.060, thank you Highlander on Homebrewchatter.com.

Pages: Brewday - Cherry Addition

Engagement/Valentine's Day American Ale

Valentine's Day is my lady's favorite holiday. I planned on popping the question months in advance, and when she suggested we make her favorite holiday coincide with brew day, I was excited. We brewed a basic American Ale, with more grain than we've ever used before (62.3 percent of the fermentables!) I proposed during the cooling period, and she accepted.  Then we went to Elsa's and ate like gluttons and drank Bad Juans (strong but tasty margaritas!) Here's the recipe, followed by a pictorial tutorial:


UPDATE 3/8/10:
Bottling time!  We bottled this last night, so the Final Gravity and bottling pictures are below.  And it meets BJCP guidelines for American Pale Ale!  Success!

VD American Ale

Original Gravity: 1.062
Final Gravity: 1.015
ABV: 6.17%

Fermentables
5 lbs US Pale 2 row Malt
1 lb US Victory Malt
0.25 lb US Carapils Malt
3.3 lbs Briess Golden Light Liquid Malt Extract
0.5 lb generic honey

Hops
US Cascade 7.5 % 1.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops 60 Min From End
US Cascade 7.5 % 1.00 oz Loose Pellet Hops 10 Min From End


Yeast
Safale US-05

Others
1 tsp Irish Moss at 15 Min From End

Left to right: 3.3 lbs Golden Light Liquid Malt Extract, 2 oz Cascade pellet hops, grains milled at brew shop (5 lbs Pale Malt, 1 lb Victory Malt, .25 lbs Carapils Malt), dry yeast, Irish Moss, Iodophor (sanitizer), honey

First we used 2 clips to secure our super large straining bag, partially rolled up, into our 22 quart kettle.




We heated 2.5 gallons of water in the giant pot on our tiny stove until it reached 164 degrees Fahrenheit, then shut off the power. This is called the strike temperature because...


...it's that temperature before the grains strike! We heated to 164, calculating that with our grains at the kitchen's ambient temperature (65 degrees), we would get a 152-153 degree mash.

After pouring all our grains in the bag and stirring to break up any clumps, we took a temperature reading, and were right on the money with 153 degrees Fahrenheit. So we put a lid on it, wrapped a towel around it (all to maintain the heat for the full 60 minute mash), and drank a homebrew!

Of course, I had her pose in front of the kettle with the mash paddle first.

This was some of our first 2.5 gallon batch from after Christmas (thanks for the carboy Sandy!), a Dry Stout. It's thick and roasty, with a strong bitterness reminiscent of burnt coffee. With an ABV of 4.1%, it's a good beer to drink when a strong taste is desired, but the day is still young.

After the 60 minute mash we had to remove the grains to pour the first runnings into a bucket. I lifted out the swollen grain sack, and put it in this severely undersized drip-catcher,

poured the wort into a bucket,

and started heating another 2.5 gallons of water in the pot for the sparge. Once the water was around 180 degrees, I transferred the grain bag into the water to extract as much remaining sugar as we could from the grains.

As we waited on the water to work its magic I weighed out the honey.

After about 10 minutes, I removed the grain bag, and set it back in our tiny pot for one last drip session before meeting the garbage disposal.





In later calculations, I found our process this session to be 85% efficient! Next we poured the first runnings back into the kettle and cranked the heat up to get that sucker boiling. We also added the first ounce of boiling hops.


At this time we stir like hell to prevent the hot break (coagulating proteins) from boiling over. We did a good job on this one, it was probably our cleanest brew to date. Towards the 45 minute mark we added our honey and liquid malt extract. We did this late in the boil to prevent carmelization.













We added the second ounce of hops, in a muslin grain bag, 10 minutes before the end of the boil. Then we turned the heat off, filled the sink with ice, and set the kettle in it's cooling bath.

She went to shower so I dressed up real purdy. When she came out I took a knee, and asked that woman to marry me. She said yes and my systolic pressure dropped 20 points. Don't worry though, the greasy goodness of Elsa's made up for it! Here I am taking the hops bags out:

heheh

And here she is with her necklace and ring! Isn't she pretty?

Another happy homebrewing couple! We're going to try to have only our own beer at the wedding reception...fitting, isn't it?

-Myles Nestok


Oh yeah, and of course, after cooling (and 3 plates of food and 2 Bad Juans!) we poured into the fermentor, pitched the dry yeast, and fit with an airlock. Cheers!


Bottling time:

 

Isn't that beautiful beer?

Just grab...

And go!

Look at all that beer...

And if you're thinking of popping the question yourself, accompanied by a gorgeous bouquet,  check out the coupons here.  20% off is no joke!