I haven't brewed anything in almost a year, since the local homebrew shop shut down. It takes so much more organisation when I can't just pop down of a morning and be brewing some suggestion from the brew shop guy an hour later. But since I was getting organised in advance, I decided to do something I've wanted to do for awhile; make the same beer several times in a row, with minor variations. So with the helpful assistance of Bill, who picked up my supplies on a run down to Prescott, and lent me his mill, we're going to do this a few times.
Grain Bill:
10 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US Grain
2 lbs Rye Malt Grain
1 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 10L
12.0 oz Carafa I
10 oz Special Roast
(Note the Carafa III got converted to the much lighter Carafa I, because that's what they had - though I did get some of another substitute that will be part of the experimentation.)
Never actually milled my own grain before, so that deserves a picture:
With my anemic little 12v battery drill... |
With Mike's industrial strength Torque-mada. I'm sure there's a horribly macho metaphor there, but if you're doing your metaphorical with that much torque, you're doing it wrong. |
60 min .75 oz Warrior [15.4 %]
45 min .25 oz Warrior [15.4 %]
10 min 1.0 oz Cascade [6.4% AA 5.9% BA]
10 min 1 tsp Irish Moss
5 min 1.0 oz Citra [14.1% AA 5.9%]
Initial Gravity: 1.044 (not a great yield for that much grain...)
Wyeast 1065 American Ale pitched at 80F.
Fermentation took a mere 4 days - blowing the lid off once - but was down to 1.002 and quiet so I reckon it was at least mostly done. Transferred to the secondary fermenter on the evening of the 30th, and added:
1.0 oz Cascade [6.4% AA 5.9% BA]
1.0 oz Citra [14.1% AA 5.9%]
in a hops sock.
2 comments:
Cracked this out for the boardgame-fest at Shane's last weekend. Very nice. A bit nutty from the rye. Not overly hopped. Everyone else seemed to approve too; we killed the keg, anyways.
Saved a bit of all 4 batches of this beer, and cracked them out for dinner at Bill and Melanie's tonight - which therefore included a fair number of almost-intimidatingly-skilled brewers (who, I should point out, were in no other way than their skill and depth of knowledge intimidating about it.) This first version was a non-unanimous favorite, and I think I agree. There was a bit of almost sourness to it that didn't taste lactic, and I didn't remember from when it was in the keg, but then that was a fair few months back. Jeff seemed to think that it might be just the rye showing through. Could probably actually use a bit more bittering hops.
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