The Longbrew Project

Pale Ale (again)

2012-01-15T12:04:00.005-07:00

Making this recipe again. Its not, as this badly-kept-up-to-date blog would imply, the first beer I've made since the last batch, but I don't remember what-all the others were. We _did_ however, just finish drinking the last batch, because I had a few things cellaring at once, so it got a good 9 months worth of keg aging. Don't know whether it was the aging or the recipe, but it was darn nice, so I'm making more.

Sort of. Didn't get a SG reading last time, so I can't match that. Nor did I write down AA ratings on the hops, and they were out of Centennial so I'm using Chinook. We'll see.

11 lbs. 2-row pale malt
0.25 lbs Crystal 20L
0.25 lbs Crystal 90L
1 lb. Munich malt

1 oz. Amarillo Gold (AA 9.3% Beta Acid ? 6.1%) @ 60 mins.
1 oz. Cascade (AA 6.4% Beta Acid ? 5.9%) @ 10 mins.
1 oz. Chinook (AA 11.8 Beta Acid ? 3.0%) @ 10 mins.
1 oz. Cascade (AA 6.4% Beta Acid ? 5.9%) @ 0 mins.
1 oz. Chinook (AA 11.8 Beta Acid ? 3.0%) @ 0 mins.

Initial S.G. 1.040
Final S.G. 1.004

Bookshelves

2011-10-15T15:14:00.006-07:00

Anyone who knows Coz and I will know that we like books. Hell, Anyone who's passed me in the street on the way to work knows I like books. A fact probably much less-known is that I hate bookshelves. I don't hate them for what they do, I hate them for how badly they do it.

Most bookshelves are boxy things that are too deep - so you end up piling the books in in two rows, and can't see the ones in back. Or you just pile miscellaneous crap on the otherwise-wasted front of the shelf. And the shelves are too tall, so you stack them two rows high and then they collapse in a heap whenever you take anything out. And they waste all the space above the unit as a whole, while taking up more space than they need out from the wall. In short, they end up looking like this, which we just moved out of our bedroom:

I've been saying for half a year now that I wanted to just make my own, and last weekend I finally got to it. They're just pine, and they're a bit knotty, though straight. And the finish is a little rough, because I got some sawdust in the urethane. And the wall brackets are unevenly-spaced, because one of the studs was crooked. And I don't care; they're perfect:

They go floor-to-ceiling, and 10 feet across the whole wall. They're 8 inches deep, so they don't eat much of the room, and they alternate between just taller than a paperback, and just taller than a hardback. 100 feet of bookshelf, all for us! Apparently we don't own enough books... yet.

Pale Ale

2011-02-25T18:30:00.003-07:00

A personal recipe from the guy down the brew shop - which kindness I have repaid by losing the bit of paper with his name on it, so I can't even give him credit for it. On this blog that nobody really reads but me when I'm trying to remember a recipe. Which is either consolation or insult to injury - I'm not entirely sure.

Anyways, no final SG for the last one, or any SG for this one, because the hydrometer got broke. I reused the yeast from the previous cream ale on this guy, and it got almost two weeks in the fermenter - partially because I had no hydrometer to tell when it was done, and mostly because I was sick as a dog and didn't want to deal with it. Fermenting was so vigorous that it blew the lid clean off the fermenter at one point, so hopefully it didn't get contaminated. But seriously? When the yeast is going _that_ gangbusters I don't rate the chances of your average bacteria...

11 lbs. 2-row pale malt
0.25 lbs Crystal 20L
0.25 lbs Crystal 90L
1 lb. Munich malt

1 oz. Amarillo Gold @ 60 mins.
1 oz. Cascade @ 10 mins.
1 oz. Centennial @ 10 mins.
1 oz. Cascade @ 0 mins.
1 oz. Centennial @ 0 mins.
---
Just cracked the keg on this one; very nice. Got some hops to it, but not in the rip-the-back-of-your-head-off way that seems to be getting more and more popular with IPAs these days. I mean, don't get me wrong; I love a pint of Arrogant Bastard, but I'm not sure I want nothing but it in the keg in the garage, yes? Give the taste buds a chance to come reeling to their senses every once in awhile...

Anyways, this is a nice brew. Make it again.

Wolf Creek Cream Ale

2011-01-28T22:23:00.005-07:00

Bloody hell; I haven't logged a brew since August? I am getting slack.

I made a whole slew of things. Got far enough ahead of myself to cellar things a bit more, which seemed good to me, but since I almost never do the same thing twice it'd be hard to say how much difference it really made. I did drink through most of the aging stuff without replacing it over Christmas though, so its just as well it was there. I'm thinking I did a red and a scotch ale, among a couple of others, but I may be making that up. One of the side effects of having more things in the cellar is that I can never remember whats what; need to label the kegs. In amongst there I had a chat with the Beer Guys at the brew shop about re-using yeast cultures, and did a couple of batches back-to-back that way. Seemed to work pretty well. Apparently it keeps pretty well, but its harder to go from something really hoppy to something less so (or really, to reuse the yeast at all after really hoppy things) and also harder to go from high alcohol to lower.

Oh and back in July I did a batch of red wine from a kit (they were on sale for half price at the shop.) It was fiddly, but seems to have worked pretty well; I'm drinking the first of it as I write this, and I'm not dead yet (bit bland flavoured though.) Re-used screwcap bottles but dipped them in melted wax to seal them better for aging.

So this weekend I'm doing the first of another double batch, re-using the yeast culture. The weather said to make a lager, but they need more keg time, and I've got a bit behind in the brewing over the hols, so I'm going to do a couple of quick-and-easy's first. This is a cream ale (no actual milk sugars in it though; just the name) from the Homebrewers Outpost Wolf Creek Cream Ale full grain recipe. It has corn in it? Weird. Hope its not too sweet.

5 lbs. 2-row pale malt.
3.5 lbs. 6-row pale malt.
1 lb. Flaked corn (maize).
0.75 lb. Cara-Pils Dextrine malt.
3.5 gallons H20 @ ~180 F.

mashed 1 hour @152 F

sparged @ 168 F to ~6.5 gallons, brought to boil, added:

1 oz. Tettnang (4.8% A.A.) for 1 hour.
0.5 oz. Saaz (3.9% A.A.) for 15 mins.
0.5 oz. Saaz (3.9% A.A.) for 5 mins.

initial S.G. 1.040
pitched yeast packet at ~80 F
---
Just finished this. It was ok, but kinda pale and bland. I did a cream ale as kind of an experiment - not really knowing what one was - so when it turned out kind of pale and bland, I looked them up; apparently, cream ales are kind of pale and bland. Yay, I made it right?

Traquair House Ale clone

2010-08-10T17:36:00.002-07:00

A scottish ale, recipe from a "the best of Brew Your Own" magazine. And I seem to have skipped the last quite a few before the porter before this, but I don't remember doing anything exceptional.

15 lbs. pale UK malt
0.25 lbs. roasted barley
~19 quarts of water @ 163 F

mashed @ 152 F for 1 hour. Drained off 1 gallon and set to rapid boil (to carmellise) for 30 minutes. Sparged the rest with water at 168 F until I had 7 gallons. Began boil. After 30 minutes, added carmellised wort and:

1.5 oz. Kent Goldings (~AA 4%?)

Boiled for another hour and added another:

1.5 oz. Kent Goldings (~AA 4%?)

Cooled, aerated, added an ale yeast. Forgot to get an initial SG again.

Smoked Chili Porter

2010-04-11T09:47:00.004-07:00

Yeah yeah, so I missed blogging a couple of more brews in here. Nothing too interesting. Last couple have come out a bit yeasty-flavoured; I think I'll try racking this one, which I've never bothered with before. I wonder if the beers really are getting yeastier, or if I'm just getting more finicky about my homebrews?

Anyways, I decided to try to mix two of my favorite things: porter, and chipotles. Now I've tasted some pretty bad attempts at chili beers, but they're usually done as lagers with too much chili added. I wanted something more subtle, so I figured why not add smoked jalapenos (which is all that chipotles are, really) to a smoked porter - they should blend in better that way. We'll see.

Started from a clone recipe for Vermont Smoked Porter, as done up for me by the folks down at Homebrewers Outpost, with some substituted hops. Added some coffee and just a bit of chipotle.

8lb 14oz 2-row pale malt.
2lb. smoked malt.
0.5 lb. black patent malt.
0.5 lb. chocolate malt.

Mashed in ~17 quarts of water at 152 F for one hour. Sparged to ~6 gallons with water at 168 F. Added:

1 level tablespoon of chipotle puree (take a can of chipotles, whack it in the blender til its paste, and put it in a jar in the fridge to use in nearly everything.) The amount was just a guess, but about a tablespoon makes a large pot of pasta sauce pleasantly spicy; I figured I had about three times that volume, and I wanted just a hint of spice. Brought to a boil and added:

1 oz Nugget hops (13.0% AA)

Boiled for 60 minutes. Added:

1 oz. Goldings hops (4.5% AA)

Boiled for 5 minutes. (Both of those hops amounts are a bit more than the recipe called for, I note.) Added:

12 shots of fresh espresso (3 lots of our little machine on full.)

Initial S.G 1.040

Oatmeal Stout

2009-12-04T14:35:00.003-07:00

8 lbs. US 2 row
1 lbs. US Boosted (? end of name unreadable)
8 oz. Crystal 60
4 oz. Bulk Patent

1 hour:
1 oz. Fuggle (AA 4.8%)

15 mins:
0.5 oz. Hallertau (AA 3.8%)

5 mins:
0.5 oz. Hallertau (AA 3.8%)

Initial SG 1.042 (? not sure this number on this scrap of paper is from this brew...
Final S.G. 1.014

-----
Beast of a full smoky flavour, but I like it.

An Irish Red?

2009-12-04T14:27:00.002-07:00

Made an Irish Red in here somewhere, which I seem to have forgotten to blog. Not sure what-all went in it at this point, but it ended up with 2 oz. of Hallertau hops (AA 3.8%)

And when I went to tap the smoked porter from the previous batch I seem to have mixed the kegs up, because I'm fairly sure its the red we're drinking now. Which means the red didn't get much more than a couple of weeks aging in the keg, and the porter is getting extra.

Smoked Porter

2009-08-22T14:54:00.005-07:00

Full mash "kit" (Homebrewers Outpost doesn't do a full mash version of this kit, so they whipped me up a recipe to approximate it with a full mash. So it was basicly a kit by the time I got it, but it was custom-made.)

10 lbs. US 2 row
1.5 lbs. German Smoked
0.5 lbs. Chocolate
0.5 lbs. Crystal 60

1 hour:
1 oz. Centennial (AA 8.5%)

15 mins:
1 oz. Golding (AA 4.5%)

Initial SG 1.060
Final S.G. 1.010

1.060 - 1.010 = 0.050
* 105 = 5.25% abw
* 1.25 = 6.6% abv

American IPA

2009-07-22T13:11:00.003-07:00

A full-mash kit. Same process as the previous.
Mashed 16 July.

11.5 US 2-Row
8 oz. Carapils
8 oz. Crystal 40

1 hour:
1 oz. Yakima Magnum (AA 14.4%)
0.5 oz. Centennial (AA 9.7%)

15 mins:
0.5 oz. Cascade (AA 7.5%)

10 mins:
0.5 oz. Cascade (AA 7.5%)

5 mins:
0.5 oz. Centennial (AA 9.7%)

After fermentation slowed:
1 oz. Cascade (AA 7.5%)

Initial S.G 1.044

Ended up doing the cooling by just sealing it in the fermenter and leaving it overnight before pitching the yeast. I'm hoping that the temperature and the cleanliness of my gear means that no contamination crept in overnight...

XXStout - full mash

2009-06-28T17:31:00.008-07:00

I've never done a full mash brew before, though I've been working up to it for a bit, so there was a lot of new here for me. The process is basically the same as for the grain mix in the partial mashes - let the grain sit between 150 - 158 F for an hour, then sparge it with 180 F water to get the wort. The difference is you don't add any malt extracts (or cold water, which gets relevant later) and instead of doing this with a pound or two of grain and a gallon or so of water, you're looking at 14 pounds of grain and 5-6 gallons of water. This is not going to fit in the pasta pot on the stovetop...

On the advice of the guy from the brew shop, I didn't buy their $50 6 gallon brew pot, I went to the hardware store and bought... a deep fryer kit for turkies; I give you, Turkinator II:

Basically its a 7.5 gallon pot and an outdoor gas burner that hooks onto the same tank as our BBQ - all for about $40. I also bought a $25 60 quart eskie from WallMart, and used a combination of the brew-shop guy's advice and this post to convert it to a mash tun with a stainless steel mesh hose (after much back-and-forthing to the hardware shop, and a certain amount of swearing...)

And boy can that Turkinator crank out the BTUs! It took 5 gallons of water from 110 F (43 C) to 190 F (88 C) in about 15 minutes, so I'll need to keep an eye on it when it comes to bringing things to the boil. Cooled the water back to 180 F, poured it in the mash tun with:

13.25 lbs. Pale Malt (2-row)
0.75 lbs. Roasted Barley
0.5 lbs. Black Patent Malt
0.5 lbs Crystal 60L

Left to sit at ~156 F for 1 hour. Sparged with ~5 gallons @ 180 F to 6.5 gallons of wort. Boiled for 1 hour with

1 oz. Yakima Magnum (14.4% AA)

added

0.5 oz. Willamette (4.6% AA)

for the last 5 minutes. Cooled in an ice bath for aaaaaaaaaaages. Hadn't thought this through, but up til now I've been cooling 3 gallons of wort down to 90 - 100 F and then adding cold water - now I'm cooling twice as much wort, and I have to get it all the way down to ~75 F to pitch the yeast. A cooling system may be necessary (or else I'll just dump it in the sterilised fermenter and leave it overnight before pitching the yeast...) Pitched

1 packet Irish Ale yeast

@ ~80 F (a little warm, but the yeast packet seemed to think it'd be all right, and the yeast was busting to go at this point.)

Initial S.G. 1.066
Final S.G. 1.014

1.066 - 1.014 = 0.052
* 105 = 5.5% abw
* 1.25 = 6.8% abv

-----
Took the keg with Laur and I to Volcano for 2 weeks. Carbonated it in the back of the car on the way there, which was a little haphazard so it left it lightly carbonated, which is good in a stout anyways. Set it in the creek to keep it cool. Very nice!
08/22/2009, 03:03:34 PM

It sploded!

Seriously, this thing was bubbling furiously all afternoon, and this evening it suddenly blew the top clean off the fermenter and halfway across the room! (And that lid is hard to get off; I always have trouble doing it by hand...) Now its bubbling so hard that I can't actually put the lid back on, but I figure with that vigorous a yeast culture going in there any invading bacteria is going to have a hard time getting a word in edgewise - I'll re-seal it when it calms down a bit.

Alpine Amber

2009-06-28T17:21:00.004-07:00

Somewhere in here I did another brew and forgot to blog it; the box of packaging has been sitting by the computer for ages. I think it would have been the weekend after the last, which would make it kegged about May 10. This was another run of the Homebrewers Outpost Alpine Amber, which I've done before, but this time as a partial mash kit. Process roughly the same as the last brew, and I completely failed to record SG readings, but the ingredients were:

4 lbs. Briess Golden Light Extract (liquid malt)
1 lb. Pilsen LightExtract (powdered malt)
1 oz. Tradition hops (bittering, 5.8% AA)
1 oz. Centennial hops (finishing, 8.0% AA)
1 vial liquid California Ale yeast
and the bag of mystery cracked grains

-----
Cracked this keg somewhere around the end of June, drank half of it, then left for Volcano for 2 weeks taking the Stout with us. Left this keg in the fridge but with the fridge turned off while I was gone. It was nice before I left, but even nicer by the time I got back - floral, without being sweet.
08/22/2009, 03:01:37 PM

American Brown

2009-04-29T02:17:00.004-07:00

Working with a partial mash kit this time; still has some powdered and liquid malt, but also contains a bag of mixed grains to mash. It was suggested to me by the guys at the brew shop as a way of working my way into full mashes. As such, I'll describe the process a bit:

Break nutrient pack in Wyeast packet (American.)
5 quarts of water in the large brew pot, brought to 168 F.
Add grain in a muslin bag, stir.
After 5 minutes check the temperature is between 145 F and 158 F (~155 F.)
Put the pot in the oven set to 155 F (nice to have a digital temp control on the oven.)
Stir and check temp every 10 minutes for 60 (had to turn off the oven a couple of times to keep the intermittent hot spots from going over 158. Maybe set the temp to 150 next time.)
Heat 2 gallons of water to 180 F.
Bag of grains in a collander over brew pot. Sparge (rince) the grains slowly (cup by cup) with the hot water.
Discard (do not squeeze) the grains.

Now basically make beer as normal:

Add 1 lb. golden light briess dried malt extract.
Bring to vigorous boil.
Add 1 oz Sterling pellet hops (AA 6.0%)
Maintain uncovered for 1 hour total, during which:
After 45 minutes, stop timer, add 1/2 oz. Cascade pellet hops (AA 6.0%), turn off heat, add 4 lbs. Pilsen Extra liquid briess (stirring), return to boil, and restart timer.
After a further 10 minutes, add 1/2 oz. Cascade pellet hops (AA 6.0%).
Cool in ice bath, place in fermenter, top off to 5.25 gallons.
Pitch yeast between 70 F and 80 F (~70 F.)
Shake / rock vigorously for every other minute for 10 minutes.
Insert airlock.

Initial SG 1.056.
Final SG 1.012.
Kegged on May 3 2009.

1.056 - 1.012 = 0.044
* 105 = 4.62% abw
* 1.25 = 5.78% abv

-----
Cracked the keg on or about the 21st of June, after carbonating overnight @ ~ 15 PSI. Nice but somewhat innocuous; its not meant to be uber-hoppy, but it still seems like it could use a bit more oomph. Bit flat.
06/28/2009, 10:50:13 PM

Beartooth Stout

2009-04-10T19:02:00.004-07:00

Beartooth Stout kit.

specialty grains
7 lbs. Briess Dark Malt extract.
2.5 gallons water.

This one got to a boil as well - seems to happen at about 90 C (according to my thermometer, anyways) between the grains and the altitude, so it keeps catching me by surprise...

1.5 oz. Centennial (AA 8.0%) bittering
0.5 oz. Centennial (AA 8.0%) finishing

added yeast at 25 C
initial SG 1.058

Kegged on or about the 18th - forgot to get a final SG reading.

Hard Cider

2009-02-06T17:13:00.005-07:00

Wanted to make a hard cider, in preparation for trying to make some Apple Jack. Started with this recipe:

6 gallons 100% Cider (from Le Targét - Archer Farms)
White Labs Liquid Starter - English Cider Yeast
1 Lemon
0.5 gallons of water with 6 cups of white sugar diluted

with variations stolen from other recipes, or just because they seemed like a good idea at the time, ending up with:

4lbs. Granny Smith apples, cored and pureed (with enough water to get the puree going.)
1 gallon apple cider
2 cups white sugar
2 cups dark brown sugar
1 lb. honey (from the Daulton ranch)
juice of 1 lime

brought to a boil (to sterilize) and maintained for 3 minutes, then cooled to ~100 F in a water bath. Added to sterilized fermenter with ~3 1/4 gallons apple cider (for ~4 1/4 gallons total plus the apple mixture - basically its all that fit in the fermenter while leaving a bit of head space.) Added 1 packet of champagne yeast at ~74 F and stored in the cellar (which is fairly cool atm - ~48 F.) Initial S.G. 1.060.
-----
anti ob
Drier than a dry thing in a dry place with its dry shoes on. I actually kinda like it; everyone else I've tried it on has screwed up their face in a funny way and said "Ewergh!" It is fairly strong, so that bit worked at least.
11/09/2009, 07:29:33 AM

worldpeace and a speedboat
but what did it TASTE like?
11/08/2009, 06:52:44 PM

anti ob
1.060 - 1.000 = 0.060
* 105 = 6.3% abw
* 1.25 = 7.9% abv

VERY roughly doubling the alcohol by volume each time - which rather ludicrously assumes that my freezing scheme is perfectly efficient and throws away no alcohol - would put it at about 15% for the first cut, and 30% for the second. If there's a cheap tester at the brew shop, I may pick one up to test the actual product.
04/04/2009, 02:16:02 AM

still 1.060 after 6 days; added a second packet of yeast after 2.
anti ob | Homepage | 02.12.09 - 5:12 pm | #

Guy at the brew shop says the cellar is way to cold for anything except lagers (which I was worried about, which is why I've been recording temperatures more with these batches) so I've brought it upstairs where it should sit at about 65 F. Odd that the last porter seems to have fermented ok at those temps.
anti ob | Homepage | 02.12.09 - 5:26 pm | #

Racked at 1.000 SG on Feb 19.
anti ob | Homepage | 02.21.09 - 4:46 pm | #

So by the time I'd finished making the cider and aging it a bit, it wasn't cold enough here to freeze outdoors. Last weekend I ran it through the freezer in batches. I'd freeze a gallon of the stuff solid, let it melt til it was about half liquid, then upend it over a funnel with a tea towel in it. Any ice which poured out of the freezing vessel into the funnel I'd pull the liquid out of with a combination of a clean tea towel and one of those salad spinner centrifuge things. The first pass cut the volume roughly in half - down to about 2 3/4 gallons - and I pulled 3 liters of this out to keep and re-froze the remainder to roughly half it again.
anti ob | 04.04.09 - 5:05 am | #

Smoked Porter

2009-01-29T16:58:00.006-07:00

Started with the Homebrewers Outpost Smoked Porter kit:

2.5 gallons water.
8 oz. German Smoked Malt
4 oz. Chocolate

in a mesh bag, heated to boil (just - didn't catch it in time. But at least we're at 7,000 ft where water boils 20 F lower...) Added:

7 lbs. Briess Dark Extract (malt)

stirring, and brought to a rapid boil. Added:
2 oz. Kent Goldings hop pellets (Alpha Acid 4.5%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 60 minutes. Cooled in an ice bath, added cold water to 5 gallons. Added 3 triple shots of fresh espresso with 2 oz. finely grated unsweetened baking chocolate disolved in it. Pitched:

11g Nottingham brewing yeast and put away to ferment.

Starting S.G. 1.052. Pitch temp ~65 F. Ferment temp ~48 F.
-----
kegged at 1.020; aging in the cellar at ~48F
anti ob | Homepage | 02.12.09 - 5:13 pm | #

In trying to sort out the hard cider, I've discovered that these temps are supposedly too low for anything but lagers. Still, the SG drop would seem to indicate that something coped; wonder if it will make the beer sweet or something, by causing the fermentation to stop early?
anti ob | Homepage | 02.12.09 - 5:28 pm | #

1.052 - 1.020 = 0.032
* 105 = 3.36% abw
* 1.25 = 4.2% abv
anti ob | Homepage | 02.12.09 - 5:39 pm | #

Gassed in the fridge for 2 days at ~14 psi. Nice and smoky - can taste the coffee and I think the chocolate as well, but not too overpowering. Carbonation is a bit low.

German Alps Pilsner

2009-01-18T12:47:00.005-07:00

Homebrewers Outpost German Alps Pilsner kit:

2.5 gallons water.
12 oz. Carapils.

in a mesh bag, heated to just before boiling. Added:

6 lbs. Briess Light Extract (malt)

stirring, and brought to a rapid boil. Added:
1 oz. German Northern Brewer hop pellets (Alpha Acid 7.0%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 55 minutes. Added:

2 oz. German Hallertau hop pellets (Alpha Acid 3.9%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 5 minutes. Cooled in an ice bath til the pot was warm to the touch, added cold water to 5 gallons @ ~75F. Pitched:

11g Nottingham brewing yeast and put away to ferment on 1/10/08 at ~48F. Initial S.G. 1.060.

Initial yeast pitch didn't seem to take (is it possible for it to be too _low_ temperature?) so I re-pitched with the packet from a Smoky Porter kit (it looks the same.) This time I followed the instructions on the yeast packet for rehydrating the yeast first (4oz. ~90F water + yeast. Cover with sterile cloth for 15 mins. Add 1oz. wort every 5 minutes until its doubled in volume (to avoid temperature shock), then add to wort.)
-----
Went to check SG on 1/18 but it was still visibly bubbling, so I didn't bother. Given the slow start and the low temp in my cellar atm, this doesn't seem too surprising.
anti ob | Homepage | 01.18.09 - 3:12 pm | #

Kegged on Jan 23, SG 1.020
anti ob | Homepage | 01.23.09 - 1:29 pm | #

1.060 - 1.020 = 0.040
* 105 = 4.2% abw
* 1.25 = 5.25% abv
anti ob | Homepage | 02.12.09 - 5:37 pm | #

After a month in the keg this was nice, but a month after that it was nicer...

Coffee Porter

2009-01-18T12:33:00.003-07:00

Started with the Homebrewers Outpost Robust Porter kit:

2.5 gallons water.
6 oz. Chocolate.
4 oz. Crystal 120.

in a mesh bag, heated to 170F and let to steep (occasionally turning the heat back on to push it back up to 170F) for 10 minutes. Added:

7 lbs. Briess Dark Extract (malt)

stirring, and brought to a rapid boil. Added:
1 oz. UK Challenger hop pellets (Alpha Acid 8.0%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 55 minutes. Added:

1 oz. ?? hop pellets (Alpha Acid ??%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 5 minutes. Cooled in an ice bath to ~100F, added cold water to 5 gallons. Added 4 double shots of fresh espresso (I have read various recipes involving people adding coffee at the end of the boil, but coffee tastes like shite if you let it boil - it boils off lots of the tasty volitiles - so I opted to make decent coffee and add it after cooling.) Pitched:

11g Nottingham brewing yeast and put away to ferment.

Didn't save the S.G readings for this one. Carbonated it at a slightly higher pressure (I believe it was about 14 PSI) and keg aged for about 1 month.

This was a nice beer! Good body, nice head, you could taste the coffee but it was subtle.

Secret Special Recipe

2008-09-04T15:51:00.003-07:00

Just a quick note: the guys at Homebrewers Outpost rock; if anyone reads this who is near Flag, or shopping by mail from anywhere in the states, check em out.

They've given me the magic ingredients list for the mystery bags in their kits, and have kindly given permission to post them here. (I'll go back and add them to the specific recipe posts.)

Daulton Ranch Snowmelt Mead

2008-09-01T15:34:00.003-07:00

I guess if I'm going to keep my brewing recipes on this blog, I might a well add a link to the mead we did back in Febuary. We cracked open a test bottle a couple of weeks ago, and it was not good at all. Smelling it was like smelling two different liquids at once - one was floral and nice, the other was like smelling grain alcohol or petrol or something - not nice. The flavour was almost bitter, with chemically overtones.

However, the guys at the brew shop said it didn't immediately sound off or anything, and that meads often "run a little hot" when theyre young, which they described as a very harsh alcohol flavour. So with that advice, and taking into account the Fine Lemming Wine we did (which started off tasting harshly of sulphur, but ended up quite drinkable, if a bit bland) we've decided to leave it in the cellar for another 6 months, then crack it out and try it again.

-----
anti ob
And tried it again just now (Aug 22). Definitely better, and Coz agrees. Still a bit of a spirits flavour about it (which is odd, because it really shouldn't be that strong) but now it tastes a bit like an over-strong cocktail instead of a glass of slightly watered down meths. So that's got to be a plus, right?

I could drink it as it is, but I might wait a bit more still and crack it out for Christmas. Mead is more of a cold-weather drink to me anyways...
08/22/2009, 03:23:26 PM

[This user is an administrator] anti ob
I did try it again, sometime around the beginning of the year. Its hard to compare tastes across 6 months, but it seemed a little better? Put it back down for some more rest...

Homebrewers Outpost Alpine Amber

2008-08-30T15:17:00.005-07:00

2.5 gallons water.
1 packet Specialty Grains. (I can tell keeping these recipes is going to be a bit pointless if I don't find out whats in these bags, but I reckon the guys at the shop will tell me.)
Edit: 8oz Crystal 90 and 4oz Special Roast

in a mesh bag, heated to 170F and let to steep (occasionally turning the heat back on to push it back up to 170F) for 10 minutes. Added:

7 lbs. Briess Amber Extract (malt)

stirring, and brought to a rapid boil. Added:
1 oz. Perle hop pellets (Alpha Acid 8.2%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 55 minutes. Added:

1 oz. Cascade hop pellets (Alpha Acid 6.3%)

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 5 minutes. Cooled in an ice bath to ~100F, added cold water to 5 gallons @ 82F. Pitched:

11g Nottingham brewing yeast and put away to ferment at ~68F. Initial S.G. 1.052.
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1.018
anti ob | 09.05.08 - 6:36 pm | #

Brew Two

2008-08-16T20:02:00.005-07:00

This is a from a Red Rock Ale kit made by the local brew shop Homebrewers Outpost. Its supposedly a fairly hoppy IPA-like thing, though it looks fairly dark so far.

2.5 gallons water with
1 bag of Specialty Grains (sneaky! They're not telling whats in it...)
Edit: 4oz Chocolate, 4oz Crystal 60, 4oz Special Roast

in a mesh bag, heated to 170F and let to steep (occasionally turning the heat back on to push it back up to 170F) for 20 minutes. Added:

7 lbs. Briess Golden Light Extract

stirring, and brought to a rapid boil.

The brew-pot was making awesome swirly patterns, which it of course refused to repeat once I got the camera out. Still, I could watch these all day.

Added:
1 oz. UK Phoenix hop pellets

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 55 minutes. Added:

1 oz. Cascade hop pellets

in a mesh bag. Rapid boil for 5 minutes. Cooled in an ice bath to ~90F, added cold water to 5 gallons @ 80F. Pitched:

11g Nottingham dry brewing yeast. Agitated for 5m and put away to ferment. Initial S.G. 1.050.

Just put it down today, so I'll update this when I find out what it tastes like...
-----
SG steady at 1.014 after 6 days. Kegged with 1 pint of water and 5 oz. dextrose for carbonation. (I'll gas carbonate too, but I'll wait til the other keg runs out.
anti ob | 08.23.08 - 5:34 pm | #

Fridge died on me when I went to gas carbonate, so I cranked it up to 25 PSI to carbonate at approximately 60 F (in the tomb.) According to the charts this should be a bit more than the last one, which was a little flat.
anti ob | 08.30.08 - 6:31 pm | #

Homebrew Porter

2008-08-16T17:19:00.003-07:00

Yeah, I know. Whats a brewing recipe doing on a site about longbows? Well I could make up something plausible-sounding about years of the SCA inexticably linking beer and archery in my brain, but the truth is I just didn't feel like starting yet another blog, and I wanted to have somewhere to put brewing recipes where they wouldn't get lost. (Like my late lamented Little Black Brewing Book did. *sigh*)

The beer cellar in the new house - room for lots more!

Homebrewing in the US - or at least in Flagstaff AZ - is much less common than it is in Oz, and it seems to work a little differently. Instead of the insert-water-and-wait idiot-proof kits that you can get in any supermarket, they're much more about custom-tailoring the wort as you boil it on the stove. Even the kits seem to come with bags of grain and multiple sets of hops to be added at various pre-set times. (You can get the simpler kits, but even at the brewshop they don't seem to get much mileage.) This is actually kind of handy, because this was the stage of brewing I'd moved on to anyways; I'm not starting from scratch, and I've got a recipe, but I'm still building all the component parts, which lets me tweak things a bit. Also, I've got myself a kegging system here, because I found a used one going cheap, and I hate washing bottles. So without further adieu, allow me to present ny first Mountain View Brew (our new house is on Mtn View Ave):

The keg system - no more bottle washing! Hurrah!

Using a Brewer's Best Robust Porter kit and recipe, but I'll spell it out in case I want to do variations on a theme at some later date.

2 gallons water in the pot with
8oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
4oz. Crushed Chocolate Malt
4oz. Crushed Black Patent Malt

in a mesh bag. Heated to 170 F and steeped 20 minutes. Drained without squeezing. Brought to boil. Added:

6.6 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract

Returned to boil stirring. Added:

1oz. Cluster Hops

kept at a rapid boil for 55 minutes. Added:

1/2oz. Willamette Hops

kept at a rapid boil for 5 minutes. Rapidly cooled (in an ice bath) to 70 F while stirring to collect trub. Siphoned into 6.5 gallon fermenter. Added room temp water to 5 gallons. Pitched 1 packet of Beer Yeast (forgot to note the type.) Initial temperature 70 F, specific gravity 1.050. Yeast activity largely stopped after 5 days, SG steady at 1.020. Siphoned into a sterile 5g keg after 7 days. Attempted to prime for 1 week with 5oz. Priming Sugar, but got very little carbonation. Gassed with CO2 for an additional week at ~ 36-38F (in the beer fridge) and 12 psi.

-----

"Robust Porter" - July 2008 (the first glass, so its a little sedimenty)

The resulting beer isn't quite what I'd call a porter, but it is nice. Its hoppier than a porter - but I like hops, so I'm not really complaining - and doesn't have quite as much body as I'd expect. A dark opaque amber colour, with a fair bit of bitterness. Its also very lightly carbonated - sort of English style. You have to pour it from 6in above the glass to get any kind of a head at all (but it is a proper head - not just bubbles - and it does hold onto it reasonably well.) I'm wondering if the low carbonation has anything to do with the altitude, but then I got the carbonation table from the brew shop here in town, so you'd think they'd have mentioned if it doesn't work here. Whatever. Not a big fan of fizzy beers, but I think I will turn it up a notch for the next batch

Tillering

2008-04-20T17:47:00.003-07:00

Well everything I've ever read about tillering a bow says that its a bit of an art form. That you do a lot of it by look and by feel. However, one of those things I read said that while it _is_ a bit of an art, there's also some maths behind it - an article in something called PrimitiveWays by Dick Baugh. Hurrah! Because I don't know the art, but I can do maths...

Because the Bow Construction FAQ suggested that I add a bit of extra length to the bow when using a somewhat inferior wood like the oak we've got, and because its always easier to take more off than put any back, I've got a bow thats about 78" long. So I had to do a little extrapolation on the tables in the tillering article to get out to 78" - his longest is 72". For 72" and a 40 lb. draw he uses .36, so I extrapolate from the table to .35 for 78" and a 40 lb. draw. To get to a draw of 45 lbs. - my target - you multiply by 40/45, and using a standard weight of a gallon jug full of water (@8.34 lbs.) I get:

0.35 x 40/45 x 8.34 = 2.59 inches.

Great! Except rulers with hundreths of inches on them are hard to come by in my world, so I'll convert to cm: 6.58 cm. And the deflection for the outer half of each limb is supposed to be between 1/4 and 1/3 of the deflection for the full limb, so between 1.65 and 2.19 cm. I've carried out to an extra decimal place while doing the maths, but I'll be lucky to be able to measure accurately to the nearest millimeter, so we'll call it:

Full Limb: 66mm.
Half Limb: 17 - 22mm.

So I bought some sawhorses, and came up with the following rig for taking the measurements:

The bow is held fast on the horse by 2 clamps, with the center of the bow or the midpoint line of the limb exactly on the edge of the horse. Its pushed up to the fence until the end just touches, and I make a mark. Then I add a gallon jug of water to the string and measure the deflection:

We did the outer half of the limb first, and when it was within the target range then we shifted to the halfway mark and measured for the whole limb - taking wood relatively evenly off the belly and sides of the bow, wanting to keep the back as a single ring of wood (as much as we'd managed so far...) We got one limb done, and then it was getting late and my hands were getting sore, so we'll leave the other side for another day.

Catch Up

2008-04-20T17:29:00.003-07:00

So, no updates since the end of last August...

Well part of that is because, like my usual slack self, I've been working on this sort of one weekend a month. And not even that while galavanting around the world the last couple of months, nor the months previous where the backyard was too full of snow to do anything much - fortunately our new place will have a big enough indoor space to use as a workroom in winter. But a big part of that was just that there wasn't much to say; before the snows Jamie and I had a go at it on a semi-regular basis, but we were just doing more rough shaping, so there wasn't much to say. Catch-up time.

So, how to know when the rough shaping was getting close enough to think about tillering? Well one way is to bend the thing a bit, but I'm wary of doing that too soon because I don't want to break anything. And I was also concerned a bit about getting the shape right, as much as I could. So I took measurements from the Bow Construction FAQ and ended up with about 1.25" x 1.25" at the grip (in a distorted oval shape drawn around a cross 5/8" on either side arm, extending 1" below the cross and 1/4" above it), tapering down to about 5/8" wide x 1/2" deep. From these rough estimates, I made up some templates:

The templates are a couple mil bigger than the actual intended final measurements in every direction, so I could slide them over the too-big stick and see where it touched - those were the bits that needed trimming. So we did that back-and-forth for a few sessions until we pretty much fit the templates evenly. And at that point we could bend the stick a bit, so I figured it was time to think about tillering in earnest.

New Links

2007-08-25T14:10:00.000-07:00

Added a couple of new links. Under Related is a link to a very simple hand-made fletching jig of sorts. Really just common sense, but worth reminding myself about. Under Bowmaking is a link to an attempt to take some of the art out of tillering by doing the maths and giving you some measurements to look for. I suspect its no substitute for a real masters depth of experience... but I haven't got that, so I'll take whatever help I can get. *grin*

Rough Shaping

2007-08-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I cheated; I did a bit of work on this a few weeks back, but never got around to writing it up. So this is really two half-afternoons' work.

The first thing I worked out when I looked at my staves and thought about it a bit, is that that nice smooth outer layer from under the bark isn't going to be the back of my bow after all. The problem is that the lighter outer layer of wood is too thick; if I make my bow from the bit right under the bark, I wont be getting any of the heartwood, from which the bow is meant to draw much of its strength. Ah well, it had seemed a bit easy that way. So the first afternoon I had a go at this I did some rough shaping of the skinniest stave with an axe and wedges - basically removing the outer cm or so of rings from the core. But the references I've found say its fairly important to try to have the back of the bow be an unbroken growth ring, and theres only so fiddly you can be with an axe. I didn't have any better tools, so I stopped.

After a couple of weeks waiting for The Tool Guy's stock to come in, I've laid hands on a draw knife and a plane. They even ordered me a spoke shave, after they looked it up to find out what one is - its a bit of an unusual piece of gear these days I think. So Jamie came round this afternoon and we had a go at the next stage of shaping until the thunder and rain arrived and shut us down:

We tried working it both ways: standing on end and lying down. Some bits were easier one way or the other, but it varied. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to finish the rough shaping before it started raining, but we did get the sides fairly well smoothed out, which showed up a couple of the flaws I was looking at earlier:

The one on the left I _think_ doesn't go very far out towards the back of the bow, and its right out near one tip where I need to take off a fair bit of wood for the taper, so I'm hoping I'm going to end up cutting it out completely. The one on the right is about 6-8 inches from the other tip and looks to go right through - I'm just going to have to hope it doesn't weaken it too much. I'll taper less around that bit, at least to start.

Splitting and Peeling

2007-07-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Having had a couple of months to season, I got my lengths of wood out to try to turn them into bowstaves proper.

On the left (if the formatting works, and your screen is wide enough) an end-view of the larger of the two logs. You can see where it has started to crack slightly in the seasoning. Trust me that this didn't make it at all easy to split. I can see why this oak might be appropriate for bows; its _tough_ and it really didn't want to fall apart.

On the right, I have finally got the bastard started, after which it went better, but its still holding on something fierce.

Eventually I got the thing split in 3:

The wider bit on the right _may_ be big enough to split again, but I'm going to see how much I lose in the shaping - we're looking at the wide ends here, and it narrows a bit up the other end. The peeling by contrast was easy; as you can see, once you picked the end of the bark up with a chisel it came off in big clean strips, leaving a smooth outer growth ring exposed. From the sound of it, I should be using this as the back of the bow as intact as possible.

The peeled staves - especially the bottom one - revealed some small knots that may be troublesome. Also, while the angle of the last shot exaggerates it a bit, they're not what you'd call perfectly straight and there was some twist in the split.

Finding a Bowstaff

2007-07-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

Having read a bit more - notably the Bow Construction FAQ I discovered that, of the woods commonly available near Flagstaff, oak, juniper, and cedar might be suitable. Checked with the Forest Service about getting a permit to cut a tree, and they said that cedar here is limited. In the end I went with oak because:
* the oaks here grow very straight.
* its the most common, and I might as well make my first mistakes on common wood.
* there's a stand of them growing in our front yard, which needs thinning anyways. (Hurrah for minimising effort.)

Jamie is leaning against our chosen vitim.

Following the advice from the FAQ, we picked a tree from 4-6 inches in diameter (well, 12-16 inches in circumference, which is easier to measure before you cut it down) and with a fairly constant width. With a little help from Jamie, I cut down the tree and stripped off the branches, and, since I couldn't find any references to whether you seasoned it before or after splitting, put it up in the rafters of the shed. This would have been about the beginning of April. (Since then I have found at least one reference to someone splitting first and then seasoning, but even there it was unclear as to how much of the shaping happened before the staves were put away to season. Hopefully having done it the other way round isn't going to cripple the attempt from the start. We'll see.)

The rope alongside is roughly the length of the finished bow. I cut the staves long so I could work around flaws or knots to a certain extent.

The Mark I

2007-07-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

Brief mention of my very first attempt at bowmaking, back in Febuary. I had read that cedar was a usable wood, and my nephew James was very excited about making a bow when we were up at Volcano, which has a lot of cedar around. Didn't have time to do any more research before we went, so we just had a go.

Not really knowing how big a tree to go for, we picked a cedar sapling that was already downed but resting well above the ground, figuring it might have had a chance to season a bit. It looked solid and bug-free; one of the advantages of cedar. This particular sapling was about the right diameter for a bow already, so I just cut it in half lengthwise to get a D-shape, shaping it with an axe. What I didn't do was make any effort to make the center of the bow thicker, and that combined with a helpful relative demonstrating how it could bend just as well the wrong direction - to the sound of an audible crack - meant that it snapped in half the first time we tried to string it. This was unfortunate, but it brought home to me exactly how much of the stress is naturally right where your hand rests, and the need for a reinforced handgrip.

The Longbow Project

2007-07-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is a record of my project to make a longbow from scratch. Lets be clear here - I have no idea what I'm doing, so look elsewhere for your expert advice. But I wanted a place to keep all of the web resources I've been finding in one place, and if I document the progress then maybe someone can eventually tell me where I went wrong... Plus its just kinda fun. Those who have witnessed my projects in the past will know that this may take some time (remember the barrel thing? I'll go back and finish that one day, I swear...)