Beer 3 – Ferment

Posted By sunsetslave on April 12, 2010

The beer started showing signs of fermentation in 12 hours or so with fairly rapid bubbles through the airlock. About a week and a half in, the airlock had slowed to a crawl and I finally found some new vinyl tubing (my old tube was too dirty to clean) to transfer my beer to my brand new (read: found on the street) secondary fermenter.

While transferring, I found a large portion of the yeast had floated to the top of the primary and smelled awful, but the beer below, flowing into the secondary, smelled amazing, like a mountain of oranges with sugar on top. I did my best to leave the floating yeast cake in the primary.

As I was advised in the brew shop, I topped off my secondary fermenter; it took almost 2 pints of water to limit the exposed surface area.  Which it appears may not have been necessary. The transfer to the secondary reawakened enough yeast to overflow my airlock and now, after almost a week in the secondary, the airlock is going every three seconds like clockwork.

As I found the incredible reawakening of my yeast a bit odd I looked it up. Apparently WLP400 (the yeast I used) takes about 3 weeks to reach terminal gravity and many people recommended stirring it regularly which would explain the resurgence after the transfer.

See you on bottling day,

Stacey

Beer 3 – Brew day

Posted By sunsetslave on March 26, 2010

time line bulleted process for this brew

  • Clean
  • Steep grain in 2.5 3 gallons of water at 155F for 45 Min
  • Remove grain and come to a boil
  • Add honey and malt extract
  • Return to boil
  • Add bittering hops (.5 oz Citra 11.1% aau) and .75 oz bitter orange peel boil for 15 Min
  • Add one lb LDME
  • Boil for 30 Min
  • Add finishing hops (.25 oz Amarillo 8.7% aau) and boil for 5 Min
  • Add crushed coriander (1 oz), remaining bitter orange peel (.25 oz), sweet orange peel (1 oz), lemon balm (1 oz – 1 cup of tea), and chopped angelica root (1 oz – 1 cup of tea)
  • Boil for 10 Min
  • Remove from heat and cool quickly
  • Combine with 2.5 gallons of water in fermenter
  • Measure gravity
  • Pitch yeast

original gravity 1.05 at 75F

Beer 3 – Recipe modifaction/shopping

Posted By sunsetslave on March 20, 2010

Went to the home brew shop today, swapped out some of the hops, and made a few minor substitutions in the grain, gonna start cleaning tonight and brew tomorrow.

Wonky Wit

This is my first attempt to design a beer… wish me luck.

Brewer: Stacey R Email: sunsetslave@gmail.com
URL: http://brew.misocat.org
Beer: Wonky Wit Style: Belgian White (Wit)
Type: Extract w/grain Size: 5 gallons
Color:
7 HCU (~6 SRM)
Bitterness: 13 IBU
OG: 1.061 FG: 1.010
Alcohol: 6.6% v/v (5.2% w/w)
Grain: 1.25 lb. Belgian 2 row, cracked

1.25 lb. White Wheat, cracked

1.25 lb. Flaked wheat

Boil: 60 minutes SG 1.122 2.5 gallons
1 lb. Light dry malt extract

2 lb. Honey

3.3 lb. Light malt extract

Hops: .5 oz. Citra (11.1% AA, 60 min.)

.75 oz. Bitter orange peel (60 min.)

.24 oz. Amarillo (8.7% AA, 15 min.)

.25 oz. Bitter orange peel (5 min.)

1 oz. Sweet orange peel (5 min.)

1 oz. Coriander (5 min.)

.75 oz. Angelica root (5 min.)

.75 oz. Lemon balm (5 min.)

Yeast: liquid Belgian Wit yeast

White Labs WLP400

Carbonation: prime with 5oz sugar.


This web page generated by The Beer Recipator.

Bard’s, gluten free beer

Posted By sunsetslave on March 4, 2010

“Ingredients: Water, Sorghum, Hops, Yeast”

Tastes a lot like molasses (almost a little burnt flavor) but with a much smoother mouth feel, not nearly so thick.

wikipedia tells me

In China, sorghum is fermented and distilled to produce maotai, which is regarded as one of the country’s most famous liquors.

and

Sorghum is in the subfamily Panicoideae and the tribe Andropogoneae (the tribe of big bluestem and sugar cane).

witch I’m guessing is why  it was chosen as a fermentable material to replace wheat, barley, rye and oats. Though I wonder if that would make this not beer but maotai. Also I’m gonna say the relation to sugar cane would explain the molasses flavour.

While hops are on the ingredient list they are almost non existent in the flavour profile leaving a very sweet sweet beer.

need to make a rating system for my reviews …. rating coming soon.

Reviewing (drinking) away,

Stacey

Beer 3 – Thoughts and Ideas

Posted By sunsetslave on March 2, 2010

My first attempt at a recipe with help from The Beer Recipator. Comments welcome and encouraged… please.

Wonky Wit

Brewer: Stacey R Email: sunsetslave@gmail.com
URL: http://brew.misocat.org
Beer: Wonky Wit Style: Belgian White (Wit)
Type: Extract w/grain Size: 5 gallons
Color:
8 HCU (~6 SRM)
Bitterness: 14 IBU
OG: 1.066 FG: 1.018
Alcohol: 6.2% v/v (4.8% w/w)
Grain: 1.25 lb. Belgian pale

1.25 lb. Wheat malt

1.25 lb. Flaked wheat

Boil: 60 minutes SG 1.131 2.5 gallons
1.50 lb. Light dry malt extract

2 lb. Honey

3.3 lb. Light malt extract

Hops: 1.75 oz. Saaz (3.75% AA, 60 min.)

.75 oz. Bitter orange peel (0% AA, 60 min.)

0.75 oz. Hallertauer (4.25% AA, 10 min.)

.75 oz. Bitter orange peel (0% AA, 5 min.)

.5 oz. Sweet orange peel (0% AA, 5 min.)

.5 oz. Coriander (0% AA, 5 min.)

Beer 2 – Bottling and Delivery

Posted By sunsetslave on March 2, 2010

Better late than never…

Final corrected gravity: 1.02

So while transferring from the primary to the bottling bucket I forgot to close the spout on the bottling bucket so I lost almost a gallon of beer to the floor. Not fun but not the end of the world. Cleaned up pretty easy with a big towel… that I put in the laundry and forgot about, encouraging the growth of lots and lots of mold. It washed out so it’s all ok but Jackie will make fun of me for the rest of time.

After the spill it all went into bottles without incident and was given this label:

Beer Lable

After a week or 2 it was delivered to Lee.

Hooray beer!

Stacey

Beer 2 – Ferment

Posted By sunsetslave on June 14, 2009

The air lock took longer than I thought it would to start bubbling but now it’s going 3-4 bubbles a second.

Fermenting away,

Stacey

Beer 2 – Brew day (night)

Posted By sunsetslave on June 14, 2009

hindsight

Not much to report, the brew went pretty smoothly. Scott and Sarah K came over to lend a hand. Ended up taking a while to clean the kitchen so we didn’t start the brew until almost 1AM. They had to go not long after the grains finished steeping so I ended up maintaining the boil alone for most of it. After the brew was over I woke up Jackie to hold the the brew pot in the bathtub while I finished preparing the fermenting bucket.

Note: Buy a good manual can opener. The cheep one from 7-11 was worse than the electric that I ended up using again.

1.072 original measured gravity at 75F + .0015 to compinsate temp = original gravity of 1.0735

bubble bubble boil…,

Stacey

Beer 2 – Prep Day

Posted By sunsetslave on June 12, 2009

I did all the big preliminary work to do my next brew last night. My fermenting bucket still had the smell of my last beer in it but it’s all clean now. All that’s left for tonight is cleaning the brew pot and sterilizing everything.

I think I may switch the roles of my buckets this time around just to keep the wear on them even. They both have spigots but only one has a thermometer stuck to it, we’ll see how it goes.

Scrub a dub dub,

Stacey

Beer 2 – Pre Prep day

Posted By sunsetslave on May 30, 2009

Jackie’s boss loved my first beer and ordered a full batch. I got the last of the kit I used at my local shop (Thanks for the assist Andy) and may brew as soon as this weekend.

See you on brew day,

Stacey