Oatmeal Pale Ale

I wanted to make a batch of Gemutlich, but I didn't have the ingredients, so I made this Gemutlich-inspired oatmeal pale ale instead. Like Gemutlich, the oatmeal will give this a nice mouth feel and body.

10 gallon batch.

Grain:

20 lbs 2 row
1.5 lbs Quaker oats
2 oz Chocolate malt
4 oz honey (add to BK at 30 minutes)
6 oz molasses (add to BK at 30 minutes)

Mash at 153F for 60 minutes. I used my immersion chiller again as a heat exchanger to keep the mash temp even, and that worked very well again. I brought the water in the HLT to 170F, then I adjusted the flow on the output side of the pump to be fairly low, and the temp stayed constant for the entire mash. That's probably the first time ever that has happened.


Hops:

2 oz Fuggles, an experimental variety, 5% AA, FWH
2 oz mixed hops, 60 minutes (a mix of HG Chinook and Willamette)
1 oz Cascade, 30 minutes
1 oz Willamette, 30 minutes
2 oz Fuggles, an experimental variety, 5% AA

60 minute boil. The "mixed" hops is a combination of homegrown Chinook and Willamette. The plants had grown together, and I couldn't tell what was what.


Wyeast 1272 from batch 85, pitched directly on the yeast cake.


OG: 1.068 (actual)
FG:
IBU: 42
SRM: 10
ABV: 6.8%


A few pics of the brew day, it snowed most of the day. I started at about 9 am, and was done around 1:30 pm. Just getting started:


Using the immersion chiller as a heat exchanger:



Hops. The FWH hops are already in the boil kettle. I used 8 ounces total for this batch.


Transferring from mash tun to boil kettle. The bucket is to keep the snow off of the pump.

Batch 85, Imbolc

This is the same as St. Brigid's Lake IPA from batch 70. I made a change in the hops -- I don't have any Centennial, so I used Perle instead and am calling this batch Imbolc.   Imbolc is the pagan name for St. Brigid's day, which is the Catholic name for Ground Hog's day.

10 gallon batch.

Grain:

21 lbs 2-row
4 oz chocolate malt

Hops:

This is the hard part.
1/4 oz Chinook (whole) 
1/4 oz Cascade (whole) 
1/4 oz Perle (pellets) 
Add all of the above at 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, 5, and 0 minutes. That is 11 additions of 3/4 oz hops.

Wyeast 1272

OG: 1.059 actual: 1.065 
FG: 1.015 actual:  
ABV: 5.7%
SRM: 11

IBU: 98

I ended up with a little extra in the boil kettle, 13 gallons, so I turned up the heat to get to the right volume at the end.  I guess I had it a little too high, since I only ended up with 9 gallons in the fermenter instead of 10.  OG came out a little high because of that.

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Update on the Brown Ale

Here is an update on the Brown Ale that I made along with the Rumcake a while back. As expected, a week or so in the kegerator and it's a quite good beer. The alcohol content is fairly low (4.2%) compared to most beers I make, so it's easy to drink several of these. The flavor is very mild. It's a little over carbonated at the moment, which adds to the perceived lightness. I doubt I'll make this again since it was the second runnings of a bigger beer, but I wouldn't have a problem making something similar either as the main recipe or as the second runnings of a bigger beer.

Batch 84, David's Scotch Ale

My brew club did our annual group brew on Jan 9. It was sort of a complicated brew, bigger than what we've done as a group before. We had 9 brewing rigs in Rob's shop (heated!). It was pretty organized, more so than last year, I think. The crush on the grain seemed a little course, and just about everyone missed the OG. Here is the recipe:

David's Scotch Ale
Style: Strong Scotch Ale
Type: All grain Size: 8 gallons
Color: 49 HCU (~22 SRM)
Bitterness: 29 IBU
OG: 1.093 FG: 1.023
Alcohol: 9.0% v/v (7.1% w/w)

Grain: 21.9 lb. American 2-row
5.87 lb. Belgian biscuit
7.7 oz. Briess Special Roast
0.64 lb. American crystal 40L
1.92 lb. American crystal 60L
5.1 oz. Peated malt
5.1 oz. British crystal 135-165L

Mash: 65% efficiency
Mash @ 154°. Boil a portion of first runnings for added kettle
caramelization.
Boil: 90 minutes SG 1.074 10 gallons

Hops: 0.41 oz. Fuggles (5.5% AA, 60 min.)
0.73 oz. Northern Brewer (8.5% AA, 60 min.)
0.83 oz. Centennial (10.5% AA, 30 min.)
0.41 oz. Fuggles (5.5% AA, 30 min.)

The Fuggles was actually an experimental variety, a Fuggles and Mt Hood cross. We ended up using Nugget instead of Northern Brewer, and both the Nugget and Centennial were home grown by Steve P. David made a big pot of wort and let it simmer for a long time, then topped off several of the boil kettles, which helped with the final gravity. I ended up taking 7 gallons home with an OG of 1.082. The plan is for everyone to ferment individually, then in a month or so, we'll all meet up and dump it all into a wine barrel for aging. That should be interesting. Since I had 7 gallons, I'm fermenting in two 5 gallon corny kegs. I volunteered to bottle one of the kegs without the wine barrel aging so we'll have something to compare with.

Batch 83, Panama Red

A fresh batch of Panama Red. The previous batch got hit pretty hard over the holidays.

10 gallon batch

20.25 lbs 2-row
1.5 lbs Crystal 60
4 oz Chocolate malt
6 oz wheat

Mash 60 minutes at 153F, collect 12 gallons.

2 oz Mt Hood (whole, last of the 2008 crop), FWH
2 oz Nugget (whole, HG from Steve P), 60 min
2 oz Cascade (whole, HG), 30 min
2 oz Cascade (whole, HG), 5 min
2 3/4 oz Mt Hood (whole, HG), 5 min

90 minute boil

Wyeast 1272, a brand new packet, I made a 1 gallon starter

I bumped up the Mt Hood on the finishing hops a little bit to use up the last of the 2008 crop. It was a longer brew day than expected, I ran out of propane and had to make a run to get a refill, then I got a vapor lock and it was about 20 minutes before I realized it, so it took forever to get to boiling. I ended up about a gallon short, so having the gallon starter worked out just right. I really need to get 13 gallons out of the mash, the whole hops suck up a lot of wort.

The wheat is a new addition. I just used all that I had, it should help a little on head retention. 6 oz won't make much difference on the final product.

I used my immersion chiller as a heat exchanger to keep the mash at the right temp in this cold weather. That worked out really well. I put it in my HLT and ran the wort from the bottom of the mash tun into the inside of the IC, then back out to the top of the mash tun. It was real easy to keep the mash temp just right. I (finally!) added a valve on the output side of my pump, which is really handy. I used that valve both with keeping the mash at the right temp and with the CFC. I got 60F into the fermenter just by slowing down the flow to about half.

Rumcake and the brown ale

I bottled the Rumcake Ale last weekend. Yes, "Bottle". What a pain in the ass. I started about 6:30 and finished at about 9. I'd forgotten what a lot of work bottling is. Wash bottles, sanitize bottles, drain bottles, clean bottling bucket, sanitize bottling bucket, sanitize caps, sanitize siphon. Arg! If I did the math right (I've got a masters degree in math, but I can still screw up simple arithmetic, so I may have made a mistake here (5 gallons = 5 x 128 oz = 500 + 5 x 28 = 500 + 100 + 40 = 640 / 22 = 2 x 10 + 200 / 22 = 20 + 9 point something = 29, I did that in my head)), I should have got 29 22oz bottles out of 5 gallons. I got 23. I lost 6 x 22 = 132 ounces (I did that in my head too -- 6 x 20 = 120 + 6 x 2 = 132) which is over a gallon lost somewhere. Well, I can account for about a pint, since I'm drinking that. On the other hand, that is a quite joyous pint! When I racked this from primary to secondary, I thought the hydrometer sample tasted odd. I'm looking at boxes, and that 23rd bottle is in jeopardy, 22 bottles fit nicely in available boxes. On the other hand, the first pint has toasted me quite nicely, another 22 oz might be dangerous. I think I'll go for it.

The Rumcake is tasty now, so I expect it'll be tastier later. I put the brown ale on tap 2 days ago. It's brown. It's cloudy. It's beer. It's strange. I'll drink it anyway. It's definitely a session beer, but it really needs to sit a little longer than 2 days to be good. I expect that in a week or so, it'll clear up and be a nice, quaffable, after work drink 3 or 4 sort of beer.

My wife is the best

Money has been a little tight lately, I'll just blame it on the economy for now. My wife was feeling pretty good today, it's been just over a week since her last chemo, so we went out to do some Christmas shopping. We don't keep a lot of secrets from each other, so her idea was to drive out to Deb's and buy some homebrew supplies for me for Christmas. I'm just about out of everything, but I showed some restraint and didn't spend too much. A bag of Great Western 2-row, 5 lbs of Crystal 60, a couple of pound of chocolate malt, and a new packet of yeast. (duh, 1272, what else?) I haven't brewed yet, but am planning to this next weekend. I've actually got everything to make Panama Red, including the right hops. I'd traded Steve P some homegrown Cascade for some Nugget, and he brought the Nugget to the club Christmas party. So I've got all the right grain, the right hops, and the right yeast. Should be good!

Bad news, good news

So I had a keg go empty yesterday. I had the second keg of The Pounder on stand by, but since it was cloudy in the first keg, I thought I'd transfer the second keg to another keg for serving. It seems to have carbonated nicely in the keg, so when I hooked on the jumper hose, it started transferring with no effort. Nice! Well, it got to about half way and I tried to bleed off pressure to keep the transfer going and I got a lot of foam out, spraying everywhere. So now I have 2 half kegs of this. I took one and put it on my empty garage tap. When I plugged in the gas hose, there was still so much pressure in the keg that it blew beer backwards into the gas tube, and sprayed beer out of the regulator. What a mess. That was the bad news.

The good news: I was cleaning out the fridge after the beer sprayed all over, and I opened the vegetable drawers at the bottom. I never use those, but it looked like beer had leaked in there. I found a bomber bottle of Winterfest from Sockeye! Score! It must have been given to me last Christmas, and I put it in the veggie drawer and forgot about it.

I popped it open a few minutes ago, and it is quite nice. It has a good, strong malt flavor, slightly smoky, and not very hoppy. Winterfest when fresh is a fairly hoppy beer, but since it has aged, the hops have mellowed significantly.

Club meeting at TableRock

Some pics from the club meeting at the Table Rock brew pub. Bob, the brewmaster, gave us a tour through the brewery and answered lots of questions. This was an excellent educational meeting!


Steve checks out the mash tun.



Plumbing and grain auger above the 485 gallon mash tun.



In the brew house.



Bob the brewmaster and Bob the Bronco. Mash tun to the left, boil kettle behind.



Fermenters. The serving/bright tanks for dispensing to the bar area are behind the white door. Table Rock does keg beer, and will fill Corny kegs.



Fermenters, looking the other way. Notice the hose in the bucket, that is the blowoff tube for the fermenter. The people are gathered around a table with some grain and hops samples.



Close up of a fermenter full of Copperhead Red.

Fermenter bubbles

Video taken with my phone of the airlock bubbling away from Batch 82.