New Pipeline

Again with the blah blah I'm a lazy ass yada yada... yep. Anyway, we're back to making beer after a winter in which our wort was more likely to freeze than boil. Thus our time was spent making a lot of shitty-to-mediocre music in our friends basement instead. We got back to brewing sometime in March. Here's what's coming, in chronological order:

Caution! Hop Coffee Imperial Black Ale 

Bottled 12April2014

Resinous and floral hops meet dark fruits and caramel in our fortified black ale. A coffee aroma compliments the scene in a strange way. 9.5% ABV

You Know What I'm Saison II

Secondary 29May2014

Predominantly Saaz hops

Clementines and Black Peppercorn

You Know What I'm Saison III:
Secondary 29May2014

Golding and Citra Hops

Roasted Rhubarb, Orange Zest, and Brown Sugar

Far Away IPA 

Kegged 29May2014
The beer formerly known as Calvin and Melissa are Gay IPA features melon and citrus with a hint of malt in the backbone. 6.5% ABV

Hammock Hefeweizen
 Primary 18May2014

Something something American Hefeweizen.

For now, that is all.

Drumroll please....

First post in (slightly more than) a year. We have been brewing, sporadically at least. Our most recent batches include a variation on This Is America Pale Ale, our experimental Caution! Hop Coffee Imperial Black Ale, and Two new saisons from our You Know What I'm Saison series. More on that later, maybe, seeing as that's what I said last time, just over a year ago. Yep.

Some text

We made some beer last weekend. Rev 1 IPA, Simcoe/2-row SMaSH, and Galaxy/2-row SMaSH. More on that later. The default keyboard on Samsung GS3 is butt.

What to Make Next?

We are currently at a crossroads. Well, not really, but after we bottle 10gal of This Is America Pale Ale today, there will be exactly zero brews in primary or secondary fermentation.

Not the best Album Art

Though a short and rather unnecessary post, I shall promote our listening material. The playlist for our last bottling session included Trilogy by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. A masterful progressive-rock trio formed in 1970 who fused classical, jazz, and hard rock styles to create incredible sounds. The group is one of the first to use the Moog Synthesizer live, and is well-respected in the "giants balls" category because of this. This album is great. It features originals and covers (to use the rock terminology) such as my favorite version of Aaron Copland's Hoedown. Check it.



Anyway, many a brew has been bottled lately.  Our arsenal is definitely growing.  The list of beers currently conditioning in the cellar is as follows:

48-12oz P-Town Brown Ale (Bottled 24FEB2013)

36-12oz Abr. ID. Double Red Ale (Bottled 17FEB2013)

13-12oz This Is America Special Stout (Bottle 24FEB2013)

3-22oz This Is America Special Stout (Bottle 24FEB2013)

Soon to be bottled

~96-12oz This Is America Pale Ale (Brewed 06FEB2013)

It's not warehouse full of booze, sure, but we are approaching almost 1 full barrel (~31gal).  Throw in the 3.5gal Scuzzy Buzzy IPA and 2gal Nice tRye PA on tap and we are just about there.

In order to keep a good inventory, and keep it turning over, there must be some planning. Planning involves research. Research, in this case, involves drinking. Have I told you how much I love science? I'll save the science for a real post though. For now we will create a to-be-brewed list haphazardly:

1. 10gal Funky George Porter
2. 5gal Revision 1 IPA
3. 5gal Some other IPA 
4. 10gal This Is America Pale Ale

The Funky George will be slightly modified to increase %ABV and tweak flavors. We are also considering throwing some chocolate and/or oak chips into the mix. More on that when the decision is made. As for the others, This Is America is delicious and is here to stay ('Murica!), and IPA experimentation will remain a constant on our schedule.

Coming soon to this blog... The Abr. ID. Ale taste test, A photo for our blooper reel, and more wonderful music recommendations from Two Heads Brewing.

Sunday Funday

This past Sunday, February 17 was the day we got off of our asses to finally do some work. The work involved:
A) modification of P-Town Brown Ale
B) modification of the Scuzzy Buzzy IPA
C) bottling of ABR. ID. Double Red Ale (pronounced abbreviated identification).
I don't know if Double Red Ale is a true style, but that's what we are going with in order to adequately describe it.

A powerhouse of smooth funk

Our music choice for the day is a masterpiece by the incredible Booker T. & the M.G.'s, McLemore Avenue. Tis a tribute to, or may I say re-envisioning of, The Beatles' Abbey Road. These guys are good. Really good. And they play it oh-so-nice. There was other music involved, like Chick Corea's 1978 oddity The Mad Hatter, which is an interesting and funk-laden album, but Booker T. is the main event here. On to the beer.

Straight Bitter, yo

As I said previously, we had a few things to work on. The simplest task was modification of the Scuzzy Buzzy IPA, which was a victim of the infamous small-bag incident (see post 30 January 2013). Due to extremely low hop utilization, we had to add some bitterness to this guy.  Fortunately we were finally able to acquire some reasonably priced Isomerized hop extract. This stuff is literally concentrated bitterness. Ask my buddy Calvin. I let him sample a fraction of a drop. That shit is bitter. It consists mainly of isomerized alpha acids and is typically used for post-fermentation bittering. That is exactly how we used it here. To determine how much to add, we used Hop Union's Calculator and scaled-down a bit to meet our needs. To increase the bitterness about 40 IBU's, we added slightly less than 3.0mL using a graduated pipette. Calculations called for 2.9mL. Our equipment isn't that precise, but I gave it a shot. If I made an honest list of things at which I excel, pipetting would likely be top 3. I do a lot of pipetting. The extract was added directly to the carboy. We will give it a try in a few days. I think dry hopping would have been a good choice here too. Maybe I'll do that.

I should note that 20 IBU's were added to the Nice tRye PA via 1.5mL extract after the hop tea addition failed to meet suitability criteria (it didn't taste good). The addition of the extract really helped to balance the beer and bring out some wonderful flavors. If a situation similar to that caused by the bad bags occurs in the future, we now have a very reasonable solution - add extract to adjust bitterness and dry hop to add aroma. We didn't dry hop this, but it is certainly a viable option.

The next item in need of modification was our most recent batch of P-Town Brown Ale. The brew was much lighter in color than expected - somewhere around 6°SRM as opposed to the theoretical 27°SRM. This batch was the first in which we steeped the specialty grains instead of including them in the mash, so an inefficient steep is likely where things went wrong.  Luckily this was an easy fix.

We started by determining the amount of grain we needed to steep to add the missing 21°SRM. According to Morey's Regression,

°SRM = 1.49(MCU)^0.69   

where 

MCU = (color °L grain)(Lbs grain) / Batch Volume

Before (Left) and After (Right)

In the case of chocolate malt, °L=350, which means 1Lbs grain contributes approximately 28°SRM to 5gal beer.  As we wanted to add 21°SRM, we used 0.75Lbs chocolate malt. The grains were steeped 30min at about 160°F in 0.5gal H2O.  The result was 1.5qts of lovely dark brown tea.  We sparged with 0.5qts 170°F H2O in order to reach 0.5gal, as we had approximately 4.5gal in the carboy. The result was a brown ale worthy of being called brown.

As a slight bonus, the process also added a bit of sugar to the brew, which had fermented down to a gravity of 1.006. Much too low for this beer.  We considered adding malt extract to bring the gravity up to 1.012, but decided the approximately 2 points added via the tea would suffice. Now this 3rd generation brown ale is in secondary, waiting to be bottled.

Lazy Asshole, Check

The last bit of work we had to take care of was the bottling of our ABR. ID. Double Red Ale, which was brewed November 24, 2012. Three months of fermentation is good - the brew turned out nicely in an interesting way. A product of carefully (read- randomly) chosen spare ingredients, ABR. ID. Ale is dark red, slightly sweet with balanced bitterness, and exhibits some unexpected fruity flavors which complement the unnoticeable 7.9% ABV. We ended up with 45 bottles of the stuff. It will be ready for consumption around March 10.  I'm looking forward to it.                

This Is America Pale Ale

It was American Pale Ale day. It was the best day of the year. Well, not the best, but it sure was a good time. It was the day we brewed 10 gallons of This Is America Pale Ale.  That day would be Wednesday, 06FEB2013.

Name change: Super Fly Brewing?

First thing that needs discussing is the music schedule. I plan to make this a regular feature of our posts for two reasons: because we love music, and because brewing can be affected by many, many factors... and I will go ahead and make the claim that music choice can be one of them. It's the vibrations, man.

Anyway, the choice of music included such beauties as Curtis Mayfield's Super Fly and Are You Experienced? by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. And it was good.  On to the brewing.

That chair is a piece of crap

This Is America Pale Ale is a simple beauty we have been working on since our first all-grain brew session.  It is an American Pale Ale (after all, this is America...) with a balanced backbone, just enough bitterness, and a fresh citrus and floral aroma, coming in at about 6% ABV.

Who says brewing isn't a workout?

Being our first 10 gallon batch of this stuff, it was an exciting time.  It took us slightly longer, mainly due to a lengthy mixing process between two 8 gallon kettles, but the benefit is amazing - we get a keg  and a couple cases this time. Also, due to a higher-than-expected mash efficiency, we were able to snag 2 gallons from the pre-boil wort to make a side ale, which as of writing this may or may not get the yeast it needs to turn it into a brew.
 
After a momentous brew-session involving sprints, squats, and clean-and-jerks (see photo), we ended up with two lovely fermenting buckets filled with 5 gallons each of the sweet nectar that becomes This Is America Pale Ale, and 2 gallons of the soon to be world famous This Is America Extra Special Stout. The Pale is bubbling away nicely right now.  Expect it to be available from the keg around February 29th, for the birthday celebration of the birth of der meaters, and in bottles March 14th. As for the Stout, I need to go check the stir plate.

Happy Racking Day!

Free Jazz it is.

Today is racking day. A very overdue racking day. Three batches were transferred from primary to secondary: Scuzzy Buzzy IPA (Brewed 13DEC2012), Rev 0 IPA (Brewed 05JAN2013), and P-Town Brown Ale (Brewed 05JAN2013). Scuzzy should have been transferred approximately 27 days ago, though the others are only a few days (~4) overdue. 

Step 2: Scrub

First step in the process is the choice of music. Free Jazz it is. Step 2: Preparatory cleanup. Scrub those carboys. Luckily they were pretty clean already. Good deal. 

The beer, it flows

Now, on to the transfer.

The part where beer is pumped from one container to another is one that some consider the most exhilarating part of the brewing process. Those people are wrong. It's enjoyable in a mindless way, I guess.  Anyway, no issues with the transfers. The beers look good.

The Brown ale is a bit lacking in color and attenuated to a whopping gravity of 1.006. The target is darker and sweeter, so an attempt will soon be made to add more color and sweetness. The likely procedure for this will be to steep X lbs Chocolate Malt in Y gal water, followed by bringing the mixture to a boil. Updates will follow.

 

P-Town Brown (-ish) Ale

The Rev 0 IPA look and taste resemble expectations. This beer features east coast IPA bitterness, caramel color, a light body, and a refreshing bouquet of Cascade, Glacier, and Centennial hop aroma.  Following a brief secondary with possible dry hopping, this will be cold crashed and kegged. Coming Soon.

Scuzzy Buzzy IPA is another story. This Frankenstein of a brew was the unfortunate victim of the too-small nylon bag disaster of late 2012.  Our hop-bagging technique seemed like such an excellent idea that we brewed approximately 20 gal beer while employing small drawstring cloth bags for hopping. 

Scuzzy Buzzy IPA

Our hypothesis on the matter is that the bagged pellets did not experience sufficient extraction due to tight quarters preventing proper flow. Wort got sucked in, the pellets blew up (in size) as they absorbed juices, and the bags just didn't let much out. The end result was several batches of beer that were severely lacking in bitterness and aroma. Modification is necessary.  We no longer use those bags.  Commit us if we attempt it again.

Hop tea was added to two previous batches. The first was considered a moderate success. Ideal results were not achieved but the final product was palatable and bitter enough. The second, Nice tRye PA, is still in secondary. More on that later. Something will need to be added to the Scuzzy Buzzy.  What that is will need to be determined at a later date. Now I need to go finish cleaning up. Cheers