This week at the Home Brewery

It's been a pretty eventful week for the home brewery. I was able to transfer both of the beers that I had in secondary into some kegs, and start the force carbonation process. It's going to be a busy week this week at our house, and I'm sure my wife is super happy to not have any fermenters on the kitchen island. Have I mentioned what a saint my wife is? On another note, I planted my hop rhizomes into a couple of very large containers. This years plan is to grow them from the containers and up about 20 feet to some connections off the south side gutters. It should make for some good looking decoration, and give the hops adequate space to grow. Coming up next will be an Irish Blonde Ale. Yes, a Guinness like beer, in a blonde. It should be interesting. I'm also going to be brewing up another batch of my Blue Eyed Wheatie. It's always a hit, and there's nothing better than a Blue Eyed Wheatie after a long hot summer day. Cheers!

Dunkelweizen moving to keg

It's finally time to move Bill and I's first collaborative brew to the serving kegs!


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Tonight's Brew - My CDA

Andy's CDA (Black IPA)

23-A Specialty Beer
Author: Andrew Murrey
Date: 2/15/12

Size: 5.04 gal
Efficiency: 65%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 235.53 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.070 (1.026 - 1.120)
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Terminal Gravity: 1.018 (0.995 - 1.035)
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Color: 31.67 (1.0 - 50.0)
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Alcohol: 6.96% (2.5% - 14.5%)
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Bitterness: 31.6 (0.0 - 100.0)
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Ingredients:

12 lb 2-Row Brewers Malt
2 lb 2-Row Caramel Malt 60L
1 lb Victory® Malt
1 lb German Carafa III
1 oz Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 m
1 oz Cascade (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 10 m
1.0 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 2 m
1 oz Chinook (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 m
1 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.21

Brew Update

Bill and I transferred our Dunkelweizen AG brew from primary to secondary last night.  There was a TON of flocculated out yeast, so the fear of too many dead yeast cells drove the desire to transfer a few days early.  We will let it sit in the secondary for another 3 weeks.  SG reading when going into the secondary was 1.025.  Hopefully in the next three weeks we can get down closer to our target of 1.011 - 1.014.

Looking to get into Homebrew

Groupon currently has a great deal online for Midwest Brewing Supplies.  For $64 you get a starter kit, a recipe, and a gift card for a second recipe.

Check it out

http://www.groupon.com/amarillo/deals/dc-ghd-mm-midwest-hydroponic?utm_medium=afl&utm_campaign=4534259&utm_source=rvs

Great Quick CDA Recipe - BIAB

In the last episode of Brewing TV Jake walked us through a really simple and probably very tasty 3 gallon BIAB for a CDA.  Today they posted the recipe on their blog site.  If you love CDA's and have been wanting to try out all grain brewing, but don't have the dough or space for the equipment, this is right up your alley.

You can find the recipe and instructions here:  http://www.northernbrewer.com/connect/2012/02/jakes-biab-cda/

You can subscribe to BrewingTV, put on by the fine folks at Northern Brewer on iTunes or here: http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewingtv/

Cheers!

What a Week of Brewing

Well a lot sure has happened in my brewing sphere this week.  First off, I took the Hefeweizen that I had fermenting the past 3 weeks, and racked it ontop of 6lbs of blueberry puree.  Yes, I know that it was supposed to be blackberry nectar this time around, but a dear friend of mine is moving to Virginia, and she hadn't gotten to try the Blue Eyed Wheatie.  For this particular batch, I doubled the amount of puree that I used.  I did this for a couple reasons.  First I wanted to add a bit more blueberry flavor to the beer.  The first batch I did only had 3lbs and you couldn't really taste the blueberry until the finish.  Second, I wanted to add more berry color to the beer.  I used all pale color base malts along with the wheat, so that it would help take more color from the berry in the finished product.  It is going to sit on the puree for about two weeks, and then I will rack it off to an empty keg, and let it age a week before putting it in the beer fridge, and carbing it up to 2.3 volumes.  The next thing that happened in my brewing this week was the introduction of a friend to the hobby.  He had always enjoyed drinking my beers, and was interested in seeing how it was done.  For our brew,  I chose to brew an All Grain Dunkelweizen from Northern Brewer.  I walked Bill through all of the steps of a Brew Day from Mashing In, Sparging, Boiling, Hops, Chilling, Pitching, and finally Sanitization, and all the work that goes into producing a quality brew.  At the end of the day, we spent a few hours outside on a 30 degree Indiana night, tossed back a few home brews, and checked our troubles at the door.  On the Dunkel, we had a decently successful mash.  For some reason I am only able to get about 60 percent efficiency out of my current cooler setup.  I think it may have something to do with the SS braid floating up into the mash, and I'm leaving some thick malty wort in the bottom of the 5 gal rectangular rubbermaid cooler.  I'm open to any thoughts on ways to get that number up.  I'd really like to get 70 percent efficiency.  On the next batch, I am going to ask for a finer crush from NB.  I'm interested in seeing if that would help make a difference.  Anyways, we ended up 5.25 gallons of sweet dark wheat wort in the fermenter, and pitched some Wyeast 3068 that I had harvested from the recently completed Hefeweizen that is now on the blueberries.  So, it's been a successful brew week.  

Cheers!