Welcome back

It's been a long strange time since I've posted.

I have 2 main excuses:

1) My website software was doing a bad job at keeping out spammers comments and I was discouraged by having to clean them out.
2) I had 6 cases of beer and moved into a much smaller apartment, so I haven't brewed in almost a year.

I also have 2 lesser excuses:

1) I'm lazy
2) I suck

Anyway, I hope that by moving to blogger I will be less depressed by fighting spam and more excited to just come and post. Also, I'm almost out of beer and getting ready to brew again.

So welcome back!

Also, I'm almost out of beer and getting ready to

Peanut Butter Porter V 3.0

Almost an entire year after I starting telling my friends to expect a new batch of Peanut Butter Porter 'soon', it's finally here. This builds off my last try and keeps several of the uniquely random aspects of the beer, such as lager yeast (to help emphasize the malt and peanut flavors) and oats (to help with head stabilization).

Grains/Extracts

• 8oz Chocolate Malt


• 12oz Black Patent Malt


• 4oz Roast Barley


• 3oz Oats (Steel Cut, not instant)


• 8oz Crystal, 60L


• 8oz Munich 10L


• 4.5lbs DME

Hops

• 1oz Perle 7.6% AA


• 1oz Fuggle 4.5% AA

Yeast

• While Labs Oktoberfest

Adjuncts

• 8oz De-oiled peanut butter ("100% Real Peanut Butter" brand) - see this post for de-oiling info

Directions

• Infusion mash


• Added DME and Perle hops at beginning of boil


• Added 2oz of PB at 5min, 25 min, 40min, 55min


• Added 1/2 oz Fuggle at 40 and 55 min


• Ferment a week, then rack. Pay attention to the surface of the beer to keep any excess oil from getting to the secondary


• Secondary 3 weeks at 50F (remember lager yeast), reracked to remove trub and remaining oil slick


• Bottled at 6 weeks, age at least 2 weeks, preferably 3 before drinking. The peanut butter flavor will continue to change.

Gravities

• OG 1.047


• FG 1.014

Nose: Some malt sweetness with a noticable arroma of peanut butter. No hops. There should be some, maybe mine are old and have gotten oxidized.

Pour: Dark with highlights. Lasting medium head (a worry with the peanut oil, but the oats seem to be doing their job).

Taste: Medium body, a little low for a porter (probably the result of the lager yeast). The peanut butter pushes through the malt (again, not much in the way of hops) as the beer moves back along the tongue. Strong peanut butter flavor in the swallow.

Conclusion: Peanut butter without the oil is crumbly but I still ended up with large clumps in my brewpot. 8oz seems like a sufficient amount with homebrew equipment/methods. I'm going to keep trying different de-oiling techniques to see if I can get more of it into suspension. This beer is highly drinkable, I recommend you try it yourself.

Sleezy light honey lager

Earlier this year I made a batch of 'leftovers' beer. I had a bit of this, some of that, some yeast that I've recultured 3 times, and other assorted beer detritus. So I put it all together and made what could best be called 'Light honey lager'.

Here's what I had to throw in:

Grains/Extracts

• 20oz 2-Row


• 4oz Munich 10L


• 2lbs Honey


• 2lbs DME


• 5oz Table Sugar

Hops

• 1oz Saaz 4.4%AA


• 1oz Cluster 6.1%AA

Yeast

• White Labs Oktoberfest

Directions

• Soaked grain for an hour


• Added DME, Sugar, Honey Cluster Hops


• Boiled 60 min, added half oz of Fuggle at 30 min, and 45 min


• Lagered for a week at 55f


• Rack and lager for another 2 weeks at 50f


• Ready to drink about 2 weeks after bottling

Gravities

• OG 1.040


• FG 1.009

Nose: Low honey aroma, no malt or hop aroma. The lack of hop aroma is a little odd, maybe the minimal amount is being drowned by the honey. My sense of smell sucks as always.

Pour: Golden, clear, thin long lasting head. The clear golden beer shows off the excellent natural carbonation bubbles.

Taste: Bitter hops in the initial taste with honey sweetness coming through as you swollow. No malt flavor at all, but a surprisingly moderate amount of body. Very crisp.

Conclusion: The bitter start with a sweet finish is an odd dichotomy, not one that I'm sure works. It's highly drinkable and quiet pleasant, but I'm not sure I would go out of my way to try it again. Still for a batch of leftover scraps, it's a solid showing.

Scotch Ale by Gregory J. Noonan

I'm conflicted about this book.  The first 1/3 is the history of brewing in Scotland, which provides lots of background into the evolution of Scottish beer styles.  The last 1/3 is a listing of Scotch breweries and products, it's only slightly interesting and 15 years out of date at this point.

This only leaves 60 pages specifically devoted to malts, hops, water, yeast and brewing techniques.  Noonan does an excellent job of packing a lot of information in, but it's not well organized.  There's brewing technique information in the history section and even a few gems scattered in the brewery listing section.

Basically this book reminded me of eating a lobster - to get everything out of it, you really have to work over the whole book for small morsels.

That said, I do like this book.  It's the best resource on Scotch Ale I've seen and has great recipes for making both modern and historical Scotch Ales.  With the price of hops going through the roof I expect we'll see a resergence of interest in this low hoped style

So get ahead of the wave and start working on your Scotch Ales now.

Buy it here

Cider review

Late last year I made a batch of hard cider from Trader Joe's pure organic cider. Their cider is UV pasteurized (all cider sold in the US must be pasteurized in some manner), which is the least invasive pasteurizing method (adding sulfites is the worst as it actively retards bacteria growth instead of just killing whatever is already there). The bottle doesn't list apple types and it's a good bet that the contents vary from region to region with whatever local farmers provide.

I used White Lab's English Cider Yeast ( WLP775 ) and fermented a 5 gallon batch without additives. Original Gravity 1.055.

Results:

Very clear, very tart and very slow fermenting cider, it took over a month to reach a final gravity of 1.012. I primed with 3/4 of a cup of sugar, but never achieved much carbonation. The cider is mellowing nicely over time and should be very drinkable after about 3 months in the bottles.

Conclusion:

I wouldn't rush out to buy it, but if you live in a city and can't get unsulfated cider any other way, Trader Joe's does offer you a viable cider. I would recommend it more as a base for my spiced cider.

At least I’m brewing

I've been brewing up a storm lately, which is good because it gives me something to talk about.  One nice thing about moving to Chicago is that I can now lager in my home.  Closets with an outer wall, far from heaters are great lagerring areas - 45-55 and stable, very nice.  My goal is to make as much lager this winter as I've made in my entire career.  I think it's about time to make a maibock, one of the styles I've never tried.

I finally made and bottled my 3rd batch of Peanut Butter Porter.  The first batch had too little peanut butter taste, with the second batch I achieved a very good balance.  So of course I ramped it up even more for this batch - seems like I went to far this time, but I'll wait until I'm drinking it to post the recipe and review.

I also made a light honey pilsner (aka I threw whatever I had in a pot) -it's carbonating nicely, however the honey and hops aren't playing nice.  I'll post a recipe and review in a few weeks.

Not living up to potential

When I lived in New York I would brew in a kitchen that could be summed up as a stove, a sink, and the 2 square feet of counter space needed to secure them to the wall.  I made amazing beer in that kitchen, almost effortlessly.  I even switched to all grain using a hodgepodge of chairs and a homemade sparger.

I would ferment at ambient temperatures, and it always worked, even when it was 90 degrees out.

Now I'm in Chicago and I have a real kitchen with tons of counterspace, and nearly all of my batches fail.  I made cider, but it didn't carbonate.  I made a raspberry imperial stout, it got contaminated (my first contaminated batch ever).   Heck, I can't even get people over to empty enough bottles to let me brew more.  Woe is me!

Part of the problem is that my equipment is new, I'm missing a few pieces and have gone back to extract brewing.  Some of it might be because of Chicago's hard water vs New York's soft.  Mostly though, I think I'm just not living up to my potential.  I don't have much to say, but I can't even be bothered to post my results on my own blog.

So, time to stop sucking, and start posting.