Posts Tagged 006
Updates
So I went down to Hops and Berries to pick up a compression valve for Mike’s new boil kettle I scored for him, and I also picked up a few gallon jugs for my raspberry mead. I did this because it was in the 2.8 gallon carboy and was only filling that about 1/2 way. So I racked the mead into the (2) gallon jugs and what space was left I decided to fill with water so there was no airspace to create oxidation. One was 1.5 cups added and the other was just a tad.
I also bottled the lemonade. I did it a little bit hap-hazardously though. I added 3/16 cup priming sugar straight in (I was too lazy to boil it). I also added a little of the raspberry mead in there because it sounded good. It didn’t taste all that great either. I even forgot to take a reading on it. Oh well, it has to be about the same, as I saw no bubbles come out since I racked it.
Well, as you can probably tell, this post is pretty poorly written too. Off to bed after I post these updates in their respective posts.
2 comments March 6, 2008
006, Alex’s Hard Lemonade (Better Name Pending)
I decided to give the lemonade a try. I didn’t really want to squeeze fresh lemons, but did want some good lemonade, so I took a trip to Whole Foods and got to shopping. The only fresh lemonade they had was the Whole Foods brand, 365, Pasteurized Lemonade. I got 1 Gallon Fresh Lemonade. I also scored about 9 lbs. of honey there, in the bulk foods section, for cheaper than the homebrew store can do ($2.29/lb instead of $2.50)! They also had three choices instead of just one – wildflower, clover, and something else. Sweet!
Anyway, I got home and whipped up a starter that consisted of 3/4 cup DME, about 1/3 gallon water, and and a packet of Lavlin EC-1118 (Champagne Yeast). 24 hours later, it was nicely bubbling away, so I sanitized the primary (a 3 gallon stainless steel pot) and got to work.
I added the lemonade along with 1/2 lb. Corn Sugar, and mixed them up. Along with it, I added my yeast starter. The total volume of the starter was just under 1/2 gallon giving me a total volume of about 1.5 gallons. I’ll let it sit and see how it does!
03/01/08
racked to secondary and recorded SG at 1.014
03/05/08
bottled. I did it a little bit hap-hazardously though. I added 3/16 cup priming sugar straight in (I was too lazy to boil it). I also added a little of the raspberry mead in there because it sounded good. It didn’t taste all that great either. I even forgot to take a reading on it. Oh well, it has to be about the same, as I saw no bubbles come out since I racked it.
2 comments February 27, 2008
Clementine’s Molasses Porter – Round II
So this next batch will be my first batch of all-grain beer. I though it fitting to pull out a batch I already did and try to improve it.
The original Recipe:
3 ½ lb light malt extract
3 ½ lb amber malt extract
1 lb crystal malt (60L)
½ lb. chocolate malt
¼ lb. Black Patent Malt
½ cup blackstrap molasses
2 cups dark brown sugar
1 tsp gypsum
½ tsp Irish Moss
Hops:
1 oz. liberty (pellets) @ 60 min
½ oz. Cascade (pellets) @ 0 min
Yeast:
American Ale Yeast (Dry)
The biggest question is how I will replace the amber extract. I think I want a little more of a chocolatey note in the beer, so I’ll make up lost color with more chocolate malt (1 lb).
So on to creating my recipe:
I want to match the OG of the original, 1060. To do this, I’ll find the number of total gravity units I need to create the desired OG. First, I need to convert the extract potential of my fermentables into Gravity Units (GU’s). All a GU is is subtracting 1 from the number and then multiplying by 1000. Thus, 1.030 becomes 30 GU’s.
next I multiply by gallons of the wort of the final batch:
5.5 gal of final volume after boil * 60 GU desired OG = 330 TGU (total gravity units)
What this means is that I need to get 330 TGU’s from all of the combined fermentable ingredients.
Now that I know how many TGU’s I need, I’ll work backwards a bit to find how many GU’s the specialty grains will cover:
[eq: lbs of malt = GU's contributed by this malt / (extract potential of malt GU's * mash efficiency %)]
- 1 lb crystal: 1 = x / (34 * 0.68) = 23.1
- 1 lb chocolate: 1 = x / (30 * 0.68) = 20.4
- .25 lb black: 0.25 = x / (27 * 0.68) = 4.6
These add up to a total of 48 GU’s of the total 330. That means I want to add 282 more GU’s worth of base malt.
- Pale Malt: x=282 / (36 * 0.68) = 11.5 lbs of pale malt
So here is my revised recipe:
11 ½ lbs. pale malt
1 lb crystal malt (60L)
1 lb. chocolate malt
¼ lb. black patent malt
1 ½ cups blackstrap molasses
1 tsp gypsum
½ tsp Irish Moss
Hops:
1 oz. liberty (pellets) @ 60 min
½ oz. Cascade (pellets) @ 0 min
Yeast:
American Ale Yeast (Dry)
You may have noticed I got rid of the brown sugar. This is because sucrose (table sugar) does not add any desirable qualities to a beer, and the flavor that I want from brown sugar is actually just the molasses. I could boil the brown sugar and add it for some caramel/molasses flavoring, but I’ll just take it out and add more molasses. I am also going to try using molasses as priming sugar for half the batch (assuming preliminary tastings go well), just to see how that turns out. I want this to be MOLASSES porter. but not overly so.
The BU’s of the last batch were around 20, and I liked where it was or perhaps a little higher (~25 IBU). I am going to switch the bittering hops to an English variety however. I’ll go with golding, challenger, fuggle, or maybe go with northern brewer. We’ll see what I can find down at Hops and Berries.
I’ll boil for 90 minutes, to get some more caramelization going.
I’m not going to brew this for a week or two. I’ll try to have some camera action so I can well document my first all-grain attempt though.
5 comments February 5, 2008
