Batch Number 11: Dry Irish Stout - Northern Brewer

Been on a brewing kick here of late, this time brewing up a batch of Dry Irish Stout from a brew kit from Northern Brewer. This was a simple batch, with very few ingredients, just showing that it doesn't take much to brew a batch of beer.

Ingredients:

1 lbs. Simpsons Roasted Barley

6 lbs. Gold Malt Extract

1 oz. Nugget Hops @ 60 mins.

* 1 cup Brown Sugar

* Residue from this mornings Coffee in the French Press @ 15 mins.

1 Pkt. Safele S-04 Ale Yeast

* I can't leave well enough alone, so I went looking at what else I could throw into the mix.

Brew date: 11/23/09

Size: 5 gal.

O.G. 1.041 @ 80 = ~1.043

F.G.  1.016

Pretty straight forward batch of beer. Either the brown sugar or the coffee upped the specific Gravity a touch. Now it is all up to the yeast to make some beer out of sugar water.

Final Gravity to follow in a few weeks!

Notes: Wow, the wort on this beer is amazing. The coffee really comes through in the flavor. It is going to be a really dry stout and am excited for it to age a couple weeks in the bottle for carbonation. Should be good!

Home Made Wort Chiller - Cool Beer Fast

The left side goes in a water bath, the right into the wort pot.

After watching my friend Jason use his home made wort chiller, I had to have one. Jason gave me all the pro's and con's to his design, namely it works great, but he got the wrong size copper tubing. Knowing this, I went down and got the wrong size tubing as well (dumb), but since I was committed to the tubing after they cut it, I decided it would have to do. Smaller tubing will give you more surface area for heat exchange, wasting less water in the process.

This fits on the faucet.

I designed mine with two sets of coils, one for a cold water bath with ice cubes in it, the other to submerge into the wort. The need for the coil in the cold water bath isn't founded and was just an idea. I have tried it in a cold water bath and without, and not sure if there was a difference in chill times. The copper is easily twisted, and it is best to have your brew pot around to ensure that you will get it to fit. Also, use a bottle or large can to twist the copper around and if you are so lucky as to have some tubing benders, those make the work even easier.

When you are purchasing materials, make sure you know what size your faucet is. The faucet at the old house in Lawrence wouldn't have been able to use this, but our new place does.

When you use the chiller, make sure this end goes in the sink or a bucket!

How does it work you ask? Very well. I can cool a 3 gallon vat of wort in about 8 minutes, from boiling hot to about 90 degrees or so. Mixed with room temperature water, it is yeast pitchable.

Bottled Batch Number 9 Tonight - Finally Out of the Closet!

Bottled the Breakfast Stout tonight (11/22/09), got 51 - 12oz. bottles from the batch. A week or so from now and it and it will be ready to test! Couple more weeks and it should be well ready. Can't wait. The F.G. came in at 1.016 @ 60 degrees F. I didn't think it would be this high since I gave it 2 weeks to ferment. Wondering if the lactose in the recipe is responsible?

Batch Number 10: Ordinary Bitter

Brewed another batch tonight, this time a recipe from Austin Homebrew Supply. I am a huge fan of the British Bitter and this one was an easy batch to brew.

Ingredients:
1/2 lbs. Crystal 60L
1/2 lbs. 2 Row Barley
5 lbs. Extra Pale Malt Extract
2 oz. Fuggles hops (1.5 @ 60 and .5 @ 15 min.)
Irish Moss - Pinch at 10 min.

The O.G. was 1.041.
F.G. is 1.0135.

This beer is one of my favorite styles and am excited about trying it. Should be ready in a week or two..

Batch Number 9. Northern Brewer's Breakfast Stout

Brewed batch number 9 today, which was an inexpensive kit from Norther Brewer. The kit was the Breakfast Stout and was one of their cheapest kits available at $19.95. Initial brew day impressions are positive. The wort smelled great and my new home made wort chiller worked like a champ, cooling the 200 degree wort down in less than 10 minutes to a yeast-pitchable-ready 85 degrees.

Beer in the closet! I can't wait till it comes out!

Here are the kit's ingredients:

1.5 lbs. Flaked Oats
0.5 lbs. Simpson's Roasted Barley
3.5 lbs. Dark Malt Syrup
1.0 lbs. Lactose (non-fermenting sugar)
1 oz. Willamette Hops
1 pkt. Danstar Nottingham Ale Yeast
* 1+ Cup Molasses

* My addition. Really like the way it makes the beer taste and smell, especially since this is a breakfast beer.

Everything else is pretty standard, steep, boil, ferment, bottle, drink!

O.G. is 1.044

Just a note that this came out about 0.014 more than the recipe specified. I don't think that 1 cup of Molasses would add that much and I bet I didn't add enough H2O to my carboy. Darn the bad luck, guess we will see what happens. Pics. and F.G. will be posted in due time. Check back later.

Here are the results of this brew!

Batch Number 8. Really Light Pale Ale - Suggest A Name?

Cat approves of the finished product.

I made up a beer recipe that I thought I would be embarrassed to admit to making up. I wanted a really light, but bitter pale ale type of beer so I used rice syrup solids for some of my fermentable sugars. What I ended up with was something that I was surprised to say I really liked and has been well received by some other beer lovers.

The beer has a really light color at ~6 HCU's, a nice bitterness to it at around 41 IBU's and ended up with a ~5% alcohol by volume.

Here is the batch ingredients for a 4 gallon batch size:

- 4 lbs. light malt extract
- 1.5 lbs. rice syrup solids
- 2 oz. cascade hops
- 1 oz. goldings hops
- 1 pkt. Mutton's yeast
- bit of Irish moss

Pretty standard instructions:
- bring 3 gal. H2O to boil
- turn off heat
- add sugars
- turn on heat
- add hops at 60, 45 and 15 mins. into the boil
- add Irish Moss at 15 mins. left to aid in clarification.
- cool in carboy or bucket and add yeast at optimal yeast temperature
- ferment 1-2 weeks or until F.G. gets down to 1.010 or so.
- bottle and wait

Oh wait...relax....have a home brew through at least 100% of these instructions.

So, for the future, I am going to make a 5 gal. batch and change a few things about the recipe trying to give it a bit more hop as well as more sugar to increase the alcohol content as well as the flavor a bit. My idea is that the rice will add sugar for fermentation, but that sugar won't be adding too much in the way of flavor, kind of like an American Macrobrew but the hop will let you know that it definitely isn't that! I am also trying to achieve a high rate of attenuation and would like most of the sugars to be converted to alcohol for a dry crisp taste.

- 5 lbs. light malt extract
- 3 lbs. rice syrup solids
- 3 oz. cascade hops
- 2 oz. goldings hops
- 1 pkt. muttons dry yeast
- Irish Moss

I am going to dry hop 1 oz of the goldings hops in a secondary fermentation vessel for a week. The rest of the hops will be added at 60, 45, 30 and 15 mins. Otherwise pretty similar, with just a bit more fermentable sugar per batch size than what I did before.

Conversions were done using the Beer Recipator 2.2.

As I get this recipe tweaked out, I will be trying to think of a name. Anyone has any suggestions, send it my way.

As usual, pics to follow some time soon.