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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Cranberry Oak Bark Ale

The plan: I was consulting my "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" book and found an interesting recipe using oak bark. Yes, bark. We happened to have a fairly young oak tree in our back yard and I noticed the bark could be chipped off easily. I did some more reading and decided what the hell.. let's do a 1 gallon batch and see how it turns out. As I was putting the recipe together, I thought I should add something to balance out the dry earthy taste the oak bark would most likely give. First thing that came to mind was cherries... I figured the tartness of them might pair well. After an internet search for Cherry Oak... I discovered that Widmer Brothers had already made a Cherry Oak Dopplebock. Shit! Oh well... was actually still going to go through with it, and I went to the grocery store to get the supplies but I could not find any fresh cherries. What I did see though were fresh cranberries. I grabbed a pound of those and also a bag of dried cranberries and headed home to brew.

Recipe: (1.5 gallon batch)
OG: 1.074
FG: 1.019*
2# Pale LME
2oz Oak Bark
Cooper's Ale (dry)

11/18 BREWDAY: This was easy - I put on 1.5 gallons of tap water, brought to a boil, added the extract, dissolved, then added the oak bark and left on a low boil for 45 minutes. I pulled it off the stove, gave it an ice bath to 70, strained it into a 2 gallon bucket, checked gravity - Brix=18/1.074, then pitched 1 gram of yeast and let go. By the next morning it was showing fermentation. We left soon after for Thanksgiving, so the plan was to rack to secondary & add the cranberries when we got back from our trip back to PA.

12/5 SECONDARY: Before racking, I pulled a sample and checked gravity - Brix=9.9/1.019. Sweet... already rockin 7%. I also took a little sample to taste. Color was darker than I expected, very sweet... but wow was it tasty! I first added the dried cranberries to a 1 gallon jug, I think about 3 oz. I racked the beer on top... then realized that the dried cranberries would probably just make it sweeter, rather than tart. I pulled out the fresh cranberries, crushed them up a bit, and then added those in as well. Over the next couple of days a bit of a re-fermentation started happening. I made the mistake of not taking a gravity reading after I added the cranberries... it seems like the dried ones have added more sugar. I let it go until the 11th and then prepared for bottling.

12/11 BOTTLED:

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Chapin Cider 2009

The plan: Oh yes... it's cider time. I have tried to make a hard cider probably 3 or 4 times now. This year I restarted my homebrewing hobby, and went about things a little smarter. I think this one has a chance! Wuhoo!

I signed up for a fall crush from a local orchard. A fall crush is a special apple collection of a huge variety of apples that they crush together for a good mix to be used for hard cider. I rolled out to Chapin Orchard in Essex VT and collected 5 gallons. I also bought 2 cider donuts (couldn't resist), and a (ahem) "control" quart of their cider for ... you know... scientific purposes. (wink wink). In actuality, I wanted to sample their cider without using any of the cider I'd be using for the hard stuff. It was exceptionally great!

When I got home, I took a gravity reading (1.046), crushed up and added 5 camden tablets, and let it sit for 24 hours. I was a bit worried about these tablets working, because they were oooollllldddd. I got this particular bottle of them back in 2001 (gulp) in a purchase I made from a guy selling his 3 tier system and everything else in his brewing locker. So who knows how long he had them. Not sure if something like that can weaken or go bad over time. However, it seemed to work.

A day later, I warmed up some water, added 2 cups of brown sugar, and a little maple syrup, cooled the mixture to 100, then pitched some Red Star Champagne yeast and let it settle/activate for about 10-15 minutes. I racked the cider out of the 6 gallon bucket and into a glass carboy, then added the yeast, water, sugar, syrup mixture.

Throughout the following days, I got a little worried. It looked like it started to ferment, but then got this strange looking krausen on top -



It went away by the next day, and then it started doing this totally funky fermentation again where it swirled in random patterns... check out the vid:

I confirmed with some more advanced brewers, that everything looked ok, and went on.

11/7 SECONDARY: While I was racking, I pulled a sample to check the gravity... 0.998!!! Holy schnikes! It tasted tart, was yellow and almost clear. I overshot where I wanted the fermentation to stop... damn. Deceiving little sucker! In the past, I've had the trouble of my ciders NOT fermenting... this time it fermented too much, which is a good problem to have I guess.

So, I racked to secondary, added some potassium sorbate (to halt the fermentation), and put it out in the garage where it will live for the next month at least... maybe longer. I may rack to a corny keg and stick in my fridge. This puppy needs to age, I just hope it has stopped fermenting. I do plan on adding 1 or 2 pounds of brown sugar, some honey, and maybe some maple syrup... hoping to sweeten it up. I'm not a big fan of dry ciders, and this thing was super dry.

1/29 THIRDARY: I had moved the cider out of the garage and into the 50-55F basement because I noticed ice building up on the inside of the carboy... not good! I'm sure it wouldn't really hurt, but I didn't want it happening. I took a gravity reading and we're still sitting pretty around 1.000. The taste had definitely mellowed out a bit, still dry, but not as bitey as it was back in November. I put about a quart or so of newly purchased cider into a saucepan, heated it up, then added 2#s brown sugar, 8oz maple syrup, and 8oz honey. Kept stirring until all dissolved, then added to thirdary carboy. I racked the cider on top, gave it a good shake, and capped it with an airlock. I left it there overnight to check for any possible fermentation start up. 24 hours later, nothing happened, which was good and bad. I really would like this to have some carbonation, but with no yeast left, I wouldn't have any. This would be a great one for a keg... hmmm... maybe I'll have to get that kegerator put together soon... ;-)




Saturday, November 7, 2009

Mystery Rye IPA













The plan:
Saturday November 7th was "Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day" by AHA... so I invited some friends over and put together a little IPA partial mash recipe for the day. Turns out, we didn't get much brewing done that day while everyone was there... but we did bottle my Holiday Cheer, and move my cider to secondary... so they learned quite a bit from that.

Recipe:

11/7 BREWDAY:

11/18 SECONDARY:

12/13 BOTTLED:

12/18 TASTING!!!