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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Funky Monkey

The Plan: I've got an idea. In "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers", I read a recipe for a banana beer. Seemed interesting, but not enough that I would act on it. Recently I had Well's Banana Bread Beer, and holy shit was it tasty! Additionally, on the Beer Advocate Homebrew forum, someone was asking about making a Spongebob Ale. A lot of people were pointing towards some sort of a pineapple beer, or using Citra hops which give a bit of a pineapple taste and aroma. So, I've decided to whip all of this stuff together and make a German style Hefeweizen with bananas, some hefe yeast to add to the banana flavor, citrus hops to give a little bit of pineapple flavor and aroma, throw in some sweet & bitter orange peel (which I use in my Wit), and top if off with a slice of orange when served. Let's brew!

Recipe:
OG: 1051
FG: 1009
ABV: 5.47%
IBU: 16.8
SRM: 4.2
5# Pale 2 Row
5# Malted Wheat
3/4# Pilsner 2 Row
3/4# Flaked Wheat
1/2# rice hulls
1oz Hallertau (4%) (60 min boil)
1oz Citra (11%) (flame out aroma)
1oz sweet orange peel (10 min to go)
1oz bitter orange peel (10 min to go)
4# banana (pre-peeled) for primary
2# banana (pre-peeled) for secondary
Wyeast 3068 - Weihenstephaner

3/28 BREWDAY:
Poland Spring Water this time... 5.3 pH
Mash water: 3.6 gallons/14 qts @ 165, target temp of 152 for 60 minutes
No mash out
Sparge water: 5 gallons/? @ 178
Hitting my strike temp is tough. I threw my mash water in the cooler @ 165. Left it in the cooler for about 5 minutes, and it dipped down to 160. I doughed in, and it sunk to 145 in most parts, 150 in high parts. I took out 2 qts, boiled, added back in and everything was around 150. Took another 2 qts out, boiled, added back in and hit about 152. Mashed for 60 minutes.
First runnings -
Second runnings -
Total gravity - - booooo
Boiled for 60 minutes, added 1 oz. Hallertauer pellets at the start of the boil, added 1 oz. sweet and 1 oz. bitter orange peels with 10 minutes left in the boil, added 1 oz. of Citra whole hops at flame out.
During boil, I weighed out 4pounds of bananas, peeled them, sliced them, and added to the primary. Once wort was cooled, I filtered it on top of the bananas, gave it a good shake, and pitched the yeast starter. And off we go!

4/2 RACK TO SECONDARY:
The initial fermentation slowed down Thursday night into Friday, so I decided not to wait too long and get the beer off of the first dose of bananas. I weighed out 2 pounds of bananas, peeled, sliced, and chucked into the secondary, and then racked the beer onto the bananas. The gravity was at 5.5 Brix/1.009... whoa! Not bad :-) I also probably won't keep this going too long, hoping to bottle it soon too.

4/11 BOTTLED:
Racked to bottles - 4.5 Gallons = 24 500mL bottles and 11 12oz. bottles. Brix was 5.5 still. Taste was a little funky... hardly any banana flavor at all which I can't seem to understand, had kind of a bite to it like cider, and it had alcohol warmth which seems a little strange if this is only about 5.5%ABV. Oh well, they're bottled so the time is near... 2 weeks hopefully!

4/18 TASTING: Ernie and Dave came over to brew an Octoberfest, while we were wrapping up, I decided to try one of these even though it had only been in bottle for a week. It carbonated just fine, and we all liked it. Ernie asked if I had submitted it to the homebrew comp (deadline to submit was the day before), and I said no. He said "too bad", which coming from a certified beer judge, I'll take that as a nice compliment. I think the hops were a good idea but I wouldn't use them next time, or I'd at least cut back on them. It definitely masks the hefe & banana flavors.

4/23: (took above pic) Took 6 bottles in to work to pass out... ended up only passing one out and bringing the rest home. I knew this would go fast and I wanted to salvage as many of the bottles as I could. This is definitely turning out nice, still wishing I hadn't hopped it that much, but the banana aroma is much better now. Very very tasty!

5/7: Took a bottle over to my buddy's for a beer tasting. The banana aroma was awesome. Everyone seemed to like it. I am definitely very happy with how this one turned out. I'd chalk it up to the best all grain batch I've brewed yet, and probably one of the top 3 that I've made ever (pumpkin ale & wit being the top 2). I think the hops are important to have in there to some degree, they definitely balance out the bananas. I just need to cut back the amount next time.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Water Woes

Damn damn double damn... I've screwed myself.

Last summer & fall, I used spring water for all of my homebrews. Then I started boiling 7 or 8 gallons of tap water the night before, and letting it sit overnight to cool. Both of these worked well... the spring water beers definitely were the best of all of them, that could just be coincidence, or it could be factual.

Recently I started all grain brewing... and for some lazy-ass reason, I used tap water. I've now noticed that my chocolate stout, dunkelweizen, AND brown ale all have the same bitter taste to them. Unfortunately, the last batch I did, the brown rice lager, also used tap water. Well... never again. I'm either going back to boiling it the night before or just ponying up the $ to buy spring water each time.

Having the right water really does make an enormous difference... go figure, your beer is mostly water in the end, so it really should be one of the most important ingredients.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Brown Rice Lager

The Plan:
Had an interesting beer at Magic Hat over the summer... a brown rice lager, based after a Budweiser clone, using brown rice instead of regular white rice. Doing some research I soon realized this is all based off of a Japanese lager style. I had some trouble locating a clone recipe for Budweiser, surprise surprise... and found plenty of good jokes about brewing Bud. But in the end, I based my recipe partially off of Kirin (pic @ right), partially a guess at Budweiser, partially off of a plain rice beer I found, and also ended up getting the Magic Hat grain list after I got all the ingredients, so I went and got more. I figured this would be a great beer to server at one of our sushi nights (hopefully to start again soon!)

Recipe:
7.5# Weyerman 6-Row
2.5# Muntons 2-Row
1# Rye Malt
1/2# Rice hauls
1/4# Crystal 40L
4# Brown Rice
1oz Saaz (60)
1oz Saaz (5)
Wyeast California Lager 2112 (Activator, 2L starter)

3/4 Yeast Starter:
2L water, 2 cups DME, 1 tsp yeast nutrient. Boiled for 10 minutes, yeast pitched, covered w/ foil, put on stir plate. Took off stir plate Friday night (3/5), put in fridge, decanted this morning, let out at room temp ready to pitch.

3/6 BREWDAY:

Wanted to try and get some stuff done today, so I got up at 7 to try and get started early. Rice was boiling by 7:45. Beersmith called for 19.79 qts of mash water, that seemed like a lot, so I used 4.79 of those in with the rice, then the other 15 I heated up separately for mash in. Rice needs to boil for an hour, mash water needs to be about 167.
Ended up adding 2 or 3 additional quarts of water to the rice starting at 38 minutes left... got rightup to the top of the kettle... should have used a bigger kettle, so the rice could have been on a hard boil the whole time. Gravity reading at 60 minutes was 5 Brix/1.019 or so. Booo. Had a hell of a time adjusting all the temps so that the initial mash water/rice temp was 167. Never hit that... closest I got was 165 after taking a few qts out and reheating. After adding in all the grain and rice hauls, temp was 152. Close enough.

3/28 RACK TO KEG:
Thought I'd rack it into a corny keg so that it would fit into my fridge a little easier so that I can start lagering (a little late). I got roughly 5 gallons, light color, maybe a little lighter than I wanted, but pretty much right where I wanted it. Tastes great! Very very faint taste of that shitty bitter tap water taste. Hopefully it won't be there. Gravity was 6.75/1.010 which was lower than expected, with an estimated ABV of 5%. Keg fits snuggly in the fridge, holding steady at about 35 degrees or so. Looks like it should be ready by end of May or so.