Dandelion EXPs

THE PLAN:
One brewing goal I had this year was to make use of my yard full of dandelions that pop up in late April/early May. I've heard good things about dandelion wine... and I have two books that have some dandelion beer recipes in them. So, I think I'll bust out my gallon experimental jugs (5 of them), and do some experiments with these dandelions.

1 gallon dandelion wine, based off of Don Osborn's recipes.
1 gallon dandelion beer, based off of the same Don Osborn recipe, but just making a few adjustments to make it a beer.
1 gallon dandelion bitter, from the Homebrewer's Garden book
1 gallon dandelion bitter, based off of the above recipe, but doing a clone of Luna Sea ESB from Empyrean Ales.
1 gallon dandelion beer, from the Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers book. There are actually 3 recipes in that book, but they're all pretty much the same, so I'm combining them all.

Dandelion Wine

4/25 - picked about 800 dandelion flowers, still only picked about a qt. Had to go to a house-hunting meeting, so I decided to freeze... they actually took to freezing pretty well.

4/30 - My buddy Dave and I picked another 600... and it seemed like double the amount that I picked on Sunday. Waited until later at night... but put all of the dandelions (both fresh & frozen) into a pot, added 5 qts water and boiled for 12 minutes. Cooled til morning, but allowing to sit for about 48 hours to let the flower flavor & aroma soak in.

5/2 - Strained boiled flower mixture, added zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges, and 1 tsp of yeast nutrient. Boiled for 10 minutes, added juice of lemon & oranges and kept boiling for another 2 minutes. At the end of boil, removed from burner and added 2.5# of sugar, allowed to dissolve then gave an ice bath. Brix = 21.2/1.088, I was shooting for over 1.1, but this'll do I suppose ;-)
I took a packet of Red Star Cote de Blanc and rehydrated in 105F water, pitched when the yeast mixture equalized in temp with the water... which happened to be about 85/86F. I actually poured the mixture through a strainer into a 2 gallon bucket, then added the yeast.


5/5 BEERS (BITTER & "ALE"):
I started by weeding out the garden of all dandelion plants, weighed it, got about a 1/2#... need a full #, so I walked around yard and tried to find some good volunteers. Jen helped wash off the dandelions until all the dirt and muck were off, stripped the fibrous roots off, and plucked any white flowers.
Bitter OG - 18/1.074
Ale OG - 13.5/1.055


5/15 RACKED ALL TO 2ND's:
These are some crazy elixirs! Very interesting to say the least. I'll be anxious to see if any of these are even drinkable when complete. The wine is most promising, although it looks more like orange juice right now than anything. It was spritzing like it was already carbonated. Pretty smooth taste, aside from the tang of the zest in it. The wine yeast was apparent, not overwhelming though. The ale was pretty blah... and it looked more like lemonade than beer! The bitter was also kind of questionably blah. Nonetheless, I took some readings, racked them over... added a pound of golden raisins to the wine, capped with an airlock and no we wait a little longer. I'll probably try to bottle the beers in a week or two.
Wine - 6.5/0.989
Bitter - 9.5/1.016
Ale - 4.5/0.997

Ecktoberfest

THE PLAN:
I had a goal this year to brew an Octoberfest for our Halloween party this fall... I probably should have brewed it in March if I were going to stay true to the style, but oh well... next year. So, I got together with my friends Ernie Kelly and Dave Magnanelli to brew this bitch up. I based the recipe off of one made by Don Osborn called Better Late Than Never Oktoberfest... I just rounded up the grain bill since my efficiency is still pretty low (60%?), and I used Wyeast 2633 Octoberfest Activator pack (2L starter + 36 hrs on a stir plate) rather than the Bavarian Lager strain. Ernie schooled me on a double infusion & fly sparging... up til this point I have just been doing batch sparging.

THE RECIPE:
5# 2 Row Pils (Ger)
4# Munich (Dark)
3# Vienna
1# CaraMunich
1 oz Hallertau (60)
1 0z Hallertau (30)
1 oz Tettnang (homegrown) (10)
Wyeast 2633 - Octoberfest Lager Blend

4/16 YEAST SLURRY:
Used a big Activator 2633 Octoberfest yeast pack from Wyeast... 2L starter. OG was around 1035-1040. Stir plate til brewday.

4/18 BREW DAY:
Double Infusion Mash, engineered by Ernie
11.7 qts @ 140F --> 125F for 20 min.
0.3 qts @ 205F --> 140F for 20 min.
10.4 qts @ 198F --> 155F for 20 min.
Sparge - 1 gal @ 188F --> 168F
First runnings - 13/1.053
Pre-boil gravity - 9/1.036
Boil - 60 minutes, hops at 60 (Hallertau), 30 (Hallertau), and 10(Tettnang)
Post-boil/OG - 11.5/1.046

5/16 RACKED TO KEG FOR LAGERING:
While brewing my wit, I cleaned and sanitized another one of my ancient kegs to lager the oktoberfest in. Brix reading = 5.5/1.008... whoa! Nice!

Took pic at left. The OG was a little low to begin with, so this is actually right on the mark. Color was very orange, almost like a pumpkin, kinda wishing it was more red than orange. Very cloudy, I could see sediment whirling around in it, hopefully that will all clear out. Taste was very nice, smooth, very balanced, no astringencies or anything.... this will be good, can't wait til October!