Heather Ale

The Plan:
Not sure where I heard about Heather Ale's first - Sacred & Herbal Healing Beers, or through my wife's Scottish roots. Either way, I stumbled on Fraoch last fall and really dug it. Was going to brew one last year, but for some reason decided to wait and brew one at the end of this summer to have for the fall... and for the Quechee Scottish Festival! The biggest issue with this beer is sourcing the heather. The Fraoch recipe calls for 1.25# of heather blossoms. I only have access to dried heather tips. I know that the blossoms would probably taste a heck of a lot better... but I decided to go with the dried ones for now until I can source some fresh ones.


Check out this YouTube video about the brewing process of Fraoch:




THE RECIPE:
10# UK Pale Malt
1# Crystal 60L
1# Biscuit
1/2 oz Cascade (6%)(90)
1/2 oz EKG (15)
8 oz Dried Heather Tips
1 oz Sweet Gale
Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale


8/1 BREWDAY:
Mash - 15 qts @ 153F for 90 min.
(No mashout) Collected
Sparge -
Collected
Pre-boil gravity: Brix 13/1.053
Boil: 90 minutes, with the following additions:
@90 - 4 oz. heather, 1 oz. sweet gale, 1/2 oz. Cascade
@15 - 1oz. heather, 1/2 oz. EKg, 1 tsp Irish moss
@5 - 1 oz. heather
@flameout - steep 1 -oz. heather for 1 hr.
Collected 5.0 gallons
SG = 14.2/1.057

8/22 BOTTLING:
FG: 7/1.010
I was in a bit of a rush to get these ready for the Quechee festival... I really should have transferred this to secondary and let it rest for another week... and I really should have had some more conditioning time under it's belt because it wasn't ready on the 28th like I had hoped.
With some help from Jen, we bottled 24 22 oz bottles and 14 12 oz. bottles.

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.

The Mash Tun Project

1/3/10 - Good lawd this thing has stressed me out somethin awful! I have a sweet 3 tier system (on the left - circa 2003), but the damn thing has such a problem with heat loss that I have decided I just cannot use it. Even in hotter outside temps, it just doesn't do well. I had had enough of it, and I was ready to start all grain brewing for good, but I knew I needed to get this thing fixed or else I'd be screwed.

First Option - Wrap That Rascal
I had seen some people wrapping their mash tun kettle with water heater insulation. I went to Lowes and looked at a couple different types and decided to use the one with the higher rating. Well, what I didn't take into consideration was the friggin insulation (dumb ass). When I actually went to cut out the piece to wrap the kettle, and also a circular piece for the lid... I realized that choosing the one with the fiberglass insulation was a HORRIBLE idea. That shit got everywhere, and I was so pissed at myself. What a waste of $25. Well, I made it work for that first batch, but proceeded to throw it away right after. And the thing still didn't retain heat... it dropped 10 degrees in 45 minutes. WTF???

Second Option - Convert The Old Family Cooler.
This seemed very promising since a lot of people have done this, PLUS it would allow me to brew indoors during the winter which was a huge bonus. So, I needed to fix a crack on the inside, find the right size tube to fit through the hole, a stainless steel toilet supply line, and an in-line valve outside of the cooler to control the flow. Well, for the first attempt with this one, I decided not to fix the crack on the inside... it seemed sooo small and insignificant... big mistake. Well, maybe not big, but it did leak quite a bit through the course of mashing and lautering. The toilet supply line was easy, and finding the the valve setup locally was a little challenging but I got it worked out. I could've just snagged a valve from Northern Brewer... but I like to make things difficult for myself apparently. So, 2 1/2" (shanks) and a 1/2" valve switch later, I was in business. Since I had the leak, I tried caulking the outside of the hole, but that just slowed it down a little and made a gooey mess. Between my 2nd & 3rd batch, I got some food safe water sealant and sealed the shit outta the inside and out and it has worked wonderfully.

So, option #2 is the big winner for now... I do love my 10 gallon stainless steel kettles... and I hope to maybe make a 5 gallon version of the Brutus 10 someday with them. I have shitty burners, and smaller kettles, but I think it's possible. Just need to build the stand, get some pumps, and build the controller and I'll be set. I will still have the issue of heat loss with that effin thing, so we'll see. But for now, I'm loving the resurrection of my old cooler. We used to make a huge vat of jungle juice in that thing for parties, so it's probably loving this retirement plan. :-)

Cheers