Rhubarb Berliner Weisse

The Plan:
Earlier this year, I started getting more into sour ales. Not completely, but a bit here and there. I think it started with Magic Hat's Odd Notion this past winter. Long story short, I was thinking about brewing a sour ale when I met Amy, a friend and relative of one of my wife's co-workers. She's into beers and brewing and actually works at Magic Hat now. She had an idea to pair rhubarb with a sour ale given its tartness. I liked the idea, and when I started researching to see what a good style would be, I thought something sweet might be best. Almost right away, I landed on a Berliner Weisse, and of course when I punched in "Rhubarb Berliner Weisse", I found a few people had already come up with this pairing, go figure. Oh well, we'll give it a shot anyways!

Amy had access to a bunch of rhubarb so she grabbed a few pounds and froze it. I did some research on the best way to brew a berliner, and came up with a few options: decoction, single infusion, sour mash, no boil, short boil, full boil, lactobacillus + US-05, wyeast berliner blend, add lactic acid at end, etc. Lots of ways to do this. I decided I didn't want to mess with a sour mash because I didn't want to contaminate my cooler with any little buggers. I kind of liked the idea of just using the Wyeast blend eventhough a bunch of people said the '08 version didn't give enough tartness. I'm hoping that the 2010 version has corrected that, so I'll put my trust in them. I pretty much based my recipe off of Jamil's recipe in Brewing Classic Styles, and would just add some rhubarb to secondary when the time comes.

THE RECIPE:
5 Gallon batch
OG: 1.032
FG:
ABV:
IBU: 7
SRM:
4# German Pils
4# German Wheat
1 oz. Hallertau
3# Rhubarb, cut into 1/4" chunks and frozen, to be added in secondary
Wyeast 3191 - Berliner Blend (Private Collection)

7/23 BREWDAY:
This was a pretty busy day. Dave came over and so did Amy. We started the day off with bottling the saison into a bunch of 750 mL Belgian beer bottles, corking them, and winding down a wire basket on top. While we were doing that, I started heating the strike water.
Mash:
Single Infusion, mash @ 149/150 for 90 minutes
Strike - 10 qts @ 164
After 60 minutes, temp had slipped to about 146, added 3 qts 180F to raise up to 149.
After 90, collected 2 gallons, first runnings Brix 14/1.057
Sparge w/ ~4 gallons @ 168, pre-boil gravity - 8/1.032
Boiled for 15 minutes, added the Hallertau right at the beginning of the boil.
Chilled, took temp readings every minute... got to 69.9 in 31 minutes.
Did not make a yeast starter this time, figured the Activator pack for this low of gravity would be enough. Pitched about midnight.
Checked @ 10AM the next day, absolutely flat.
Checked @ 6PM, clean white froth forming.
Checked @ 11PM, comletely blew out of blow tube... so it's working :-)

More later...

4/27 RACKED TO A QUICK 2ND:
Wow, it's been a long time since I brewed this.  Just over 9 months now.  I finally had a taste of a real Berliner (1809) and was happy to see a lot of similarities.  The main areas that were different were color - the 1809 was a shade darker; and tartness - again the 1809 was a little more tart.  I went through a lot of scrambling to try and doctor mine up a bit using lactic acid.  I also still had the idea of making rhubarb syrup to include with the bottles for the homebrew competition, but was told at length why logisitically it wouldn't work.  So in the end, I decided to go back to the original idea of the Rhubarb Berliner.  I thawed out the rhubarb I had int he freezer, compressed and collected all the juice.  I sanitized a keg, threw the juice in, then racked the beer on top.  This is only going to stay in here for a day or so, really not a lot of time to infuse, but it's got to be bottled and submitted to the homebrew comp by Friday.  Gulp.  The beer itself, with the rhubarb, is almost perfect now.  The tartness of the rhubarb has helped out with that aspect greatly.  The one thing that I'm worried about now is carbonation.  I'm assuming that 9 months has dropped out all of the viable yeast.  I'll have to do some more research before I bottle, knowing whether to add some additional yeast or not.

A review from Mr. Don Osborn:

Cranberry Oak Bark Tripel

THE PLAN:
Last year I tried something crazy... I brewed a 1 gallon experimental batch of an oak bark ale, based off of a recipe in Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. I liked how it turned out for the most part... with some minor adjustments, I think I could make a really killer 2nd version of it, all grain and 5 gallons this time. I decided that the base beer I'd use was a Belgian Specialty Ale or maybe a Belgian Tripel... very close styles. I used some cranberries in it last time to balance out the dry oaky taste, and I plan to use them again. With the oak, I thought I'd use some oak cubes in the secondary to add a little more oak flavor to the mix. So here we go...

THE RECIPE:
15# Belgian Pilsner
3/4# Caravienne
1/4# Aromatic Malt
2# Table Sugar
1 oz Fuggles (60)
1/2 oz Willamette (15)
1/2 oz Fuggles (10)
24 oz Craisins
24 oz Fresh Cranberries
Lightly Toasted Oak Chips (not sure how much I'm adding)

7/10 BREWDAY:
Brewday was mayhem. I nailed my strike temp, and it stayed exactly where it was supposed to be for the full 90 minutes. BUT, somehow my gravity was way way lower than what was projected, even at 65% efficiency. I was freaking out a bit. But, I chilled, collected 7 gallons of wort and decided to do a 2 hour boil, plus I still had 2#'s of table sugar to add.  Pre-boil gravity was 1.044, after 2 hr boil and addition of 2#s of sugar, SG was 1.082

7/23 RACKED TO 2ND:
Time to get this puppy on the oak & cranberries. I added 24 oz. of craisins, 24 oz. of fresh crushed cranberries, and about an ounce of light toast french oak chips to the bottom of a freshly sanitized carboy, then racked the tripel on top. Planning on keeping it on here for about a week. Gravity check before adding it on top of the cranberries was 8/1.002... whoa!

7/31 GRAVITY CHECK: Rose to 10/1.015, so the cranberries did add some sugar!

8/1 RACKED TO 3RD:
Another gravity check shows that it went down to 9.6/1.012, racked it off of the cranberries and oak. This tastes amazing! Still a little sweeter than I wanted, but has a nice warming dry finish. Can't wait for Thanksgiving!

8/7 GRAVITY CHECK: Down to 9.2/1.010

8/22 GRAVITY CHECK: Down even further now - 8.2/1.003
Planning on bottling soon, going to do the 750mL belgian corked bottles like I did for the saison. And then we'll keep our mitts off of these until Thanksgiving!

9/19 BOTTLING:
Was brewing my pumpkin ale today and had some time to bottle this batch.  I tried to used as many Belgian 750mL bottles as possible, and a few 12 oz.

11/10 TASTING:
Did a thai dinner tonight with Dave & Megan and decided to pop one of these open to see how it's coming along.  TRAGEDY... it appears that they're not carbonated at all.  :-(  Did something happen or did I pull a major faux pas and forget to add priming sugar before I bottled :-S  Oh god, say it ain't so. 

11/11 RE-TASTING:
Tried another bottle, this one was a 12 oz capped bottle - same result... nothing at all.  BARNACLES!!!  I'm going to test one more and see if it produces the same results.  If it does, then I'm going to have to do one of two things: 1) open every bottle up, throw some carb tabs in, then recap/recork and wait another couple of weeks.  2) open every bottle up, mix up some priming sugar, and distribute between all of them OR pour them all back into the racking bucket and re-rack to bottle, cap/cork, and wait a couple of weeks.  I would just choose the former of the two options, but I've experienced some problems recently with the carb tabs I have.  I carb tabbed some Oktoberfests and Brown Rice Lagers and they came out flat and had chunks of the tabs floating around.  Then there's the question of adding more yeast.  Oh, and there's the added bonus of not having enough corks and hoods to re-cork this batch.  I'll have to either drive an hour to Plainfield to buy more, or order some online.  Did I mention how much this sucks?

Saison de la Dolan ;-)

THE PLAN:
The gameplan for this one was top secret for awhile... our friends Rob & Kristina were getting married in August, and had asked my good friend Dave to cater the wedding. He came to me with the idea of brewing a beer for the wedding, not for the whole wedding, but for the bride, groom, wedding party, and cooks. Additionally, I suggested we cook with the beer too. He went through his projected menu and I thought the best style for the event & menu & time of year would be a traditional french/belgian saison. I also thought it would be a great chance to try corking some 750mL belgian beer bottles too. The biggest obstacle I knew we were facing was time. That style is known for a tricky yeast that usually take 4-6 weeks to finish fermenting, and needs super high temperatures too. I also knew that we would need 2-4 weeks of conditioning time for those bottles to carbonate properly. Well, to my great pleasure, everything turned out great.

THE RECIPE:
9# Belgian Pilsner 2 Row Malt
2# Vienna Malt
1# German Wheat Malt
1# Rye Malt
1/2# Flaked Wheat
1/2# Flaked Oats
1/2# Light Brown Sugar (wasn't planned, added it on a whim)
1/2# White Sugar (whim again)
1 oz. Perle (60 minutes)
1 oz. Styrian (10 minutes)
1 oz Styrian (5 minutes)
1/4 oz fresh grated ginger
1/8 tsp paradise seeds
Wyeast 3724 - Belgian Saison (1 L starter for 12 hours on stir plate)

6/11 BREWDAY:
Planned a low & slow mash for this one... 90 minutes @ 148-150F. 90 Boil as well.
17.5 qts @ 162F --> doughed in, temp adjusted to between 146 & 150. Covered up and checked at 3 x 30minutes intervals, temp was right on the money the whole time... I love this mash tun (48 qt. igloo cooler).
Tried to mashout with 11 qts of 200F water... temp only raised to about 165F. Let go for 10 minutes, then started sparging with 1/2 gallon of 180F water... didn't raise the bed temp up at all... and it all pretty much got absorbed. Collected about 5.5 - 6 gallons, Brix @ 12/1.048... target was 1.054. Sparged another gallon, collected 1/2 gallon to get 6.5 total gallons.
Added 1/2# light brown sugar and 1/2# white sugar to raise gravity. Brix now @ 14/1.057.
Boiled for 90 minutes, with hop & spice additions.
Cooled with IWC, Brix @ 18.25/1.075, target was originally 1.065. I went back and added the sugar into the program and now it gave me SG as 1.074, so still right on the money.
Cooled to 75, pitched yeast slurry, put to bed, and cleaned up.

I'm planning on fermenting this one out for about a month, in an upper bedroom where the temps get nice and toasty - usually in the 80's during the day, and stays in the 70's at night. It's not constant, but it's the best I can do for now.

7/10 GRAVITY CHECK:
It's been a month, so I thought I'd check in to see where the gravity is. 13 Brix/1.039... damn. This really didn't get far. After some discussions on the BA Homebrew board, I decided to put this puppy out in the garage for another week of hot and steamy temps that will hopefully kick it back in enough to finish it off. I also sanitized my hands and shook the carboy for a couple minutes to get the yeast stirred up. The people on the boards said give it another 2 weeks... but I'm running out of time, so we'll see.

7/16 GRAVITY CHECK:
10.5/1.022 - Still not where I want it, but getting closer. I have to source some corks and hoods for the 750mL bottles I plan to use, so I'll let it go a little longer.

7/20 GRAVITY CHECK:
10/1.019... it might be under 10 a bit... but it's getting close now. I think the estimated FG was supposed to be around 1.016, so if it dropped 3 points in 4 days, then hopefully it will finish off by Friday (the 23rd), and if not, I really need to bottle these to have them ready in time for what their original purpose was - a wedding gift!

7/21 CORK CHECK:
I had decided that I wanted to bottle this batch in 750mL Belgian Beer bottles that would also need to be corked. With some quick research, I saw that a bag of 30 corks was about $8, wire hoods to tie down the corks were about $15 per 60, and I would need a floor corker in order to make this happen. Shit. That's about $25 extra bucks plus I'd have to find a floor corker. It was a little unreasonable to try and buy a floor corker just for this batch... they run anywhere between $75 & $150. I did some searching and was able to borrow an Italian floor corker from a guy in the Green Mountain Mashers. There was still a little finagling on how to position the corker right so that only half of the cork got inserted. Ended up just putting the metal disc to the bottom of the bolt, then adding a #6.5 holed-stopper on the end. It took about 6 tries to get the depth correct though. I also ended up driving out to Plainsfield to visit Local Potion, since they had the right type of corks and VT Homebrew did not. While I was there, I also discovered they had some used Portuguese floor corkers from a local winery that they were selling for $20. The Portuguese corkers are a little smaller than the Italian ones, and seem like they are really only for wine bottles/corks. We tested a few with no luck, but I still got it hoping I could make it work somehow. Turns out, after about an hour of hankering, the hole that's between the cork and the bottle is sized for a wine cork. It looks like I could drill a larger hole, enabling it to work for the bigger belgian corks. But, for this batch, I'll use the larger Italian floor corker and mess with the other one later... or trade it back in towards an Italian corker they have there as well.

7/23 CORKING:
Even with all the trials and tribulations with the corkers, the actual corking process went fast & smooth. I had Dave helping fill the bottles, I would put the corks in, and our friend Amy was putting the wire baskets or hoods on. We got about 19 bottles corked, they looked awesome! So now we wait.

8/6 FIRST TASTE:
The wedding is tomorrow, so I decided to bust one out and see what it was like. I had it chilling in the fridge for about 4 or 5 hours. It poured beautifully! And the taste was spot on! Doin the happy dance :-)

8/7 THE WEDDING:
I was excited to give this to the happy couple, and what a day it was. Perfect weather, amazingly beautiful scenery overlooking Lake Champlain on the historic Shelburne Farms Brickhouse. Dave decided to use the beer with the mussels, and I opened a few bottles for the bride & groom. They loved it! I stashed one away for them to open on their anniversary next year, it will be exquisite.

Nit Wit

THE PLAN:
One of my favorite beers is Victory Whirlwind, a PA brewed Belgian Witbier. I made a pretty damn good wit last summer as an extract batch, and so this year I was going to do the same thing, but decided to go all grain at the last minute. Why not?

THE RECIPE:
6# Belgian Pils
4# Weyerman Ligth Wheat Malt
1# Flaked Wheat
1 oz. Hallertau
1/2 oz. Saaz (homegrown)
1 oz Sweet Orange Peel
1 oz. Bitter Orange Peel
Zest of 1 Orange
Wyeast 3944 - Belgian Witbier, 1L starter on stir plate for ~ 36 hours.

5/16 BREWDAY:
Decided to do a double infusion mash schedule...
9.9 qts @ 132F --> 120-122 for 30 min.
8.8 qts @ 198F --> 152-154 for 30 min.
7.7 qts @ 206F --> 168F for 10 min.
Sparge w/ 1.38 gal. @ 205F --> 168F
Collected 6.5 gallons
First runnings - 11/1.044
Pre-boil - 10/1.040
Boil - 60 min, hops @ 60 (Hallertau), 10 (Saaz), orange peels @ 10
Post boil/OG - 12/1.048

6/9 PRIMARY to BOTTLE
Happy 9 months Bear! Well, Brix is down to 6/1.010 which actually exceeded my estimate by about 3 points. Nice! Smell and taste were right on, color was maybe a smidge darker than Whilrwind, but, man this will be good! Can't wait!

6/22 FIRST TASTING
I had the supreme pleasure of first trying this beer with the one and only Don Osborn when I went out to MN for a work conference. Don was gracious enough to invite me over for some homebrews, and I brought with me a few VT beers as well as some homebrews, this being one. I was a little worried that it hadn't carbonated much since I had only bottled it 6 days prior, but it poured fine, even though the head dissipated pretty quickly. It was pretty good, sweet, light, a little tang from the orange peel... still not quite where I wanted it, but will be able to tell better when I sample it with a Whirlwind and my last bottle from the one I brewed last summer.

Way back Archive

I was re-organizing my brew book (a binder full of recipes), and I found a bunch of stuff from when I started brewing. These are some recipes I tried the first time around, 2001-2008:

2001:
2/01 - IPA (kit)
7/10/01 - Wood's Edge Berry Wheat (ended up like a framboise, but w/o the belgian funk)
9/9/01 - Whirlwind clone
9/16/01 - Blueberry Ale
9/23/01 - IPA
9/30/01 - Granny Smith Cider

2002:
2/23/02 - IPA (AG)

2003:
10/5/03 - Phil & Brian's Cider
10/5/03 - Boo Berry Ale
10/17/03 - IPA (AG)

2007:
4/29/07 - Weirdo Witbier (had choc & crystal malts in it)
4/29/07 - VT Maple Cider

2008:
4/20/08 - VT Maple Cider
4/23/08 - Whirlwind clone
8/18/08 - Pumpkin Brown

I really didn't have that great of a handle on what I was doing back then. I also complicated things by jumping into all grain too soon. A lot of these batches ended in frustration, and so it was hard to keep moving forward. I worked/volunteered part time at a homebrew shop, my pay was ingredients, pretty good trade off. Another thing that I see now is that my setup had a lot of problems, and I didn't have that many resources available as I do today. But I'm glad I started then and kept my gear. Now the timing is right for me to start up again, and I'm enjoying it.

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!

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.

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.

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.