English Brown Ale

I made this one yesterday, and am hoping it turns out.

I did my 1 1/4 gallon boil with:

4oz Crystal 60L
4oz Chocolate
1 1/2oz Roasted Barley
3oz Carapils

steeping for 20 min and then added 1lb of amber DME and (where I should have done 1/4 oz Cascade hops) 1/4 oz Styrian Goldings hops.

Boiled that for 45 min, added 1/2 a Whirlflock tab, boiled for 5 more minutes and added my other 3 lbs of amber DME as well as 3/4 oz of Hallertauer hops (where I should have used Northern Brewing - if I was following the original recipe).

I pitched using a high-gravity trappist ale yeast, so this should be interesting!

And my wife broke my hydrometer, so I was unable to get an SG reading.

The goal of this one is to get a very chocolaty brown ale with a hint of roasting in the aftertaste.

I can't decide if I want to get  a new brewpot, or a smaller carboy.

I would like to point out that I felt much more at ease wandering and asking questions at Bob's Homebrew Supply than back in Chi-Town. The Brew and Grow will always have a special place in my cupboard, but I think I'm more of a Bob's type of guy.

Belgian Tripel Update

After reviewing the process and ingredients list (and a side-by-side comparison to New Belgium's Tripel - mine won :) next time I'm going to

Switch the 1 lb candi sugar for 1 lb honey
Try to make the LME all DME
Add cloves (giving it a taste more like Delerium Tremens or Goose Island's Sofie)
Add more priming sugar (to give the somewhat flat tripel a bit more head and effervescence)

I'm also going to make an English Dark Chocolate Ale, with a bit of black patent (just a bit) to get that dark, bitter taste, and a lot of chocolate grains, though I'll finalize that recipe later.

I'm also going to make a beer for my wife - a basil ale. To that end I picked up 3 of the Rogue beers - their chocolate stout, their nut brown ale, and their chipotle ale - the last being the most helpful when attempting to add an odd ingredient. I'm not sure if I'm going to make and IPA or a regular ale, but I'm interested to find out.

SG Readings and Procedural Thingys

English Brown Ale
So while doing the English Brown Ale, I wasn't pleased with how long it took to get back up to a boil. I did something stupid and put the lid on the huge brewpot. It took just seconds for it to overflow. I think that also removed several of the good fermentables, because there is almost no krausen buildup on the edge of the primary. I think that also might be because of the gas release valve setting - I put it deliberately low after having the Russian Imperials Stout literally explode all over my dining room. Oh well. I am going to siphon now, using the water-in-tube method suggested by Papazian.

The OG was 1.040, and the SG now - moving to secondary - is just over 1.010. Assuming that's relatively stable, the ABV% is going to be about 4% ((1.040 - 1.010)*131.25)

Belgian Tripel
While brewing the Tripel I cut some of the recipe out. I did not wait for the wort to come to a boil before adding the LME/DME/candi/maltodextrin and dumped it all in.

I must say, it was one of the coolest reactions ever to see the hops go into that. I put just a few at a time in because I knew it would cause major foam with the enzymes mixing, and that thing was bubbling like MAD for a good 5 minutes. It was pretty cool.

OG was 1.080 - this is gonna be a strong one! Hopefully it'll get down to about 1.010, making it just over 9%

This is a quick video of the airlock after just over 12 hours - there is a steady, but not huge amount of CO2 being released.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/_cqfWoGNslLQ/S78VT8qSGOI/AAAAAAAADFE/yCwSAXmqYnc/s128/Fermentation%20048.jpg


Next Up: Hard Cider

Impulse Buys and Second Tries

I headed out to the Brew and Grow two days ago and made an impulse buy. They have an expanded selection, so I purchased the planned English Brown Ale, but also saw and purchased a kit for a Belgian Tripel. Apparently, you have to age them for over 3 months, so I'm going to purchase a second carboy today when I go again, and try to bulk age it for the 3 months and then bottle it.

My buddy also pointed me out to a new site where I saw this:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/14-gallon-fermenator-f3-14-tri-clamp-fittings.html

So I have a 5 gallon plastic carboy, I wonder if there is a sanitary way for me to attach this to the bottom:

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xmi/R-100079386/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

The most difficult would be the secondary nozzle for tasting, but I was thinking I could use to the one I already have with nozzle in it, not necessarily in the funnel. The nozzle at the bottom is easy, but sealing the two together - especially in a way that is known to be sanitary.

On another note, I also found that I had not been sanitizing my equipment properly, which I believe is the odd taste to my stout. I had been using the iodine sanitizer before the cleanser, and apparently you're supposed to do the opposite - the iodine sanitizes for human consumption those things the chemical cleanser removes/loosens from your equipment. Whoops!

English Brown Ale

It's unanimous that the English Brown Ale was a much better beer overall, so I will be returning to that with my next batch, but taking it a step further and attempting to improve it.

In addition to the Brewer's Best kit, I will purchase an extra 4 oz bag of chocolate grains. I haven't decided if I will use all of them yet, but I'd like the cocoa flavors to come out a bit more in the trial batch. In addition, I will also try to find and use the moss - I can't remember if it's Irish or Scottish at the moment, but it helps with clarity (and, I would imagine, body by virtue of making it clearer).

Now I just need to hit up the Brew and Grow to pick everything up.

(And after that, I think I'm going to make this recipe)

Homebrewing - English Brown Ale

I tasted my first homebrew today. After traveling to the Brew and Grow on the north side of Chicago and picking up the two tubs, sealed lid, blow-off valve, sanitizer, cleanser, tubes, and bottle brush; I also picked up the Brewer's Best English Brown Ale beer kit. The ingredients were:

Fermentables:
3.3 lb. Amber Liquid Malt Extract
2 lb Amber Dried Malt Extract

Specialty Grains:
8 oz Crystal 60L
4 oz Chocolate
6 oz Carapils Dextrine

Hops:
1 oz Bittering
1 oz Flavoring
.25 oz Aroma

Yeast:
1 Sachet

The equipment is much more straightforward than I expected: 2 6gallon plastic buckets (2 x $9.95), 1 6-gallon plastic lid with hole for airlock ($5.95), 1 stopper for airlock($0.60), 1 airlock ($1), 1 section of 3 foot long plastic hose - (~$3), 1 container sanitizing concentrate, 1 container cleansing concentrate. I borrowed a 5 gallon pot from a friend, as well as a bottler, which I'm sure helped as the brewpots are like $40 for the cheap ones.

For sanitization, I dump a gallon of water into the bucket I'm going to use, dump in the cleanser (as this is an update several months after the original post, I have the benefit of hindsight, for those reading this chronologically I had this backwards at first - not recommended) and mix it up, was the inside of the lid (so I have something to put the other equipment on when it gets washed), set that aside, then wash and rinse the rest of the equipment, doing the bucket last. Then I do it again with the sanitizing solution, and let it all air dry. As the pot boils for an hour, I do not clean it.

I combined everything according to the ingredients and with the provided materials (for anyone looking to get into homebrewing, I'd highly recommend the Brewers Best kits). Once everything was set, I actually mis-read the instructions. I popped my first English Brown Ale after 7 days, and it was delicious. The ingredients hadn't fully mixed and melded with each other, and the chocolate flavor was a bit stronger than in the later bottles, and it was extremely good.

The rest of the bottles over the next week were more bitter - but those opened after two weeks were then very good again (though not as chocolaty).

My attempt at siphoning failed miserably, and I need to figure out a better way (ie, not just sucking it through the hose) to start it. That aspect of the sanitation definitely concerned me.