Nov 302012
 
An alternative starter...

I decided to be a little creative when making my most recent lager yeast starter. I am going to be co-brewing an 11 gallon batch of German pils, and this requires a 2 gallon starter using my starter system. It seems like a waste of beer to just dump 2 gallons of starter down the […]

Nov 012012
 
Yeast Isolation Medium

I have been contemplating taming wild yeast. What I mean is I want to isolate clonal strains of wild yeast, be it S. cerevisiae or Brettanomyces species. By far the latter is more intriguing, as there are hundreds of S. cerevisiae strains available. To begin taming Brett stains I need two things: a source and a medium to specifically […]

Oct 112012
 

So I decided to try my hand at a partigyle brew, and I figured what better style to do this with than an English brown ale and a mild ale. I’ve been meaning to do this for a few years now, but never sat down to actually calculate a recipe. I sat down with my […]

May 112011
 

I’m always behind on my entries, so here’s a wrap up of the sour cherry ale. I named it Elysian Cherry Ale, and technically it’s a soured cherry Belgian pale ale. After primary fermentation (which was quite vigorous), the final gravity was 1.014.  I added 1 Lb of cherry juice concentration, which brought it up […]

Mar 162011
 

I got my wort for the Iron Brewer from Iron Hill on Friday Mar 11.  The SG was 1.058, and it was all domestic 2-row. In short, here’s the recipe: Grains: Iron Hill Wort (2 row)   5 gallons CaraMunich I 1lb 5oz Aromatic Malt 11 oz Hops:2.5 oz East Kent Goldings (4.8% AA) – […]

Feb 052011
 

Today, I’m going to start a Cherry Melomel. I’ll first ferment 5 gallons of orange blossom honey. Then I’ll rack it to secondary with cherry juice concentrate. Pretty simple – here’s the recipe. 15 lb Dutch Gold orange blossom honey Dissolve in water to yield 5 gallons total. Pitch 1.75 packs of D47 yeast.

Aug 212010
 

Wow, I’m actually caught up on my notes.  Last night I brewed “Nutty Brown Dog”.  It’s been over two years since I made that.  I’ve been disappointed in the beer for a while.  I really liked the first recipe I came up with for it, so I’m going back to that one.  The only changes […]

Aug 212010
 

I had Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Bier a bit ago, and I loved it.  It’s a great low-alcohol beer with tons of flavor, and a nice subtle sourness.  I highly recommend buying this if you ever see it.  So, I was inspired to try something similar.  The style is along the lines of a low gravity […]

Aug 142010
 

OK, it’s been a while.  Between moving, removing a fallen tree, generally taking care of a one-year-old, and working, it’s been hard to find extra time.   Here’s the questionnaire we presented to the homebrew club a few months ago regarding the English ale yeast strains.  In short, everyone could taste differences in all beers. […]

Apr 272010
 
Bottling/Wrap-up

Bottled all beers on Sunday (4/25). Added ~1.6 oz dextrose to each, to give us a final CO2 volume of about 1.8. Got an average of 30 bottles from each. The only problem we had was forgetting to add the sugar to the 1028, which we had to pour back into the bottling keg, prime, […]