Begin Brewing!

Quite a few years ago, Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione worked with Dr. Patrick (Pat) McGovern to re-create an ancient brew based on a chemical analysis of residue found in 9000-year-old pottery from the Jiahu region of China.  The analysis of that pottery showed a combination of residues from barley, honey, and rice, along with grape and/or hawthorn berry.  Using this information, Dogfish Head and "Dr. Pat" (as he's known to many people) created a beer they called Chateau Jiahu. This was a beer I was very fond of from the first sip.  It has a flavor that immediately invokes a combination of sake (rice wine), beer, and mead, with a mild sweetness from the hawthorn berry.  It's incredibly easy to drink despite the higher ABV. Dr. Pat's book Ancient Brews - Rediscovered and Recreated   contains a malt-extract-based recipe to recreate the beer. I brewed a batch of this a while back , and it turned out quite well.  For this batch, I'm swapping out...

I've come to the conclusion that the best way to bring my recipe creation skills up a level is to focus a bit on the flavor contribution of various malts. There is a lot out there on the subject already, but most experts will tell you that each of us has a slightly different sense of taste and smell. What may seem dry and lemony to me could seem very different to you.  The best way to know what the different base malts contribute to a recipe is to build a single-malt and single-hop (SMASH) beer.  To fairly compare the malts to one another, you will want to use the same water profile, mash and sparge steps, same hops, same yeast, etc.  Your only change should be the base malt. I have a fair amount of a number of base malts in stock, along with a decent quantity of Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets, and some Coopers dry ale yeast.  With the Brewie+ functional again, I should be able to create a number of SMASH beers which are nearly identical apart from their base malts...

Although I was pretty happy with my original Dark Mild recipe , it unfortunately picked up a bacterial infection and had to be dumped.  A second Dark Mild suffered the same fate. In my notes on the original version, I mentioned that I wanted a little more crystal malt and more body.  Toward that end, I've shifted the mash temp upward for most of the mash and added another ounce of Medium English Crystal malt. I've also added some flaked corn, which the BJCP notes is a common ingredient in the style. Ingredients 3 pounds Munton's Pale Ale Malt 6 ounces Medium English Crystal Malt 4 ounces Flaked Corn 4 ounces Crystal 120L Malt 2 ounces English Pale Chocolate Malt 1 ounce English Black Malt 1 ounce Acid Malt 0.35 ounces East Kent Goldings hops @ 6.1% AA (60 min.) 1 large pellet East Kent Goldings hops @ 6.1% AA (15 min.) 1/8 tsp. Brewtan B in the mash 1.5 tsp. pH 5.2 Stabilizer in the mash 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the boil (20 min.) 1/4 tsp. Irish Moss (15...

The Matt Groening television series Futurama has long been one of my favorites.  On that show, the robot named Bender was frequently seen chugging bottles of a beer called Olde Fortran Malt Liquor.  There's no way to guess how a fictional beer on an animated television show might taste. We can guess from the label, which is a parody of Olde English Malt Liquor, that it might be something like that. The American Home Brewing Association web site listed a clone recipe for Olde English. I started there. Since Bender belches fire after drinking Olde Fortran, I figure it has to be a strong beer. Since it's implied in several episodes that Bender has no taste buds (though this is sometimes contradicted), it's probably a cheap lowest-common-denominator kind of mash. I'm going with 6-row malt and a fair amount of flaked corn for the grist.  Since I want it to have at least some flavor, I'm going to add Mandarina Bavaria hops at the 15 and 5 minute marks to impart some ...

Recently, I have struggled to get the desired final volume out of the Brewie+ system. To try and resolve that issue, I've decided to brew a couple of recipes and babysit the mash and sparge process to see where the problem is occurring, as well as double-checking my calculations to ensure they are correct. The first test was this Pale Ale recipe. Ingredients 5 pounds of 2-row Pale Ale Malt 1 pound of Munich Malt 4 ounces of Flaked Corn 0.75 ounces of Mandarina Bavaria hops pellets @ 9.2% AA at 10 min. 0.60 ounces of Citra hops pellets @ 14% AA at 5 minutes 1/4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient 1/8 tsp. Brewtan B in the mash water 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the boil at 10 min. 1/2 tsp. Irish Moss in the boil at 15 min. 1 packet of Lallemand Nottingham dry ale yeast 9.2 liters of mash water 3.2 liters of sparge water The mash schedule began with a mash in at 104F, followed by 20 minutes at 140F, and 40 minutes at 158F. Mash out was 15 minutes at 168F. BeerSmith estimated the follo...

I'm a big fan of the Tripel Karmeliet Belgian Tripel. I've wanted to brew something similar since I started home brewing. My last couple of attempts have gotten close, but have lacked the bright lemony flavor and aroma I get from the real beer. Last time around I had a touch of that flavor. This time I'm making some changes to dial it up a notch. I'm adding more corn sugar to dry it out somewhat, doubling the amount of lemon peel in the boil, shifting the hop load closer to the end of the boil to pick up more of Hallertau Mittelfruh's citrus notes, and even including a bit of citric acid in the boil. I'm hoping that the addition of acid will brighten up the hop flavor, and the slight drying out will make the citrus clearer. Ingredients 6 pounds Swaen Pilsner Malt 1 pound Swaen Wheat Malt 8 ounces Flaked Oats 12 ounces of Corn Sugar added to the mash water 6 handfuls of rice hulls added to help the mash flow 0.50 ounces Hallertau Mittelfruh @ 2.7% A...

The finished beer I just acquired a Brewie+ automated brewing system. After I've gotten a few brews under my belt with it, I plan to do a compare-and-contrast post between iMake's The Grainfather, PicoBrew's Zymatic, and the Brewie+. For now, I'm working out how to use it properly. I can tell you already that the Brewie+ has a number of advantages over the Zymatic: up to 5 gallon batch size, larger grain bills, direct connection to your water supply, ability to brew offline, ability to sparge the grain, and automated wort chilling. It's also much quieter. On the other hand, recipe editing must be done on the device's touchscreen (until they provide you with access to their Android or iOS app, which isn't freely available online), and you need to do mash and sparge water calculations yourself. I'd been thinking about brewing a purported clone recipe for La Trappe Quadrupel. This is a really delicious Belgian Trappist beer, and one that I enjoy d...

At the BrewDog Annual General Mayhem (AGM) event in Columbus this year, I had the opportunity to meet the brewers from Scofflaw Brewing in Atlanta. I enjoyed all of their beers I tried, but one that stuck with me was their "Basement IPA", due to its sweetness and intense fruit flavors. The Scofflaw representatives said they brewed a sweet IPA because the market in Atlanta seemed to prefer it, as it was reminiscent of sweet tea. I reached out to ask if they'd share their recipe, but got no response. I decided to take a shot at cloning it myself, just for fun. From their web site , I knew that it contained 2-row Pale Malt, Acidulated Malt, and Carafoam Malt. It is hopped with Chinook and Citra hops. It's a 7.5% ABV beer with a reported 40 IBUs. Given that the bitterness in Basement isn't particularly intense or harsh, I suspect it's late-hopped more like a New England IPA than a traditional West Coast IPA. For that reason, I'm not starting my hops addition...

Although I liked my first two Scottish 80 Shilling Ales, judges in the competitions I entered them into decidedly did not. The second actually scored worse on average than the first, despite the fact that it incorporated feedback from the judges of the first recipe. This time around, I decided to build my own recipe after having a look at the BJCP criteria for the style and the ingredients it recommends. Ingredients 4.5 pounds Maris Otter Malt 4 ounces British Crystal Malt (60-70L) 2 ounces Caramel Light (8L) Malt 2 ounces Melanoidin Malt 4 ounces Flaked Corn 2 ounces Special B Malt 1 ounce Roasted Barley 0.35 ounces Horizon hops pellets @ 8.2% AA (60 min.) 0.25 ounces Bramling Cross hops pellets @ 6.5% AA (10 min.) 1/4 tsp. Yeast Nutrient at 15 min. 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the Mash 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in at 15 min. 1/2 tsp. Irish Moss at 10 min. 1 packet White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh Scottish Ale Yeast 1/2 vial White Labs Clarity Ferm 3 gallons, 16 ounces filtered tap...