Begin Brewing!

From the first time I tried one at The Winking Lizard Tavern many years ago, I've been a fan of the English Dark Mild Ale style. It's a nice mix of roasty malt flavors without the heaviness of a porter or stout, which makes it easy to drink year-round. The recipe below is adapted from the Hey Man Dark Mild recipe by Nic Pestel of Missoula, MT.  Nic won a gold at the 2018 NHC in Portland, OR, with the original version.  This variant changes the original recipe in the following ways: Swapped Maris Otter for the original's Montana 2-row Pale Malt Swapped Munich DME for the original's Munich 10L Malt Replaced the original's Dextrin Malt with some Pilsner (since I had no Dextrin or similar on hand) Swapped Lallemand CBC-1 dry ale yeast for the original's Wyeast 2112 California Lager Yeast, mostly because I didn't want to deal with a lager and the CBC-1 should be fairly neutral yeast Adjusted IBUs based on my hops' Alpha Acid levels Changed the first hops add...

I've heard quite a lot about this beer over the last couple of years, so I decided to try brewing a batch with the best recipe I could locate, adjusted for my Grainfather and a three gallon batch.  This will be the first Imperial Stout I think I have ever brewed.  I don't know where I found this recipe, and I tried to locate it again on the web with no success.  My apologies to whoever originally published it, but since I've significantly altered it below (adding DME, swapping out the flavor/aroma hops, and the yeast) that may be just as well if the beer doesn't turn out. Ingredients 5 pounds 5 ounces Maris Otter malt 3.3 pounds (1 large can) Maris Otter LME 8 ounces English Medium Crystal malt 6 ounces English Pale Chocolate malt 2 ounces English Black Patent malt 2 ounces English Roasted Barley 1/8 tsp. Brewtan B (mash) 1.5 tsp. pH 5.2 stabilizer (mash, after grain) 10 ounces cane sugar (start of boil) 4 ounces Lyles Treacle (10 min.) 1 tsp. yeast nutrient (15 min.) 1...

Thanks to the mold infection, I had to toss Irish Red 6.0 before I even got to taste it.  Since it was mostly a mash optimization experiment, it was less painful to toss it out than it might have been.  Today, I decided to brew a sixth version of the beer, as a further test of mash optimization. Ingredients 6 pounds, 6 ounces Maris Otter malt 6 ounces Caramel/Crystal 120L 6 ounces British Medium Crystal 5 ounces Chocolate Rye Malt 0.57 ounces Whitbread Golding Variety hops @ 7.1% AA 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B during boil (20 min.) 1/2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient (15 min.) 1/2 tsp. Irish Moss (15 min.) 3 gallons RO mash water 1.75 gallons RO sparge water 1 gram Calcium Chloride 0.5 grams Canning Salt 1.1 grams Epsom Salt 2.5 grams Gypsum 0.5 grams Magnesium Chloride 1 package Wyeast English Ale III yeast Brewfather estimates the batch will have the following characteristics: BJCP Category: Irish Red Ale Batch Size: 3.0 gallons, 2.7 gallons actual Original Gravity: 1.058 SG estimated, 1.060 ...

Despite having had the DIY Dog book of BrewDog's recipes for a while, I've never taken the time to make one of their beers. I decided to change that today, selecting the "IPA is Dead" Mandarina IPA since I had plenty of Mandarina Bavaria hops and (what I thought was) enough Maris Otter malt. As it turned out, I was a little shy on the Maris Otter and had to fill in with some Belgian Pale Ale malt I wanted to use up. Ingredients (as Brewed) 5 pounds plus 5 ounces Maris Otter Malt (6 pounds 4 ounces was the original recipe) 15 ounces Belgian Pale Ale Malt (not included in the original Brew Dog recipe) 0.75 ounces Mandarina Bavaria Hops pellets @ 9.2% AA (60 min.) 0.80 ounces Mandarina Bavaria Hops pellets @ 9.2% AA (20 min.) 0.85 ounces Mandarina Bavaria Hops pellets @ 9.2% AA (5 min.) 1/4 tsp. Brewtan B in the mash 1.5 tsp. pH 5.2 Mash Stabilizer in the mash 1/4 tsp. Brewtab B in the boil (20 min.) 1 packet Safale US-05 yeast 1/2 vial White Labs Clarity ...