This Saturday, my friend Rick and I finally got around to brewing the collaboration witbier we have been waiting on ingredients for. The LHBS finally got my yeast (WLP410, my go-to witbier strain) in stock again and so after picking up the yeast and other ingredients on Friday, we were good to go.
I also needed to borrow Rick's beer gun so I could keg and fill a few bottles of KG30 for my cousin's thirtieth birthday party on Saturday night.
Lastly, we needed to bottle our
secret porter that we originally brewed for a collaboration homebrew contest in Southern California. Unfortunately, we bit off more than we could chew and the beer was not even close to ready when the deadline came up, so it never even got to compete (if it had, I'm sure we'd have done well!).
Ultimately, Rick and I ended up holding a 'brewing triathlon' and decided we would just do everything in one day. Because of this, I am going to split this up into two posts, with Part I today and Part II tomorrow morning.
Part I - Batch Eleven and KG30
Since there's no longer any need for secrecy, let's get Batch Eleven out of the way. Originally brewed for a competition in Fullerton, it ended up missing the May deadline and was finally ready to go in bottles. Rick and I brewed a single six gallon batch back in February as a tribute to "Black Lingerie", one of the best beers I've ever had. I was able to get the recipe from Daniel, the brewer, and made a few (minor) adjustments to the grain bill, leaving the yeast, hops, and mash schedule intact.
Partially inspired by my love of cordial cherries and Alaskan's Baltic Porter, I decided that I would add cherry puree, cacao nibs, and a concoction of american oak cubes and vanilla beans soaked in rum to my half of the beer. Rick, conversely, went with blackberry puree and a single french oak stave soaked in port wine. The beer was primaried in a single carboy and split up for our expirements in secondary.
We ended up bottling most of it as two seperate batches, along with a handful of bottles filled with a 60/40 blend of the two, my half being the majority. I have my share in a cool closet for the next few weeks to carbonate and bottle condition, but I plan on opening one ASAP to see how it tastes with some carbonation, as the sample I had at bottling was fantastic.
KG30
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| KG30, bottled and labelled. |
I also filled 5 bottles of KG30, the wheatwine with honey, oak, and tequila I brewed a few months back to celebrate my cousin's 30th birthday. The party was later that night, and since I didn't have time to bottle it the regular way, I asked Rick if I could use his beergun to bottle it. I racked the beer to a keg on Tuesday, and force-carbonated it at Rick's Saturday morning (I was out of CO2). We let the keg chill for a few hours in his lagering chamber while we brewed and bottled
Batch Eleven. After we were (mostly) done with everything else we grabbed the bottles out of the freezer (keep them cold for best results) and retrieved the keg from his refridgerator. Beer gunning is incredibly simple, and I can't believe I don't own one already. It's a huge time saver being able to not have to pick between kegging
or bottling, and except for sours, I already keg everything, so I think I will have to get one of these once I start entering more competitions.
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| Rick filling the bottles. |
Tomorrow I will go over the rest of the brewday, including a tasting of an oddly named stout and brewing our collaborative witbier.
Last night I transferred my Harvest Wee Heavy (Pumpkin Scotch Ale) to secondary for some simulated bourbon barrel aging. A little over two weeks ago, I charred some American oak staves in my oven and cut them down to 3" lengths (so that they would fit in a mason jar), and put them into a jar with some Buffalo Trace bourbon. Now that they've had plenty of time to soak up the flavor of the bourbon, I added the jar - whisky and all - to the secondary at racking.
Final gravity was 1.018, a few points under my estimated FG of 1.024, giving an approximate ABV of ~8.4%. It's a bit dryer than I had expected, but the hydrometer sample still tasted pretty close to last year's batch. I will need to add more spices at bottling, however, probably using a tincture with vodka.
I have been keeping track of my hops daily for the past couple of weeks, as it seems they were getting closer and closer to harvest time. On Friday I noticed that the majority of the cones on the plant were ready for harvest - thanks again to everyone's insight on judging "ripeness". Since I knew I wouldn't have time after work next week, and I could just leave any undeveloped cones on the plant for a second harvest, I decided that Sunday would be harvest day #1. I say number one because there are still a lot of burrs left on both plants, and I plan on a second, smaller harvest in another two to three weeks.
Yesterday I was finally able to break in all the new equipment I've been collecting, building, and blogging about the past few weeks. This was my first true 'all-grain' beer, since I have been using the BIAB (brew in a bag) method up until now for all of my beers (not counting collaborations on other peoples equipment, of course). I wanted something I could put on tap without having to wait months for oaking, aging, or souring, so I decided I'd brew an IPA to fill up my last keg. I drew a lot of inspiration for the recipe from some clone recipes (Pliny the Elder, Knuckle Sandwich, and Stone Ruination to be specific) and some sage advice from fellow homebrewers.
Long story short, the beer was well-recieved and people have been asking for me to brew a second batch ever since. I finally capitulated and agreed to split a batch with my friend Richard, giving each of us 2.5 gallons. I made some adjustments to the recipe. I ended up having to use flaked red wheat instead of raw spelt since I couldn't seem to find it again. I also increased the grain bill to boost the ABV from the original 3.5% to ~5%, as I found the original version a tad too watery for my tastes. Lastly, I added some additional spices in the form of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and thai chilies based on some success with the ingredients in the past. With these tweaks, I set on brewing a second batch of witbier.
Since there's no longer any need for secrecy, let's get Batch Eleven out of the way. Originally brewed for a competition in Fullerton, it ended up missing the May deadline and was finally ready to go in bottles. Rick and I brewed a single six gallon batch back in February as a tribute to "Black Lingerie", one of the best beers I've ever had. I was able to get the recipe from Daniel, the brewer, and made a few (minor) adjustments to the grain bill, leaving the yeast, hops, and mash schedule intact.
I followed the instructions on the HomeBrewTalk thread to a tee, but made a couple modifications to the basic design. First, I opted to use the more substantial 'bazooka screen' instead of the braided hose filter. I've heard too many stories of the braid crushing under the weight of the grain bed and getting horrible efficiency - or worse - a stuck sparge. I attached a spare stainless steel nut to the bazooka screen to weight it down per advice from my friend Rick, who had problems with the bazooka screen 'floating' and causing him to lose efficiency points. The second modification I made to the design was to add a neoprene rubber washer to the inside of the cooler, between the stainless steel washer and the rubber grommet. My hope is that the rubber washer will help fill in the gap between the flat washer and the curved wall of the cooler. I'm probably going over-kill, but I'd rather overdo something than have it leak.
