Local lambic 2013 + Local lambic 2012 updates

This weekend, I brewed the second annual batch of my local pseudo-Lambic. Last year's batch has  developed into a nice lambic base - assertively sour (but not overly so), with a great bouquet and good color and clarity.

For this years batch, I'm keeping the turbid mash, and using the same recipe - the only change being that I upped the Munich malt by 10% and reduced the boil time from two hours to 60 minutes. The hope is that the extra Munich will offset any kettle caramelization the extra hour would have given.

To make way for this year's batch, it was finally time to do something with the 5 gallons I brewed last April. I have been debating back and forth over whether or not to fruit the beer. I finally decided that the beer would work fine as a fruit lambic base and went back to the original idea to use boysenberries after the plan to use pinot gris grapes didn't work out as planned (with only a few ounces, the flavor and acid contributions were undetectable). I racked a little under three gallons of the beer onto 3 pounds of boysenberries (which I might bump up to five), and racked another gallon into a small glass carboy for extended aging - my intent is to use this in blending for a gueuze-style beer in a year or two.

All-Nevada harvest ale (or, the worst brewday ever)

Yesterday I brewed up a beer that I've been looking forward to since harvesting my first year Cascade and Centennial hops way back in August. A number of factors kept me from brewing this beer earlier (weather, sickness, vacations, etcetera), but most importantly, I was waiting on the right malt.

We have our very own maltster in Reno, Lance, who buys locally-grown barley and malts it himself in a converted garage. The quality is second to none, and it was always the missing puzzle piece in a locally produced beer.

The beer itself is a loose SNPA clone using locally grown ingredients. I bought twelve pounds of Copeland malt (a nice 2-row base malt variety) that was grown in nearby Yerington, and along with the 5 ounces of Cascade and half-ounce of Centennial I was able to grow last year, all I needed was a little water and yeast. Of course, if I had the technology, I'd culture some S. Cerevisiae out of the local air and be 100% local, but for obvious logistical reasons I'm using a packet of US-05 for fermentation purposes.

Tasting notes: Red Flanders & Local lambic

Over the weekend, I got around to pulling samples from my two sours that have been in secondary. It has been nearly five months since I last sampled my cherrywood-aged flanders red, appropriately named Red Flanders, and this was the first time I'd tasted the local lambic.

Update: Harvest Wee Heavy (2012)

It's been awhile since my last post, but last weekend I finally got around to bottling my pumpkin beer. Some of the spicing didn't come out as strong as I had intended, luckily Rick lent me some of his pumpkin pie flavor extract - I ended up using about 10 drops for the entire batch.

Head past the break for some additional photos from the bottling day.

Ribs 'n Stuff

 

Last weekend I smoked a few pounds of ribs. I started with my homemade dryrub (mostly brown sugar and black pepper), and then smoked the ribs for nearly six hours.

 

 

My uncle got us a bottle of Dreamland Barbeque sauce (from Alabama) which I mopped on the ribs during and after cooking. We also had some corn and fried green tomatoes from the garden to go with them.

 

Good eats!

Update: Harvest Wee Heavy 2012

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.

Custom bottle caps

 

Last month I ordered some custom bottle caps from BottleMark, which arrived this past week. The quality is pretty nice.

 

Although I mostly keg now, I'll use these for gifts and the rare beer-gunned bottle. I ordered a few different designs, including a sequential run of steam locomotive builder's plate inspired ones (the number is the batch number).

 

I'll report back on how these hold up to capping/storage.