Tasting and Hops!

So, the Helles and Pilsner IPA are in the keg. Both turned out to be really good. The IPA I knew would be good, as it is a recipe I have brewed several times in the past, it's basically my house beer. The Helles was another story, a new recipe that I had never brewed before, using first wort hopping which I had never tried. Well, it really does result in a smooth bitterness, but I feel like there is too much hop flavor than the style calls for. However, that is not something I worry about, I think the beer tastes good and in the end, thats all that really matters.
Oh, and my hop plants have broken ground and are loving the warm weather. The centennial has 7 shoots, the tallest ones are currently about 6 inches long. The cascade has about 15 shoots, and are all about 3 inches long. I expect serious growth this weekend with the 80 degree temps being forecast. I'll post some pics soon.

Taking Advantage

So the sun was out and there wasn't much going on last saturday, so I decided to brew 10 gallons of Pilsner IPA. I omitted the roasted barley, upped the munich to 3 lbs for 10 gallons. Actually, this was probably the smoothest session ever, I was done in under 6 hours, and that included a 90 minute boil. OG was 1.062, for about 75% efficiency, and I pitched 3 packs of US-05 at 60 degrees. Beer is fermenting nicely in the basement. I also moved the Helles into an extra fridge in the basement for lagering at 35 degrees for a month or so. Cheers!

Tasting the BVIP

This is certainly quite a different tasting beer. I think right now the bourbon could have been mixed in a little better with the beer. During kegging, my guess is there is more bourbon in the bottom of the keg, so it is dominating the flavor. But, my wife likes it, so that must count for something.
The helles is going right along, it was down to about 1.012 after a week. I'm going to check it again this weekend. One other thing I learned was that the FWH is a flavor addition, not a bitterness addition. Oh well, we'll see how it comes out.

Helles Style Lager

I brewed 11 gallons of Helles lager today, similar to the brew we did at Valley Farms over the Christmas holiday. The recipe was pretty simple:
12 lbs Weyermans Pilsner
5 lbs Weyermans Munich
1 lb Carahelle
1 oz Perle (9.4% AA) First Wort Hopping
1 oz Liberty (4.0% AA) @ 10 minutes
4 packs Safale S-23 pitched at 50 degrees
Target og was 1.049 for 11 gallons, which I hit right on with about 11.5 gallons into the fermenter. The one new thing I tried was the FWH, which is putting hops in the kettle prior to running anything out of the mash tun. It is supposed to result in a "smoother" bitterness. We'll see how it comes out in a month or 2. Cheers!

BVIP

I kegged the Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter the other night. It certainly is different than anything I've done before. I ended up leaving the vanilla in for about 16 days, which is a little bit over what the recommended time is. But, it is good and there is a lot of flavor.
I noticed that my refractometer was out of calibration, so the og was really about 1.078, and the fg was 1.021. So, for just the beer, it is 7.4% abv, and add in 375 mL of bourbon, and it is close to 8%. Yummy.

IPA and other stuff

I recently kicked the first keg of the IPA I brewed in november. Turned out to be great, really smooth bitterness. And the aroma of the big hop additions (amarillo) were really nice as well. A friend of mine told me it smelled like really good pot. I guess thats a good thing.

Also I helped some friends brew 10 gallons of a Helles style lager over the holidays. Heres a few photos.

He wanted to mash hop, so heres the mash with 8 oz. of Brewers Gold (grown on-site).

Heres my buddy Nate getting a whiff of the mash.

This is our host, Chris, Head Brewer (and farmer) at Valley Farms Brewing Co.

It was cold, and it being a farm and all, we used the stuff we had to keep the mash temp up. Its under there somewhere.

Nate lives in Syracuse, and brought us over some beer from Middle Ages Brewing. I believe this was a scotch porter. Heres me and Nate enjoying a brew.

I had to head out before things got finished up. But we may have overdone the mash hops. We'll see. Cheers.

Big beer and happy yeast

I tend to surf the forums at Northern Brewer frequently. There is a guy over there named Denny Conn who is kind of the godfather of the forums. Anyway, he posts quite a few interesting/tasty looking recipes. One of them that sounded good was a Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter. I like bourbon and porter, and vanilla is good as well. So I decided to give it a shot. After several natural disasters delaying the brew day, I finally got around to brewing this past saturday. The recipe:
5.5 Gallons, 80% efficiency, target og 1.086
11 lbs pale 2-row
2.5 lbs Munich
1.5 lbs brown malt
1 lb Crystal 135
1.25 lb Chocolate malt
1.2 oz Challenger (7.5%AA) @ 60 min
1 oz East Kent Goldings (4.5%AA) @ 10 min
Mash at 153 for an hour. Run off 6.5 gallons, boil for an hour down to 5.5 gallons.
Cool to 60 deg, pitch 2 packs US-05
Everything went pretty smoothly, although I did have an issue with the manifold coming apart again. Fortunately, it filtered itself, and I ended up with about 6 gallons of 1.088 wort. Chilled down to 60, aerated and pitched yeast. Pretty short lag, this is what it looked like on sunday afternoon:

Notice the nice krausen already. Well, this thing is going crazy right now, I had to attach a blowoff hose because the airlock was clogged. Wow. I did overpitch a little, but there is a ton of sugar in there to consume. Looking forward to trying this monster, should come in around 8.5 - 9% ABV. Cheers!