That’s right ladies and gents, time to brew up some beer. I actually do have a couple cases worth of big beers in storage currently, but I really do not have much in the way of session beers. I pretty much have a drawer full of homebrews in the fridge (a mix of session beers – mostly hefeweizens – and stronger beers), and that’s about it. Solution? Five gallons of oatmeal stout and two half-batches of single-hop pale ales.
The first half of the solution was brewed about two weeks ago. Fork ‘N Knife Stout is my first attempt at a very sessionable oatmeal stout. I had written the partial mash recipe for this a few months ago and finally got around to brewing it. This was also the first beer to break in my mash tun and wort chiller. The mash tun worked great without a single leak! It worked a lot better for controlling the mash temperature than steeping on the stove top or by putting the pot in the oven to maintain temperature. Mash and sparge done, time to boil. The boil went as smooth as any other brew I’ve done – only had three additions: 1oz of Centennial at 60 minutes, 1oz of Glacier at 30 minutes, and some Irish Moss at 15 minutes. Boil done, time to chill. As expected, the chiller did its thing and got the temperature down in the 80s in no time. I ended up doing an ice bath for the rest of the temperature drop because the tap water was struggling to get under 80. I was eventually able to chill it down the rest of the way and pitch the yeast.
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| The mash tun as it was draining the wort into the brew kettle, leaving the spent grains behind. |
I ended up sticking the carboy right next to the AC unit to make sure it stayed down in the right temperature range. That really was my biggest obstacle in this brew – the temperature. In all my infinite wisdom, I decided it would be a good idea to brew on one of the hottest days of the year. Smart move, John. There were a few issues with this. Since I had my supplies shipped to me, the yeast was actually feeling pretty warm from the few days it spent on a delivery truck, despite the fact that I had them add a couple ice packs in with the yeast. Definitely should have done a starter on this one, but oh well. After about a day lag, the fermentation kicked in pretty good and had a pretty healthy fermentation. Another issue with the heat was chilling the wort down. It’s a lot harder to get the wort down to temperature when the kitchen feels about 100F (it actually probably was up around there – definitely in the 90s I’m guessing). Heating up a kettle a few times for mash water and sparge water, and doing an hour long boil of three gallons of wort, heats up a kitchen pretty quick. I had initially intended on doing the pales ales the next day but decided against it since the temperature in the apartment was still recovering from the mass amount of heat I generated the day before.
I just put this stout into bottles (one Party Pig, and the rest in bottles) this past Sunday. It did taste pretty delicious from the sample that I took from fermenter. It definitely had a punch of coffee flavor from the roasted grains but not excessive amounts. I’m excited to see how it tastes once it is carbonated, but so far, so good. One regret with this one. I had originally intended on adding in a couple ounces of cocoa nibs into the Party Pig to impart some chocolate flavor into half the batch. However, on bottling day, I realized that I forgot to add in the cocoa nibs (or even get them out of storage for that matter) about two seconds after I closed up the Party Pig and activated the pressure pouch. Wah wah. Oh well, no big deal.
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| A sample of the oatmeal stout before it was bottled. |
Where was I to be found this past Saturday? In my kitchen all day doing my first all-grain batch. Started off with ten pounds of American 2-row and a half pound of Crystal 60L in the mash tun at about 152F. After the mash and sparge, I ended up with about six gallons of pale ale wort. I split this into two three-gallon boils (I ended up draining the mash tun into my bottling bucket to collect the six gallons I needed and then put three gallons into the brew kettle, boiled, chilled, put that batch into the fermenter, then drained the other three gallons into the brew kettle for the second boil since I only have one large brew kettle). For the first boil I added three additions of Calypso hops (.25oz at 60 minutes, .25oz at 15 minutes, and .5oz at 2 minutes), and for the second boil I added three additions of Sonnet hops (1oz at 60 minutes, .5oz at 15 minutes, and .5oz at 2 minutes). I am planning on dry hopping each of these with an ounce of each of the respective hops. I probably won’t bother putting these two through a secondary fermentation since I am looking to get some more beer sooner, rather than later. Also, the main purpose of these two ales is to showcase the two hops so that I get a better idea of how I want to use these hops in future beers. I am not too worried if these ales aren’t perfectly clear – John needs to stock his shelves with beer, so he’s not patient enough for a secondary on these two. :-) These will probably be bottled in about a week and a half.
If all goes well over the next few weeks, I should have about three cases of beer and a Party Pig (about the equivalent of a case) ready to drink. I see some delicious stouts, a couple interesting pale ales, and perhaps a few black and tans in my future. :-)
That’s all for now folks, stay frosty.
Song of the Day: “Stand Tall” by the Dirty Heads
Beer of the Day: Iron Hill Media’s Yin Yang
