Dry Hoppin

I racked both the beers today. Things seem good so far. Shelley took some pictures, they are in my pictures folder. Both beers taste and smell good. I am going to give them three weeks or so in the secondary.
Note: I added 1/2 ounce of casade hops to the secondary. Dry Hoppin!

Stout & IPA Update

Both beers are venting nicely. I need to order some new valves for the bottling buckets. I am thinking about using an online vender for supplies, maybe I'll try one for the valve. I am thinking about homebrewheaven or Brew Your Own Beer

Stout

I also got this recipe from http://beerrecipes.org/ but I had to modify it a bit based on what I could get.

Ingredients:
½ lb flaked barley
¼ lb black patient malt
½ lb crystal malt
2 3.3lb cans dark malt extract – Munton's
2 ounces Kent Golding
Yeast Safale S-05 dry yeast

Procedure:
Get two gallons of water to 175 F. Turn off heat. Steep flaked barley, black patient malt and crystal malt for 30 minutes. Remove hope bag, turn heat back on. Bring to a boil, turn off heat, add malt extract. Boil for 15 minutes. Add 1 ounce Kent Golding. Boil 30 minutes. Add 1 ounce Kent Golding. Boil 3o minutes.
Move pot to ice bath. After cool add to primary fermented and bring up to 5 gallons.
Hydrate and proof yeast, then pitch.
Move to basement and wait.
I will rack this after 7 or 10 days.

IPA

This is based on a liberty IPA clone recipe that I found online at http://beerrecipes.org/

I changed it a little based on availability of ingredients and Barry's recommendation. I just found http://www.howtobrew.com it's a pretty rockin site. I decided to boil for a little longer than normal and add more hops than I normally would. It's an IPA after all.

Ingredients:

½ lb crystal malt
2 4lb cans light unhopped malt extract – Mountmellick
1 lb dry light malt extract
1 ounce Northern Brewer hops
2 ounces Cascade hops
Yeast Safale S-04 dry yeast

Procedure

Get two gallons of water to 170 F. Turn off heat. Steep crystal malt for 30 minutes. Remove hope bag, turn heat back on. Bring to a boil, turn off heat, add malt extract. Boil for 15 minutes. Add ½ ounce Northern Brewer. Boil 45 minutes. Add ½ ounce Northern Brewer and ½ ounce Cascade. Boil for 30 minutes. Add 1 ounce Cascade and 1 teaspoon Irish Moss. Boil for 15 minutes.
Move pot to ice bath. After cool add to primary fermented and bring up to 5 gallons.
Hydrate and proof yeast, then pitch.
Move to basement and wait.

I am planning to dry hop this batch. I am going to add the last ½ ounce of Cascade to the secondary fermenter.

Hot Beer

So I tasted the jalapeno and coffee beers last night. Both were great. I don't know why we don't rack to a secondary every time. The beers were really clean. Neither was overly foamy and they both poured nicely. The bitter was disappointingly yeasty so its nice to have figured that problem out.

Anyway, I had the jalapeno ale first. It starts out as a nice amber ale. Smells good and has nice darker amber color. The jalapeno is best described as a peppery aftertaste. I really enjoyed it and then a minute or so after a big sip you get a nice warm feeling in your belly. Great beer overall, I am really impressed with it. I think that we need to drink these right away though, something tells me they won't taste great if left in the bottles too long. One other note, I don't know if I was off or something but it seemed to have a decent amount of alcohol or at least it went right to my head. Maybe the jalapenos carry that good stuff to all the right parts of your brain.

I was going to wait a little longer on the coffee stout, but I couldn't help myself. I tried the wort before we bottled and I wasn't too excited. It's hard to tell with a dark beer but it just didn't seem right. Well, the time in bottle serve the stout well. After only two weeks it has really come together. It's completely drinkable now and I really don't see it improving much. I think it will keep well however and we really had brewed this with colder weather in mind. As for the beer, it looks and smells great, really dark almost black. It tastes like an American Porter, at least that's the closest I can think of. It's a little hoppy and slightly sweet. It has a molasses / chocolate flavor without being syrupy but balanced with a slight roastiness. This balance isn't perfect but it's still good and some more bottle time might help this out.

Bottled

The Jalapeno and Coffee are both bottled. Jeff and I knocked that out Monday night.

The Jalapeno tastes pretty good, its has a nice peppery aftertaste, not too much. The Coffee is a little rough at this point. It's hard to tell at this point though, I think it just needs some time alone in the bottle to figure itself out.

Equipment note: Both our filler buckets need new valves. They are both cracked. We had to work fast on the coffee stout cause that thing was dripping bad. Makes sense that they need replaced though, we've had them for a while now.

Racked

I racked the Jalapeno and Coffee beers the other day. Just trying to let the yeast eat all the sugar so nothing blows up or bubbles over. They smelled good. Soon they will be bottled.

Update

Both beers' air traps are venting nicely. The smell from them is really nice but a little unusual.

I forgot to mention that we broke out a Chimay clone the other night when we were brewing. It was pretty good considering its been on the shelf for 3 or 4 years. It was a little cidery and thin.

Brewed Last Night

Jeff and I brewed last night. We did a Coffee Porter (probably more a stout) and a Jalapeno Ale. They are loosely based on Gary's (or Homer's) Coffee Porter and Sparky's After-Burner Brew. Barry from Barry's Homebrew Outlet, helped tweak the recipes based on what he had in stock and a couple of recommendations to improve the taste. So far everything is looking good. The jalapeno had a nice hint of heat but not overwhelming, we decided to use 6 peppers instead of the 10 that were called for.

Update on the Bitter we brewed last time: it has really come together well. Nice and bitter, the unpleasant taste is pretty much gone and the flavor is a bit more subtle. This really seemed to be closer to an IPA, maybe without the higher alcohol content, so it makes sense that it would need more than 3 weeks to come together.

Recipes and Procedures:

Coffee Stout

Ingredients:

• 3.3 pounds, Mutons dark malt extract syrup
• 3.5 pounds, Bierkeller light malt extract syrup
• 2 pounds, dry dark malt extract
• 1 cup, malto dextrin
• 1 pound, chocolate malt
• 2 ounces, drip ground Sumatra coffee
• 2 ounces, Northern Brewer hops
• 2 ounces, Kent Goldings hops
• 1 tsp Irish moss
• Irish Porter yeast starter

Procedure:

Add the chocolate malt in the grain bag. When the water hit 180 F turn off heat and let grains steep for about 15 minutes. Remove the grains, turn heat back, and after wort comes to a boiling add the malt extract, dry malt, and malto dextrin.
Boil for 15 minutes, add the Northern Brewer hops, boil for 20 minutes, and add the Kent Goldings and Irish Moss, boil 15 minutes more.
Cool wort to about 180 F, add the coffee in grain bag and steep for 7 or 8 minutes. Then continue chilling. Pitch yeast when wort is between 75 and 80 F.

Jalapeno Ale

Ingredients:

4 pounds, Mountmellick amber malt extract
1/2 pound, crystal malt
1/2 pound, dark dry malt
10, fresh Jalapeno peppers
2 ounces, Cascade hops
Munton & Fison ale yeast

Procedure:

Add crystal malt to cold water, raise to 180 F turn off heat and steep for 15 minutes. Chop up Jalapeno peppers. After steeping the malt, turn on heat; after wort comes to a boil add extracts and jalapenos. Boil for 15 minutes, add hops, and boil for 15 minutes more. Strain when pouring wort into primary. Pitch yeast when wort is between 75 and 80 F.