New Blog Site

I am getting sick of MySpace, it seems to be down more than up so I am moving the blog over to here, much better blog site.
The wheat seems to be doing well. The little room in the basement where I keep the fermenting beers had a nice fermenting oder when I went in a few days after setting it in there.
I also wanted to mention that I was very happy with morebeer.com the shipping was fairly fast, but more importantly free. I got a bunch of parts that I have been needing for a while. The ingredients are a lot less expensive than Barry's. I feel bad about not shopping locally, but its nice to be able to try whatever I want without having to "okay" it with Barry. Also the selection is a bit better. Makes me have to plan a head a little more.

Wheat & Bottle

Zach came over last night and we watched the Seahawks lose, then bottled the IPA and Stout and started a wheat brew.

We bottle the IPA first. It smells great, but was a little less hoppy then I was expecting. It tasted good, a little sweet but balanced nicely with the bitterness. I think this is going to be good.

We actually brewed the beer next but I'll get to that later. I used the dishwasher to sanitize the bottles this time. It worked nicely. I have been washing the bottles in the dishwasher after I drink them, so they aren't so funky when I go to sanitize and bottle. A couple of the bottles that were a little older had some gunk on the bottom, but it wasn't too bad, I soaked them for a bit and it came out without too much scrubbing.

So the Stout, I really brewed this more as an after thought with the IPA being my primary interest. But the stout is really promising. I had never used flaked barley before, it gave a great, thick, mouth feel, pretty cool, and it's just what I was going for. Overall, smooth and just a bit hoppy, really more in the smell. I think this stout is going to be good.

To the wheat beer:

This was an odd recipe. There were a lot of grains in the partial mash and then not much extract. For some strange reason I didn't taste it (it was getting late) but it ended up looking and smelling great. It had the right look for a wheat, a little cloudy and light colored. I also used Mt. Hood hops for the first time. I really like the smell of them, they smell great coming out of the bag and really nice in the wort. Anyway, here's the recipe and procedure for the American Wheat.

Ingredients:

• 4 lb. American 2-row
• 5 lb. Wheat malt
• 2 lb. Light dry malt extract
• 2--1/2 ounces, Mt. Hood hops
• German Ale yeast

Procedure:

Steeped the grains for 30 minutes at 150° then rinsed the grain bags with 150° water. This was a huge amount of grain. Thankfully I got a new large grain bag that handled the grain without a problem.

Boiled for one hour, added 1 1/2 ounces hops at the start, then 1/2 ounce at 30 minutes, and 1/2 ounce at 5 minutes. Cooled and pitched yeast. I started the yeast in two cups of hot water with a teaspoon of corn sugar added.