After a very successful brew day I pitched the yeast and closed up the fermenter around 4pm on Saturday afternoon. I didn’t take a gravity reading as it’s not all grain so I figured there was no need. The extract was added as full cans so it should work out fine. I pitched the yeast from the smack pack after sanitizing it prior. The package really ballooned up. I checked the date on the yeast and it was December 15th (thanks to Thirsty Brewer for always keeping fresh yeasties for us).

I checked the batch Sunday afternoon right around gametime (GO RAVENS) and it was bubbling ever so slightly. Monday morning the bubbles were fierce and that’s where they stand now. I will be interested to see how temps will do for this batch. The air temp in the room fluctuates right now because of the heat being on in the house. During the day we keep the heat aorund 68 so the temps in the cellar are near 62 based on the thermometer I have ontop the fermenter. At night, we kick it up ato 71/72 so the temps go up to 67/68. I don’t think the fluctuation will hurt the beer much but I’m not positive. I figure as long as I have bubbles and in a week and a half or so I have a low FG, I should be fine. What’s the old saying? Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a HomeBrew! (RDWHAHB)

I’ll post again when I am ready for secondary. Having a hard time getting my pics into the blog properly but should have them up later today from the brewday Saturday.

Cheers!

I ended up with 1 pound of British Crystal 60L and I am currently steeping that at 155 degrees for about 30 minutes. Once that is done, I will fire up the burner and get it to a boil, add the extract and then once it boils again the 60 minute timer starts. I was going to use a Better bottle for fermentation but as this stainless steel pot is wide mouthed and large I wouldn’t trust pouring it through a funnel and I’d rather not start a siphon. Trying to keep things simple today. I am using East Kent Goldings to hop this bad boy and I am going after a more traditional Irish Red with the 1084 yeast. I just cleaned and sanitized my bucket fermenter so it’s just a waiting game now. Gotta love making brews on a Saturday afternoon. I still need a name for this batch. Red Flag Ale in honor of the Ravens/Pats game tomorrow perhaps?

We have a free Saturday here in the house and since it’s bitter cold outside it’s time to whip up a batch of beer! My son brought me one of my recipe books this morning when I was having some coffee and said “dada…DADA” almost like a sign that he wanted me to brew today. I will be headed over to the Thirsty Brewer this morning to grab some ingredients.

The brew of the day will be an Irish Red Ale. I’m going to do an extract batch because the temps outside are way too cold to be out there watching boils and controlling temperatures. I haven’t yet formulated a recipe but will stick to something fairly basic that will be ready in time for St. Patricks Day which is widely celebrated in this house.

I will be using LME for this as it is typically cheaper than the dry equivalent. I always seem to have a problem with DME actually dissolving properly in the pot. As I  have been brewing all grain for many years now going back to an extract batch feels like cheating but since I only have a few hours to do it, it fits perfectly. Many an award winning brew has been made with extract. Who knows, maybe if it’s good I will enter it into some of the local competitions.

Back to th recipe though, thinking of using 6.6 pounds of LME to start. I always like to use some form of crushed grain and make a bit of a tea with it to steep some flavor and some color out of the grains. This adds a nice touch to extract brews and makes them feel a lot more like all grain batches. For hops I will be using Northern Brewer and Cascade. I’m not making a traditional Irish Red Ale so I won’t need to use English hops and can get by with the American hops. I am thinking of using about a half an ounce at 60 of each and then a quarter ounce of each and 15 and then again at flameout. This should still leave me with a nice malt characteristic but you should still be able to detect the hop flavoring underneath. Using Crystal 40L for the steeping should help with head retention and help with that nice red color that is one of the main characteristics of this style.

For yeast I will use either the traditional Irish Ale 1084 yeast or if it’s cheaper I might just go with a couple packets of US-05. My basement temps are around 65 right now which is ideal for US-05. It should produce a really clean beer at those temps.

I will update the blog as I brew today with some pictures hopefully and my brew buddy for the day will be helping dad measure and stir with careful supervision. Sanitizer will be Star San as usual. I plan to ferment for 14 days, secondary for about 2-3 weeks and then bottle or keg. I haven’t bottled in a long time but I keep getting requests for samples so that’s the easiest way to do it.

Stay tuned……

image courtesy of yardsbrewing.com

This brew came to me in the last month pack of the beer of the month club. They sent two beers from Yards but will be reviewing the other later on. The first one in the pack here is Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale. I know Philly was known for Cheesesteaks but not necessarily great beer. Pennsylvania on the other hand produces many many good breweries like Yuengling, Victory, etc. I did a little research on Yards brewing as I’ve had a few members in the club go up there and do tours at the brewery and they can only say good things about their beers and the guys that make up Yards Brewing Company. The brewery has been around about 20 years now and they have progressed from just a small brewery to a fairly large outfit. Recently, based off info obtained from their website, it shows they have tried to re-create some of the beers of the founding fathers like Washington, Jefferson, and Ben Franklin. Not a bad idea!

I will say that my review of this beer might be a little bit odd as I didn’t put the beer into a glass. I popped the cap off and took a quick smell and immediately had to have a taste. 3 or 4 minutes later and the beer was empty. It was that good. Seriously. I’m usually a fan of beers with C (cascade, chinook, challenger etc) and this one just had an incredible nose to it. It wasn’t overpowering like an IPA minf you but it was noticeable. I couldn’t comment on the color of the brew as it was in brown glass but the taste was something I’ve been looking for in my adventures for a while. Nice citrusy taste but still had a slight caramel malt taste and some hints of buscuit that defines a lot of really great beers. This beer has balance, no flavor really overpowering any others. The hops bitterness is long lasting in the after taste but doesn’t overpower the beer like an IPA. It seemed to be fairly light bodied so you could have a few of these in a sitting. ABV shows about 4.6% which is on par with most Ales. One note I thin I would change could be the carbonation. It seemed a little too bubbly for my tastes. I know that can change from beer to beer but this one seemed to be quite high. I will pour the next sample in the glass to see the color and see if the carbonation subsides a little but the next time I am in Wine World I will pick up a 6 pack if they carry it for sure. I would give this a solid 9/10 with points deducted for carbonation issue. I think a lot of people would really enjoy this brew so go get yourself some!

man, that’s a mouthfull. This beer came in a sample pack from the Tommyknocker Brewery in Idaho Springs CO. I didn’t get a chance to review the other beers in the six pack as they only provided one bottle of each and not many were noteworthy except this one so far. The beer pours a deep amber color almost ruby which is spot on with most nut brown ales. It didn’t have much aroma in the nose that I could detect. I drank it too fast to let it warm up a little to detect any notes in the nose. The carbonation was decent and poured with a frothy brown head. Initial taste hits you with high sweetness but it doesn’t last. The sweetness dissipates quickly and an intense malt flavor takes over. You can taste a bunch of Crystal and chocolate malt in the background and the after taste is somewhat dry. It’s almost confusing to drink because you expect the sweetness to carry through to the end of the beer and into the aftertaste especially with it being a maple nut brown ale. The maple adds complexity to the beer which out of the box would be a good nut brown by itself. I don’t see this as a crowd pleaser by any stretch but for fans of Sammy Smiths or even New Castle Brown, you might enjoy this one. Slainte!

This beer was one that was included in the latest beer of the month club pack. It comes to us from Diamond Beer Brewing in Arkansas. The first thing to notice about this beer is the color. It pours a deep amber/orange hue and had quite a nice frothy head to it which looked like the color of caramel. As with most American IPA’s it had a citrusy nose to it mostly from one of the C hops I would assume. This IPA was a pretty full flavored beer that had quite a big afterbite of hop flavor. It was overpowered though strangely enough by a malty touch on the backside. Not sure if they used a lot of different malts or what but it was a strange combination to taste. Usually IPA’s are known completely for their hops but this one is rather different with the malty tastes. It’s not a bad combination overall, very drinkable and would rate it a solid 8/10. Looking forward to sampling their other offering this month this week. Cheers!

I was at Wine World this weekend as they were celebrating their 4 year anniversary Harford County style with a live band, food, and a keg on the front porch when I came across this wonderful brew. I first read of it in the last issue of BYO and was intrigued enough to look for it next time I went beer hunting. Wine World had a pretty good stock of it and for a 24oz bottle, it was only $4.99. Not too shabby for a delicious Ale.

In doing some reading, the Harvest Ale has been around a number of years for Sierra Nevada. The basic premise is that they brew the beer with the freshest hops they can. They literally pick them off the vine and get them to the brewery. It’s a mixture of Cascade and Centennial hops.

The beer pours almost like a basic pale ale but the nose is what hits you right away. Floral hops obviously dry hopped stand out and make you thirst for a sip. The initial taste is somewhat intense with hop flavor and almost slightly spicy in the aftertaste. The head is slightly darker than normal cream color and the beer color itself is magnificent. It pours an amber color and in certain lights is almost ruby. It’s not your average session beer but one can easily drink a 24oz in a sitting and be content. Be sure to check this one out if you head to a decent beer store. You don’t want to miss it.

that’s an understatement for sure. But then again I have a good reason, we had another baby. I’ve been tasting quite a few new brews though and reviews for those will be up before too long. Had some nice beers from Boulder Brewing company in my last batch last month. This month I think I have a few brews coming from Florida which should be interesting. We’ll see how well they put together a lager. Last batch also had some Fat Tire beers which I am not completely through with yet. They make a Triple which will about knock your socks off at 8.5% and also sampled their Golden Ale.

I needed a 12 pack of brew while my Koelsch is in secondary so I picked up a 12 pack of Warsteiner beer. I’ve had it before at a couple of parties but really only grabbed one because they were serving Macro Swill alongside it. The beer pours nice and golden in color with little to no hope aroma. It’s a German Pilsner beer but doesn’t necessarily have anything that makes it stand out. It’s not very bitter, but does have a bit of a sour note to it in the aftertaste. It goes down easily and is fairly lightweight on the alcohol, weighing in at under 5% ABV. If I had a choice between this and Sam Adams I think I would go with Warsteiner. If it’s Warsteiner vs. Macro Swill, it wins again. I’d rate it a 6.5/10 on the beer scale. I’d buyt it again if nothing else really sticks out and I just need a decent 12 pack.

Wednesday night I was able to finally rack the Koelsch to secondary and get it off that yeast cake. I racked it over to a Better Bottle so I could hopefully see it clarify over the next few weeks. As soon as the lid came off te fermenter I took a whiff and had somwhat of an alcoholy nose hit me. If you recall the OG of this beer was mugh higher due to really good extraction of the grains. While good extraction is usually never a bad thing, it can take you out of style if you are close to the upper end of your original gravity. I was off on this one with a SG of 1.061. I took a brix reading and it was around 5.8 which just didn’t seem right but I checked a bunch of times and even calibrated the refractometer with water. That would put my final gravity somewhere near 1.00 which is lower than I have ever seen and doesn’t seem quite right. The yeast attenuates fairly well but not that well. That would put this beer around a 6.8% brew which is a lot higher than expected or desired.

The next thing to do was to taste the beer and see if it was too warm or had a high alcohol taste. The nose while the beer was warm and uncarbonated was pleasant in a smaller quantity. It didn’t smell of alcohol as bad as the fermenter did. The initial taste was dry with a very light hint of hops but I could taste a little alcohol warmth coming through which is not characteristic of this beer at all. I’m perplexed as to why it was so high in OG and so low in FG. My mash temps were right on, and I only milled the grains once through the barley crusher. The yeast had a perfect environment to work though with 66-68 degree temps the entire 3 weeks of fermentation. Who knows, maybe everything was just optimal for this batch overall. Once the beer is bottled, chilled, and carbonated, the true taste test will begin. If it turns out a little strong I will decrease my pilsner malt down by a pound or two to make that OG come down some especially if I hit the same extraction ratio. I should make this again as my next bath so I can compare it and see the difference in the malt weight.