The Bar Towel

In September, I took 5 gallons of Sierra Nevada Golden Ticket Baltic Porter and added some dregs from my Flanders Red Solera. I pulled a sample yesterday (4 months later), and it is already quite sour and funky and tasting pretty good. The original specs were:

OG: 1.083
FG: 1.024

It is now down to 1.013. I'm gonna let it sit another 4 months before kegging it up.

markaberrant wrote:

cannondale wrote:

cannondale wrote:Russian Imperial Stout, 5.25 gallons

Grain Bill: Maris Otter, Amber, Roasted Barley & Black Patent
Hops: Columbus (bittering)
Yeast: Safale S-04

Just racked this to secondary. From an OG of 1.104 it's down to 1.024 and tastes incredible.

That is pretty impressive for S-04, sounds awesome!

I was very surprised and impressed as well, I rubbed my eyes a couple times to make sure I wasn't misreading the hydrometer. I used 2 packs rehydrated, and had mashed at 150 for 90 min. This should prove to be a very enjoyable keg to work through..

Got my starter going, and going to brew my first Pale Ale using Kolsch yeast this weekend:

9 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
1 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
0.5 lb Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.5 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)

0.5 oz Centennial [9.50%] (60 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (40 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (30 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (20 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min)
.25 oz Mt Hood [3.70%] (5 min)

Wyeast 2565 Kolsch
Dry hop with ½ Oz of Centennial per 5-gallons for 5-7 days.

Mashed at 154.
Ferment at 60 degrees

Woke up at 5 this morning to brew a CDA. It's chilling in a snowbank in the backyard.

woke up early so i decided to throw together an oatmeal stout recipe. Used maris otter, choco, victory, roasted, crystal 60. Bittered with 40 ibus of chinook. Than pitched onto a starter or 1056. shooting for 6% abv.

elproducto wrote:Got my starter going, and going to brew my first Pale Ale using Kolsch yeast this weekend:

9 lb Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
1 lb Munich Malt (9.0 SRM)
0.5 lb Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
0.5 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)

0.5 oz Centennial [9.50%] (60 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (40 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (30 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (20 min)
.25 oz Cascade [7.80%] (10 min)
.25 oz Mt Hood [3.70%] (5 min)

Wyeast 2565 Kolsch
Dry hop with ½ Oz of Centennial per 5-gallons for 5-7 days.

Mashed at 154.
Ferment at 60 degrees

Sounds a bit like the Skjálfti Steam beer.

I almost did something VERY similar with Alt yeast, but decided I didn't want to use up my MO. I was thinking half Light Munich, with Columbus & Citra. Basically an American Alt... which seems to beg for American Pale malt... so I'll have to get some.

phirleh wrote:Woke up at 5 this morning to brew a CDA. It's chilling in a snowbank in the backyard.

Today, I'm making Spent Grain Bread with some of my grain from yesterday, courtesy of this recipe

Heavy Table Spent Grain Sandwich Bread
Makes three small (9×5″) loaves

The main thing that a would-be spent grain baker is confronted with is the moisture — it comes damp as heck from the brewing process. I’ve read that you can toast it, but I wanted to incorporate that malt/brewing-infused flavor into the bread. I started with a “rustic country bread” recipe and then started changing things around to make the bread more retiring and gentle (to let the sweet, malty spent grain shine) and also account for the extra liquid. I wanted a tender crumb that would be great for sandwiches or spreads, and this seemed to yield a good end product.

Note that you can freeze spent grain, and then thaw it out again before using in this recipe. It’s best to bring it up to room temperature before you start baking.

Sponge
1/2 tsp active dry yeast (not rapid rise)
3/4 c water (room temperature)
3/4 c spent grain from brewing, still damp and at room temperature
1 1/2 c bread flour (I like King Arthur’s)

Dough
4 cups bread flour
1 cup water (room temperature)
2 tbsp honey
2 tsp salt

1. For the Sponge:

Mix the yeast into the water in a medium bowl until it’s dissolved. Mix into the flour and spent grain with a spatula and create stiff, wet dough. Cover and let the sponge sit at room temperature for at least five hours, if not overnight. (It can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours, but should be brought back to room temperature before continuing.)

2. For the Dough:

Mix your water, honey, flour, and the sponge in the bowl of a KitchenAid or other workhorse mixer, using a spatula. Mix the dough with your dough hook attachment on a slow speed for about 12 minutes, then add the salt. Continue mixing with the dough hook for another 3 minutes.

During the course of this process, the dough should be sticking to the bottom of the bowl, but easily clearing the sides. I tend to check halfway through by pushing the dough off the hook and seeing how it sticks to the bowl and my hands. If it’s really gluey and damp, add more flour in 1/8th cup increments, mixing between each addition. You want a dough that’s smooth and tacky but not actually glue-like.

Transfer your dough to a big lightly oiled bowl, and cover it with plastic wrap that’s been greased. Let it rise about two hours, until it has roughly tripled in size.

3. Grease three 9 x 5 inch loaf pans.

Put your dough on a lightly floured surface. Working with floured hands, press it out into a rectangle, and use a bench knife to divide it into three equally sized pieces.

Roll each piece of dough into a tight 9-inch cylinder and pinch the seam closed. Place the loaves, seam side down, in the prepared pans.

Set each loaf into a greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.

Cover loosely with a cloth or greased piece of aluminum foil and let the dough rise until it almost doubles in size, about 45 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, put a deep metal pan or cast-iron skillet on the lowest shelf of the oven. Heat your oven up to 450 degrees F. Heat up two cups of water (not quite to boiling) and keep it on hand for your baking cycle.

5. Cut two or three slashes on top of each loaf using a sharp serrated knife. Cut almost parallel to the top of loaf, not real deep, and without sawing or tearing.

Put your loaves in the oven. Pour two cups of hot water into your pre-heated pan or skillet, to create steam.

Bake for 15 minutes, then, if the loaves are browning unevenly, rotate each loaf 180 degrees. Bake for another 5-10 minutes (or until tops of loaves turn dark brown) and test the temperature with an instant read thermometer — 205-210 degrees F is perfect.

Take your pans out, let them cool 10 minutes, then put loaves on a cooling rack for an hour or two. Voila! Serve with local honey and/or butter, or make delicious little sandwiches.

That was some great looking bread!

I'm brewing a Rye IPA...

10# Marris Otter
3# Rye Malt
1# Caramunich I
Columbus, Centennial, Citra Hops ~60IBU
OG=1.064

First time I did a batch sparge (I thought it might be a good idea with the Rye). Based on the hydrometer, that's 80% efficiency, which is quite good for me (considering the weight).

Though my refractometer is saying 16.8, which would be a gravity of 1.069. Maybe my hydrometer has always been a bit off, and my efficiency hasn't been as bad as I thought? (they both look right for distilled water).

Brewing this tomorrow

10lbs Warminster Smoked Malt
.5oz Galena @ 60
1oz Mt Hood @ 15
US-05

Hoping for some sort of Rauchbier, but Warminster is a UK maltster and using an american ale yeast, so who knows?

2 weeks into my annual Sake brew. Starting the doubling rice additions today.

Mocha Porter.

Marris Otter, biscuit, brown, carastan, dark kilned amber and chocolate malt.

This is the first time I've used the MFB dark kilned amber. I'm not sure they're selling it anymore... their 'coffee malt' has a very similar specs.

Derek wrote:MFB dark kilned amber

MFB? Malteries Franco Belge?

Where did you pick that up from Derek?

Mail-order from Randy in Brampton. I thought it was old-school dark amber, but I didn't check the lovibond until after I ordered. It's considerably darker (and I'm thinking they changed the name to coffee malt). It seems to have a lot of coffee flavour.

Here's the link:
http://www.homebrew-supplies.ca/viartsh ... tem_id=810

Oh yeah, I threw some oats in there as well. Man I hate sparging with oats... so slow!

Woke up yesterday morning, temperature was -29C, seemed like a great day to brew.

Made a hoppy american red - 2-row, C120, amarillo hops and US-05. I have a pretty sweet setup for winter brewing in my garage, so a couple other guys came over to brew with me; one made a dunkelweizen, the other made a DIPA with 3 different varieties of hops from NZ. We even had the smoker going, threw on some of my uncle's sausage, went well with the cans of Maui Brewing beers we were sampling.

S-05 weirdness...

Last week I did that Rye IPA with a gravity around 1.065. The single pack of yeast went through a ridiculous growth phase. There was a healthy kraussen after the first day. After 8 days, there was still 2 cm of dense kraussen, the wort was seriously cloudy, and there was a thick yeast cake on the bottom. And the ambient temp had dropped to 59F.

Now I typically just throw a second batch on a week old cake, but this was a lot of yeast!

So I checked:
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

Then I top-cropped 250 ml and pitched it on the 1.065 mocha porter. 2 days later, I haven't seen any serious kraussen, so I took a gravity reading and it's already 1.022. Strange that it dropped so fast without much visible activity (after the first generations performance). And it tastes pretty decent too!

Actually, the first batch is still cloudy as hell... I may need to cold crash in the fridge.