The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), released the new 2008 style guidelines, the first revision since 2004. They are available in several different formats for you to download including a small, pocket sized guide, check it out here!

I’ve been meaning to post my update on my bastardized kolsch recipe for a while now but have been out of commision with the flu lately and  haven’t really been inspired to write. Now that I’m feeling better and have some energy, here are the details straight from beertools:

Kolsch in da hood

6-C Kölsch

Size: 5.0 gal

Efficiency: 46.57%

Attenuation: 78.9%

Calories: 345.28 per 22 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.057 (1.044 - 1.050)

Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.007 - 1.011)

Color: 13.4 (3.5 - 5.0)

Alcohol: 5.89% (4.4% - 5.2%)

Bitterness: 22.47 (20.0 - 30.0)

Ingredients:

3.0 lbs American 2-row

0.5 lbs Caramel Malt 120L

6.6 lbs Liquid Light Extract

1 oz Mt. Hood (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min

1 ea White Labs WLP029 German Ale/Kölsch

.5 oz Mt. Hood (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min

.5 oz Mt. Hood (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min

Notes:

Mashed  for 1 hour at 148 -152 Added 1/2 gallon of heated  water at 1/2 hour mark to get temp back up after hitting 148< New temp start 164 with 20 minutes left in mash

Mash volume 1.5 gallons for 3.5 lbs of grain

Rinse with additional 1.5 gallons for 10 minutes at 170

Started boil at 1:20pm

Added 1 oz Mt Hood at 60

Irish Moss 15

1/2 oz Mt Hood at 10

1/2 oz at end

Cooled wort to in ice bath @ 2:20 afer over 40 minutes, was down to 100; poured top off water into fermenter & added wort, temp dropped to 80. Will pitch at 75

Pitched yeast @ 77; attached blowoff tube @ 3:30

Waiting for fermentation to start

Refracto reading was 14 which converts to 1.054 pre fermentation

Took refracto reading on 01/30/08 (10 days into fermentation) and converted to 1.017/Took Hydro reading as well which read 1.012 without adjusting for temp

02/04/08 - Dumped the yeast/trub

02/05/08 - Took refracto once more  - 8 brix; steady at 1.012 and ready to bottle

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.0.29

I am a regular over at www.homebrewtalk.com and found this forum to be a great resource for everything related to the homebrewing hobby. I’ve been wanting to hack up my beverage cooler after the first use when I did the Arrogant Bastard Clone. Give it a bit of an overhaul so to speak. I found a great thread with vivid instructions on how to assemble your own mash tun, here are the results:

Tested with plain water (4 gallons for 3 hours) no leaks! May test with rice hulls or oatmeal flakes next.

 Brewing schedule for the Arrogant clone went something like this…

Brewed on 12/23/07

1 week in the primary

1 more week in primary with dry hopping addition

Bottled on 01/05/08

After one week in the bottle I cracked one open to test carbonation and see how the beer was coming along. Looking at this beer when bottling I thought that the color would be too light to be close to an Arrogant Bastard but once I opened the bottle it finished fairly dark and similiar to an Arrogant B. This recipe turned out great, a tiny bit bitter at the finish but this should mellow out with age in the bottles. I’m going to wait one more week before cracking open the next bottle, at that time I will compare it side by side with a bottle of Stone’s Arrogant Bastard Ale.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Years, I spent my New Years Eve brewing beer!

This one was a simple extract kit that I picked up from a local homebrew shop, the True Brew series of kits. First time I have ever used one of these kits from this company, so i figured I would give it a shot and brew up a quick 5 gallons. All of the brew kits are fairly simple however this one added something to it that I have never seen before. One of the steps is to roast some of the crushed grains in the oven for 10 minutes. This my friends, will make your  kitchen smell wonderful, although your spouse may not approve!

Here’s the ingredients:

LIQUID MALT EXTRACT (LME):

6.6 lbs Dark Malt Extract

CRUSHED GRAINS ( they do not specify the exact grain, just a general description):

6 oz. Chocolate

6 oz. Crystal

6 oz. Pale

HOPS:

1 oz. Hallertau

1 oz. Tettnang

YEAST: Munton’s dry Active Brewing Yeast (yellow packet)

Gravity targets are  listed as 1.052 - 1.054 for the starting gravity and 1.012-1.014 for the final gravity. When I checked my readings with the hydrometer it read 1.040 without adjusting for temperature (room temp was 68 degrees). Adjusted for temperature in Promash and it came  out  to be 1.051, still came in a bit under  and not  sure why?

Basic instructions (these were a little bit different than what  I am used to):

Preheat oven to 350 and spread the Pale malt on a cookie sheet, toast for 10 minutes.

Place 1 to 1.5 gallons of water in the brewpot, bring to a boil.

Turn the heat off, place all the grains into the steeping bag (provided in the kit) and steep for 20 - 30 minutes. Personally I did 30 minutes here.

Remove the grain bag and bring back to a boil. Then turn the heat off and add the 2 cans of LME mentioned above. Also add 1 oz of the  Hallertau hops at this time.

Stir and bring back to a boil (watch for boil overs!)

Boil for 1 hour, adding the Tettnang hop pellets for the final one to two minutes of the boil.

When boil completes, cool the wort down as you normally would (I currently use an ice bath) to get the temperature of the wort down to below 80 degrees.

Add the wort to your fermentor and top off with sterilized water up to 5 gallons.

Now here is where I strayed from the instructions just a bit. As I stated above, this kit comes with a packet  of dry ale yeast. Technically you can just pitch this yeast  into your wort bone dry but i decided to rehydrate. What this does is activates your yeast (think, head  start!) before you pitch which should result  in a faster start  to your fermentation. I’m glad I decided to do this as my airlock was bubbling like mad within 4 hours of pitching the yeast.

To rehydrate a dry yeast, simply place 1 cup of  sterilized water ( I boil mine, then cool to pitching temps - under 80 degrees) into a small container. Sprinkle in your yeast packet and stir with a sterilized utensil. Cover this with Saran wrap or equivalent, I happened to be out of Saran wrap so I just placed a ziploc bag overtop of the container. Wait 10-15 minutes for the yeast to activate, you should see a small amount of activity and  it should turn a cloudy, milky consistency. When the yeast is ready, stir up your wort a bit with a sterilized utensil (seeing a pattern here?) and pitch. Finally, seal your fermentor and agitate the wort (i.e - shake the shit out of it!).

Place your fermentor in a safe  place and your done, for  now!

to be continued…..

Double checked my readings with the hydrometer last night and it matched my refractometer readings of 1.011.

 Starting Gravity - 1.064

Finishing Gravity - 1.011

This gives me an approximate alcohol content of 7% abv

After dry hopping with the Centennial for 1 week, bottling will commence on January 5th!

Brewed my first countertop mini mash this past weekend, an Arrogant Bastard clone recipe from Clarke. Much thanks to him for his advice on this one, the man is a plethora of beer knowledge!

I did have to tweak it a bit because I could not get Warrior hops, substituted with Centennial at 10aa, my mash math calculations came out to be potential alcohol of 6.6%. Next time I do this I am adding a couple more pounds of 2-row to attempt to get more of a yeild from the grains per Clarke’s advice.

Promash has this coming in around 1.075 OG (I used 70% efficiency.)  Given an attenuation of 73-80 with WLP 001, I should have a final abv of 7.3% - 8.1%.  64.5 IBU’s. 25.2 SRM give or take.

Arrogant Bastard Mini-Mash Clone

Buy:
6 pounds Liquid Malt Extract
5 pounds 2-row Pale Malt
2 pounds 120L Crystal Malt
1 pound Black Patent Malt (or Carafa III malt)
1 ounce Chinook hops
2 ounces Warrior hops
Irish Moss (unless you already have it)
White Labs WLP001 or WLP002 or Wyeast English Ale Yeast

Put this in your mesh grain bag:
5 pounds 2-row Pale Malt
1.5 pounds 120L Crystal Malt
1/4 cup Black Patent or Carafa III malt

Add 2 gallons of water at 162 degrees F to your igloo cooler. 

Add the mesh bag full of grain and make sure it’s completely submerged. 

Cover the igloo.   Leave this alone for 60 minutes at least.

Then, heat up another 2 gallons of water to 170 degrees this time.  Once it’s at
this temp, turn it off and remove from heat.

Open the valve on that igloo and empty the mash water into your brewing kettle. 

Get as much of that out of there as you can. 

When you’re done, close the valve.

Open the top of the Igloo, add the other 2 gallons of water you heated to 170.
Splash it all over the grain bag.  Don’t burn yourself.  Cover the igloo.  Let it
sit for 10 minutes. 

Then, open the valve and start emptying that into your brewing
kettle until you’ve collected as much as your brewing kettle can handle. 

Add your liquid malt extract and stir until it’s all part of the wort.

Bring it to a boil.
Once the boil starts, add 3/4 ounce of Chinook hops
15 minutes from the end of the boil, add 1 tablespoon Irish Moss
10 minutes from the end of the boil, add 1/2 ounce of Warrior hops
1 minute from the end of the boil, add 1/4 ounce Chinook hops

After the boil’s finished, chill the wort as you normally do to get the temperature
down to 80 degrees or lower.

Add 2 gallons of ice cold water to your fermenter (bucket or carboy). 

Then, pour in your wort, leaving behind as much of the hops and sediment as you can.

Aerate your wort as you normally would.

After aerating, pitch 1 vial of White Labs WLP001 or WLP002 or Wyeast English Ale
yeast.

Once primary fermentation is complete, pull the yeast off the beer.  Then add 1
ounce of Warrior hops (this is your dry hop) and allow to sit, undisturbed, for 1
full week.

Bottle with 3/4 cup of corn sugar and allow to age for 4-6 weeks or more.

Brewed on December 23rd

Slow to fermentation after pitching yeast until I raised the surrounding temp to around 74 degrees, after that I started to see action from the blow off tube.

One week later:

Fermentation should almost be complete in primary. The blow off tube has slowed down significantly and it should be time to add the dry hops. I will check the refractometer readings on Monday when I have the time to verify if fermentation is indeed complete. 

Thanks goes to Clarke for making the East Coast Hoppers logo!

I couldn’t be happier with the way this beer turned out. I’ve been sharing and everyone has loved it so far. Of course this also means that I only have half my stash left!! More reason to brew again!

For my first homebrew in several years I decided to do an extract recipe to get back into the swing of things as I’m not quite ready for all-grain just yet. I went to Northern Brewer and ordered one of their ale extract kits called “Tongue Splitter”. They describe this beer as a west coast American Pale Ale that is aggressively hopped, here’s the ingredients:

Specialty Grains

0.5 lbs - Dingemans Caramel Pils

0.5 lbs - Simpsons Caramalt

Malt

6 lbs. Pilsen Malt Syrup (liquid extract)

Boil Additions (hops)

1 oz. Nugget (60 minutes)

1 oz. Kent Goldings (15  minutes)

1 oz. Cascade (10 minutes)

.05 oz. Cascade (2 minutes)

.05 oz. Mount Hood (2 minutes)

Special Ingredients

.05 oz. Cascade Hops (dry hop)

.05 oz. Mount Hood Hops (dry hop)

And last but not least, the yeast:

Wyeast #1332 Northwest Ale Yeast

Produces a malty and mildy fruity ale with good depth and complexity, optimum temperature 65 -75 degrees

Original Gravity - 1.045              Finishing Gravity - 1.010

This kit is said to be ready in 6 weeks

I just finished bottling this batch and am now waiting for carbonation, I will update everyone on this batch when I crack the first one open! Maybe we’ll review it on SIDT!

Always wanted to homebrew but could never take that first step?

Too intimidated by other homebrewers to ask those “stupid” questions?

 If you answered yes to these questions, you’ve come to the right place. My alter ego resides over at www.shouldidrinkthat.com, a craft beer/hard liquor review podcast. I haven’t created a homebrew in over 7 years, ever since the inception of “SIDT” I have had an urge to rekindle my homebrewing hobby and wanted to share my experiences here.