Navidad Crema de Jalapeño - brew day

The Brew

The beer I get the most inquiries about and requests for is the Jalapeño Cream Ale I made this last August. The inspiration for that brew was the Jalapeño Ale from Thunderhead Brewing Company out of Kearney, NE. I choose a cream ale because I wanted my beer to be all about the heat and the peppers. I succeeded in that for certain and I loved the result. A little too much so as the keg quickly emptied.

I don't plan on changing much for this rebrew. One difference is that this will likely end up in bottles as I don't think I will have an open keg for a while. This will also be the first time I am trying out some local hops. Picked up a couple ounces from Duffin Knudsen Hop Growers from right here in Eastern Nebraska.

The other great thing about this brew was having the O.G. brewmaster back in the homebrewery. Love getting the opportunity to brew with my brother!

The Recipe

Grain/Sugars:
8 lbs. 2-Row (US) [76%]
1 lbs. Vienna (DE) [10%]
1 lbs. Flaked Corn (US) [10%]
8 oz Carapils (US) [4%]

Hops:
0.5 oz. Nugget @60. (A: 13.04%, B: 6.54%)
0.5 oz. Nugget @10.  (A: 13.04%, B: 6.54%)

Yeast:
US-05 packet  (re-hydrated)

Extras:
1.0 tablet Whirlfoc @15m
0.5 tsp Wyeast nutrient @15m
4 Jalapeños @15 (roasted, sliced and steeped in vodka)
3-4 Jalapeños (roasted, sliced and steeped in vodka) for 10 days prior to package

Brewday

12/22/2015 - Prep work

Halved and lightly roasted 9 fresh Jalapenos. 

Peeled away charred skins, sliced and put in vodka overnight. 

12/23/2015- Brewday

I wasn't quite as prepared as the last brew but still had everything pre-measured and ready to rock with the brew partner arrived. 

Fired up the burner on to get the water up to strike temperature. Once that was done, mashed in the cooler, stirred and hit pretty much head on at target mash temp of153°F. While the 60 minute mash was underway I heated the sparge water to 180°F. At 60 minutes, pulled a quart to vorlauf and then captured first runnings. Much like the last brew, I was well short of my first runnings target volume. I think I have more dead space in the mash tun then used in calculations. Despite this we continued on as planned batch sparging in the 5.5 gallons of 180°F water and hitting a sparge temp around 168°F. Let that sit for about 10 minutes, vorlauf and drained off. Ended up with with an extra half gallon collected in kettle (8 gallons). 

Boiled per schedule above, chilled and transferred into sanitized carboy. Ended up with about 6 gallons of 1.048 OG wort. Pitched hydrated yeast and let it to do it's thing. This one was a little slow to start, but by 24 hours, it's was bubbling like crazy.

Full details here.

Vanilla Bean Blonde - brewday

The Brew

Inspiration: c.o. Infusion Brewing

This will be the 4th time brewing an American Blonde with vanilla. The first attempt was actually my first brew. The inspiration for all four was attempting to clone my wife's favorite beer brewed in Benson, NE by Infusion Brewing Company. Each attempt has been different and progressively getting closer to a true clone of this great beer.

The Recipe

Grain/Sugars:
9.25 lbs. 2-Row (US) [92.5%]
8 oz Crystal 10L (US) [5%]
4 oz Crystal 20L (US) [2.5%]

Hops:
1.40 oz. German Tettang @60. (A: 2.4%, B: 4.1%)
0.50 oz. Czech Saaz @15. (A: 3.6%, B: 4.8%)
0.50 oz. Czech Saaz @0.  (A: 3.6%, B: 4.8%)

Yeast:
Danstar Nottingham Ale packet  (re-hydrated)

Extras:
1.0 tablet Whirlfoc @15m
0.5 tsp Wyeast nutrient @15m
3.0 Vanilla beans. soaked in vodka, sliced and scraped. @2 day prior to packaging 

Brewday

12/12/2015 - Brewday
Made a party of sorts out of this brewday. I was joined by 3 good friends to enjoy some beverages, food and brewing.

The four of us shared a variety of beers; New Belgium's La Folie, Oskar Blue's Hotbox Coffee Porter, Upright Brewing's Seven, Deschutes Jubel, Brickway's Chocolate Coffee Stout and my Punch Bowl IPA. This list resulted in less than perfect note taking, no pictures and perhaps some subpar attention to detail on the brew. Time will tell.

I took advantage of some extra time on Saturday to prep for the brew. I pre-measured and captured strike and sparge water. I weighed out and labeled each boil addition and even heated the garage.

Fired up the burner on to get the water up to strike temperature and overshot a bit. Once that was down, mashed in the cooler, stirred and hit pretty much head on at target mash temp of 153°F. While the 60 minute mash was underway I heated the sparge water to 180°F. At 60 minutes, pulled a half gallon to vorlauf and then captured first runnings. I was expecting to pull more volume off the first runnings then I did. Only got about 2.8 gallons from the first run. Despite this we continued on as planned batch sparging in the 5.5 gallons of 180°F water and hitting a sparge temp around 168°F. Let that sit for about 10 minutes and then drained off. Ended up with almost exactly 7.5 gallons collected, which was right on target. I didn't take an accurate pre-boil gravity (see beer list above).

Boiled as per schedule. Chilled while a rare December thunderstorm rolled through. Pitched the yeast into the cleaned and sanitized carboy. Then transfered nearly 6 gallons of 1.045 OG wort onto the yeast. Eight hours later, very active fermentation was underway. Activity noticeably increased at the 24 hour mark.  One thing to note, the color in the carboy is quite a bit darker then expected for this grist. 


Complete brew details here.

Not Your Mother's Breakfast - Update

Wrapping up fermentation on this one. Did a gravity check at the 1 week mark and it was already near target final gravity. The best part was the sample tasted amazing. Like, the best young beer sample I've ever tasted by a long ways, amazing.

12/4/2015. Gravity check. 1.022 @60f

So for those scoring at home: after 1 week fermentation it was already at 8.5% ABV with an apparent attenuation around 76%.

12/12/2015 - Signs of fermentation have ceased. Time to decide what's next for this brew; bottle, keg or secondary...

Punch Bowl IPA - Tasting

Appearance – The beer is slightly cloudy, yellow-orange. 

Smell – Tropical fruit bomb. Citrus hop aroma plus pineapple, mango and other tropical fruit smells. 

Taste – Mild to medium citra hop flavor with the same tropical fruitiness from the aroma. 

Mouthfeel – Carbonation is good. The beer is a little on the thin side. And slightly more sweet then dry.

Drinkability & Notes – Very drinkable. Not a hint of the nearly 7% ABV. Would likely do well as a summer IPA.

Not Your Mother's Breakfast - brewday

The Brew

My second brew ever, '10k Before Breakfast', was our attempt to clone one of my favorite beers, Founders Breakfast Stout. That attempt was an extract brew we based mostly off a recipe from BYO magazine. That beer turned out OK. Well, pretty good considering what we were trying to accomplish. We missed big time on our OG, only getting around 1.070, well below the 1.080 goal. In getting to 1.070 we had to boil longer then planned so in the end we only had about 4.5 gallons to package. The lower starting gravity ended up with a lower yield for alcohol content as well at 6.2%. Another flaw in the final product was a slight acrid note to the coffee flavor. I attributed this to our leaving a hop bag with the final coffee addition in secondary far too long. Lastly, the bottles over-carbonated. All that said,  every last drop was drank and enjoyed.

A second attempt at this has been in the cards ever since the first go-around. A year later however, we've progressed from extract to all-grain. And this brew was the first in jumping from BIAB to batch sparging in a cooler mash tun.

The grist was again based strongly off of the BYO recipe, as were the hops, hopping schedule and additional recipe ingredients. The only major variation to note was the use of the dry English Ale yeast instead of a liquid American Ale variety.

The Recipe

Grain/Sugars:
14 lbs. 2-Row (US)
1.5 lb Flaked Oats (US)
1 lb Chocolate Malt 
12 oz Roasted Barley
8 oz De-bittered Black Malt
8 oz Crystal 120L

Hops:
1.00 oz. Nugget @60. (A: 13.8%, B: 4.7%)
0.50 oz. Willamette @15. (A: 5.2%, B: 3.6%)
0.50 oz. Willamette @0.  (A: 5.2%, B: 3.6%)

Yeast:
Safale S-04 English Ale Yeast  (2 packets - rehydrated)

Extras:
1.0 tablet Whirlfoc @15m
0.5 tsp Wyeast nutrient @15m
2.5 oz Dark bittersweet bakers chocolate @15m
1.5 oz Unsweetened chocolate baking nibs @15m
2.0 oz Course ground Sumatran coffee @0m
2.0 oz Ground Kona coffee, cold brewed, add at packaging 

Brewday

11/28/2015 - Brewday

As noted above, this was the first brew with my new mash tun. This homemade tun is simply a 50 qt beverage cooler with some small modifications. Inspiration for this was based off of Denny Conn's interviews, articles and website discussing his method for batch sparging.

Solo brew. Heated 7 gallons of strike water to 168F and transferred to the cooler. Mashed in the 18 1/2 lbs of grains, stirred to breakup any clumps. Temperature reading at start of mash was 153.9F. As that mash sat in the cooler converting away, I measured out and heated 3 gallons of water to 180F. After the 60 minute mash, ran off into the kettle collecting 4.9 gallons. This is the point where the batch sparging comes in. Added just over 2.5 gallons of 180F water to the tun and stirred. After a short 10 minute rest, again ran off into the kettle. Mash and lauter complete, I had collected 7.75 gallons of 1.063 preboil wort.

Fired up the burner to start the boil. After about 10 minutes of warming I realized I wasn't getting the heat necessary from the burner. And then, flameout.  Fifteen minutes later, I returned with a full propane tank and boiling commenced within a few minutes.  Boil was per schedule in recipe and uneventful. Concerned about how efficient my first single infusion and batch sparge was I added a pound of DME with 10 minutes left in the boil to bolster the OG.

Chilled down the wort, transferred to the carboy and pitched the rehydrated yeast. Ended up with nearly 6 gallons of 1.087 original gravity wort.

The next morning the yeast were doing their thing as it bubbled away.

Complete brew details here.

Punch Bowl IPA - update 2

Quick update on the IPA brew. It's currently awaiting an open keg, interestingly still some activity in the airlock so I'll be cold crashing prior to racking it over.

11/19/2015  Fermentation check (day 12)
Gravity: 1.018
Taste: no change

11/23/2015  Fermentation check & dry hopping (day 16)
Gravity: 1.015
Taste: no change
Gravity stabilized for 2 consecutive days at 1.015 which is a little high still, but OK given the strong tropical notes. With stability came time to dry hop. Added the 3 oz Citra hops. 


After the dry hopping, fermentation kicked back up, likely due to the introduction of oxygen with the hops. Like I said, now just waiting for a keg to land this guy in. The target keg has sprung a leak and the new one is in the mail. 

Punch Bowl IPA - update

Fermentation update. The first 2 days fermentation went fast and furious like all of the standard ale fermentation I've seen so far. Then, from the airlock and krausen activity; silence.  Temperature has been held steady right around 72F.

11/13/2015 - Fermentation check (day 6)
Gravity: 1.022
Taste: General taste is great. It's overly sweet as expected at that gravity. Definite yeast bite as so much is still in suspension. As described with this yeast, strong tropical fruit tones are already very noticeable.

11/16/2015 (day 9)
Quick visual check tonight, and to what do I see, krausen reformation and an airlock bubbling away.

I don't have much of an idea as to what the explanation is here. I see anecdotal references to this yeast hitting major growth phase around day 8. Still, I'm surprised to see it take off to start, then quiet just to pick up again. Airlock is smelling super tropical and delicious.

Punch Bowl IPA - brewday

The Brew

I’ve been brewing for almost 10 months. My brother introduced me to the hobby back in January and I was immediately hooked. He and I have continued to brew together when schedules align and when they don't I'm usually solo.  I’ve only made one IPA; attempted to anyways. The one attempt was a Blind Pig IPA clone last February. That batch was tragically lost when the airlock clogged with hop debris after 24 hours in the fermentor. Was I lucky enough to have it blow the bung and spray down the room? Nope, this one pressurized and blew out the bottom of the glass carboy sending 6 gallons of sticky young hoppy beer all over the entryway and hall closet. Since that batch, I haven't really desired to brew another IPA. There are so many commercial IPAs available that when looking for a hoppy beer it was never a challenge finding something far better than I could brew.

On a recent vacation to Tampa, FL I had the opportunity to drink (quite a few) Jai Alai from Cigar City Brewing. One of the things I really liked about that beer was the tropical fruit character mixed with the caramelly malt notes. Then I ended up ordering a vial of White Labs WLP644 Saccharomyces "Bruxellensis" Trois through my LHBS for a Gose that didn’t work out. So, in looking for what to make with the vial of Brux Trios I found numerous references [1],[2],[3] to IPAs who used this formerly classified as Brett strain for primary fermentation. Most all of those noted the tropical fruit, mango, papaya, and pineapple flavors.  I was set.

The grist for this brew was inspired by a Can You Brew It? episode of The Jamil Show where the guys worked on Nebraska Brewing Company’s Cardinal Pale Ale. I followed their recipe relatively closely, only bumping up the OG a bit and upping the hops slightly to get closer to IPA range of IBUs.

Reading online many reports of the small pitch size in this variety coming from White Labs, I was careful to use a large started to get my pitch rate up. Built up to a 2L starter of 1.040 3 days prior to brew-day. The aroma of the starter was in and of itself amazing. It smelt of tropical fruit almost like Juicy Fruit gum. In my limited brewing career I’ve worked with quite a few different yeast strains but never experienced such a different and bright smell from just yeast.

The Recipe

Grain/Sugars:
10 lbs. 2-Row (US)
1 lb Crystal 10L (US)
1 lb Crystal 20L (US)
12 oz Munich Light 10L

Hops:
0.75 oz. Galena @60. (A: 13.9%, B: 9.4%)
1.00 oz. Cascade @15. (A: 7.1%, B: 6.4%)
3.00 oz. Citra @ dry hop 4 days. (A: 13.65%, B: 4.5%)

Yeast:
WLP644 Saccharomyces "Bruxellensis" Trois (2L starter)

Extras:
1.0 tsp Whirlfoc @15m
0.5 tsp Wyeast nutrient @15m

Brewday

11/7/2015 - Brewday
The plan was for a fairly normal 'solo' brew-day. Executed as such, with a visit from the neighbor sharing a bottle of New Glarus Raspberry Tart brought back from WI. Good beer, a little too sweet and not enough tart IMO.

Executed the brew plan to a tee. My current system is a BIAB setup in a 15 gallon MegaPot 1.2. Heated strike water to 157F. Mashed in. Stirred in 1 tbsp lactic acid. Covered and wrapped in blankets. Mashed for 60 minutes. Initial temp 152F, ending temp 150F. Lifted bag off bottom for 10 minute mash-out at 170F. Pulled and drained bag and brought to a boil.  Pre-boil volume of 7.7 gallons with a gravity of 1.047. Once boiling, I followed schedule above, Cooled down to 70F, pitched onto the starter and placed carboy in temp controlled water bath.

Fermentation was actively bubbling through the blow-off tube in less then 4 hours and was rolling by morning the following day. After 2 days of fermentation, it appears to be slowing a bit.

More to come on this batch!

Complete brew details here.