Black Ryeday

Today I brewed up batch #13, a rye beer. I had intended to brew Brevity Wit again, but the homebrew store was out of the appropriate yeast. So, I flipped through some brew magazines to get ideas and thought, hey, how about rye? I dreamed up some proportions, milled my grain twice, and was ready to go.

The Recipe:

7 lb 2-row pale malt
2 lb rye malt
1 lb flaked rye

11 AAU (24g @ 13% AA) Nugget @ 60
5 AAU (31g @ 4.5% AA) Willamette @ 15
4 AAU (37g @ 3% AA) Hallertau @ 5

1 Irish moss tablet @ 15 min

Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II

Mashed at 150° for an hour using about 14 quarts of water. Sparged with 170°-185° water until I had about 25 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.062
Est. IBU: 57.0*

This beer is either a rye beer or an IPA; you could call it a hybrid. I'm just calling it a rye for my own purposes.

As I mentioned, I milled the grain twice just as I did last time; lo and behold, I hit 90% mash efficiency once again. The fine mill (plus, I have read, rye's natural properties) led to a very slow sparge of about an hour and fifteen minutes. Still, I'll take the extra time waiting in exchange for great efficiency any day.

I went with the name Black Ryeday because I bought the ingredients for this batch on the day after Thanksgiving, though the beer itself is not black in any way. The homebrew store was busier than I'd ever seen it, which I thought was weird, but at least it inspired a name.

Also, I racked Terrible Tripel to the secondary and measured its gravity at 1.005. If that ends up being the actual final gravity, we're talking 9.8% here. It tasted pretty good, too.

*Note: I just noticed (13 July 2010) that the AAU and IBU calculations were slightly off based on how many grams of hops I actually added at the 5 minute mark. Not sure how this happened or how I missed it for so long. This has been fixed; IBUs dropped by a paltry 0.8 units.

A Mishap

So, today I had my first real bottle-related mishap. I had brought a selection of homebrews to my parents' house to share for Thanksgiving, including one bottle of my dwindling supply of Brevity Wit. But when I popped the cap to pour a sample for my brother, I heard no satisfying "kshh" sound; when I poured, the beer was flat and rather foul smelling. Let this be a lesson: cap your bottles tightly, kids, or you too will know the shame of massively oxidized homebrew.

On another note, I tried Blackacre IPA now that it has had enough time to really carbonate and found it quite tasty. Initial comments from my brothers tend to confirm that I have indeed finally made a somewhat successful hop-centric beer. I also sampled a Procrastination today and it was pretty good; another week or two won't hurt it, but I think it's turning into a solid porter.

My brewing goals for this weekend are manifold: bottle Bar-None Brown, rack Terrible Tripel to the secondary, maybe rack Dummkopf to a secondary and brew another batch of Brevity Wit. Racking Dummkopf would require the acquisition of another secondary, but it may be worth it; I definitely need to get Terrible into the secondary if I want to have it bottled and drinkable before Christmas.

Dummkopf Dunkelweizen

Today I finally got around to brewing my dunkelweizen. Things went very well; more on that later.

The Recipe:

4.5 lb European Pilsner malt
4.5 lb wheat malt
2 oz chocolate malt

4 AAU (9g @ 13% AA) Nugget @ 60
2 AAU (16g @ 3.5% AA) Czech Saaz @ 15

Wyeast 3068 - Weihenstephan Weizen

Single infusion mash for 60 minutes at about 150° using 11.5 quarts; fly sparged with ~170-185° water until I had about 25 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.057
Est. IBU: 20.4

So, in an attempt to maximize mash efficiency, I ran the grain through the mill twice at my LHBS. And guess what! I managed 90% efficiency this time around. I was rather gobsmacked to see it, but happy. Dummkopf is going to be a little higher ABV than planned, but I think I can deal.

One unfortunate thing is that I lazily let the grain sit unused for almost 2 weeks after milling but before brewing; it didn't seem nasty so I think I'm OK, but I'm still a little apprehensive about the effects of oxidation (or whatever other processes can occur in a paper bag).

Bloodshed

So, today my new hobby finally drew blood. While attempting to remove a piece of plastic tubing from the racking cane of my auto-siphon, I broke the cane and cut my finger. Not a major injury, but it makes me feel more complete as a brewer.

Other than that, I bottled Blackacre IPA (finished at 1.006 - 6% ABV) and racked Bar-None Brown to the secondary. It has achieved 1.010 so far, but I don't expect it to attenuate any further at this point.

Tomorrow I need to brew, because I crushed the grain for this batch almost two weeks ago. Has it all oxidized and started to turn? I guess we'll find out.

The Grid

Yesterday I stopped off at my LHBS to buy ingredients for my next brewing session (a dunkelweizen!) and some green bottle caps for Blackacre IPA (not sure why, but my vision for this beer entails green caps). So, that was fun.

Mostly, I wanted to post a link to the Beer Grid, which catalogues and analyzes my brewing projects. It's über-simple, but it servers as a nice little dashboard/summary of my brew projects.

So ... behold! The Beer Grid!