The Elder

Today I brewed up my first batch in two months. A few days ago, I decided it would be a wheat porter, using half and half barley and wheat for the base malt component.

For Christmas I received a gift certificate to my LHBS from my sister-in-law. My ingredients only costing about $18 and I not wanting to have leftovers from my GC, I grabbed at the nearest interesting item to the register: an 8oz bag of dried elderberries. This got me to thinking: I really like Ebulum dark elderberry ale, an un-hopped Scottish ale, so why not try my own homebrew in that vein?

The Recipe:

4 lb 2-row pale malt
4 lb wheat malt
12 oz chocolate malt
4 oz crystal 60°

8 oz dried elderberries @ 10

Wyeast 1318 - London Ale III

Mashed at 154° for an hour using about 11 quarts of water. Sparged with 170°-190° water until I had about 26 quarts for the boil.

O.G.: 1.052
Est. IBU: n/a

I didn't go into this batch with an ironclad mash temperature in mind, so when I ended up at 154° after my initial dough-in I decided to stick with it. The last beer I brewed with an above-152° mash was Foam Dome Stout, which had a mouthfeel I really liked.

As far as bitterness is concerned, I have read that elderberries contribute a fair amount of it, albeit of a different character than hop bitterness. I'm calling this brew a major experiment; based on its taste pre-fermentation I have high hopes that it will at least be drinkable. Ebulum, by which this decision was inspired, uses no hops; however, it is fermented with the berries rather than having the berries used in the boil as I have done. In any case, this shall be interesting.

Lastly, my efficiency for this batch was merely 83%, which is relatively low by my recent standards. I double-milled the grain, but despite this the sparge took less than an hour, which is somewhat quicker than the last two brews. This is especially interesting considering the large amount of wheat I used. Perhaps the mill at my LHBS needs to be adjusted; still, 83% is within the satisfactory range.

A New Year, A New Beer

OK, so there's not actually a new beer. December was almost entirely devoid of brewing-related activity, with the exception of yesterday. New Year's Eve I bottled Bar-None Brown and Terrible Tripel and racked Dummkopf and Black Ryeday to the secondary. The latter are going to end up pretty good I think, but I'm not so sure about Bar-None (finished 8.1% ABV) and the Tripel (10%). Some bottle conditioning and carbonation will probably help these a lot (especially the Tripel).