Cliffred Lager
My Dad and buddy Corey came over for Barking Dog’s first all-grain brew day. We did Midwest Supplies’ Midwest Red
Lager recipe:
Base malt: 9 lbs domestic pilsner
Specialty: 8 oz carapils, 12 oz Carmel 40, 2 oz Debittered black (pre-mixed)
Hops: 2 oz Hallertau
Yeast: White Labs German Lager #WL830 (did a yeast starter)
12/4
- Started the day at about 9:30am. Cooooold in the garage!!! I think the grain bed got down to 140* during the hour it was in the mash tun. Started off at about 150* or so.
- 90 min. sparge
- OG: 1.045 (11.3 brix) while target is 1.042-1.046 so I’m pretty happy
- Doing a longer boil (75 min.) to promote clarity in the finished product, forgot to buy Irish moss… Recipe said I could go as long as 90 min. in the boil.
- Hallertau in at 60″
- Hallertau in at 2″
- Post boil, came up about a gallon short of volume (longer boil = less final product, whoops, duh). Brix was back up to almost 14 so I didn’t feel bad adding over half a gallon of spring water I had laying around to the fermenter. Got the brix reading back down to 11.9 (1.048) which is just above target. Good to go.
- I had done a yeast starter (one cup dried Pilzen malt extract with four cups water boiled together for 15 min.) on Thursday night prior to this Saturday brew day. I’ve read it can be bad to do them too early, as the yeast could be tired out by the time they’re pitched, but I think I may have done this one a bit too close to pitch time, as there wasn’t a ton of activity in the container — but some. Pitched at about 4:00pm. (more…)
Sammy's Golden Porter
After Cristof, Dan and I stood in line all morning at Darkness Day to get our bottles of Surly Darkness, it was time to
brew and test out my recently purchased 10 gal. brew pot and propane burner. We did a Honey Porter recipe from Midwest Supplies which ended up being christened “Sammy’s Golden Porter” because Cristof’s wife’s family yellow lab growing up was named Sammy. Cristof had grown up dog-less himself and requested we take pity on him by naming the batch after his wife’s dead dog. Thus came to be Sammy’s Golden Porter, henceforth to be referred to as SGP.
With this batch, I knew I wanted to start monitoring my process much closer on brew days and during fermentation in the weeks following. Here are the deets: (more…)
CUJO SPICE Pumpkin Ale
Friends Jim and MaKenzie came over to help me brew this batch on a Friday night, and honestly we got a little
drunk on some good craft brews (apparently the delicious Alfrenzo pizza from Fat Lorenzo’s didn’t offer enough sustenance) so the details are as hazy as this beer turned out. Also, some friends in town stopped by as we were in the process of transferring this beer into the primary fermentor and I got a bit distracted. I almost started to boil the priming sugar for bottling! Whoops. Did I mention already we weren’t sober for this brew day?
What I can tell you: (more…)
Fraz(zzled) Wheat
OG was supposed to be 1.046 by the recipe (Northern Brewer Raspberry Wheat extract, partial boil). My OG came in
a bit light at 1.042 but I had no idea what to do about that yet at this point. The FG landed at 1.012 when I bottled two weeks later (7/10/10). I didn’t do a secondary fermentation for this batch, as I’d heard that isn’t completely necessary with wheat beers. Well ok then! Less transferring = less opportunity for infection. I’m game. (more…)
Double Dog Dare IPA
This is the first brew day I attempted solo. Like I’ve said, I love IPA’s so why not try and make a double IPA. I was still doing extract boiling at this point so this recipe consisted of pretty much double the extract syrup of the Snaggletooth IPA recipe along with a shit ton of hops added at various points of the boil. Part of the extract partial boil recipe has you make “hop tea” where you… make a tea with hop pellets. Kinda fun. I love the smell of hops. I started understanding the hydrometer a bit more at this point so I actually took and kept some readings recorded:
OG: 1.086 (recipe had me shooting for 1.083)
FG: 1.021 (the end result seemed a bit sweet and I think this was why)
I recall transferring this to secondary and dry-hopping on June 26th or 27th I believe. The hop pellets moved around quite a bit, which seemed good. I seem to recall having a busy summer and not getting around to bottling this batch until early August, which was maybe a mistake? August 27th was the big day, the first bottles to be cracked at my buddy Jim’s new house for a BBQ. NO CARBONATION! It tasted pretty good but no bubbles at ALL. So pissed. I worked pretty hard on this batch so I was mad.
Snaggletooth IPA
Dad brewed with me again. We used all spring water this time, not distilled as with the first batch. It turned out
GREAT! This batch was given the name Snaggletooth IPA after Leiny’s snaggletooth.
I’m a big fan of India Pale Ale’s, so I thought I’d try my hand at one. IPA’s have such a distinctive hop character they just smack you in the face. This probably plays well into my personality, as I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, most of the time. The recipe I used was Northern Brewer’s Chinook IPA extract kit. Partial boil. I believe chinook hops were used for both bittering and aroma in this recipe. (more…)
Honeydog Wheat, my first brew
Back in January 2010 I gave my dad his Christmas present from weeks prior: a brew day! We brewed a honey wheat with an partial-boil extract recipe from Northern Brewer. I got the deluxe starter brew kit because I had been thinking about beginning to brew for many months and had already read through a how-to book.
The Brew went to secondary and was bottled in March, I believe. I didn’t really understand the purpose of the hydrometer yet and didn’t record any readings. I recall primary fermentation took place at about 72-74 degrees, as I was concerned this might be a bit hot for primary. The only complaint I really had about the first batch was that I could tell we’d used distilled water for the entire volume, as though the brew tasted ok it kinda had a thin mouthfeel to it.
Anyway, definitely was encouraged enough to continue brewing!