"Closed for Maintenance"

I have emptied and cleaned all three kegs, and run sanitizer through the lines and taps on the kegerator.  Soon I will install the new Perlick faucets, and the homebrewery will be ready to be put back into action.

Pouring at the Bay Area Craft Beer Festival

Today I got to spend the afternoon tasting some excellent craft beers and pouring Club DOZE homebrew, including my own Saison, for the public at the Bay Area Craft Beer Festival.

Following the good reception given a homebrew tasting booth at another recent festival, DOZE was invited to share its members' homebrews at this iteration of the Craft Beer Festival.

It was great time, and our booth was one of the more popular ones, with many repeat visitors looking to taste our varied offerings.

A curiosity of the event was that Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Enforcement regulations limited us to pouring into small plastic cups, even if someone tried to hand us their festival-issued glassware.  I expect that it was that as homebrewers we were not licensed to dispense beer to the public, thus we could not "serve" beer but only offer folks  a 2-3 oz. "tasting" sample.

Even so, by a bit past halfway through the event we finished off my keg of Saison and three others, and by the end of it we had drained fourteen corny kegs of homebrew!

Pouring at the Bay Area Craft Beer Festival!

It turns out that DOZE has been invited to set up a booth at the Bay Area Craft Beer Festival next week and to serve our homebrews.

I'll be donating my keg of Saison to the effort, and look forward to pouring it for the public.  So, if you're there, stop by for some!

T'is the Holiday Saison 2010

Brew #:25
Brew Date: October 27, 2010

Recipe based on that developed for the mini-mash version of Brother Levonian saison ale.

Ingredients

6 lbs extra-light dry malt extract

2.0 lbs Vienna malt

1.0 lb flaked wheat

0.5 lb flaked oats

12.0 oz sugar

3.0 oz Saaz hops @ 60 min.

0.5 oz Glacier hops @ 60 min

19 g. (0.67 oz) Glacier hops @ 30 min.

0.75 oz Glacier hops @ 5 min.

1.0 oz Saaz hops @ 0 min.

8.0 oz honey, @ 0 min.

0.5 oz fresh tangerine peel @ 0 min

0.25 tsp black pepper @ 0 min

0.25 tsp turmeric @ 0 min

2 vials of White Labs WLP565 Saison Ale Yeast

0.5 oz Kent Goldings, dry hopping

Procedure

Placed grains in 1.3 gals of 151F water and held at between 151F and 170F for 70 mins.  Sparged into boiling kettle with 1 gal of 170F water, to make 6 gals in boil.

Added malt extract and sugar, and brought to boil.

Added 60-minute hops, and proceeded to add hops at times indicated above.

At minute 0, turned off heat and added the honey, 1.0 oz Saaz hops, tumeric, pepper, and tangerine peel.

Cooled wort to 82F, racked to fermenter and pitched yeast.

Gals in fermenter: 4.5

O.G.: not taken

F.G.: not taken

Fermentation
10/27 Pitched yeast at 82F.  Set to ferment with FermWrap to keep temperature above ambient.
11/13 Racked to secondary fermenter, with addition of dry hops.  I would have preferred to have done it a few days sooner, but I had a bad cold.
11/22 Very occasional bubbles through airlock.  Fermentation or evaporation?
12/23 Racked to keg.  Rather later than I would have liked, but I was sick for two weeks and figured it wouldn't be prudent to deal with the beer in that state.   Tasted beer, a bit more bitter than I would have liked in the style.  May  mellow out with time, cooling, and carbonation.

Now, to get it carbonated in time for our New Year's Eve party....

Gals. in Keg:  around 4.
 

No. 24: Pale

I'd been calling it a "Mild" because that's all I could think of.   It had an OG of 1.045 and around 50 IBUs.   It's light in body and not very hoppy. So "mild" comes to mind.  However, it is not a brown ale. 

Looking at Charlie Papazian's description, it may fall more in the range of an Ordinary or a Special Bitter.  

NB: Next time try a British yeast?

         NB: at the September DOZE meeting it was generally agreed that it most fit the description of a Pale Ale.

Brew #24

Brew Date: August 22, 2010

Ingredients

• 7 lbs light liquid malt extract
• 1 lb Crystal 15°L malt
• 2 oz. black roasted barley
• 4 oz. CaraRed malt
• 1 oz N. Brewer 8.5% AA hops (bittering)
• 1 oz N. Brewer 8.5% AA hops (flavoring)
• 1 oz Centennial 9.2% AA hops (aroma)
• 2 vials of White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001)
  

Procedure 

- Added grains to about 1.5 gals. 180°F purified water, turned off burner, covered and allowed to steep for 20 mins.

- Brought remainder of water to boil in kettle.
- At boil, sparged grain liquor into kettle.
At this point I realized that I had fudged my measurements and ended up with 7.5 gals in the kettle.  To prevent boilover I removed 1.5 gals of wort and ketpt it in reserve.
- Added LME, and brought back to boil.

- Once back at boil added bittering hops.  After foaming had subsided, I returned 1 gal of liquor to the kettle, and returned to boil.

- At 50 minutes added flavour hops, and remaining 0.5 gal of liquor.

- At 59 minutes added aroma hops.
- At 60 minutes removed from heat and turned on wort chiller.
- When wort reached 86°F, transferred to fermenter, leaving about 1 gal, full of sediment, in kettle.

- Pitched yeast at  84°F (actually, not much above room temperature today).

Gallons in fermenter: 5.5

Fermentation:
Active fermentation within 24 hrs.

Kegging/Bottling:
Kegged beer.  Set CO2 at 30 psi to try to carbonate it in time for NCHF.

9/14: Overcabonated it. Oops!   Tastes quite mild, very drinkable on a hot day.    Liz likes it as well.

OG: 1.045

FG: Sample not large enough.  Hydrometer rested on bottom of tube.

ABV:  Unable to calculate. 
IBUs:  46-52 

T'is the Holiday Saison

Brew #:23
Brew Date: 24 November, 2009

Recipe based on that developed for the mini-mash version of Brother Levonian saison ale.

Ingredients

6 lbs extra-light dry malt extract

2.0 lbs Vienna malt

1.0 lb flaked wheat

0.5 lb flaked oats

12.0 oz sugar

3.0 oz Saaz hops, 3.0% AA @ 60 min.

19 g. (0.67 oz) Glacier hops, 6.0% AA, @ 30 min.

1.0 oz Glacier hops, 6.0% AA, @ 20 min.

1/8 oz Glacier hops, 6.0% AA, @ 5 min.

1.0 oz Saaz hops, 3.0% AA, @ 0 min.

8.0 oz honey, @ 0 min.

0.5 oz fresh tangerine peel @ 0 min

0.25 tsp black pepper @ 0 min

0.25 tsp turmeric @ 0 min

0.5 oz Kent Goldings, 6.1% AA, dry hopping

2 vials of White Labs WLP565 Saison Ale Yeast

3.0-3.5 volumes CO2 in keg/ 5.4-6.6 oz corn sugar for bottling (for 5-5.5 gals).

Procedure

Placed grains in 1.3 gals of 151F water and held at between 151F and 164F for 70 mins.  Sparged into boiling kettle with 1.5 gals of 170F water, to make 6 gals in boil.

Added malt extract and sugar, and brought to boil.

Added 60-minute hops, and proceeded to add hops at times indicated above, however the 1 oz of Glacier hops added at 20 minutes was intended to be added at 5 minutes, thus the addition of the remaining 1/8 oz of Glacier hops at 5 minutes.  Added enough water to return volume to 6 gals.

At minute 0, turned off heat and added the honey, 1.0 oz Saaz hops, tumeric, pepper, and tangerine peel.

Cooled wort, and pitched yeast at 84F.

Gals in fermenter: 6

O.G.: not taken

F.G.:

Fermentation
11/24 Pitched yeast at 84F.  Set to ferment with FermWrap to keep temperature above ambient.
11/25 Temp. over 80F, detached FermWrap almost entirely.  Krausen evident.
11/26 Temp at about 76F.
11/30 76F
12/1  76F.  No evident fermentation.
12/3 Racked to secondary fermenter, with addition of 0.5 oz of 6.1%AA Kent Goldings hop pellets.
12/5 75F.  Active fermentation, airlock bubbling frequently.   Is this normal?  Effect of rousting the yeast?
12/13 Turned off FermWrap.
12/21 Kegged beer.

Gals. in Keg:  4.5

American IPA

Brew #22

Brew Date: 15 Nov. 2009

Ingredients

• 9 lbs ultralight liquid malt extract
• 1.5 lbs Crystal 15°L malt
• 1.5 oz Magnum hops (bittering)
• 2 oz Cascade hops (flavoring)
• 2 oz Cascade hops (aroma)
• 0.5 oz Chinook hops, 12.1% AA (dry hopping)
• 1 tablet Whirfloc clarifying agent
• 2 vials of White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001)
  

Procedure 

- Steeped grains in grain bag at 170F - 171F for 30 minutes.

- Brought wort to boil and added malt extract

- Once back at boil added bittering hops

- At 45 minutes added Whirfloc

- At 53 minutes added flavour hops

- At 60 minutes added aroma hops, and turned off flame

- Cooled with wort chiller (NOTE: Stirring wort with wort chiller really reduces cooling time!)

- Pitched yeast at 85F

Gallons in fermenter: 6

OG: n/a

FG:

Fermentation:

11/16  65F  Evidence of foam, which had subsided.

11/18 64F
11/23 64F
11/24  Racked to secondary, dry-hopped with 0.5 oz Chinook (12.1% AA) whole-leaf hops
12/3 Kegged beer.