Homebrewing For The Uninitiated And Brave
Today, instead of working, I'm building a Hoegaarden rip off. It's an experiment with using the Golding hop, which weighs in at a subtle 4.2% alpha acid, for bittering, as well as a light wheat malt extract. The latter has almost always resulted in failure.
Anway, the usual qbrew files are always here: http://quantifier.org/qbrew/
http://quantifier.org/qbrew/hoe.qbrew
http://quantifier.org/qbrew/hoe.html
http://quantifier.org/qbrew/hoe.pdf
Comments welcome.
Austin Homebrew Supply offers several recipes for existing beers available at the market. I am brewing their Abita Turbodog right this moment. I added the yeast fuel and the alcohol booster that are add-ons available before checkout.
I prefer AHS for my brewing supplies because their shipping charges are affordable and their wide selection of ingredients and kits are unmatched. I will have the qbrew file up by the day's end.
I went extra-anal on sanitizing & cleansing this cook, and used bottled water instead of the mud that comes from these Dothan taps.
Today we're bottling an IPA and then getting started on the larger project for the afternoon: starting the first batch of Merlot. Hopefully this first time goes easily. We're skimming all ingredients by 20% to meet our storage capacities. Perhaps I'll add some photos of our progress.
Or just start drinking beer instead.
Who knows what 2009 will bring? We'll be brewing wine and ginger ale this year, in addition to moving to Cornelius kegging. The kegerator waits patiently for its babies. Its delicious, life-giving baby kegs.
I'm returning to dry yeast as the liquid pitchable yeasts are giving me some off-tastes. I have done my best to rule out other factors (such as water & environment) and the one thing I notice is that my brews made with the liquid yeast do not come out to my liking.
And that's all this is really about anyway: making what I like when I want.
It's all in the journey after all, right?
Another week, another brew. I tried http://www.homebrewden.com & had them ship me their Dog & Crown Pale Ale kit. It shipped with White Labs pitchable liquid yeast. I substituted Glacier hops for the Kent Golding aroma hops also. Here’s the qbrew file and here’s the html page.
I am going to try the late malt extract addition method on my next brew. I’ll probably do about 20% of the DME or syrup to get the hops going, and then finish off the extract for about 15-20 minutes. Another good post about it is right here:
http://menuinprogress.com/2007/08/on-importance-of-late-extract-addition.html
I moved the Turbodog clone to the carboy this afternoon. The color & aroma are right on target. Looking forward to enjoying it in a few weeks. I also came across this site: http://www.mansgarden.com/brewing.html. Here’s an excerpt:
Brewing Herbs
Using Brewing Herbs - An excerpt from The Homebrewer’s Garden (©1998 Joe Fisher and Dennis Fisher)
Brewing herbs have different characteristics, just as different hop varieties do. Most herbs traditionally associated with brewing are bitter. Others are more flavorful or aromatic. What you use an herb for and when you use it depends on the qualities of the herb and the kind of beer you wish to brew. Some herbs are multipurpose, though none approaches hops in overall utility. Beer without any hop character at all is an acquired taste. We usually add at least 1/2 ounce (14 g) of hops for a 5-gallon (19 L) batch of even our most herbal beers.
I’ve been reading about Simcoe Hops, and decided to put them to work in a Pale Ale recipe. They’re particularly popular with Amarillo, if you’re trying to hit a high IBU/btu for an IPA. But I’m going a bit more subtle, as in Dog Fish Head’s 60 minute IPA. So I’m mixing them with Glacier and Warrior, and using Simcoe and Warrior for a bit of dry hopping, too.
The recipe , as always, is available in my qbrew file, here:
Happy Homebrewing.
I found this on a forum somewhere and adjusted it very slightly.
For those living on the intersection of open source software, and homebrew beers, you’ll want to
apt-get install qbrew
It’s a homebrewer’s recipe calculator, using QT. I don’t take much advantage of the calculator, but rather use it to keep track of recipes.
Moving on, I’ve updated some of my qbrew files, and converted them both to html, and pdf. They can all be found:
I don’t know why I keep messing with other brews. Look at the IPA (my first, and best work).
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