Home Brew Insider

Today was a nice day for homebrewing. I took half the day off work and spent the time cooking up some homebrew with a buddy of mine Chris. He brought over his cooker, kettle, ingredients and of course his dog Turkish. Since we had two propane cookers we staggered our batches about fifteen minutes apart so that we would have enough time to process each one. We did extract recipes today and were able to get three five gallon batches completed between lunch time and 5:30. Not too shabby for a Monday afternoon!

Chris started off with a coffee stout. He started with a simple stout recipe and then we scavenged hops from my freezer. (I had quite a bit more in there then I thought). I think he grabbed about 2oz of Cascade and 3oz of Centennial. Then at the last 5mins of the boil he added in a pot of French roast that he had made earlier. It smelled very nice.

While the stout was boiling away, I started on the double IPA. Not sure why I never made a double IPA before considering it is one of my favorite styles of beer. Also, I did not have an exact recipe for this so I had to piece meal it together from a few others. We started with 1/2lbs of crystal 90 for flavor and color. Then went with  10lbs of light extract for the fermentables. Once again to the freezer for hops. We dug out 3oz of Amarillo, 4oz of Centennial and 5oz of Simcoe. That should be about 105 HBUs. Without using much precision, we divided each of the hops into quarters and added that portion of each hop type at 15 minute intervals.Hopefully this one will be a good trial, and not an error.

So while the double ipa was boiling away we decided to do a third batch. I had a tub of wheat malt extract hogging space up in my fridge, so I figured why not. A very basic wheat recipe 7lbs of malt and 4oz of Saaz. That’s pretty much it. We did decided to flavor it at the end with some corriander seeds and the zest from one lemon. It is a bit out of season, but it should still taste good.

Chris and I were talking a little bit about “slow starts”, meaning the time it takes for the yeast to reach their most active point is slower then expected. I tried to get him to place a wager on which one would be the first to become active. My thought was the Hefe yeast since I did a yeast starter for it yesterday afternoon so that has a 24hr head start on the other two wich were pitched straight from thier packing tube. Tune in next time for an update on the yeast activity.

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So here is a practical product I found, “Brew Balls”. If you are new to brewing then the price tag of $20 might seem a bit high. Once you have brewed for a few years and broken your fair share of hydrometers, the price tag will seem just fine. Just think about this product for a minute. Once you have the balls in a carboy, you can easily tell what the gravity is without having to risk sanitation issues with taking samples.

Site: http://brewballstore.com

admin Uncategorized Equipment, Measuring, Products

Nothing says “Welcome” in any language better then handing your guest a nice glass of craft beer or wine, especially when you have made it yourself. Ah yes, beer – who’d have thought it was such a universal language. Well the monks of course, but never mind that.

Some of the goals for this site

• Provide relevant content in the segment of home brewing, craft beer, micro-brewing, industry happenings and anything else of value to those interested.
• Broadcast regular journal entries in my own trials and tribulations with home brewing, and beer tasting.
• In the future I would like to include resources like a home brew store directory, club directories, product and book reviews, beer recipes, etc.

Since this site is new, there is not much else to see here, YET. You could however read a little about my history of dumping the swill and moving to craft beer.

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