Playa Dust Pale Ale recipe (PDF)

Graphics courtesy the Beer Labelizer.

Seriously, it was pretty nasty yesterday, but I had to get in my Burning Man brew session; I’d already put it off at least a month longer than I should have. From last year’s burn I learned two important facts:

1. Having ice cold beer on the playa is essential.
2. Keeping a keg ice cold on the playa is foolhardy.

So this year I’ve decided to bottle-condition – in plastic bottles, no less. I’m leaving August 9, and I’m sure that three weeks rattling around in a hot car trunk will be plenty of time for the beer to carbonate, even if it isn’t a great idea otherwise. But that means that I have less than five weeks to take a 7.2% ABV lager from brewing to bottling. I have some reservations, but what are you going to do?

Anyway, the brewday went off without a hitch. I under-estimated my efficiency slightly, and ended up with an OG of 16.7°P (1.069). I had to chill the wort in my kegerator overnight to get it down to pitching temps, then this morning I aerated, pitched, and took a sample to conduct a fast ferment test. Normally I don’t bother, but in this case a few extra days of lagering could really make a difference, so I need to get the beer out of primary as soon as it’s ready – hopefully no more than about 10 days from now. I’ll do a short diacetyl rest, then lager it at 0°C for as long as possible.

I also racked my properly fermented Oktoberfest into a keg to make room, and man oh man is that tasting good.

Black Rock Maibock recipe (PDF)

The penultimate attempt, IPA #17, at right.

The recipe for Two Hearted is actually pretty straightforward. The base is regular domestic two-row pale malt, with a fairly significant dose of light Munich, and a small addition of light crystal malt. Some allegedly authentic sources suggest that Bell’s actually uses Vienna malt, but the Munich I use is rated 4-8 Lovibond, overlapping the typical range for Vienna considerably. Consult your maltster’s specifications and act accordingly. Hopping is 100% Centennial, of course, with more or less equal quantities for bittering, aroma, and dry-hop additions, doubled for the flavor addition. I like to split that between 20 and 10 minute doses, rather than a single addition at 15 minutes, because I feel that it gives a smoother and more complex hop flavor, at least in theory. Whether or not the difference is actually detectable, or which technique Bell’s uses, I couldn’t say.

In order to be 100% accurate, you’ll need to culture the yeast from a bottle; any of Bell’s American ales will use their house strain, so Oberon is probably the easiest source. Having brewed with both, though, I’ve found that I actually prefer Wyeast 1272. The differences are subtle, but its slightly fruitier esters seem to prolong the Centennial hop flavor, which is a plus if you won’t be finishing the keg for a couple months. I pitch at the standard 0.75 billion/L-°P, starting at 17°C/63°F, then let the beer rise on its own to 20°C/68°F and hold it there for the remainder of fermentation. Dry-hopping is conducted for 10 days at the same temperature.

I have to dilute my tap water 2:1 with reverse osmosis water to brew a beer this pale, then add gypsum and calcium chloride. The combined effect is to reduce the residual alkalinity to about 20 ppm CaCO₃ and brings the pH to a perfect 5.3.

• Ca²⁺: 103 ppm
• Mg²⁺: 9 ppm
• Na⁺: 7 ppm
• SO₄^2-: 144 ppm
• Cl^-: 29 ppm
• HCO₃^-: 119 ppm

The last time I tasted the two beers side by side (pictured), they were extremely close, but I could still differentiate them, even tasting blind. The clone was a hair too dark, and also a little too malty. For this last revision, I reduced the Munich malt and increased the bittering charge slightly, and the two are now basically indistinguishable. About the only way I can reliably tell the difference is to finish a glass; the homebrew has better lacing.

IPA #18 recipe (PDF)
 

The sweet wort sample may be the best I’ve ever tasted. Really fresh Munich is just incredibly rich, complex stuff. I actually straight up ate a little while I was brewing. The color is absolutely fantastic too.

Unfortunately, I undershot my efficiency again, although only by a few percent. My past few brews have been all over the place and I have no idea why. I may just be expecting too much potential extract from the pilsner malt. Hopefully I’ll get the lot analysis from NCM shortly.

Krasny Oktyabr recipe (PDF)

Get your festbieren in soon! Mai is upon us!

I know, my kettle is filthy...

Then yesterday, while doing a whirlpool addition of cardamom to a tripel, one of the seed pods got sucked through the pump and clogged my chiller. Enough was enough. I ran to the hardware store and bought every brass pipe fitting known to man, thinking I’d be able to hack together something. Turns out all I needed was a single 90° female fitting. One of my concerns proved valid – there’s just barely enough thread for it to grip, and in the proper orientation it can’t be fully tightened – but it’s a perfect fit, sitting just a couple millimeters off the bottom, and apparently the threads are tight enough for the pump to pull a vacuum. I did a “dry run” (pun lovers are really getting their money’s worth today!) and it seems like my kettle dead space is now about 100 mL. Yay.

Truti Fruiti recipe (PDF)

Anyway, I brewed my second “draft”, if you’ll pardon the pun, of a Robust Porter recipe, modeled loosely after Great Lakes’ Edmund Fitzgerald. (Kudos to GLBC, by the way, for not having me verify – or lie about – my age to use their site.) I love the flavor of EF, but for my tastes it has too much roasted barley. This time I went with just a hint – about 1% – to supplement the judicious amount of black patent and chocolate malts. I also switched to GLBC’s own house strain instead of an American ale strain, to try to replicate the great depth of ester profile and mouthfeel their beers seem to have. After less than four days between 64 and 71°F, active fermentation is wrapping up, so chances are good this one will be in the keg in about a week – and in my tummy in two.

Andrea Doria Mk2 PDF

• 2 cups spent grain, pureed
• 4 cups wheat flour
• 1 cup beer
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/8 cup vegetable oil
• 1 packet dry bread yeast
• white flour, as needed

Proof the yeast with a teaspoon of sugar and a few ounces of warm water. Knead to combine the rest of the ingredients, and add white flour as needed until the texture is right (not dry to the touch, but no longer sticky). Pound the dough down into a loaf pan, then let it rise for 1-2 hours. Bake at 350°F until the internal temperature is 210°F, or a “toothpick test” shows that it’s done – it should be about 45 minutes.

Yes, my garage is a mess.

I set the Barley Crusher gap from the default of 39 mil (0.99 mm) to 30 mil (0.76 mm), for no particular reason other than that it’s the width of credit card stock. I don’t have any feeler gauges to do a more precise adjustment; I may have to pick some up though, because I also tried out malt conditioning. It produced a beautiful crush and faster lautering than I’m used to getting even from the wider mill setting at my LHBS. But either my gap is too narrow or the amount of water I added (150 mL, about 3% by mass) was too much, because I was barely able to operate the mill. Next time I’ll probably try a 1% water addition to see if I can get the benefits, without the workout.

I doubt the malt conditioning has anything to do with it, but thanks to the new mill I also got a 10% increase in efficiency, to 87%. That’s pretty damn close to the theoretical limit for a single batch sparge, so at least in theory the mill will pay for itself… after only 1465 pounds of grain.

Behold a Pale Ale Mk5 PDF

My half-assed hypothesis here is that the acid in the OJ will extract some of the flavors from the spices.

To my tastes, most spiced beers are seriously overdone, so I’m using a deliberately light hand in the whirlpool – only nine grams of spices. (Pro Tip: Whole Foods has fresh, bulk, whole spices for around $1/oz.) If it needs more, I can always add it as a vodka tincture in the secondary. Looks like I may have caught the last good-brewing-weather day of the year, too.

I haven’t really been brewing since putting the kegerator in storage in July, but I have a porter that I brewed about a month ago, and just bottled Friday, so keep an eye out for a recipe and tasting notes for that soon.

Unholy Trinity recipe