Chocolate Pecan Porter Bread

Ingredients

--------------

3 Cups Flour (sifted)

3 Teaspoons Baking Powder (omit if using Self-Rising Flour)
1 Teaspoon Salt (omit if using Self-Rising Flour)
1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
12 oz bottle of Chocolate Pecan Porter (or a  substitute beer)
1/4 Cup Melted Butter

Directions
-------------

1. Preheat oven to 375°
2. Mix dry ingredients first. Once the dry ingredients are mixed, add the beer. Rinse the beer bottle with a little cool water and shake around to get the most out of the bottle
3. Use a spoon to scoop equal amounts into a muffin trays. (Note: the size of the muffins will vary the bake time depending on size of muffins)Pour into a greased loaf pan.)
4. Pour melted butter over each muffin.
5. Bake 8 - 10 minutes at 375°F
6. Serve warm, or let cool before putting in refrigerator.

Read More

Flemish Red

The weekend was planned to be this: brew a beer that would eventually be the first sour beer to age for ~6 months, or until flavor profile developed. Additionally, Brett and I talked about making another Mead (this time adding mulberries). In some future posts there will be detail of what this weekend turned into.

Grain
-------
4.00 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
3.5 lbs. American Vienna Malt
3.00 lbs. Belgian Munich Malt
1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
0.5 lbs. CaraMunich Malt
0.5 lbs. Aromatic Malt
0.5 lbs. Special B Malt

Hops
-------
1 oz Czech Saaz (60 minute addition)

Yeast
--------
Wheat Yeast harvested from Barney's Back primary fermenter

Mash Schedule
--------------------
Sacch Rest 40 min @ 147°F.
Sacch Rest 30 min @ 162°F.

Notes
--------
3/6/2015
Preboil gravity reading was only ~1.035 so we added 3 cups of sugar to the boil. We are not happy with our mash efficiency! Boiled down to a little over 5 gallons. OG was 1.048. Yeast pitched from washed wheat yeast -- harvested from the primary fermentation of the Barney’s Back (no berries were exposed to this yeast because berries were only added into secondary). This was a lot of yeast! Put carboy in the ~60°F pantry overnight with an ‘S’ airlock.

3/7/2015 - It was raging in the morning with visible movement/current in the beer. Came home around 5:30pm to find a blown out airlock and a still raging beer -- converted to blowoff tube and put carboy in the 40°F basement to slow down.

3/8/2015 - Moved carboy and blowoff tube back up to the 60°F pantry

Plan to move this into secondary on 3/13/2015 but the date might change dependent on the activity of the primary. Going to add White Labs Sour Mix 655 to the secondary and let alone for 6 months!

OG 1.048
FG 1.007 (estimated)
ABV 5.43 %
IBU 19.7





The $8 dollar oak barrel trick was used for the first ~4 months, but then I had freshly picked sour cherries I wanted to add. So I removed the oak dowel rod and filled the headspace with the cherries you can see in the above photo.

Read More

Mead and Mulberry Melomel

While making beer is easy, making mead is ten times easier. Sterilize water, chill the water, add the honey, shake until homogeneous, add a pinch of yeast nutrient, pitch the yeast, shake the must. That's it. So on the week of 2/23/2015 I did enough research to feel comfortable and I made my first mead.

The left is the must before pitching the yeast. The right is the must after 1 week of fermentation. The color difference in just 1 weeks is surprising. 

First Mead - Honey, Water, Urea, and Yeast

Ingredients
-------------

2 Quarts of water

2.5 pound of orange blossom honey

1 Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient

1 packet of Safale US-05 yeast

1/2 Cup of water (used for yeast starter)

Procedure

--------------

1. Add water to 1 gallon jug. Add 2.5lb honey to jug. 
2. Add ¼ yeast nutrient to jug (I’m going to add ¼ teaspoon the next 3 days to equal 1 full teaspoon, stirring in the yeast nutrient each day.) 
3. Shake vigorously until homogeneous. 
4. Add yeast packet to ½ cup of 80°F water – stir and let yeast sit in the water for 10 – 15 minutes (pitching temperature of the must shall be 70°F – 80°F).
5. Pitch the yeast
6. Shake the 1 gallon jug after yeast was pitched. 

Notes

-------

The 2 quarts of water was boiled the day before making this batch of mead. I was going to use this water for yeast washing, but instead using sanitized water for mead making isn’t such a bad idea. I got a 5lb bottle of this honey and just eyeballed half of it for this batch.

Original Gravity: 1.112

Target Final Gravity: 1.050

The left is the final color after all ingredients were added, and the yeast was pitched to start our first mulberry melomel.

First Melomel - Honey, Water, Urea, Yeast, and Mulberries

Ingredients

Pulp after straining

-------------
The same ingredients as above, with the addition of Mulberries
1 gallon bag of frozen mulberries harvested in summer of 2014

Procedure - 3/6/2015
-------------
Same procedure as above, with the addition of boiling the mulberries for about an hour and a half. In that hour we mashed the berries in the boil pot (using a plastic cup as a press). After we were happy with the amount/consistency of the juice we strained with cheese cloth. Let the juice cool until room temperature. Then add the juice to the must before adding the yeast. Shake water, honey, and juice until homogeneous. THE COLOR IS AMAZING!

Day 4 eruption

3/10/2015
Slight eruption took place on day 4 of fermentation. I cleaned this mess up as soon as I found it and replaced airlock with a blow-off tube.

3/13/2015
Took off blow-off tube and replaced with a standard S-airlock, it looked calm enough to graduate from the blow-off.

5/30/2015
Racked both meads into secondary.
---
Clean Mead 
OG: 1.112
FG: 1.000
ABV: 14.7%

Mulberry Melomel 
OG: 1.100 estimated after adding berries
FG: 1.020
ABV: 9% - 11%

Read More

Second Runnings Coffee Ale

Enjoying the smell in the kitchen

I don't plan on this being anything special, considering that I'm not going to sour it. And I was using a sour ingredients list which only consisted of 1 oz of hop. Nonetheless, it's worth noting the procedure because of the coffee addition.


After getting enough wort from the lauter for the first sour beer, I collected a little more than a gallon of second runnings. Original gravity was 1.040 SG, yet another sign of poor mash efficiency (second runnings should never be equal to, or even close to the specific gravity of the first runnings). I boiled the baby beer in the kitchen for about 60 minutes. I added ~.25 oz of Czech Saaz hops at 60 minutes. At about 30 minutes, I decided to steep some whole grain coffee beans. They were 100% Colombian Dark Roast. Nothing else to this beer. Chilled and pitched yeast. The yeast I used was some that I had harvested from Barney's Back secondary. This yeast was tainted with berry juice and the color red. I even washed this yeast 3 times and it is still discolored. Not to worried about off flavors for this 1 gallon batch. I expect 10 bottle or so. I have no plans to sour this, I just want to see what it tastes like with the coffee steep idea.

Coffee beans being steeped

A portion of this yeast, which was harvested from the secondary of Barney's Back, was pitched into this 1 gallon batch.

Brew Day 3/6/2015
------------------------
OG: 1.050

Moved to Secondary Fermentation 3/13/2015
-------------------------------------------------------
1.013

Bottled 3/16/2015
----------------------
I bottled 5 bottles. Should be ready to taste in a few weeks. Coffee is really coming through distinctively. I want to leave one of the bottles sitting until the tasting of the first bottles of sour beer from the flemish red. That'll be a cool comparison. I think if I pulverized the coffee beans a bit and steeped in cheese cloth into a 5 gallon batch that it would give off a similar flavor. I definitely enjoy it. And it gave a noticeable coffee buzz when drinking. "I love drinking a young beer un-carbonized and not hating the flavor. Love the teaser."
FG: 1.010

Read More

Foxy Cayenne Red

Grain

--------

8 lbs Maris Otter 

1.5 lb Munich

1 lb Belgian Special B

.5 lb 40L Crystal 

Hops

-------

.5 oz Nugget 60 min boil

.5 oz Nugget 10 min boil

Yeast

--------

Dry pack of English Ale Yeast (warmed up in some water before adding to primary)

Other Adds

----------------

2 dry cayenne peppers - medium size, chopped, containing 5 seeds (10 min boil)

1 dry cayenne pepper - large size, chopped, containing about 20 seeds, soaked in in 1 oz gin (added to primary)

Mash Schedule

----------------------

60 min @ 154°F

Notes
-------
Brew Day 3/7/2015

Preboil gravity was 1.045. This gives us a calculated pre-boil efficiency of ~68%, which is a definite improvement of the previous batch. Typical, and simple brew day.

3/12/2015
1.013 SG reading while still in the 5 gallon bucket primary fermenter. There was only a thin layer of sediment laying on the top of the beer, but not covering the whole top. I was easily able to stir a bit to get a nice reading with the hydrometer. Bucket smelled dry and peppery - some peppers were visibly floating on the top of the beer.

OG: 1.053
Estimated FG of 1.010 will obtain 5.6% ABV

Bottling 3/21/2015
I moved it from the fermenter (primary) to the bottling bucket on 3/20/2015. It a day in that vessel before bottling on the 21st.
When bottling, I took 10 pieces of the pepper that was floating on the surface and put them into 6 of the first bottles. The bottle caps are marked with a 'P' to indicate the pepper bottles. Added 3/4 cup of priming sugar. Yield: 48 - 12oz bottles, and 1 - 22oz bottle.

OG: 1.053
FG: 1.012
ABV: 5.5%

Read More