Saturday, February 14, 2015

Barney's Back Strong Berry Wheat Beer


In the summer of 2014, Good Neighbor's first all grain brew was Barney's Dead. It was an experiment lead by Brett Meador wanting to make a beer with the mulberries that he personally picked from trees at his house. In today's post we are talking about the Lazareth of the Barney series -- Barney's Back! The second edition of the Barney series still consists of handpicked mulberries. They were picked in the late summer of 2014 by Neal and Brett. The Raspberries and Blueberries were purchased on brew day from local the grocer. Maybe someday we'll grow these and handpick them too. 

Compliments to Jenna taking some awesome pictures with her 35mm lens: http://jennagarberphotography.pass.us/goodneighbor_barneysback/

Grain
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5 lbs Wheat Malt
8 lbs 2 Row Morris Otter Pale Malt
2 lbs Munich Malt
.25 lbs Black Patent Malt
10 cups (4 lb) (our mash efficiency was terrible so sugar was added)

Fruit
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7 lbs mulberries (1 - one gallon bag)
14 oz Canned Raspberries
2 Pints Blueberries

Hops
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.5 oz Citra (60 min)
.5 oz Citra (30 min)
.5 oz some other 8% acid hop (30 min)
.5 oz Cascade (15 min)
.5 oz some other 8% acid hop (5)

Yeast
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2 packs of dry wheat beer yeast

Mash Schedule
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3.85 gallons of water needed for mash. Target temperature was 152°F to achieve a dryer flavor. We achieved mash temperature ranging between 148°F-152°F. 5+ gallons of water for sparge at 170°F.

Notes
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45 IBU calculated approximately.

Brew Day - 2/14/2015
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Preboil wort: 1.042 SG
We were/are not happy with the grain mill from roots - they were under milled. We heavily adjusted the gravity reading by adding sugar -- we added 4lbs of white sugar to the boil to boost gravity. Gravity reading was 1.095 after the wort was chilled.

Began primary fermentation at mid 50°F in the basement (carboy was off of the ground about 2 feet to avoid getting too cold from the concrete floor). After 2 days in the basement, I brought it upstairs to finish out in the low-to-mid 60°F range.

Secondary Fermentation Start - 2/20/2015
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Moved beer from the carboy to a bucket, added all of the berry juice (76.5 oz) to the beer in the bucket. After mixing the berries into the beer, I moved it back to the clean carboy because I wanted to see the color and take some good pictures!

Berry juice: 1.062 SG (76.5oz)
Beer before adding berries: 1.030 SG
Beer after adding berries: 1.034 SG

Assuming we started at 5.5 gallons of wort, after adding the berries we would be looking at a calculated OG of 1.092 SG since the beer was 1.095 by itself and considering the 1.030 SG of the berry juice.

Bottling Day - 3/5/2014
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Volume: 5.5 Gallons
Final Gravity: 1.008 SG
That’s all folks, 11% ABV before bottle conditioning
Before bottling it tasted like a wine, nice maroon/purple color. Not too bad, actually pretty palatable even young and uncarbonated. Not very much hop profile coming though at this tasting. Bottle conditioned with 1/2 cup of sugar.




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