Iron Fest 2
The East Valley Crossfit Iron Fest 2 was a blast! The keg of Blonde Ale I brewed was kicked in about 90 minutes. It was a beautiful day to be outside, and everyone had a great time! Props to everyone who competed yesterday, and congrats to the winners.
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Hop Haze? I say excuses…
If you drink hoppy beers, I’m sure you’ve heard the term ‘hop haze’ before. There’s a notion that heavily hopped beers or dry-hopped beers will inherently have a hazy appearance due to the hop oils in suspension. I see it all the time on home-brew forums and beer websites; hell, even the BJCP states it’s acceptable. Personally, I call BS. I think hop haze is just another excuse to fall back on for hazy beer.
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Foreign Extra Stout Brew Day
This weekend I brewed a foreign extra stout. This is my first attempt at brewing this style, so I’m fairly eager to see how it turns out. Equally as exciting, I finished building a counter-flow chiller, and it made it’s maiden voyage on this batch. Where has a counter-flow been all my life! I recirculated wort back into the kettle, and in about 7 minutes it brought the entire batch down to 120* using hose water to cool. Once I switched the cooling water to recirculating ice water, the wort was coming out at 60*, which I pumped directly into the fermenter. The entire batch was chilled in about 15 minutes; I’m very impressed.
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Choosing a House Yeast
Over the past few months I’ve been inching closer and closer to using one yeast for most everything I brew. I fell in love with WLP007 early last year, and I’ve been looking for just about every excuse to use it since. I’ve used it for Blonde Ales, IPAs, Double IPAs, English Pales and American Pales. It has a very clean ester profile for an English strain, attenuates extremely well, and it flocculates like peanut butter. In the low 60* range it’s nice and clean, and in the upper 60* range it makes some nice esters. What’s not to like?
I had been using the chico strain for just about everything, but I’m finding that 007 gives beers a malty, softer edge than the sharp, bright flavors of chico. So I’m jumping in the deep end with 007. I washed the yeast from my Special Bitter, and then pitched it in the Honey Blonde. I’m going to re-pitch this culture for my next 6 batches (outlined here), and see how they turn out. This is a good mix of styles, and will serve as a good test to see if it 007 can replace chico as my go-to house yeast.
If you haven’t tried WLP007, I strongly encourage you to. It’s an excellent all around yeast.
Traveling for the Holidays
There aren’t any new brewing related things going on here lately because I’m traveling for the Holidays. Christmas in California, and New Years in Texas. But here’s a sunset from Christmas Eve over Laguna Beach. Happy Holidays everyone!
Ten Gallons of Delicous
Yesterday was my first 10 gallon batch. Greg and I have been using our keggle mash tun for awhile and we broke our boil keggle in last week, so we gave it a full run for it’s money yesterday. This batch of Honey Blonde is destined for the East Valley Crossfit Iron Fest. Same exact recipe as my earlier post here, only doubled for 10 gallons, and I used WLP007 rather than US-05 this time. Should be mighty tasty by January 14th! If you’re going to be in the area, drop by. It’s going to be fun!
Future Batches
Last night I picked up the specialty malts for my next 6 batches:
Blonde Ale
Foreign Extra Stout
Robust Porter
American Amber
Furry Penguin DIPA
Pale Ale
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Special Bitter Brew Day
Today I brewed a special bitter. Just about any one living in the Phoenix area is familiar with Four Peaks brewery. They make a special bitter called 8th Street Ale that I am just obsessed with; it’s a lower gravity session beer that just hits the spot. It has a big pronounced hop aroma, more so than you’d expect for a bitter, but the flavor is mostly malty sweetness. Today marks my second attempt to clone it.
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Hoppy Holidays
I purchased a bunch of hops in bulk this fall from the 2011 harvest, and I just finally got around to breaking them down into 4oz packs. If there are any hop-heads out there that don’t buy hops in bulk, you should strongly consider it. Pick up a foodsaver and some vacuum bags because the savings are huge. After shipping I paid an average of 81 cents per ounce. This years hop harvest smells absolutely incredible: very oily, fragrant, and pungent. Looks like it’s going to be a very hoppy 2012 at my house!
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Spent Barley Bread
Like many other brewers I often stare at my mash tun wishing I had a useful way to utilize the spent grain that’s left over from brewing. It always seems like such a waste to throw away. Since I don’t have a farm or a compost bin, using the grain to bake bread seems like as good of an idea as any. The results were delicious, and there’s abosuletly nothing like the smell of fresh baked bread coming out of the oven.
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