I am a child of rock n’ roll. Not like, child of Led Zepplin groupies, but more like child of a dad that played Led Zepplin and other classic rock on the way to and from church Sunday mornings. How many 5-year-olds have a classic rock radio station bumper sticker on their bikes?

Months ago I was driving home from work and heard The Who’s “Boris the Spider” come on and I fell in love. I danced in the car, bouncing around to the music, probably looking like an idiot in traffic. I consider it one of my “happy songs.”

I knew I wanted to use the song as an inspiration point for a brew. Spiders tend to be black … I’d be brewing in the fall … I love oatmeal stouts in the colder months … I was introduced to chai in college by a close friend and the smell of the spiced tea makes me think of chilly autumn days in Western New York … spiders and stouts are black …

So there you have it. A wild stream of consciousness that brought me to this: Boris the Spider Chai Oatmeal Stout. I could totally see Pete Townshend drinking this.

20 September 2009
Boris the Spider Chai Oatmeal Stout
Extract w/ grains
5 gallons, 60 minute boil, 30 minute steep

6.0 lbs Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
1.0 lb Dried Malt Extract (60 min)

Specialty Grains:
1.5 lbs Flaked Oats
9.00 oz Crystal 60L
8.00 oz Chocolate Malt
8.00 oz German Carafa II
4.00 oz Roasted Barley

1.00 oz Sterling Hops [7.0% AA] (60 min)
2.00 oz UK Kent Golding [4.2% AA] (60 min)
1.00 oz UK Kent Golding [4.2% AA] (5 min)

Custom cold-brewed chai tea with traditional spices (recipe to come)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

White Labs Irish Ale Yeast (WLP004)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat and add 1.0 lb dried malt extract and 6.0 lbs liquid malt extract. Bring to a boil. Add bittering hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 5 minutes, add remaining hops.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to 75°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Decant yeast starter and pitch yeast. Aerate thoroughly. Ferment at 70-75°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Add cold-brewed chai tea strained of spices. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 2 – 3 weeks.

I’m still working on my chai recipe, but I can tell you that I will be mixing it myself. Chai is typically brewed with Indian Assam tea, but I didn’t have the best of luck finding this tea. So instead I picked up Twinings of London’s English Breakfast Tea, which is a blend of Kenyan and Assam. I have a wonderful stash of spices to work with, so I’m excited!

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes 1 Comment »

Back in May, we talked about my experiment mixing gin with our Tripel, and how wonderfully wonderful it was. We were inspired to try brewing a tripel with juniper and rosemary, and that happened yesterday:

23 August 2009
Ginpel
Extract w/ grains
5 gallons, 60 minute boil, 30 minute steep

5.0 lbs Pilsner Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
4.0 lbs Pilsner Liquid Malt Extract (15 min)
2.0 lbs Demerara sugar (15 min)

Specialty Grains:
1.0 lbs Crystal Malt 15L
1.0 lbs Carafoam Malt

1.00 oz Sterling Hops [7.0% AA] (60 min)
2.00 oz Sterling Hops [7.0% AA] (5 min)

1.00 oz Crushed coriander seed
1.00 oz Sweet orange peel
1.00 oz Juniper berries
0.50 oz Grains of paradise
0.50 oz Rosemary

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

White Labs Trappist Ale Yeast (WLP500)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat and add 5.0 lbs malt extract. Bring to a boil. Add bittering hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add remaining malt extract while stirring. Return to boil.

At 5 minutes, add remaining hops.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to 75°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Decant yeast starter and pitch yeast. Aerate thoroughly. Ferment at 70-75°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Add coriander, orange peel, juniper berries, grains of paradise, and rosemary. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 2 – 3 weeks.

Definitely one of our odder recipes. I have a feeling the juniper and rosemary will end up being over-emphasized, but nothing ventured! *fingers crossed*

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Welcome to The Session, a monthly event for beer and brewing bloggers! This is Session #30, for which Beer 47 writer David  have chosen the topic “Beer Desserts.”

Ahh dessert. The realm where I feel most comfortable because it’s one of my specialities — so much so that I just left my desk to go bake my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, although it doesn’t contain beer.

I have made 3 beer desserts I can recall. My first was a spice cake using Victory’s Storm King Imperial Stout, frosted with a quadrupel-spiced buttercream. I baked it for my 26th birthday, and guests seemed impressed.

We’ve made stout floats with Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout and a mocha java chip ice cream — and I think we’ve also used North Coast Brewing’s Old Rasputin and Stoudt’s Fat Dog.

I’ve also baked with liquid malt extract in place of molasses, creating my cherry oatmeal cookies, which were insanely good. Mmmm … cookies.

While baking my chocolate chip cookies and pondering beer desserts, I picked Ray’s brain for ideas. He thinks that any Belgian Strong, Tripel, Dubbel or Barleywine could be used with fruit somehow — so I suggested their use in a pie filling. Hmmm … a mincemeat pie dressed with a little English Barleywine in the filling? It could be delish. Ray also suggested making a reduction of a beer with some brown sugar and serving it over warmed fruit, with a spot of fresh whipped cream.

As for desserts we’ve ordered out, we have to tip our hats to the folks at Dogfish Head. We have shared the  Chocolate Chicory Stout Cheesecake, which interestingly enough, is made with blue cheese and is insanely rich, and we have also shared the DFH Stout Sundae, which consists of vanilla ice cream, Chicory Stout chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and a hop-infused brownie.

What I think is important to consider when creating a beer dessert is that you must have a plan of action for dealing with the bitterness. Balance is crucial. If you’re going to reduce a beer for a sauce, you don’t want to reduce it to an unappetizing sticky mess.

So I think this might mean no IPA-infused cookies. Nevertheless, I’m sure there’s a place for bright, grassy beers, just maybe not dessert.

Breweries, Brewpubs, Pairings, Recipes, Restaurants, The Session 1 Comment »

Barleywine is that odd case of a beer style name making a lot of sense. It’s basically a wine-strength beer, literally a barley wine. Barleywine is fairly sweet and fruity, with just enough hop bitterness to keep it from being cloying. It’s meant to be sipped and savored, but if you want to drink it like a normal beer, by all means, go for it. Just don’t expect me to catch you afterward.

Because of the huge amount of malt that goes into a barleywine, yeast can sometimes struggle for roughly the same reason that one slips into a torpor after a big bag of Skittles. A higher fermentation temperature can help out, and the resulting fruity esters will probably be welcome anyway.

Thanks to the high alcohol content (anywhere from 8-12%), barleywine ages well. Mind you, if you’ve under-bittered your barleywine, no amount of aging is going to fix it, as bitterness will tend to decrease over time, but if you open a fresh bottle of barleywine and it tastes like it could help a Saturn V make low-Earth orbit, there’s a good chance it’ll evolve into something tasty with a few months in the cellar.

18 July 2009
Barleywine
Extract w/ grains
5 gallons, 90 minute boil, 30 minute steep

8.0 lbs Ultralight Liquid Malt Extract (90 min)
4.0 lbs Ultralight Liquid Malt Extract (15 min)

Specialty Grains:
1.0 lbs Crystal Malt 60L
1.0 lbs Victory Malt

3.25 oz Kent Golding Hops [5.4% AA] (90 min)
1.00 oz Kent Golding Hops [4.2% AA] (90 min)
2.00 oz Centennial Hops [8.0% AA] (90 min)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

3 vials White Labs Dry English Ale yeast (WLP007)

2 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 1-2 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat and add 8.0 lbs malt extract. Bring to a boil. Add hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add remaining malt extract while stirring. Return to boil.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to 75°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Decant yeast starter and pitch yeast. Aerate thoroughly. Ferment at 70-75°F.

At approx. 25% attenuation, create a yeast starter. After 24 hours, decant and pitch.

Repeat at approx. 50% attenuation.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 3 – 4 months.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 6 months to 1 year.

We had to improvise a bit on the hops. The hops that arrived in our Morebeer order were much lower alpha than what was listed on Morebeer’s website, so we had to find a way to make up for the missing IBU. Fortunately, we had some extra hops that were going to go unused in a future brew day. This is why the hop amounts listed in the recipe aren’t round and why there are two of the same hope variety listed with two different alpha acidities.

I’ll be honest here: I am not wholly optimistic about how this will turn out. Our original gravity came out to 1.093, exactly what we wanted, but an awful lot for yeast to handle. Theoretically, we’re looking for 75% attenuation, for a final gravity of 1.020-1.022, which would equate to about 9.5% ABV, but that’s feel-good optimism. In practice, there’s a lot that can go wrong, chiefly of which being severe underattenuation. An incomplete fermentation would leave us with a cloyingly sweet barleywine, but that’s the least of our problems. If the yeast should somehow decide to wait until they’re in the bottles to finish eating all of our maltose, we could find ourselves wading in a sea of beer and broken glass. Explosions are bad. Pointy explosions are worse.

That’s why we’re going to be pitching three separate yeast starters over the course of the fermentation. If the beasts that are already in there get burned out, then one hopes a fresh batch of fungus can start a new shift. Fingers are crossed. I’ll be content with 60-65% attenuation after four weeks. Worst case, we can always drop in a vial of champagne yeast.

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During the 60s and early 70s, my Uncle Larry was in a real rockin’ band called Snake that was active during the anti-war movement. In 1970 they played to a packed crowd in Cornell University’s Barton Hall at the America Is Hard to Find Peace Festival.

According to whichever bandmate who does the most posting to the Snake Facebook fan page, “… this festival promised a venue for the Berrigan Brothers … Catholic priests who were wanted by the FBI for counseling draft dodgers. They actually showed up in biker attire with helmets and managed to make it on stage and off without getting caught.” Snake even was adopted by the East Coast motorcycle gang BREED and opened for a number of great artists like Janis Joplin.

Yeah. My Uncle was in a freakin’ kick-ass band (and still is, just a different one).

So, um, what does this have to do with beer? Well, one bandmate’s name was Simmi Slovacek, and I remember hearing that name on and off as a teenager. And you know what? Simmi sounds a lot like “Simcoe” … so in naming this brew, I pay tribute to my Uncle’s band with “Simie the SNAKE.”

14 June 2009
Simie the Snake Simcoe IPA
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

7.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
1.0 lb Wildflower Honey (15 min)

Specialty Grains:
1.5 lbs Crystal 15L
0.5 lbs Caravienne
0.5 lbs Special Roast

1.50 oz Simcoe Hops [11.9% AA] (60 min)
1.00 oz Simcoe Hops [11.9% AA] (15 min)
1.00 oz Simcoe Hops [11.9% AA] (5 min)
1.50 oz Simcoe Hops [11.9% AA] (dry hop)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

White Labs California Ale yeast (WLP001)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat and add malt extract. Bring back to a boil. Add 60 minute hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add wildflower honey. Stir until dissolved. Return to boil. Add 15 minute hops.

At 5 minute, add 5 minute hops.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to 75°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F in bathtub full of cold water with a wet-towel wrap.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Add dry hops. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 2 weeks.

Though we were a bit off with our gravity (it’s been a reoccurring issue that is quite frankly pissing us off), the wort tasted great, and the other samples we’ve taken have also been delicious. I’m excited to get this brew into the bottle, and most definitely into my uncle’s hands.

Homebrewing, Miscellany, Our Brew Days, Recipes 2 Comments »

Pulled pork is the classic barbecue dish amongst classic barbecue dishes. Flaky, tender morsels of juicy, slow-cooked meat; tangy, spicy sauce soaking into a soft, fresh kaiser. All it took was a sale on pork shoulder at Shop Rite, and I knew what my all-Sunday-afternoon production was going to be.

Our condo association doesn’t allow grilling/barbequeing, so I grabbed a bottle of our kolsch and decided to braise the shoulder in it for a few hours with some rosemary and star anise. Once the meat was sufficiently tenderized, I strained out the herbs and simmered the beer with some brown sugar and garlic to create the sauce while I shredded the meat. Mix in a long list of spices, heat up some sauerkraut and onions, and you’ve got yourself a sweet and succulent sandwich perfect for a cool spring night.

We also had some dandelion greens that we got from the local farmer’s market. It doesn’t say so in the recipe, but Mel cooked those with some onions, garlic, dried chiles, salt, and pepper. The bitter dandelion greens went great with the sweet onions and garlic.

The recipe here calls for kolsch, but any malty beer will do. Your best bets are probably kolsch, anything Belgian (especially dubbel), brown ale, malty English beers, and sweeter stouts (perhaps even a coffee stout).

Pulled Pork in Kolsch Sauce With Sauerkraut

3 lbs Pork shoulder
12 fl oz kolsch
3 or 4 star anise pods
2 tbsp dried rosemary
4 or 5 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 Tbsp coriander
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cayenne
freshly ground nutmeg to taste

1 15 oz can sauerkraut
1/2 c minced onion
1 Tbsp olive oil
A few pinches salt
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

Cut pork shoulder into 2″ steaks. Make sure to cut perpendicular to the grain so the pork will be easy to shred when it’s cooked. Season liberally with salt and pepper.

Combine shoulder steaks, kolsch, star anise, rosemary, and bay leaves in a large saucepan over low heat. Cook for at least three hours, flipping the pork halfway through.

Remove pork and set aside. Strain herbs out of the kolsch and scrape the bits of cooked meat stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add brown sugar and garlic and simmer over high heat until thickened and caramelized. It will smell like burnt sugar when it’s ready.

While the sauce reduces, shred the pork. The easiest way to to this is to hold the meat in place with tongs, and use a large-toothed steak knife or bread knife to gently pull the meat apart. The slow cooking will have weakened the connective tissue, allowing you to shred the meat without much force.

When the sauce is dark and thick, add the spices and stir. Return the pork to the pan and turn it with tongs to coat it evenly with sauce.

While the meat rests, prepare the sauerkraut. In a separate pan, combine oil, onion, and salt and cook over medium heat until the onions are tender. Add sauerkraut and mustard, mix until ingredients are evenly distributed, and cook over medium heat for five minutes.

Serve pork on toasted kaiser rolls with a little bit of sauerkraut.

Pairings, Recipes 1 Comment »

Hefeweizen was one of the first styles I was exposed to when I first started exploring good beer at the Iron Hill in Newark, Delaware. It’s a sweet German wheat beer brewed with a strain of yeast that produces lots of banana and clove flavors. This particular strain does not readily settle out of suspension, and the beer is served unfiltered, giving hefeweizen a cloudy appearance and a thick, bready body. It’s a great springtime beer, but the big body and above-average alcohol (depending on the brewer) make it less suitable for hot summer days, making it more appropriate at sunset. Or, well, sunrise, too. I’m not here to judge.

We got adventurous again with this recipe. We’d wanted to explore dried fruit for a while, so we’ll be adding raisins and dried cranberries to the beer during a two-week secondary fermentation. We’ll then transfer the beer to a tertiary fermenter, wringing the raisins and cranberries out to reclaim all of the beer that gets absorbed into them, and age it with orange peel and a lot of coriander. There’s going to be a big danger of oversweetening the beer with all of that fruit, so we’re using a bit more bittering hops than you’d normally see in a hefe (actually, we’re doubling it).

3 May 2009
Hefe the ORC
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

4.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
4.0 lbs Wheat Malt Extract (60 min)
2.o lbs Orange Blossom Honey (15 min)

0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Hops [8.4% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (60 min)
0.50 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (15 min)
0.50 oz Sterling Hops [6.0% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Amarillo Hops [8.4% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Vanguard Hops [4.4% AA] (1 min)
0.50 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (1 min)

1.0 lbs Raisins
1.0 lbs Dried cranberries

2.0 oz Sweet orange peel
2.0 oz Crushed coriander

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min – clarifier)

White Labs Hefeweizen Ale yeast (WLP380)

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

—

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to boil.

Turn off heat, add malt extract. Bring back to a boil. Add 60 minute hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add orange blossom honey. Stir until dissolved. Return to boil. Add 15 minute hops.

At 1 minute, add 1 minute hops.

At end of boil, remove all hops. Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer over raisins and dried cranberries to secondary fermenter. Age for 2 weeks.

Rack to tertiary fermenter. Recover raisins and cranberries from secondary fermenter and squeeze absorbed beer into tertiary fermenter. Add orange peel and coriander. Age for 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for 2 weeks.

The hopping schedule is needlessly complicated because we had a bunch of leftover hops that we just wanted to use up. Normally you’d just use something neutral like Sterling for all of your hopping.

We weren’t able to find dried cranberries that did not have added sugar. You may have better luck, but after consulting with our adviser, we concluded that the small amount of sugar on the cranberries would have no significant impact.

You might be wondering why we’re adding the coriander after fermentation is complete instead of during the boil. We’ve boiled it in the past, but the flavor has always been nonexistent in the final result. We’re guessing that the coriander flavors are volatile enough to be carried away by the CO2 released during primary fermentation, so we’re going to wait until all of that destructive effervescence is done first.

This will be a HUGE morale boost for us if it’s successful. Our previous attempts at getting a little trippy with our recipes have been a bit disappointing, but we have a really good feeling about this one. Neither one of us is especially crazy about adhering too strictly to the established styles, though we certainly understand how important it is to know them to give you a metric to hone your skills against. I guess this is just what happens when you put two creatives together and tell them to have fun. We could fart out a Reinheitsgebotized hefe if we wanted to, because proven recipes are so easy to come by, but isn’t it a bigger test of skill if you can make a train cross the continent without even touching the rail?

Regardless, we’ve got a pound of crow ready to roast if this does end up exploding in our faces.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes Add Comment »

Welcome to The Session, a monthly event for beer and brewing bloggers! This is Session #27, for which Beer at Joe’s writers Joe and Jasmine has chosen the topic, “Beer Cocktails: Beyond the Black & Tan”.

This is probably going to be the shortest Session post ever. I call it a Ginpel. Ready? Add a shot of gin to some tripel. Imbibe.

I’ll wait until you’ve picked yourself back up off the floor.

Let’s make it official with a formal recipe:

Ginpel

Ingredients:
2 oz gin
12 oz Belgian style tripel

Pour tripel vigorously over gin to raise a good head. Drink. Seek local non-profit organization to help you recover.

The first time I did this, I used our homebrewed tripel and Dogfish Head Jin. Dogfish makes the best gin ever, but unfortunately it’s almost impossible to find if you don’t live in Delaware or South Jersey. We’ve only ever seen it at their brewpub in Rehoboth Beach, ourselves.

What makes their gin special, apart from the spelling, is the use of rosemary, pineapple mint, and green peppercorns in addition to the usual juniper berries, giving it a crisp mix of citrusy and spicy flavors, and also making it immensely fragrant. All of these qualities blend superbly with the sweet and fruity tripel.

If all you have on hand is regular gin, the cocktail will still taste good, but it might pay to steep some of your gin with the missing herbs and spices for a few days, at least if you can find them. Pineapple mint and green peppercorns will probably be difficult to locate, but I’m betting regular mint and black or white peppercorns will be a decent approximation. If anything, you should be adding a branch of rosemary to every bottle of gin you bring home anyway.

Okay, so I guess that wasn’t as short as I thought it would be.

This discovery inspired us to try adding juniper and rosemary to our next batch of tripel. We’ll probably do it in August or September, so keep an eye out for that.

Recipes, The Session 2 Comments »

I’m sure a number of you do not have fond childhood memories of bee stings. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of them are horrifying, or at least they were when you were 5.

Nevertheless, I have come to terms with bees — in spite of being stung numerous times. I don’t plan on going all “Lil’Kim Queen Bee” anytime soon, but the reality is that my name — Melissa — is Greek for “honeybee.”

Couple my newfound interest in bees with the recent March/April BYO article I read — “Club Profile: Barossa Brewers Club” — I came across Barossa Valley Brewing’s Bee Sting, which is a honey wheat beer. The name inspired me, and I wanted to make my own Bee Sting Ale, not a clone. I came up with the idea of focusing on the “bee” and the “sting.” For the bee, I wanted to use honey to bring about a dry sweetness, and for the sting, I wanted something with zip — leading me to choose the peppery, earthy seeds of paradise. And there you have it!

12 April 2009
Bee Sting Ale
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

5.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
2.0 lbs Orange Blossom Honey (15 min)

Specialty Grains:
0.5 lbs Crystal Malt 15L

1.0 oz Chinook Hops [11.1% AA] (60 min)
1.0 oz Amarillo Hops [8.2% AA] (15 min)
3.0 g Seeds of Paradise, crushed (5 min)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)

White Labs California Ale Yeast WLP001

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

———

Create a yeast starter 2-3 days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Heat to 155°F.

Steep grains at 155°F for 30 minutes.

Remove grains, turn off heat, add malt extract. Bring back to a boil. Add Chinook hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 15 minutes, turn off heat. Add orange blossom honey. Stir until dissolved. Return to boil. Add Amarillo hops.

At 5 minutes, add seeds of paradise

Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for two weeks.

So far the beer has a wonderful flavor, with Chinook’s grapefruit coming out to play with the Amarillo’s citrus notes. When we racked the beer we noticed that the zip of the seeds of paradise wasn’t quite there yet, so we created a seeds of paradise extract to be added when we bottle (We’ll update the recipe here once we know how much extract is needed). Honestly, I’m happy with the sample I had after racking, but it’s not a true representation of my idea of a bee sting — it’s all bee, and not enough sting. I think the extract will help us bring up the sting, while still being refreshing.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes 2 Comments »

After trying to summon my inner Dogfish Head and it not quite working (not Sam’s fault … just mine and my inability to differentiate between 8 oz by weight and 8 oz by volume), I decided that my next recipe would be a little simpler and more classic.

15 March 2009
Sweetheart Kölsch
5 gallons, 60 minute boil

4.0 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extract (60 min)
2.0 lbs Wheat Dried Malt Extract (60 min)

2.0 oz Vanguard Hops [54.4% AA] (60 min)
1.0 oz Sterling Hops [6% AA] (5 min)

1 tablet Whirlfloc (20 min — clarifier)

White Labs German Ale/Kölsch Yeast WLP029

4 oz corn sugar (bottling)

———

Create a yeast starter two days in advance.

Add 3 gallons of water to kettle. Bring to a boil. Turn off heat and add liquid and dry malt extracts while stirring.

Bring back to a boil. Add Vanguard hops.

At 20 minutes, add Whirlfloc tablet.

At 5 minutes, add Sterling hops

Chill wort to below 70°F. Rack to fermenter and dilute to 5 gallons. Pitch yeast starter and aerate thoroughly. Allow to ferment to completion at 60-65°F.

Rack fermented beer to secondary fermenter. Age for 1 – 2 weeks.

Rack to bottling bucket. Boil corn sugar with 1 c filtered water and add to beer. Mix well.

Bottle. Age for two weeks.

Originally, since I like being witty and giving things weird names, I wanted to come up with an alliterative name for the kölsch. I had already come across one named Kölnnel Klink Kölsch, which I thought was pretty darn klever (ha! I crack myself up). The closest I came was calling my brew the Kurnitz Kölsch, after Grandma Kurnitz, the character I played in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers. However, Grandma Kurnitz is extremely bitter and harsh, and that’s not what I was going for in my kölsch, so I renamed it the Sweetheart Kölsch, under the guise that you would share a bottle or two with your sweetheart. Collective “Aw!” on the count of 3 … 2 … 1 … oh nevermind. Back to the beer.

We just recently bottled this beer, so a tasting post should be around the bend in a week or two. My hope is that this beer is balanced and refreshing. Sure, it might not make you fall off your seat with a burst of flavor, but at least you’ll stay seated with no beer spilled.

Homebrewing, Our Brew Days, Recipes 5 Comments »