DrDougsHomeBrew

WOW, Christmas is only a week away!

2008-12-17T14:23:00.000-08:00

Where has this year gone? Well, did I tell you about my Munich Malt? Man was that ever good, 1.5# of English 2Row, 2.5# 6Row and 8# of Munich, 90 minute mash, I used Cascade and Horizon, Nottingham yeast, 1 week primary, 2 weeks secondary, 3 weeks keg, then drink, yum! I am planning on making another but a 10 gallon batch on New Years Day 2009! I of course did a Pumpkin ale for the Holidays and the Red I talked about in the last post, well it turned out odd, almost bitter, some like it, I don't really, lots to give away :)
Well, till next brew....
-Dr.Doug

2008-09-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

Hello again, well, I brewed an Irish Stout 2 weeks ago and an Irish Red this week-end past. Both recipes I found on-line, then modified slightly. The stout will be ready to drink end of October, the Red should be ready about a week before that. I read an article about using 100% Munich malt for a brew, I am going to try that soon, I plan to use Cascade hops grown in my own hop yard. Well cheers for now, send a comment, win a prize.

Is it August already???

2008-08-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

Wow, where did the time go? So I have brewed a few batches since my last post, like seven! I also harvested quite a bit of hops from my hop yard. I am getting ready to do a Pumpkin Ale for the holidays, it was quite a hit last year. Cheers for now.

2008-04-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been quite a while since I posted, the Red is gone :( The Stout is good, I made a Peach Ale, and it is pretty good, for a fruit beer. I have another Red in the secondary, and the primary is crying out for something new, perhaps another Blonde, it was good, it is also gone :( What next???

Prepping for St. Paddy's

2008-02-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

Well, the Blonde is not too bad, for a Cream Ale, I did an English Pale, 10 gallon batch, then split it with a friend, he added 4 oz. of Chinook to the secondary! Yeah, he likes it hoppy. I secondaried mine for 2 weeks, and kegged last week-end, it is aging nicely, tastes great even green. So to prepare for St. Paddy's I made an Irish Red this week-end past, and I am going to make an Irish Stout next week-end. So I do not know if anyone reads these blogs because no one ever comments, so if you read this, please comment, so I know I should continue.
Cheers
-Dr Doug

Last of 2007

2007-12-30T23:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been a while since I posted, it is the eve of New Years Eve, tomorrow I plan to brew a Blonde Cream Ale, now some of you might say that is redundant, Blonde and Cream, but this is kind of a combination of two recipes. Trust me, I am guessing here. I think it will be good. I received Palmer's book for Christmas and I have been reading a lot about grains regarding colour and taste and I hope I have made the right choice, we will see. I am using ale yeast as that is what I have, but I plan to attempt to lager, to some degree. Well, I will post how it goes. If you read these blogs, please add your comments. Thanks
Cheers

-Dr. Doug

Pumpkin Ale – Take 2

2007-12-03T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well I did my second pumpkin ale, with hopes of it being ready for Christmas.

Boy do I hate hop pellets, I am sure the guy who invented them is still laughing.

I used a lot more real pumpkin this time, on the order of 8 ½ pounds with 11 pounds of assorted grains, 4 pounds of British 2row, 2 pounds of red wheat, a pound of Belgian Special B and a few pound of others. I mashed with 4.25 gallons of 152° water for one hour, when I tried to sparge I had the worst stuck mash I have ever seen, what a mess.

I got through that and decided to use some of my reserve of pellet hops, did I say how much I hate pellet hops? Well I do! I put them in a hop sack, and tripled it, and then put it in a nylon hop bag with some whole hops, well as soon as those pellets hit the hot water, they became almost liquid and passed right through all of the barriers I made and mixed with my wort, yuck! I boiled for one hour and then started the chiller, once everything was down to temp. I transferred it through a strainer to my primary, even through the strainer, when I took my sample for the hydrometer reading, my test vial was 20% full of trub, and did I mention how much I hate hop pellets? My reading was 1.024, so it will be a lighter beer, but that is ok, the taste is phenomenal, I used a bit more spices this time.

Besides the dreaded hop pellets, I used some Cascade and Tettnanger Whole hops.

I used 22gms of Nottingham dry yeast in a starter, and let it get going good.

I will be giving away my hop pellets as I don’t like them, I might have mentioned that.

So, time will tell, but I think this is much better than my last pumpkin ale.

Till Next Time.....

Happy T-Day

2007-11-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

Well, Thanksgiving is over and we survived :) The Pumpkin Ale I made was a hit, thanks to whomever created the recipe "The Great Pumpkin Ale", I got the recipe off line but cannot remember from where ?!? Anyway I did modify it a bit, for example, I only had about 3 pounds of fresh pumpkin on hand, and I soaked my spices in Bushmill's Irish Whisky as that is all I had. For my next batch of Pumpkin Ale I am going to use lots more pumpkin and I am possibly going to increase the amount of spices, half at flame out and half in the secondary to bring them a bit more to the forefront. I need to come up with something to make for Christmas, but am at a loss, and time is running short. If you have any ideas, please add it to the comments section.
Happy Holidays

-Dr. Doug

Recipes

2007-11-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

OK, so I told you I would talk about some of the recipes I have tried, I have done 4 Kits, 3 of them were American Wheat Apricot beers, that turned out real good, and one was a Dry Stout kit, which was good. All of the other batches have been All-Grain recipes, some I followed carefully, others were kinda 'made-up'. I will say that I tried to make a Brown Mild Ale session beer and poured out 20 gallons, and I also poured out 5 gallons of a stout that could have woken up the dead. I think the best beer I have made from a recipe that I came up with was an Irish Red, boy-o-boy was it good. Well, I am going to keep this one short.... More later.

Moving on...

2007-10-31T07:50:00.000-07:00

OK, so as promised, how does that sweet liquid become beer? Well, when it gets down to about 75°F you add yeast, which gobbles up the sugars and releases alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The opening of your fermenter is fitted with what one guy called 'the bubble thingy that lets the gas out' it is actually called an airlock and it does just that, lets the CO2 out and keeps the air from getting in. If air gets in to your fermenter while making wine, you get vinegar, but I am not sure what you get with beer, except plant food. It takes about 5 to 7 days for the yeast to do it's thing, then you are faced with a choice, personally I move mine to a secondary fermenter, it helps clear things a bit and gives the last of the yeast time to finish the conversion. Others go straight to bottles. I leave it in the secondary for anywhere from one week to three weeks depending on what I am making. I have a pumpkin ale that I am leaving in the secondary for three weeks so the pumpkin and spice have time to mellow. After the secondary period is complete you boil up about a pint of water and add priming sugar, some people use corn sugar, others use Dried Malt Extract DME, I use a combination of both, depending on your recipe, you use anywhere from3 oz. to 6 oz. you have to make sure it boils good, then you have to cool it to about 75°F without it getting contaminated then you mix it well with your 'almost beer' and then bottle and/or keg it. I usually bottle about 1 bottles and then keg the rest. I like to share, and I can easily hand someone a bottle, but to share a keg..... Sounds like a party to me.
So next time I will talk a bit about the different recipes I have tried. Till then.....

Next....

2007-10-25T12:33:00.000-07:00

OK, so I made the beer for the wedding, and yeah, it was a hit. Basic American wheat with apricot, my wife tasted it and immediately I was to make another batch for home, I also made a stout which remember is my favorite, well was anyway. I tried making a mild brown ale, all of the flavor lower alcohol, it was so bad I dump it out, 20 gallons worth. Somewhere in all of the hub-bub I converted from doing Extract kits to all grain recipes, for those who do know know the difference, extract is a powder and you just add boiling water, easier and quicker, but less flavor and less control in my opinion. All grain you go buy different types of barley, and by types I mean roasted differently for different taste and colour, you then crack it, I use the mill at the brew store, and you put it in a pot of very hot water, about 155°F for about an hour, it is like making tea. After an hour you sprinkle 180° water over it while draining slowly to pull the sugars from the grain, at this point you do the same thing regardless if you are doing all grain or extract, you put the liquid which is call wort (Pronounced wert) in a pot big enough to hold it with some head space and turn up the heat, you need to get it to a rolling boil, when it starts to boil you add the first set of hops, now hops are interesting things, they are actually flowers from the hop plant, and they only come from female plants, you can buy them in 3 styles, pellets, plugs, or my favorite, whole flower hops, unprocessed just dried and ready to use. So about 45 minutes later you add the second bit of hops, now the first amount is for bittering, and the bittering counters the sweetness of the grain and you use about an ounce, the second bit is about ½ ounce and is for flavoing, and at this point I add about a tablespoon of Irish Moss which help clarify things, then about 15 minutes later you add one more bit of hops anywhere from ¼ to ½ ounce and this is for aroma, not all recipes call for this amount of hops and some call for much more. So then you shut off the flame and cool the wort, it must be cooled quickly, like in less than 30 minutes it must go from 212° to about 70°, I use an immersion chiller, which has cold water flowing through it, what ever is used, you cannot make any unclean contact with the cooled wort or it becomes bacteria-ville, also known as plant food, because it will be undrinkable.
So that is enough for today, as always...... More later. Next time... How does this liquid become beer?

Number 2

2007-10-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well, just a quick note on how I got started in the new hobby. Well, of course I was a beer drinker, quite the snob I must say, Guinness was my drink and none other. A very good friend of mine told me he was a home brewer, 'what!' I said, you make beer, at home, must be some real hooch, but I tried it, and darn if it wasn't good, now I had tried several 'micro brews', and frankly I didn't care for a one of them. So I was up visiting my friend and he was brewing, so I helped (watched) and it was very interesting, so he sent me home with about a gallon of wort well hopped and a packet of Nottingham yeast. He told me to pick up a pound of DME cook it up with about another gallon of water, add my wort, boil for a good while, cool it and add the yeast. So that is what I did, now I had only what he gave me, a couple of air-locks, some stoppers, things like that.
So I racked it into 3 one gallon glass bottles, we only had two, so my wife went out and bought a cheap gallon of wine, just for the bottle. I left it in the bottles for about a week, then I put it all in a borrowed 5 gallon plastic water jug and let it age for another week, then I bottled, aged for another few days, chilled and drank, Oh, did I say I got Dark DME? So it was dark, not Guinness by any stretch, but not too bad. Well that was the start, before it was even done, another friend asked if I would make a 5 gallon batch of Apricot Hefe-wizen for his daughter's wedding.
And the story will continue later....

Opening Blog

2007-10-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

OK, so this is Dr. Doug's Blog spot, where I will hopefully chronicle my Home Brewing experiences, good and bad.