Big Time Brewing: Quadratic Formula

One of my proudest moments as a homebrewer was having one of my beers selected to be brewed at Mad Jack's Mountain Brewery in Bailey, Colorado. It was the first time one of my beers had been chosen to brew and sell to the public.

The beer was a Quadrupel that I brewed as an excuse to try the new at the time Simpsons DRC malt in place of Special B. Apparently it worked out quite well. The owner and the brew master at Mad Jack's both tried my beer, and the rest is history.

For the brewery, my original 5 gallon brew was scaled up from 5 gallons to 3 barrels. The switch was also made to a brewery made Candi Syrup in place of the commercial Candi Syrups from my original brew.

The recipe below is therefore a 5 gallon brew that was modified and scaled up to 90 gallons and then brought back down to 5 gallons again.

If you'd like to forgo making your own Candi Syrup, I've also listed the original syrups. In addition, I've provided two mashing options. At the brewery, we did a single Saccharification Rest. When I made this at home, I added in a Protein Rest.

Grains:

11lbs Castle Pilsen
3lbs Weyermann Light Munich
12oz Simpsons DRC

Hops:
0.5oz Magnum (12% a.a.): 60 min
1oz Styrian Golding (3.5% a.a.): 30 min

1oz Tettnanger (4.8% a.a.): 15 min

Extras:
At flameout, add 2lbs Amber Homemade Candi Syrup or

1lb each of Candi Syrup D-180 and Simplicity

Total Boil Time: 90 Min

Yeast:
Imperial B45 - Gnome

Mash Schedule:
Protein Rest: 131F for 20 min (Optional)

Saccharification Rest: 150F for 60 min

Mashout: 168F for 15 minutes

Original Gravity:
1.095
Final Gravity:
1.024

IBU: 26
SRM Color: 20

ABV: 9.2%

Fermentation Schedule:
3 Weeks Primary at 69F
11 Weeks Secondary
1-2 Months Bottle Conditioning (Optional)

Comments

Saving Money: Simple Yeast Culturing

A few members of the family I just finished racking my English IPA to a secondary fermentor. As part of the process, I saved some of the yeast in the primary for future use. Here then, is the start of a series of articles on yeast culturing. Back in the "good old days," homebrewers didn't have a ton of yeast choices. In some cases, brewers would even use bread yeast from the baking section of the grocery store. In practice, you hydrated the packet of dry yeast you got at the homebrew or grocery store and pitched it. The packets were cheap and worked, but there wasn't much variety to be had. Nowadays, there are several dozen strains available. While a few strains are still dry , most are liquids that come in pitchable tubes , or smack-packs . The liquid yeasts give consistent results and provide tremendous variety to finished beers, but are pricey. If you only use each pack, or tube once, you will quickly discover that yeast makes up 15%, or more of the cost ...

Kit Review: Northern Brewer La Petite Orange

Every once in awhile, a good deal on a beer kit hits my inbox. This time around, I received a nice offer from the folks at Northern Brewer for their La Petite Orange . It's described by them as a lighter take on the traditional Trappist Dubbel . What's the finished brew like? Let's find out. The kit is Malt Extract based, but also has a nice compliment of pre-crushed specialty grains in the box. In addition, there's a bag of Belgian Candi Sugar. Replacing part of the extract with Belgian Pils malt allowed me to perform a Mini-Mash with the kit's grains, rather than simply steep them. Other than that, I followed the instructions as written. Of the two recommended yeasts, I went with Wyeast's Trappist High Gravity (a.k.a Westmalle ) strain. Fist off, the beer has nice clarity and a copper hue that's paler than I expect from a Dubbel. The dense eggshell cap has decent staying power and leaves quite a bit of lace behind. Whether I approve of the colo...

Kitchen Brewing Part 3: Sparge and Boil

The mash emerges from the oven. Now that we're finished with Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, it's time to Sparge. As you can see from the photo, the grains have absorbed a lot of liquid. In a traditional all-grain setup, your Mash Tun has a valve at the bottom to release the first running of Wort. The grains are then rinsed with the sparge water to extract any remaining sugars. My stove-top method doesn't afford such luxury, so a different method is called for. The grains have gained a little weight. There are a couple of choices at this point. One choice is to lift the grain bag out of Pot A and place it into the sparge water in Pot B to steep for 10-15 minutes or more. The other is to lift the grain bag up, put a colander under it and slowly pour the sparge water through the grains into the original pot. I prefer the former, because I get a better extraction rate from my grains. All that absorption means that the grains weigh a lot more than they did going i...

Colorado Kitchen Brew

Search This Blog