Colorado Kitchen Brew

Cold Mashing is a technique I stumbled upon while researching ways to make very low ABV beers. My goal was to see if I could get below 2% ABV without using either microscopic grain bills, or boiling off alcohol post fermentation.  Why would I want to do this? For one, my wife loves the taste of beer, but not the aftereffects of having a couple. That left her drinking the limited array of NA beers that you can get in my neck of the woods. Plus, she's a fan of darker beer styles that aren't exactly well represented in the NA beer landscape.  In addition, low ABV also means you can have a few without getting loopy. If I'm working outside in the garden, I want to plow the fields, not get plowed in the fields.    I've tried both the small grain bill and the boil off techniques. Neither of them produced what I would call good beer. Small grain bills produced thin, beer flavored water. Boiling left behind an aftertaste that's most generously described as different, but mo...

Thanks to a gift from my wife, I'm finally able to lager beer.  Not being able to lager has meant that the closest I've ever gotten to making one has been to use the Anchor Steam yeast to make pseudo-lagers. With my new toy, that has finally changed. I brewed this beer back in January, figuring that would be the perfect time to make a Maibock for Spring. After primary fermentation, I'll be giving my beer 7 weeks for the lager yeast to do its thing. I'm very excited to see how this turns out. The five gallon brew is below. Grains: 6.5lbs Weyermann Pilsner 3.5lbs Briess Pilsen 2.5lbs Weyermann Light Munich Hops:  0.5oz Magnum (14.7% a.a.): 60 min 1oz Hallertauer (4.4% a.a.): 30 min Total Boil Time: 120 min Yeast: White Labs WLP833 - German Bock Lager 64oz Starter Hochkurz Double Decoction Mash Schedule: Maltose Rest: 144F for 30 min Decoction 1:      Heat 12 cups of thick mash to 162F and hold for 15 min      Heat Decoction to boiling and ...

In late 2015, shortly after this blog went on its long hiatus, I brewed my first Kriek Lambic. Five years and a lot of waiting later, it's bottled and ready to drink.  Just being able to start this beer took awhile. To create my aged hops, I took an ounce of Willamette leaf hops from 2014 and stuck them in a warm furnace room for a year. That hopefully dried them out enough to provide little to no bitterness in my beer. The beer itself follows a pretty straightforward recipe. My grains are a 2:1 mix of Pils malt and Flaked Wheat. The hops are the aforementioned aged Willamette. Cherries are a mix of sweet and tart whole cherries from my local supermarket. Finally, the yeasts are Wyeast's Lambic Blend for fermentation, with Red Star's Premier Blanc champagne yeast added at bottling time.   Before I dive into how the beer came out, here's the full recipe for the five gallon brew. Grains: 6lbs Castle Pilsen  3lbs Briess Flaked Wheat Hops: 1oz Aged Willamette Leaf Hop...

While I've done my best to devote this blog to brewing inexpensively, I'm occasionally given a piece of gear that is a brewing luxury rather than a necessity. In this instance, my wife found an awesome deal on the BrewJacket Immersion Pro. Lo and behold, Christmas came, and one was waiting for me under the tree.   Before the Immersion entered my brewery (a.k.a. the kitchen and a basement storeroom), I had no way to control temps. Mercifully, the temperature in my storeroom stays between 65F(18C) and 70F(21C) all year. This has allowed me to brew ales for a long time without worrying about whether or not my beer was getting too hot or cold. What it also meant was that brewing lagers was out of the question, because there's nowhere in the room I can put a dedicated brewing fridge. That's no longer the case. Now I can brew cold enough to make lagers, and can also be more true to style with my Belgians by upping their fermentation temps. The full setup I was pleasantly surp...

While 2020 was easily my worst year ever, all of those weeks cooped up at home meant I had more time than usual to brew. One of my final brew days of 2020 was devoted to this Barleywine.  My beer is loosely based on various takes I found on Great Divide's Old Ruffian , which is a beer that used to be a regular member of their lineup. That's not the case anymore, which is why I decided to tackle my own.  The main area where I've diverged from what I came across online is with the specialty malts. I've bumped them all up just a tad. In addition, my homebrew store doesn't stock Crystal 80, so I went with Crystal 77. I'm fairly certain my hop schedule is different as well. To finish my beer off, I'll be adding an oak spiral toward the end of secondary fermentation. This beer won't be ready until mid April at the earliest, so I have quite the wait ahead. My 5 gallon brew is below: Grains: 17lbs Rahr 2-Row 12oz Crisp Crystal 77 12oz Briess Victory 8oz Briess F...

If you hit the  way-back machine to 2013 , you'll find a post similar to this one. My Barleywine was basically an end of year excuse to clear out a collection of leftover ingredients. It's 2020, and I'm doing it again by making an English Imperial Stout.  This time, I didn't have quite as many leftovers, so I had to buy the 2-Row and Warrior hops. Everything else was either in a box in the basement or the fridge.  The idea behind using two yeast strains was taken from a recipe I stumbled across a few years ago for the long unavailable Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter . That beer used both an American and English strain for fermentation. My guess is that at this strength, the SafAle US-05 will make up for the fermentation limitations of the LalBrew London. Plus, if it was good enough for Gonzo, it's good enough for me.  As a last step, I'll add an oak spiral that's been soaked in Whiskey. I'm hopeful that the oak will be subtle rather than overpowering. ...

It's been five years since my last blog post . I had no idea so much time had passed. It's almost shocking that this site hasn't been turned off by Google to free up server space.  Being laid up at home with a certain thing that made 2020 pretty much the worst year ever is what inspired me to hit the restart button and bring this blog back to life. It's time for more brewing articles that people will hopefully find interesting, helpful, or both. Plus the occasional article that has nothing to do with beer . A lot has changed in five years.  I moved from the mountains to the city, which caused me to drop my old tagline about brewing at 7,734 feet. One kid is in college and the other will be soon, meaning my wife and I are about to become empty nesters. There's also an '81 Chrysler project car in the garage that has a very interesting backstory . My brewing setup also got a bit fancier, although not  too  fancy. This blog did start out focused on brewing without a...