Colorado Kitchen Brew

I'm doing a 4-for-1 with this installment, and will be bundling my finished beers going forward, rather than writing a blog for each.  That should leave me space for more brewing oriented posts. This month, I've got beers I posted the recipes for back in November, December and January. First out of the gate is Enchanted Nightmare Imperial Stout. This beer is an amalgamation of extra grains and hops I had that were combined with some 2-Row and additional hops to create a 9.95% ABV Stout for the depths of Winter. So what if it wasn't actually ready until the Spring Equinox arrived? A beer like this can't be rushed. My beer pours nearly pitch black, and has nice ruby highlights. The head could stand a touch more staying power, but is appropriately dense. In the mouth, the body is a little lighter than I expected. The carbonation is very soft, and feels just about right for this beer style.  When I bottled this beer, I was slightly worried that the whiskey and oak were a li...

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 ...

The older I've gotten, the more I've wanted to make my brew days easier. While I appreciate the exercise I get from lifting heavy wet grain bags, and moving large pots of water or wort back and forth around the kitchen, that doesn't mean I want to work that way forever.  My back, for one, doesn't dig all the weight lifting like it used to. My spine was badly injured quite a few years back, and can only take a certain amount of strain, no matter how much I focus on lifting with my legs. Gravity is our friend, and it would be nice to take advantage of that fact more than I have. Simply having my wife give me a brew pot with a ball valve for Christmas two years ago seemed like a gift from above, since I was no longer tipping a heavy pot to transfer wort to a fermenter.  Brew day has also meant taking over the kitchen for several hours. Or many hours, on the days I decided to perform a multistep mash. That's not exactly fair to the rest of the family, which lead me to p...

Back in 2012, I did a post on making your own Candi Sugar for Belgian beers. Nine years later, it's time to make Brewer's Invert Syrup for British beers. While these syrups are available commercially, they're tough to find in the US, as there are only a handful of homebrew shops that carry them. They're also not exactly cheap, so why not make your own? The sugar I prefer to use for making Invert Syrup is Turbinado. Complexity is what I want from these syrups, and I feel that Turbinado, as well as other raw sugars, create more complex flavors than plain white table sugar does. However, table sugar works just fine.  Here's the basic procedure for making one pound of Invert Syrup: Mix one pound of sugar with approximately 1 cup of water to make a thick syrup. Over Medium heat, gently stir the liquid until the sugar is dissolved.  Add 1/4tsp of Cream of Tartar. You can optionally add roughly 2Tbsp of Lyle's Golden Syrup at this step to help avoid crystalizing your s...

As promised in Part 1, now that we know how to Cold Mash, it's time to brew some beer! The recipes below are all beers that I've had good luck with. Styles include Oatmeal Stout, Witbier, Dunkelweizen, Mexican Lager and Schwartzbier. I intend to add styles in the IPA realm as I continue experimenting. Hopefully I've provided enough variety to get people started.  Oatmeal Stout Grains: 3lbs Simpsons Golden Promise 12oz Fawcett CaraMalt 12oz Flaked Oats 12oz Simpsons Chocolate Malt 4oz Crisp Roasted Barley Hops: 0.75oz Challenger (6.3% a.a.): 60 min Total Boil Time: 60 min Yeast: White Labs WLP002 - English Ale or Imperial A09 - Pub Mash Schedule: Cold Mash for 12 Hours at 37F  Original Gravity: 1.015 Final Gravity: 1.005 ABV: 1.31% IBU: 30 SRM Color: 28 Fermentation Schedule: 1 Week Primary at 67F 2 Weeks Secondary Witbier Grains: 2.5lbs Castle Pilsen 1.25lbs Weyermann Pale Wheat 1.25lbs Briess Flaked Wheat 8oz Flaked Oats Hops: 0.5oz Styrian Golding (3.5% a.a.): 60 min 1oz ...

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 ...