Category: Recipe

Roscoe Simcoe, a red IPA

I dusted off my Amarillo Red recipe and decided to change it up a little for a fall brew. I have an abundance of Simcoe hops at the moment and a relatively small amount of Amarillo pellets, so I’me going to tweak the recipe for this brew.

Grain bill

  • 15 lbs. domestic 2-row
  • 5 lbs German Pilsner malt
  • 1.5 lbs Crystal 60L
  • 1 lbs Crystal 120L
  • 1  lbs malted wheat

Hops

  • 2oz Simcoe (whole cone) @ 60 minutes
  • 2oz Simcoe @ 10 minutes
  • 2oz Amarillo pellets @ 5 min
  • 1oz Amarillo @ flameout
  • 1oz Simcoe @ flameout
  • 1oz Simcoe dry hopped

Yeast

  • Safale S-05 (1st carboy)
  • Wyeast British Ale Yeast (2nd carboy)

Instructions?

You know the drill, right? Get up at 6am on a Sunday, start heating the water in the HLT, go back and get some more coffee, etc. The SRM should come out around 13-14L. f

Imperial BIPA

Today’s brew went from normal to Imperial when the hot liquor tank ran out of hot water. I was shooting for an IPA with a nice biscuit flavor. Thus BIPA. All told, the OG was 1.078 and I managed to pull off a full 10 gallons.

Grain

  • 18 lbs 2-row
  • 6 lbs Pilsner
  • 1 lbs Munich
  • 1 lbs Biscuit

Hops

  • 3 oz Simcoe @ 60min
  • 1 oz Newport @ 60min
  • 2 oz Simcoe @ 20 min
  • 2 oz Simcoe @ 10min
  • 1 oz Amarillo @ 7min
  • 1.5 oz Simcoe @ 5min
  • 1 oz Simcoe in keg

Other

  • 1 packet of Safale S05 in 1.5L starter
  • 1 smack pack Wyeast NW ale yeast
  • blend the two at inoculation

I debated whether to have two separate batches with a unique yeast, but given the initial gravity, I opted to mix and pitch to make sure both beers got a running start.

Hoptoberfest 2011

This is an amalgam of beer styles. Malt profile should be similar to a Märzen/Oktoberfest style beer, yeast is an ale yeast, and the hops are mostly from my neighbor’s and my hop plants. It’s an homage to our harvest season. This is for a 10 gallon batch.

Grains

  • 9 lbs. 2-row
  • 8 lbs. German pilsner
  • 2 lbs. Munich
  • 1 lbs. CaraPils
  • 1 lbs. Vienna

Hops

  • 2 oz Glacier @ 60
  • unknown addition of unknown hop @ 45
  • unknown addition of unknown hop @ 20
  • unknown addition of unknown hop @ 15
  • unknown addition of unknown hop @ 10
  • unknown addition of wet centennials @ 5

I used Fermentis Safale S-05 yeast again, one per carboy. Someone recently told me that they were bored with this strain. I’m not yet. I plan to cold-crash the carboys right before bottling to clear it up a little more like a true Oktoberfest.

Jasmine IPA

Today I’m brewing a Jasmine IPA loosely based on Elysian’s Avatar. Avatar (the name greatly pre-date the movie hype) is one of my wife’s favorite beers, so I thought I’d give it a try. I picked up some jasmine via the web from a local reseller on Etsy. The bag arrived yesterday. I’m not entirely convinced by the experiment, and since this is a double batch (10 gallons), I’ll probably only do 5 gallons as the jasmine brew and the other as a dry hopped IPA using Simcoe hops. Here’s the base recipe. We’ll see if I go through with the split or just decide to do 10 gallons of Jasmine.

Malt

  • 17 lbs domestic 2-Row
  • 5 lbs Weyermann Pilsner
  • 1 lb domestic Munich
  • 1 lb Crystal 40L

Hops

  • 2 oz Simcoe @ 60 min
  • 2 oz Simcoe @ 10 min
  • 1 oz Simcoe @ 2 min
  • 1 oz Simcoe @ dryhop for 1/2 of the batch

Adjunct

  • 2 oz dried Jasmine @ 10 min
  • 2 oz @ flameout
  • 1-2 oz dryhop (is that a verb?)
  • Safale S-05 American Ale yeast x 2

NoPoToberfest '09

A while back I had a conversation with Full Sail’s John Harris about Oktoberfest and Fresh Hop beers. He felt fresh hop beers were our true harvest festival beer, and I’m in agreement that they have become our de facto style and cause for celebration here in the Northwest. Hell, even brewers some distance from the hop fields are willing to air rush fresh hops to the brewery for a specialty beer. I look forward to sampling fresh hop beers every year (soon, soon…), but I don’t always get a chance to brew one myself.

This year, my hop crop is pitiful. The Willamettes never got down to business, and the Centennials are putting up a rather meager offering. Not to complain though, it’s only their first year. Luckily, my neighbor has a very mature plant that’s gone crazy. He’s given me the access to the cones, so this weekend I’m going to harvest and brew with them. At this point I don’t know the yield so I’m only putting together a grain bill, but I’ll be able to improvise with hops.

Here’s NoPoToberfest – my celebration of the hop harvest using North Portland’s residential bounty.

Grain bill

  • 16 lbs domestic 2-row
  • 2 lbs domestic wheat
  • 2lbs crystal 20L
  • 2lbs Munich

update

Hop bill

  • 2.5 oz Summit @ 60min
  • 1 oz dry unknown @ 20 min
  • 35 oz wet unknown @ 7-5 min

Naturally, I used Safale S-05. OG was 1.052 and the two carboys are merrily bubbling along.

Nugget Please!

I just finished brewing an IPA for my friends’ wedding at the end of the month. Scott is also brewing several beers for the occasion and I offered to take on one of the batches to lighten his burned a bit. I love brewing for people’s weddings – people I know anyway – and love it when the beer actually turns out well. Normally I’ve just brewed pales or hoppy ambers to have something that was accessible for guests. This time I’m brewing an IPA that’d I’d drink. It highlights Nugget hops for the sole reason that I could name it “Nugget Please,” which is a play on an ODB album from back in college when Tom and I met. He and I both enjoy our hip-hop, and while ODB is neither of our favorites, it was much better than the other name I’d come up with that I’ll tell you in private at some time in the future if you’re curious.

Anyway, ( I start a paragraph with “anyway” when it becomes apparent that I need to be doing something other than blogging) the beer finished at 1.060 and will probably finish around 6% abv (a little high for weddings…forgive me..) but also clocks in at around 80 IBU, which is also a little high for a wedding. Oh well, Nugget please.

malt bill

  • 12 lbs 2-row
  • 1 lbs domestic Munich
  • 1 lbs domestic wheat
  • 1 lbs domestic crystal 20L

hop bill

  • 1.5 oz Nugget (14% aa) @ 60 minutes
  • 1 oz Nugget @ 15 min
  • 0.5 Nugget @ 10 min
  • 1 oz Amarillo (8% aa) @ 5 min
  • 1 oz Amarillo @ 2 min
  • 2 oz Nugget in the keg

I got some Safale S-05 for the yeast. Couldn’t bring myself to put Chimay yeast in to something that promises to be raw and crude.

Stan, Stan, He's our Man Cream Ale

My grandfather passed away last weekend, and he was a big fan of my brewing, even if only in theory. He still hadn’t opened the IPA I brewed for my wedding nearly 8 years ago so he could show people the bottle. He was more of a macro-drinker, and combining that with his being Nebraskan and his love of cream can dinners, it only seemed appropriate to brew a cream ale of the pre-prohibition style.

I’m not going to stick with period ingredients, but I think he’d be happy enough with the results to keep a bottle on his desk well beyond the “best by” date.

I’ve not used corn before, so this will be yet another adventure.

Grain

  • 7 lbs Pilsner Malt
  • 3 lbs 2-Row
  • 1 lbs flaked corn
  • 0.5 lbs Carapils

Hops

  • 1 oz. NZ Saaz @ 60 min (4% alpha)
  • 1 oz. NZ Saaz @ 10 min
  • 1 oz. NZ Saaz @ 5 min

Should be interesting. I’ll probably just stick with Safale S-05.

A Scottish

Michelle requested that I brew a Scottish ale what is now close to 4 weeks ago. It took a while to get the recipe, and a while longer to get the time to brew. Ella helped me shop for the ingredients this time. It was her idea to add some Marris Otter. While I measured my grains, she went to each bin at Steinbarts and sampled 1-2 malt kernels like I showed her. She made two laps around before I was done milling. Here’s the recipe.

Malt Bill

  • 9 lbs domestic 2-row
  • 2 lbs Marris Otter
  • 1 lbs Crystal 60L
  • 1/4 lbs roasted barley
  • 1/4 lbs peated malt
  • 3/4 lbs torrified wheat

Hop Bill (if you can call it that)

  • 1 oz. Santiam @ 60 minutes (5% alpha)
  • 0.8 oz Santiam @ 10 minutes (5% alpha)

Rest of the recipe was pretty predictable. Irish moss, Safale S-04, blah blah. The wort that I sampled for a gravity reading was delicious.

Make it a dubbel

I was about to post an update on my dubbel when I discovered I’d never actually posted anything about said beer. Anyway, back on November 1st, as a promise to my equipment, I brewed an all grain Belgian-style dubbel. I used this recipe from Barley Dog Brewery as a template and changed it a tad based on my desire to not include wheat, and to use hops I had on hand.

As an aside, Barley Dog Brewery is probably one of the coolest homebrew sites I’ve ever seen. The nerd in me loves the BeerXML exports, the DIYer in me loves the project lists, and the wannabe web designer loves the systematic integration of it all.

Anyway, here’s the recipe for a 6 gallon batch:

grain bill

  • 1lbs domestic Munich
  • 13lbs American two-row
  • 0.50lbs Belgian Special “B”
  • 0.50lbs Belgian biscuitGrain, Mashed
  • 1lbs Belgian candi sugar, amber
  • 0.50lbs Crystal 60L
  • 0.25lbs Chocolate malt

hops

  • 0.5 oz Galena @ 60 minutes
  • 1oz Galena @ 10 minutes
  • 1oz Galena @ 5 minutes

etc

  • Safbrew S-33 Belgian Ale yeast
  • Irish Moss

The original gravity is actually quite low because someone didn’t account for how little water would boil off when the humidity is @ 100%. I ended up with closer to 7 gallons at 1.058, which is now closer to 6 gallons at 1.014 as of transferring to secondary on Saturday.

BTW, my jaw still hurts from the candi sugar. Apparently the cartilage is damaged and I’m not supposed to move it much. My doctor father suggested a liquid diet of beer, and my attorney wife suggested slim-fast.