National Homebrew Day

man + drill + bucket = mandrilbuket

We rang in National Homebrew day by making 2 5 gallon batches of beer and some BBQ'ing in the sun. One of the recipes is a delicious red ale recipe from MoreBeer (http://www.morebeer.com). It's called Fire In The Hole, and the ingredients are listed below:

Malts:
7 lbs Ultralight Extract
Grain:
2 lbs 2-Row
1 lbs Flaked Wheat
1 lbs Ctystal 75 L
.5 lbs Rye
.5 lbs Munich
.18 lbs Carafa

Hops:
1 Oz Magnum Hops 60 mins
2 oz Centennial Hops 5 mins

Water Treatment:
Wirfloc Tab 20 mins

Secondary
2 oz Columbus
1 oz Oak Chips

I think it is a really excellent red ale, so you should get their kit if you're looking for a new brew to try, but not wanting to write up a new original recipe. It's my second time to make it. The first time, it was delicious, but I came away with only 3.5 gallons of beer due to a slight mishap with the wort and my butter fingers directly after chilling. I will just be thankful the wort wasn't hot when over a gallon spilled on my floor :) Anyhow, that experience inspired this second batch, so it's kind of hard to complain. The other recipe du jour brewed by my buddy was Vagabond Gingered Beer:

1lb of crystal

1lb of chocolate

dark malt extract (7lbs-ish)

one chuck of finely chopped ginger (recipe called for between 2 and 4oz by weight)

domestic nugget for bittering

fuggles for aroma

white labs california ale yeast

Based on the Charlie book recipe. The ginger looked delicious, and I am excited to try it. The only time I've ever placed such a strong flavor agent into a beer was with a bourbon vanilla porter (BVP). Basically prior to brewing, people were warning me, "don't put too much bourbon or vanilla beans into it!!!" My BVP turned out to be pretty vanilla-ey, despite this advice, and I've heard of more than one story about other strong flavoring agents that take a long time to mellow; jalepeno peppers and sarsaparilla roots to name a couple. I relayed this information to Chas when he was cutting up his organic ginger, so we'll see. I'm sure it will be good.

Brew Gear

One fun thing about brewing to me is that it's always fun to work with and optimize the setup. In the photo below, Chas creates a mash tun by drilling 1/8" holes into a bucket. This will operate as a removable false bottom when making a full-mash brew. I'm pretty stoked to see how it will work. I use a Gott cooler mash tun, which is reasonable, but I have my suspicions about the fluid circulation, since it does not have wonderful efficiency.



The day also saw my second attempt with counter-flow chilling, and an inadvertent experiment of concurrent flow chilling (woops). The chiller I built is from the following design:

http://texanbrew.com/article.php?story=BuildACFC

Counterflow is no doubt more efficient, although the the arrangement is a little more tedious. I think fixing the chiller in a specific location on a brewing rack would be ideal. Another option would be the addition of pumps to the system, which would eliminate the danger of placing a large volume of fluid at 212 F six feet in the air. All things to consider for next time.