Framboise

I received a recipe book for Christmas! I was flipping through and by chance my finger landed on a lambic recipe, specifically a Framboise. The making of a lambic, specifically a Framboise, is a very fragile and wonderful process. Traditionally, after a spontaneous wild fermentation produces what is known as lambic, the lambic is refermented along with raspberries to produce Framboise, a fruit beer.

Spontaneous wild fermentation would be very difficult for a homebrewer, so there are yeast strains available on the market to reproduce the fermentation. However, traditional methods of making lambic also require a souring of the mash. The souring of the mash is the random variable in making a lambic for homebrewers. An easy technique (which I hope promotes consistency) for souring is this:

During the sparge, draw off 6 gallons of wort. Let the wort cool to 130 degrees F, then add 1/2 pound pale 2-row crushed malt to the wort, mix thoroughly, seal with a lid, and let sit for 12-24 hours, depending on how sour you want the final product. After 12-24 hours, strain the malt, add hops and boil as usual.

This was my first time "souring mash," and I have to say, the smell and taste of a soured mash is quite unusual and different... exciting!

During the racking of the beer to secondary, the raspberries are heated to 150 degrees in a minimal amount of water for 30 minutes, then the entire mixture is added to the beer. Traditionally the fruit would only be added after several years (1-3) aging of the lambic.

Recipe:

6 lbs Belgian Pils malt
3 lbs Wheat malt
1 lb Flaked Wheat
.5 lb 2-row pale (souring)
10 lbs frozen raspberries
.5 oz Tettnanger
1 pack 5112 Brettanomyces bruxellensis
1 pack 3942 Belgian Wheat

Add both packets of yeast for primary fermentation.

primary: 2 weeks
secondary: 12 weeks
bottle condition: 3 months - 1 year

Milling and Harvesting

It was a big weekend for homebrew production. I built a malt mill and harvested my cascade hops! I based my malt mill on the barebones version of Jack Schmidling's MaltMill.
Barebones Malt Mill (from Jack Schmidling Productions, Inc.)

I had to build the table and the hopper, but the money I saved in doing it myself, I was able to buy an electric drill to motor the whole contraption. I used medium density fiberboard for the table and the sides of the hopper. I used a lightweight smooth fiberboard with staples for the hopper. I added dropped edges on the table so it fits snugly on top of a bucket. I bolted the mill onto the table with 1/4" bolts and the hopper attaches to the top with 1/4" bolts.
This malt mill holds 12.5 pounds of uncrushed grain.

Gorilla glue sealed the edges inside the hopper where I narrowed the chute.

The hop harvest was outstanding. We clipped the vine down and brought it over to the deck where we began picking. There were so many flowers it was quite a chore for two people. I did not expect this quantity! The net product was half a paper grocery bag.

To dry them out we first cut paper bags in the shape of a bin and covered them, leaving plenty of breathing room.

It was a long weekend, so I decided to put together a proper hop bin, with a screened bottom for faster drying. They will sit in the sun room for 3 days or so and then be packed and frozen.

Raisin Abbey Dubbel

My best Abbey Dubbel yet! I have it on tap for special occasions. This will knock you out.

Recipe
10.0 lbs 2-row
2.0 lbs wheat
2.0 lbs cara-pils
1.0 lbs crystal 60L
1.0 lbs brown malt
1.0 lbs rauch malt
1.5 lbs brown sugar
1.5 lbs raisins (puree with hot wort, steep 15 min)
1 pk 1388 Wyeast Belgian Strong Ale
1.5 oz Kent Goldings (60 min)
0.5 oz Saaz (20 min)

On a side note, I was up in Madeline Island for the 4th of July, and I went kayaking through a sea cave, check it out!

Dunkin Coffee Stout

In honor of the drink that America runs on, I made a delicious coffee stout using 2 cups of fresh Dunkin Donuts Original Blend coffee beans, ground with a burr grinder. I used a nylon sack as an extra large tea bag, and just dipped for a period of 5 minutes, immediately after shutting down the boil. The coffee taste in the final product is less than subtle, but delicious and sweet. You know the roast flavor is coming from the coffee and not the roasted barley.

Recipe:
13.0 lbs 2-row
2.5 lbs crystal 60L
0.5 lbs roasted barley
0.25 lbs black patent
0.25 lbs chocolate malt
1.5 oz Northern Brewer (60 min)
0.5 oz Willamette (10 min)
2.0 cups whole Dunkin coffee beans
1 pack Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Second season Hops

I planted my Cascade hops last year, so this is the second growing season for them. They are monsters compared to last year, with about three times the growth. They outgrew my fence so I built a makeshift trellis, allowing them to keep growing tall.

Look at these beauties!


To build the hop trellis, I ran some garden twine from one tree to another above the fence they were growing on, about 10 feet from the ground. Then I hung smaller pieces of twine from it and tied them to the fence. The result was a very inexpensive hop trellis. The vines immediately attached to the twine, and are already maxing out the trellis!

Compare the growth from last year!

Latest cash in from the fermentors: Vanilla Stout and Pale Ale

My first decoction mash

18 hours

I read an article in this month's Beer Advocate magazine that was basically a recipe and guide for brewing a terrific Marzen but without going through the procedure of a decoction mash. It called for one pound of melanoidin malt, which is a special kind of malt containing highly extractable levels of melanoidin. Melanoidin is found in Munich and Vienna malt and is a key in giving German Oktoberfest beers their authentic flavor. I called both brew shops, neither one had melanoidin malt. There was only one thing to do: learn how to do a decoction mash.

Decoction mashing is basically the procedure of heating up a portion of the mash to a boil and then mixing the heated portion back into the mash, raising the temperature of the mash to the next "step." The boiling of the mash results in a distinct malty flavor due to the Maillard reaction which causes a non-enzymatic browning of the sugars in the malt.

Recipe:
5.5 lbs 2-row
5.0 lbs Munich
3.5 lbs Vienna
0.75 oz Tettnanger (add during sparge)
0.33 oz Hallertau 40 min.
0.50 oz Hallertau 20 min.
Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager

Decoction mash:
Mash at 130F with 1.5 quarts of water per pound of grain. After 20 minutes, take one third of the mash and heat to 170F. Add back to mash; the mash temperature should level off to 150F. If it does not, stir the mash around and take another one third of the mash and repeat the first process. In actuality the more times you perform this step the better decoction you will have. When the mash reaches a temperature of about 153F, maintain for 60 minutes. After that sparge and proceed normally.

0 hours

18 hours

Peach Pear melomel

My parents came to visit this weekend and I wanted to brew something quick and easy with Dad since he hasn't made a brew with me before. He's a big fan of the cyser I've made in the past so I thought I'd do a mead to show how easy it is to start one, plus I don't have a mead going currently. A general rule of thumb is always have at least one mead going (they take forever so why not?). I decided on a peach/pear/apple melomel.

Recipe:
15 lbs. honey
2 gallons apple cider
2 gallons peach puree
2 gallons pear puree
3 teaspoons pectic enzyme
Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead

Instructions:
Smack yeast. Bring 2 gallons apple cider to boil, slowly stir in 15 pounds of honey to create must. Boil for 15 minutes, using metal strainer to pull out honey comb and other impurities. Drop the must to 70 degrees with cold bath, add 2 gallons peach puree, 2 gallons pear puree, 3 teaspoons pectic enzyme, and yeast. Store and rack as desired until mead reaches your preferred level of attenuation.


My carboy couldn't fit the volume of mead I had, so I poured the leftover must into some growlers. Notice the pectic enzyme floating on top of the puree in the carboy. The layer of pectic enzyme is slowly dropping to the bottom of the carboy as it extracts the juice from the pectin. The fact that I added the puree after the boil means the pectin was not damaged, so the enzyme will be able to get a good extraction of juice, resulting in a fragrant and strong finished product.

Taking it up a Notch

Muktesh, Kevin, Pete, Eric, Ashley (Eric's girlfriend... wait, Eric has a girlfriend??) and I were on a mission. Brew 25 gallons of beer, the equivalent of around 250 bottles of beer. This was the first use of my two 15.5 gallon keggles. Let's get started.


I started the mash for the first batch, which was 10 gallons of Oak-aged Cascade IPA, 26 pounds total grain bill.


Meanwhile, Pete was starting his mash for a 5 gallon Shackleton porter clone.


After the Shackleton was complete, we prepared for another 10 gallon batch, this time a Dark Licorice Stout, 33 pounds total grain bill. Today we totalled a 50 pound sack of 2-row, impressive!


Hard work will pay off when these gems are ready... Here are the recipes (5 gallon measurements):

Oak-aged Cascade IPA
10.0 lbs. 2-row
2.0 lbs. crystal 60L
1.0 lbs. Victory (toasted) 2-row
1.0 oz. Perle 60 min.
0.5 oz. Cascade 30 min.
0.5 oz. Cascade 15 min.
1.0 oz. Cascade dry hopped during rack to secondary
3.0 oz. Oak chips during rack to secondary
1 Wyeast 1098 Brit Ale

Dark Licorice Stout
13.0 lbs. 2-row
2.5 lbs. crystal 60L
0.5 lbs. black patent
0.5 lbs. roasted barley
3.0 oz. Willamette 60 min.
1.0 oz. Licorice root 20 min.
0.5 oz. Willamette 10 min.
0.5 oz. Willamette 0 min. (end of boil)
1 Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Shackleton Porter (Beware this fantastic recipe)
9.0 lbs. Marris Otter 2-row
2.0 lbs. 2-row
2.0 lbs. wheat malt
2.0 lbs. peat-smoked malt
1.0 lbs. Rauch malt
1.0 lbs. chocolate malt
1.0 lbs. roasted barley
1.0 oz. Cascade 60 min.
1.0 oz. Perle 30 min.
1 Wyeast 1028 London Ale

30 gallons of brew in my basement!!

Yeast Culturing

Some beer recipes I will be posting soon include:
Rye Lager
Shackleton Smoked Porter
Smoked Chili IPA
Ginger Saison
Cherry Trippel
Franziskaner Hefe-weisse clone

So... I decided that I need another brew on tap, my kegerator has been dry for some time now. I've been experimenting with different wheat brews, trying to get something that tastes like a Franziskaner. Wyeast just doesn't come close. So I've decided to culture some yeast from the bottom of a Franziskaner Hefe-weisse.

How to culture yeast from your favorite beer.

Equipment:
two 12 oz. empty beer bottles
2 bottle caps and capper
2 rubber stoppers that fit an airlock and a 12 oz. bottle
2 airlocks
grain alcohol or vodka
cotton swabs
a lighter
one-step cleaning solution
2 quarts of wort
2 bottle conditioned beers that have yeast to culture

It is important to note that this process must take place 2 days in advance of the brewing day that you wish to use this yeast with.


The first step is to buy a couple (2) bottles of beer that were bottle conditioned or have a yeast build-up on the bottom of the bottle. Set the beers out at room temperature.

Put the rubber stoppers and airlocks in a bath of one-step cleaning solution. Fill the two empty bottles with one-step and water. Set aside.

Put two bottle caps in the grain alcohol, or boil caps to sterilize.

Next step is to get a hold of some wort. You can either set aside 2 quarts of wort from your latest brew, or make a small batch of wort. To make 2 quarts of wort, boil 2 quarts water with 6 oz. of dry or liquid malt extract, and a small handful (1/4 oz. or so) of hops for a preservative quality.


Boil wort for 30 minutes then strain out the hops and turn off the heat. Pour the cleaning solution from the bottles, dip a cotton swab in the grain alcohol or vodka, and sterilize the mouth of one beer bottle. Heat the mouth of the beer bottle with the lighter. Using a funnel pour the hot wort into the bottle. Repeat process with the second bottle. Immediately cap with the bottle caps that were soaking in grain alcohol or boiling.




Let hot bottles of wort cool at room temperature for one hour. After one hour, you may refrigerate the bottles to rapidly cool them or to store them for future yeast culturing. They will need to be 70 degrees before you can use them for yeast culturing.


When bottles of wort are at 70 degrees (about room temperature), open the bottles of beer that have the yeast you wish to culture. Pour the beers into drinking vessels for your enjoyment but leave 1.5 inches in each bottle. Swirl the yeast around in the bottom of the bottle to loosen it.

Uncap the bottles of wort, swab with grain alcohol and heat mouths of bottles, then dump the 1.5 inches of yeast from each bottle into each bottle of wort. Attach the rubber stoppers and airlocks that were sanitizing in the bath of one-step.


Let the bottles ferment for 1 day between 60-70 degrees with the airlocks attached. After that you can put the bottles with airlock attached in the refrigerator for at most 4 weeks before they must be pitched into your latest batch of 5 gallon wort. Make sure there is active fermentation before putting them in the refrigerator. Sterilize the mouths of the bottles before pitching, using the swab of grain alcohol and a lighter.

Rye Baby

I had the first taste of my rye ale. It's got a terrific nose, fresh and spicy from the rye malt and cascade hops. It was rewarding to use my first year hop harvest in a beer. This beer is so damn good !

5.0 lbs. 2-row American pale
5.0 lbs. Muntons Marris Otter 2-row
2.0 lbs. rye malt
1.0 lbs. flaked rye
1.0 lbs. crystal 60L
1.0 lbs. flaked barley
1.0 oz. Challenger (60 mins.)
0.5 oz. Argentinean cascade 3.2% (30 mins.)
0.5 oz. home grown cascade (dry hop at first racking)
1056 Wyeast American ale (2nd generation)

Luke O' Lantern Strong Pumpkin Ale

7.0 lbs. 6 row
1.0 lbs. wheat
1.0 lbs. munich
1.0 lbs. vienna
1.0 lbs. crystal 60L
1.0 lbs. carapils
3 medium pumpkins (~10 lbs.)
1.0 oz. saaz at 0 min.
1.0 oz. willamette at 60 min.
1.5 tsp. cinnamon
1.5 tsp. nutmeg
1.0 tsp. allspice
0.5 tsp. real vanilla extract
1.0 tsp. irish moss
1056 wyeast american ale yeast

gut pumpkin, chop into large pieces leaving skin on. bake at 350F for 1.5 hours. scoop pumpkin from skin.


mash along with grain, using 1 quart water for each pound of pumpkin (same ratio for grain).


boil for 90 minutes.


add 1.0 tsp. of cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice at 30 minutes. add 0.5 tsp. of cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla at 75 minutes. add 1.0 tsp. irish mosh at 75 minutes as well.

Mash / Lauter Tun... Upgrade!

My beloved cousin Jason has given me one of his keggles, now I can brew 10 gallon batches! It was necessary for me to upgrade my mash tun to support the new volume, so I sold off my old 5 gallon to Pete, and began working on a bigger one. I converted a 48 quart cooler, which is equivalent to 12 gallons.

This time I took my experience with the old mash tun, and some tips from Jason, to improve my original design. I noticed the false bottom gets stuck if you aren't careful dumping the grains into the cooler. So this time I built a slotted manifold. It was a pain in the butt cutting all those slots with a hacksaw, but it was worth it in the end !

Hop Harvest

The hop flowers were getting paper-like and slightly brown near the bottoms, a sign that it was time for a hop harvest. 2 minutes later, harvest was complete.

I put the hops in a paper bag and left them in the sun room where they will dry out for a few days. This was the first year so there weren't many flowers.

I think I'll have enough for one dry hopping, I guess I'll have to make a pale ale next.


I put some fresh hops in my beer as a garnish. Squeezing the hop flower in my mouth like a sponge elicited a wonderful hoppy taste.

Hopalicious

I couple months ago I happen to be at my local brew shop and they were selling fresh hop rhizomes. I thought hell why not? In a couple years I could be brewing homemade beer using home grown hops ! I bought 3 cascade and 2 golding rhizomes which were all they had of these particular types. Turns out 1 golding died when the vine somehow snapped at the base, and 1 cascade was eaten by an animal. Still I managed to grow 2 vines per type. My first hop cone grew in a few days ago on one of the cascade vines so I had to take a picture. I'm really glad I decided to plant these.

Smoke on the Porter (Frankenstein II)

I threw together a recipe using all my left overs... strangely enough the ingredient list resembles a porter recipe I found online that used rauch, peat, chocolate, black patent, and flaked barley. I just bought the London Ale III and hops and I was ready to go. The foaming, chocolate brown wort tasted delicious.

ingredient list
3.0 lbs. rauch
2.0 lbs. munich
1.0 lbs. 2 row
1.0 lbs. caramel 20L
1.0 lbs. caramel 60L
1.0 lbs. peat
1.0 lbs. chocolate
0.5 lbs. black patent
0.5 lbs. cara pils
0.5 lbs. vienna
0.5 lbs. flaked barley
1.0 oz. pearle 60 minutes
1.0 oz. kent goldings 30 minutes
1.0 oz. fuggles 15 minutes
1318 Wyeast London Ale III

I bought a plastic bucket with an attached spigot, which came in handy while sparging since now I don't need to siphon the sparge water.

Smoked Malt (Rauchbier version 2)

I'm making a smoke beer today, using the smoker I bought! May the smell of apple wood fill the air. The recipe I used is posted below, followed by instructions for smoking your own grain.

Classic Rauchbier
(5 gallons, all grain)

This is a Bamberg-style reddish lager, sweet and substantial like a Marzen, with the distinctive smokiness of a beechwood fire.

3.0 lbs. lager malt
2.5 lbs. rauchmalt
0.5 lbs. carapils malt
0.5 lbs. Vienna malt
4.0 lbs. light malt
1.0 oz. Hallertau hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
1.0 oz. Tettnang hops (4% alpha acid, 4 AAUs)
Munich lager yeast slurry (Wyeast 2308)
3/4 cup corn sugar or 1 cup light dry malt extract for priming

Heat 10 qt. water to 164 F. Crush grains, mix into liquor and hold 90 min. at 152 F. Runoff and sparge with 14 qt. at 168 F. Add the dry malt to kettle, mix well. Raise to boiling, add Hallertau hops. Boil 60 min., add Tettnang hops, boil 30 min.
Remove from heat, cool and add to fermenter along with enough chilled pre-boiled water to make 5.25 gal. When cooled to 65 F, pitch yeast. Seal and ferment for two days at 55 F, then move to cooler place and ferment a further two weeks at 45 F, rack to secondary and condition six weeks at 38 F. Prime with corn sugar or dry malt extract and bottle. Condition six weeks at 35 F.

Instructions for smoking your own grain:

1. Soak the wood chips of your choice in clean fresh water for a minimum of 1 hour. Longer if you are using very large chips.

2. Light a small charcoal fire in a kettle-type charcoal grill. Use enough coal to keep a good fire for about 1½ hours (or longer if you're doing a lot of malt). You can avoid using charcoal altogether if you have one of those gas fired (or electric) smokers that looks sort of like R2D2 from "Star Wars."

3. Soak about 2 lbs of malted barley in clean fresh water for 15 minutes. This step is simplified a lot if you first put the grain in a mesh bag or nylon stocking. If you don't use the mesh bag you will have to strain out the grain with a kitchen strainer.

4. Place a large piece of screen on the grill. Plain old hardware store variety window screen will work quite well. (HINT: Bend up the edges to help keep the grain on the screen. If you don't, a lot of your grain will fall into the fire.) (ANOTHER HINT: Make sure your grill is clean. Leftover grease will mess up your malt.)

5. Remove the wood chips from the water and place them directly on the hot coals.

6. Place the screen covered grill onto the kettle grill and cover with as much grain as you can and still be able to easily stir the grain around without knocking the grains into the fire.

7. Put the lid on the kettle grill and adjust the vents to get maximum smoking.

8. I usually stir the grains around a bit every 15 minutes or so. Also at this time I can check for dryness.

9. The grains are done smoking when they return to their original dryness.

10. After smoking I put the grains in a 5qt plastic pail with a lid and let them sit for a minimum of 2 weeks. This seems to let the smoky flavor mellow a bit.

Mash / Lauter Tun

I feel like my last few all grain brews have been on the lighter side, meaning they were a tad bit watered down for my liking. I think it has something to do with my batch sparging process. I feel that I'm not getting a very efficient sugar extraction, and so I am in the process of making a mash and lauter tun, which I will use to fly sparge.

I borrowed some instructions on how to convert a water cooler from here: How to make a cheap 10 or 5 gallon MLT with a Rubbermaid Cooler. After reading the instructions I decided I wanted a false bottom rather than using the braided stainless steel hose, so I only followed the instructions for assembling the bulkhead.

I bought a 5 gallon cooler from Wal-Mart for 20 bucks, ordered Phil's Phalse Bottom 9" online, and the rest of the parts from Home Depot. The assembly was not difficult. When I was done I filled the tun with water and let sit for 20 minutes, and there was not a drop leaked (Don't forget the teflon tape or your tun will leak)!

I have not yet received the false bottom in the mail, but the 9" bottom supposedly fits perfectly in a 5 gallon Rubbermaid cooler. Then it should be as simple as connecting the false bottom to the barb adapter with a hose and clamps. I still need to buy another pot for sparge water and build the sprinkler system for the fly sparging, and when I do I'll post the details.




P.S. Check out my links to Chris Knight's kegging videos and all grain brewing videos.

Dunkel weiss

Now that my kegerator is assembled, how about some beer to serve with it? The sooner the better so I brewed up a batch of dunkel today using a basic recipe from "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing," modified slightly.


4.0 lbs. 2 row pale
3.0 lbs. Munich
3.0 lbs. American wheat
1/8 lb. Black patent
3/4 oz. Hallertau boiling
1/4 oz. Hallertau finishing
1.0 tsp. irish moss
Wyeast Bavarian Wheat 3056

60 minute boil. 3/4 oz Hallertau at beginning of boil. 1 tsp irish moss at 50 minutes. 1/4 oz Hallertau at 58 minutes. Ferment at 70 degrees F. 7 days in primary. 7 days in secondary. Put in cellar at 55 degrees F for a few days if you want the yeast to settle before racking into the keg.

Rauchbier

My friend Pete and I made a smoke beer over a month ago and it's time to bottle! We used a Kölsch yeast and it is currently hiding away in my lagering room (the downstairs bedroom). We stole a taste during the last racking and it was incredible!



Here is the recipe we used:

5.0 lbs. pilsner malt
3.0 lbs. rauch malt
1.0 lb. biscuit malt
0.5 lb. carapils malt
0.5 lb. munich malt
2.0 oz. spalt hops (boiling)
2.0 oz. saaz hops (finishing)
1.0 tsp. irish moss
Wyeast 2565 - Kölsch

-- sidenote : take a look at my kegerator pics!

Dry Hoppin !

I just added 2 ounces of 2006 Centennial hops to a Bell's Two Hearted clone that I brewed with my cousin Jason and buddy Pete.