One of the kits I got was the Synchronicity Extraordinaire Wheaten Saison. I am absolutely crazy for Saisons, and I kind of loved the idea of a relatively quick extract-based brewday with minimal ingredients. It’s been really warm here so letting it ferment up around 77° shouldn’t be difficult, and if everything goes well, it’ll be ready in about 6 weeks.

The kit was really simple: 6 pounds of wheat malt extract, three hops additions, a late addition of 1 pound of honey, and some lemongrass and sweet orange peel. Holy Hell did it smell good in the last five minutes!

Normally, when I do extracts, it’s a partial boil that gets topped off before pitching yeast, but I’ve done a couple from Brewing Classic Styles, and I much prefer doing a full boil (partially because it makes getting a correct OG reading much easier than if I add water and have to worry about striation) so I got on the line with the support crew at Northern Brewer, and asked if I could go ahead and do full boil without messing up the hop utilization. Gabe at NB told me that for a non-hop-forward beer like this, it would be fine to do that (for a hop-forward beer I could still do it, but there’s a bit of math involved to ensure the hop utilization is correct) so I went ahead and did a 6.5 gallon boil. Everything went great, with no boil overs or accidents, and I was able to drain right into my bucket leaving trub and hop debris in the bottom of the kettle. Unfortunately, I miscalculated my boil off and ended with just under 4.5 gallons, but my OG was 1.052 (right on target!) so I didn’t top it up. I aerated it for about 20 minutes, pitched Danstar’s saison yeast, and after about 3 hours lag, the yeasties were doing their thing.

I checked it this morning, and fermentation is going like crazy, so I’m staying out of the way until it’s all done sometime next week. I’ll do about a five day secondary (while I’m in Phoenix next weekend for Comicon, probably) and then this one will go into bottles because I don’t have enough kegs or kegerator space [FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS] to package it any other way.

I went on a buying bonanza recently, and took advantage of some sales at Northern Brewer. If you want to see what’s in my queue, it’s in the sticky at the top of the main page. A couple of days ago, I brewed their Dead Ringer IPA, partially because Anne and I love IPAs, but mostly because I harvested a bunch of yeast from Batch 31 (which finished a little sweet at about 5%, but tastes amazing and is on draft in my office right now) and I wanted to repitch it into something new. Dead Ringer calls for US05 or 1056, but my yeast was harvested WLP001, so that’s what I used. I’m pretty excited to see how it turns out, since it should theoretically be comfortable with my water and brewhouse conditions. It’s also the first time I’ve used an aerator, which was pretty neat, and the shortest lag I’ve ever had, right about 2 hours.

I was hoping to celebrate today’s Big Brew Day by making a Saison this afternoon, but it’s also Free Comic Book Day, and I don’t think there’s going to be time, so I’ll celebrate it tomorrow. For the first time this year, I’m hoping it stays warm so I can really let that Saison yeast go nuts at 80+°.

I also bought myself a three-keg draft system that will be delivered on Monday. I can not begin to describe how excited I am to have multiple homebrews on tap to share with my friends!

Finally, I found a really great guide for new homebrewers at Homebrew Finds that I wanted to share with the world.

Happy Homebrewing, everyone!

The only problem was, my homebrew supply didn’t have any Munich extract, which is an important part of the recipe. Greg (the owner of Eagle Rock Homebrew Supply) and I stood in the store for several minutes trying to figure out what I could do instead, and then we simultaneously realized that I could just substitute Munich malt for the extract, and do a partial mash of that malt with the caramel 40 specialty grains.

I gathered my hops, milled my grains, and then went to get the LME … only to realize that the recipe calls for 7.9 pounds, and the homebrew supply only sells LME in 6 and 3 pound units. Undeterred, Greg and I did some math, figure out that I could substitue an appropriate amount of light DME for 2 pounds of LME, and pretty soon, I was in business.

I mashed the grains at 154 with a thickness of 1.5qt/pound for 45 minutes, circulated the resulting wort through the bag one time, and was delighted when I saw that my calculations were spot-on, leaving me with exactly 2.25 quarts, which I added to about 6 gallons in my brewing kettle.

My boil was uneventful. I didn’t boil over, I didn’t boil too much, I didn’t evaporate too much, and when the whole thing was over I collected just over 5 gallons of wort. The best part? The target gravity was 1.052, and that’s exactly what I got. I pitched 2 WLP001 at about 74* (a little warm, I know, but I had to leave) and when I got home six hours later, the yeasties were already doing their thing.

This beer is currently unnamed, but I’m looking forward to drinking it in a few weeks, so I can find out if the adjustments I made worked, and if I brewed to style.

Speaking of competitions, in the next few days I’m going to deliver my Patient Zero Pale Ale to Golden Road for the pro-am competition. I went ahead and kegged the portion that I thought was infected (but hoped was okay) and … well, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with it. There’s definitely something a little off, but it isn’t ruined. In fact, I’m going to brew it again and make sure that it stays healthy, because I believe the recipe is solid. I’m really glad that I did the dry-hopped gallon, because I opened a bottle of that last night and OH MY GOD SWEET HOPPY JESUS IS IT GOOD. The hop aroma is just magnificent (and makes me think that the mystery hop is some kind of New Zealand Cascade), even if it’s just a little bit too much. I used 3/4 of an ounce for the gallon, and if I did it again, I’d probably pull that back to 1/2 or so, just so that it doesn’t overwhelm the malt profile. Still, it’s a great beer and even if I don’t make it past the first round, it’s something I’ll be brewing again (dry-hopped and not).

In the next day or so, I’ll be racking my Pliny the Elder clone (which I call Pompey the Great — bonus points if you can figure out why) to secondary for five freaking ounces of dry hops. I lifted the lid of the fermenter when I moved it to my racking station (kitchen counter) and it looks and smells great. I’m really excited about that.

Finally, the Mystery Parti-gyle just isn’t working out. It’s way too bitter for the malt profile, and it has this bready, doughy taste underneath the bitterness that I just don’t like. If it was the 17th century and we needed it for survival, I’d keep it, but life’s too short in these modren times to drink crummy beer, even if it’s beer you made yourself. So that’s going to the Land of Wind and Ghosts as soon as I need the keg. Oh well. I did learn a lot from that whole experience, so it wasn’t entirely wasted.

Cheers!

We’re having weird weather in Los Angeles, and yesterday a lot of warm unsettled air dropped hail and quite a bit of rain all over the place, so I set up under an overhang by my back kitchen door, and got to work. This particular kit uses six separate hop additions, including 2 ounces of whole Cascade while steeping the specialty grains (holy hell did that smell good), as well as a lot of extra sugars (maltodextrin and dme and corn sugar) to lighten the colour and increase the fermentables.

It was a delightful brewing experience, just me and the weather and my dog sleeping on the floor in the kitchen behind me. I had some trouble keeping the long boil going (I’m still figuring out my new regulator and burner), but I had an uneventful brewing session that gave me a little over four gallons of wort that finished at 1.098. After topping it up to 5 gallons, the OG dropped to 1.078, so if my yeast stays happy and hungry, this could be a monster double IPA when it’s all done. I pitched 2 smack packs of 1056 (I didn’t think to make a starter this time, which was kind of silly considering the high OG) and after about a 5 hour lag, they went to work. I’m using a blow-off tube into a glass Wheaton lab bottle filled with StarSan, and HOLY BALLS is it going crazy. It sounds like playing cards in the spokes of your childhood dirt bike and the wheel is just slowly spinning in perpetual motion.

This is a great kit, and More Beer includes instructions for full or partial boils (I did a full boil, and in the last 30 minutes had a ton of evaporation, probably because, like I said, I’m trying to figure out this new regulator and burner). They also give you the recipe for all-grain, so if you wanted to make it yourself after you’ve made the extract version, you have that at your fingertips.

In other homebrewing news: later today, I’m going to bottle the tripel I made three months ago (usually I keg, but I think a tripel should go in big bottles). I pulled a sample of the possibly-infected Patient Zero yesterday, and it tastes off to me. I’m hoping that the yeast will clean it up for another 10 days or so, but I think it may be a lost cause.

But that’s one of the joys of homebrewing: it’s entirely out of my hands (and inside one of my kegs) so all I can do is let it do its thing, hope for the best, and accept that it’s out of my control now.

This morning, while preparing to bottle both brews, I discovered what looked like an ugly infection on the surface of the large carboy:

Gross.

It looks pretty nasty, and I had a big old sad.

Luckily, the dry-hopped gallon is fine and healthy, so I think that’s what I’ll submit into the contest.

But here’s the thing: I popped the airlock out of the carboy and took a big smell (Thinly rolling for a Smell Check and getting a critical success). It didn’t smell sour or gross or off at all. Intrigued, I pulled a few ounces into a glass (using massively sanitized equipment, of course) and tasted it. It didn’t taste weird to me at all, so I asked Anne to taste it, and she also thought it tasted fine.

So I suppose it’s possible that what I thought was an infection is actually something yeasty that looks bad (there is a big, ugly whitish bubble on top, which is what really makes me nervous) but isn’t a problem. If it is infected, I’m worried about bottle bombs, so I decided to keg that four-ish gallons and let it naturally carbonate right up until it’s time to submit my bottles. I’ll use my beer gun to bottle some, and then make a decision about submitting the dry-hopped version or this one. At the very least, I’ll submit the dry-hopped version and hope for the best.

And if the infected(?) batch is drinkable, I’m calling it Patient Zero Pale Ale.

All of us got a big bag of mystery hops. All we know is that they are 7.8%AA, and smell pretty great. I got a very clean, almost noble aroma, but my brother got a piney aroma, so that doesn’t exactly help narrow down the origin. To be honest, though, I kind of like that it’s just a mystery.

So we’re charged with making a beer within the competition guidelines using these hops, and submitting finished bottles by the end of March. Four of the submissions will be brewed on their pilot system, and one of the four will be declared the winner.

Because I don’t have a whole lot of time to get something conditioned and ready to drink, and because the hops are 7.8%AA, I was immediately limited , which was a good thing; creativity comes from limitation! I kicked around a few ideas, and decided to make an American Pale Ale, which I thought would let the hops come through, and which should be ready to drink faster than, say, a Saison or a Brown.

Here’s my first pass at the recipe:

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Golden Road Pro-Am Pale
Brewer: Wil Wheaton
Asst Brewer: 
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 6.52 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.98 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal 
Bottling Volume: 5.13 gal
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 10.8 SRM
Estimated IBU: 38.6 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 80.5 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU 
9 lbs 0.7 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 83.0 % 
1 lbs 1.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 3 9.8 % 
8.5 oz Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 4 4.9 % 
4.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 5 2.3 % 
0.86 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 22.4 IBUs 
0.43 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 30.0 min Hop 7 8.6 IBUs 
0.22 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 8 2.8 IBUs 
0.93 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 9 4.8 IBUs 
1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 Yeast 10 -

Mash Schedule: Temperature Mash, 2 Step, Full Body
Total Grain Weight: 10 lbs 14.2 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time 
Protein Rest Add 13.61 qt of water at 129.3 F 122.0 F 30 min 
Saccharification Heat to 156.0 F over 15 min 156.0 F 30 min 
Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 10 min 168.0 F 10 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 4.67 gal water at 168.0 F

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm probably going to tweak this a little bit, and maybe simplify. I may take out the wheat entirely and just up the C60 a tiny bit, or mix in some C40. At the moment, it's going to end up right in the middle of the style guideline, and I want to preserve that.  I may also change the mash to a single infusion, just to eliminate one more place where I can screw up.

This will be my first ever competition, and I'm really excited. Even if I don't get past the first round, I'll probably learn a whole lot of things.

UPDATED: I asked John Palmer, who I met last night at the Beer Blogger's thing at Chloe's at the Pub at Golden Road (wow, that's a lot of nested ats), for some feedback and comments on my recipe. He gave me some great notes and suggestions, so I have modified the recipe thusly:

BeerSmith 2 Recipe Printout - http://www.beersmith.com
Recipe: Golden Road Pro-Am Pale
Brewer: Wil Wheaton
Asst Brewer: 
Style: American Pale Ale
TYPE: All Grain
Taste: (30.0)

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 6.52 gal
Post Boil Volume: 5.98 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal 
Bottling Volume: 5.13 gal
Estimated OG: 1.055 SG
Estimated Color: 7.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 43.5 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 80.5 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU 
9 lbs 0.7 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 83.8 % 
1 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 3 9.3 % 
4.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4 2.3 % 
4.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM) Grain 5 2.3 % 
4.0 oz Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 6 2.3 % 
0.85 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 22.1 IBUs 
0.70 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 20.0 min Hop 8 11.0 IBUs 
1.00 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 9 - 
2.00 oz Mystery Hop [7.80 %] - Boil 5.0 min Hop 10 10.4 IBUs 
1.0 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) [124.21 Yeast 11 -

Mash Schedule: Simple Mash
Total Grain Weight: 10 lbs 12.7 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time 
Strike Add 13.49 qt of water and heat to 145.0 145.0 F 30 min 
Infusion Add 7.56 qt of water at 184.6 F 158.0 F 30 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 2.80 gal water at 168.0 F

Created with BeerSmith 2 - http://www.beersmith.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m pretty sure this is what I’m going to brew on Sunday. If you want to do it at the same time and see how our things turn out, let me know in email, or just chime in when I’m live-brewing on Twitter. That might be fun and awesome. I can convert this to extract, if anyone wants that.

It has a very light body, extremely pale colour, and a whole lot of hop bitterness. Based on my hydrometer readings and knowledge of BJCP guidelines, I’m going to go ahead and declare that this is a proper English Bitter. It isn’t bad, and exhibits potential to be a satisfying session beer.

This will likely be racked to a secondary in a few days (as soon as one of my two become available; I have a Tripel in one and a Pale in the other) and given a week or so to clear. It’s probably going to end up in a keg, so if it’s just not worth drinking, I don’t have to deal with two cases of bottles that need to be given a Viking funeral.

I ended up sparging way too fast, so the OG of my wort was very low (around 1.060 instead of 1.106). I knew I could get the gravity up with the long boil, but I still sort of panicked, put too much wort in my brewpot, boiled it too hot, and in addition to the nearly 2 gallon boil over I had, I also boiled off another two gallons.

When it was all done, I had just around three gallons of … wait for it … 1.103 wort. I could have just fermented that and probably would have done well, but I’d made a 2L starter, so I panicked again and topped it up to 5 gallons. Which dropped the OG to around 1.065ish. Stupid, Wheaton. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

It’s currently fermenting in my office, and I’m really glad I put a blowoff tube on it because it looks like it’s going to explode, and the tube is full of kreusen.

It seemed like a shame to just take 22 pounds of grist and throw it into the compost bin, so I did a second mash, which I added to about 2 gallons of high gravity wort I had left over from the barley wine. I did some calculations in Beersmith, and concluded that I could probably end up with a very light pale ale, maybe in the 1.050 range if I get lucky. I have a ton of hops in my fridge, so I decided to do the following:

Roughly 6.5 gallons of second runnings from the barley wine grist.

1oz Simcoe at 60

1oz Willamette at 15

1oz Willamette at 5

Ferment with 1056 or US-05, depending on how I feel in about 2 hours.

I have no idea what will happen with this, but it’s a fun experiment that doesn’t cost me anything except time, and since I got up early this morning specifically to do this brew, I think I’m still coming out ahead.

Post-boil update: Everything went well, and I ended up with a nice pale ale, OG around 1.039. I suppose it’s sort of on the line between an English Pale and a Bitter, and will likely finish around 5%. I’m sticking with Mystery for the name, because reasons.

I haven’t had time to do an all-grain brew for months, but I was looking at my calendar and saw that I have this entire day free until around 5pm, so I resolved to do an all-grain brew today. That brew is the Old Guardian Barley Wine from the Stone Brewing book, because it’s a simple recipe that will deliver a high gravity monster which is perfect for aging in my whisky barrel.

I have a 2L starter on my stirplate, and a full bottle of propane to get me through the nearly 2-hour boil. This is going to be a lot of fun, and in about 7 months — you know, right around my birthday — I should have some oak-aged barley wine to celebrate with.