Playing with recipe tools online.

I think I like Promash better but Beertools works for when
I'm just messing around on the computer.

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CD 2.3
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General
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                  Category: Specialty Beer
               Subcategory: Specialty Beer
               Recipe Type: All Grain
                Batch Size: 5 gal.
             Volume Boiled: 6 gal.
           Mash Efficiency: 72 %
       Total Grain/Extract: 14.36 lbs.
                Total Hops: 2.75 oz.
     Calories (12 fl. oz.): 285.9
          

Ingredients
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       5.99 lbs. Golden Promise Pale
       5.94 lbs. Pale Ale Malt
       0.34 lbs. 2-Row Chocolate Malt
       0.14 lbs. De-Bittered Black Malt (Mout Roost 1400)
       1.95 lbs. Caramel Malt 120L
       1 oz. Centennial boiled 60 minutes.
       0.75 oz. Simcoe boiled 45 minutes.
       0.5 oz. Cascade boiled 30 minutes.
       0.5 oz. Cascade boiled 10 minutes.
          Yeast: WYeast 1272 American Ale II

Notes: 4oz Oak chips in secondary for 2 weeks, No plans to dry hop.
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BW Beer in Secondary

This morning I racked the BW into a the secondary. I kept putting if off because the krausen hadn't fallen away. It was like this burger of yeast, a layer on the top and bottom and the relatively clear beer in between. I figured a little time in secondary, then a crash cool, then bottled. I tasted it. It was still a little thin but it tasted light and refreshing and the hop flavor was pretty mild, which is a good thing for such a light beer.

Racking 3B to secondary

Today the weather is making me feel tired and productive at the same time. I'm tired in body but my mind is working overtime. I woke up with the goal of getting some writing done. Writing in general not necessarily on my dissertation, but on a few different things like this blog post for example. The posting is important because Barnaby is out of the country and I'd at least like to keep him abreast of the Buckwheat happenings.

I let it go a little longer in primary than I had initially planned, mostly because what I'd read of buckwheat beer and dry yeast is that it tended to be slow to get going and slow to ferment. So a few extra days in primary isn't a bad thing. I'm going to move it to a 3 gallon carboy to do a bit more bulk aging and then then crash cool it and bottle.

I have forty five more minutes of writing to do today and then I'm going to head home and get some cleaning done and read and move some files to my little laptop from my external hard drive, wash out carboys and jugs and stoppers and airlocks and get them ready to fill with beer tomorrow after I come back from my two hours of writing at the library. I will get into a routine. I will finish what I started 7 years ago and I will get a beer brewed in the coming weeks.

I'm on the RADIO!!!

So a few weeks ago while working a gig with extrasonly on the set for Leverage I met this guy. This sounds do "blah!" but what happened was that I had taken out my book Designing Great Beers and my knitting and then got up to go talk to the makeup artist to make sure I looked ok. I came back and this guy in the seat next to me asks if that book belonged to me. I said yes, and then he asked if I brewed, again I said yes. If you've spent any time talking to me, you know that I will talk for hours about beer.

Well it turns out he has a radio show on beer. It's an internet radio show and usually they interview folks in the profession but they've wanted to do a show with homebrewers. I believe it was fate, or at least good fortune. After a few weeks of getting our schedules to mesh we came up with a day. I bottled up some of the IPA and toddled on downtown.

I was really nervous and friends who've heard the show remark that I sound more reserve than they are used to but that I do sound like that in real life. I thought my voice sounded weird but that's just me.

I think 32 will be a lucky number for me, that's the episode for BrewHappy I'm in.

Colour on the Vine!

I meant to put this picture up after I got back from the vineyard in Wilsonville but I completely forgot in my exhaustion. We'd spent two days covering all the plants with netting so the birds and deer can't get to them. Both early days but not terribly long days but all the bending and squatting (thank goodness for knee pads!) and a few moments of crawling really left me hurting. I think I came home and went to bed pretty early both days. This vineyard has color gathering, and the one in Alsea didn't. I wonder what that means for production overall?

3B recipe

3.8# Malted Buckwheat
1.5# corn sugar
1# rice solids extract
1.5# Buckwheat honey
2oz Hallertaur @ 45
10z Willamette @ 10
1oz Styrian Goldings @ 30
.2 oz Amylase enzyme added to mash at 148 degrees for 1 hour.
Nottingham dry yeast

Mash in at 110, protein rest for 30 min, 1.5 gallons
Raised temp to 150 held temp between 140-149 with the added amylase for 1.5 hours.

OG 1.041/ 4 gallons

I ended up with a much lower gravity than expected and not a full 5 gallons, so we decided to not add more water and leave it at 4 gallons. I may decide to add more rice extract dissolved in a little water to see if i can get the yeast ferment further when I move it to the secondary.

Krausen!!!

Well the panic has been thwarted! I was worried yesterday when I didn't see more activity. Apparently the little beasties have gotten over their shock of being moved from a small glass container or warm water to a gigantic container of food. I might have to do a bit of feeding this batch with some honey and water in a week. I'm going to be doing some reading up on adding body to gluten-free beers that are not lagers.

This little baby is sitting in the laundry room where it stays in the mid 60s. I think at the tail end of the fermentation I'm going to crash cool it in the fridge for a few days and try to get as much yeast to fall out as possible. I think I might also do a secondary aging for a few weeks to a month or so depending on how it tastes.