Arrogant Bastard Clone

Props to Mike "Tasty" McDole for cloning this beer!  This beer will be next in my lineup and will be brewed by myself and six friends who purchased the brew session and dinner at the OLM School fundraiser.

Arrogant Bastard
14-B American IPA
Author: Tasty McDole

Size: 10.5 gal
Efficiency: 64.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 224.17 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.067 (1.056 - 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.017 (1.010 - 1.018)
Color: 21.56 (6.0 - 15.0)
Alcohol: 6.62% (5.5% - 7.5%)
Bitterness: 95.7 (40.0 - 70.0)

Ingredients:
29.0 lb Pale Ale Malt
3.22 lb Special B - Caramel malt
1.0 tsp 5.2 pH Stabilizer - added during mash
50.0 g Chinook (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 85 min
50.0 g Chinook (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 45 min
50.0 g Chinook (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
1.0 tsp Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
50.0 g Chinook (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0 min
2.0 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale

Notes
Mash at 148

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.12

Willamette IPA

'Tis time to brew an IPA again as the Mad Pig is almost gone.  I was thinking of re brewing the wildly popular Sick Puppy IPA again but I've had this pound of Willamette hops on hand for about a year and I've been searching for a brew to use them in.  After searching the interwebs one night I learned that Jamil Z had tried to clone Lagunitas IPA many moons ago and came up with a recipe that used all Willamette hops.  I'm not shooting for a Lagunitas clone (and most homebrewers know that this recipe doesn't come close) but I did use the Lagunitas malt schedule on this beer and replaced most of the hop additions with Willamette hops.  What I'm shooting for is a somewhat spicy IPA with a nose that will knock your socks off!  Of course, with all experiments, this may fail miserably, but I'm hoping for the best.  I just picked up my supplies today from Barley and Wine and I'll be brewing this Saturday at about 5 am hoping to be done by 10 am.

Here's the label and the recipe:

Willamette IPA
14-B American IPA
Author: Wade L. Williams

Size: 11.0 gal
Efficiency: 64.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 209.43 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.063 (1.056 - 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.016 (1.010 - 1.018)
Color: 12.7 (6.0 - 15.0)
Alcohol: 6.19% (5.5% - 7.5%)
Bitterness: 48.2 (40.0 - 70.0)

Ingredients:
24 lb American 2-row
2.0 lb White Wheat Malt
1.8 lb Munich Malt
1.2 lb Crystal Malt 60°L
2.75 lb Crystal 15
1.75 oz Magnum (10.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
.7 oz Glacier (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min (similar to Willamette and I want to get rid of them)
1.25 oz Willamette (4.7%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
2 oz Willamette (4.7%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
4 oz Willamette (4.7%) - added during boil, boiled 1 min
4 oz Willamette (4.7%) - added dry to primary fermenter
2.0 ea WYeast 1968 London ESB Ale

Notes
Mash temp 158-160

Ferment temp: 66F for three days - slowly raise to 70F over the next 3-4 days

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.3

Poker Dogs Pale Ale

I'm changing up the brewing schedule here a bit.  I went to fill up a growler of 44 Pale Ale this morning for a friend and the keg blew.  The last keg blew.  That means no more pale ale, the most popular beer in the lineup.  Sooooooooo, I'm going to brew the SNPA clone again, but I'm changing it up a bit to make it a little less than medium on the mouth feel.  This should make it more drinkable and with a little less ABV.  Here's the label and the recipe.

Poker Dogs Pale Ale
10-A American Pale Ale
Author: Wade Williams
Date: 7/2/2010

Size: 11.0 gal
Efficiency: 64.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 183.25 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.055 (1.045 - 1.060)
Terminal Gravity: 1.014 (1.010 - 1.015)
Color: 14.11 (5.0 - 14.0)
Alcohol: 5.42% (4.5% - 6.2%)
Bitterness: 41.5 (30.0 - 45.0)

Ingredients:
25.16 lb Pale Ale Malt
2.19 lb Crystal Malt 60°L

1.1 oz Magnum (14.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
1.0 oz Perle (5.5%) - added during boil, boiled 30.0 min
2.0 oz Cascade (5.6%) - added during boil, boiled 10.0 min
4.0 oz Cascade (5.6%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min

2.0 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale

2 oz Cascade (5.6%) - added dry to primary fermenter

Brew Day - Fuego Del Diablo

Another blustery day outside and another brew session under my belt.  Everything went great except the boil over.  Always, and I mean always, watch that brew pot until you begin your boil!  I was trying to do too many things at one time, took my eye off of it for about five minutes, and noticed sticky wort coming under the garage door. Yikes!  I lost about 1/2 gallon to this mess.  No worries though, everything cleans up nicely with a hose. 

I hit my OG a little high at 1.069 instead of 1.067 but that's close enough for government work!  ;-) 
The hydrometer sample tasted wonderful!  The additional 10 IBUs at 60 minutes really balanced out this beer.  I can't wait to taste it in 3 weeks!

Now, on to the pictures!














This is the new brew house setup.   The burner on the left is new(er) and is used to head the Hot Liquor Tank holding the strike water.  It's more powerful than the old burner on the right and I had to turn it down a tad after it heated the keg on top of it bright red/yellow!  And, yes, I'm still using the dog kennel to hold the Mashtun, it's just the perfect height.  I also kept the water filter close to the HLT in order to refill after pouring the initial strike water into the mashtun.  This helped because I didn't have to move water from the boil pot to the HLT.  The less lifting I have to do the better!














With two burners I'm now able to drain the mashtun directly into the boil pot.  Again, no lifting heavy buckets!














The boil over mess.....  :-(














The end of the boil with the wort chiller sanitizing in the pot.  I'd read on the Morebeer Forums that if you turn down pressure of the water going into the chiller that the wort will cool down faster.  I tried it and it worked great.  The water goes slower through the copper giving it time to allow the heat  transfer to take place.  Cool water in, hot water out, cool wort in the process.

Everything is in the fermentor and cooling down to 67 degrees.  I'll pitch the 2,000 ml yeast starter of Wyeast 1056 American Ale tomorrow morning.

Cheers!

Fuego Del Diablo

My, oh my, how the beer seems to disappear faster when the sun comes out! I just tapped my second keg of Mad Pig IPA and I'm almost completely out of Pale Ale and Amber Ale. I planned my next 3 brew sessions today and they'll happen over the next 9 weeks, the first of which will be this Friday. I'll also be reusing the yeast cake from this beer for the next two.

Fuego Del Diablo means The Devil's Fire and it's a slightly altered version of JZ's Evil Twin. All I'm doing to change it is to actually do a 90 minute boil and add 0.4 oz of Magnum hops at 60 minutes to up the IBUs by 10 points. This will be an evolving recipe where I try different ideas each time I brew it.

Here's the recipe:

Fuego Del Diablo
14-B American Amber/IPAish sort of thing
Author: Wade L. Williams

Size: 11 gal
Efficiency: 64.0%
Attenuation: 75.8%
Calories: 224.06 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.067
Terminal Gravity: 1.016
Color: 19.84
Alcohol: 6.7%
Bitterness: 52.7

Ingredients:
26.25 lb Pale Ale Malt
2.2 lb Crystal Malt 40°L
2.2 lb Munich Malt
1.1 lb Victory® Malt
1.1 lb Crystal 120
.6 lb Pale Chocolate

.4 oz Magnum (14.5%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
1 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
1 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
1 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
2 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added during boil, boiled 0.0 min
2 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added dry to primary fermenter
2 oz Amarillo (8.5%) - added dry to primary fermenter

2 ea Wyeast 1056 American Ale in a 2,000 ml starter

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.3

Weed Death Brew Day

My 18th brew day is done.  A good day indeed.  All of the usual stuff will come here shortly, but I had to mention three new things I got to use in the brew house today.
First, I got to use my new mash paddle.  It went through the mash effortlessly and really broke up those dough balls!  Easier = better in my opinion.
Second, I was able to use my new high temperature tubing to transfer the 165 degree water from kettle to bucket.  I also used it to transfer the wort to the kettle and I'll use it here shortly to transfer the boiled wort to the fermentor.  Again, very easy to work with since it's so flexible.
Third, I got to use my new stainless steel spoon instead of my plastic spoon to stir the hops into the wort.  Wow, just wow.  No more wimpy spoon twisting in my hands as I stir.

Now, back to our regular programming:



The yeast starter went a little crazy on me and blew its top.  I made two 2,000 ml starters - one for the initial starter and one to step it up and grow more yeasties.  The first starter fermented out in two days so I put it in the fridge, let the yeast settle to the bottom, decanted the nasty starter beer off the top and re-fed it again on Thursday morning.  I took of for my meeting in Monterrey and came back Saturday afternoon to this mess.  Yuck!  The starter is just fine but I have quite the mess to clean up!


 The mash with my new mash paddle!  Take that you little dough ball bastards!  OK, maybe I'm just a little too excited about this.....



Did I mention that I mashed in really early this morning?  Also, I had to lengthen the mash to 1 hour 20 minutes instead of the standard 1 hour.  I missed my mash temp by a few degrees so I wanted to make sure everything converted.


7.5 gallons of wort on my first runnings, 8 gallons from my second runnings.  1.5 gallons of wort (that won't fit into the boil kettle) down the drain.  I've got to work on my mash math so that I come out with zero extra gallons of wort. 


Just a liiiiiiiiiiiiiitle too vigorous on the boil.  I tuned it down and got the perfect boil going.  Not too much, not too little, just right.  Hmmmm.  Thinking about some kind of Goldilocks Ale now.....  ;-)

Just chillin'.  Oh, BTW, the outlet hose for my chiller split in the middle of the hose AND the darn connector started leaking.  Had to put a towel over the connector to keep hose water from getting into the wort.  Hmmmm.  Thinking about some kind of Hose Water Hefeweizen now..... ;-)

And, finally, the little bastards that this ale was named after.  I could here these Weedomites screaming in their death throws today: "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee".  Damn that was irritating!  ;-)

Weed Death Wheat Ale

The Summer Sunset Orange Wit is about 4 pints away from blowing the keg so it's time to brew something light to replace it.  To be honest, I don't like Wits (Sorry Stephen!) and American Wheat beers seem to be getting lots of attention so a wheat beer it is.

Now, as much as people like wheat beers, they may not necessarily want to drink one with the word Death in the name so here's the explanation.  Almost everyone reading this is going to have a lawn.  Very low alcohol beers are sometimes called "lawnmower beers" meaning that you can have one when you mow the lawn.  Well, I don't have a lawn, I have weeds and I've been battling them for 4 years.  This year my father in law gave me a mixture of round up and some other chemicals that I'm sure will pollute the ground water for years to come, but I won't have any weeds!  So, instead of "Lounge Lizard Larry's Lawnmower Libations" I opted for "Weed Death Wheat Ale", a name that was partially born out of my buddy Steve's suggestion of "Wade's Weed Death Mixture".

The yeast starter was created last night and is spinning dizzily on the stir plate.  Brewday is Sunday while I smoke 16 pounds of pork butt (Yes Steve, I said pork butt).  Here's the label and the recipe.

Weed Death Wheat Ale
6-D American Wheat or Rye Beer
Author: Wade L. Williams

Size: 10.56 gal
Efficiency: 64.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 166.16 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.050 (1.040 - 1.055)
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.008 - 1.013)
Color: 6.63 (3.0 - 6.0)
Alcohol: 4.91% (4.0% - 5.5%)
Bitterness: 22.3 (15.0 - 30.0)

Ingredients:
10.5 lb Pale Ale Malt
10.5 lb White Wheat Malt
2 lb Vienna Malt
1.5 oz Sterling (7%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) - added during boil, boiled 15 min
1 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
1.5 oz Sterling (7%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
2.0 ea White Labs WLP320 American Hefeweizen Ale

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.3

Containing the Mad Pig

I was able to clean a couple of kegs and then transfer the Mad Pig from the KegMentor to kegs. 

1.070 SG, 1.014 FG = 7.36% ABV.

The hydro sample had some hop haze to it but it smelled/tasted great!  Should be ready in time for the CVBG March meeting!

Mad Pig Brew Day

The Surly Sow has mutated.  It's become bigger, more bitter, hoppier, more aromatic, and about 1% more alcohol.  The color looked great in the sparge, the kettle smelled fantastic with 8 ounces of hops going into the boil, and the gravity sample tasted out of this world!  I cannot wait for this beer to finish fermenting so it can go on draft!

I did change one thing in the recipe and added 1 lb of corn sugar to the boil at 10 minutes to dry the beer out a little.  Here's how the brew day went.

I finally found a picture of a "mad" pig that didn't involve foaming at the mouth.  ;-)  I didn't think I'd be happy with a white background on the image, but in the end I was quite surprised at how well it made the pig stand out in the label.  He's one P.O.'d pig!

I was getting everything ready Saturday night and decided to bring things inside to sanitize them so I could spend some time with Carlen while I did it. The fermentor (keg on the left) was easy to sanitize on the stove.  I just put a little water in it and boiled it for 10 minutes.  I had a new thermometer and spigot for the brew kettle and wanted to put it through it's paces for brew day so I put it on another burner.  No leaks!

Santa brought a ping-pong table for the kids this year.  It sure is a nice place to spread out the brew stuff!

31.77 pounds of grain + 9.5 gallons of 175 degree water = 154 degree mash!  Hit it dead on!

Sparging one hour later.  The wort was a beautiful golden/amber color.

The hot break forming on top of one full boil kettle.  I've learned that my boil off rate is very high in the kettle (3 gallons per hour) so I have to collect 14 gallons of wort to to boil down to 11.  10.5 of which goes into the fermentor and 1/2 gallon which is left behind because it looks like pea soup from the pellet hops.

209-210 degrees is the perfect boil temp!  Keeps the wort at a nice, stead boil without going crazy.

14 gallons of wort at a boil with the first addition of hops floating around.  When the 3 ounces of Chinook hops hit the kettle the whole garage smelled like heaven.  Or, what I hope heaven will smell like!

The one hour boil is done and we're cooling everything down to 80 degrees with the immersion chiller.  Also cleaning up the boil over that happens when I put the wort chiller in the pot.  Don't know why it happens, but it does.  I'm thinking of switching over to a different kind of chiller, but haven't figured out which one I want yet.

All those hops left over on the screen after the wort has been drained off.  The wort is in the fermentor and 1800 ML of WLP001 yeast starter is in there chugging away.

2 weeks until this one is done fermenting.
1 week dry hopping.
2 weeks carbonating.
2 weeks conditioning.
----------------
7 weeks until it's ready to drink.

Mad Pig IPA

Finally! After 3 months I'm brewing again this Sunday. The yeast starter is done and will be on the stir plate tonight. This recipe is loosely based off of Blind Pig IPA that I got from Brandon over at The BN.

Mad Pig IPA
14-B American IPA
Author: Wade L. Williams

Size: 10.56 gal
Efficiency: 64.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 223.09 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.067 (1.056 - 1.075)
Terminal Gravity: 1.017 (1.010 - 1.018)
Color: 12.16 (6.0 - 15.0)
Alcohol: 6.59% (5.5% - 7.5%)
Bitterness: 96.8 (40.0 - 70.0)

Ingredients:
28.5 lb Pale Ale Malt
1.09 lb White Wheat Malt
1.09 lb Cara-Pils® Malt
1.09 lb Crystal Malt 40°L
3.0 oz Chinook (12.4%) - added during boil, boiled 60 min
1.0 oz Cascade (7.8%) - added during boil, boiled 30 min
2.0 oz Cascade (7.8%) - added during boil, boiled 15 min

1.0 ea Whirlfloc Tablets (Irish moss) - added during boil, boiled 10 min
2.0 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) - added during boil, boiled 10 min

1.0 oz Amarillo (8.6%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min
1.0 oz Simcoe (13.0%) - added during boil, boiled 5 min

2.0 ea White Labs WLP001 California Ale

1.0 oz Amarillo (8.6%) - added dry to primary fermenter
1.0 oz Simcoe (13.0%) - added dry to primary fermenter
1.0 oz Cascade (5.5%) - added dry to primary fermenter
2.0 oz Centennial (10.0%) - added dry to primary fermenter


Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.3