This is my second attempt at a sweet stout, the first was a partial mash oatmeal stout, this was a small biab all grain batch designed from a recipe found on beersmithrecipes.com. I made a few changes to my recipe for scaling, in an attempt to smooth it out.
This beer is a collaboration beer with my good friend Mike, of Bow Bog Brewing. We have been homebrewing in parallel for the past few years, and have had many an exchange recently about technique, ingredients, and various projects. We both have a similar focus on sourcing our ingredients locally, and trying to build our own equipment, and are at a similar experience level brewing. So when we went in on a few sacks of grain from Valley Malt late last year we started talking about a beer we would both brew.
This is my first all grain batch, while I find it very had to be objective about my own beer, I’m happy with the results. Despite some of my brew day miscues. It’s not the recipe that it was designed to be do to those changes, but I don’t think it’s worse for it. While I have not tried the beer side by side with 21 A’s bitter american, it’s similar in spirit. Lowish ABV, light body, but not watery, and hoppy.
I’ve had the itch to brew a Berliner Weisse styled beer for…
This is one of the more recent additions to my brewing library.
I picked it up because I heard about the book on Beer sessions radio and I’m a sucker for brewing books, as my library can attest. This is an advanced how to brew book that’s focused on all grain. This is intended as a brewing book based on the author’s experience as a professional brewer.
I try to brew as often as reasonable, which is usually when I’ve got a keg free, when I’ve got a competition to enter, or it’s been way too long. In 2012 it was more like every 3 months, despite wanting to brew more often. That is what makes brewing 3 times in december quite an accomplishment. This last batch pushed the 2012 total to 6 batches, 5 beers, one cider, an extract only batch, extract and steeping grains, a partial mash, all grain, and brew in a bag all grain. To say I’m a dabbler might be an understatement. One thing that hasn’t changed a whole lot is what I brew.
This New Years eve brew session was pretty much on a lark. I had picked up a pair of 2.5 gallon kegs from adventures in homebrewing as a christmas gift to myself. From a trip to Valley Malt this fall, I have a stock pile of grain. From stocking up during the fall harvest I also have an abundance of hops. I’ve been thinking of how to fill one of the small kegs, while taking advantage of what I had on hand. 90% of the grain, 100% of the hops, came from what I had on hand. I did still have to make the trip to the home brew shop to pick up yeast, and a few misc things, but it was a little easier on the wallet. I only needed caraffa II, lactose powder, and yeast. Anyone guess what I brewed from the ingredients I picked up? Since kicking the Oatmeal stout, I’ve wanted to brew something dark to go beside the pales I usually brew, and have on tap. My wife likes stouts more than my typical beers. I
Another brew day, another clone recipe. This time it’s from the pages of Brew your own magazine, a clone of 21st Amendment’s Bitter American. A hoppy american style bitter, weighing in at 4.4 ABV, 42 IBU, featuring warrior and cascade hops, according to 21A’s website. A beer I’ve had a few times, and have enjoyed it. It’s similar to my earlier brews, pale, hoppy, lower abv, and a clone recipe. Whats different about this brew day was that I brewed all grain.